A group of rabbits in Colorado with grotesque, hornlike growths may seem straight out of a low-budget horror film, but scientists say there's no reason to be spooked — the furry creatures merely have a relatively common virus.

The cottontails recently spotted in Fort Collins are infected with the mostly harmless Shope papillomavirus, which causes wart-like growths that protrude from their faces like metastasising horns.

Viral photos have inspired a fluffle of unflattering nicknames, including "Frankenstein bunnies," "demon rabbits" and "zombie rabbits."

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But their affliction is nothing new, with the virus inspiring ancient folklore and fueling scientific research nearly 100 years ago.

The virus likely influenced the centuries-old jackalope myth in North America, which told of a rabbit with antlers or horns, among other animal variations.

The disease in rabbits also contributed to scientists' knowledge about the connection between viruses and cancer, such as the human papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer.

The virus in rabbits was named after Dr. Richard E Shope, a professor at The Rockefeller University who discovered the disease in cottontails in the 1930s.

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News about the rabbit sightings in Fort Collins, 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Denver, started getting attention after residents started spotting them around town and posting pictures.

Kara Van Hoose, a spokesperson for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the agency has been getting calls about the rabbits seen in Fort Collins.

But she said that it's not uncommon to see infected rabbits, especially in the summer, when the fleas and ticks that spread the virus are most active.

The virus can spread from rabbit to rabbit but not to other species, including humans and pets, she said.

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The growths resemble warts but can look like horns if they grow longer, Van Hoose said.

The growths don't harm rabbits unless they grow on their eyes or mouths and interfere with eating.

Rabbits' immune systems are able to fight the virus and, once they do, the growths will disappear, she said.

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The Premier League is back! And for tens of thousands of football fans in Australia that means nine months of late nights and early starts following their favourite clubs.

This year the Premier League is set to be bigger than ever. For champions Liverpool, another title would put them one ahead than bitter rivals Manchester United.

For United, surely the season can't be any worse than last year – a title challenge is unlikely but stranger things have happened, after all, this season will mark ten years since Leicester City stunned the world by winning the championship.

And what about Arsenal? Is this finally their year. Spurs too have a huge fanbase in Australia, despite the decision to sack Ange Postecoglou.

But we understand not everyone is a diehard fan, so we've put together a quick guide to everything you need to know ahead of the new season.

Football has a new home. Stream the Premier League, FA Cup, J.League and NWSL live & on demand, including Premier League with 4K on Stan Sport

How does the Premier League work?

The Premier League is made up of 20 football teams in England.

Each season, three teams from the division below – called the Championship – are promoted and replace the three teams that finished in the bottom three places in the previous Premier League season.

The competition takes place in a round-robin format, where each team plays each other home and away in a 38-game season.

The team with the most points at the end of the season are crowned champions.

Which teams have been promoted to the Premier League in 2025-26 season?

A couple of big teams are making their return to the Premier League this season.

Leeds United are back after two seasons away; they are one of the best-supported clubs in England and have plenty of Aussie fans thanks to the exploits of Aussie stars Mark Viduka and Harry Kewell in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Sunderland are also back in the Premier League for the first time since 2017; they became known around the world thanks to their Netflix documentary 'Sunderland Till I Die', which charted their struggles after relegation from the Premier League.

Burnley round off the promoted teams, who replaced Southampton, Ipswich Town and Leicester City.

Which team is likely to win the 2025-26 Premier League?

The bookmakers currently back Liverpool to retain their Premier League title after spending big in the transfer market, including spending a whopping $222 million on German star Florian Wirtz.

It is most likely to be a three-horse race for the Premier League this season, with Liverpool set to battle Arsenal and Manchester City.

Arsenal have finished second three seasons in a row, but have made a couple of key signings, including Viktor Gyokeres, a striker who scored 54 goals last season.

Manchester City have arguably the best manager in the world in Pep Guardiola and the best striker in the world in Erling Haaland, and will be out for redemption after a tough season last time out.

What is the 'big four' in the Premier League?

The big four are the four biggest teams by support in the Premier League, and have historically been the most significant.

It refers to Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea, who became part of the special group in the 2000s as they often finished in the top four positions.

This has been challenged in recent years by Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, with the moniker 'the big six' now used to describe the biggest sides in the league.

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What is the new 2025-26 Premier League ball?

The new Premier League season is also significant because it is the first time in 25 years Nike will not be supplying the Premier League ball.

Instead, a deal with Puma has begun, with the new 'Puma Orbita' set to be used this season.

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When does the 2025-26 Premier League begin?

The new season gets underway tomorrow morning (AEST) when champions Liverpool host Bournemouth at Anfield.

On Saturday night, Aston Villa take on Newcastle in a game you can watch on Channel Nine at 9.30pm AEST as free-to-air Premier League football returns to Australia for the first time in six years.

The biggest game of the opening weekend sees Arsenal travel to face rivals Manchester United. That takes place on Tuesday at 2am AEST.

The season concludes on May 25, with all 10 games being played simultaneously.

How to watch the Premier League in Australia

The Premier League has a new home in Australia, with every match available live and on demand on Stan Sport. Nine, the publisher of this website, also owns Stan Sport.

In addition, one game for the first three rounds of the season will be shown on free-to-air television on Channel Nine.

These games will be Newcastle United's trip to Aston Villa on the opening weekend, Manchester City's heavyweight clash with Tottenham Hotspur, and Chelsea's local rivalry match against Fulham.

These three matches all begin at 9:30 pm (AEST).

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More than half of Australia's full-time employees now spend part of their week working from home, with the proportion sharply rising in the cities.

New research from Roy Morgan has shown that more than 6.7 million Australians, or 46 per cent of the total employed population, work from home at least some of the time.

That proportion rises to 51 per cent for full-time employees, and falls to 36 per cent for part-time employees.

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"These latest Roy Morgan findings clearly show that 'work-from-home' arrangements have become a permanent and distinct feature of Australia's employment sector," Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine said.

The trend is concentrated in the capital cities, with a majority of workers in Sydney (55 per cent), Melbourne (52 per cent), and Canberra (51 per cent) working from home.

That falls to below half in Brisbane (43 per cent), Adelaide, (44 per cent), Perth, (40 per cent), and Hobart (45 per cent).

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In regional Australia, work-from-home rates are noticeably lower, with Queensland (40 per cent) having the highest level, followed by NSW (39 per cent), Victoria (36 per cent), the Northern Territory (34 per cent), South Australia (33 per cent) and Western Australia (31 per cent).

Smaller workplaces, especially solo workers or the self-employed, naturally have the highest working from home rates (55 per cent), while smaller businesses have the lowest (38 per cent for workplaces with five to 24 employees).

The industries with the most people working from home include finance and insurance (66 per cent), communications (61 per cent), property and business services (57 per cent), and public administration and defence (56 per cent).

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By contrast, just 31 per cent of retail employees work from home, with other low-level sectors including recreation and personal services (37 per cent) and transport and storage (38 per cent).

Income also makes a difference, with work-from-home rates peaking at 64 per cent for those with a wage of $300,000 or more.

"Gaining an in-depth understanding of the nuances surrounding current 'working from home' trends across different cities, industries, workplace sizes and income bands is vital to understand as businesses, employees, and policymakers adapt to a rapidly changing workforce landscape," Levine said.

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Everyday Australians living with a newly-identified sleep health concern could have no idea they're suffering from it.

Research from Flinders University has revealed that the severity of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), a common condition caused by repeated airway collapse during sleep, increases significantly on weekends.

This phenomenon may be linked to late nights, sleeping in, alcohol and smoking on weekends, leading FHMRI Sleep Health experts to dub it 'social apnea'.

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Sleeping for an extra 45 minutes or more on weekends can almost double the risk of worse OSA, and adults under 60 had a 24 per cent higher risk of OSA on weekends.

Men were also more likely to be affected.

Experts warned this 'social apnea' could increase the risk of serious health conditions like heart disease, depression, dementia and extreme fatigue.

It could also contribute to motor vehicle and other accidents.

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But diagnosing social apnea through current sleep study methods may prove difficult.

"Most clinical diagnostic testing is done on a single night, typically a weeknight, missing the weekend effect we're now calling social apnea," lead author and Research Fellow Dr Lucia Pinilla said in a statement.

Flinders professor and director of FHMRI Sleep Health Danny Eckert said this highlights the need for multi-night sleep assessments.

"Relying on a single-night sleep study may miss important variations, leading to underdiagnosis or misclassification of OSA severity," he said.

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Australians can reduce their risk of 'social apnea' by maintaining a regular sleep routine even (or perhaps especially) on weekends.

That means going to be when you feel sleepy, getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep each night, and waking up at about the same time each day.

OSA already affectes about one billion people globally and, if left untreated, can lead to death.

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A Rhode Island man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to evade rape charges was found guilty late Wednesday of sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in his first of two Utah trials.

An eight-person jury in Salt Lake County found Nicholas Rossi guilty of a 2008 rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand.

Rossi, 38, declined to testify on his own behalf. He will be sentenced on October 20 and is set to stand trial in September on another rape charge in Utah County.

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First-degree felony rape carries a punishment in Utah of five years to life in prison, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

"We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place," Gill said in a statement. "

It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable."

Utah authorities began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified through a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018.

He was among thousands of rape suspects identified and later charged when Utah made a push to clear its rape kit backlog.

Months after he was charged in Utah County, an online obituary claimed Rossi died on February 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.

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He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19 after hospital staff recognised his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol notice.

Extradited to Utah in January 2024, Rossi insisted he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed.

Investigators say they identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.

He appeared in court this week in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank.

Rossi's public defender denied the rape claim and urged jurors not to read too much into his move overseas years later.

"You're allowed to move, you're allowed to go somewhere else, you're allowed to have a different name," attorney Samantha Dugan said. She declined further comment following the verdict.

Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

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The woman was living with her parents and recovering from a traumatic brain injury when she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist. They began dating and were engaged within about two weeks.

She testified Rossi asked her to pay for dates and car repairs, lend him $1,000 so he wouldn't be evicted, and take on debt to buy their engagement rings.

He grew hostile soon after their engagement and raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home, she said.

Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons told jurors Wednesday that the woman did not consent.

"This is not romantic, this is not her mistaking things."

The woman said her parents' dismissive comments convinced her not to go to the police.

She came forward a decade later after seeing him in the news and learning he was accused of another rape from the same year.

Rossi's lawyers said the woman built up years of resentment after he made her foot the bill for everything in their month-long relationship.

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They argued she accused him of rape to get back at him years later when he was getting media attention, and sought to undermine her credibility with jurors.

Rossi's accuser in the Utah County case, who testified at this week's trial, is also a former girlfriend.

She went to police at the time of that alleged rape.

He is accused of attacking her at his apartment in Orem in September 2008 after she came over to collect money she said he stole from her to buy a computer.

When police initially interviewed Rossi, he claimed she raped him and threatened to have him killed.

Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and returned there before allegedly faking his death.

He was previously wanted in the state for failing to register as a sex offender.

The FBI says he faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related charges in 2008.

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Banned pregnancy devices are leading to deaths around Australia as they continue to be illegally traded, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has warned.

Following a review in September last year, the TGA removed all home-use foetal heart monitors from the Australian Registry of Therapeutic Goods, meaning they are no longer approved for sale or advertising in Australia.

But new and second-hand devices continue to be sold illegally, the TGA said, and warned that the information provided by such devices can be "dangerously misleading".

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"We have received reports of instances where they have provided false reassurance, leading to delayed medical attention and deaths," the TGA said in a statement.

"These devices are not a substitute for professional care."

Home-use foetal heart monitors are handheld devices used to detect or monitor the heartbeat of a baby during pregnancy.

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They are commonly used by health professionals during pregnancy checkups, but in recent years had become widely available to the public.

Following the ban, the TGA has urged people concerned about their unborn baby's wellbeing to seek "immediate" attention from their midwife or doctor.

Untrained use of an illicit monitor can provide falsely reassuring data.

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Medical professionals have also been urged to remind parents-to-be of the dangers associated with the devices.

Criminal and civil penalties apply for selling therapeutic goods excluded from the ARTG.

People can report a problem related to a medical device online here.

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One of Australia's largest service station chains has launched a billion-dollar takeover of a British-owned operator.

Ampol, which had been placed in a trading halt this morning ahead of the official announcement, told the share market this evening that it has reached an agreement to acquire EG Australia and its roughly 500 petrol stations.

Ampol will spend about $1.1 billion in cash and shares to complete the takeover.

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EG's service stations already bear the Ampol logo, which supplies it with about 2.3 billion litres of fuel each year.

"The proposed EG Australia acquisition makes sense for Ampol," chief executive and managing director Matt Halliday said.

"It is a business and market we understand well, given our multi-year relationship with them including fuel supply and brand licence agreements.

"We are uniquely placed to leverage our demonstrated capability as a known and trusted brand in fuel and convenience retailing."

The $1.1 billion price tag is a significant loss for the UK-based EG Group, which entered the Australian market in 2019 when it paid $1.73 billion for the Woolworths Petrol business and its 540 outlets.

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However, fuel consumption has dwindled since then due to more efficient vehicles hitting the road, the rise of working from home, and particularly the emergence and take-up of electric vehicles in Australia.

The takeover is subject to approval by the ACCC, and Ampol has proposed it will sell 20 outlets in order to avoid falling foul of the competition watchdog.

If approved, the deal is set to be completed by mid-2026.

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The 47-year-old has 90 previous convictions, 55 of them for dishonesty offences.

Emergency services were called to the scene about 4.25pm.

OPINION: Public appearance by the former Prime Minister would set a bad precedent.