The Algorithm Age

Heather Rae El Moussa , who shares son Tristan with husband Tarek El Moussa , isn't opposed to potentially expanding their family one day. "It's been the best experience of my life. I was someone that didn't think I was going to have my own kids. I never thought I would date a man that had kids, to be honest. As a woman, you think you're going to meet someone in your twenties and you're going to get married and have kids — but life doesn't go as predicted! I met Tarek at 31, and he had two kids [he shares Taylor and Brayden with ex Christina Haack ]. He had an ex-wife that he was working with. Having those kids in my life made me want my own, and then I had Tristan and it was just a better experience than I could have ever imagined. I love everything about Tristan. He's so cute. I would have 10 if I could!" the 37-year-old starlet exclusively tells OK! while talking about her partnership with SHEIN , the ...

Some kids beg, some kids plead, but one brilliant Canadian girl took a completely different approach to getting her dream pet. In August 2020, she created a professional-quality PowerPoint presentation to convince her parents that adopting a cat was the logical next step for their family. The elaborate presentation went viral on Twitter when her proud parent shared screenshots of the impressive slides. Complete with charts, bullet points, and persuasive arguments, the PowerPoint demonstrated remarkable creativity and determination from someone who clearly understood the power of good marketing. Professional Cat Adoption Pitch Goes Viral Image credit: pexels Cat On Grass The young entrepreneur’s PowerPoint included all the elements of a serious business proposal. She researched cat care costs, outlined family benefits, and addressed potential parental concerns with thoughtful counterarguments. Her presentation skills would impress many adult professionals. Soci...

The board of the ASX-listed childcare provider that employed an accused sexual abuser has been criticised for lacking “sufficient expertise” to oversee child safety, with shareholder advisers questioning the CEO’s multi-million dollar pay packet amid rising reputational and financial challenges. Roughly $120 million has been wiped off the market capitalisation of G8 Education in the two days since confidence in the childcare sector was rocked by allegations that Joshua Dale Brown committed multiple child sexual abuse offences while working at a range of early education facilities across Victoria, including at G8’s Creative Garden Point Cook, from 2017 until this May. The revelations have so far led to a wave of snap reforms in Victoria to apply greater pressure on childcare providers to oversee staff, including a mandatory ban on mobile phones, and triggered calls for a national register of staff to more clearly communicate issues with specific worke...

A class action lawsuit could be launched on behalf of families caught up in a horrific child sex abuse investigation that has rocked Melbourne. Former childcare worker Joshua Brown, 26, is facing 70 charges for the alleged sexual abuse of eight victims aged between five months and two years old. The charges relate to offences police allege occurred at Creative Gardens Early Learning in Point Cook between April 2022 and January 2023. READ MORE: Melbourne family risk being deported to South Korea over 'misunderstanding' Police continue to investigate Brown's conduct at 19 other childcare centres he worked at between 2017 and 2025. The investigation has prompted Victorian authorities to urge 1200 families to send their young children for precautionary STI testing. A dozen families have already reached out for legal advice from Arnold, Thomas & Becker lawyers, who said it has "not ruled out" the possibility of a class action. ...

Recent cases of prolific alleged child sexual abuse in Melbourne and other Australian early childhood education and care settings have shocked even experienced people who work to prevent child sexual abuse. Parents are right to be outraged, scared and uncertain. The most pressing issue, then, is what we do about it. Regulation and practice is still falling short, despite all our knowledge and prior recommendations. We have the benefit of the gold-standard Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (including Volume 6 on making institutions child-safe). We can also draw on rigorous scientific work about how best to prevent child sexual abuse in child and youth-serving organisations. Criminal history checks are essential, but many offenders will not have a criminal record. These checks are only one part of an entire safety system. Other measures are arguably even more important. The federal government, together with states and territories,...

Shocked parents who unknowingly handed over their children to an alleged sex abuser are demanding answers as "gutted" workers back safety changes. Former childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown, 26, was charged with more than 70 sex offences against eight alleged victims aged under two at a centre at Point Cook, in Melbourne's southwest. Father-of-three Satbir, who didn't want his surname used, recognised the alleged offender on the news. He said he went to Creative Garden Early Learning Centre for details about Brown's supervision of his children in 2023. "I dropped off my child into his hands a couple of times," Satbir told . "I'm a bit worried. I (need) to find out everything. I've seen him in the classroom where I dropped my children." He wanted advice on whether two of his children needed to be tested for infectious diseases after more than 1200 families were told to have their infants screened. Allegations again...

The role of men in the early childhood sector is being questioned after horrific allegations of child sexual abuse at multiple childcare centres across Melbourne. But a ban on male early childhood educators is not the right solution, experts say, as it would not address systemic issues facing the sector. Hundreds of Melbourne families have been told to have their children tested for infectious diseases after childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown was charged with more than 70 sex offences against children. While caution about men working closely with children was justified, banning men from the sector would have an adverse effect, University of South Australia early childhood education senior lecturer Martyn Mills-Bayne said. "Children need to have a diverse group of adults around them in childcare and in life," he told . "Young boys and girls need to see good men around them who are demonstrating how to be in the world ... if you take men out of that, kids ...

Melbourne’s childcare system is in crisis after it was revealed a worker had been charged with abusing eight children in his care and that the Health Department had recommended more than 1200 children at centres he worked at be tested for sexually transmitted infections. Here is everything we know about the situation so far. Who is Joshua Brown, and what was he charged with? The accused man is Joshua Dale Brown , a 26-year-old man from Point Cook in Melbourne’s south-west. He was arrested on May 12 after police allegedly linked him to a cache of child abuse material. Police allege this material led them to identifying eight victims, who were between the ages of five months and two years, from the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook, where Brown was working at the time of his arrest. Brown was charged with more than 70 offences, including sexually penetrating a child under 12, attempting to sexually penetrate a child unde...

A string of sexual abuse allegations against a childcare worker in Melbourne have brought regulation of the early childhood sector back into the national conversation. Advocates for children's rights and prevention of abuse say oversight of the system is flawed, and that robust federal intervention is needed to ensure the safety of society's youngest while in care. The Victorian government has announced it will fast-track reforms into the childcare sector and has commissioned an urgent review to be turned around in about six weeks. Nationally, the system for regulating early childhood education and care falls to an independent statutory authority, but there is neither a ministry nor a regulator dedicated to it. Here's what we know about the regulatory framework as it currently stands. What are the rules for child safety in childcare centres? Victoria's early childhood sector is regulated under a combination of Commonwealth and s...

Primary schools across the country have become reliant on the Deposit Return Scheme to raise money to ‘keep the lights on’. Parents are increasingly being asked to chip in through fundraisers to make up shortfalls in capital grants, which are used for day-to-day running expenses, including heating and insurance. While the grants are set to rise from €200 per child to €224, teaching unions have said they are at 2007 levels. As a result, parents and children have been asked to take part in multiple fundraisers, including collecting bottles and cans, which can be redeemed for up to 25c via the Deposit Return Scheme . Séamus Mulconry of The Catholic Primary School Management Association has said that in many schools, this has now become an ‘integral part of their financial planning. They’re desperate to raise cash and we have a lot of schools now who are dependent on money from collecting plastic bottles to pay for school essentials,’ he told Pat Ke...

Parents of potential victims of alleged child sex offender Joshua Dale Brown have spoken about the "heartbreaking" and sickening moments they found out their very young children may have been sexually molested while at child care. Mr Brown, 26, was charged with more than 70 offences allegedly involving eight children at the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook, in Melbourne's western suburbs, between April 2022 and January 2023. Police said the alleged victims were between five months and two years of age. Some 1,200 children have been recommended to get tested for sexually transmitted infections, namely chlamydia and gonorrhoea. One mother was arriving at one of the centres Mr Brown had previously worked in as police were leaving, and said her child's educator was in tears, before she then found out about Mr Brown. "They told me there had been a person who had been charged with sexual abuse and things related to...

Child safety reforms fast-tracked after a childcare worker was charged with dozens of sex offences have been dismissed as "band-aid measures" that won't stop the alleged crimes being repeated. The Victorian government has ordered an urgent child safety review, the creation of a register of all early childhood educators and brought forward a ban on phones after two men were charged by sex crimes detectives. Childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown, 26, was accused of abusing eight children aged between five months and two years at one centre in Point Cook. Federal reforms have also been flagged after the allegations were revealed, including cutting funding for childcare centres that fail to meet minimum standards. But the rapid government response doesn't tackle the root causes of issues in a sector where half of all educators had been working for less than three years, early education advocate Lisa Bryant said. The industry had a highly casualised and under...

This Morning regular Emma Kenny, 52, has announced the birth of her fourth child in a heartfelt post reflecting on the recent death of her mum. The psychologist who regularly appears on the ITV daytime show, took to Instagram with a slideshow of pictures of her in the hospital and pregnant. In the caption she wrote: ‘Say hi Ella-Grey. And then we were six! Say hello Ella-Grey! This morning she entered the world with a very loud cry. The Royal Bolton hospital have been fantastic and ensured that we have both been looked after brilliantly.’ Emma, married to husband Pete Skywalker, then spoke about her sorrow at her mum’s ‘sudden’ death a couple weeks ago and how ‘strange’ it was knowing that neither of my babies will get to know their grandparents’. ‘They would have loved them as older my boys did before them,’ she said, Then continued: ‘Ella-Grey has been lying on me all day, she latched on immediately and is as wonderful as I imagined she would be…..but like her ...

In 1963, when Rod Stewart was just 17 and living in London, his first child was born. The now 80-year-old crooner would go on to have another seven children with four different women and get married three times over. Here’s everything we know about Rod Stewart’s big blended family. ROD STEWART’S ELDEST DAUGHTER IS BORN Rod dropped out of school at 15 and was working a string of dead-end jobs, while dreaming of becoming a singer, when his girlfriend Suzannah Boffey told him she was pregnant. “The relationship was pretty much over from that moment,” Boffey, now Suzannah Hourde, told the Daily Mail in 2013. “A baby was the last thing he wanted.” Suzannah went to stay at an unwed mother’s home, where she was forced to spend hours cleaning to pay for her rent and board, and was eventually convinced to give the baby, who she named Sarah, up for adoption when she was one. “It was like a 19th-century institution. We had to work like skivvies to earn our keep. ...

Climate change is said to be scaring young children in Australia, and a leading expert has come up with a controversial solution — don’t tell them about it. “It's really difficult to see kids who are very fearful at such young ages in front of me who have sleep disorders, who have clinical ranges of anxiety over this,” psychologist Clare Rowe told Yahoo News. She’s the author of a controversial report published by conservative think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which argues climate change should not be taught to primary school children. In response, 150 experts in mental health, medicine and education have published an open letter rejecting this claim, arguing that what's actually scaring children is their lived experience of environmental disasters, the failure of government to act, and adults not listening to their concerns. There's no doubt that climate and the environment are worrying Aussie kids — a 2024 survey of 15 to 19-year-olds found ...

Ministers are racing to close gaps in Australia's child safety laws that have been left open for years, in the wake of another shocking case of alleged child abuse at a centre in Victoria. State and territory governments have responsibility for child protection and enforcement in childcare centres — but it is the Commonwealth that funds providers. That tension is again in question after a 26-year-old man was charged with dozens of child abuse offences at the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook. It has reopened questions about gaps in Australia's laws, including how unsafe centres continue to receive funding, around how safety standards are enforced and around the systems monitoring workers — which remain a patchwork of rules a decade on from recommendations for reform. Education Minister Jason Clare has reaffirmed that the government is urgently progressing laws it announced in March to strip funding from childcare providers who rep...