Trump taps election denier to head global media operation VOA


By AFP
December 12, 2024

  

Kari Lake refused to accept her loss in the 2022 election for Arizona governor 

- Copyright TAIWAN COAST GUARD/AFP/File Handout

US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday appointed election denier Kari Lake to be the new director of Voice of America, the state-funded international media organization.

VOA has reach around the world, with programming in a slew of African, Asian and European languages, including Somali, Dari and French.

It receives US funding but is generally considered a reliable, independent media operation, covering global and US news for international audiences.

However, previous leadership under Trump’s first administration came under fire for politicizing the outlet.

Lake, a former television news anchor, is a hard-line conservative who ran in 2022 as the Republican candidate for governor of the southwestern state of Arizona and for US Senate in 2024, losing both times.

She has repeatedly refused to accept her past election defeats, as well as Trump’s 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

As he prepares to take office in January, Trump’s staffing announcements have consisted of close allies.

“I am pleased to announce that Kari Lake will serve as our next Director of the Voice of America,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social website.

“She will be appointed by, and work closely with, our next head of the US Agency for Global Media… to ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”

In his first term, Michael Pack, Trump’s head of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, raised concerns when he moved in 2020 to strip an internal firewall at the organization meant to insulate the newsroom from political interference.

A VOA White House reporter was also investigated for supposed anti-Trump biases during Trump’s first administration.

Trump team mulls axing Great Depression-era agency that guards against bank failures: WSJ

Matthew Chapman
December 12, 2024 

RAW STORY


President-elect Donald Trump's advisers, alongside tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force, are soliciting opinions from nominees on whether it would be possible for Trump to abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

For now, at least, the idea appears to be reorganizing its function rather than eliminating it outright. Trump's advisers "have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said," reported Gina Heeb.

Regardless, such a proposal "would require congressional action," the report noted, and "while past presidents have reorganized and rebranded departments, Washington has never shut down a major cabinet-level agency and rarely closed other agencies like the FDIC that are not."

The FDIC, considered one of the most critical banking regulators in the United States, runs deposit insurance, a program that compensates a bank's account holders up to $250,000 if the bank fails and is unable to dispense the money in their account. Created in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression, the program exists to prevent "bank runs," or cascading panics where most or all of a bank's accountholders try to withdraw their money simultaneously. Prior to the creation of the FDIC, bank runs were common during economic crashes.

It is unclear that there is even support within the banking industry for a drastic change to federal deposit insurance, the report noted.


"FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears," said the report. For example, "after several banks failed last year, customers panicked about whether their deposits were safe at smaller banks. Many fled to the biggest of big banks who are perceived to be so important that the government would never let them fail. Since then, banks have been calling for wider deposit insurance protections to keep smaller banks competitive."

This also comes as Musk has pushed for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a corporate misconduct watchdog that since its creation in 2011 has returned billions of dollars to consumers.

Trump floats plan to let billionaire polluters 'bribe their way' past regulations

Jake Johnson,

 Common Dreams
December 12, 2024 

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday floated a legally dubious proposal to let corporations and individuals who invest $1 billion or more in the U.S. bypass regulations, a scheme that environmental groups and government watchdogs said underscores the corrupt intentions of the incoming administration.

"Corporate polluters cannot bribe their way to endangering our communities and our clean air and water," Mahyar Sorour of Sierra Club said in a statement. "Donald Trump's plan to sell out to the highest bidder confirms what we've long known about him: He's happy to sacrifice the wellbeing of American communities for the benefit of his Big Oil campaign donors."

"We will keep fighting to defend our bedrock environmental protections and ensure they apply to everyone, not just those who can't afford Trump's bribe," Sorour added.

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump wrote that "any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals."

"GET READY TO ROCK!!!" said Trump, who pledged on the campaign trail to accelerate oil drilling and asked the fossil fuel industry to bankroll his bid for a second White House term in exchange for large-scale deregulation.

As early as May of this year, fossil fuel industry lobbyists and lawyers had already begun crafting executive orders for Trump to sign upon retaking the White House. After winning last month's election, Trump moved quickly to stack his Cabinet with billionaires and other rich individuals with close corporate ties, including those in the fossil fuel industry.


The Associated Pressnoted Tuesday that Trump's push to let large investors evade regulations would itself likely run up against regulatory hurdles, "including a landmark law that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impact before deciding on major projects."

"While Trump did not specify who would be eligible for accelerated approvals, dozens of energy projects proposed nationwide, from natural gas pipelines and export terminals to solar farms and offshore wind turbines, meet the billion-dollar criteria," AP noted. "Environmental groups slammed the proposal, calling it illegal on its face and a clear violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, a 54-year-old law that requires federal agencies to study the potential environmental impact of proposed actions and consider alternatives."

"Presidents have no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment."


Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, said Tuesday that "Trump is treating America's energy policy like a cheap knickknack at an estate sale: brazenly offering to auction off our public lands and waters to the highest bidder."

"Trump's promise to fast-track environmental approvals for billion-dollar kickbacks is nothing but an illegal giveaway to fossil fuel special interests," said Moffitt, pointing to federal law requiring "rigorous review processes to protect the public interest, not rubber stamps for corporate polluters."

"Trump's plan would turn a system already rigged in favor of fossil fuel interests into one openly driven by corruption, where special interests dictate policy and everyday Americans pay the price," Moffitt added. "Now he's making it official: If you write a big enough check, his administration will let you break the rules and drive up costs for working families."

Axiosreported that Trump's specific focus on environmental regulations "will put the spotlight on Lee Zeldin," the president-elect's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Zeldin is considered to have little environmental policymaking experience—but is a strong supporter of Trump's broad deregulatory push," the outlet noted.

Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at Public Citizen, expressed confidence that Trump's plan "will not come to pass," given that "presidents have no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment."

"Trump's claim deserves ridicule for being so outlandishly illegal and wrong," said Slocum. "However, the statement does highlight Trump's utter disregard for protecting the environment or human health and the imminent peril that he and his cronies will push policies that jeopardize health, safety, and planetary well-being."

Slocum said there are other "more realistic and insidious" Trump schemes worth guarding against, including his "efforts to use national security designations to force bailouts of coal power plants during his firm term."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) warned in response to the president-elect's Truth Social post that "the Donald Trump-Elon Musk government will be of the billionaire, by the billionaire, and for the billionaire—with one set of rules for the big-money oligarchs and another set for everyone else."

"Clean air and clean water are not and will not be for sale," the senator added.

Trump's FTC head vowed to 'terminate uncooperative bureaucrats' and fight 'DEI wokeism'

Matthew Chapman
December 10, 2024 
RAW STORY

President-elect Donald Trump has named his choice to head the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that oversees antitrust law: Andrew Ferguson, a longtime Republican FTC commissioner who has already pledged to purge the institution of anyone disloyal to Trump.

"Andrew most recently served as Solicitor General of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Prior to Government service, he was an antitrust litigator at several Washington, D.C. law firms. He earned his undergraduate degree and law degree from the University of Virginia. Andrew also clerked for Judge Karen L. Henderson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas," Trump posted to Truth Social.

"Andrew will be the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History," he added. "CONGRATULATIONS ANDREW!"

The FTC is currently chaired by Lina Khan, a progressive icon who raised the ire of several wealthy business leaders by cracking down on anticompetitive mergers. This week, she secured a major victory when a federal judge blocked the merger of supermarket chains Kroger and Albertsons, which opponents noted would create a giant grocery retailer with more locations than Walmart that would've resulted in higher prices. Tech billionaire Elon Musk in particular has pushed hard for Khan's removal.

Ferguson appears set to pump the brakes on this effort, stating on a campaign page to lobby Trump for the job, that he would "stop Lina Khan's anti-business agenda" and reverse the "war on mergers." He additionally promised to fight "DEI wokeism" and go after "censorship" on social media platforms.

Perhaps most ominously, however, Ferguson also vowed to "terminate uncooperative bureaucrats" who aren't on board with Trump's agenda — part of a broader push, outlined in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 plan, to strip merit protections from civil servants and replace them with party loyalists.

American imprisoned in Syria freed following fall of Assad regime
1:32

New Syria leaders vow to search for abducted US journalist Tice

By AFP
December 12, 2024

Austin Tice (L) was detained at a checkpoint in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, on August 14, 2012 - Copyright AFP JOSEPH EID

Syria’s new leadership said Thursday it was searching for abducted US journalist Austin Tice and had secured the release of another American it said had been held by the ousted government.

In 2022, US President Joe Biden accused Syria of holding Tice, a freelance photojournalist detained near Damascus a decade earlier, and demanded that the government of Bashar al-Assad release him.

The transitional government, which took the helm in Syria after Assad’s ouster on Sunday, said that “the search for American citizen Austin Tice is ongoing”.

“We confirm our readiness to cooperate directly with the US administration to search for American citizens disappeared by the former Assad regime,” the transitional government’s department of political affairs added in a statement on Telegram.

In recent days, Syrian residents and armed men have broken into government prisons, freeing inmates, some of whom have spent decades behind bars.

The political department’s statement said that another US citizen, Travis Timmerman, “has been released and secured”.

Residents of the Al-Zyabiyeh neighbourhood of Damascus said they had found Timmerman wandering around without shoes.

“The municipality guard Mousa Rifai found him, so we brought him to our house and fed him and he slept for about an hour,” said Ziyad Nedda.

“He was held in the Palestine Branch, he wouldn’t stop saying it. ‘I was held in the Palestine Branch in Damascus’,” he said.

The “Palestine Branch”, also known as Branch 235, was a prison operated by the Syrian intelligence services under Assad.



– Release ‘huge Christmas present’ –



According to US media reports, 29-year-old Timmerman was last seen in Budapest, Hungary, in early June.

His sister Pixie Rogers described his release as a “huge Christmas present” and said she “can’t wait for that day” she is reunited with her brother.

Timmerman’s mother “is very, very ecstatic… overwhelmed, and just beyond super excited with this information that we got today,” Rogers told the US network CBS.

Tice was working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other media outlets when he was detained at a checkpoint in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, on August 14, 2012.

Last week, the missing journalist’s mother, Debra, told reporters her son is believed to be alive and is being “treated well,” without providing further details.

The rebel forces, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), appointed an interim prime minister on Tuesday to lead Syria until March.

Assad fled the country over the weekend, ending a half-century of his family’s iron-fisted rule.

Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many Western governments including the United States, though it has more recently sought to moderate its rhetoric.

CAPTAGON

Syria’s rebel victors expose ousted government’s drug trade

By AFP
December 12, 2024

Rebel fighters said they found a drug factory linked to Maher al-Assad, widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade 

- Copyright AFP Aris MESSINIS
Dave CLARK

The dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.

Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.

Led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, the rebels say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.

On Wednesday, HTS fighters allowed Afp journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.

“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher al-Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek al-Shami.



– Household appliances –



Maher al-Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.

Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs”.

In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilisers.

“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.

Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.

Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.

Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.

Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP during a 2022 investigation.

Experts — like the author of a July report from the Carnegie Middle East Center — also believe that Assad used the threat of drug-fuelled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.

Captagon fuelled an epidemic of drug abuse in wealthy Gulf states, even as Assad sought ways to end his diplomatic isolation among his peers, wrote Carnegie scholar Hesham Alghannam.



– ‘Huge amount, brother’ –



Assad, he wrote, “leveraged captagon trafficking as a means of exerting pressure on the Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world”, which it did in 2023 when it rejoined the Arab League bloc.

The caustic soda at the warehouse, in the Damascus suburbs, was supplied from Saudi Arabia, according to labelling on the sacks.

The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.

Journalists from AFP this week found a bonfire of captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh air base, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.

Behind the smouldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged $100 bills.

“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab”.

“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”

Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbours by exporting the drug — a trade worth billions of dollars.

Inside Assad’s Captagon drug-smuggling empire and how it funded brutal Syrian regime

Story by Alex Croft
• 12/13/2024 • THE INDEPENDENT

As the dust settles on the fragments of Bashar al-Assad’s collapsed Syrian dictatorship, the truth about a mass drug empire believed to have brought huge profits to the former regime is being uncovered among the ashes.

The Assad family was long accused by Washington and other international actors of profiteering from the production and sale of captagon, an addictive amphetamine-like stimulant which swept across the Middle East and became known as “poor-man’s cocaine”.

The regime consistently denied links to the global captagon trade, which experts say is worth billions of dollars a year. A stimulant first produced in 1960s Germany to help treat attention deficit disorders and narcolepsy has swept the Middle East across the past decade.

It was discontinued but an illicit version of the drug known as "poor man's cocaine" continued to be produced in eastern Europe and later in the Arab world, becoming prominent in the conflict that erupted in Syria following anti-government protests in 2011.

It staves off sleep and hunger. It has been banned in many countries including the U.S. and can have harmful side effects. Its prevalence has led to growing drug abuse in Gulf Arab states.




Syrian members of the rebel group inspecting electrical components that were used to hide amphetamine pills (AP)

Now that the Assad family has been ousted following a lightning insurgency led by former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the scale of the trade in captagon is becoming clear.

In the city of Douma, 10 kilometres northeast of Syria’s capital of Damascus, warehouses storing thousands of captagon pills have been unearthed by the rebels scouring areas once controlled by the Assad regime and its allies. The warehouse, according to experts, may be one of the biggest captagon labs ever seen.

Pills were found hidden in furniture, fruit, decorative pebbles and voltage stabilisers. Many had a double crescent logo stamped on them, marking them as captagon pills.




Amphetamine pills, known as Captagon, hidden inside an electrical component at a warehouse where the drug was manufactured (AP)

Inside the warehouse, a pill-press was found along with dozens of barrels holding the various chemicals required to produce captagon. The chemicals came from various countries including the UK, China and India.

The leadership of Syria made an annual profit from captagon of around $2.4 billion, according to Caroline Rose, the director of the New-York-based New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project. An investigation by AFP news agency found that captagon had become Syria’s largest export, dwarfing its legal businesses.

Ms Rose, whose organisation tracks all publicly recorded captagon seizures and lab raids, said the site appeared to be one of the biggest captagon labs that has been found.

"It’s very possible that it's the biggest one that existed in regime-held Syria," she said.




Captagon helped to prop up Assad’s war effort to the tune of $2.4 billion per year (AP)

Last year, the US Treasury sanctioned a number of Syrians closely associated with the Assad regime for their alleged involvement captagon trade.

“The Syrian regime and its allies have increasingly embraced the production and trafficking of captagon to generate hard currency, estimated by some to be in the billions of dollars,” the Treasury said.

Related video: Syria's rebel victors expose ousted government's drug trade (AFP)

More videos

France24 (Video)Syrians celebrate the demise of Assad's regime as thousands freed from prison
8:15

France24 (Video)Syrian rebels discover large-scale drug factories
2:05

Among those sanctioned were two cousins of Bashar al-Assad and Khalid Qaddour, a close associate of Maher al-Assad, brother of Bashar, who was described as a “key drug producer and facilitator” of captagon production in Syria.

In the days since Assad's fall, rebel fighters say they have found several sites across the country where the drug was produced and prepared for export.

They have sometimes set fire to the pills or poured them down drains, according to videos shared online by accounts affiliated with them.

Ms Rose noted that her organisation tracked all publicly recorded captagon seizures and lab raids.

"Up until the regime fell, there was not a single incident of a laboratory seizure on the database in regime-held territories," she said.

Speaking in front of a crowd of supporters inside the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani told supporters according to AFP: “Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on Earth, and today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God.”

Reuters contributed to this report

The Independent stands for many things, often uniquely so. It stands independent of political party allegiance, and makes its own mind up on the issues of the day. The Independent has always been committed to challenge and debate. It launched in 1986 to create a new voice and in that time has run campaigns for issues ranging from the legalisation of marijuana to the Final Say Brexit petition.

What is the drug captagon and how is it linked to Syria’s fallen Assad regime?

THE CONVERSATION

Published: December 13, 2024 

After the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria, large stockpiles of the illicit drug captagon have reportedly been uncovered.

The stockpiles, found by Syrian rebels, are believed to be linked to al-Assad military headquarters, implicating the fallen regime in the drug’s manufacture and distribution.

But as we’ll see, captagon was once a pharmaceutical drug, similar to some of the legally available stimulants we still use today for conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Captagon was once a pharmaceutical

Captagon is the original brand name of an old synthetic pharmaceutical stimulant originally made in Germany in the 1960s. It was an alternative to amphetamine and methamphetamine, which were both used as medicines at the time.

The drug has the active ingredient fenethylline and was initially marketed for conditions including ADHD and the sleeping disorder narcolepsy. It had a similar use to some of the legally available stimulants we still use today, such as dexamphetamine.

Captagon has similar effects to amphetamines. It increases dopamine in the brain, leading to feelings of wellbeing, pleasure and euphoria. It also improves focus, concentration and stamina. But it has a lot of unwanted side effects, such as low-level psychosis.

The drug was originally sold mostly in the Middle East and parts of Europe. It was available over the counter (without a prescription) in Europe for a short time before it became prescription-only.

It was approved only briefly in the United States before becoming a controlled substance in the 1980s, but was still legal for the treatment of narcolepsy in many European countries until relatively recently.

According to the International Narcotics Control Board pharmaceutical manufacture of Captagon had stopped by 2009.

The illicit trade took over

The illegally manufactured version is usually referred to as captagon (with a small c). It is sometimes called “chemical courage” because it is thought to be used by soldiers in war-torn areas of the Middle East to help give them focus and energy.

For instance, it’s been reportedly found on the bodies of Hamas soldiers during the conflict with Israel.

Its manufacture is relatively straightforward and inexpensive, making it an obvious target for the black-market drug trade.

Black-market captagon is now nearly exclusively manufactured in Syria and surrounding countries such as Lebanon. It’s mostly used in the Middle East, including recreationally in some Gulf states.

It is one of the most commonly used illicit drugs in Syria.

A recent report suggests captagon generated more than US$7.3 billion in Syria and Lebanon between 2020 and 2022 (about $2.4 billion a year).

What we know about illicit drugs generally is that any seizures or crackdowns on manufacturing or sale have a very limited impact on the drug market because another manufacturer or distributor pops up to meet demand.

So in all likelihood, given the size of the captagon market in the Middle East, these latest drug discoveries and seizures are likely to reduce manufacture only for a short time.

Author

Nicole Lee
Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne based), Curtin University
Disclosure statement
Nicole Lee works as a paid consultant to the alcohol and other drug sector. She has previously been awarded grants by state and federal governments, NHMRC and other public funding bodies for alcohol and other drug research. She is a Board member of The Loop Australia.

What is Captagon, the addictive drug mass-produced in al-Assad's ...

May 9, 2023 ... An addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant, Captagon has been primarily produced in Syria in recent years and smuggled to the Gulf states. That ...

The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping, researcher says


By AFP
December 12, 2024

The Italian island of Sardinia was the original "blue zone", where people were believed to live longer than elsewhere - Copyright AFP Andrea ARIZA
Daniel Lawler

Most of what we know about humans living to very old age is based on faulty data, including the science behind the “blue zones” famous for having a high proportion of people over 100, according to one researcher.

The desire to live as long as possible has driven a booming lifestyle industry selling supplements, books, tech and tips to those wanting to learn the secrets of the world’s oldest people.

But Saul Justin Newman, a researcher at University College London’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies, told AFP that most extreme old age data “is junk to a really shocking degree”.

Newman’s research, which is currently being peer-reviewed, looked at data about centenarians and supercentenarians — people who live to 100 and 110 — in the United States, Italy, England, France and Japan.

Contrary to what one might expect, he found that supercentenarians tended to come from areas with poor health, high levels of poverty — and bad record-keeping.

The true secret to extreme longevity seems to be to “move where birth certificates are rare, teach your kids pension fraud and start lying”, Newman said as he accepted an Ig Nobel prize, a humorous version of the Nobel, in September.

Just one of many examples is Sogen Kato, who was thought to be Japan’s oldest living person until his mummified remains were discovered in 2010.

It turned out he had been dead since 1978. His family was arrested for collecting three decades of pensions payments.

The government then launched a review which found that 82 percent of Japan’s centenarians — 230,000 people — were missing or dead.

“Their paperwork is in order, they’re just dead,” Newman said.

This illustrates the problem Newman has sought to shine a light on — that confirming ages in this field involves triple-checking very old documents that could have been wrong from the start.

The industry that has popped up around blue zones is one “symptom” of this problem, he said.



– ‘Only alive on pension day’ –



Blue zones are regions around the world where people are said to live disproportionately longer and healthier lives.

The term was first used in 2004 by researchers referring to the Italian island of Sardinia.

The following year, National Geographic reporter Dan Buettner wrote a story that added the Japanese islands of Okinawa and the Californian city of Loma Linda.

Buettner admitted to the New York Times in October that he only included Loma Linda because his editor told him: “you need to find America’s blue zone”.

The reporter teamed up with some demographers to create the Blue Zones lifestyle brand, and they added Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula and the Greek island of Ikaria to the list.

However, as seen in Japan, later government records have cast doubt on old age data in these regions.

In Costa Rica, 2008 research showed that 42 percent of centenarians had “lied about their age” in an earlier census, Newman said.

For Greece, he found 2012 data suggesting that 72 percent of the country’s centenarians were dead or imaginary.

“They’re only alive on pension day,” Newman said.

Several prominent blue zone researchers wrote a rebuttal earlier this year, calling Newman’s work “ethically and academically irresponsible”.

They accused Newman of referring to broader regions of Japan and Sardinia when the blue zones were smaller areas.

The demographers also emphasised they had “meticulously validated” the ages of supercentenarians in blue zones, double-checking historical records and registries dating back to the 1800s.

Newman said this argument illustrated his point.

“If you start with a birth certificate that’s wrong, that gets copied to everything, and you get perfectly consistent, perfectly wrong records,” he said.



– A clock to measure age –



The only “way out of this quagmire” is to physically measure people’s ages, Newman said.

Steve Horvath, an ageing researcher at the University of California, told AFP he had created a new technique called a methylation clock “for the express purpose of validating claims of exceptional longevity”.

The clock can “reliably detect instances of severe fraud”, such as when a child assumes their parent’s identity, but cannot yet tell the difference between a 115- and 120-year-old, he said.

Horvath has offered to test a DNA sample of France’s Jeanne Calment, who died at 122 in 1997 and holds the record for the oldest confirmed age.

Newman’s analysis “appears to be both rigorous and convincing”, Horvath said, adding that several blue zones are overseen by rigorous scientists.

“I suspect both opinions hold some truth,” he said.

So what can people at home take away from this debate?

“If you want to live a long time, step number one: don’t buy anything,” Newman said.

“Listen your GP (doctor), do some exercise, don’t drink, don’t smoke — that’s it.”

‘Part of Bogota’s soul’: how Colombia fired up the car-free movement


By AFP
December 12, 2024

An estimated 1.7 million Bogotanos walk, cycle, jog, rollerblade, scoot, ride unicycles, push buggies through 128 kilometers (79 miles) of car-free streets each Sunday - Copyright AFP Andrea ARIZA

Clare BYRNE

Fifty years ago, a 28-year-old Colombian with a bushy beard, flares and vintage Raleigh bicycle led a revolution on the streets of Bogota.

Architect Jaime Ortiz Marino got permission to shut down a section of roads and — with 5,000 other two-wheeler radicals — pedaled down the middle of the street on December 15, 1974 in protest over car culture.

The world’s first Open Streets event quickly grew into a weekly fixture named “Ciclovia” that has spawned dozens of imitations in cities worldwide.

“This is the biggest outdoor civics classroom in the world!” Ortiz Marino, now 78, told AFP, surveying his creation with satisfaction on a recent Sunday.

An estimated 1.7 million Bogotanos walk, cycle, jog, rollerblade, scoot, ride unicycles, push buggies through 128 kilometers (79 miles) of car-free streets each Sunday.

The program’s global renown is a huge source of pride in Bogota, helping transform a city blighted by guerrilla and paramilitary violence in the 1980s and 1990s into a Latin American capital of cool.

“Ciclovia is part of Bogota’s soul,” Camilo Ramirez, a migration specialist, told AFP as he and his wife Anny Garcia jogged down the street behind their bike-riding children, aged 5 and 12.

“This is what keeps me alive!” said Jhon Lozano, a spry 89-year-old cycling fanatic, who leaves home at 4:30 am each Sunday to meet up with friends along the route.

– ‘Escape valve’ –

Ortiz Marino describes Ciclovia as an “escape valve” for residents of Latin America’s fourth-biggest city, which has seen its population explode to eight million in the past half-century.

Public transport, which consists almost exclusively of buses — a long-awaited first metro line is still under construction — has failed to keep pace with the growth, resulting in some of the worst traffic jams in the world.

Sundays offer a welcome respite from the gridlock and smog, as a tsunami of fitness enthusiasts pour through the city, from the wealthy north to the poorer south.

The mood is festive, with stalls dotted along the route offering juices, arepas (corn cakes) and other snacks.

For Ramirez and Garcia, who grew up cycling and skating on Ciclovia, having the freedom of the city once a week has become a Bogota birthright.

“If we don’t go out for some reason, for instance because it’s raining, the children miss it,” Garcia said.

– Crazy about bikes –

At an elevation of 2,600 meters (8,500 feet), the world’s third-highest city might seen an unlikely place to start a biking revolution.

But Colombians’ passion for cycling dates back generations, fueled by the exploits of legends such as 1987 Vuelta a Espana winner Luis “Lucho” Herrera and 2019 Tour de France winner Egan Bernal.

In 1974, Ortiz Marino recalled, Bogota was “a city designed for cars, but in which people do not have cars.”

The bicycle became a symbol of emancipation, “allowing everyone to move about in ways that are accessible to all,” psychologist and urbanist Carlos Efe Pardo said.

The city now has nearly 600 kilometers of dedicated cycle lines.

Ciclovia has also helped create employment for thousands of people, including the bicycle mechanics stationed at regular intervals along the route to pump tires and fix punctures.

“Here I have earned what I need to pay for my daughter’s education, my own well-being and my home,” 56-year-old bike mechanic Eladio Gustavo Atis Bernal said.

– Costs brake US rollout –

Ciclovia’s biggest legacy however has been its ability to transcend Colombia’s deep political and social divisions.

Throughout decades of violence, it never came under attack, with the defunct FARC guerrilla group vowing never to target it, according to Ortiz Marino.

The program, which is poised for further expansion into Bogota’s poorer southern districts, has become one of the city’s biggest exports, spawning spinoffs in Chile, Mexico City and Sao Paulo, among others.

But no major US city or European capital has managed to shut out cars each week.

“It’s really about costs,” Aaron Paley, co-founder of Los Angeles’ monthly CicLAvia told AFP.

He cited eye-popping costs for insurance and special water-filled barriers required to be set up.

Colombian-born sustainable mobility consultant Marcela Guerrero Casas also faced challenges in trying to import Ciclovia into the South African city of Cape Town.

Citing that city’s low density — a legacy of the racist apartheid regime which kept communities apart — and the absence of a legal framework for closing streets, she said: “Ultimately, each city must develop a model that suits its unique conditions.”

Nerds or crooks? 3D gun makers in spotlight after US executive murder

GIVE AN AMERICAN A 3D PRINTER FIRST THING THEY DO IS PRINT A GUN!

By AFP
December 12, 2024


The murder of health executive Brian Thompson in New York sparked a flurry of backlash against ghost guns - Copyright AFP Andrea ARIZA
Ben Turner

Gun rights activist Rob Pincus was worried when he heard a 3D-printed “ghost gun” was found on the alleged shooter in last week’s notorious murder of a US health executive in New York.

Not because it showed the danger of the untraceable weapons — but because the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson would mean “another wave of attacks” against private gun makers.

A police report states that 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who led authorities on a six-day manhunt only to be arrested in a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania, was found with a “black 3D-printed pistol and a black silencer” in his backpack.

The news sparked renewed fears over ghost guns, which President Joe Biden’s administration has tried to crack down on as the homemade weapons are increasingly used in crimes.

Ghost guns are weapons put together as a kit or from separate pieces, sometimes made by 3D printers, and have no serial numbers so cannot be traced.

Anti-gun violence group Giffords Law Center slammed them as a “criminal’s dream come true,” while another group, Everytown, said the New York killing showed how they have “exacerbated our nation’s gun violence epidemic.”

But for Pincus, who runs an annual homemade gun-making contest, producing 3D-printed guns is a “nerdy” hobby.

The process typically involves inputting gun designs shared online into a 3D printer, which then sculpts a physical frame that can be built into a firearm using other commercially available parts.

“It trends towards the ‘Lords of the Rings book club’ look, rather than the ‘wannabe cop’ look you might get at other gun events,” he told AFP.



– ‘Congratulations’ –



However, enthusiastic social media reactions to the New York killing hint at a darker underbelly to homemade gun making, as some people began to recognize who had designed the alleged shooter’s gun.

“Congratulations @chairmanwon for designing the frame of the 1st high profile assassination with a 3D Printed gun,” one gun maker wrote on X, referring to the pseudonym of the supposed creator.

Some designers have gone offline since the killing — possibly fearing repercussions from authorities, according to Cody Wilson, the founder of a website that distributes gun designs that can be used on 3D printers.

“There are lots of legal implications… Law enforcement are now empowered to penetrate the groups of designers,” Wilson told AFP.

Under US law, gun rights are closely protected by the Second Amendment and it is legal to build a firearm for personal use.

Many people doing this had relied on DIY gun kits bought on the internet until the Biden administration introduced new regulations in 2022, as police recoveries of ghost guns jumped from 4,000 in 2018 to nearly 20,000 in 2021.

The rule, which is being challenged by gun rights groups in the Supreme Court, broadened the definition of a firearm to include the weapon frame — even if sold separately — meaning sellers of frames would have to provide serial numbers and carry out background checks on buyers.

Tom Chittum, a former associate deputy director of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), said that technology developments are likely to increase 3D-printed guns, but he still downplayed the danger they posed despite the latest death.

“It’s exceedingly rare to see 3D-printed weapons used in violent crimes,” Chittum, who now works at a security firm, told AFP.

“There’s no reason to think that 3D guns have somehow made the world more dangerous.”

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/nerds-or-crooks-3d-gun-makers-in-spotlight-after-us-executive-murder/article#ixzz8uMED7c7u

Japanese researchers test pioneering drug to regrow teeth

By AFP
December 12, 2024


Handout images from the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital show before (top) and after images of the regrowth of teeth in a ferret (centre) and mice (R and L) - Copyright TAIWAN COAST GUARD/AFP Handout
Tomohiro OSAKI

People with missing teeth may be able to grow new ones, say Japanese dentists testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants.

Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth.

But hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, according to Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka.

His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental medicine to adult test subjects that they say has the potential to jumpstart the growth of these concealed teeth.

It’s a technology “completely new” to the world, Takahashi told AFP.

Prosthetic treatments used for teeth lost to decay, disease or injury are often seen as costly and invasive.

So “restoring natural teeth definitely has its advantages”, said Takahashi, the project’s lead researcher.

Tests on mice and ferrets suggest that blocking a protein called USAG-1 can awaken the third set, and the researchers have published lab photographs of regrown animal teeth.

In a study published last year, the team said their “antibody treatment in mice is effective for tooth regeneration and can be a breakthrough in treating tooth anomalies in humans”.

– ‘Only the beginning’ –

For now, the dentists are prioritising the “dire” needs of patients with six or more permanent teeth missing from birth.

The hereditary condition is said to affect around 0.1 percent of people, who can have severe trouble chewing, and in Japan often spend most of their adolescence wearing a face mask to hide the wide gaps in their mouth, Takahashi said.

“This drug could be a game-changer for them,” he added.

The drug is therefore aimed primarily at children, and the researchers want to make it available as early as 2030.

Angray Kang, a dentistry professor at Queen Mary University of London, only knows of one other team pursuing a similar objective of using antibodies to regrow or repair teeth.

“I would say that the Takahashi group is leading the way,” the immunotechnology expert, who is not connected to the Japanese research, told AFP.

Takahashi’s work is “exciting and worth pursuing”, Kang said, in part because an antibody drug that targets a protein nearly identical to USAG-1 is already being used to treat osteoporosis.

“The race to regenerate human teeth is not a short sprint, but by analogy a set of back-to-back consecutive ultra-marathons,” he said.

“This is only the beginning.”

Chengfei Zhang, a clinical professor in endodontics at the University of Hong Kong, said Takahashi’s method is “innovative and holds potential”.

“The assertion that humans possess latent tooth buds capable of producing a third set of teeth is both revolutionary and controversial,” he told AFP.

He also cautioned that “outcomes observed in animals do not always directly translate to humans”.

The results of the animal experiments raise “questions about whether regenerated teeth could functionally and aesthetically replace missing teeth”, Zhang added.

– ‘Over the moon’ –

A confident Takahashi argues that the location of a new tooth in a mouth can be controlled, if not pinpointed, by the drug injection site.

And if it grows in the wrong place, it can be moved through orthodontics or transplantation, he said.

No young patients with the congenital disorder are taking part in the first clinical trial, as the main objective is to test the drug’s safety, rather than its effectiveness.

So for now, the participants are healthy adults who have lost at least one existing tooth.

And while tooth regeneration is not the express goal of the trial this time around, there is a slim chance that it could happen to subjects anyway, Takahashi said.

If so, the researchers will have confirmed that the drug can be effective for those with acquired toothlessness — which would be a medical triumph.

“I would be over the moon if that happens,” Takahashi said.

This could be particularly welcome news in Japan, which has the second-oldest population in the world.

Health ministry data shows more than 90 percent of people aged 75 or older in Japan have at least one tooth missing.

“Expectations are high that our technology can directly extend their healthy life expectancy,” Takahashi said.

'More harm than good': Trump nominee expected to push 'high-risk' health research

Travis Gettys
December 12, 2024
RAW STORY

Scientist (Shutterstock)

Donald Trump has nominated a controversial choice to oversee the National Institutes of Health, and both supporters and critics say he would likely push for more high-risk, high-reward research.

The president-elect tapped Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who's both an epidemiologist and economist, to oversee the NIH and its nearly 19,000 employees across nearly 30 institutes and centers, and he's expected to shake up the research institution with a nearly $48 billion budget, reported Axios.

"The controversial Stanford professor could rattle the scientific establishment and turf-conscious lawmakers in Congress, but also satisfy skeptics' calls for a serious look under the hood at how NIH works," the website reported. "There's generally less risk-taking today that pushes science in new directions, in part because of economic incentives and the higher likelihood that research confirming earlier work will pay off."

The health economist criticized Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates during the pandemic and pushed the idea of protecting the elderly and other vulnerable populations while letting others resume their normal routines, which ex-NIH director Francis Collins dismissed as dangerous.

"Getting science right is arguably the single-most important thing we can do in society," says Caleb Watney, co-founder and co-CEO of the Institute for Progress.

Bhattacharya and his former student, University of Waterloo economist Mikko Packalen, have previously found that NIH is generally supportive of novel scientific ideas, but their analysis showed funding for innovative ideas trended away from clinical research toward basic science, which the private sector doesn't have an incentive to fund, and he has identified the grant review process as an area for reform.

"Everyone complains about peer review," said one former senior NIH official. "Picking the winners isn't that easy in science."

Even some of Bhattacharya's critics have expressed cautious optimism that he could identify high-risk, high-reward programs worthy of public funding, but they also worry that he could make changes just for the sake of making changes.


"There is so much to do – none of this glamorous," said Pierre Azoulay, an MIT economist who was a co-investigator on a grant with Bhattacharya before the pandemic. NIH "still funds a lot of great research" and "you can imagine some reforms doing more harm than good."

Australia to force tech titans to pay for news shared on platforms


By AFP
December 12, 2024

Australia wants big tech companies to compensate local publishers for sharing news links that drive traffic to their platforms - Copyright AFP/File SEBASTIEN BOZON

Australia will force Meta and Google to pay for news shared on their platforms under a new scheme unveiled Thursday, threatening to tax them if they refuse to strike deals with local media.

Traditional media companies the world over are in a battle for survival as precious advertising dollars are hoovered up online.

Australia wants big tech companies to compensate local publishers for sharing news links that drive traffic to their platforms, an idea they have baulked at in the past.

“It is important that digital platforms play their part. They need to support access to quality journalism that informs and strengthens our democracy,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.

Social media platforms with Australian revenue of more than US$160 million a year will be taxed a still-to-be-decided figure earmarked to pay for news.

But they can avoid paying the tax if they voluntarily enter into commercial agreements with Australian media companies.

It is the latest salvo in Australia’s efforts to reign in the tech giants.

Australia last month voted for new laws that will ban under-16s from social media.

It has also mooted slapping fines on companies that fail to stamp out offensive content and the spread of disinformation.