Vly News - Professional news Platform

There is chaos out there for travelers, but there are ways you can prepare. Photo: Jason South An hour and a half. That’s how long it took me to leave Sydney Airport a few weeks ago. One and a half hour. Ninety minutes. To go. Not to check in and go through security and board the plane. Just to grab my bag and jump in the car and leave. It was raining, so my plan to escape with my kids from the back row of the plane straight out the back door was thwarted. We were the last to get off. Then we had to wait for our baggage (which, in Virgin Australia’s judgment, finally turned up). And then we step outside to the mother of all traffic jams, absolute traffic jams, which doesn’t move a centimeter for good. Nightmare. Happy traveling in the post-middle era of this pandemic. It’s wild out there. Difficult. Airlines are struggling, going through a mix of bad luck and bad decisions. Airports are crazy. Luggage is missing. Flight is being cancel...

When Australian sailor John Deer fell off his yacht in the Caribbean Sea, he thought he wouldn’t make it through the night alive. But when he saw his boat drift off into the distance, the 41-year-old realized he had a choice: wait for the waves to finally pull him down or try to swim the 17km to shore. ‘I kind of stepped on the water for a second and I thought, ‘Right, I’m going to die’,’ he told 60Minutes. ‘Then I thought ‘am I just going to float and wait for my lungs to fill with water?’ I might as well start swimming.” “So I started swimming.” Three years ago, Mr Deer left his home in Melbourne to embark on the journey of a lifetime – a solo sailing adventure around the world. He bought a used yacht, called the Julieta, in the Greek Islands and started his journey – sailing across the Mediterranean, visiting Albania, Italy, then exploring the islands around Spain. Despite having no previous sailing ...

As part of a series of cycles of loss, supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation, we published three articles on the social determinants of health. They looked at how factors such as your income, where you live, and your background influence your risk of cancer, dementia and heart disease. In Australia, the odds of living for at least five years after being diagnosed with cancer have increased from 51% to 70% over the past 30 years. But not everyone has the same opportunities. Likewise, your risk of developing cancer differs depending on where you live, how wealthy you are, and your parents’ wealth and social situation. How does your socioeconomic group affect your cancer risk? If you live in a socially disadvantaged area – defined by the low salaries of a largely unskilled workforce, high unemployment, and low levels of education – you have a 5% higher chance of developing cancer than those living in an area that most benefited. Your survival also tend...