☕️ STDs among young people on the rise

Here is today’s trivia question: Which Australian drink was originally developed as a nutritional supplement during the Great Depression?

Answer is in the titbit!

The quote: “F**k off, yeah f**k off, I've had enough of that.” Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate to an ABC journalist in response to questions over his visit to the U.S. where he claimed to have dined with President Donald Trump. The White House confirmed Trump "did not have dinner with that group".

The stat: 8. The number of Emmys The Diplomat star Allison Janney and Hacks star Jean Smart have now both won, putting them in the all time record holders club alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman.

The big question:

Yesterday’s results: 70% of you said Sydney Sweeney's ad will negatively impact women in sport, while 14% said it'll have no impact. Thanks for voting - your responses inform TDA's journalism and research. [2,207 votes].

Together with AAP.

Cross Morocco off the bucket list.

Contiki have an 8-day Morocco trip that journeys through the Sahara Desert, the famous blue city Chefchaouen and Fes’ Old Town – with the chance to learn traditional cooking, visit a women-led rug cooperative and relax at a hammam spa. What's more, they're also running a giveaway right now with a $5,000 travel voucher on offer.

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Research released this week by the Kirby Institute shows rates of syphilis and gonorrhoea in young Australians have increased over the past decade.

The data also shows that First Nations Australians continue to be disproportionately diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Kirby Institute Epidemiologist Dr Skye McGregor told TDA they would like to see “higher testing and reducing that stigma around sexual health”.

Kirby Institute data shows that, overall, the number of syphilis and gonorrhoea diagnoses have increased by 78% each over 10 years.

This equates to more than 6,000 syphilis cases and 42,000 gonorrhoea diagnoses, including 14 congenital syphilis cases, meaning the infection was passed on from mother to child. Syphilis cases in Australians aged 25 to 29 have increased by 50% since 2016.

Syphilis can be transmitted through oral, vaginal and anal sex, pregnancy, and blood transfusions. It can be asymptomatic. If left untreated, it can cause issues ranging from vision and hearing loss to death.

In 2016, there were 1,211 cases detected in Australians aged 15-29. In 2025, there were 1,624.

Gonorrhoea can also be transmitted through oral, vaginal and anal sex, as well as pregnancy. It is often asymptomatic, especially in women, and can lead to infertility and pregnancy issues.

In 2016, there were 12,675 detected in Australians aged 15-29. In 2025, there were 18,293.

First Nations Australians make up around 3.8% of the national population, however they are disproportionately represented in STI cases.

In 2016, 21% of all syphilis cases were detected in First Nations people, increasing to 25% in 2025. In a more positive sign, the percentage of gonorrhoea cases detected in First Nations people decreased from 28% in 2016 to 21% in 2025.

The data also showed First Nations people were diagnosed with HIV at 1.9 times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians, up from 1.6 times in 2016.

Reporting by Emily Donohoe.

🎧 On today's TDA podcast, multimedia journo Elliot unpacks why Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran's tour. Listen or watch on Apple here, Spotify here, or YouTube here.

🎾 Want to be across the biggest storylines in women’s and men’s sports? Sign up to TDA Sport here for a full run-down in your inbox at 4.30pm.

🧫 Did you catch our recent IG video? We explored how Brisbane-based company Gelomics uses Google AI to help develop treatment for cancer in a faster, safer and more accurate way.

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On Tuesday, Flinders University published findings suggesting Australia’s Indigenous population before European colonisation was seven times bigger than previously believed.

The study estimates the population was around 2.22 million people, compared to previous suggestions of 250,000 to 1 million.

Researcher Professor Corey Bradshaw told TDA he hopes “the right information... fuels better conversation and helps us heal some of these historical travesties.”

Historically, Australia’s pre-European Indigenous population has been estimated at between 250,000 and one million.

An early estimate by anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown was that no more than 300,000 people lived in Australia before colonisation.

Flinders University and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures (CIEHF) have worked with Indigenous scholars and communities to investigate deadly smallpox outbreaks and their impacts on population numbers.

Professor Corey Bradshaw led a study, published this week, which found previous First Nations population estimates were “systematically biased.”

“Much of the damage caused by colonialism had happened when these observations took place, thereby missing lots of people that should have been there otherwise,” he said.

The researchers estimate that the population was more likely to be around 2.22 million people, seven times larger than early figures.

According to these estimates, by 1861, around 93% of the pre-European population had died. This is equivalent to around 2 million people.

Professor Bradshaw said smallpox killed a large proportion of First Nations people, as well as frontier violence, including widespread massacres against Indigenous people.

Researchers used a combination of technologies to inform their estimates and compare them to earlier data.

This includes satellite-based and global circulation modelling, which looks at landscape productivity (how much life a piece of land can sustain).

Another technique was through genomic tools, analysing genetic diversity and mutation rates to help reconstruct population rates.

Finally, archaeological data, looking at things like stone tools, helped to indicate the number of people.

Bradshaw told TDA he hopes the research will “help to understand the degree to which the gap [between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians] has persisted to today”.

“We’re hoping that this helps bring the conversation into the light,” he said.

Researchers will now focus on disease outbreaks and massacre data “to see if we can start correcting for some of the biases there and get a better handle on where these happened and the magnitude of them,” Bradshaw added.

Reporting by Emily Donohoe.

Never followed the NBL? Now's the time.

This season is the game at its loudest. A wave of new talent have arrived to shake up the competition - like Cole Anthony, formerly in the NBA, in his prime and playing for Melbourne. The reigning Lithuanian MVP Arnas Velička is also joining Brisbane, and a handful of rising locals are stepping up. It's flipped the MVP conversation on its head, which has been held by two names for the past two years: Bryce Cotton and Kendric Davis.

Translation: whether you know the NBL or not, this is the season to start paying attention.

The device, developed by American biotech firm Paradromics, allows the 68-year-old woman to converse using a computer-generated voice. The implant works by reading brain signals, which are decoded using AI and turned into speech. The woman is the first patient in a clinical trial involving 10 people with speech and limb paralysis. Her first words with the new device were: “Ok, I have a lot to say.”

Reporting by Pavitra Ravi.

Taylor Swift now has a whole group of insects from Australia named after her.

UC Riverside doctoral student Sarah Schroeder named the genus Swiftiephylus, with four species inspired by Swift and her albums, including Swiftiephylus amator which is Latin for lover.

The bugs had actually been sitting in museum drawers for decades before finally being formally described.

I guess you could say these bugs are officially Out of the Woods.

Reporting by Pavitra Ravi.

Trivia answer: Milo. According to Milo’s own telling of the story, Nestlé wanted to develop a drink that “tasted good enough that children would eat it, whilst giving them the vitamins and minerals they needed, without costing families too much”.