Australian televisionSeason two opens on pregnant Debbie, whose litter is sent to five graziers tasked with training the puppies over a year Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast You could say the internet has been built off the back of cute puppy videos – so a reality TV show following the journey of five working dogs on farms across Australia is a recipe for success.

The balanceWork-life balanceThe music director of the Baltimore and São Paulo symphony orchestras on evening work and getting by on short sleeps SleepI don’t have too many issues with sleeping. My main commute is between Baltimore and São Paulo, as I am the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and the time zones almost line up. It’s about letting my body do what it needs to do; if I’m up at 2am I just do some work.

The age of extinctionGlobal development This article is more than 10 months oldParasitic fungus that infects and kills spiders discovered in Brazil This article is more than 10 months oldExclusive: rare purple organism preys on trapdoor spider in behaviour reminiscent of its ‘zombie’ relatives that feature in apocalyptic TV show The Last of Us Scientists believe they have discovered a new parasitic fungus which preys on trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest.

Ask Annalisa BarbieriLife and styleAfter my father left and remarried, my mother looked to me for supportMy father left mum and us five children when I was 16 (I'm 34 now) and eventually married one of the women he was having an affair with, and to whom he is still happily married. I bear no animosity towards him or his new wife. But I have realised that, while I love my mother, I don't actually like her.

EconomicsWhen the World Bank set its mission to a ‘world free of poverty’, it was ‘Martin’s definition and Martin’s measure’ Martin Ravallion, an Australian economist who devoted his career to fighting poverty, occasionally found his reputation preceded him to remote parts of the world. In 2016 the Dutch publication De Correspondent described a 2005 field trip Ravillion took to the southern Chinese province of Guizhou – one of the country’s poorest – where he asked the county statistician what approach he used to calculate how many people in the region were poor.