Federal bribery statutes prohibit any U.S. official from expressing a “specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act.” Courts have ruled that soliciting an attack on a political opponent constitutes asking for “something of value.”He goes on to explain the complicated system for intelligence whistleblowing, and the clearly authoritarian way the Trump administration is seeking to circumvent it.
Alcohol-producing gut bacteria could cause liver damage even in people who don't drink
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the build-up of fat in the liver due to factors other than alcohol. It affects about a quarter of the adult population globally, but its cause remains unknown. Now, researchers have linked NAFLD to gut bacteria that produce a large amount of alcohol in the body, finding these bacteria in over 60% of non-alcoholic fatty liver patients. Their findings, publishing September 19 in the journal Cell Metabolism, could help develop a screening method for early diagnosis and treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver.I guess the ultimate irony would be if drinking alcohol killed some of these unhealthy alcohol making bacteria.
"We were surprised that bacteria can produce so much alcohol," says lead author Jing Yuan at Capital Institute of Pediatrics. "When the body is overloaded and can't break down the alcohol produced by these bacteria, you can develop fatty liver disease even if you don't drink."
In an interview this month with Civil Service World, Professor Davies asked: “Is this a ticking time bomb? Will they turn out to have long term consequences?”Not sure about that "unregulated" comment - I thought Public Health England says they are heavily regulated there? - but the Professor's comments about "science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer" reminds me very much of how the views of marijuana and the risk of psychosis developed over 20 or 30 years.
Public Health England published a report in 2015 suggesting that vaping could be 95 per cent less harmful than normal cigarettes.
The report stated: “There is no evidence that e-cigarettes (EC) are undermining the long-term decline in cigarette smoking among adults and youth, and may in fact be contributing to it."
Professor Davies conceded evidence has accumulated to suggest that e-cigarettes may help as a smoking cessation tool, but did not believe the evidence is 'hard' yet.
She added: "Meanwhile they're not regulated. So when you buy them, you don't know that you're getting what it says on the packet.
"I do - and will continue to - worry, because we don't know what the effects are of long-term use, or about the effect on people who may be upping their nicotine addiction by using them as well as smoking."
She added: “What you have to remember is that evidence is a social construct. So there’s hard evidence, from randomised control trials and meta-analysis. But then there’s other evidence.
"Policy based just on hard evidence leaves out all sorts of things that haven’t been tested but which maybe should be tried.
“The other thing, which is always difficult to explain to the public and to non-scientists, is that science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer."
China to tap pork reserves as swine fever hits industryI suppose Australian democracy could be in trouble if there was a sausage shortage before an election, so I think the National Party needs to fly a National Snag Reserve.
China is set to release pork supplies from its central reserves as it moves to tackle soaring prices and shortages caused by an outbreak of swine fever. A state-backed body will auction 10,000 tonnes of frozen pork from its strategic reserves on Thursday.
I have also noticed some people on Twitter pointing out that people so upset with it tend to only think of the attacks run by those on the Left, not about those run by the wingnuts of the Right:Stand-up comedy, just like other art forms, has traditionally enjoyed an unspoken pact with the audience: Comedians can say pretty much whatever they want, and people in the crowd can feel however they want about the jokes. In live comedy, the power dynamics tend to favor the comedian who has the stage, spotlight and microphone. If a couple of people in the audience are deeply offended, the comic may never know about it.But the Internet changed this relationship. The audience can do more than heckle a live performance; they can talk back, at length, and get a lot of people to listen.
Nearly every Republican policy priority lacks majority support. New restrictions on abortion are unpopular. Slashing legal immigration levels is unpopular. The president’s single major legislative achievement, tax cuts for corporations and high earners, is unpopular.Public support for enhanced background checks stands at an astonishing 90 percent, and 60 percent (and more) support a ban on assault weapon sales. Yet Republican legislatures block modest, popular gun control measures at every turn. The security of the minority’s self-ascribed right to make the rules has become their platform’s major plank, because unpopular rules don’t stand a chance without it. Float a rule that threatens their grip on power, no matter how popular, and it’s “my AR is waiting for you, Robert Francis.”They’ll tell you their thinly veiled threats are really about defending their constitutional rights. Don’t believe it. The conservative Supreme Court majority’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller found an individual right to own guns for self-protection, but no civilian needs a weapon capable of shooting 26 people in 32 seconds to ward off burglars. The Second Amendment doesn’t grant the right to own one any more than it grants the right to own a surface-to-air missile.They’ll tell you their foreboding “predictions” of lethal resistance are really about preserving the means to protect the republic against an overweening, rights-stomping state. Don’t believe that, either. It’s really about the imagined peril of a multicultural majority running the show. Many countries that do more to protect their citizens against gun violence are more, not less, free than we are. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, 16 countries enjoy a higher level of overall freedom than the United States, and most of them ban or severely restrict ownership of assault weapons. The freedom to have your head blown off in an Applebee’s, to flee in terror from the bang of a backfiring engine, might not be freedom at all.I’m not too proud to admit that in my misspent libertarian youth, I embraced the idea that a well-armed populace is a bulwark against tyranny. I imagined us a vast Switzerland, hived with rifles to defend our inviolable rights against … Michael Dukakis? What I slowly came to see is that freedom is inseparable from political disagreement and that holding to a trove of weapons as your last line of defense in a losing debate makes normal ideological opposition look like nascent tyranny and readies you to suppress it.So it’s no surprise that the most authoritarian American president in living memory, elected by a paltry minority, is not threatened in the least by citizen militias bristling with military firepower. He knows they’re on his side.Democrats don’t want to grind the rights of Republicans underfoot. They want to feel safe and think it should be harder for unhinged lunatics to turn Walmarts into abattoirs. But when minority-rule radicals hear determined talk of mandatory assault rifle buybacks, they start to feel surrounded. They hear the hammers clicking back, imagine themselves in the majority’s cross hairs.
That’s why they’re unmoved by the mounting heap of slaughtered innocents, by schoolkids missing recess to rehearse being hunted. It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to let other Americans make, because they think democracy’s coming for their power, and they’re right.
A LEADING scientist has accused health bosses of purposely "ignoring" the dangers of vaping.
Professor Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says that he has "serious concerns" about the safety of e-cigs.And a couple of doctors writing to the BMJ in 2018 expressed similar scepticism about the PHE endorsement:
We understand that such conflict, existing as it does among tobacco experts, reflects a wider uncertainty surrounding the long term health risks of e-cigarettes. That PHE, whose purpose is “to protect and improve the nation’s health,”5 should sanction e-cigarette use citing an embryonic and inconclusive evidence base, is astonishing.There was a whole article in an American journal looking at how the American and English appraisals of vaping could come to such different conclusions: The E-Cigarette Debate - What Counts as Evidence.
A growing number of Italians are now opting for pets rather than children. Back in 2014, Pope Francis was already sufficiently worried about this new trend, and warned Italians to keep their devotion for their children rather than pets. It looks like no one was listening. The passeggiata, the traditional evening walk which used to be a chance to show off babies in prams and toddlers on their new tricycles, is now given over to strutting dog owners, and pooches nestling like a baby in a kangaroo pouch.
The land that was once synonymous with a large brood now has one of the lowest birthrates in the world (1.35), but boasts a one-to-one ratio of pets per person – more than any other European country. Italians spent more than €2 billion (£1.8 billion, $2.2 billion) on pet food in 2017, and more than €72 million (£65 million, $80 million) on “accessories” in the same year. When I say “accessories”, I mean rhinestone-studded collars and sheepskin-lined miniature four-poster beds.
...the reaction he has received, from family and friends to strangers, has been mostly “horrible,” underscoring the intolerance faced by LGBT people in many parts of Africa.The articles goes on to note that although Rwanda does not make gay sexual activity a crime, it is far from socially accepted:
Some of Nabonibo’s best friends who spoke to the AP said they were too embarrassed even to talk about him. They requested anonymity for their own privacy. “This is crazy. I don’t understand why he thinks this is normal,” said one friend, shaking his head.The article also notes that in many countries on that continent, legislation is in reverse from the Western, liberalising trend:
Another friend, a man who attends the same church as Nabonibo, said he was in a state of “agony” since the rest of his family knows he used to hang out with Nabonibo. Now he has blocked Nabonibo from all phone contact, saying he wants to “keep safe.”
There has been a similar reaction on social media, with many Rwandans questioning Nabonibo’s intentions and others condemning him. One wondered on Twitter: “How can a gospel singer be gay?”
In 2017, Chad enacted legislation criminalizing same-sex relations for the first time in the country’s history. In May, a court in Kenya ruled against overturning a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults. Activists there who had challenged the law in court said they faced discrimination and threats to their dignity.It's pretty remarkable, really: living in the West, it is easy to imagine that everyone around the globe is moving in same liberalising direction on such matters.
And in neighboring Uganda, a government minister in charge of ethics is threatening to introduce another version of an anti-gay law passed in 2014, and subsequently voided by the country’s constitutional court, that provided for jail terms of up to life for those convicted of engaging in gay sex. The original version of that bill, first introduced in 2009, had included the death penalty for what it called aggravated acts of homosexuality.
Fecal samples were formed into knives using ceramic molds, “knife molds” (Figs. S1–S2), or molded by hand, “hand-shaped knives” (Fig. S3). All fecal samples were stored at −20 °C until the experiments began...I have even downloaded the supplementary material so you can see what a frozen human poo blade failing to cut looks like. Here:
Neither the “knife mold” samples, nor the “hand-shaped knives” could cut through hide (Figs. S5–S6). Despite the hide being cold from refrigeration, instead of slicing through it the knife-edge simply melted upon contact, leaving streaks of fecal matter (Fig. S4).
