US soldier Travis King sentenced for desertion after fleeing into North Korea

Private was sentenced to 12 months of confinement and dishonourably discharged from army but has been released because of time already served

A US soldier who fled into North Korea last year has been sentenced to 12 months of confinement after pleading guilty to desertion as part of a plea agreement, his lawyer has said.

Because of good behaviour and time served, the soldier was released, the lawyer, Franklin Rosenblatt, said on Friday. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/us-soldier-travis-king-sentenced-for-desertion-after-fleeing-into-north-korea?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

Revealed: where property underquoting is rife in Australia – and when buyers are most likely to get stung

Our analysis suggests buyers are better off checking an automated price estimate than going by the real estate agent’s guide

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On a gloomy Saturday morning in Sydney, a small crowd with umbrellas and raincoats is waiting outside a terrace in the inner west for an auction to start.

The place is completely rundown, with peeling paint and water-stained ceilings. But the guide price online is $1.3m, and the house will sell for more than $1.8m after a six-minute auction marked more by a feeling of inevitability than excitement.

Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/21/real-estate-property-underquoting-australia?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

Jasper, garnet, sometimes sapphires: pocketfuls of treasure at Gemstone Beach

At Orepuki, on the remote south coast of New Zealand’s South Island, a bed of riches colour the shoreline, bringing gem hunters from near and far

Jack Geerlings crouches down at the shoreline to sift through a bed of stones. He picks up a small rough rock and turns it over in his hands. “This one is too coarse,” he says and flicks it back to the pile. Geerlings is after something a little more interesting.

Slowly, he walks along the vast sweep of beach, his gaze rarely lifting from the ground. “The sunlight helps to reveal the stones,” he says, bending to pick up and inspect rocks one by one. A little further on, he turns over a small red-brown stone, the colour and texture of a chestnut. “This one could be jasper,” he says, with more enthusiasm. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/21/jasper-garnet-sometimes-sapphires-pocketfuls-of-treasure-at-gemstone-beach?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

Midlife left me asking what was the point of me? But then everything changed, again | Ros Reines

Losing fertility, friends, family, work – midlife for women can be self-altering. But I found liberation on the other side of menopause

In the first flush of my post-menopausal years, I didn’t exactly experience the energy surge that Dr Christine Northrup mentions in her breakthrough book The Wisdom of Menopause. She refers to menopause as “the mind-body revolution that brings the greatest opportunity for growth since adolescence”. Talk about a positive spin.

On one level, I was still mourning the loss of my fertility and feeling a bit like a husk of a person. I longed to get my sexy back, not realising that it would eventually be replaced by something equally as powerful – a lust for life. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/sep/21/midlife-left-me-asking-what-was-the-point-of-me-but-then-everything-changed-again?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

Rob Baxter: ‘Our first title was incredible, but it would feel bigger doing it again’

The Premiership’s longest-serving director of rugby brushes off retirement talk as he focuses on returning Exeter to the top

Occasionally it is worth reflecting on what success in sport really looks like. Is it measured by silverware alone or by a much wider set of parameters – the long-term flowering of a club, say, or the depth of regional pride? The biggest compliment you can pay Rob Baxter, the Premiership’s longest-serving one-club director of rugby, is that once-unfashionable Exeter is now the last place where opponents want to kick-off a brand new season.

In a decade and a half under Baxter’s stewardship, among other things, the Chiefs have yet to lose a round one game at Sandy Park, magnifying the challenge facing Leicester in the opening game of the Michael Cheika era. Stir in the intense pre-season fitness work at the Royal Marines commando training centre at Lympstone and the intricate tactical planning of Baxter and his fellow coaches and the Devonians remain a force at their hilltop lair above junction 30 of the M5. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/sep/20/rob-baxter-exeter-premiership-rfu-rugby-union-interview?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger