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From Raygun to Rinehart: 25 predictions for 2025Ubisoft is officially discontinuing XDefiant in 2025, the publisher announced Tuesday , with all new purchases and registrations being discontinued immediately. As part of the shutdown, the publisher plans to shut down its production studios in San Francisco and Osaka while ramping down its site in Sydney, with up to 177 employees losing their jobs. Roughly half of the XDefiant team will be assigned roles elsewhere. Chief Studios and Portfolio Officer Marie-Sophie de Waubert revealed the news in an email sent to Ubisoft employees that was subsequently posted online, saying that the shooter was "not able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market." The full message can be found below. Today, I wanted to share with you that we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue development on XDefiant. Despite an encouraging start, the team’s passionate work, and a committed fan base, we’ve not been able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market. As a result, the game is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment, and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it. Concretely, that means that as of today, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. Season 3 will still launch, and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025, out of appreciation for both our dev teams who worked on it and for XDefiant’s active players. Unfortunately, the discontinuation of XDefiant brings difficult consequences for the teams working on this game. Even if almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide will be transitioning to other roles within Ubisoft, this decision also leads to the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney. To those team members leaving Ubisoft, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your work and contributions. Please know that we are committed to supporting you during this transition. Developing Games-as-a-Service experiences remains a pillar of our strategy, and we’ve achieved significant successes, like Rainbow Six, The Crew, and For Honor, among others. It’s a highly competitive market, and we will apply the lessons learned with XDefiant to our future live titles. Globally, we are determined to take the necessary steps to put the company back on a path to growth, innovation and creativity and make sure we can set you up for success. This means continuing to radically evolve our mindset for Production and Business practices, which we will share more about soon, and doing targeted restructuring when necessary. I know that the situation brings questions and expectations, and we will share regular and transparent updates. My sincere thanks for your continued dedication as we navigate these trying times together. XDefiant Executive Producer Mark Rubin also shared a message thanking fans and saying he was "heartbroken." He also shared refund details, saying that any purchases made within the last 30 days will be fully refunded and that those who purchases the Ultimate Founder's Pack will also get their money back. Refunds should happen automatically with 8 weeks, he said. I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down. Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date TBD) and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025. More like this Ubisoft Call of Duty Rival xDefiant 'Absolutely Not Dying,' Dev Insists For those who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack, you’ll receive a full refund. Players who made any purchases within the last 30 days will also be fully refunded. Those refunds should happen automatically within 8 weeks of today and you can find more details on our official website, http://XDefiant.com . A few years ago, Ubisoft and the SF Dev team embarked on a bold adventure to develop a new arcade shooter called XDefiant. It was from the start, an incredible challenge. Not only were we trying to shake up the genre by removing Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) while bringing back a more “old-school” arcade shooter experience, but we were also diving into the high-risk, high-reward realm of free-to-play. And for that I want to applaud not only the Dev team but also Ubisoft leadership for taking that chance! Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey. Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It’s a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue. I am, of course, heartbroken to have to be writing this post. Yes, this game has been a personal passion for me for years and yes, I know that not all challenges lead to victory, but I also want to recognize all of the developers who are being affected by this closure. Each and every one of them is a real person with a real life separate from our own and they have all put so much of their own passion into making this game. And I hope that they can be proud of what they did achieve. I know that I will always be proud and grateful to have worked with such a great team! A team that really punched above its weight class. And what they achieved is truly remarkable. The early response from players when XDefiant launched was amazing—we broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass 5 million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game! That is something to be extremely proud of, especially considering how tough this genre is. So, thank you to all of the developers who put their passion into making this game! If there’s one thing, I hope we can all take away from this experience, it’s the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. This “player-first” mentality along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players has been one of the standout differences that made XDefiant so special. From my very first post about XDefiant, this was the vision I wanted to champion, and I hope it leaves a positive mark on how the game industry treats its players and communities. To our players, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the incredible community that has grown around XDefiant. Your passion, creativity, and dedication have inspired us every step of the way. With the utmost of love and respect, Mark XDefiant joins Concord as the latest service game to abruptly shutter not long after launch. Unlike Concord, though, XDefiant will be given a bit of grace, with its servers not due to shut down until June 3, 2025. Ubisoft also plans to go forward with releasing Season 3, though downloads and purchases will no longer be available. Hello XDefiant Fans, I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down. Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date...— Mark Rubin (@PixelsofMark) December 3, 2024 First announced in 2021, XDefiant endured several delays before finally launching in May. We wrote in our review , "XDefiant joins the free-to-play shooter crowd as a respectable competitive FPS built around various Ubisoft franchises, but little makes it really stand out." Despite middling reviews, XDefiant got off to a fast start, pulling in a million unique players within two and a half hours, but its momentum soon dissipated. In October, Rubin acknowledged that players numbers were down while denying persistent shutdown rumors . XDefiant's impending shutdown adds to Ubisoft's woes in 2024 , which has included lower-than-expected sales for major releases , delays , and other setbacks. Its share price collapse reportedly has the Guillemot family and Tencent considering taking the company private . It's far from the only publisher to struggle in 2024 though as game developers of all sizes have been racked by abrupt shutdowns and layoffs . Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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The Italians know about ice cream and thankfully, they have taken their passion and expertise to the South Coast of New South Wales for the delectation of holidaymakers. Subscribe now for unlimited access . Login or signup to continue reading All articles from our website & app The digital version of Today's Paper Breaking news alerts direct to your inbox Interactive Crosswords, Sudoku and Trivia All articles from the other regional websites in your area Continue Two of the acclaimed makers - Bermagui Gelati Clinic and the Bodalla Dairy Shed - trace their success to Italy. The Bermagui operation was set up by Alberto Cementon and Francesca Michielin who met in Italy. He was from Melbourne, exploring his Italian background in Italy itself when he met Francesca who was full-blooded Italian. They got together and moved to the South Coast seaside town , setting up the shop on the harbour more than 20 years ago. It is still doing well, with queues out of the door through the summer. "This is our 21st year and we are very proud of that," Francesca said. "We are still using lots of local fruit - citrus, rhubarb, guava." Local growers bring the fruit and the couple turn it into ice cream. They also get local milk. Francesca Michielin of Gelati Clinic. Picture by Tara Chiu (@daisyhillphotography) Experimenting with some unique flavours Alberto and Francesca like to experiment. If it works, it works and if it doesn't, it gets jettisoned. They made a Vegemite ice cream and a curry one. They weren't successful. Who knows why? "We try different flavours for a bit of fun," Francesca said. Their popular licorice flavour is back. "Hazelnut is always popular," she said. By the way, the "clinic" moniker is in the title because they started in what was an old veterinary surgery. "I painted over the 'veterinary' with 'gelati' because our signage wasn't ready when we opened," Alberto said. View + 3 Photos The Italian job on the South Coast - Bermagui Gelati Clinic and the Bodalla Dairy Shed The Bodalla Dairy Shed , 50 kilometres to the north, also has its roots in Italy. When Sandra McCuaig branched out from cheese, she spotted an advert on Gumtree for a set of Italian ice cream machines. They were being sold by a pair of Italians who had tried to make a go of it in an industrial part of Sydney without success. So she got in touch, but said she'd only take the machines if the two Italians came with them. "They came to Bodalla, which was a surprise to them after Milan," Sandra said. The pair stayed for nine months, imparting their expertise. Their Italian knowledge now goes into every inventive ice cream the Bodalla Dairy Shed churns, starting from scratch with fresh milk from a neighbouring farm, cream and Australian sugar. And then comes the flavouring. Their Kakadu plum 'n' rum, Queensland lemon myrtle, Bodalla yoghurt and local Ironbark honey flavours stand out. Smoked ice cream? They also smoke some fresh cream with gum leaves before churning it into ice cream. The smoking process takes just over two hours and the smoke can't be too hot. The result is an ice cream called "Let's go Camping" because of its camp smoke flavour (combined with butterscotch and a Macadamia praline). By the way, Sandra was a cadet for The Canberra Times in the mid-60s. She's just turned 81 and still drives a truck, until recently driving more than a ton of ice cream on the back to their pop-up shop in Sydney (which has just closed because the work was getting too much so the best place to buy the ice cream now is the Bodalla Dairy Shed). If you can't get to the Italian places on The Canberra Times' Best of the South Coast list, but need to cool down, there are places to taste good ice cream along the coast. At the Batemans Bay Ice Creamery , there is often a steady stream of customers poring over the 52 flavours on offer. "Something we love doing is looking after the Canberrans," manager Troy Schryver said. "We are a second home to you guys. "If you're down here on the the Christmas holidays, you can see lines out the door till 10 o'clock at night." Where to eat The Bodalla Dairy Shed Picture Bodalla Dairy Shed 52 Princes Highway, Bodalla. (02) 4473 5555. https://www.bodalladairy.com.au/ Rated 4.5 stars on Google The Bermagui Gelati Clinic The Bermagui Gelati Clinic is nearby Bermagui Fishermen's Wharf. Picture Instagram 79/73 Lamont St, Bermagui. 0404 813 323. https://www.facebook.com/BermaguiGelatiClinic/ Rated 4.5 stars on Google The Batemans Bay Ice Creamery Batemans Bay Ice Creamery. Picture Google Maps 7 Clyde Street, Batemans Bay. (02) 4472 9128. https://www.facebook.com/BatemansBayIceCreamery/ Rated 4.5 stars on Google Want more? Tim the Yowie Man rounded up his hot spots for a cool treat in 2022. Share Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email Copy Steve Evans Reporter Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues." Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues." 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It looked like a recipe for disaster. So, when his country's swimmers were being accused of doping earlier this year, one Chinese official cooked up something fast. He blamed it on contaminated noodles. In fact, he argued, it could have been a culinary conspiracy concocted by criminals, whose actions led to the cooking wine used to prepare the noodles being laced with a banned heart drug that found its way into an athlete's system. This theory was spelled out to international anti-doping officials during a meeting and, after weeks of wrangling, finally made it into the thousands of pages of data handed over to the lawyer who investigated the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for that same drug. The attorney, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, refused to consider that scenario as he sifted through the evidence. In spelling out his reasoning, lawyer Eric Cottier paid heed to the half-baked nature of the theory. "The Investigator considers this scenario, which he has described in the conditional tense, to be possible, no less, no more," Cottier wrote. Even without the contaminated-noodles theory, Cottier found problems with the way WADA and the Chinese handled the case but ultimately determined WADA had acted reasonably in not appealing China's conclusion that its athletes had been inadvertently contaminated. Critics of the way the China case was handled can't help but wonder if a wider exploration of the noodle theory, details of which were discovered by The Associated Press via notes and emails from after the meeting where it was delivered, might have lent a different flavor to Cottier's conclusions. "There are more story twists to the ways the Chinese explain the TMZ case than a James Bond movie," said Rob Koehler, the director general of the advocacy group Global Athlete. "And all of it is complete fiction." Something in the kitchen was contaminated In April, reporting from the New York Times and the German broadcaster ARD revealed that the 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine, also known as TMZ. China's anti-doping agency determined the athletes had been contaminated, and so, did not sanction them. WADA accepted that explanation, did not press the case further, and China was never made to deliver a public notice about the "no-fault findings," as is often seen in similar cases. The stock explanation for the contamination was that traces of TMZ were found in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers were staying. In his 58-page report, Cottier relayed some suspicions about the feasibility of that chain of events — noting that WADA's chief scientist "saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities." But without evidence to support pursuing the case, and with the chance of winning an appeal at almost nil, Cottier determined WADA's "decision not to appeal appears indisputably reasonable." But how did the drugs get into the kitchen? A mystery remained: How did those traces of TMZ get into the kitchen? Shortly after the doping positives were revealed, the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations held a meeting on April 30 where it heard from the leader of China's agency, Li Zhiquan. Li's presentation was mostly filled with the same talking points that have been delivered throughout the saga — that the positive tests resulted from contamination from the kitchen. But he expanded on one way the kitchen might have become contaminated, harkening to another case in China involving a low-level TMZ positive. A pharmaceutical factory, he explained, had used industrial alcohol in the distillation process for producing TMZ. The industrial alcohol laced with the drug "then entered the market through illegal channels," he said. The alcohol "was re-used by the perpetrators to process and produce cooking wine, which is an important seasoning used locally to make beef noodles," Li said. "The contaminated beef noodles were consumed by that athlete, resulting in an extremely low concentration of TMZ in the positive sample. "The wrongdoers involved have been brought to justice." New information sent to WADA ... eventually This new information raised eyebrows among the anti-doping leaders listening to Li's report. So much so that over the next month, several emails ensued to make sure the details about the noodles and wine made their way to WADA lawyers, who could then pass it onto Cottier. Eventually, Li did pass on the information to WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel and, just to be sure, one of the anti-doping leaders forwarded it, as well, according to the emails seen by the AP. All this came with Li's request that the noodles story be kept confidential. Turns out, it made it into Cottier's report, though he took the information with a grain of salt. "Indeed, giving it more attention would have required it to be documented, then scientifically verified and validated," he wrote. Neither Wenzel nor officials at the Chinese anti-doping agency returned messages from AP asking about the noodles conspiracy and the other athlete who Li suggested had been contaminated by them. Meanwhile, 11 of the swimmers who originally tested positive competed at the Paris Games earlier this year in a meet held under the cloud of the Chinese doping case. Though WADA considers the case closed, Koehler and others point to situations like this as one of many reasons that an investigation by someone other than Cottier, who was hired by WADA, is still needed. "It gives the appearance that people are just making things up as they go along on this, and hoping the story just goes away," Koehler said. "Which clearly it has not."
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From Raygun to Rinehart: 25 predictions for 2025Ubisoft is officially discontinuing XDefiant in 2025, the publisher announced Tuesday , with all new purchases and registrations being discontinued immediately. As part of the shutdown, the publisher plans to shut down its production studios in San Francisco and Osaka while ramping down its site in Sydney, with up to 177 employees losing their jobs. Roughly half of the XDefiant team will be assigned roles elsewhere. Chief Studios and Portfolio Officer Marie-Sophie de Waubert revealed the news in an email sent to Ubisoft employees that was subsequently posted online, saying that the shooter was "not able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market." The full message can be found below. Today, I wanted to share with you that we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue development on XDefiant. Despite an encouraging start, the team’s passionate work, and a committed fan base, we’ve not been able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market. As a result, the game is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment, and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it. Concretely, that means that as of today, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. Season 3 will still launch, and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025, out of appreciation for both our dev teams who worked on it and for XDefiant’s active players. Unfortunately, the discontinuation of XDefiant brings difficult consequences for the teams working on this game. Even if almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide will be transitioning to other roles within Ubisoft, this decision also leads to the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney. To those team members leaving Ubisoft, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your work and contributions. Please know that we are committed to supporting you during this transition. Developing Games-as-a-Service experiences remains a pillar of our strategy, and we’ve achieved significant successes, like Rainbow Six, The Crew, and For Honor, among others. It’s a highly competitive market, and we will apply the lessons learned with XDefiant to our future live titles. Globally, we are determined to take the necessary steps to put the company back on a path to growth, innovation and creativity and make sure we can set you up for success. This means continuing to radically evolve our mindset for Production and Business practices, which we will share more about soon, and doing targeted restructuring when necessary. I know that the situation brings questions and expectations, and we will share regular and transparent updates. My sincere thanks for your continued dedication as we navigate these trying times together. XDefiant Executive Producer Mark Rubin also shared a message thanking fans and saying he was "heartbroken." He also shared refund details, saying that any purchases made within the last 30 days will be fully refunded and that those who purchases the Ultimate Founder's Pack will also get their money back. Refunds should happen automatically with 8 weeks, he said. I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down. Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date TBD) and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025. More like this Ubisoft Call of Duty Rival xDefiant 'Absolutely Not Dying,' Dev Insists For those who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack, you’ll receive a full refund. Players who made any purchases within the last 30 days will also be fully refunded. Those refunds should happen automatically within 8 weeks of today and you can find more details on our official website, http://XDefiant.com . A few years ago, Ubisoft and the SF Dev team embarked on a bold adventure to develop a new arcade shooter called XDefiant. It was from the start, an incredible challenge. Not only were we trying to shake up the genre by removing Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) while bringing back a more “old-school” arcade shooter experience, but we were also diving into the high-risk, high-reward realm of free-to-play. And for that I want to applaud not only the Dev team but also Ubisoft leadership for taking that chance! Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey. Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It’s a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue. I am, of course, heartbroken to have to be writing this post. Yes, this game has been a personal passion for me for years and yes, I know that not all challenges lead to victory, but I also want to recognize all of the developers who are being affected by this closure. Each and every one of them is a real person with a real life separate from our own and they have all put so much of their own passion into making this game. And I hope that they can be proud of what they did achieve. I know that I will always be proud and grateful to have worked with such a great team! A team that really punched above its weight class. And what they achieved is truly remarkable. The early response from players when XDefiant launched was amazing—we broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass 5 million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game! That is something to be extremely proud of, especially considering how tough this genre is. So, thank you to all of the developers who put their passion into making this game! If there’s one thing, I hope we can all take away from this experience, it’s the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. This “player-first” mentality along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players has been one of the standout differences that made XDefiant so special. From my very first post about XDefiant, this was the vision I wanted to champion, and I hope it leaves a positive mark on how the game industry treats its players and communities. To our players, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the incredible community that has grown around XDefiant. Your passion, creativity, and dedication have inspired us every step of the way. With the utmost of love and respect, Mark XDefiant joins Concord as the latest service game to abruptly shutter not long after launch. Unlike Concord, though, XDefiant will be given a bit of grace, with its servers not due to shut down until June 3, 2025. Ubisoft also plans to go forward with releasing Season 3, though downloads and purchases will no longer be available. Hello XDefiant Fans, I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down. Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date...— Mark Rubin (@PixelsofMark) December 3, 2024 First announced in 2021, XDefiant endured several delays before finally launching in May. We wrote in our review , "XDefiant joins the free-to-play shooter crowd as a respectable competitive FPS built around various Ubisoft franchises, but little makes it really stand out." Despite middling reviews, XDefiant got off to a fast start, pulling in a million unique players within two and a half hours, but its momentum soon dissipated. In October, Rubin acknowledged that players numbers were down while denying persistent shutdown rumors . XDefiant's impending shutdown adds to Ubisoft's woes in 2024 , which has included lower-than-expected sales for major releases , delays , and other setbacks. Its share price collapse reportedly has the Guillemot family and Tencent considering taking the company private . It's far from the only publisher to struggle in 2024 though as game developers of all sizes have been racked by abrupt shutdowns and layoffs . Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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The Italians know about ice cream and thankfully, they have taken their passion and expertise to the South Coast of New South Wales for the delectation of holidaymakers. Subscribe now for unlimited access . Login or signup to continue reading All articles from our website & app The digital version of Today's Paper Breaking news alerts direct to your inbox Interactive Crosswords, Sudoku and Trivia All articles from the other regional websites in your area Continue Two of the acclaimed makers - Bermagui Gelati Clinic and the Bodalla Dairy Shed - trace their success to Italy. The Bermagui operation was set up by Alberto Cementon and Francesca Michielin who met in Italy. He was from Melbourne, exploring his Italian background in Italy itself when he met Francesca who was full-blooded Italian. They got together and moved to the South Coast seaside town , setting up the shop on the harbour more than 20 years ago. It is still doing well, with queues out of the door through the summer. "This is our 21st year and we are very proud of that," Francesca said. "We are still using lots of local fruit - citrus, rhubarb, guava." Local growers bring the fruit and the couple turn it into ice cream. They also get local milk. Francesca Michielin of Gelati Clinic. Picture by Tara Chiu (@daisyhillphotography) Experimenting with some unique flavours Alberto and Francesca like to experiment. If it works, it works and if it doesn't, it gets jettisoned. They made a Vegemite ice cream and a curry one. They weren't successful. Who knows why? "We try different flavours for a bit of fun," Francesca said. Their popular licorice flavour is back. "Hazelnut is always popular," she said. By the way, the "clinic" moniker is in the title because they started in what was an old veterinary surgery. "I painted over the 'veterinary' with 'gelati' because our signage wasn't ready when we opened," Alberto said. View + 3 Photos The Italian job on the South Coast - Bermagui Gelati Clinic and the Bodalla Dairy Shed The Bodalla Dairy Shed , 50 kilometres to the north, also has its roots in Italy. When Sandra McCuaig branched out from cheese, she spotted an advert on Gumtree for a set of Italian ice cream machines. They were being sold by a pair of Italians who had tried to make a go of it in an industrial part of Sydney without success. So she got in touch, but said she'd only take the machines if the two Italians came with them. "They came to Bodalla, which was a surprise to them after Milan," Sandra said. The pair stayed for nine months, imparting their expertise. Their Italian knowledge now goes into every inventive ice cream the Bodalla Dairy Shed churns, starting from scratch with fresh milk from a neighbouring farm, cream and Australian sugar. And then comes the flavouring. Their Kakadu plum 'n' rum, Queensland lemon myrtle, Bodalla yoghurt and local Ironbark honey flavours stand out. Smoked ice cream? They also smoke some fresh cream with gum leaves before churning it into ice cream. The smoking process takes just over two hours and the smoke can't be too hot. The result is an ice cream called "Let's go Camping" because of its camp smoke flavour (combined with butterscotch and a Macadamia praline). By the way, Sandra was a cadet for The Canberra Times in the mid-60s. She's just turned 81 and still drives a truck, until recently driving more than a ton of ice cream on the back to their pop-up shop in Sydney (which has just closed because the work was getting too much so the best place to buy the ice cream now is the Bodalla Dairy Shed). If you can't get to the Italian places on The Canberra Times' Best of the South Coast list, but need to cool down, there are places to taste good ice cream along the coast. At the Batemans Bay Ice Creamery , there is often a steady stream of customers poring over the 52 flavours on offer. "Something we love doing is looking after the Canberrans," manager Troy Schryver said. "We are a second home to you guys. "If you're down here on the the Christmas holidays, you can see lines out the door till 10 o'clock at night." Where to eat The Bodalla Dairy Shed Picture Bodalla Dairy Shed 52 Princes Highway, Bodalla. (02) 4473 5555. https://www.bodalladairy.com.au/ Rated 4.5 stars on Google The Bermagui Gelati Clinic The Bermagui Gelati Clinic is nearby Bermagui Fishermen's Wharf. Picture Instagram 79/73 Lamont St, Bermagui. 0404 813 323. https://www.facebook.com/BermaguiGelatiClinic/ Rated 4.5 stars on Google The Batemans Bay Ice Creamery Batemans Bay Ice Creamery. Picture Google Maps 7 Clyde Street, Batemans Bay. (02) 4472 9128. https://www.facebook.com/BatemansBayIceCreamery/ Rated 4.5 stars on Google Want more? Tim the Yowie Man rounded up his hot spots for a cool treat in 2022. Share Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email Copy Steve Evans Reporter Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues." Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues." 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It looked like a recipe for disaster. So, when his country's swimmers were being accused of doping earlier this year, one Chinese official cooked up something fast. He blamed it on contaminated noodles. In fact, he argued, it could have been a culinary conspiracy concocted by criminals, whose actions led to the cooking wine used to prepare the noodles being laced with a banned heart drug that found its way into an athlete's system. This theory was spelled out to international anti-doping officials during a meeting and, after weeks of wrangling, finally made it into the thousands of pages of data handed over to the lawyer who investigated the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for that same drug. The attorney, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, refused to consider that scenario as he sifted through the evidence. In spelling out his reasoning, lawyer Eric Cottier paid heed to the half-baked nature of the theory. "The Investigator considers this scenario, which he has described in the conditional tense, to be possible, no less, no more," Cottier wrote. Even without the contaminated-noodles theory, Cottier found problems with the way WADA and the Chinese handled the case but ultimately determined WADA had acted reasonably in not appealing China's conclusion that its athletes had been inadvertently contaminated. Critics of the way the China case was handled can't help but wonder if a wider exploration of the noodle theory, details of which were discovered by The Associated Press via notes and emails from after the meeting where it was delivered, might have lent a different flavor to Cottier's conclusions. "There are more story twists to the ways the Chinese explain the TMZ case than a James Bond movie," said Rob Koehler, the director general of the advocacy group Global Athlete. "And all of it is complete fiction." Something in the kitchen was contaminated In April, reporting from the New York Times and the German broadcaster ARD revealed that the 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine, also known as TMZ. China's anti-doping agency determined the athletes had been contaminated, and so, did not sanction them. WADA accepted that explanation, did not press the case further, and China was never made to deliver a public notice about the "no-fault findings," as is often seen in similar cases. The stock explanation for the contamination was that traces of TMZ were found in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers were staying. In his 58-page report, Cottier relayed some suspicions about the feasibility of that chain of events — noting that WADA's chief scientist "saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities." But without evidence to support pursuing the case, and with the chance of winning an appeal at almost nil, Cottier determined WADA's "decision not to appeal appears indisputably reasonable." But how did the drugs get into the kitchen? A mystery remained: How did those traces of TMZ get into the kitchen? Shortly after the doping positives were revealed, the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations held a meeting on April 30 where it heard from the leader of China's agency, Li Zhiquan. Li's presentation was mostly filled with the same talking points that have been delivered throughout the saga — that the positive tests resulted from contamination from the kitchen. But he expanded on one way the kitchen might have become contaminated, harkening to another case in China involving a low-level TMZ positive. A pharmaceutical factory, he explained, had used industrial alcohol in the distillation process for producing TMZ. The industrial alcohol laced with the drug "then entered the market through illegal channels," he said. The alcohol "was re-used by the perpetrators to process and produce cooking wine, which is an important seasoning used locally to make beef noodles," Li said. "The contaminated beef noodles were consumed by that athlete, resulting in an extremely low concentration of TMZ in the positive sample. "The wrongdoers involved have been brought to justice." New information sent to WADA ... eventually This new information raised eyebrows among the anti-doping leaders listening to Li's report. So much so that over the next month, several emails ensued to make sure the details about the noodles and wine made their way to WADA lawyers, who could then pass it onto Cottier. Eventually, Li did pass on the information to WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel and, just to be sure, one of the anti-doping leaders forwarded it, as well, according to the emails seen by the AP. All this came with Li's request that the noodles story be kept confidential. Turns out, it made it into Cottier's report, though he took the information with a grain of salt. "Indeed, giving it more attention would have required it to be documented, then scientifically verified and validated," he wrote. Neither Wenzel nor officials at the Chinese anti-doping agency returned messages from AP asking about the noodles conspiracy and the other athlete who Li suggested had been contaminated by them. Meanwhile, 11 of the swimmers who originally tested positive competed at the Paris Games earlier this year in a meet held under the cloud of the Chinese doping case. Though WADA considers the case closed, Koehler and others point to situations like this as one of many reasons that an investigation by someone other than Cottier, who was hired by WADA, is still needed. "It gives the appearance that people are just making things up as they go along on this, and hoping the story just goes away," Koehler said. "Which clearly it has not."
Undiscovered Gems To Explore In December 2024
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