For most people, a summer trip to France is a chance to relax in beautiful surroundings and to savor the country’s fine food. For Tom Rice of San Diego, it’s an opportunity to relive the time he nearly died jumping from a C-47 Douglas airplane, then was shot at, again and again.
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Despite being 97, Rice climbed once more into the bone-rattling fuselage of a C-47 and, while flying over the Normandy fields where he first saw action in 1944, leaped into the unknown.
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Those on the ground watched the anxiety-inducing descent as, strapped to another parachutist dangling beneath a red, white and blue canopy, the old man coasted through the sky, another gigantic American flag billowing out behind him.
A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.
The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed.
Researchers in the company’s division of inflammation and immunology urged Pfizer to conduct a clinical trial on thousands of patients, which they estimated would cost $80 million, to see if the signal contained in the data was real, according to an internal company document obtained by The Washington Post.
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Pfizer’s arthritis drug appeared to reduce the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. The Washington Post’s Chris Rowland explains why Pfizer did not pursue it.(Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)
According to the 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses report, the number of women-owned businesses increased by 58 percent from 2007 to 2018.From this, businesses owned by African-American women grew by 164 percent, which is equal to 20 percent of all women-owned businesses. Not only does this provide a huge boost to the economy, it can create jobs in local communities. Food Tank has compiled a list of 14 African-American female entrepreneurs who have incorporated sustainable food production practices into their business motto.
In America, the conventional wisdom of how to live healthily is full of axioms that long ago shed their origins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Get eight hours of sleep. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Two thousand calories a day is normal. Even people who don’t regularly see a doctor are likely to have encountered this information, which forms the basis of a cultural shorthand. Tick these boxes, and you’re a healthy person.
In the past decade, as pedometers have proliferated in smartphone apps and wearable fitness trackers, another benchmark has entered the lexicon: Take at least 10,000 steps a day, which is about five miles of walking for most people. As with many other American fitness norms, where this particular number came from has always been a little hazy. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a default daily goal for some of the most popular activity trackers on the market.
Now new research is calling the usefulness of the 10,000-step standard into question—and with it, the way many Americans think about their daily activities. While basic guidelines can be helpful when they’re accurate, human health is far too complicated to be reduced to a long chain of numerical imperatives. For some people, these rules can even do more harm than good.
Mosquitoes and ticks can spoil a beautiful day and make people sick. Beyond buzzing, biting, sucking and stinging, they can carry serious diseases. Tiny blacklegged ticks carry Lyme disease. Nighttime biting Culex mosquitoes can transmit West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis. And the aggressive Aedes mosquitoes — happy to bite any time — can cause Zika, dengue fever and chikungunya. And that’s just a sampling of the troubles they bring.
Little wonder we look for ways to protect ourselves from mosquitoes and ticks, especially this time of the year, when we spend more time outside. With a little thought and care, though, we can do so in ways that are healthier for us — and for the world around us — than using toxic chemicals.
Insecticides kill all insects, not just ticks and mosquitoes. They also kill important pollinators such as bees, butterflies and moths. Insecticides harm the animals that eat these insects such as bats and birds. And they wash into waterways, where they can kill aquatic invertebrates that provide critical food for fish, frogs and other stream dwellers.
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Mosquitoes in a cage in a laboratory in Brazil. There are ways you can prevent bites from these flying insects and ticks without using chemicals that could harm the environment and other creatures. (Paulo Fridman/Bloomberg News)
When an antiques dealer in Scotland bought an ivory chessman for £5 ($6) in 1964, he probably had no inkling that he had taken possession of one of the most famous chess pieces in the world.
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Stored in a drawer for 55 years, the Lewis Warder, as the piece is known, could now fetch up to £1 million ($1.3 million) at auction after the late owner’s family took it to Sotheby’s auction house in London for assessment.
The Lewis Chessmen were found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in 1831, but the circumstances of their discovery are shrouded in mystery. With 93 pieces found — the majority carved from walrus ivory — the set was missing one knight and four “warders.”
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The chessman was recorded in the owner’s ledger as ‘Antique Walrus Tusk Warrior Chessman.’ Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort could be headed to Rikers Island, the notorious jail complex in New York City, if prosecutors get their way.
New York prosecutors are seeking to move Manafort from the western Pennsylvania prison where he is serving his federal sentence to Rikers Island for the duration of a state case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
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But Manafort’s legal team hopes that won’t be where he stays as he faces the New York charges. Manafort hasn’t been told where he’ll be held yet, according to his defense attorney, Todd Blanche. Blanche acknowledged that Rikers was a possible place Manafort could go—and that it’s even likely.
As tax season drew to a close in April 2019, and Americans all across the country struggled through their newly-convoluted return forms, their paltry or non-existent refunds, their minimum wage, and salary increases, and their resulting financial status, a slowly dawning realization began to take shape.
It was the unpleasant recognition that yes, in fact, they had been conned.
The title of this analysis by Think Progress, reporting on a study just released by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, really says it all: New study confirms ordinary Americans got fleeced by the Trump tax bill.
And Michael Hiltzik, writing for the Los Angeles Times, explains just what a colossal, shameless rip-off the Republican Party and Donald Trump perpetrated against ordinary Americans, with the passage of their so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” a legislative abomination which the formerly Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Republican Senate foisted upon all American taxpayers in the dead of night on December 20, 2017.
Abbey Creek, Black Coyote, McBride Sisters, Brown Estate—these are a few names bounced around when discussing Black wineries. Yes, there are many more but Brown Estate, the Napa Valley’s first Black-owned estate winery, made news in February because of a big partnership with Delta Air Lines.
Family Roots
Based in Napa Valley, California and sporting the familiar scarab beetle on most of its bottles, Brown Estates is known for Chaos Theory and a variety of Zinfandel wines. The Brown family’s vineyard started in 1980. By 1995, the Brown children began laying the groundwork for Brown Estates but it would be a year before they began working on their first wine.
Things came to fruition in 1996 and four years later, three vintages took the stage at San Francisco’s Zinfandel Advocates and Producers Grand Tasting. Since then, the winery has expanded as has the business. With this came more recognition in the wine world and more interest from potential partners.
It is said that all modern pop music is really just based on four chords. So, in essence, every pop song is mostly the same — it’s how one arranges those chords that makes the music interesting or different. The same can be said for the pop music biopics. The newest entry is “Rocketman,” which focuses on the first 40 years of legend Sir Elton John’s life. On paper, the film sounds exactly like every other pop music biopic, from the one-hour “Behind the Music” specials which used to air with alarming regularity on VH1 to last year’s hit “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It’s what the film does with its source material that makes it special.
The comparisons to “Bohemian Rhapsody” are inevitable. Set in the same early-1970s to late-1980s era, both movies feature sons who have their musical interests and signs of genius discounted. One day, Young Elton (then named the far less sexy Reginald Dwight) meets a fellow musician to partner with, lyricist Bernie Taupin, who is still his main collaborator. This coming-of-age story, complete with a series of challenges posed by drugs and a meddlesome lover-turned-manager, is quite similar to the story of Queen frontman Freddy Mercury. In the end, rock bottom is found, the artist has a call to sobriety, and the film ends with a triumphant recreation of a seminal career moment.
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Taron Egerton is a bolt of electricity in “Rocketman.”Paramount Pictures
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Despite being 97, Rice leaped into the unknown.
Paul Manafort to Rikers Island?
Americans were ‘fleeced’ by the GOP tax bill
Winery Signs Deal With Delta Airlines
James' World 2 