It Looks Like Real Mega-Forces Are Moving To Really Change Our Lives!

This appeared last week:

I suspect we “ain’t seen nothing yet”!.

AI is starting to work. The Trump drama could look like a sideshow

Lost among the Trump turmoil is the disruption caused by the AI revolution. It’s happening and Australian investors, politicians and business leaders are not ready.

James Thomson Columnist

May 16, 2025 – 9.53am

For the past few days, some of Australia’s top chief executives – including Commonwealth Bank’s Matt Comyn, NAB’s Andrew Irvine and Telstra’s Vicki Brady – have been bunkered down in the US city of Seattle, for one of Microsoft’s most exclusive and influential events.

The tech giant’s annual CEO summit has an exclusive guest list that includes many leaders from America’s Fortune 500 companies. Comyn, who has spent the last two weeks touring the US, and nerds out on the detail of technology like few other Australian CEOs, says the Microsoft conference has become bigger each year, as the artificial intelligence revolution gathers pace.

“You see the sharp edge of the metaphorical sphere in the US, and how driven and how focused and how intensely they’re working on some of the broader technology challenges,” Comyn tells AFR Weekend.

Comyn, who has done stints in Silicon Valley and at CBA’s Seattle tech hub over the past two weeks on his US tour, has already taken away some key AI lessons from his trip. He says the past six months have seen tremendous advances in what’s called reinforcement learning, where AI mimics the trial-and-error learning process that humans use to achieve their goals. He’s also been closely studying the cultural and leadership aspects of AI implementation.

“There’s a big difference between big companies that are navigating that transition well and successfully, which is not necessarily easy,” Comyn says.

But his biggest message is that the AI revolution is moving faster than ever – and Australia may not be ready.

For many consumers, it may seem that the initial hype that accompanied the release of ChatGPT has faded, and generative AI models are simply better versions of existing tools – a smarter way to search the web, for example, or a souped virtual assistant.

But inside some of the world’s big businesses, things are changing, and fast.

“I think there are interesting questions about how and where that evolves, and how well equipped Australia is,” Comyn says. “The disruptive potential over a three- to five-year timeframe is significant, and there’s a lot of preparatory work and policy work and thought that needs to go into that, at an economy and policy and regulatory level.”

There’s been plenty of discussion about issues such as the infrastructure Australia needs to ride the AI wave, and what regulatory guidelines should steer the development of the sector. But if AI delivers on its promise – that is, if it can augment and replace human workers as tech giants like Microsoft expect – then much more complex and difficult questions will need to be addressed, including around vexed issues like welfare and taxation.

The disruption unleashed by AI could even make the febrile debate around Labor’s proposed tax on unrealised gains for savers with more than $3 million in superannuation look like a sideshow.

One of the most notable aspects of the powerful sharemarket rally that has greeted the cooling of US President Donald Trump’s trade war is the resurgence of America’s tech giants. Having led a two-year rally on Wall Street, the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and chipmaker Nvidia were hit first by the emergence of Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek, and then by Trump’s tariff war.

But it’s been a very different story this week. The pause in the tariff war between the US and China sent tech stocks surging, before Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, and the promise of huge spending by the Saudi Kingdom on AI infrastructure, added further momentum to the melt-up. Since the start of this week, Nvidia stock has surged 16 per cent, taking its gains since Wall Street bottomed on April 8 to more than 40 per cent.

But the evidence that AI is starting to change the global economy goes well beyond financial markets.

“AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call.”

— Fiverr, chief executive Micha Kaufman

Earlier this week tech giant Microsoft announced it would cut 3 per cent of its workforce – about 6000 workers – in what has been described as a “delayering” exercise designed to remove management levels.

But according to data uncovered by Bloomberg, about 40 per cent of the 2000 staff laid off in Microsoft’s home state of Washington were software engineers. That’s not surprising; last month, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said that about 30 per cent of the code written inside the company was being written by AI.

Presumably, Microsoft’s own popular AI coding tool, called GitHub CoPilot, is doing a lot of the heavy lifting inside the tech giant – and doing the company’s own staff out of work.

The Microsoft sackings were a concrete example of a shift in mood that appears to be taking place across the US business community.

An article in The Wall Street Journal this week suggested that the war for talent has become a war on talent, with CEOs telling staff they need to work harder and stop complaining.

The paper recalled JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon’s now-infamous leaked tirade against remote work from an internal meeting heard earlier this year – “I’ve had it with this kind of stuff. I’ve been working seven days a week since COVID, and I come in, and where is everybody else?” – and a brutal comment from Emma Grede, co-founder of Kim Kardashian’s shapewear company Skims and chief executive of clothing label Good American, co-founded by Khloe Kardashian.

“Work-life balance is your problem. It isn’t the employers’ responsibility,” she said on a podcast this month.

What’s led to this change in tone? At least in part, the Journal argued, a reflection of the advances in AI.

A changing workforce

At Shopify, the $225 billion e-commerce giant, chief executive Tobi Lütke recently wrote a company-wide memo instructing the managers not to hire new staff before making sure their roles could not be replicated by AI.

“Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI,” he wrote. “What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?”

At Salesforce, chief executive Marc Benioff has said the company will reduce its hiring of engineers this year due to the use of AI.

At US freelance marketplace Fiverr, chief executive Micha Kaufman shared on social media a memo sent to staff last month warning them that unless they become “an exceptional talent at what you do … you will face the need for a career change in a matter of months”.

“It does not matter if you are programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson or finance person – AI is coming for you,” Kaufman wrote. “AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call.”

All of this is, of course, anecdotal evidence, and it’s easy to get gloomy about the potential for AI to wipe out large numbers of jobs.

Raphael Arndt, chief executive of the Future Fund, points out that unemployment is hovering near historical lows right around the world, and AI can play an important role in meeting worker shortages in areas like healthcare, where humanoid robots could eventually prove invaluable in meeting the needs of an ageing population.

“We’ve been thinking about lower-cost workforce options for decades.”

— Craig Scroggie, chief executive NextDC

The chief executive of $28 billion ASX-listed accounting software giant Xero, tech veteran Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, is a believer in the disruptive power of AI. “It’s not the future – it’s here now,” she said on Thursday, after delivering another impressive earnings result.

But adoption can be slower than expected; when Singh Cassidy was an executive at Google, she remembers being told by co-founder Eric Schmidt back in 2003 that cloud computing would take over the world. More than two decades later, she says Xero is still working hard to bring customers into the cloud.

But Craig Scroggie, chief executive of ASX-listed data centre operator NextDC says the trend is clear – companies always find ways to cut costs and maximise profits.

“We’ve been thinking about lower-cost workforce options for decades. We’ve outsourced to lower-cost countries for decades, but now we have a tech-based knowledge base with the ability to put a workforce’s entire knowledge base in one system,” Scroggie said at the Macquarie Australia conference last week.

Like it or not, he’s right. The sheer weight of money being ploughed into generative AI around the world – estimated at just over $1 trillion by market research firm Gartner – will demand a return.

Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett says there are two ways this can go: either companies adopt AI without laying workers off, which will lead to pressure on profit margins and share prices, or AI adoption unleashes a productivity-enhancing wave of unemployment.

In the latter scenario, Hartnett argues, “US politicians would move to protect US workers via wealth taxation.”

Protecting jobs

It wouldn’t just be America facing the question of how to protect citizens forced out of the labour force by artificial intelligence. If Comyn’s prediction is correct, and AI disruption arrives in three to five years, the potential erosion of the tax base from AI-related job losses could be impressive; even if 10 per cent of Australian jobs were hit by the technology, that would mean about 1.4 million extra people out of work.

Sound crazy? Remember, Microsoft has already cut 3 per cent of its workforce, and it’s at the very start of this journey.

But it’s also important to note these job losses would also collide with a nasty shift in demographics; about 80,000 Baby Boomers will turn 80 in 2027, with the number of new octogenarians each year hovering at about 60,000 for the next 20 years, according to modelling by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

This combination means the oft-repeated suggestions that Labor’s tax on unrealised super gains in super funds with over $3 million will eventually morph into other wealth taxes – higher capital gains taxes or even inheritance taxes – may well prove prescient.

But the pressure to tax wealth would be bipartisan; as Bank of America’s Hartnett says, the combination of fewer individual taxpayers and the costs associated with an ageing population may mean there are few alternatives.

In a world filled as it currently is with uncertainty, it’s hard for workers, investors, politicians and business leaders to grapple with the risks and opportunities AI will bring; the hype has been overdone, the impacts on our daily lives are currently pretty minor, and it’s hard to shake the feeling of helplessness – AI will happen to Australia, and there’s not much we can do about it.

But if nothing else, it’s important to realise the potential scale of the disruption could make today’s big issues – trade dramas, and tax changes – look very irrelevant, very quickly.

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/labor-s-3m-super-tax-may-be-start-of-a-wealth-grab-just-ask-chatgpt-20250515-p5lzny

I have to say it is becoming ever harder to know where all this is heading but the curse suggesting “may you live in interesting times” seems to become more of a worry by the week!

It certainly seems that the pace of change is accelerating and keeping up is getting harder and harder.

It is also clear that the impact of this change is going to be wider and deeper that most suspected.

My only advice is to “buckle in, it is going to be a wild ride”!

David.

I Am Not Sure I Would Be Keen To Know The Result Of This Blood Test!

This seems like a mixed blessing to me!

‘Game changer’ Alzheimer’s blood test cleared in the US

Gerry Smith and Robert Langreth

May 17, 2025 – 10.09pm

US regulators have approved the first blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, potentially making it easier to find and treat patients with the mind-robbing disease that affects nearly 7 million Americans.

The test made by Fujirebio Diagnostics a unit of Japan’s H.U. Group Holdings was cleared for people 55 years and older who exhibit signs and symptoms of the disease, the US Food and Drug Administration said in a statement.

It is designed for the early detection of amyloid, a protein that can build up in the brain and is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia in the elderly.

The development and approval of blood tests that can spot which patients are likely to have toxic amyloid in their brains has been viewed as a critical step toward making drugs to treat the condition more widely accessible.

While the test is approved for people who are already exhibiting signs of cognitive impairment, studies show amyloid begins accumulating in the brains of some patients years before symptoms begin.

Howard Fillit, cofounder and chief science officer at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, called the approval “a major milestone for patients and clinicians.”

“The ability to diagnose Alzheimer’s earlier with a simple blood test, like we do for cholesterol, is a game changer, allowing more patients to receive treatment options that have the potential to significantly slow or even prevent the disease,” Fillit said in a statement.

To qualify for drug treatment, Alzheimer’s patients now generally get a specialised PET scan to detect amyloid in their brains or undergo a cerebrospinal fluid test. The PET scans are expensive and require specialised equipment, while the spinal fluid tests involve an invasive procedure.

The need for these tests has slowed the rollout of new Alzheimer’s drugs like Leqembi from Eisai and Biogen and Eli Lilly & Co’s Kisunla.

The FDA approval was a “much-needed win” for the companies whose treatments have struggled to gain traction due to logistical hurdles, said Evan Seigerman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

“Not a sea change, but today’s announcement could start to help these franchises gain some more momentum,” Seigerman wrote in a note to clients.

Fujirebio’s newly approved test, called Lumipulse, only requires a blood draw, making it less invasive and potentially easier for patients to access. It’s unclear how much it will cost or when it will be available. It’s intended for patients at a specialised care setting who are experiencing cognitive decline, according to the FDA.

The blood test shouldn’t be used alone to diagnose the disease, in part because of the risk of false positive or negative results, the agency said. Other clinical evaluations and additional tests should be used to determine treatment options, it said.

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/companies/healthcare-and-fitness/alzheimer-s-blood-test-cleared-in-the-us-in-game-changer-20250517-p5m033

This is a test I would hope I never need and, if positive, that I would be sufficiently far gone not to be able to understand or care what the result was!

I don’t know how others feel but I would hope that I would be past caring what the result was when the test was done, and found to be positive. I guess the point of doing the test is to exclude other (treatable) causes of dementia so sensible conservative care can be initiated and the individual made as comfortable as possible while awaiting the inevitable.

Where do others see a blood test of this sort fitting in, if at all?

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 794 – Results – 18 May 2025.

Here are the results of the recent poll.

Do Labor Or The Liberals Do Better Running The National Health System

Labor Is Better                                                                 14 (64%)

Liberal Is Better                                                                 6 (27%)

I Have No Idea                                                                   2 (9%)

Total No. Of Votes: 22

It seems clear that most think Labor is better at running the Health System.

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Pathetic voter turnout – answer must have been too easy. 

2 of 22 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

It Looks Like GP Bulk Billing Is Pretty Popular and Being Well Supported.

This appeared last week:

• Medicare

Albanese sold his big health promise to the people. The fight isn’t over yet

By Angus Thomson

May 11, 2025

As Anthony Albanese basked in electoral glory last weekend, an American eye doctor gave a crowd of surgeons in Sydney a piece of advice that wouldn’t be lost on the prime minister.

“If you’re thinking about making a change to your healthcare system … ask yourself one question: Does America do that thing?” Dr Will Flanary, better known online as Dr Glaucomflecken, told the Royal Australian College of Surgeons’ annual scientific congress on Sunday.

“If America does that thing … let me just say, don’t do that.”

Australians have long treated the US health system as a cautionary tale, and since the return of Donald Trump, they have only grown more unimpressed with what they see happening across the Pacific.

Labor knew it. It went to the polls with a pitch to boost Medicare and make GP visits free again. It painted opposition leader Peter Dutton, who tried to introduce a $7 GP fee when he was health minister, as the man who might take it all away.

“If you ask people what they think works here much better than America, most Australians would put health at the top,” says Health Minister Mark Butler. “Dutton had a record of trying to introduce a user-pays system of healthcare for GP visits … and that was really a more American style of healthcare than what people identify as quintessentially Medicare, or quintessentially Australian.”

Albanese swept to re-election on a pledge to make nine in 10 GP visits free by the end of the decade. To deliver, he will need to defy gravity. Bulk-billing rates have been in freefall since he came to office in 2022, and while a $3.5 billion boost in 2023 left children and concession cardholders better off, millions of Australians still can’t remember the last time they visited a doctor without paying.

‘Not going to happen’

First, Albanese will need to sell his plan to hundreds of GPs yet to be convinced they would be better off abandoning gap fees and embracing bulk-billing for all patients.

“What the government needs to do is make the expectations clear,” says Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Dr Danielle McMullen. “They need to make sure patients don’t expect 100 per cent bulk-billing [when the scheme begins] on November 1 because that’s clearly not going to happen.”

The $8.5 billion scheme, which extends the incentive paid to GP practices that choose to bulk-bill all patients, did not go down with doctors as well as might have been expected from such a lucrative investment.

Throughout the government’s first term, doctors’ groups including the AMA and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) told Albanese and Butler they wanted higher Medicare rebates without the obligation to bulk-bill. This was to make up for a six-year freeze (that ended in 2019), and save clinics from an avalanche of soaring rent, electricity, insurance and labour costs.

“They wanted the investment without strings attached,” says Butler. “You’re not going to get me to agree to that.”

But perhaps the government didn’t attach enough strings to its record funding, says Professor Henry Cutler, a health economist who advised the government on its latest review of primary care incentives.

“What Labor proposed, particularly with bulk-billing, was good politics, poor policy,” says Cutler, director of the Centre for the Health Economy at Macquarie University. “[Medicare] hasn’t changed in the last 40 years, and that is a problem because we have greater chronic disease, more need for multidisciplinary care and a fee-for-service model [that] really isn’t delivering the care that people need.”

He says several reviews in Labor’s first term recommended sweeping changes to the way primary care is funded, such as creating payments to fund multidisciplinary teams with GPs, nurses and allied health working together.

“The $8.5 billion that was pledged by government really doesn’t talk to that at all,” says Cutler. “It is a continuation of the status quo.”

In a recent poll of 283 doctors by the RACGP, two-thirds said they didn’t intend to increase bulk-billing in response to the proposal.

If a GP practice in metropolitan Sydney or Melbourne agreed to bulk-bill all patients, the Health Department calculates their rebate per standard appointment would rise from about $42 to just under $70.

McMullen says that might be enough to convince a GP who has only recently begun charging a fee under $30, but it is well short of the $40 gap fees that are now commonplace at major city clinics (the AMA fees guide estimates GPs should charge about $102 – including the Medicare rebate – for a standard consult to meet costs).

Butler says the scheme won’t suit everyone, but based on national billing data, the government estimates three-quarters of clinics would be better off. “That can get us to a 90 per cent bulk-billing rate across the country over time,” Butler says.

Another common argument from GP groups is that the flat-rate incentive encourages quick consults, and financially penalises doctors who spend longer with patients that may have more complex or chronic conditions.

“If you’re doing a lot of seven-minute appointments, this actually works very well,” says Dr Kean-Seng Lim, a GP in Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west. “If you have a practice where you are spending a lot more time with patients, then this actually doesn’t work very well.”

But Dr Edias Shumba, a GP in a Werribee clinic in Melbourne’s south-west, which bulk-bills about 90 per cent of its patients, says the length of appointments is determined by what a patient needs.

“If you have a patient that you always see for 20 minutes because they have a serious condition, but there’s a day when ... they just need a medical certificate, why would you do a 30-minute consult just to prove that you care so much? You saw them two days ago,” Shumba says. “Most doctors, they want to do a good work. They want, they feel good when they know that they’ve diagnosed something that could have killed someone.

“I think the majority focus on that ... and let the finances take care of itself.”

Werribee Medical Centre, where Shumba works, is owned by ForHealth, the country’s second-largest primary care provider. Chief executive Andrew Cohen, who has appeared alongside Butler and his assistant minister, Ged Kearney, at several media events spruiking the government’s health policies, says the new incentives will have an immediate effect on bulk-billing at about 100 GP clinics owned by the company nationally.

“On November 1, we will switch from one in 10 [clinics that bulk-bill], to six in 10,” Cohen says. “Suddenly, the bulk-billing model is sustainable from our perspective, it’s sustainable from an investment perspective, and most importantly, it’s sustainable from a doctor’s perspective.”

Cohen says the company is looking to build 50 additional clinics over the next two years, targeting “bulk-billing deserts” in regional and outer metropolitan communities where the incentives are more lucrative. Clinics that don’t change their practice may be left behind.

“It’s all well and good to say you won’t do it, but if next door opens up and they’re bulk-billing, that’s competition,” Cohen says.

Around the country, Labor enjoyed swings in seats where bulk-billing has declined rapidly in the past six years. In NSW, it picked up the electorate of Hughes, taking in Sutherland, where bulk-billing rates have dropped by 10.5 per cent since March 2019.

In Victoria, the ALP won Michael Sukkar’s seat of Deakin. The electorate takes in parts of Maroondah, Manningham and Whitehorse council areas, all of which have had a drop of least 5 per cent in bulk-billing over the same period.

Such communities could expect to benefit from the bulk-billing incentives – and give Albanese the sharpest blowback if they do not flow through to patients.

‘They’re using them because they’re free’

Butler says the popularity of the government’s bulk-billing promises can’t be separated from its pledges to invest in women’s health, make medicines cheaper and build dozens of new urgent care clinics.

The prime minister made a point of visiting an urgent care clinic in Dutton’s electorate of Dickson on the first day of the campaign, the first of many visits spruiking an initiative Butler admits was “pretty friendless” when he announced the first 87 clinics in 2022.

An interim review of the clinics, published on the eve of the election, estimated they had prevented 334,000 emergency department visits nationally.

Taxpayers covered about $246 a visit, more than the government pays for GP visits but less than the estimated $616 for equivalent non-urgent visits to emergency departments. There have been ongoing teething problems in recruiting GPs and getting access to medical imaging services out-of-hours.

Macquarie University’s Cutler said it was not yet known whether the clinics were taking pressure off emergency departments as intended, but they are at least giving Australians access to some form of free healthcare – something that feels increasingly unreachable for many.

“People are using them, and most likely they’re using them because they’re free compared to a general practitioner,” Cutler says. “So in that regard, urgent care clinics are delivering.”

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/albanese-sold-his-big-health-promise-to-the-people-the-fight-isn-t-over-yet-20250506-p5lx18.html

I wonder just what the patient satisfaction scores look like in this system. If they are holding up and people are getting what they want it makes pretty good sense.

Locally the polyclinics seem pretty popular and to be well utilized.

Comments are really welcome on your experience  and level of satisfaction….

David.

I Felt It Was Worthwhile To Give The New Pope One Cautious Welcome Blog!

This appeared a few days ago:

• The Wall Street Journal

How an American cardinal beat the odds to become Pope

Stacy Meichtry, Margherita Stancati, Ian Lovett and Marcus Walker

10 May, 2025

Cardinal Robert Prevost, seated beneath Michelangelo’s monumental fresco of the Last Judgement, buried his head in his hands as the sound of his name echoed off the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

It was Thursday morning, and the prelates running the conclave were reading out the ballots. The papal election was shifting the way of the Chicago-born cardinal. His tally was rising with each round of voting, while support for the early frontrunner — Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin — was stagnating.

A realisation weighed visibly on Prevost, said three cardinals who watched his reaction: He was on track to become the 267th pope of the global Catholic Church, with its 1.4 billion faithful.

By late afternoon it was all over. Votes for Prevost reached the winning threshold of 89, or two-thirds of the 133 voting cardinals present in the chapel. Applause rang out from banks of red-clad cardinals. Prevost, sitting with his eyes closed, stood up and mustered a smile as the historic moment sank in.

“I couldn’t imagine what happens with a human being when you’re facing something like that,” said Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, archbishop of Newark.

The election of the first-ever American pope stunned the crowds gathered in St Peter’s Square, defied betting markets and shattered an assumption that the church would never hand its highest office to a citizen of the world’s leading superpower.

But by Thursday, the 69-year-old Prevost had become the natural choice for the cardinals secluded in the Sistine Chapel. For weeks, they had searched for a successor who offered continuity with the late Pope Francis’ dream of an inclusive and humble church — but who showed more deference for Catholic tradition and stronger managerial skills to run a financially strained city-state of global reach.

Even before the conclave began on Wednesday, a geographically and ideologically diverse bloc had come to understand that they had among them an all-rounder who checked those boxes.

The longtime bishop of Chiclayo in Peru was from the US, but of the global south. Many of his supporters described the polyglot prelate with the same four words: “citizen of the world.” Years of missionary experience had lent him a reputation as an advocate of the poor and marginalised. He had served in the heart of the Vatican, but not long enough for its frequent scandals to taint him.

Cardinal Parolin, in contrast, had spent his career in the Vatican’s diplomatic service before rising to serve nearly 12 years as secretary of state, effectively Pope Francis’ No. 2.

Parolin was the favourite to succeed his former boss and satisfy Italian yearnings to recover an office the peninsula held for most of the church’s 2000-year history. But as an Italian saying goes, “He who enters the conclave as a pope leaves as a cardinal.”

Francis was hospitalised with a complex lung infection, eventually dying from his ailments on Easter Monday. As cardinals converged on Rome from around the world for his funeral and pre-conclave deliberations, Parolin still held a strong advantage.

“He was the best-known among us,” said Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero of Spain. “But that is not enough.”

The empty throne

The cardinals filtering into Rome in the days after Francis’ death represented the late pope’s legacy: the most geographically diverse conclave in church history. They came from 70 countries and territories, ranged in age from 40-something to 90-something and spoke a Babel of languages. Many of them barely knew each other.

Several had little in common with the Italian-dominated Roman Curia, the Vatican administration. English was the lingua franca for a new crop of cardinals. European prelates spoke about the dangers of artificial intelligence with African cardinals, who replied with laments that their continent’s natural resources were being plundered to produce tech gadgetry. Latin American cardinals discussed the migration of their compatriots to the US A cardinal flying in from Mongolia wowed his colleagues with stories of offering Mass to nomads in tents.

But Italy still boasted more cardinals than any other single country, and after three successive foreign popes — a Pole, a German and an Argentine — many felt the time had come to make the pope Italian again. Before St. John Paul II, who was elected in 1978, Italian popes had reigned continuously for 455 years.

Parolin, born near Venice, was their country’s hope. The veteran diplomat was best known in recent years for negotiating a controversial agreement between the Vatican and China that gave Beijing a say in choosing bishops within the Asian country. Despite his pedigree as a statesman, he lacked the pastoral experience of on-the-ground ministry that many cardinals were looking for.

A Latin American bloc of cardinals already viewed Prevost as their region’s best shot at retaining the papacy. Many other cardinals wanted, above all, to maintain Francis’ emphasis on “synodality,” or gatherings of bishops and laypeople to discuss the church’s challenges.

The day after Francis’ funeral, Parolin presided over a Mass, but his remarks — an opportunity to shape the agenda for the conclave — bypassed synodality.

“His not mentioning it was striking,” said Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Vatican official who was sitting in the pews.

Prevost’s name began to circulate, at dinners and in the secret pre-conclave deliberations. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, recalled how Italian cardinals were pressing him for information on his American colleague.

“Do you know this ‘Roberto?’” Dolan recalled one of them asking.

Day after day, cardinals sat through speeches on issues facing the church, from sex abuse to the increasingly dire state of the Vatican’s finances. During coffee breaks, cardinals concurred that they needed to elevate a proven manager.

With the conclave approaching, Tobin saw Prevost. “Bob, this could be proposed to you,” he said. “I hope you will think about it.”

Cardinals converge

On the last day before the conclave, Prevost delivered a speech to his fellow cardinals, and hit the note Francis’ supporters wanted to hear: He praised synodality.

“Synodality is working together,” Prevost said, according to Cardinal Luis Cabrera Herrera from Ecuador.

On Wednesday afternoon, the cardinal-electors filed into the Sistine Chapel and took an oath of secrecy in Latin. All electronic devices were banned. The Renaissance-era chapel had been swept for bugs. Its heavy wooden doors swung shut, cutting the cardinals off from the outside world.

Inside, Parolin’s opponents already had a strategy. In the first round of voting, they dispersed their votes across several candidates, to gauge their appeal.

The first ballot began hours late, partly because the 90-year-old preacher whose speech opened the conclave went on for over an hour.

When the papers were finally tallied, Parolin was in first place with more than 40 votes. The field behind him was fragmented.

As voting continued on Thursday morning, Parolin was still in the lead, but his tally was stuck in the high 40s. Prevost, by contrast, was closing the gap as the cardinals broke for lunch.

Over pasta, steak and tactical debates in a plethora of languages, Prevost emerged as the new favourite.

A frustrated caucus of Italian cardinals sat mostly among themselves, speaking in their own language. Nearby, cardinals from Asia, the Americas and Europe mingled and chatted in English, or used each other to translate.

“At lunch, things were getting clarified,” said US Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Only one more round of voting was needed.

By an auspicious coincidence, Prevost was seated in the same spot in the Sistine Chapel where Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had sat at the 2013 conclave that elected him as Pope Francis, noted US Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who attended both conclaves.

Prevost’s final score in the afternoon vote surged to over 100 votes.

The next step fell to Parolin, as the highest-ranking cardinal in the room. Turning to the victor, he asked in Latin: “Do you accept your canonical election as the supreme pontiff?”

“I accept,” said Prevost.

“By which name will you be known?”

“Leo,” came the reply.

Cardinal Parolin was the first to kiss the ring, said Cardinal William Goh of Singapore. “Parolin is a gentleman,” he said.

Leo stepped into the Room of Tears, where new popes change into the white papal cassock for the first time. Nearby, ballots were being burned. White smoke soon billowed from the slender smokestack over the Sistine Chapel. The cheering crowd waved flags from all over the world as the name of the new pope was announced.

Two elderly Italian women near the back of St. Peter’s Square scanned their phones. One looked and said to the other: “Americano …” Her friend shot back a perplexed look: “Americano?”

Wall Street Journal

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/how-an-american-cardinal-beat-the-odds-to-become-pope/news-story/f8f7de883690d6d88cffbf696d2f6e16

As a Protestant / Agnostic / Atheist I welcome the new Pope only conditionally but I am hoping his missions in South America may have led him to more humanitarian views on such issues as contraception, abortion, euthanasia, assisted dying and so on. To remain rigid and utterly conservative on such matters will benefit few and cause unnecessary suffering for many IMVHO. It would be a true wonder to see some Christian caring injected by the church into these issues. I believe there is a better and more humane way to approach these issues than the usual Roman Catholic inflexibility!

Time will tell I guess.

David.

It Is Very Hard To Be Sure What Is Going On Here, But I Suspect It Is Not Good For Academic Progress And Freedom!

This appeared a few days ago:

Trump v Harvard: Clash of the titans

Cameron Stewart

12:00AM May 10, 2025

On a warm northern spring day this week, dozens of students relax between classes on the grassy lawns of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the peaceful scene belies the turmoil that has engulfed America’s oldest and most famous university.

Inside his rarefied office on campus, Ryan Enos is fuming about Donald Trump’s growing war with the Ivy League institution. Enos, an associate professor of government, concedes the university should try to be more ideologically diverse but he says the US President has gone too far in his unprecedented demand to try to reform its liberal progressiveness, which includes cutting off its federal funding.

At Harvard, America’s richest and most prestigious university, the stakes of this latest intervention by Trump into the civic life of the nation could not be higher.

“The university certainly has flaws, and I think that one of its flaws is that it is largely ideologically homogenous,” he tells Inquirer during an interview in his Harvard office.

“There’s a dominant culture of liberalism here that doesn’t reflect the median voter in the United States. And you know, we should be aware of that, and we should think about whether that serves our mission of education or research. Harvard should be more ideologically balanced, but it’s allowed to not be ideologically balanced. That’s part of living in a free country.

“Just like the National Rifle Association can be ideologically imbalanced, just like Quakers can be ideologically imbalanced, just like any other private institution can be ideologically imbalanced. That’s what freedom means.”

Enos says none of Harvard’s failings justifies the sort of government interference Trump is proposing. “I don’t think that should ever be thought of as an excuse to attack an institution,” he says. “Trump operates very clearly as somebody who is an aspiring authoritarian. And so he was going to attack higher education.

“There was no doubt about this. And what he found were convenient pretexts.”

Harvard v Trump has become the heavyweight fight in a broader campaign by American conservatives to tackle what they see as rampant left-wing bias in US higher education institutions.

This has been a long-term cause for Republicans, but Trump has turbocharged it by issuing a range of unprecedented demands the Harvard administration and study body say crosses the line and jeopardises academic freedom.

Harvard, alone among more than 60 American universities targeted by the President, has drawn a line in the sand at Trump’s attempts to mount an ideological war against it. The Trump administration seeks to punish Harvard for its failure to protect Jewish students during campus encampments in 2024 and also is trying to impose government oversight to ensure greater “viewpoint diversity” among staff and students.

Harvard’s defiance of his demands has infuriated Trump, who has frozen $US2.2bn ($3.4bn) in federal funding to the university and claims he will revoke the university’s tax-exempt status unless it bows to his wishes.

Harvard president Alan Garber has warned that Trump’s actions pose an “existential threat”, not only to Harvard but also to all American universities.

Harvard is suing the Trump administration, arguing that it has violated the first amendment to the US constitution and exceeded the law in its behaviour. The success or otherwise of Harvard’s legal action will determine whether Trump succeeds in his quest to “reclaim” America’s elite universities.

“Everyone knows that Harvard has ‘lost its way’,” Trump says. “Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders’,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Elite universities are a priority target for Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has accused Harvard of having an “anti-America, pro-Hamas ideology”; in a 2021 speech JD Vance, now the US Vice-President, argued “the universities are the enemy”.

Influential conservative political activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk says: “At a lot of these schools they’re not pursuing what is good, true and beautiful. It has become the oppression Olympics and a weaponised complaint seminar of people sitting in a circle and finding out who’s been offended the most that day.”

The irony in this fight is that Harvard admits it has a campus culture problem that needs fixing.

“We acknowledge that we have unfinished business,” Garber wrote in a letter after the univer­sity filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration in the US District Court in Boston. “We need to ensure that the university lives up to its steps to reaffirm a culture of free inquiry, viewpoint diversity and academic exploration.”

The ugly scenes of anti-Semitism across many US university campuses, but especially at Ivy League schools such as Harvard, in 2024 underlined how an intolerant form of left-wing ideology had taken root across many campuses.

In the immediate wake of the Hamas massacre of 1200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, Harvard student groups released a statement holding Israel responsible. Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, later caused a furore at congressional hearings in December 2023 when in reply to a question from representative Elise Stefanik asking if “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Harvard’s rules, Gay replied that it would depend on their “context”. Gay resigned within the month.

Last week, a Harvard taskforce released a blistering report that detailed how anti-Semitism had infiltrated everything from university coursework and social life to the hiring of faculty members and the world view of many departments.

It gave numerous examples of how Jewish students lived in fear on campus and of how the university failed in its duty to provide protection for Jewish students and to shut down the racist behaviour of many of the anti-Israeli protesters.

“The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful,” Garber wrote in response to the report, commissioned by Harvard. “I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. Harvard cannot – and will not – abide bigotry.”

Before its showdown with Trump, Harvard had been moving in recent months to ensure the disgraceful scenes of the 2024 encampment were not repeated. It took steps to improve campus safety, removed two anti-Israel leaders from its Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, banned any form of encampments or obstructive protests on campus and abolished several courses that promoted a hostile view of Israel and Jews. The day after Trump’s inauguration in January, the university adopted a more stringent interpretation of anti-Semitism based on that used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This defines certain criticisms of Israel, such as calling its existence racist, as anti-Semitism.

The reforms have been welcomed by many of Harvard’s Jewish students, including a group called Students Against Anti-Semitism that earlier had launched legal action against the university. The group describes Harvard’s reforms as “demonstrating leadership in the fight against anti-Semitism and in upholding the rights of Jewish students”.

But on April 11 the Trump administration ordered Harvard to initiate a far wider series of reforms beyond dealing with anti-Semitism to continue to receive federal funding.

It says government funding “only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigour, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture”. These include hiring and admissions based entirely on merit, ending all preferences based on race, colour, religion or sex.

The administration has demanded a full government-monitored audit of the student body, faculty, staff and leadership for “viewpoint diversity” and says each department and teaching unit also needs to be “viewpoint diverse”. It warns if these audits show Harvard is failing to implement sufficient “viewpoint diversity” it will lead to corrective measures, including the deliberate recruiting of “a critical mass” of new faculty and students to correct the imbalance.

The administration’s letter to Harvard – which goes further than Trump’s demands at other universities such as Columbia and Princeton – was a step too far for the institution.

Harvard accuses Trump of overreach by demanding something that not only is impossible to deliver in practice but also injects the heavy hand of government into controlling academic thought and research.

On the anti-Semitism front, it believes it has already implemented the necessary reforms and that Trump is using anti-Semitism as a cudgel to implement wider and unrelated ideological reforms across the university. “The government has cited the university’s response to anti-Semitism as a justification for its unlawful action,” Garber wrote. “As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising anti-Semitism.”

But he says “the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach”.

Harvard University said it will not comply with demands issued by the Trump administration aimed at curtailing antisemitism on campus, resulting in the White House freezing billions in feder…

Garber points out that the freeze of $US2.2bn in federal funds will end a wide range of critical medical and scientific research that Harvard conducts on everything from cancer research to infectious diseases outbreaks.

“As opportunities to reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are on the horizon, the government is slamming on the brakes,” Garber says. “The victims will be future patients and their loved ones.”

Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration states: “The government has not – and cannot – identify any rational connection between anti-Semitism concerns and the medical scientific, technological and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation.”

But the critics of Trump’s actions say the cost is far greater than the loss of this medical and scientific research.

They fear that if it is successful, it will set a precedent of direct government interference in higher education across the country.

Even The Wall Street Journal – which is no fan of Harvard’s leftist campus culture – believes Trump has overreached in his demands.

“Few Americans will shed tears for the Cambridge (Harvard) crowd, but there are good reasons to oppose this unprecedented attempt by the government to micromanage a private university,” it editorialised on April 15.

“These reforms may be worth pursuing, but the government has no business requiring them. Its biggest overreach is requiring ‘viewpoint diversity’, which it doesn’t define … An external monitor will decide such questions … Must Harvard ask applicants if they support Mr Trump and impose ideological quotas in hiring and admissions?

“President Trump has enough balls in the air without also trying to run Harvard.”

A central problem with Trump’s demands on Harvard is that the concept of “viewpoint diversity” is not explained and is left wide open to interpretation.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who previously has accused the far left of creating an atmos­phere of intellectual intolerance on US college campuses, said this week that viewpoint diversity was “crucial” in “intellectual discourse”. But he said having the government impose it could lead to outcomes that are Orwellian.

“There’s nothing to prevent the party in power from enforcing the teaching of ideas that are both flaky and congenial to the administration: vaccine denial in medicine, 2020 election conspiracies in history, creationism in biology, quack nutritional theories in public health, the benefit of tariffs in economics, and so on,” he said.

James Prashant Fonseka, a student at Harvard Divinity School, which was the scene of some of the most virulent anti-Semitism in 2024, says it was valid to criticise the university for some of the more “extreme progressive views” on campus.

But he says when Harvard knew Trump would be serving a second term, it moved fast to curb some of the excesses on campus as well as cracking down on anti-Semitism.

“I think they saw the firestorm that was coming and they made certain moves to try to inoculate themselves from it,” he tells Inquirer in the divinity school library. He says the Trump administration is determined to punish the university regardless of what reforms it puts in place.

“Now it just feels like revenge,” he says. “It’s like they’ve gone beyond the original concept and they’re just trying to change the way the whole university thinks. It’s like they really want to win.

“But democracy cannot function if we do not have independent institutions.”

His friend and fellow divinity school student Jarrett Hill says: “I don’t believe that there is anything material Harvard could do that would satisfy them. I believe that those in the administration who are going after Harvard are absolutely convinced that they have a righteous cause, and that Harvard, as an institution, represents something that is bad and dark and bad for society, that they need to be targeted and punished for that.”

Perhaps the most telling sign that Trump has overreached in his battle with Harvard is that many of its Jewish students have said they are opposed to his attack on the university.

More than 100 Jewish students at Harvard have signed a letter decrying Trump’s “exploitation” of anti-Semitism to threaten the university’s funding.

“We are compelled to speak out because these actions are being taken in the name of protecting us – Harvard Jewish students – from anti-Semitism,” the students wrote.

Ophir Cohen-Simayof, president of the Jewish Student Association at the Harvard Divinity School, tells Inquirer she is worried Jewish students will become the scapegoat for any backlash against Trump’s actions because they are being carried out ostensibly in the cause of combating anti-Semitism.

“I do think it’s too heavy-handed, what they’ve done,” she tells Inquirer. “I don’t think it’s about anti-Semitism. I think most of it is unrelated. And I do fear that Jews are going to be targeted once again. My fear is that students are going to get angry at their Jewish colleagues, even though their Jewish colleagues have nothing to do with (Trump’s actions).”

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, the Jewish community centre at Harvard, tells Inquirer that Trump’s attack on the university might have been less heavy-handed if the university had acted more quickly in 2024 in tackling anti-Semitism on campus.

But he says Harvard is right to oppose the Trump orders. “Trump’s edict had a level of invasiveness that would functionally end the independence of Harvard as an organisation. Harvard could not and should not have acceded to that,” Rubenstein says.

Legal experts believe Harvard stands a good chance of winning its legal case against Trump because they say the President’s orders appear to be a clear breach of the free speech provisions of the first amendment.

The case will be keenly watched by the roughly 60 higher education institutions that have also had their funding reviewed or threatened by the Trump administration. The irony is that Trump’s election win, coupled with the obvious failures of universities in 2024 on anti-Semitism, has already had the effect of forcing many American universities to do more to protect Jewish students and distance themselves more from diversity, equity and inclusion mandates and other progressive causes. So the “Trump effect” was already affecting the university sector.

But by attacking Harvard and the notion of academic freedom with such extreme demands, Trump risks blowing up his own campaign to reform American universities before it begins.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/trump-v-harvard-clash-of-the-titans/news-story/7047fe20e8a71be689444e4a2e2cd142

One has to be grateful not to be at any of the major US universities right now! Time to let things settle and wait for the next US President to be elected. Trump is not a president I would even start to try and calm down / appease in this area!

David.

This Has To Be The Most Stupid Sort Of Press Release.

With the re-election of the Government we have had a blizzard of nonsense press releases.

Here is an example:

Guild congratulates Minister Butler

12 May 2025

Media Release

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has welcomed the opportunity to continue working closely with Minister Butler in his re-appointment as Minister for Health and Aged Care.

“Minister Butler has worked hard to put patients at the heart of his work. Most recently we’ve seen the announcement that medicine will soon be more affordable” National President Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Professor Trent Twomey said.

“Continuity will ensure the necessary reforms to healthcare, including expanding the range of services offered in pharmacy, can be taken forward at pace. There were a lot of reviews and recommendations in the first term – now is the time to put these into practice in partnership with industry, healthcare professionals and experts. Now is the time to act.

Minister Butler is joined in the Department for Health, Aged Care and NDIS by Minister Sam Rae and Minister Jenny McAllister.

“The Guild and community pharmacy looks forward to working with Minister Butler and his team to continue delivering for all Australian patients.

“I am also looking forward to continuing to work closely with fellow pharmacist Emma McBride to deliver regional and rural healthcare – and with Dan Rapacholi as Special Envoy for Men’s Health.”

Community pharmacy is Australia’s most accessible frontline healthcare destination and plays a vital role in treating and supporting patients across Australia. On average people visit community pharmacy every three weeks, providing a unique opportunity for proactive health advice and intervention.

There are more than 6,000 community pharmacies, often with extended opening times through the week and weekend. This makes it easier for patients to get the help they need. By thinking pharmacy first patients can access high quality advice, triage and treatment.

----- End Release:

Here is the link:

https://www.guild.org.au/news-events/news/2025/guild-congratulates-minister-butler

While I am sure the Minister is thrilled, this release really has to be total rubbish that makes no difference to anything!

Its just total nonsense IMVHO and a waste of paper and ink!

Why do they bother do you think?

David.

I Don’t Understand This Stuff But If Others Throw Billions Of Dollars At It. It Must Be Important!

This appeared last week:

PsiQuantum’s $1bn quantum computer project cracks ‘major milestone’

Jared Lynch

9:00PM May 08, 2025

The American company tasked with building Australia’s first quantum computer is steaming ahead with plans to deliver the machine, as the Queensland government reconsiders its co-investment in the $1bn project with Anthony Albanese.

PsiQuantum – a US company founded by Australians – has unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest cryogenic plants to house the computer in Brisbane.

It has signed a deal with Linde Engineering, based in Germany, to build the cooling plant, which is expected to take several years to complete. It has said previously that it expects to have the computer operational by the end of 2027.

The federal and Queensland governments have invested $1bn to build Australia’s first practical quantum computer. But Queensland’s new LNP government is reconsidering the investment.

“The (Queensland) government is reviewing the deal between the previous Labor government and PsiQuantum,” Treasurer David Janetzki told The Australian on Thursday.

PsiQuantum co-founder and chief executive Jeremy O’Brien remained upbeat, saying the deal with Linde was a “major milestone” in delivering the computer.

“This cryoplant is a critical component of the first utility-scale quantum system. It is a key step on the company’s road map to systems with millions of physical qubits, and the realisation of quantum computing’s potential,” he said.

“Linde Engineering is one of very few companies worldwide with the required expertise – having installed more than 500 cryogenic plants in total. These are serving hi-tech industries such as semiconductors and magnetic resonance imagining and supporting scientific applications like particle accelerators and fusion research.”

A cryogenic facility is needed because quantum computers must operate at extremely low temperatures – colder than deep space – to maintain the delicate state of qubits, which are needed to process quantum information. For example, Microsoft’s quantum computer operates at less than 100 millikelvin or -273C – around absolute zero.

The difference between quantum and classical computing is quantum uses qubits rather than bits. Bits can either be 1 or 0 to process information, while quantum could be both at the same time — like a coin being both heads and tails spinning in the air before it lands — a process known as superposition, and is incredibly powerful.

This means quantum computers can process information in a fraction of the time of classical computing, in some cases saving thousands, maybe millions of years – performing tasks such as rapidly accelerating drug development and personalised medicine; more accurate climate modelling; creating new materials at an atomic level; and more.

The Tech Council has said Australia cannot afford to be “left behind” in the quantum computing race, which it said had the potential to create a multibillion-dollar local industry by the end of the decade.

But qubits are, as Microsoft’s vice-president of advanced quantum development Krysta Svore said, “noisy”. She said they are like 1000 spinning tops, and the task is to keep them spinning for a month, while the room moves around a bit.

“It’s a hard task”.

Microsoft has invested more than $US1bn in quantum and has created a new chip that leverages a new state of matter and that could underpin quantum computers. But Professor O’Brien said PsiQuantum had taken a different approach.

Its technology uses photons, or light, rather than matter-based qubits. Therefore it can operate in a warmer but still chilly environment (4 kelvin or -269C), allowing it to use existing cryogenic systems.

“Photons don’t feel heat the way matter-based qubits do. Our systems can run 100 times warmer – and we appreciate collaborating with a world-class firm like Linde Engineering to deliver industrial-scale systems with proven technology,” Professor O’Brien said.

“This is a fundamental scaling advantage and a key reason we are able to move rapidly toward utility-scale quantum computing.”

Australian venture capital Playground Global founder Peter Barrett is a majority investor in PsiQuantum.

Blackbird Ventures- which has an investment portfolio of more than $7bn – has also backed PsiQuantum. Blackbird general partner Michael Tolo said PsiQuantum was “Australian by heart and spirit as much as origin”.

PsiQuantum has also partnered with Australian start-up Iceberg Quantum – founded by University of Sydney mates Felix Thomsen, Larry Cohen and Sam Smith – to design fault tolerant quantum computers.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/psiquantums-1bn-quantum-computer-project-cracks-major-milestone/news-story/c76c4ef595e9b8d16e59f2e035cb467d

There is a prize for a less than 200 word explanation as to what quantum computing will / can do for us!

You can read the relevant Wikipedia article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

Given Australia seems to have some expertise in the pretty arcane area I felt it was important to mention the article.

I look forward to your explanations!

David.