Latest news with #Potter
The Herald Scotland
6 hours ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Less than 3% of ScotRail services cancelled in 2024
A high water mark in 2022 saw 23,207 services cancelled, or 3.7% of all trains. Early figures in 2025 have also been positive, with only 2.2% of trains cancelled this year, as of 16 May. Mark Ilderton, ScotRail's Service Delivery Director, praised the findings. He told The Herald: 'Everyone across Scotland's Railway is working flat out for our customers to ensure our rail service is a safe, reliable, and green form of public transport. 'We operate more than 2,100 services every day, with around nine out of ten of those services meeting the punctuality target, getting customers to where they need to be. 'Cancellations can be for a number of reasons, many of them outside the control of ScotRail, but represented around two per cent of more than 650,000 services we operate across the country over the course of the year.' ScotRail trains were cancelled less than 3% of the time in 2024. (Image: Merseytravel) However, the number of public performance monitoring (PPM) failures has fluctuated in recent years. The figure increased slightly between 2022 and 2024, rising from 69,625 to 73,359. However, the overall failure percentage dropped from 11.2% to 10.7%. PPM tracks the publicity of train services, measuring the percentage of trains which arrive at their destination within five minutes for regional trains and ten minutes for long distance services. Ilderton said that while the trends were 'encouraging', there was more work to be done. He said: 'Our focus is building on the hard work of our people to deliver the safe and reliable railway that our customers expect and deserve, and to encourage more people to travel by train instead of using the car. 'And with more than nine out of ten customers satisfied with our service according to Transport Focus, the independent watchdog for transport users, it's testament to the hard work of ScotRail staff in delivering a safe, reliable, and green railway.' Read more from Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco: Rail station reopenings will lead to multi-million economic boost, quango says ScotRail 'one of UK's best for passenger satisfaction' ScotRail is 'fixing' AI train announcer after controversy over voice used The Herald's FOI request also queried the cost of ScotRail's AI announcement system, dubbed 'Iona'. The system sparked controversy after Scottish voiceover artist Gayanne Potter alleged tech firm Read Speaker used recordings of her voice to develop the software — without her permission. When asked to provide details on how much it cost to develop and implement the system, ScotRail declined, stating 'Iona' did not incur "development costs' as it was 'an off the shelf product'. Potter told the BBC: "I have to look on social media and see people mocking it, berating it. "They don't realise it's actually a real person who's been put through a dreadful voice app." Potter added: "It's hard enough for people in the creative industry to sustain careers but to be competing with a robotic version of yourself just adds insult to injury." First Minister John Swinney has told MSPs in Holyrood that ScotRail would be 'fixing' the software.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
Choosing the sex of an IVF baby is banned. Should it be?
'I'm here to promote awareness for the availability of gender selection and to hopefully ignite some conversation so that perhaps in the future, people won't have to travel to the United States to have this done,' Potter says. What are the rules and the concerns behind them? The National Health and Medical Research Council reviewed their guidelines on assisted reproductive technology in 2017 and upheld its view that sex selection should not be used unless to reduce the risk of a genetic disease. (Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, mostly affects males.) One of the concerns cited by the NHMRC's ethics committee was that nonmedical sex selection could lead to people favouring one sex over the other based on cultural or personal biases. What the NHMRC considered in its ban on sex selection Whether sex selection is a justifiable use of medical resources. Whether there's an ethical difference between people wanting sex-balanced families and people choosing a particular sex due to personal or cultural bias. The possibility that sex selection my validate or reinforce gender stereotyping and discriminatory attitudes, and create pressure on the person born to conform to their parents' gender expectations. The possibility that sex selection may open the way for selecting other characteristics such as eye or hair colour. Concerns that people may be terminating pregnancies as an alternative sex-selection technique. Concerns Australians seeking sex selection could be travelling to international clinics with a lower standard of care. Values inherent in Australian society that relate to freedom and autonomy, particularly in relation to reproductive choices. Read the full reasoning behind the guidelines. The imbalance of the sex ratio in China is often cited as an example of cultural bias favouring male babies; in 2004 there were 121 males to every 100 females, at least partly because sons were preferred, so female fetuses were more likely to be aborted. China's sex ratio has since evened out, but there's still a male skew. Choosing the sex of an embryo to 'balance' a family's split between male and female children is one of the most common reasons people seek out sex selection, and it's viewed as more ethically acceptable. Alex Polyakov, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne and medical director of Melbourne's Genea IVF clinic, believes couples should be able to choose the sex of their third child, as long as their first two children are of the same sex. 'I think the argument that it will skew the sex ratio is really quite nonsensical,' he added, arguing the proportion of people taking part in sex selection would have to be huge to have such an effect. 'I don't really see an ethical or moral issue if safeguards are put in place.' By the same token, Polyakov has also warned embryo testing and selection strategies can decrease chance of pregnancy or lead to the discarding of healthy embryos, which in some cases has risked parents missing out on biological parenthood altogether. 'I think we often forget that the overriding aim is to increase the pregnancy rate, to get someone pregnant as soon as possible,' he says. Do people choose more males over females? Data is mixed on whether people are more likely to choose male or female embryos. An analysis of about 2300 embryo transfers at a US IVF clinic between 2012 and 2021 found 56.5 per cent of people who opted for sex selection chose male embryos. A study on a different hospital found roughly equal rates of sex selection when it was someone's first child, but a 59 per cent preference for females on the second child. Potter said about 70 per cent of his clients request female embryos, often driven by women who wanted a mother-daughter relationship. 'This process is driven by the female partner in most cases. For a lot of women, they've been imagining having a daughter ever since they were playing with dolls and modelling parenting behaviour as a child,' he says. Sex v gender Bioethicist Dr Tamara Browne, a senior lecturer in health ethics at Deakin University, says she's sad this debate has rekindled. 'We really haven't gotten very far when it comes to counteracting gender stereotypes and achieving gender equality,' she says. 'The two are interlinked, and I've become even more convinced that if we're to achieve gender equality, we have to stop parenting children differently according to their sex.' Assuming daughters will be closer to their mothers, or that boys offer different, more 'macho' experiences such as being into sport, plays into outdated gender beliefs, Browne says. Loading 'We don't have any good scientific evidence that you can only get these sorts of parenting experiences with a child of a certain sex,' she says. She makes the point that sex selection allows people to choose the sex chromosomes and genitalia of their child. It can't decide a child's gender – the way they express that sex. How, Browne argues, do we expect more men to take up nursing or childcare roles, and women to take up STEM subjects like maths and engineering, if we reinforce the idea they're born with different traits and abilities and therefore should be parented differently? I also ask Potter if he ever discusses with his clients the chance that a child born from a sex-selected embryo could eventually embrace a different gender identity – for example, a baby born from a female embryo who grows up as a trans man. (About 5 per cent of Americans under 30 say their gender is different to the sex they were assigned at birth, according to Pew Research Centre.) 'There would be no reason to discuss that, any more than it would be to discuss with an expecting mum,' Potter says. 'It's a pretty unlikely thing and kind of a grim topic.' How much should it cost? Dr Hilary Bowman-Smart, a research fellow at the University of South Australia who has studied prenatal testing, thinks sex selection in embryos isn't a particularly valuable use of medical resources, but the current reasons to keep it illegal were not compelling. Loading Bowman-Smart is concerned, though, about companies making money from sex selection services. 'I would be concerned about this becoming an expensive service that is advertised to people during a vulnerable time in their lives who otherwise might not have cared too much either way,' she says. While Polyakov backs sex selection in some circumstances, he doesn't believe it should be covered by Medicare. If it were legalised in Australia he estimates the practice would cost about $500 to $700 per embryo. 'So if you have 10 embryos, that adds about $5000 to $7000,' on top of the existing costs, he says.
The Age
4 days ago
- Health
- The Age
Choosing the sex of an IVF baby is banned. Should it be?
'I'm here to promote awareness for the availability of gender selection and to hopefully ignite some conversation so that perhaps in the future, people won't have to travel to the United States to have this done,' Potter says. What are the rules and the concerns behind them? The National Health and Medical Research Council reviewed their guidelines on assisted reproductive technology in 2017 and upheld its view that sex selection should not be used unless to reduce the risk of a genetic disease. (Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, mostly affects males.) One of the concerns cited by the NHMRC's ethics committee was that nonmedical sex selection could lead to people favouring one sex over the other based on cultural or personal biases. What the NHMRC considered in its ban on sex selection Whether sex selection is a justifiable use of medical resources. Whether there's an ethical difference between people wanting sex-balanced families and people choosing a particular sex due to personal or cultural bias. The possibility that sex selection my validate or reinforce gender stereotyping and discriminatory attitudes, and create pressure on the person born to conform to their parents' gender expectations. The possibility that sex selection may open the way for selecting other characteristics such as eye or hair colour. Concerns that people may be terminating pregnancies as an alternative sex-selection technique. Concerns Australians seeking sex selection could be travelling to international clinics with a lower standard of care. Values inherent in Australian society that relate to freedom and autonomy, particularly in relation to reproductive choices. Read the full reasoning behind the guidelines. The imbalance of the sex ratio in China is often cited as an example of cultural bias favouring male babies; in 2004 there were 121 males to every 100 females, at least partly because sons were preferred, so female fetuses were more likely to be aborted. China's sex ratio has since evened out, but there's still a male skew. Choosing the sex of an embryo to 'balance' a family's split between male and female children is one of the most common reasons people seek out sex selection, and it's viewed as more ethically acceptable. Alex Polyakov, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne and medical director of Melbourne's Genea IVF clinic, believes couples should be able to choose the sex of their third child, as long as their first two children are of the same sex. 'I think the argument that it will skew the sex ratio is really quite nonsensical,' he added, arguing the proportion of people taking part in sex selection would have to be huge to have such an effect. 'I don't really see an ethical or moral issue if safeguards are put in place.' By the same token, Polyakov has also warned embryo testing and selection strategies can decrease chance of pregnancy or lead to the discarding of healthy embryos, which in some cases has risked parents missing out on biological parenthood altogether. 'I think we often forget that the overriding aim is to increase the pregnancy rate, to get someone pregnant as soon as possible,' he says. Do people choose more males over females? Data is mixed on whether people are more likely to choose male or female embryos. An analysis of about 2300 embryo transfers at a US IVF clinic between 2012 and 2021 found 56.5 per cent of people who opted for sex selection chose male embryos. A study on a different hospital found roughly equal rates of sex selection when it was someone's first child, but a 59 per cent preference for females on the second child. Potter said about 70 per cent of his clients request female embryos, often driven by women who wanted a mother-daughter relationship. 'This process is driven by the female partner in most cases. For a lot of women, they've been imagining having a daughter ever since they were playing with dolls and modelling parenting behaviour as a child,' he says. Sex v gender Bioethicist Dr Tamara Browne, a senior lecturer in health ethics at Deakin University, says she's sad this debate has rekindled. 'We really haven't gotten very far when it comes to counteracting gender stereotypes and achieving gender equality,' she says. 'The two are interlinked, and I've become even more convinced that if we're to achieve gender equality, we have to stop parenting children differently according to their sex.' Assuming daughters will be closer to their mothers, or that boys offer different, more 'macho' experiences such as being into sport, plays into outdated gender beliefs, Browne says. Loading 'We don't have any good scientific evidence that you can only get these sorts of parenting experiences with a child of a certain sex,' she says. She makes the point that sex selection allows people to choose the sex chromosomes and genitalia of their child. It can't decide a child's gender – the way they express that sex. How, Browne argues, do we expect more men to take up nursing or childcare roles, and women to take up STEM subjects like maths and engineering, if we reinforce the idea they're born with different traits and abilities and therefore should be parented differently? I also ask Potter if he ever discusses with his clients the chance that a child born from a sex-selected embryo could eventually embrace a different gender identity – for example, a baby born from a female embryo who grows up as a trans man. (About 5 per cent of Americans under 30 say their gender is different to the sex they were assigned at birth, according to Pew Research Centre.) 'There would be no reason to discuss that, any more than it would be to discuss with an expecting mum,' Potter says. 'It's a pretty unlikely thing and kind of a grim topic.' How much should it cost? Dr Hilary Bowman-Smart, a research fellow at the University of South Australia who has studied prenatal testing, thinks sex selection in embryos isn't a particularly valuable use of medical resources, but the current reasons to keep it illegal were not compelling. Loading Bowman-Smart is concerned, though, about companies making money from sex selection services. 'I would be concerned about this becoming an expensive service that is advertised to people during a vulnerable time in their lives who otherwise might not have cared too much either way,' she says. While Polyakov backs sex selection in some circumstances, he doesn't believe it should be covered by Medicare. If it were legalised in Australia he estimates the practice would cost about $500 to $700 per embryo. 'So if you have 10 embryos, that adds about $5000 to $7000,' on top of the existing costs, he says.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Besra Gold Inc. Introduces David Potter, Independent Non-Executive Chair of Besra
Melbourne, Victoria--(Newsfile Corp. - June 16, 2025) - Besra Gold Inc. (ASX: BEZ) refers members to the below link, which introduces its newly appointed Independent Chair, Mr. David Potter. Concise resume of Mr. Potter Mr. Potter has extensive experience in the resource sector, spanning over 30 years, during which he has built and led a diverse range of specialist teams providing technical, financial, and strategic support for multiple start-ups, operations, feasibility studies, and due diligence. This wealth of his hands-on operational experience is combined with strong corporate, legal and finance acumen, built from continued education as well as executive experience at Reed Resources, Excelsior Gold and Round Oak Minerals (a 100% owned subsidiary of Washington Soul Pattinson), as well as being a director of several private entities. Mr. Potter currently works as a private resource sector consultant advising on technical, finance and strategic matters. He has a Bachelor of Science (geology), a Master of Science (mineral economics) and a diploma in Financial Investment and Analysis. As a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, he is able to act as a JORC competent person for a variety of deposit styles. Michael HigginsonChief Corporate Officer and Company To view the source version of this press release, please visit Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Metro
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Harry Potter star's new TV show with trans icon is coming out imminently
Fans have just days to wait to see Harry Potter star Nick Frost and Jordan Gray in a new hit sitcom. The 53-year-old actor, who will be playing Rubeus Hagrid in HBO's Harry Potter revival, takes the lead opposite transgender icon Jordan in Transaction – which she originally wrote as a series of Comedy Central shorts. Nick and other adult actors have come under fire after signing onto the Potter series, due to J.K. Rowling's comments about the trans community. In the new show, supermarket boss Simon (Nick) sparks backlash in the LGBTQ+ community after a marketing campaign goes badly wrong. He employs transgender woman Liv (Jordan) in a bid to turn things around, but he soon faces another struggle as she's described in the synopsis as someone who 'ticks the diversity box, but not much else'. ITV teases: 'Despite a non-existent work ethic, it's pretty much impossible for Liv to get the sack, encouraging her to wreak havoc on the supermarket night shift.' The series launches on June 24 on ITVX, where all episodes will be available to stream. 'My one true goal with this show is to create something as timeless as my implants,' Jordan quipped when the show was announced. And executive producer Kenton Allen said at the time: 'Transaction promises to be a very eye-catching contemporary comedy, with Jordan Gray, Nick Frost and Thomas Gray forming an unlikely but electric three-some. 'Jordan's razor-sharp writing and timing paired with Nick's legendary comedic presence is comedy dynamite.' The comedy is based on her former six-part series of shorts of the same name for Comedy Central, which followed the same plot. She told Gay Star News in 2020 that she wrote the piece as a away of creating a character who was a 'regular tit-for-brains, not some tragic hero'. Jordan, 36, rose to fame as The Voice's first transgender contestant in 2016, making it to the semi-finals before moving into comedy, appearing on the likes of The Russell Howard Hour and Friday Night Live. On the later in 2022, she performed her song Better Than You about life as a transgender woman, and stripped naked to play the piano with her penis. Nick was recently forced to respond to backlash facing the Harry Potter show and wider franchise over its creator's comments, which some have deemed as transphobic. In a recent interview with The Observer, the Shaun of the Dead star insisted he does not share Rowling's views. 'She's allowed her opinion and I'm allowed mine, they just don't align in any way, shape or form,' he said. He also argued that the controversy and backlash might not be something people should want to 'blow over' for the sake of the wizarding franchise. Asked if it could 'overshadow the series', he replied: 'I don't know. But maybe it shouldn't blow over? We shouldn't just hope it will go away, because it makes it easier. Maybe we should educate ourselves.' Nick will be following in the footsteps of late actor Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, and he's not concerned with filling the character's giant shoes. 'You get cast because you're going to bring something to that. While I'm really aware of what went before me in terms of Robbie [Coltrane]'s amazing performance, I'm never going to try and be Robbie,' he told Collider. More Trending 'I'm going to try and do something, not 'different', I think you have to be respectful to the subject matter, but within that, there's scope for minutia.' He added: 'I always read Hagrid as he's like a lovely, lost, violent, funny, warm child. I think the beauty of being able to do a book a season means I get to explore that a lot more, and I can't wait. View More » 'He's funny! I want it to be funny and cheeky and scared and protective and childlike. That's what I'm planning on doing.' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: 'Most loved' ITV star set to make series return after 2 year absence MORE: I ran a lad's mag – now I've embraced my trans identity MORE: Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber's transgender daughter Kai, 16, speaks out for the first time
