“Scientists are testing an entirely new way to fight heart disease: a gene-editing treatment that might offer a one-time fix for high cholesterol. It’s very early stage research, tried in only a few dozen people so far. But gene-editing approaches being developed by two companies show hints that switching off certain genes could dramatically lower artery-clogging cholesterol, raising hopes of one day being able to prevent heart attacks without having to take pills. ‘People want a fix, not a bandage,’ said Dr. Luke Laffin, a preventive cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. After co-authoring a promising study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, he said he was flooded with queries about how to participate in the next clinical trial.” (02/11/25)
“I don’t want to be that guy who throws the red challenge flag on the victims of child sex trafficking at the hands of Democrat Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator and fellow Democrat Ghislaine Maxwell, but someone has to. Someone has to because the ‘justice’ these women are demanding, or are claiming to demand, is fully and completely within their grasp, and their grasp alone. Yet, they don’t seem willing to take it. Sooner or later, they have to put up, or shut up, don’t they? There comes a point at which you either put your money where your mouth is or you stop talking trash. People who talk about how tough they are, or how good they are at something, often get really quiet when challenged to a fight or a game.” (02/12/25)
“The Paris prosecutors office on Thursday said that nine people were being detained as part of an investigation into a suspected decade-long, 10 million euro ($11.8 million) ticket fraud scheme at the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum. The arrests took place on Tuesday as part of a judicial investigation opened after the Louvre filed a complaint in December 2024, the prosecutors’ office said. The loss for the museum over the past decade is estimated to exceed 10 million euros ($11.8 million), it said. Those detained include two Louvre employees, several tour guides and one person suspected of being the mastermind, according to the prosecutors’ office. The museum alerted investigators about the frequent presence of two Chinese tour guides suspected of bringing groups of Chinese tourists into the museum by fraudulently reusing the same tickets multiple times for different visitors. Other guides were later suspected of similar practices.” (02/12/25)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman
“For months, we have warned of a drive by President Donald Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent, and over the past week the public issue has exploded. The fight for a free and fair vote is taking shape, especially after House Republicans on Wednesday night passed the euphemistically named SAVE Act. Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb. Effectively, the bill would require Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register and thus to vote. Brennan Center research shows that 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. Half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example.” (02/12/25)
“New York City is facing serious public health challenges. Drug overdoses are surging. Mental illness is rampant. Emergency rooms are under strain. Life expectancy in parts of the city has declined. So what are some employees at the New York City Department of Health reportedly studying? The effects of ‘global oppression’ on health. This is not a joke. It is a disturbing example of how ideology has displaced competence in city government — and how taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill. A public health department has a straightforward mission: protect people from disease, respond to health emergencies and ensure basic safety standards. It exists to prevent outbreaks, combat addiction, improve maternal health and keep food and water safe. It is not a political theory workshop.” (02/12/25)
“Two Mexican Navy ships laden with humanitarian aid docked in Cuba on Thursday as a U.S. blockade deepens the island’s energy crisis. The ships arrived two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country selling or providing oil to Cuba, prompting the island to ration energy in recent days. The Mexican government said that one ship carried some 536 tons of food including milk, rice, beans, sardines, meat products, cookies, canned tuna, and vegetable oil, as well as personal hygiene items. The second ship carried just over 277 tons of powdered milk. Yohandri Espinosa, a 34-year-old engineer, observed the ships arrive with his daughter and took pictures. ‘This is incredibly important aid for the Cuban people at this moment,’ he said. ‘We are living through difficult times of great need and uncertainty, and we don’t know how long we will be like this.'” (02/12/25)
“Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is under federal indictment for participating in a Minnesota protest group’s obstruction of a church service. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday. News of his prosecution took me back more than five decades to when I was a young university professor in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). At that time, President Mobutu Sese Seko’s government threatened to arrest me for my alleged involvement in student disruptions. In both cases, increasingly authoritarian governments decided to clamp down on independent observers (journalists or others) who sympathized with community activists. To do so, they distorted what actually happened to serve their political interests. Yet, I suspect that the last person President Donald Trump wants to be compared to is a corrupt, fallen, disgraced African dictator.” [editor’s note: He performed as a part of the story, not as a real journalist, and should pay the penalty for violating the rights of the pastor and parishioner, End of story – SAT] [additional editor’s note: I’d chide SAT every time he was wrong, but nobody wants two editors’ notes EVERY time – TLK] (02/12/25)
“The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate. In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives. Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued. The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.” (02/12/25)
“Ding dong, the climate hoax is dead. Twenty years after Al Gore’s apocalyptic movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ the Trump administration has put the final nail in the coffin of the lie that scared a generation into believing the planet was about to explode in flames if they kept using fossil fuels. In what the White House calls ‘the largest deregulatory action in American history,’ the EPA on Thursday will repeal an Obama-era proclamation that has mandated greenhouse-gas regulations for 17 years. The 2009 ‘endangerment finding’ has been the primary climate handbrake on American industry, forming the legal justification for increasingly punitive greenhouse-gas regulations. Rescinding it ‘would save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week, with the EPA projecting an average saving of $2,400 per vehicle and further savings on farm machinery, soon to be freed from the complex extra circuitry required to restrict emissions.” (02/11/25)
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has selected his daughter as his heir, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday. Kim Ju Ae — who is believed to be 13 — has in recent months been pictured beside her father in high-profile events like a visit to Beijing in September, her first known trip abroad. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it took ‘a range of circumstances’ into account including her ‘increasingly prominent public presence at official events’ in making this assessment. The NIS also said it would keep close tabs on whether she will attend the North’s party congress later this month — its largest political event that is held once every five years. The party Congress is where Pyongyang is expected to give more details about priorities like foreign policy, war planning and nuclear ambitions for the next five years.” (02/12/25)
