So, when someone is called a bush rat, we now know it's a compliment.

>Why are native rats so important?

Australia is home to about 50 living species of rats that have adapted to its environments over thousands if not millions of years.

These rats often perform essential roles in nature...

"We know them to be really good pollinators, especially of our banksias...," "They're good at moving seeds and eating seeds ... they're really good dispersers of fungi spores, the mushrooms that are so key to our ecosystems...

Bush rats have been shown to keep black rats from reinvading places the native species is re-established.

Black rats often like to nest in homes and eat your food, but bush rats prefer to avoid developed places.

"[Bush rats] tend to live in these dense, complex, vegetated, native bushlands," Ms Wauchope said.

Boosting bush rat numbers can also help feed native predators — like goannas, owls and snakes.

Without bush rats these predators sometimes will eat poisoned black rats and then die themselves.

Fears US-Israeli onslaught could lead regime to push for bomb or embolden other groups to steal uranium stockpile

The US-Israeli onslaught against Iran is intended to resolve a 24-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear programme, but it runs the risk of backfiring and driving the regime towards making a secret bomb, proliferation experts have warned.

The regime in Tehran has long insisted that the programme is for civilian purposes and it has no intention of making a nuclear weapon. However, since two undeclared sites, for uranium enrichment and heavy water plutonium production, were discovered in 2002, the programme has been treated with intense suspicion.

A nuclear deal in 2015 imposed severe limits and thorough inspections on Iran but when Donald Trump walked out of the agreement in 2018, triggering its collapse, Iran ramped up its work on enrichment and other aspects of the programme.

Cuba said the speedboat carrying weapons came from the United States to sow chaos. However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was not a US operation.

Prosecutors in Cuba on Tuesday charged six Cuban nationals with "crimes of terrorism" and accused them of entering Cuba with a US-flagged boat packed with weapons to stir unrest in the country.

Their boat was intercepted by Cuba's coast guard as it entered Cuban waters last week, resulting in a shootout. Four of the Cuban nationals aboard the speedboat were killed in the incident and six others were wounded.

Last Wednesday, Cuba's Interior ‌Ministry accused the Cuban exiles of opening fire on a border guard vessel, and said they came from the United States with the intent ​to target military units on the Communist-ruled island.

Cuban officials said the boat was carrying firearms of various calibers, including 14 rifles, 11 pistols and nearly 13,000 rounds of ammunition.

As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley, says author and historian Rutger Bregman

Paywall? https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-04/sweden-tells-citizens-to-hold-cash-in-case-of-war-or-crisis

This has been hidden in developer options for a while now, but they're now releasing it officially. Limited to Pixel 8 and newer devices and no 4k yet.

alternative video link: https://files.catbox.moe/6iv67p.mp4

UPDATE :

The US has carried out a submarine torpedo strike that sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka, according to the US secretary of defence.

Pete Hegseth confirmed that the US was behind the deadly strike on an Iranian frigate that was travelling close to the Sri Lankan coast.

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo.”

US submarine sank Iranian warship off Sri Lanka’s coast, Hegseth says

OSLO, March 3 (Reuters) - The impact on energy flows of U.S. and Israeli military attacks on Iran ‌and Iran's drone and missile launches against its neighbours ‌could reopen debate in the European Union over banning Russian natural gas ​imports, Norway's energy minister said on Tuesday.

European gas prices have jumped 75% this week, hitting multi-year highs as hostilities in and around Iran have impacted gas exports from the Gulf.

Major liquefied ‌natural gas (LNG) exporter Qatar ⁠halted production on Monday.

"The EU has been very clear that they want to liberate themselves ⁠from Russian oil and gas, but then the events of the last three-four days have also been difficult," Norway's Energy Minister ​Terje Aasland ​told a conference in Oslo.

"With ​the geopolitical situation we ‌see now, I believe the debate will be revived," Aasland said.

In a 10-minute televised address Sánchez reflected on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as the Iraq War more than 20 years ago and said "the government's position can be summed up in four words: No to war".

Trump threatened to impose a full trade embargo on Spain in response to Madrid's refusal to allow the US to use the jointly run bases at Morón and Rotafor for strikes on Iran.

"Spain has been terrible," Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday.

Australian travellers stuck overseas are taking extraordinary measures to get home amid the escalating war in the Middle East.

While some flights out of the region have resumed, many travellers remain stranded overseas and have little clarity about how long the situation will last.

What's next?

The federal government says it is now sending six crisis response teams to the region, while the first flight to Australia from Dubai is expected to arrive this evening.

Hacker News.

We tracked the organic search traffic of CNET, Wired, The Verge, TechRadar, and six others from early 2024 to today. Combined, they've lost 65 million monthly visits. Some lost over 90%.

Hacker News.