It’s a neutral pronoun that’s proving anything but: a non-binary pronoun added to an esteemed French dictionary has ignited a fierce linguistic squabble in the country.

Le Petit Robert introduced the word “iel” — an amalgamation of “il” (he) and “elle” (she) — to its online edition last month.

While the term is gaining currency among young people, it is still far from being widely used, or even understood, by many French speakers.

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Though at first the change went mostly unnoticed, boisterous debate broke out this week in a nation that prides itself on its human rights tradition but that also fiercely protects its cultural heritage from foreign meddling.

In one camp are the traditionalists, including some political leaders, who criticise the move as a sign that France is lurching toward an American-style “woke” ideology.

In the other is a new generation of citizens who embrace non-binary as the norm.

“It is very important that dictionaries include the ‘iel’ pronoun in their referencing as it reflects how the use of the term is now well accepted,” said Dorah Simon Claude, a 32-year-old doctoral student who identifies as “iel.”

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“It is,” they added, “also a way of confronting the Academie Francaise that stays in its conservative corner and continues to ignore and scorn users of the French language.”

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer is not in the same camp.

He went to Twitter on Wednesday to say that “inclusive writing is not the future of the French language.”

The 56-year-old former law professor warned that schoolchildren should not use “iel” as a valid term despite its inclusion in Le Robert, seen as a linguistic authority on French since 1967.

Francois Jolivet, a lawmaker from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, also made his distaste plain.

Non-binary pronouns are, he suggested, a worrying sign that France is embracing a “woke” ideology.

Mr Jolivet wrote a letter to the bastion of French language, the 400-year-old Academie Francaise, claiming that Le Robert’s “solitary campaign is an obvious ideological intrusion that undermines our common language and its influence.”

The general director of Le Robert editions, Charles Bimbenet, jumped to the dictionary’s defence on Wednesday in a statement.

Far from dictating which terms should be used, he said, Le Petit Robert was elucidating the word’s meaning, now it is growing in currency nationwide.

Since “the meaning of the word iel cannot be understood by reading it alone,” Mr Bimbenet said, “it seemed useful to us to specify its meaning for those who encounter it, whether they wish to use it or … reject it.”

“Robert’s mission is to observe and report on the evolution of a changing and diverse French language,” he said.

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In 2017, the Academie Francaise warned that moves to make French more gender neutral would create “a disunited language, with disparate expression, that can create confusion verging on illegibility.”

Gendered languages like French are seen as a particular hurdle for advocates of non-binary terms as all nouns are categorised as either masculine or feminine, unlike in English.

Not all European countries are moving at the same speed as France.

In Greece, where all nouns have not two, but three possible genders, there is no official non-binary pronoun, but groups who support them suggest using “it.”

In Spain, after former deputy prime minister and affirmed feminist Carmen Calvo asked the Royal Spanish Academy to advise on the use of inclusive language in the Constitution, its reply the next year was crystal clear: “Inclusive language” means “the use of the masculine to refer to men and women."

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on an "emerging public health concern" of people losing their sense of smell, according to new research published on Thursday.

The research published in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery estimated that between 700,000 and 1.6 million people in the US who had COVID-19 have lost or had a change in their sense of smell that has lasted for more than six months.

This is likely an underestimate, the authors from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said.

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The study suggests most people recover their sense of smell eventually, but some may never regain it.

The authors consider this a concern because, by comparison, prior to the pandemic, only 13.3 million adults age 40 and older had what scientists call olfactory dysfunction (OD) or chronic olfactory dysfunction (COD).

"These data suggest an emerging public health concern of OD and the urgent need for research that focuses on treating COVID-19 COD," the study said.

A study last year found that 72 per cent of people with COVID-19 recovered their sense of smell after a month, but for some, it is a much slower process.

"The long-term disease burden from this, we're literally going to be dealing with this for decades," according to John Hayes, director of the Sensory Evaluation Centre at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Mr Hayes did not work on this study but has done research in the area.

He thinks the estimated number of people in the study with this problem is conservative and the issue could impact many millions more.

While a long-term loss of a sense of smell may sound trivial compared with other symptoms of long COVID-19, such as chronic fatigue or heart problems, not being able to smell can be dangerous, he said.

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A 2014 study found people who have lost their sense of smell were more than twice as likely to experience hazards such as eating spoiled food, as those who did have a sense of smell.

A loss of a sense of smell has also been linked to depression in earlier studies.

"It's really consequential to appetite and social relations, like people have lost their sense of smell may not be able to detect if they have body odour, and can impact diet too," Mr Hayes said.

Hayes said his research with COVID-19 patients has shown that they've experienced three different kinds of long-term olfactory disturbances.

Some lose or have a diminished sense of smell.

Some have a sense of smell that is off, where instead of flowers, for example, someone would smell stinky feet.

Others may have what Mr Hayes calls a kind of "phantom limb syndrome" for a sense of smell, where people smell things that aren't actually there, like a persistent chemical or burning smell.

Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School who has been studying why people with COVID-19 lose their sense of smell, said this is an important line of research.

"We've never really had a formal estimate made of how many people have been struggling with this," Mr Datta said.

"This is a really unusual event in terms of olfactory dysfunction and an unprecedented consequence of a pandemic that's never really been observed before."

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Unless someone breaks their nose in an accident, or had some other kind of head trauma, it's unusual for younger people to lose their sense of smell, particularly from a virus.

As people age, some do lose some sense of smell.

One study found 60 to 70 per cent of people 80 years and older have some degree of smell dysfunction.

Other studies suggests it may impact fewer people, but this loss typically happens slowly over time; an acute loss is unusual.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why people with COVID-19 lose a sense of smell.

Dr Datta said the consensus seems to be that there is a disruption in the support cells in the nose.

He said it's unlikely that the neurons responsible for detecting odours are being directly attacked by the virus.

"After that, there's still a lot of mystery as to what's going on and in many labs, including my own, we continue to work on this problem," Dr Datta said.

Understanding how COVID-19 has warped someone's sense of smell will be important for scientists to determine how to help them regain it, if it doesn't come back on its own.

Some long COVID-19 clinics have been offering a kind of physical therapy for the nose and retraining people's sense of smell by exposing them to certain oduors so they can try and relearn them.

Studies show this can work for some people, but not everyone.

"I had a patient call me the other day and ask what could be done and honestly, I don't have any good recommendations yet," Mr Hayes said.

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President Joe Biden on Friday temporarily transferred power to Vice President Kamala Harris while he was under anaesthesia for a routine colonoscopy for one hour and 25 minutes, according to the White House.

The nation's first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president broke yet another barrier when she temporarily stepped into the acting role.

Harris worked from her office in the West Wing while Biden was under anaesthesia, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

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"@POTUS spoke with @VP and @WHCOS at approximately 11:35am this morning. @POTUS was in good spirits and at that time resumed his duties. He will remain at Walter Reed as he completes the rest of his routine physical," Psaki tweeted.

Biden, who turns 79 on Saturday, arrived Friday morning at Walter Reed Medical Centre to undergo his first routine annual physical since taking office.

It's routine for a vice president to assume presidential powers while the president undergoes a medical procedure that requires anaesthesia. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney did so on multiple occasions when then-President George W. Bush underwent routine colonoscopies.

To officially transfer the presidential powers to Harris, Biden sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the president pro tempore of the Senate, at 10:10am ET (2.10am Saturday AEDT) before going under anaesthesia.

The letter reads: "Today I will undergo a routine medical procedure requiring sedation. In view of present circumstances, I have determined to transfer temporarily the powers and duties of the office of President of the United States to the Vice President during the brief period of the procedure and recovery."

Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution says the President can send a letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives and the president pro tempore of the Senate declaring declaring they are "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President."

In order to transfer the powers back to Biden, a separate letter was sent after the procedure.

"In accordance with the provisions of section 3 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, I hereby transmit to you my written declaration that I am able to discharge the powers and duties of the Office of the President of the United States and that I am resuming those powers and duties," the letter, which was sent to both Pelosi and Leahy, reads.

Earlier this year, former President Donald Trump's ex-press secretary Stephanie Grisham heavily implied that Biden's predecessor underwent a colonoscopy in a secret visit to Walter Reed in 2019, but kept it quiet to avoid transferring presidential power to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

In her book, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," Grisham does not use the term colonoscopy but heavily implies that's what the trip was for. She says Trump's hospital visit, which stirred weeks-long speculation about his health was a "very common procedure," during which "a patient is put under." She also writes that Bush had a similar procedure while in office.

Grisham writes Trump did not want then-Vice President Mike Pence to be in power while he was sedated, which was part of the reason he kept his visit private. He also "did not want to be the butt of a joke" on late-night television, writes Grisham.

Biden is the oldest first-term president in US history, and the last comprehensive update on Biden's medical history came nearly two years ago when his presidential campaign released a three-page summary of his medical history in December 2019.

Dr. Kevin O'Connor, Biden's primary care doctor since 2009, described Biden as "a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male," at the time.

The 2019 summary showed Biden was being treated for non-valvular atrial fibrillation, or AFib — an irregular heartbeat that O'Connor said Biden experiences no symptoms of. He was taking Crestor to lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels, as well as Eliquis to prevent blood clots, Nexium for acid reflux, and Allegra and a nasal spray for seasonal allergies.

The most significant medical event in Biden's history, O'Connor wrote, was when Biden suffered a brain aneurysm in 1988. He was serving in the Senate at the time. During surgery, doctors found a second aneurysm that had not bled, which they also treated.

While in the hospital after that surgery, Biden suffered deep vein thrombosis and a pulmonary embolism. Doctors at the time inserted an "inferior vena cava filter," which would prevent future blood clots from reaching the heart and lungs and treated him with an oral anti-coagulant for several months.

A sea turtle has made its long awaited return to the ocean, after being rescued and cared for by Sea World staff.

Lucy the Hawksbill sea turtle had been spotted off Kirra reef by a local diver, who noticed her health deteriorating.

The diver notified Sea World on the Gold Coast, which made plans to retrieve and rehabilitate the injured juvenile turtle.

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Sea World turtle rehabilitation coordinator Siobhan Houlihan said this year had been the busiest on record for sea turtle rescues, with 91 turtles cared for so far.

"Unfortunately many of these have been due to human impact including fishing injuries and boat strikes," Ms Houlihan said.

"Quite a lot of fishing injuries, boat strikes, floating syndrome parasite linked to poor water quality."

Ms Houlihan said many factors could contribute to injuries in turtles and what was causing Lucy's ill health was unkown.

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Lucy was anaemic and underweight when found, Ms Houlihan said, but can now enjoy full health back on the reef thanks to the specialised vet team.

"Our team treated Lucy for her illness in our vet centre before she progressed to rehabilitating in our larger pool to get her swimming and weight condition back to a healthy position ready for release," Ms Houlihan said.

After five weeks' recovery, Lucy was carefully released back into the waters off Kirra beach today.

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"It is always very exciting when we can rescue, rehabilitate and release any animal but it is even more exciting because Kirra Reef is home to a group of resident turtles," Ms Houlihan said.

"We can't wait for Lucy to get back out there."

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