More than 50 progressive activists marched across Capitol Hill on Wednesday to protest the war in Ukraine and call on lawmakers to push theBiden administration to negotiate an end to the war.
At least 11 of the protesters were arrested outside the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) after congressional aides demanded they end a sit-in inside the senator’s office. Several senior citizens, including a handicapped elderly woman, were either handcuffed by officers or escorted out.
The protest movement, organized by the nonprofit organization Code Pink and the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, entered 12 congressional offices belonging to progressive and Democratic lawmakers, according to organizers.
Their anger stems from the tens of thousands of people dying in Ukraine on both sides of the conflict, and the perceived reluctance of the Biden administration to try to negotiate an end to the war.
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink, said she and other protesters were “shocked” and “embarrassed” that Democrats have fallen silent on the issue and are continuing to support more weapons packages without calling for any type of negotiations.
She slammed Ukraine security aid backers for giving what she says is a one-sentence answer to pleas for negotiations: “You can’t negotiate” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which Benjamin said she is not buying.
“We say: Try. We want to see Biden talking,” she said. “We care about lives. We care about the human survival, and we don’t think we’re going to survive as a species if we allow this to go on.”
The gathering involved religious faith leaders and progressive activists from across the country. Green Party presidential candidate Cornel West also spoke at the beginning of the protest in the lobby of the Hart Senate building.
In conversations with congressional office aides, protesters were willing to dig into the facts of the war and the conflict with Russia. Many of them said they were not Putin apologists and condemned the Russian invasion, but argue the U.S. has played a role in the tug-of-war over Ukraine and that there is a path to at least begin negotiations.
They also point out that Ukraine is struggling in its counteroffensive and that, ultimately, the war will end by negotiations anyway — it’s just a matter of how many deaths until then.
“This is not an epic fight between democracy and autocracy,” said Marcy Winograd, co-chairwoman of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition. “We want negotiations without preconditions. None of this, ‘We won’t sit down until Russia leaves every inch of Ukraine and Crimea.’ No, we want it now. I have two grandchildren. I don’t want this for their future.”
A study shows that so-called “good cholesterol” may not be as healthy as previously believed.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, claims that high or low levels of high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, could increase dementia risk for older people.
Researchers tracked more than 180,000 California residents through health surveys for about two years starting between 2002 and 2007, then tracked the group using medical records for about nine years on average. The subjects are now an average of 70 years old.
“Previous studies on this topic have been inconclusive and this study is especially informative because of the large number of participants and long follow-up,” study author Maria Glymour said in a statement. “This information allowed us to study the links with dementia across the range of cholesterol levels and achieve precise estimates even for people with cholesterol levels that are quite high or quite low.”
During the course of the study, about 25,000 people developed dementia.
People with the highest levels of HDL cholesterol had a 15 percent higher rate of dementia compared to those in the middle group, the study found. Those with the lowest levels had a 7 percent higher rate of dementia compared to those in the middle group.
The recommended “healthy” HDL amount is 40 mg/dL in blood. Study subjects’ average was about 54 mg/dL.
The study also tracked LDL cholesterol, dubbed “bad cholesterol,” but found that it did not significantly impact dementia rates.
“The elevation in dementia risk with both high and low levels of HDL cholesterol was unexpected, but these increases are small, and their clinical significance is uncertain,” Glymour said. “In contrast, we found no association between LDL cholesterol and dementia risk in the overall study cohort. Our results add to evidence that HDL cholesterol has similarly complex associations with dementia as with heart disease and cancer.”
The study released Wednesday follows the results of another released in July which found that having cholesterol levels which fluctuate over time may also increase dementia risk. That study, also published in Neurology, found that people whose cholesterol levels fluctuate the most are at about 19 percent higher risk of dementia.
Fox News hostSean Hannity says former President Trump is open to the idea of being drafted by House Republicans to serve as the next Speaker of the House, although that scenario remains very unlikely.
“Sources telling me at this hour some House Republicans have been in contact with and have started an effort to draft former President Donald Trump to be the next Speaker, and I have been told that President Trump might be open to helping the Republican Party, at least in the short term, if necessary,” Hannity said on his nightly program Tuesday.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted hours earlier, after a small group of hardline Republicans, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), put forth a motion to vacate the chair, claiming McCarthy had “broken promises” to them and the American people over government spending and other issues. Democrats joined them in the vote to remove McCarthy.
A number of Trump-supporting Republicans have suggested the former president, who is currently running for the GOP nomination in 2024, should be selected as the next Speaker. That list includes Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.), Greg Steube (Fla.) and Troy Nehls (Texas), who said he would nominate Trump for the role.
Although the Speaker does not have to be a member of the House, congressional observers have pointed out in the aftermath of McCarthy’s ouster that Trump being nominated and voted to the post is unlikely.
Speaking to reporters during a court appearance in New York on Wednesday, Trump said “a lot of people have asked me about” the possibility of him becoming speaker.
“I’m focused, you know, we’re leading … by like 50 points for president. My focus is totally on that,” Trump said of the 2024 race. “If I can help them during the process, I would do it. But we have some great people in the Republican Party that can do a great job as Speaker.”
The former president is under several federal criminal indictments, which House Rule 26 dictates would disqualify him from serving in GOP leadership. But lawmakers could theoretically change the rule.
Developing brains become shaped by the sights, sounds, and experiences of early life. The brain's circuits grow more stable as we age. However, some experiences later in life open up opportunities for these circuits to be rapidly rewired. New research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Stephen Shea helps explain how the brain adapts during a critical period of adulthood: the time when new mothers learn to care for their young.
Shea's work in mice shows how thislearning processis disrupted when a small set of neurons lack a protein called MECP2. In humans, MECP2 dysfunction causes the rare neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome. Shea's findings could point researchers toward the brain circuits involved in Rett syndrome and potential treatment strategies. His research could also have implications for more common neurological conditions.
Shea explains, "It's not lost on us that Rett syndrome patients have difficulty interpreting and producing language. Difficulties with communicating are widespread in autism spectrum disorders. One of the reasons we study Rett syndrome is that this may be a valuable model for other forms of autism."
The Shea lab's studies of MECP2 began about 10 years ago when he first learned that female mice with mutations in the Mecp2 gene are poor parents. When it comes to parenting, most mother mice are quick learners. But without adequate MECP2 protein, Shea says, "they neglect their children and don't listen to their cries."
Shea and his team tested how eliminating MECP2 from specific cells in the mouse brain affected maternal behavior. They found that for pup retrieval to be delayed, the protein only had to go missing from a small subset of cells in a sound-processing part of the brain. The crucial cells are known as parvalbumin (PV) neurons. To efficiently learn to retrieve their pups, mice need MECP2 in those specific brain cells when they first hear the young animals' cries of distress.
Shea points out that PV neurons also play an essential role in brain circuits earlier in life. These cells normally dampen the signals of other neurons. But they release this inhibition during development, creating conditions that are favorable for change. Shea says,
"We find that some of the same mechanisms engaged in development are actually at play in adults. They can be reactivated and repurposed for rewiring the brain in a new life time point."
In other words, it's not just about development or adulthood. This research may provide clues about brain disorders that arise later on, like dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
The study is published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
More information: Deborah D. Rupert et al, Selective deletion ofMethyl CpG binding protein 2from parvalbumin interneurons in the auditory cortex delays the onset of maternal retrieval in mice, The Journal of Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0838-23.2023
A UCLA-led team of researchers has found nerve pathways that supply brown adipose tissue (BAT), a type of tissue that releases chemical energy from fat metabolism as heat—a finding that could pave the way toward using it to treat obesity and related metabolic conditions.
The researchers have for the first time detailed this nerve supply and provided examples of how manipulating it can change BAT activity, marking a first step toward understanding how to use it therapeutically, said senior author Dr. Preethi Srikanthan, professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology, diabetes & metabolism, and the director of the Neural Control of Metabolism Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The largest deposits of BAT are in the neck.
"We know from previous literature that the sympathetic nerve system is the main 'on switch' for BAT activity," Srikanthan said. "However, the sympathetic nervous system is also responsible for many other stimulatory effects on organs such as the heart and gut. Finding a way to increase activity of BAT alone has been challenging, so finding out the path these sympathetic nerves take to BAT will allow us to explore ways of using nerves to provide a very specific stimulus to activate BAT."
The paper was published Oct. 4 in the journal PLOS One.
The researchers dissected the necks of eight cadavers to trace the distribution of sympathetic nerve branches in the fat pad above the clavicle. They found nerve branches in all the dissections from the third and fourth cervical nerves to BAT. Further, they demonstrated that BAT activity had changed in clinical cases where neck pathology, such as an increase in BAT temperature following removal of a tumor, had effected a change in the nerves.
"There is a need to find long-term solutions for obesity, and while we are lucky to have effective drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, people need to take them long term for weight loss," Srikanthan said.
The researchers hope to use the knowledge gleaned from this study to find a way to coax BAT into producing a constant source of fat-burning heat.
"There is literature suggesting—and we are doing another study to confirm it—that these drugs act by stimulating BAT," she said. "By identifying the nerve pathways supplying BAT we hope to explore methods of chronically stimulating nerves to BAT and hopefully achieving similar therapeutic outcomes of weight loss."
Study limitations include the small number of cadavers dissected and the high age of the donated cadavers, which have a smaller amount of BAT compared to younger bodies.
Study co-authors are Dr. Shumpei Mori, Ryan Beyer, Dr. Breno Bernardes de Souza, Julie Sorg, Dr. Harold Sacks, Dr. Michael Fishbein, Dr. Grace Chang, Dr. Warwick Peacock, Dr. Maie St. John, Dr. Olujimi Ajijola, and Dr. Kalyanam Shivkumar of UCLA; Dr. Donald Hoover of East Tennessee State University, and Dr. James Law and Dr. Michael Symonds of University of Nottingham, UK.
More information: Sympathetic innervation of the supraclavicular brown adipose tissue: A detailed anatomical study, PLoS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290455
Itslatest updateabout the business impact of the cybersecurity attack came just over two weeks after Clorox had indicated September 18 that it would likely see negative financial impacts stemming from it.
Clorox first informed investors about the incident, which involved "unauthorized activity" in its IT systems, back in August. It wasn’t the only company targeted by a cyberattack this fall – MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment were, too.
For the first quarter, Clorox projected a year-over-year drop of 28-23% in net sales.
Preliminary first-quarter expectations included its adjusted earnings per share to be "a loss of $0.40 to $0.00." It linked that to the cyberattack "more than offset[ting] the benefits of pricing, cost savings and supply chain optimization," as well as it leading to "lower cost absorption in costs of products and operating expenses.
Other metrics – gross margin, organic sales and diluted net earnings per share – will see negative effects as well, according to the company.
The now-contained cyberattack had brought "wide-scale disruption of Clorox’s operations, including order processing delays and significant product outages," it said.
Regarding the status of its operations, Clorox reported it was "making progress in restoring its systems and operations."
"On Sept. 25, Clorox began the process of transitioning back to automated order processing and the vast majority of orders are now taking place in an automated manner, which is enabling the company to ramp up output and shipments to rebuild retailer inventories," it said. "Clorox expects the process of restocking retailer inventories will occur over time as it ships above consumption levels."
The Clorox brands include wipes, multi-surface disinfecting sprays, bleach, toilet cleaners and other products. The company also has numerous brands like Burt’s Bees, Fresh Step Glad and Pine-Sol under its purview.
"Based on its current assessment of the situation, the company expects to experience ongoing, but lessening, operational impacts in the second quarter as it makes progress in returning to normalized operations," Clorox said.
Clorox also revealed that it planned to hold an earnings call for the first quarter's results in November, at which time it will update its longer-term expectations.
According to an early August press release, the company generated a total of $2.02 billion net sales for fiscal 2023’s fourth quarter, a figure that represented a lift of 12% from the $1.8 billion it saw in the same period the prior year. Its net earnings were $176 million.
In terms of adjusted EPS, it experienced an 80% year-over-year jump in the fourth quarter, coming in at $1.67.
The Biden FBI has 'quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump's army of MAGA followers' ahead of the 2024 election, according to prolific (and well connected) anti-war journalist and political commentator, William Arkin, who haspreviouslyreported on the FBI's efforts to "Fight MAGA Terrorism."
In a Wednesday Newsweek article, Arkin reveals that the vast majority of FBI investigations into "anti-government" activities are of Trump supporters.
"The FBI is in an almost impossible position," a current FBI official told Arkin, who added that the agency's stated intent is stopping a repeat of January 6th type incidents (which was riddled with feds), while balancing the Constitutional right of Americans to protest the government "Especially at a time when the White House is facing Congressional Republican opposition claiming that the Biden administration has 'weaponized' the Bureau against the right wing, it has to tread very carefully," the official continued.
Newsweek spoke to over a dozen current or former government officials who specialize in terrorism in a three-month investigation to understand the current domestic-security landscape and to evaluate what President Joe Biden's administration is doing about what it calls domestic terrorism. Most requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly, were reluctant to stray into partisan politics or feared the repercussions of speaking frankly.
Newsweek has also reviewed secret FBI and Department of Homeland Security data that track incidents, threats, investigations and cases to try to build a better picture. While experts agree that the current partisan environment is charged and uniquely dangerous (with the threat not only of violence but, in the most extreme scenarios, possibly civil war), many also question whether "terrorism" is the most effective way to describe the problem, or that the methods of counterterrorism developed over the past decade in response to Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups constitute the most fruitful way to craft domestic solutions.
We would note that an FBI whistleblower in March claimed that the agency pressured him to inflate domestic terrorism figures against conservatives, and that the agency created a specific threat tag for pro-lifers "THREATSCOTUS2022" following the leaked Supreme Court opinion on abortion (and not a threat tag for the violent leftists who threatened SCOTUS justices?).
The FBI told Newsweek in a statement that: "The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI's goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence and threats of violence. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI's top threat priorities," adding "We are committed to protecting the safety and constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including a person's political beliefs or affiliations."
According to the FBI's data leaked to Arkin,the number of domestic extremism cases has dropped since Jan 6, but that "Sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence."
So - while the threat that the FBI has encouraged agents to inflate may have fallen, they're on the lookout!
The agency has even created a new subcategory of threats, "AGAAVE-Other," to denote those who are a threat but don't fit into its anarchist, militia or Sovereign Citizen categories.
Introduced without any announcement, and reported here for the first time, the new classification is officially defined as "domestic violent extremists who cite anti-government or anti-authority motivations for violence or criminal activity not otherwise defined, such as individuals motivated by a desire to commit violence against those with a real or perceived association with a specific political party or faction of a specific political party." -Newsweek
Trump or MAGA aren't directly menti0oned in the official description of AGAAVE-Other, however "government insiders acknowledge that it applies to political violence ascribed to the former president's supporters."
"What other name could we use?" said one FBI officer, who added: "Obviously if Democratic Party supporters resort to violence, it [AGAAVE-Other] would apply to them as well.It doesn't matter that there is a low likelihood of that. So yes, in practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan."
Sure anonymous FBI guy... there's a 'low likelihood' that Democrats (the party which the FBI's top brass belong to) aren't causing political violence. Did someone get into Hunter's crack stash?
A parked limousine burns during a demonstration after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington.
Despite widespread, leftist-led and encouraged riots during the 2020 summer of rage, FBI data says that spikes in domestic violent extremism and domestic terrorism investigations in 2020 and 2021 “show clearly that the main targets of the investigations and cases open were of Trump supporters,” not the people who wreaked billions of dollars of damage on American cities.
Similarly, “assessments,” a shadowy tool used by the FBI to spy on Americans who have political or ideological associations deemed unfavorable by the agency, “more than doubled from 2019 to 2021.”
The increase also serves as a continuation of the Biden regime’s persecution of its number one political opponent and his popular brand of wrongthink ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
