A Queensland ecologist who suggested 4WDs should be partially banned on the beach to protect wildlife is refusing to back down after being flooded with death threats.

University of the Sunshine Coast Professor Thomas Schlacher called on the government to consider outlawing all-terrain vehicles on parts of the sand due to the irreversible damage it causes to marine creatures.

He took his family to the United States for a period earlier this year when vitriol from some 4WD drivers became so inflamed that he was even sent a letter that read "we know where you live".

READ MORE: Australia at risk of destructive weather not seen for a decade

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Cambridge Dictionary has named its word of the year for 2025, alighting on "parasocial," used to describe a connection that people feel with someone they don't know or even with an artificial intelligence.

The term was coined in 1956 by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, who wanted to describe how television viewers formed "para-social" relationships with TV personalities, the dictionary said in a statement.

This phenomenon continues today, as social media users form parasocial relationships with celebrities.

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A key example cited by Cambridge Dictionary is singer Taylor Swift, who announced her engagement to NFL star Travis Kelce this year, with many fans talking of their heartfelt feelings toward a couple that the vast majority had never met.

Another is British singer Lily Allen, whose latest album "West End Girl" tells the story of a breakup and sparked a "parasocial interest in her love life," according to the statement.

And use of the term has surged this year, particularly as concerns over the connections that some people have started to develop with AI chatbots such as ChatGPT have come to the fore.

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Colin McIntosh, a lexicographer at the Cambridge Dictionary, said the word "captures the 2025 zeitgeist" and demonstrates how language changes.

"What was once a specialist academic term has become mainstream," he said in the statement.

"Millions of people are engaged in parasocial relationships; many more are simply intrigued by their rise," McIntosh added.

"The language around parasocial phenomena is evolving fast, as technology, society and culture shift and mutate: from celebrities to chatbots, parasocial trends are fascinating for those who are interested in the development of language," he said.

Simone Schnall, Professor of Experimental Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge, said in the statement that the word "is an inspired choice."

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"The rise of parasocial relationships has redefined fandom, celebrity and, with AI, how ordinary people interact online," she said.

"We've entered an age where many people form unhealthy and intense parasocial relationships with influencers," Schnall added.

"This leads to a sense that people 'know' those they form parasocial bonds with, can trust them and even to extreme forms of loyalty. Yet it's completely one sided."

Cambridge Dictionary also highlighted a number of other words that it said have had a "significant impact" this year.

Among their number is "slop," defined as "content on the internet that is of very low quality, especially when it is created by artificial intelligence," as well as "memeify," or "to turn an event, image, person, etc. into a meme."

And the dictionary added 6000 new words this year, with notable newbies including "delulu," "skibidi" and "tradwife."

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Nearly 200 people have been killed or injured in Japan by marauding wild bears over seven months this year.

The figures, released by the country's Environment Ministry, show among the 197 attacks from April to October, 12 people were killed, reports The Japan Times.

The total, calculated over the early part of Japan's financial year, is nearing the record 219 casualties in 2023.

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Last month recorded an explosion in attacks, when 88 people were mauled by bears, seven of whom died.

Authorities put the spike down to more of the beasts roaming in urban areas amid a shortage of beech nuts, a key food for them.

The inventive Japanese have responded to the spike in maulings by coming up with a bear shelter.

Based on a steel cargo container, the reinforced structure can withstand more than 190 tonnes.

Last month, exasperated officials in the northern region of Akita were successful in a request for military help to deter roaming bears.

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Troops from the Japanese Self-Defence Force, equipped with repellent spray. have been deployed to transport local hunters and help dispose of dead bears. Officials say the soldiers will not use firearms to cull the bears.

The growing bear population's encroachment into residential areas is happening in a region with a rapidly aging and declining human population, with few people trained to hunt the animals.

The government has estimated the overall bear population at more than 54,000.

– With AP

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The Australian share market is down almost 1.2 per cent in early trade, dragged down by a sharp plunge on Wall Street overnight.

The ASX200 hit a four-month low for the Australian market, opening 0.8 per cent down after shaving 64.8 points to hit 8571.6.

The US stock market sank overnight as Nvidia and other "superstar" stocks created by the frenzy around artificial intelligence technology dimmed some more.

READ MORE: Brad Battin ousted as Victorian opposition leader, Jess Wilson becomes state's first female Liberal leader

In the US, the S&P 500 fell 0.9 per cent and pulled further from its all-time high set late last month.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 557 points, or 1.2 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8 per cent.

Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the market, as it’s often been in its last couple of tumultuous weeks. The chip company fell 1.8 per cent, while losses for other AI winners included a 6.4 per cent slide for Super Micro Computer.

Other areas of the market that had been high-momentum winners also sank. Bitcoin fell below $US92,000 ($141,000) down from nearly $US125,000 last month, for example.

That helped drag down Coinbase Global by 7.1 per cent and Robinhood Markets by 5.3 per cent.

READ MORE: Trump's Epstein files capitulation betrays a rare weakness

Critics have warned US stock market could be primed for a drop because of how high prices have shot since April, leaving them looking too expensive. Critics point in particular to stocks swept up in the AI mania, which have been surging at spectacular speeds for years.

Despite its loss overnight, Nvidia is still up 39 per cent for the year so far after it doubled in price in four of the past five years.

That has Wall Street’s spotlight on Wednesday (Thursday AEST), when Nvidia will report how much profit it made during the summer.

AI stocks have surged as much as they have because of expectations that they’ll produce huge growth in profits. If they fail to top analysts’ expectations, that would undercut one of the big assumptions that’s driven the US stock market to records.

Such high expectations extend beyond tech stocks, even if they are toughest for AI darlings.

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Aramark fell 5.2 per cent after the company reported a profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

The company, which offers food and facilities management for schools, national parks and convention centres, also said it expects an underlying measure of profit to grow between 20 per cent and 25 per cent this upcoming year.

While relatively strong, that was less than what analysts had been forecasting.

That helped offset a rise of 3.1 per cent for Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which jumped after Berkshire Hathaway said it built a $US4.34 billion ownership stake.

Berkshire Hathaway, run by famed investor Warren Buffett, is notorious for trying to buy stocks only when they look like good values while avoiding anything that looks too expensive.

Another source of potential disappointment for Wall Street is what the US Federal Reserve does with interest rates.

The expectation had been that the Fed would keep cutting interest rates in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market. Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments.

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But questions are rising about whether a third cut for the year would come out of the Fed’s next meeting in December, something that traders had earlier seen as very likely.

The downside of lower interest rates is that they can make inflation worse, and inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2 per cent target.

Fed officials have also pointed to the US government’s shutdown, which delayed the release of updates on the job market and other signals about the economy.

With less information and less certainty about how things are going, some Fed officials have suggested it may be better to wait in December to get more clarity.

Now that the shutdown is over, the government is preparing to release September’s delayed jobs report on Thursday (Friday AEST). That could create further swings for the market.

Data that’s very strong would likely stay the Fed’s hand on rate cuts, while figures that are very weak would raise worries about the economy.

READ MORE: Too late to stop 1000 years of deadly heatwaves, Aussie scientists say

In 2026, the Fed is likely to cut interest rates only in response to a slowing economy instead of trying to cut ahead of it, according to Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel. That’s not as good an environment for stock prices, and Bannister said the “Fed’s ‘free lunch’ is over".

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.13 per cent from 4.14 per cent late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell modestly across much of Europe and Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1 per cent after the government reported that the Japanese economy contracted at a 1.8 per cent annual pace in the July-September quarter.

South Korea’s Kospi was an outlier and jumped 1.9 per cent as tech-related stocks there did well.

The world is facing a thousand years of deadly heatwaves regardless of whether humanity reaches net zero emissions – but delays in achieving that target will only make things worse.

Researchers working at the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, and CSIRO, modelled what the next millennia of heatwaves would look like, based on the assumption global net zero would be reached between 2030 and 2060.

Heatwaves were shown to be systematically hotter, longer and more frequent the longer net zero is delayed, and they may be exacerbated by long-term warming in the Southern Ocean even after net zero is reached.

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Most trends showed no decline over the entire 1000 years of each simulation, indicating that heatwaves do not start to revert back towards pre-industrial conditions even when net zero is reached, for at least a millennium.

Some regions even displayed heatwaves of significantly increasing severity when net zero occurs by 2050 or later.

Professor Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the Australian National University, the lead author of the paper, said the research showed achieving net zero would not necessarily immediately improve conditions for future generations.

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"While our results are alarming, they provide a vital glimpse of the long-term future, allowing effective and permanent adaptation measures to be planned and implemented," she said.

"It's also vitally important that we make rapid progress to permanent net zero."

Co-author Dr Andrew King of the University of Melbourne said adapting to this future would be the work of "centuries, not decades".

"Investment in public infrastructure, housing, and health services to keep people cool and healthy during extreme heat will very likely look quite different in terms of scale, cost and the resources required under earlier versus later net zero stabilisation," he said.

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The Jeffrey Epstein files saga is far from over, even after US President Donald Trump suddenly reversed himself Sunday night and told Republicans to vote for releasing them.

But regardless of how it shakes out, the drama around the files has punctured Trump's aura of invincibility within the MAGA movement in a way few, if any, things have before. And it has proved a massive unforced political error by Trump.

The man who has for a decade dominated his base and told it what to care about has backed down when that base decided its priorities didn't align with his own.

READ MORE: Australia at risk of destructive weather not seen for a decade

That's a remarkable political moment – and an unfortuitous one for Trump, particularly right now.

The reversal, and where it leaves us

The big news overnight was that Trump seemed to relent after months of fighting an effort in the House to force the release of all Epstein files from the Justice Department. A significant number of Republicans had been expected to defect from Trump's opposition to releasing the files in this week's vote.

"House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide," Trump posted on social media, "and it's time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat 'Shutdown.'"

The first thing to note is that this isn't the end of the matter.

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For one, Trump has a way of changing his mind. For two, the bill would still need to pass in the Senate – where Majority Leader John Thune was noncommittal on Monday – and be signed by Trump, though it's hard to see how the president and Senate Republicans could resist those things now.

And lastly, the investigations Trump ordered last week of political foes tied to Epstein could seemingly give the Justice Department a pretext not to release all the files.

But it would be hard for even the president's allies not to see through that, given Trump's own DOJ said in July there was no "evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties."

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Still, Trump's reversal is a significant moment politically, because it suggests he is throwing in the towel on something he's fought for months.

While he cast his new posture as being in line with his prior comments on the matter, it's a clear capitulation.

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have fought tooth and nail against the discharge petition that ultimately forced this vote. Trump last week threatened Republicans who signed on to it, calling them "stupid" and accusing them of playing into Democrats' hands.

The Epstein files were the central issue in Trump's recent rift with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. And it's possible he was about to see 100 or more Republicans bucking him on it in the House, according to estimates in recent days.

For once, Trump succumbed to his own base

Trump will likely pretend this wasn't a rebuke of him personally. But it was. And it's a pretty remarkable one at that.

Over the past decade, he has fashioned a Republican Party that was largely about one thing: Trump.

Whatever he said, went. It didn't matter if the idea flew in the face of decades of conservative orthodoxy. It didn't matter what Republican lawmakers previously espoused.

It didn't matter if Trump seemed to be making it up on the fly or breaking the law in the process. It didn't matter if he was basing the policy on a series of fabrications. The unquestioning faith he garnered from his base was immense.

Congressional Republicans have rarely voted against Trump's position; when they have, it's almost always been on foreign policy matters.

But the Epstein files saga has shown that the base's willingness to abide Trump has its limits – or at least, it does when the base feels strongly enough and when the president's political capital starts to wane.

What it portends for Trump

That's what's particularly inauspicious for the president right now. It isn't just his retreat, but the circumstances and timing of it.

Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no smoking gun in the thousands of documents released last week from the Epstein estate.

But there's no question that the revelations – about what Trump knew about the convicted sex offender and when – have been bad for him politically. Those include emails in which Epstein said Trump "knew about the girls" Ghislaine Maxwell recruited from Mar-a-Lago, and that Trump spent hours with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre at Epstein's house.

Despite this looking bad for Trump, many congressional Republicans had apparently decided releasing the full files from the DOJ simply wasn't something they could vote against. Unlike so many other things, they couldn't ignore what their base has long been clamouring for in the service of Trump's agenda.

And perhaps most important about Trump's capitulation, politically speaking, is the timing. It's a sign of weakness at a very bad time.

The context of all of this is the apparent fracturing of the MAGA base.

That base is arguing over how hard to root out the growing racism and antisemitism in its ranks. Some elements are expressing unease with how truly "America First" some facets of Trump's agenda are – things like bailing out Argentina and threatening to go to war with Venezuela. Others are concerned about how cosy Trump has been with Big Tech.

And the Greene episode has proved a bigger headache for Trump than perhaps anyone anticipated. That's in large part because, unlike the many moderate Republicans who have bucked him in the past, the Georgia Republican is hitting back against him rather than objecting and meekly fading away. She's also doing so from a position of credibility with the base.

Over the weekend we saw a number of prominent MAGA and MAGA-adjacent influencers on social media start to distance themselves from Trump's agenda.

Greene seems in some ways to be giving portions of the MAGA base the permission structure to more forcefully object to things they were previously quietly uneasy about.

And, perhaps not coincidentally, this is also playing out at a time when Trump's political capital is at a low point.

Republican losses on Election Day this month reinforced Trump's looming lame-duck status and crystallised the GOP's very real problems in a post-Trump political world, given the party almost always loses when he's not on the ballot.

Given all of that, it shouldn't be too surprising that some Republicans are trying to figure out what the next chapter looks like and perhaps turn the page on Trump in certain ways.

And perhaps on no issue is distancing from Trump an easier call than on the Epstein files; recent polling showed Americans disapprove of his administration's handling of the files 3-to-1 and that 77 per cent want all the files released.

As these numbers show, Trump put congressional Republicans in an impossible position by asking them to toe his line. But it's still significant that so many of them, for once, actually forced his hand.

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A false claim circulating online that the pension age in Australia will rise to 68 this month has been republished by Google AI.

The false information, published by HIIT5158.com.au, claims the "official retirement age" in Australia will move from 67 to 68 from November 10, 2025, affecting anyone "born on or after 10 November 1958".

The information was then picked up by Google AI and was presented in its Overview for some searches.

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Australia does not have an official retirement age.

Australians can retire at any age if they have the financial means to do so.

Superannuation can generally be accessed when an individual reaches "preservation age", which is ordinarily somewhere between 55 and 60 depending on when you were born.

Currently, to be eligible for the government's Age Pension you must be 67 or older.

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A spokesperson from the Department of Social Services said "the government has no plans to change the Age Pension age".

"The Age Pension eligibility age is 67, however you may apply up to 13 weeks earlier," the spokesperson said.

Current and correct information on the Age Pension and all social security payments is available on the Services Australia website.

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In response to questions from 9news.com.au, Google said it had investigated the issue and the response had been fixed.

"We aim to surface relevant, high quality information in all our Search features and we continue to raise the bar for quality with ongoing updates and improvements," a Google spokesperson said.

"When issues arise including if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context, we use those examples to improve and take appropriate action under our policies."

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Exclusive: Almost 40 per cent of Australians are no longer confident in sunscreen SPF claims in the wake of multiple sunscreen recalls, according to a nine.com.au reader poll.

More than one in four of the 476 readers* surveyed said they were "not very confident" in the SPF claims of Australian sunscreen brands.

About one in 10 said they were "not confident at all" in light of the recent SPF claim concerns, while just five per cent felt "very confident".

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The SPF controversy kicked off in June, when a Choice report claimed more than a dozen sunscreens "failed" to meet their SPF claims when independently tested.

In August, Australian brand Ultra Violette pulled one of its products from shelves over "concerning discrepancies" in SPF testing results.

More than 20 other sunscreens have since been recalled, voluntarily pulled from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG), or have paused supply in Australia.

Almost a quarter of readers said they had changed their sunscreen buying habits because of all the recent recalls.

"I find it a real worry to have to question whether the SPF [products] we use are effective," one person wrote.

"Especially given my husband and brother have had melanoma."

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Melanoma of the skin is a specific type of skin cancer most commonly caused by damage from the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays.

That's a major issue for Australians, who are exposed to much higher UV levels than countries in the northern hemisphere.

Unsurprisingly, Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world.

Melanoma of the skin was the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia in 2021.

And it's predicted to take third place again in 2025, with more than 17,000 new cases expected to be diagnosed this year alone.

Though the five-year survival rate is relatively high compared to other common cancers, currently sitting at 94 per cent, melanoma claims hundreds of lives every year.

In 2025 alone, it's predicted to kill an estimated 1455 Australians.

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It should come as no surprise then that Aussies want to make sure the SPF claims on the sunscreens they use are accurate.

Fortunately, more than 80 per cent of readers said they did not previously, nor do they currently, own any of the sunscreens that have been recalled over SPF testing concerns.

Fewer than 15 per cent said they do or previously did own one of the recalled products.

Brands that have had one or more of their SPF products recalled or voluntarily pulled from shelves include Aesthetics Rx, MCoBeauty, Naked Sundays and more.

A full list of the products affected by SPF claim concerns can be found on the TGA website here.

Australian chemistry PhD, science communicator and cosmetic chemist Michelle Wong previously told 9news.com.au that Aussies shouldn't stop using sunscreen over the SPF claim concerns.

"Applying adequate sunscreen is more important than the actual SPF number," Wong said.

"If you apply any sunscreen according to the directions, on any day where the UV is forecast to be three or over, then you're going to be doing a lot for your skin."

*The nine.com.au poll, which runs once a fortnight, canvases the views of the Nine audience on 9Nation, which is an online community of our readers and viewers.

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A special tribunal sentenced Bangladesh's ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death on charges of crimes against humanity for her crackdown on a student uprising last year that killed hundreds of people and led to the toppling of her 15-year rule.

The Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal also sentenced former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan to death for his involvement in the use of deadly force against protesters.

Both Hasina and Khan fled to India last year and were sentenced in absentia.

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A third suspect, a former police chief, was sentenced to five years in prison after becoming a state witness against Hasina and pleading guilty.

Hasina and Khan were accused more than the killing of hundreds of people during a student-led uprising in July and August of 2024.

The country's health adviser under the country's current interim government said more than 800 people were killed and about 14,000 were injured. However, the UN in a February report said up to 1400 may have been killed.

Hasina says the charges are unjustified, arguing that she and Khan "acted in good faith and were trying to minimise the loss of life".

"We lost control of the situation, but to characterise what happened as a premeditated assault on citizens is simply to misread the facts," she said on Monday in a statement denouncing the verdict.

The verdict comes as the country still grapples with instability after Hasina was ousted on August 5, 2024. Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as the head of an interim government three days after her fall. Yunus has vowed to punish Hasina and banned the activities of her Awami League party.

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A three-member tribunal, headed by Justice Golam Mortuza Mozumder, announced the tribunal's ruling, a session that was broadcast live.

Some of those in the packed courtroom cheered when Mazumder announced the death penalty for Hasina. He admonished them, telling them to express their feelings outside the courtroom.

Many families of the killed and the injured during last year's uprising waited for hours outside the tribunal ahead of the verdict.

It appeared unlikely that Hasina would return to Bangladesh to face her sentence. India had not responded to requests by Bangladesh to extradite her to face the trial.

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The interim government beefed up security ahead of the verdict, with paramilitary border guards and police deployed in Dhaka and many other parts of the country.

Hasina's Awami League party called for a nationwide shutdown to protest the verdict on Monday.

Hasina denounced Monday's ruling, calling it "biased and politically motivated" in a statement. She also denounced the tribunal as "rigged" and alleged that it was "established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate".

"In their distasteful call for the death penalty, they reveal the brazen and murderous intent of extremist figures within the interim government to remove Bangladesh's last elected prime minister, and to nullify the Awami League as a political force," Hasina said.

Hasina cannot appeal the verdict unless she surrenders or is arrested within 30 days of the judgment.

Tensions and disruptions grew in the country in recent days ahead of the verdict.

Nearly 50 arson attacks, mostly targeting vehicles, and dozens of crude bombs explosions were reported nationwide more than the past week. Two people were killed in the arson attacks, local media reported.

Authorities at the Supreme Court, in a letter to army headquarters on Sunday, requested the deployment of soldiers around the tribunal premises ahead of the verdict.

Yunus said his interim government would hold the country's next elections in February, and that Hasina's party would not get a chance to contest the race.

Bangladesh's politics under Yunus has remained at a crossroads with limited signs of stability.

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An alarming rise in abusive parents in South Australian schools has prompted tough new laws.

Under the legislation, which takes effect today, parents can be banned from school grounds for up to six months and face hefty fines, as principals push back on violence, threats and online abuse.

The frequency of parental bans in the state's schools has increased by 200 per cent over the past five years as principals deal with rising levels of abusive incidents.

"It is something sometimes that it's necessary," North Prospect Primary principal Russell Barwell said. 

"It allows us to remove emotion from the situation."

Recent data indicates a marked rise in formal warnings issued to parents by public schools, with 206 letters sent this year, compared to 61 five years ago, while 107 barring notices have been issued. 

"Assault… we've had members stalked," South Australian Primary Principals Association president Tobiahs O'Connor said. 

"We've had a whole range of things that just make your skin crawl."

The new laws extend the maximum ban period from three to six months and also cover online abuse in addition to verbal and physical threats.

Parents and carers have been found to be the top source of bullying, slander and sexual harassment for principals to deal with. Education Minister Blair Boyer said the new laws are critical to spark change.

"We had to send a message to adults out there that are exhibiting this totally unacceptable behaviour," Education Minister Blair Boyer said.

Recourse action for parents remains the same, with appeals dealt with by the minister.

This article was produced with the assistance of 9ExPress.