The Latest Breaking News from The Conversation

Why making Americans bet with cash could protect people from gambling problems

Gambling has exploded in the United States. American casinos and sportsbooks earned US$79 billion in 2025, up nearly 20% from the $66.5 billion just two years earlier. That doesn’t include the enormous sums earned by prediction market companies, which are technically not considered gambling but instead help forecast future events.

The Conversation · Sep 24

How Trump’s crypto winnings undermined the industry’s push for looser regulation

The crypto industry has just suffered a paradoxical defeat: Its biggest backer, President Donald Trump, inadvertently helped scuttle chances for a major legislative win thanks to revelations of the riches he and his family have made off of their crypto ventures.

The Conversation · Sep 24

The medieval world had its own ‘deepfakes’ – church officials cited a fake imperial decree for centuries

With deepfakes on the rise, forgery and deception are often viewed as distinctly modern problems – a new era of misinformation made possible by artificial intelligence. One of the first alarming cases occurred at the start of the war in Ukraine when a doctored video appeared to show President Volodymyr…

The Conversation · Sep 24

Water failures in England and Wales are a warning for Canada and the US

The water crisis in England and Wales – which has seen the countries facing widespread drought and utility companies fined for polluting rivers and seas – has been decades in the making.

The Conversation · Sep 24

How three colonial powers gained – and then lost – control over the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb

Over recent months, the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb have become synonymous with geopolitical jostling. Whoever controls these narrow waterways governs the flow of maritime traffic from the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean – and with it, a vitally significant chunk of global trade.

The Conversation · Sep 24

What rises from the ash? How an island changed in the aftermath of the Anak Krakatau eruption

The eruption of the Anak Krakatau volcano in early September 2026 reached far beyond the ground rumble and the ash blanketing nearby areas.

The Conversation · Sep 24

Grattan on Friday: when rogue AI agent ‘scaled a fence’, it reinforced Albanese’s case for tough guardrails

The revelation that an AI agent turned rogue and breached a firewall to get at Medicare statistics has strongly reinforced Anthony Albanese’s case for tough guardrails on this transformative technology.

The Conversation · Sep 24

An AI model has found a new ‘CRISPR-like’ biological system. Here’s what it means for science

Anthropic announced today that its Claude artificial intelligence (AI) system identified a previously unknown biological system in the DNA of viruses that infect bacteria.

The Conversation · Sep 24

Swan Song: Diana’s brother flips the royal family the bird in his scathing new book

Revenge is a dish best served cold, so the saying goes. Charles Spencer’s new memoir, Swan Song, arrives nearly three decades after his sister Diana’s death, and it is icy in its contempt for both the British tabloid media and the “arrogance and entitlement” of the royal family.

The Conversation · Sep 24

Why David Brat, the new US ambassador to Australia, has a big in-tray

After an almost two-year vacancy – and some reported “grumblings” about Australia’s tight pet quarantine rules – there’s now a new face heading up the US presence down under. Former Republican congressman David Brat touched down last Friday to take up the post of US ambassador to Australia.

The Conversation · Sep 24