Thai riot police have pulled back from a barricade erected by Red Shirt protesters in Bangkok’s Silom business district, averting a major confrontation with protesters camped behind it. Earlier, tension in the area had risen as hundreds of riot police moved right up to the barrier, demanding it be dismantled. Protesters had climbed onto the [...]

NEW research suggests violent video games like “Call of Duty” and “Resident Evil” can make you smarter The study says shoot-to-kill video games improve quick-thinking and make players more able to cope with the demands of modern life, The Sun reported. It refutes claims video games turn teenagers into violent criminals – and argues parents [...]

A Queensland child psychologist says digitally enhancing photographs of children in school portraits could be contributing to body image problems. Some photography businesses now offer parents the optional extra of airbrushing out their children’s cuts and bruises in school photographs for a fee. Professor Matt Sanders from the University of Queensland says it is a [...]

A Queensland prisoner has apparently used a science trick in an attempt to escape from his cell at the Lotus Glen prison, west of Cairns. The 29-year-old inmate, serving a life sentence for murder, successfully breached the bars of his cell window about 1.30 am (AEST) yesterday. But the man, who has been in jail [...]

ERADICATING smallpox was one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments but a New Zealand researcher says trying to wipe out diseases for good is a waste of money. Dr Michael Gavin, a biologist at Victoria University, Wellington, says reducing the prevalence of diseases in the countries and regions most affected by them is a far more effective [...]

A Canadian photographer says the blind lack access to our “much sexualised” world, so she has decided to create a new kind of pornography, with tactile images, the first designed especially for the blind. “When I had the idea, I started looking around and I realised there were no nude books out there for the [...]