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News.com.au
7 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
‘Well-over six-figures': Young Aussie reveals the grim cost of her health battle
Madeline Lebski went from being financially stable and working full-time, to struggling to pay her bills because she was so sick that she couldn't get out of bed. Ms Lebski was only 27 when she got sick. She went from living in Byron Bay and embracing a healthy lifestyle to being bedridden and unable to go out with her friends, let alone hold down a job. 'I was just feeling a bit burnt out and then I took a month off, and didn't get out of bed for five years,' the now 36-year-old told Ms Lebski never imagined she would become disabled. She had always been healthy with no pre-existing conditions, and her biggest health concern used to be catching the yearly flu. When her health fell apart in 2018, she sought answers, but they weren't easy to obtain and it was also expensive. 'Every GP I went to said I had a virus and to go home and rest. I even showed up at the emergency department once, and they wouldn't admit me, and I said I needed to see a doctor for psychiatric issues,' she said. She was diagnosed with chronic fatigue and, years later in 2022, was diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), a condition where certain cells inappropriately release chemical mediators that cause a range of issues. In Ms Lebski's case, the symptoms were brain fog, painful periods, fatigue, nausea, daily headaches, anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Living with that chronic disease was incredibly hard; there was so much 'medical trauma' involved and her whole life became limited overnight. 'I was thinking, will I ever travel again? Will I ever work again? I lost a lot of friendships because you can't go and be social,' she said. 'It is an invisible condition so people don't really understand.' The young Aussie explained that, once she started looking for medical specialists to try and figure out what was happening with her body, the expenses were 'crazy' and became debilitating. 'Medicare didn't cover anything I needed. It didn't cover much of the specialist appointments or alternative therapies,' she said. 'The financial stress of it exacerbates the condition. If you're in a stressful of a state you can't focus on being well.' Ms Lebski did everything she could to self-fund the cost of her ill-health. She even sold her perfume business for $80,000. 'I ended up selling my business because I needed the money. I sold that and it paid for me to exist for the next 18 months,' she said. When that cash ran out, she turned to Centrelink, but she wasn't eligible for payments because she lived with her boyfriend. 'I was at my wits end. I remember just breaking down on the phone to Centrelink. My partner earned like $60,000 at the time, and they were like 'It is too bad, there's nothing we can do'.' she said. The rub was that a $60,000 salary was barely enough to support two people, let alone when one of those people needed to attend special appointments that could cost over $600 per hour. 'I made multiple attempts at trying to get on Centrelink, at one point, my parents were like, 'what if you study online?' Just so I could basically get Centrelink.' She completed a graphic design course that cost $5000, making her eligible for Centrelink, and received some income for a period. However, she is not sure if it was worth it. The cash flow helped at the time, but she was left with a $5000 debt at the end of it. Things got so dire that her parents had to dig into their own funds reserved for their retirement to keep her afloat. 'They've had to use their personal savings (including) getting money out of their superannuation,' she said. 'It is hard because they're in their early 70s, they've worked incredibly hard, and this is a period of life where they should be able to enjoy that,' she said. Ms Lebski said, 'as a family, we would have easily spent well-over six-figures' just on her health, and she even moved back to her home state of Tasmania to get more support from her family. It has been seven years since Ms Lebski's health declined, and she's finally in a place now where she can work full-time and manage her condition. 'Thankfully all the time and money I have invested has paid off in my case. I work part-time and that is where I see myself sitting while my body is recovering,' she said. It has been such a journey and a struggle, but there have also been positive things that have happened along the way. The 36-year-old is thankful to have found a community online and has been sharing her story in the hopes of helping others feel less alone and isolated. Social media has helped her find 'community and some visibility', enabling her to make friends and connections, even when she was bedridden. Despite her complex experience with Australia's health system, she still also feels 'incredibly lucky' that we have Medicare. 'I think we are incredibly lucky for what we do have access to and I do really mean it,' she said. 'Even right now I'm on a mental health care plan and I'm so grateful for that, but I do think it is very restrictive and there's no nuance to what disability looks like,' Ms Lebski said. She also can't help but feel this general sense of being 'behind' everyone else because she spent so many years sick. 'In another life I would have hoped that working on my business and selling it would have been something I would have bought a home with …. but that isn't the case,' she said. 'We live in rental and have a housemate to share the costs. I'm 36 and I would have loved to be able to plan for some things.'
Arabian Post
20-07-2025
- Business
- Arabian Post
Wall Street Journal's Ahmedabad Crash Report May Well Be A Plant
By K Raveendran The Wall Street Journal's report on the Ahmedabad Air India crash has triggered a storm of controversy not only for what it suggests but also for what it deliberately avoids. The claim that the crash, which took 260 lives, may have been caused by the senior pilot unintentionally or mistakenly putting the fuel control switch in the cut-off position is presented as a finding from preliminary investigations. Yet the entire report is predicated on anonymous sources, vague phrasing, and an overall speculative tone that raises more questions than it answers. In a case of such magnitude and human tragedy, a claim of this nature carries heavy implications—not least because it seems to absolve the aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, of any blame. And that is precisely where the unease lies. At face value, the report offers no hard evidence, no black box transcript, and no direct statements from investigating authorities to support its most consequential insinuation. It is speculative by admission and selectively sourced, quoting individuals purportedly 'familiar with the probe.' In the world of aviation reporting, particularly in the context of post-crash assessments, this kind of journalistic hedging can often be more strategic than informative. The timing, anonymity, and framing of the article all suggest that it may serve a public relations purpose more than it serves public interest. The possibility that the story is a planted narrative cannot be dismissed lightly, especially given the track record of how Boeing and other aviation corporations have navigated crises in the past. Media placement is a subtle but potent weapon in the realm of crisis management, and Boeing is no stranger to this strategy. Following the two catastrophic crashes involving the 737 MAX aircraft in 2018 and 2019, the company was initially quick to point to pilot training and operational errors. Only under mounting international pressure and meticulous investigative scrutiny did Boeing concede to software flaws and systemic safety issues in the MCAS system, which were ultimately found to be central to the crashes. Given that history, the suggestion that the Ahmedabad crash report may be part of a broader attempt to refocus blame is not a wild conspiracy theory, but a plausible continuation of an established pattern. In this case, the framing of the WSJ article effectively shifts the lens away from mechanical, software, or design faults that could potentially point back to Boeing, and instead plants the seed of human error, specifically that of the pilot. The pilot, of course, is not here to defend himself. Nor are the 259 other lives lost in the tragedy able to provide context or counterpoint. The tactic of blaming pilot error is particularly insidious because it operates on multiple psychological levels. For one, it exploits the public's general lack of technical understanding about aircraft systems. To the layperson, the idea that a pilot 'mistakenly flipped a switch' seems like a tragic but understandable human slip. It plays into a narrative of fallibility and distraction, steering the emotional focus away from mechanical flaws, production shortcuts, or system design oversights. At the same time, it serves the institutional interest of the aircraft manufacturer, which has billions of dollars at stake in current and future contracts, not to mention shareholder confidence. There is a grim irony in how the narrative around pilot error is often deployed. Pilots are among the most highly trained professionals in any field. Their every move is subjected to simulation, testing, review, and regulation. While human error is never out of the question, it is seldom the sole or primary cause of major aviation disasters—especially when it comes to systemic failures or design flaws that lie hidden beneath layers of operational complexity. The attempt to scapegoat a pilot in the immediate aftermath of a crash—before full data from black boxes is made public, before the investigation is complete—should always raise red flags. Moreover, the involvement of a US media outlet, particularly one with the stature of The Wall Street Journal, adds a significant dimension of corporate intrigue. Boeing, as one of America's flagship manufacturing giants, has deep roots not just in commerce but in politics and international diplomacy. It is a major defence contractor and a symbol of American industrial power. That reality brings with it a strong motivation—if not outright pressure—to protect the company's reputation in global markets. Favourable media coverage, carefully curated leaks, and selectively attributed information are all part of the playbook when a company of Boeing's stature is under scrutiny. This is not to argue that media organizations are complicit in misinformation, but it does highlight how strategic narratives can be embedded in seemingly routine reporting. Especially in crisis situations, the distinction between a leak and a plant is often only a matter of motive and timing. For a company under the shadow of past failures, a well-placed article can serve as a preemptive shield, setting the stage for public perception before the official facts are fully established. It is crucial that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) release their findings in a manner that is not only scientifically robust but also publicly transparent. Leaks through foreign media should not be allowed to shape the early narrative of a tragedy that occurred on Indian soil and involved Indian carriers and passengers. The families of the victims deserve nothing less than an unambiguous and fact-based explanation for what went wrong. (IPA Service)
Boston Globe
16-07-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Tests used to be hard. That was the point.
Advertisement The Massachusetts test, known as MCAS, wasn't a cakewalk; it called for a fair amount of time, study, and classroom preparation. But Yet despite those standout results, Bay State voters couldn't resist joining the flight from high standards. The Massachusetts Teachers Union — which prioritizes the interests of teachers over the interests of students — Advertisement It isn't only graduation tests that have been diluted or abolished. Across the country activists argue that standardized tests like the SAT are too stressful, too discriminatory, or simply irrelevant — and should therefore be made easier or dumped altogether. Yet when one looks at what students a century ago were expected to master in order to graduate from high school — or in some cases to get into high school — today's complaints about standardized tests seem almost comical by comparison. The historical record makes one thing clear: Today's test-takers don't know how easy they have it. Consider some questions from the Here are a dozen of the questions those Kansas teens were expected to answer: What are the following? Give examples: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals. Use the following in sentences: cite, site, sight; fane, fain, feign; vane, vain, vein; raze, raise, rays . A wagon box is 2 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 3 feet wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold? Find the interest on $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. What is the cost of 40 boards, 12 inches wide and 16 feet long, at $.20 per inch? What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of do, lie, lay, and run . Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe? Name the events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1776, 1789, and 1865. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude? Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each. Too tough? Tell that to the New Jersey kids who sat down to be tested a decade earlier. In 1885, the Advertisement What is the axis of the earth and what is the equator? What is the distance from the equator to either pole in degrees and in miles? Name four principal mountain ranges in Asia, three in Europe, and three in Africa. Name the states on the west bank of the Mississippi and the capital of each. Name the capitals of the following countries: Portugal, Greece, Egypt, Persia, Japan, China, Canada, Cuba. And here are five from the history portion: Name the thirteen colonies that declared their independence in 1776. Name three events of 1777. Which was the most important and why? What caused the War of 1812? Who was president during that war? Name four Spanish explorers and state what induced them to come to America. Related : These weren't impossible questions. They weren't pitched to the smartest kids in the class. On the contrary — they covered information that most students of normal ability could reasonably be expected to master. And There is no such expectation today. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress — commonly referred to as 'the nation's report card' — the reading and comprehension skills of American kids are worse than they have ever been. 'The percentage of eighth graders who have 'below basic' reading skills according to NAEP is the largest it has been in the exam's three-decade history — 33 percent,' Given such terrible results, you might imagine that policymakers and parents would be pressing urgently to raise academic standards and insisting that teachers and school administrators meet them. But nearly all the movement is in the other direction. Especially disturbing is the way the SAT — for decades a consistent barometer of academic readiness and Advertisement To begin with, the test is now administered in a digital format that calibrates the difficulty level of the questions to the performance of the test-taker. 'If a student struggles in the first section, the test adjusts to become easier; if they excel, it becomes harder,' the Manhattan Institute's Vilda Westh Blanc and Tim Rosenberger recently There are other changes. The SAT now lasts two hours instead of three. Students are allowed to use calculators for all math questions. Passages in the The upshot is that students are no longer required to parse complex or historically significant texts. Instead, the reading assignments are being made almost childishly easy. 'Instead of engaging with the great works of literature and foundational documents that have shaped Western civilization, students are asked to interpret snippets akin to tweets or memes,' Blanc and Rosenberger observe. If students are never required to read anything more challenging than short texts, how will they ever learn to wrestle with ambiguity, to shape thoughtful arguments, or to make sense of complex sentences and difficult syntax? Advertisement Amid the current vogue for weakening tests and lowering expectations, it is worth asking: Why did educators a century (or more) ago set such high standards? Perhaps it was because they saw education not just as a means to get a job, but as a moral and civic duty — a way to form responsible citizens who understood their history, could articulate their thoughts, and would therefore be better able to contribute to society. Testing was viewed as a tool of accountability — not as the enemy of learning, but as its natural culmination. It sent the message that knowledge mattered and that everyone, regardless of background, could rise to the occasion. The cultural context then was very different. Students understood that passing the eighth-grade exam might be their only chance to prove themselves before entering the workforce. Lowering standards may feel like a kindness in the short term, but it comes at a steep cost: a diminished sense of what students are capable of achieving and a weaker intellectual foundation for society. The young Americans of 1895, often sitting in one-room schoolhouses, did not have smartphones, calculators, Google, or AI — but they rose to demanding expectations and built a thriving nation. Today's students, with far more resources at their disposal, should not be sold short. The Advertisement Are you astonished that teenagers a century ago could handle questions like the ones above? Don't be. The real shocker isn't that high school students then could meet such a challenge. It's that students today are no longer expected to. This article is adapted from the current , Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter. To subscribe to Arguable, visit . Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
Qatar Tribune
13-07-2025
- Qatar Tribune
Boeing avoids MAX crash trial with last-minute settlement
Agencies Boeing has reached a settlement with a man whose family died in a 737 MAX crash in 2019, a law firm told AFP on Friday, meaning the U.S. aviation giant will avoid a federal trial slated for Monday. Paul Njoroge, who lost his wife and three children in the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in which 157 people died, was to seek damages from Boeing in a case in Chicago. 'The case has settled for a confidential amount,' said a spokesperson for Clifford Law, the firm representing Njoroge, whose mother-in-law also died in the crash. 'The aviation team at Clifford Law Offices has been working round-the-clock in preparation for trial, but the mediator was able to help the parties come to an agreement on behalf of Paul Njoroge,' added Robert Clifford, a senior partner at Clifford, in a statement. Until now, Boeing has succeeded in avoiding civil trials connected to the 737 MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019, reaching a series of settlements, sometimes only hours before trials were set to begin. The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019 took place six minutes after departing Addis Ababa for Nairobi. Njoroge lost his wife Carolyne, who was 33, his mother-in-law Ann Karanja, and the couple's three children: six-year-old Ryan; Kelli, who was four; and nine-month-old Rubi. Njoroge told a congressional panel in July 2019 he was haunted by ideas of the final moments of the flight, how his children 'must have clung to their mother, crying, seeing the fright in her eyes.' 'It is difficult for me to think of anything else but the horror they must have felt,' he said. 'I cannot get it out of my mind.' The trial set for Monday was expected to last five to seven days. Between April 2019 and March 2021, family members of 155 Boeing victims joined litigation charging the aviation giant with wrongful death and negligence. Boeing has accepted responsibility for the Ethiopian Airlines crash, blaming the design of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight handling system that malfunctioned. That system was also implicated in the Lion Air crash in 2018, when the 737 MAX 8 fell into the sea after taking
Mint
12-07-2025
- General
- Mint
Grammy-Winning musician Ricky Kej reveals he was meant to be on Ethiopian Airlines crash flight: 'My life was saved'
Grammy-winning Indian composer Ricky Kej has made a startling revelation about a near-death experience involving the Ethiopian Airlines crash of 2019. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kej disclosed that he had originally booked a seat on the ill-fated flight, which crashed en route to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board. Recounting the moment that changed his fate, Kej wrote, "I had booked a ticket on the Ethiopian Airlines flight to Kenya that unfortunately crashed. In the last minute, a colleague insisted I travel on an earlier flight, so my life was saved. Many attendees were killed on the flight. So this is personal for me, because Boeing and only Boeing was responsible for those deaths (sic)." Kej's emotional post came in response to a thread by journalist Barkha Dutt, who had criticised the western media's narrative around a recent Air India crash report and highlighted concerns around Boeing's systems. She wrote, 'Scandalous that Air India Crash report being used by western media to blame pilots for cutting fuel. The report does not say that at all. But yes, the report flags an FAA advisory on a problem with Boeing fuel switches locking - in that case why has the report not recommended further investigations against 787 planes (sic)' The tragic crash, which took place on March 10, 2019, involved a Boeing 737 MAX 8 and followed a similar disaster just five months earlier — the Lion Air crash in Indonesia. The two incidents, both involving the same aircraft model, raised urgent global concerns about the safety of Boeing's MCAS (Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System), a software feature later found to be faulty and inadequately disclosed to pilots. More than five years after the Ethiopian Airlines tragedy, Kej's revelation underscores the continued scrutiny of Boeing's role in the twin disasters — and the lack of accountability that still angers victims' families and survivors.
