ENEMY OF THE STATE

Filipino journalist reflects on Nobel Prize win at Harvard


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Investigative journalist Maria Ressa, of the Philippines, speaks with a reporter from The Associated Press, during an interview at the Kennedy School of Government on the campus of Harvard University, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, in Cambridge, Mass. Ressa, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, spoke on issues including press freedom during the interview. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — One month since she was named the first Filipino to win the Nobel Peace Prize, journalist Maria Ressa says much still remains uncertain about her life.

Will her battle against a libel suit in the Philippines lead to jail time? Will she be able to travel to Norway to accept her prestigious award next month? When is the next time she’ll be able to see her family?

“You know the painting The Scream?” Ressa said Tuesday evening, holding her hands to her face and mock-bellowing into the existential void like the famed Edvard Munch work. “I wake up every day like that.”

“I don’t know where it will lead,” she continued during an interview at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shortly before delivering the university’s annual Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press. “But I know that if we keep doing our task, staying on mission, holding the line, that there’s a better chance that our democracy not only survives, but that I also stay out of jail. Because I’ve done nothing wrong except be a journalist, and that is the price we have to pay. I wish it wasn’t me, but it is.”

The 58-year-old co-founder of Rappler, a Manila-based news website, said it wasn’t lost on her that her Harvard speech came just hours after American journalist Danny Fenster’s emotional reunion with family in New York following his negotiated release from military-ruled Myanmar, where he’d spent six months in jail for his work.

“It shows how it crumbles fast. The ground we’re on is quicksand,” she said. “Power can do what it wants.”

Ressa worries about what next year’s elections in the Philippines, U.S. and elsewhere will bring.

She assailed American social media companies for failing to act as gatekeepers as misinformation continues to proliferate virtually unchecked across their platforms, allowing repressive regimes like those in Myanmar and elsewhere to thrive and threaten democratic institutions.

“If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. You can’t have trust. You don’t have a shared reality,” she said. “So how do we solve these existential problems — the rise of fascism, coronavirus, climate change — if we don’t agree on the facts? This is fundamental.”

Ressa, who along with co-winner and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov became the first working journalists in more than 80 years to win the Nobel Peace Prize, is wrapping up a monthlong stint as a visiting fellow at Harvard.

She says she’s looking forward to visiting her parents in Florida for Thanksgiving next week before heading back to the Philippines. It marks the first time since she’s been out of the country since being convicted last summer of libel and sentenced to jail in a decision seen as a major blow to press freedom globally.

Ressa has remained free on bail while that case is on appeal, but faces up to six years in prison, not to mention a series of other active legal cases against her.

Before this month’s trip, she had a number of other travel requests denied by Philippine courts, including one she says was to visit her ailing mother. Ressa will also have to get court approval to attend the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10.

“It’s like death by a thousand cuts,” said Ressa, who was born in Manila but raised mostly in the U.S, before moving back to the Philippines and launching a journalism career. “You don’t know how free you are until you begin to lose your freedom, or you have to ask people for your freedoms.”

At Harvard, Ressa has been meeting with faculty and students, giving talks and doing research on a forthcoming book.

She co-founded Rappler in 2012, and the website quickly gained notoriety for its reporting on President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody, yearslong crackdown on illegal drugs. The news organization has also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse.

During Tuesday’s lecture, which Ressa gave remotely from her hotel room due to a potential COVID-19 exposure related to the campus event, she also reflected on the toll on her personal life.

In the Philippines, she’d taken to wearing a bulletproof vest at times in public, and pleaded with Facebook to delete violent posts against her as death threats mounted.

For female journalists in particular, Ressa said, attacks on social media quickly become menacing. Among roughly half a million online attacks she’s received, some 60% were against her credibility while 40% were more personal and “meant to tear down my spirit,” she said.

“There are moments when you go, ‘Why?’ Why does it demand this much?” Ressa said. “But the cost of not doing the right thing is far greater than the consequences for one person.”

UPDATE

NASA may not land people on moon again until 2027, new audit says

NASA's Orion spacecraft, scheduled for the Artemis III mission that would carry astronauts to the surface of the moon, is prepared for launch Nov. 5 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Despite U.S. goals to land people on the moon again by 2024, delays of several years are likely, according to a NASA watchdog audit released Monday.

Former Vice President Mike Pence set that 2024 goal in a 2019 speech, giving NASA just five years to accomplish the feat.

While NASA reinforced the practicality of that goal for a long time, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday that the agency now plans to aim for 2025 because of funding shortfalls.

But the new audit from NASA's Office of Inspector General dashed the 2025 goal as unrealistic.

"Given the time needed to develop and fully test the [Human Landing System] and new spacesuits, we project NASA will exceed its current timetable for landing humans on the Moon in late 2024 by several years," the Office of Inspector General said.

The audit pins blames space agency management for the delays, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which interrupted work on NASA's moon rocket, and on "significantly less" congressional funding than NASA sought.

The agency requested $3.4 billion this year for the lunar Human Landing System program, but the Congress appropriated just $850 million. NASA awarded a contract to its lowest bidder, Elon Musk's SpaceX, to develop such a lander for $2.9 billion over the next few years.

The audit recommends that NASA develop a "realistic, risk-informed schedule" that includes potential delays to better align expectations with the development schedule for rockets, capsules, spacesuits and other systems.

The inspector general, Paul K. Martin, also recommended with his staff that NASA develop an Artemis-wide mission cost estimate and update it on an annual basis, and maintain an accounting of per-mission costs.

In its official response, the space agency said it didn't agree with those two recommendations.

NASA said it already follows its policies regarding cost estimates and argued that Artemis is a campaign, "and not an agency-defined program with a specific set of content or a period of time."

Regarding mission costs, NASA argued in its response to the inspector report that it "does not account, track or report costs on a per-mission basis ... because doing so would reduce contractual transparency to key stakeholders."

The agency didn't explain in its response who those stakeholders are.

"Breaking out costs to align by mission may lead to inefficiencies ... and may dis-incentivize contractors to continue innovating," NASA said in its response.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin filed formal protests and a lawsuit against NASA's award to SpaceX for the landing system, but a judge dismissed that suit Nov. 4.

Meanwhile, on Sept. 14, NASA awarded a new round of $146 million to five U.S. companies, including Blue Origin and SpaceX, to continue development of lunar landers for astronauts.

Woman may have naturally rid herself of HIV, raising hope for cure

By Amy Norton, HealthDay News


A patient gets tested with the an HIV antibody test. File Photo by Michael Kleinfeld/UPI | License Photo

Researchers have identified a second HIV-positive person whose body might have naturally cleared the infection -- sparking hope that studying such exceedingly rare events will help lead to a cure. 

The researchers cautioned that they cannot prove the woman has fully eradicated the virus from her body, in what's known as a "sterilizing" cure. But in exhaustive tests of over 1.5 billion cells from her body, the scientists could not find any HIV genetic material that is capable of spurring infection.

The woman, whom the researchers call the Esperanza patient (after her birthplace of Esperanza, Argentina), is the second known person to have potentially cleared HIV infection naturally.

The first case, a woman dubbed the San Francisco patient, was reported last year by some of the same researchers.

Neither woman can be declared as having a sterilizing cure. All that can be said is it's possible, according to researcher Dr. Xu Yu, of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard, in Boston.

If the two patients have achieved a natural cure, the big question is: How? And can that 'how' be turned into a cure for others?

"How do we translate this to the general population of HIV-positive patients?" Yu said.

The Esperanza case, reported in the Nov. 16 issue of Annals of Internal of Medicine, and the San Francisco case were discovered through ongoing research of so-called "elite controllers."

They are a very select group of HIV-positive people who are able to control the virus without the help of standard antiretroviral therapy (ART). Those medications can suppress HIV to undetectable levels in the blood, but cannot eradicate the virus.

RELATED Study: Bimonthly, injected PrEP better than daily pill at preventing HIV

That's because of the nature of HIV. Its genetic material integrates itself into the DNA of an infected person's cells, where it silently camps out -- forming what's called a latent reservoir. ART treatment cannot wipe out those reservoirs, and if the drugs are stopped, latently infected cells can start churning out copies of HIV again.

Likewise, elite controllers still have detectable latent reservoirs. While they are able to keep the virus in check for many years, they do not eliminate it.

That's where the Esperanza and San Francisco patients stand out. The researchers have found no evidence of latent HIV reservoirs in either patient.

RELATED Two HIV PrEP meds work equally well, one is much cheaper

"They are very, very special people who have exceptional control of the virus," said Dr. Natalia Laufer, one of Yu's colleagues on the study.

Now that the researchers have found two such patients, they can hunt for characteristics that they share, said Laufer, of the Institute for Biomedical Research in Retroviruses and AIDS in Buenos Aires.

Hopefully, that will shed light on the mechanisms that allow the patients such exceptional HIV control.

It's estimated that fewer than 0.5% of people with HIV are elite controllers, according to Laufer. And scientists do not yet know how they do it.

Yu and her colleagues have gained some insights, though, using recently developed gene-sequencing technology to analyze elite controllers' blood cells. They've found that in those patients, HIV is often integrated into parts of the cell genome that are essentially "gene deserts."

In other words, the viral genetic material is sequestered far away from the genes a blood cell uses to make proteins. That suggests those infected cells are less able to churn out copies of HIV.

The mystery remains, however, as to how elite controllers banish HIV to gene deserts.

"Exceptional" controllers are clearly even rarer than elite controllers. How rare is unknown.

"We now have two cases where people seem, for all intents and purposes, to have cleared the virus," said Rowena Johnston, vice president and director of research for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. "How many of these people are out there? It's impossible to believe there are only two, and these researchers found both."

Johnston, who was not involved in the research, pointed to "the two fundamental questions" these cases present: What are the mechanisms allowing such exceptional HIV control? Can they be translated into a cure?

Ultimately, Johnston noted, experts believe it will take "multiple approaches" to cure HIV.

At this point, only two HIV-positive people have ever been declared "cured" -- both after receiving stem cell transplants to treat cancer. The stem cells harbored a rare gene mutation that is protective against HIV.

Yu said the two patients with possible natural cures offer "hope" that a broadly applicable cure can be accomplished.

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more on research for an HIV cure. SOURCES: Xu Yu, MD, associate professor, medicine, Harvard Medical School, and group leader, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Boston Natalia Laufer, MD, PhD, researcher, Institute for Biomedical Research in Retroviruses and AIDS, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina Rowena Johnston, PhD, vice president and director, research, amfAR, New York City Annals of Internal Medicine, Nov. 16, 2021, online

Copyright 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Pfizer to allow generic COVID-19 pill production for low-income countries

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said he believes the antiviral pills can help end the COVID-19 pandemic. File Photo by Alex Edelman/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Pfizer and the Medicines Patent Pool signed an agreement Tuesday that allows an antiviral pill to treat COVID-19 to be more widely distributed in low-income countries.

Studies have shown the pill, Paxlovid, given with an older drug called ritonavir, to be 89% effective in reducing COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations in high-risk patients.

The agreement will enable the United Nations-backed MPP to distribute the pill (pending authorization) by granting licenses for generic production.

The deal aims to make the pill available in the some of the poorest countries, which make up about 53% of the world's population.

"Pfizer remains committed to bringing forth scientific breakthroughs to help end this pandemic for all people. We believe oral antiviral treatments can play a vital role in reducing the severity of COVID-19 infections, decreasing the strain on our healthcare systems and saving lives," Albert Bourla, Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said in a press release.

The agreement includes low- and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as countries that have transitioned to upper middle income within the past five years.

Pfizer said it will not claim royalties on the licenses for the pill.

"Pfizer will not receive royalties on sales in low-income countries and will further waive royalties on sales in all countries covered by the agreement while COVID-19 remains classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization," the company said.

Charles Gore, executive director of MPP, said the group also has a license to produce the generic ritonavir, an HIV drug.

"We will be working with generic companies to ensure there is enough supply for both COVID-19 and HIV," Gore said in the press release announcing the deal.

Pfizer has requested emergency use authorization for Paxlovid, which it developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, from the Food and Drug Administration. If authorized, it would be the first COVID-19 treatment tablet on the market.

Merck has also developed a coronavirus treatment drug, molnupiravir, which is also under federal review.

Pfizer asks US officials to OK promising COVID-19 pill


This image provided by Pfizer shows its COVID-19 pills. Drugmaker Pfizer said Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, it is submitting its experimental pill for U.S. authorization, setting the stage for a likely launch in coming weeks. (Pfizer via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pfizer asked U.S. regulators Tuesday to authorize its experimental pill for COVID-19, setting the stage for a likely launch this winter of a promising treatment that can be taken at home.

The company’s filing comes as new infections are rising once again in the United States, driven mainly by hot spots in states where colder weather is driving more Americans indoors.

Pfizer’s pill has been shown to significantly cut the rate of hospitalizations and deaths among people with coronavirus infections. The Food and Drug Administration is already reviewing a competing pill from Merck and several smaller drugmakers are also expected to seek authorization for their own antiviral pills in the coming months.

“We are moving as quickly as possible in our effort to get this potential treatment into the hands of patients, and we look forward to working with the U.S. FDA on its review of our application,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in a statement.

Specifically, Pfizer wants the drug available for adults who have mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infections and are at risk of becoming seriously ill. That’s similar to how other drugs are currently used to treat the disease. But all FDA-authorized COVID-19 treatments require an IV or injection given by a health professional at a hospital or clinic.

The FDA is holding a public meeting on the Merck pill later this month to get the opinion of outside experts before making its decision. The agency isn’t required to convene such meetings and it’s not yet known whether Pfizer’s drug will undergo a similar public review.

Some experts predict COVID-19 treatments eventually will be combined to better protect against the worst effects of the virus.

Pfizer reported earlier this month that its pill cut hospitalizations and deaths by 89% among high-risk adults who had early symptoms of COVID-19. The company studied its pill in people who were unvaccinated and faced the worst risks from the virus due to age or health problems, such as obesity. If authorized, the FDA will have to weigh making the pill available for vaccinated people dealing with breakthrough infections, since they weren’t part of the initial tests.

For best results, patients need to start taking the pills within three days of symptoms, underscoring the need for speedy testing and diagnosis. That could be a challenge if another COVID-19 surge leads to testing delays and shortages seen last winter.

Pfizer’s drug is part of a decades-old family of antiviral drugs known as protease inhibitors, which revolutionized the treatment of HIV and hepatitis C. The drugs block a key enzyme which viruses need to multiply in the human body. That’s different than the Merck pill, which causes tiny mutations in the coronavirus until the point that it can’t reproduce itself.

On Tuesday, Pfizer signed a deal a with U.N.-backed group to allow generic drugmakers to produce low-cost versions of the pill for certain countries. Merck has a similar deal for its pill, which was authorized in Britain earlier this month.

The U.S. has approved one other antiviral drug for COVID-19, remdesivir, and authorized three antibody therapies that help the immune system fight the virus. But they usually have to be given via time-consuming infusions by health professionals, and limited supplies were strained by the last surge of the delta variant.

The U.S. government has already committed to purchasing Merck’s pill. Federal authorities were in negotiations with Pfizer to buy millions of doses of its pill, according to an official familiar with the matter.

___

AP reporter Zeke Miller in Washington contributed.

___

Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter

Animals that can learn sounds have higher-pitched calls, study finds


Dolphins and other mammals capable of learning sounds may emit calls at higher pitches, a new study suggests. 

File photo by Neirfy/Shutterstock

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Animals capable of learning sounds tend to produce calls at higher pitches, a study published Tuesday by the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences found.

Understanding these tendencies can help scientists better identify mammals capable of what is known as vocal learning, the researchers said.

It also could assist efforts to interpret the meaning of the sounds animals make, according to the researchers.

In their analysis of the vocal tendencies among several species, they noted that the manatee, or sea cow, produces calls that are higher than would be expected given its size, they said.

RELATED Species that use sound to 'fake' body size are usually skilled vocal learners

This may mean that the manatee, which to date has not been considered an animal capable of vocal learning, may have hidden vocal talents, the researchers said.

Similarly, non-vocalists who sound lower than expected, such as the Juan Fernandez fur seal, may turn out to have evolved specific anatomical adaptations to avoid predators, according to the researchers.

"We do not claim that all vocal learner species sound higher than expected for their body size," co-author Maxime Garcia said in a press release.

However, "there is a general trend, and this may help us to better characterize vocal communication in mammals," said Garcia, a post-doctoral researcher in evolutionary biology at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Some animals -- red deer, for example -- sound "bigger" than they really are, meaning they produce calls that are lower than would be expected based on their body size, according to Garcia and his colleagues.

Biologists think that this "faking" of body size might be a strategy to impress the opposite sex for mating purposes or to fool and intimidate potential predators.

In a study published last year, Garcia and colleague Andrea Ravignani, a research group leader in comparative bioacoustics at the Max Planck Institute Psycholinguistics in Germany, observed that animals who can fake their body size using their calls also tend to be good at learning sounds.

For this study, they expanded their earlier analyses of a wide range of mammals, including various breeds of bats, dolphins, porpoises, seals and whales.

Contrary to expectations, most vocal learners, such as dolphins, whales and seals, sounded higher than would be expected based on their body size, not lower, the researchers said.

This suggests animals that are good vocal learners usually emit sounds at higher pitches, they said.

Vocal learners who sounded lower than expected often had anatomical adaptations that could explain the lowered voice, such as a longer nose, according to the researchers.

"There might be an alternative evolutionary scenario in vocal learners, where selective pressures favor individuals that can change their tone of voice from low to high," Ravignani said in a press release.

House panel mulls ending forced arbitration in workplace sex assault disputes

By Annie Klingenberg, Medill News Service

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said forced arbitration deprives sexual harassment and assault survivors of their voice. 

File Pool Photo by Greg Nash/UPI | License Photo

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Lawmakers reached a moment of consensus on Tuesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing: Forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts can be harmful to sexual assault victims.

"Forced arbitration has robbed survivors of sexual violence and sexual harassment of their voice," Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said.

Lawmakers introduced a bill in July to eliminate forced arbitration for disputes related to sexual abuse and are likely to pass a bill with bipartisan support out of committee on the need for the change.

Forced arbitration is often found in the fine print of employment contracts. If harmed by their company, workers under forced arbitration clauses have to solve disputes through a private arbitration rather than through a public trial in court. Arbitrations are used as an alternative to a trial process as a less expensive and faster way of resolving disputes.

"We all understand the benefits that arbitration provides, however if the arbitration system is not functioning properly, and is being used to stifle individual rights, we have an obligation to fix it," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said.

Several witnesses during the hearing said people who face sexual assault in the workplace are harmed significantly by forced arbitrations. They said arbitration limited their legal options and constrained them from speaking about the issue to anyone besides the private arbitrator.

Four of the witnesses, including actress Eliza Dushku, are survivors of sexual harassment and assault who hadn't been able to share their experiences because of forced arbitration. The witnesses were only able to speak Tuesday because they were subpoenaed by the committee.

"I've worked as an actress since I was a child and signed countless contracts negotiated on my behalf, but never understood that there were mandatory arbitration clauses that would be used to keep what had happened to me a secret and would protect CBS and the sexual harassment perpetrator who had blatantly retaliated against me for trying to stop the harassment in my workplace," Dushku said.

The House is considering the bill, H.R.4445, Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021. On Wednesday, the committee is expected to complete a markup on the bill and could vote and pass the bill onto the full House. Its companion bill in the Senate was advanced out of committee to the full Senate with unanimous support last week.

Forced arbitrations are used in the workplace to solve non-sexual harassment disputes, as well. However, this bill would only eliminate forced arbitration for disputes of a sexual nature.

Face masks don't hide emotions from kids, study shows

By HealthDay News

A recent study showed that kids successfully read emotions more than 67% of the time when actors wore masks and more than 70% when they didn't wear masks. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

For children, masks don't mask the emotions of others, a new study shows.

It included nearly 300 children, ages 3-6, who were shown 90 pictures featuring actors who expressed joy, sadness or anger. In half of the pictures, the actors wore face masks.

In most cases, the children correctly identified the actors' emotions whether they were wearing a mask or not, according to the study published Nov. 15 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Overall rates of successfully reading emotions were more than 67% when the actors wore masks and more than 70% when they didn't wear masks. Older children had higher success rates. About a quarter of preschoolers had greater difficulty distinguishing sadness from anger and about 21% sometimes confused joy for anger or sadness.

"Actual face masks depicted in static pictures were significantly associated with emotion recognition in healthy preschool children, although differences were small and effect sizes were weak," the researchers from University Hospital Lausanne in Switzerland wrote.

The findings challenge concerns raised by some that the use of face masks in schools may harm younger children's development.

"Even with masks being worn, little kids can probably still make reasonable inferences about other people's emotions," Ashley Ruba, a developmental psychology expert in the Child Emotion Lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison who has made similar findings during the pandemic, told CNN.

"I like to point out that the face isn't the most important way we communicate our emotions, it is only one way. We also use tone of voice, we have body posture, we have other kinds of contextual clues that kids and adults can use to figure out how people are feeling," Ruba said.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on masks.

SOURCE: JAMA Network Open, Nov. 15, 2021 CNN

Copyright 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Coffee, tea may lower stroke, dementia risk, study finds


Drinking coffee and tea can help reduce the risk for stroke and dementia, a new study has found. Photo by Christoph/Pixabay

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Drinking coffee or tea may a lower a person's risk for stroke and dementia, a study published Tuesday by the journal PLOS Medicine found.

Drinking coffee also was associated with a lower risk dementia, or memory loss and reduced cognitive function, after a stroke, the researchers said.

People who drank two or three cups of coffee or three to five cups of tea per day, or a combination of four to six cups of coffee and tea, had up to a 20% lower risk for stroke or dementia compared with those who consumed neither beverage, the data showed.

Those who drank two to three cups of each beverage daily -- about the amount recommended in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans -- had a 32% lower risk for stroke and 28% reduced risk for dementia compared with non-drinkers, according to the researchers.

RELATED Coffee, green tea reduce stroke risk

The dietary guidelines are drafted by the federal Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services.

Intake of coffee alone or in combination with tea was also associated with lower risk for post-stroke, or vascular, dementia, which occurs following a stroke, of up to 40%, the researchers said.

"Our findings suggested that moderate consumption of coffee and tea separately or in combination were associated with lower risk of stroke and dementia," researchers from Tianjin Medical University in China wrote.

RELATED Coffee linked to lower risk of death

"However, whether the provision of such information can improve stroke and dementia outcomes remains to be determined," the said.

Strokes, or when poor blood flow to the brain leads to cell damage, cause 10% of deaths globally, according to the World Health Organization.

For years, studies have suggested that coffee and tea consumption can help stave off these significant health events, while drinking the beverages at midlife may lower an adult's risk for dementia.

RELATED Midlife coffee may help stave off dementia

Still, what is new about this study is that it demonstrates risk reduction for specific quantities of both beverages, which contain caffeine and other compounds that seem to provide protective benefits for the brain.

For this study, the researchers analyzed data for 365,682 participants from the UK Biobank, a national database of health information for residents of the British Isles.

Study participants were recruited between 2006 and 2010 and followed until 2020, the researchers said.

At the beginning of the study, participants self-reported their coffee and tea intake, according to the researchers.

Over the study period, 5,079 participants developed dementia and 10,053 experienced at least one stroke, the data showed.

"Consuming the two beverages in combination may have a joint health benefit for preventing the risk of stroke and dementia," the researchers wrote.

However, "further validation" of the effects on the beverages on the brain "in animal experiments is warranted to examine coffee and tea's potential joint associations on dementia," they said.

Ohio Public Pension Fund sues Facebook alleging it misled the public about effect on children


Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has announced a lawsuit against Facebook parent Meta over accusations the company misled the public about the negative effects its products have on the health and wellbeing of children.

The lawsuit alleges that between April 29 and Oct. 21, Facebook and some senior executives violated federal security law by misleading shareholders about how its products can harm children.

It also alleges that the company's platforms facilitate division, and favor high-profile users, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other company officials knew they were making false statements about the safety, security and privacy of its platforms.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and other investors said the truth emerging over roughly a month caused a devaluation in Facebook's stock of $54.08 per share, costing OPERS and other Facebook investors $100 billion.

Plaintiffs cited Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who testified in the Senate last month that the social media company knew its products harmed children and facilitated division, but failed to make necessary changes because it was more concerned about profit.

They also cited the Wall Street Journal's reporting in September, which showed that Facebook's cross-check shields millions of celebrities, politicians, and other high profile users from its normal content moderation rules. The company admitted in internal documents obtained by WSJ for the article: "We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly."

Last month, Facebook's oversight board similarly found that the platform lacks transparency about a program shielding high-profile users from content moderation rules.

"Facebook said it was looking out for our children and weeding out online trolls, but in reality was creating misery and divisiveness for profit," Yost said in a statement Monday. "We are not people to Mark Zuckerberg, we are the product and we are being used against each other out of greed."

The complaint refers to the parent company as Facebook for ease of reference, but noted that Facebook changed the corporate name of its parent company to Meta late last month.

Along with seeking to recover $100 billion, the lawsuit also calls for Facebook to make significant reforms to ensure it does not mislead the public about its internal practices.

Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne said in a statement emailed to The Verge the lawsuit is "without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously."

CNBC similarly confirmed a Meta spokesperson called the suit "without merit."

Yost plans to ask the court to appoint OPERS as the lead plaintiff in his Facebook securities fraud action by a December 27 deadline, and has welcomed other Facebook investors to join him in holding the company and its executives accountable.

As of December 31, 2020, OPERS managed assets of approximately $125 billion on behalf of more than 1.1 million active members, retirees, and beneficiaries, according to the lawsuit.

The system "purchased shares of Facebook Class A common stock at artificially inflated prices" period between April 29 and Oct. 21, and "suffered damages as a result of the violations of the federal securities laws alleged," according to the lawsuit.

In May, Yost joined 43 other attorneys general in sending a letter to Zuckerberg urging him to halt plans to introduce Instagram app for kids.

In late September, Facebook halted Instagram Kids to study the issue of child safety.

House memo: 'Minor security lapses' left companies vulnerable to ransomware

A memo by the House Oversight and Reform Committee found that "relatively minor security lapses," led to ransomware attacks on CNA Financial Corporation, JBS USA and Colonial Pipeline. 


File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo



Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Several major companies fell victim to ransomware attacks due to "relatively minor security lapses," according to a memo by House lawmakers Tuesday.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee released the memo in response to a panel investigation into meat producer JBS USA, insurance group CNA Financial Corporation and Colonial Pipeline, which saw all three companies pay ransoms demanded by the attackers.

"Ransomware attackers took advantage of relatively minor security lapses, such as a single user account controlled by a weak password, to launch enormously costly attacks," the memo states. "Even large organizations with seemingly robust security systems fell victim to simple initial attacks, highlighting the need to increase security education and take other security measures prior to an attack."

CNA paid $40 million in bitcoin after an employee accepted a fake browser update from a cybercriminal group called Phoenix, JBS paid $11 million in bitcoin after hackers gained access to an old account with a weak password and Colonial Pipeline, which is responsible for nearly half of the East Coast's fuel supply, paid ransomware gang Darkside $4.4 million in bitcoin after they gained access to the company through a single stolen password.

The committee also determined that some of the companies lacked "clear initial points of contact" with the federal government, delaying their ability to respond to the attacks.

"Depending on their industry, companies were confronted with a patchwork of federal agencies to engage regarding the attacks they faced," the memo reads. "For example, two companies' initial requests for assistance were forwarded around to different FBI offices and personnel before reaching the correct team."

This issue was compounded by the fact that the companies faced pressure to quickly pay the ransom under the promise from attackers that they would release the data and allow the companies to avoid negative publicity.

"Given the uncertainty over how quickly systems could be restored using backups and whether any sensitive data was stolen, the companies appeared to have strong incentives to quickly pay the ransom," the committee said.

Also Tuesday, the nation's top cybersecurity experts testified on the Biden administration's efforts to combat ransomware and improve public-private sector coordination.

"We have followed the money flows and apprehended that money when and wherever possible," National Cyber Director Chris Inglis testified, describing the administration's response. "We have used our intelligence resources to assist the private sector in understanding what the threats to them are, and at the same time give them best practices so they up their game and become a harder target."

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Executive Director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Bryan Vorndran testified that passing legislation requiring companies to report cyberattacks to federal agencies was "a top priority."

"We need the information because that enables CISA and the FBI to both engage with that victim, offer our assistance, understand what's happening from on their networks and protect other victims," Vorndran said.