Knitting and crochet can be 'deceptively good' for the brain, neuroscientist says.

Extract from ABC News

Feel good

• Topic:Craft

24 minutes ago

Crafts can help improve brain health, neuroscientist says (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

In short:

Crafts like knitting and crochet provide an ideal mix of challenge and repetition that can help with attention span and mood.

A neuroscientist says some crafts can be an important part of a broad brain health regime, along with other considerations like exercise, diet and sleep.

Knitter Will Seager says he finds attempting difficult patterns both calming and stimulating.

Will Seager taught himself to knit nine years ago. Now, it's something he does every day.

"I'm naturally a little bit of an anxious person so for me it's really nice to let go of any other worries or things that I need to be thinking about and focus entirely on my knitting," Mr Seager said.

Will Seager says knitting is both relaxing and challenging. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

"I do it also because it's very intellectually stimulating for me … I like to choose patterns which are technically quite demanding and quite difficult."

Neuroscientist Sarah McKay said crafts like knitting and crochet were "deceptively good for the brain".

"It's like this ideal mix of repetition plus cognitive challenge,"

Dr McKay said.

Will Seager says he likes to continually challenge himself by seeking out more complex patterns. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

"You have to remember where you're up to, you have to problem solve, you have to make decisions, you're constantly challenging yourself if you're doing more and more complicated patterns.

"But at the same time, it's challenging but it's low stakes … which I think might be one of the best kinds [of cognitive challenge] we can have," she said.

Dr McKay said craft activities could help with attention.

"What they're doing is they're almost training us to pay attention to something for quite a long time," she said.

Will Seager enjoys knitting socks. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

Researchers have also studied how useful craft activities could be for mood regulation and stress reduction.

"We're mastering a skill, we're getting better at that and we're kind of just doing the task for the sake of doing the task … it's quite a simple form of mastery and there's something really soothing and good for our mood about that," Dr McKay said.

Mr Seager is constantly looking for new ways to challenge himself as a knitter.

"I like to choose patterns that enable me to learn new skills … Most recently I've got into a type of [ribbed] knitting called brioche knitting," he said.

"It took me a long time to get the hang of it … [but] after a little while you settle into the rhythm and your fingers and hands do the work without you having to think too much about it."

Brioche knitting is a technique Will Seager has recently become interested in. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

Mr Seager likes to knit alone so he can focus.

But, for others, craft is a way to connect with people.

Looking after each other through craft

Once a week in Hobart's northern suburbs, the Glenorchy Library Knitting Group meets. Its members mostly knit and crochet items to donate to local charities.

"Some of the ladies [who come], this is their only outing apart from the supermarket," Carolee Marino, who started the group in 2011, said.

"It's all about looking after each other … we all help each other."

Carolee Marino started the Glenorchy Library Knitting Group in 2011. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

One of the group's newest members is Gill Shilling.

"It's awesome, I've met all these amazing ladies with interesting stories,"

Ms Shilling said.

"But the fact that we're actually making things to give to people in the community who are in need, that's really important to me."

Gill Shilling says she enjoys the social aspect of the group, as well as contributing to charity. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

Another relatively new group member, Irina Bridges, learnt to knit after moving to Australia from Russia seven years ago.

She said she was looking to share her love of knitting with others.

"I dreamt to knit for my whole life, but I couldn't because when I was a kid in Soviet Union all stores were empty without yarn so I couldn't," Ms Bridges said.

"I enjoy our group and showing off what I [have] knitted."

Irina Bridges enjoys sharing her love of knitting with others. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

Miriam Ritchie has been part of the group for about two years.

"This is it, this is my social, and I get pretty lonely so I can't wait to get here," she said.

Miriam Ritchie (right) looks forward to catching up with the other members of the Glenorchy Library Knitting Group. (ABC News: Loretta Lohberger)

Norma Kelaart joined the group after moving to Tasmania in 2024.

"I needed some company of other women to chat with and relax with and have a joke and a laugh," she said.

One part of a broader brain health plan

Dr McKay said there was not enough evidence to prove that activities like knitting and crochet helped prevent dementia — many of the studies were observational and self-reported, not randomised clinical trials that look specifically at dementia risk.

The magical healing power of crochet

The steady click of needles and hooks on couches around Australia tells us that knitters have been onto the very real therapeutic benefits of crochet for a long time.

But she said the many clear benefits meant craft activities could be an important part of a broader lifestyle brain health program.

"Alongside exercise and diet and sleep and stress reduction … [and] taking care of your cardiovascular health, your metabolic health — all of the things that we know are good for our mental health in the short term and our brain health long term — this can sit really nicely and neatly in there," she said.

"We know that social connections are a really important part of long-term brain health, we know that having purpose and meaning in life are a really important part of brain health, so it can fulfil those requirements in a really lovely, non-digital way."

The UN often feels damned to irrelevance, but it is needed now more than ever.

Extract from ABC News

Analysis

By Laura Tingle

• Topic:Foreign Affairs

about 3 hours ago

US President Donald Trump addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York last year. (Reuters: Mike Segar)

When Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong attended the United Nations General Assembly 12 months ago, it felt like something significant might be happening.

Australia joined a number of other nations in recognising the state of Palestine. The world was scrabbling to regroup around the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump. The UN was itself fighting for survival amid Trump's hostile assault on it.

This year, things feel like they will be a bit more… prosaic. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to finish his term at the end of the year so lobbying is in full swing on the question of his replacement.

Australia is lobbying for a non-permanent place on the Security Council for the 2029-30 term.

That's something that Australia has always taken reasonably seriously — though outsiders might wonder why, given veto powers of the permanent members of the Council (the US, Russia, China, France and the UK) means it rarely makes significant decisions.

Albanese is seeking the icing on the international cake

Securing a UN Security Council seat would cap the Albanese government's international efforts. 

The Security Council is still seen as an important platform for smaller countries.

Australian leadership "of the Council's response to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, and the first Council resolution on small arms and light weapons are prominent examples" of what occasional membership of the Security Council can achieve, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website says.

And there is a particularly long history for Australia with the Security Council, given the significant role the country, and External Affairs Minister HV 'Doc' Evatt, played in the establishment of the UN in the first place. It was one of the first members of the Council in 1946 in acknowledgement of that role, and in fact even chaired its first session.

What's on the UN's agenda?

The hostility of the Trump administration to the UN — and for that matter many multinational institutions — often feels it damns it to irrelevance.

(In July, the US also reportedly attempted to enlist its NATO allies in a campaign to "systematically dismantle" the International Criminal Court.)

But the UN continues to play important roles, to the extent its much reduced funding allows, in humanitarian work and peacekeeping.

Those activities would only seem more important just now, given the increasingly intractable and widening conflicts in the Middle East and Europe.

Yet strangely the escalation of those conflicts doesn't seem to be reflected in any material actions contemplated by the UN when leaders meet there next week.

There will be a "two state" conference where leaders will discuss events in Israel.

When Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong attended the United Nations General Assembly 12 months ago, it felt like something significant might be happening. (AP: Andres Kudacki)

But there are no signs of any further movement to try to address the lack of progress in Gaza, nor the increasing settler violence and land grabs by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

This is despite the fact that the Trump Board of Peace proposal for Gaza — to which the Security Council gave its blessing last year — has gone absolutely nowhere since then.

There seems to be no talk of any further UN resolutions on these issues. Or of Australia pushing for them, even as it now finds itself at odds over West Bank trade sanctions with the countries it acted with on the recognition of Palestine last year.

Last year's meeting of the UN happened before the US and Israel attacked Iran, and before events seemed to turn for a while in Ukraine's favour before, in more recent times, looking as if they may have turned in Russia's favour.

And it happened before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz gave a whole new impetus to the long conflict in Yemen by increasing the strategic importance of the Red Sea.

These developments feel to have only tipped the scales determining world events further towards those possessing weapons and away from those pursuing diplomacy and multilateral action.

Drone warfare in Ukraine

The wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East are now being transformed by defensive weapons being depleted, or running out altogether, while new forms of offensive weapons are arriving.

In Ukraine, analysts note the arrival of the newest iteration of drone warfare — but this time it is not drone innovation on the Ukrainian side as it has so often been this past year.

Instead, Russia is using Iranian-sourced attack drones with a terrifying new feature: the capacity to travel at jet speed, thanks to turbojet engines rather than propellers, carrying large payloads, at considerable distance. For all intents and purposes, these are likened to a cruise missile, but much cheaper to build.

It was one of these Shahed 136 drones — a new version called the Geran 5 — that hit a train station near the Ukrainian-Polish border, well to the west of Kyiv, just after a train carrying a range of European officials had passed through and while former Central Intelligence Agency chief David Petraeus was in the station.

Russian strike on Ukraine-Poland border shows war at Europe's 'doorstep'

A Russian drone hit a passenger train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after European diplomats, including former prime ministers of the UK and Sweden, had used the same line.

The managing editor of Foreign Policy, Ravi Agrawal, sketched a bleak picture this week after returning from Kyiv.

"We're coming up against the cold months now, and Russia's been developing about maybe 3,000 of these jet-powered drones a week", he said.

"That means that, come the winter season, it'll probably have tens of thousands of these drones ready to go. And it could shoot them at all forms of civilian and energy infrastructure."

What this is going to end up meaning, Agrawal said, "is that Ukraine could lose energy supplies, power supplies. It could get very cold, very dark for the Ukrainian people."

Agrawal observed that "one could have made the case a few months ago that Ukraine was in the ascendancy".

"It was really beginning to attack Russian energy installations. They had made Putin fearful to the extent that he low keyed his Victory Day parade, which he cares about a lot."

Germany's weapons transformation

But Russia can now target passenger trains on Ukraine's western borders, as well as penetrate the airspace of Lithuania, Poland and Germany.

While analysts vainly searched for signals about what had been achieved at the recent meeting in Moscow between Donald Trump's envoys and Vladimir Putin, you have to assume that they were prompted by Trump altering his assessment of who may come out a winner from this war, after briefly putting the case that Ukraine had the upper hand.

The same drones being fired at Ukraine can be used by the Iranians, of course, in their assault on Gulf states and US facilities located there.

Like Ukraine, the Gulf states have run out of interceptors, making them increasingly vulnerable to attacks, including those on Saudi Arabia from Iranian-linked Houthis in Yemen.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has cancelled his trip to the UN. (Reuters: Christian Mang)

Donald Trump was this week dismissing calls for the US to give more immediate assistance to Saudi Arabia in fighting the Houthis, despite the threat their move along the coast of Yemen now poses to global oil markets.

The sudden urgent need for armaments — and the transformation of many economies into weapons manufacturers — notably Türkiye, Poland and now Germany — changes many geopolitical equations.

Two more states in Germany, in the old East, will have elections this weekend, with uncertain outcomes. But German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is concerned enough — and worried enough about his own future — that he cancelled his trip to the UN.

Just consider the spectre of a Germany run by a far-right party, openly sympathetic to Moscow, that has been transforming itself into one of the world's major weapons manufacturing hubs.

It casts manoeuvring at the UN headquarters in a rather irrelevant light.

Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.

The people versus AI: Young people pushing back against artificial intelligence.

 Extract from ABC News

• By Daniel Miles

• Your Say

• Topic:AI Ethics

about 3 hours ago

Almost two-thirds of Australians believe AI is moving too fast, and most say the risks outweigh the benefits, according to a study by The Minderoo Foundation. (ABC News: Sharon Gordon)

There's an episode of The Twilight Zone, from late 1960, in which newlyweds Don and Pat Carter take shelter in an Ohio diner after their car breaks down en route to New York City.

Neither expects to be there long; an emergency mechanic just so happens to be around the corner.

To pass the time, Don, played by a young William Shatner, starts feeding pennies into a fortune-telling napkin holder: a grinning devil's head answering yes-or-no questions for a penny-a-pop.

What starts as harmless prompts soon becomes a compulsion as the machine somehow starts nailing the questions. Next thing you know, Don's stuck in a loop, unable to leave the restaurant without asking the machine's thoughts.

William Shatner's character, Don Carter, becomes increasingly reliant on the thoughts of the fortune-telling machine as the episode continues. (Getty Images: CBS Photo Archive)

More than 60 years later, the machines answering our questions cost significantly more than a penny, and a new generation of young people are feeling trapped.

Instead of fortune telling, their battle is with AI: a different kind of machine that answers with unsettling confidence and is getting harder to put down.

Elise Humphreys, 19, has never seen the episode. But it's exactly how she feels about AI.

"It stops me from being able to use my brain independently,"

she said.

Elise Humphreys says her friends are all against the widespread use of AI. (ABC News: West Matteeussen)

Ms Humphreys is studying a double degree in International Relations and International Business at Perth's Curtin University, which encourages the "ethical" use of AI.

She's part of a generation that grew up fluent in technology — and one that studies show is increasingly hostile to it.

"I think all kids are feeling like this … we're scared, we don't want it to affect us long term, and we don't want to live in a world that's run by robots," she said.

"It feels like a cheat code to me. It feels like I'm not going to be as smart as the people who are currently in the field that I want to be in — because of AI."

Nearly 80 per cent of Australian students reported using generative AI while studying last year, a figure that jumps to 94 per cent in more recent international reports.

The latest Gallup study on AI in the US found gen Z's approach to the tool has "significantly" worsened, and that the majority of young people fear its use comes at a cost — particularly to learning.

Ms Humphreys admits she does fall into the trap of using AI. If she doesn't, she said, she'll be left behind.

"I want to be able to create my own thoughts, my own opinion, rather than being reliant on AI … but I think that for me, studying, I can't study without it," she said.

Elise Humphreys says AI "feels like a cheat code". (ABC News: West Matteeussen)

The state of play

In the space of a week or so, calls to slow artificial intelligence down have gone from the margins of public debate to its centre.

Warnings about AI's risks broke out of the industry's bubble when an insider went public with fears AI could "kill us all", prompting Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, to publish an essay advocating Anthropic boss calls for AI slowdown. 

The public's on board: almost two-thirds of Australians believe AI is moving too fast, according to a recent study by the Minderoo Foundation. Most think the risks AI poses outweigh the benefits.

But AI isn't going anywhere, no matter how vociferously its protesters — many of whom have taken on the tongue-in-cheek name of decelerators or 'decels' — may argue the point.

Jenson Rainbird, a 16-year-old high school student from Melbourne, is happy to take part in the technical deceleration by avoiding AI as much as possible.

"My [friendship] group vehemently hates AI — we do not like it one bit,"

he said.

He's tried to cut it out of his life, though it still creeps in through Google searches and other study tools.

Jenson Rainbird says he avoids AI wherever possible. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)

Jenson wants to be a lawyer when he finishes school and university. But for now, he feels locked out of the discussion about AI by virtue of the fact that he's too young to have a say in how it's implemented.

"We're going to be dealing with the leftovers and downsides to what the politicians and others are doing [about AI regulation], and we don't get a say in it," he said.

Jenson Rainbird says he's not worried about falling behind without AI. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)

"We can protest and all that, but we can't actually vote. We could try and go into a minister's office or something like that, but they won't listen to us."

Where Jenson Rainbird avoids AI, his father Justin has gone the other way entirely.

"If you don't get on board, you're going to fall behind," Mr Rainbird said.

AI use is a KPI (key performance indicator) at Mr Rainbird's work. He sees it as an economic tool. It's not taking someone else's job, he argues; it's adding value a company couldn't afford in the first place.

"I might be taking a coder's job, but not really, because there's no way we would have got funds to do the coding that it's doing for me. It just wouldn't have been economical," he said.

Jenson and Justin Rainbird hold different views on AI. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)

Environmental concerns

AI crept up on 17-year-old Ingrid Miedecke.

She said she was "a little blasé" about it when it first appeared. But as it spread, her unease grew into concern.

"I find generative AI quite disturbing and horrifying. AI in and of itself has some good uses like in medicine and stuff, but it's the generative AI that I find quite abhorrent," she said.

It doesn't take long for Ingrid to run up a veritable laundry list of AI pitfalls: gender and racial bias, its contribution towards misogyny, ethical issues, and a feeling of generational powerlessness. 

But chief among her concerns are the environmental impacts. 

The amount of water required to cool Australia's fast-increasing pool of data centres has long been on the national agenda.

"It ruins the environment," Ingrid said. "And we live in a drought-prone country already, so that's the major thing for me."

Ingrid has four siblings, and her concerns about AI are far from a taboo topic at the kitchen table. Her mother, Cat Miedecke, a teacher and master's student, shares her family's concerns.

The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, recently published an essay with the headline, We Must Pace the Frontier. (Reuters: Dado Ruvic)

She said one of her children had a photo uploaded to an AI model without his consent. She said that picture, which included other students and a teacher, was then digitally manipulated and included one person performing a Nazi salute.

"What's terrifying is that you can do all the right things as a parent: you cannot have them on social media at younger ages, and they're still impacted by this," she said.

"We actually need to teach them to learn how to think … everybody keeps saying, 'Oh, well, we need our kids to know how to use it', but actually we really don't."

Escaping Twilight Zone

There's a clip that has been doing the rounds on social media of comedian Ronny Chieng delivering a class day address to a bunch of graduating Harvard students. 

"Can I just say: f**k AI," he said, to a mixed round of applause and laughter.

"I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI."

He read the room better than other graduate speakers, who have been booed for likening AI to "the next industrial revolution". 

Jemma, an arts graduate from Melbourne, is the choir Chieng's preaching to — but for her, speaking out comes with a cost he doesn't have to consider.

She's worried that going against AI publicly could cost her work in an industry where some of the biggest names, like Martin Scorsese, are embracing the technology.  

"The young people are not happy about this; they don't want it [AI]. It doesn't have any place in the arts," she said.

"Our government needs to do more about it in the education space to preserve our nation's future and ability to think."

In The Twilight Zone, the concept of free thought is what eventually pulls Don back from the brink. His new bride, Pat, pulls him from his reverie. 

"You have a mind, a wonderful mind. Don't destroy it trying to justify that cheap penny fortune machine to yourself," she said.

The pair embrace, leave a tip, and then walk out the diner door arm-in-arm. They're swiftly replaced by another couple who start feverishly feeding the fortune-telling machine.

More than 60 years on, in many ways, not a lot has changed. 

We are still asking machines for answers, and young people are still looking for the door out of the diner. 

Who asked the question?

Elise Humphreys is concerned about the use of AI. (ABC: West Matteeussen)

Elise Humphreys from WA reached out to the ABC via Your Say to share her concerns about AI.

"As a 19 year old, me and my friends and everyone I know doesn't want AI," she wrote.

"AI is a tool, but it's being used in the wrong way. It's going to take away our jobs and kill the environment. Why is the older generation messing it up so bad for us?"

Donald Trump says he has banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House.

Extract from ABC News

By Brad Ryan in Washington DC

• Topic:World Politics

17 minutes ago

Donald Trump frequently clashes with journalists over critical questions and stories. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)

In short:

Press freedom advocates say a White House "ban" on several media outlets is "flatly unconstitutional".

US President Donald Trump said he had banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico over "fake news", and later added there was "something wrong with a country that allows people to write purposely negative stories".

What's next?

Mr Trump says more outlets will be banned in future.

US President Donald Trump says he has banned three prominent media outlets from the White House, in an extraordinary escalation of his attacks on the American press.

Cable networks CNN and MS NOW and newsletter publisher Politico have been banned effective immediately, with more to follow, Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He said the ban was "a result of their constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS!"

"Media Outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America," he wrote.

Later, he told reporters in the Oval Office: "There is something wrong with a country that allows people to write purposely negative stories."

The tactics at 'Trump-a-palooza'

Donald Trump's approval rating is at dire lows. But he has deliberately tied his party's fortunes to his own popularity, and "Trump-a-palooza" showed his tactics are not changing.

It was not clear how the ban would be enforced. After the post was published on Friday afternoon, local time, staff from the three outlets were still working at the White House.

CNN said the ban, if it went ahead, would be an "illegal assault" on its constitutionally protected right to report without government interference. Politico, which recently expanded into Australia, said it would "vigorously defend our First Amendment rights".

Bruce Brown, the president of the US Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the ban was "flatly unconstitutional".

"The First Amendment is clear that once the White House invites in some journalists, it can't ban others because it doesn't like their reporting,"

he said.

"This is textbook viewpoint discrimination and will be quickly struck down by the courts if challenged."

Regular clashes

Across his two terms as president, Mr Trump has developed a hostile relationship with journalists and media outlets who report critically on his administration.

However, he regularly invites reporters into the Oval Office for impromptu press conferences, and only in rare cases have reporters or outlets been banned.

Last year, the Associated Press news agency was excluded from some Trump events when it refused to follow his order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

In 2018, the White House cancelled the media accreditation of CNN reporter Jim Acosta after a verbal clash during a press conference. A judge temporarily overturned the decision before the White House backed down and reinstated the accreditation.

'You're hurting Australia': Trump criticises ABC journalist

Donald Trump takes aim at the ABC's Americas editor during an extraordinary exchange at the White House.

More commonly, Mr Trump launches lawsuits against outlets over stories he disputes or disagrees with.

In 2022, he sought hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from CNN over reports that referred to his baseless claims of election fraud as a "big lie". A Trump-appointed judge later found the comments were "repugnant" but not defamatory, and dismissed the case.

Last year, he sued the Wall Street Journal, which broke a story about a 2003 birthday greeting to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that appeared to come from Mr Trump. A judge dismissed the case in April, but Mr Trump later refiled.

He also filed a $US15 billion ($21 billion) suit against the New York Times and four of its reporters over a series of articles, including a 2024 editorial that said he was unfit for office. A judge threw out the case four days later.

New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger said Mr Trump had been more hostile towards the press than any other modern president.

"He accuses reporters of treason, a crime punishable by death," Mr Sulzberger wrote in an editorial published earlier on Friday, local time.

"He personally sues news organisations when their coverage displeases him. He directs his administration to use the levers of government power to investigate, subpoena and prosecute journalists for doing their jobs."