"The United States cannot be complicit in the use of starvation as a weapon of war" - Bernie Sanders

 

The United Nations has reported that 28 children have died of malnutrition and dehydration in Gaza thus far. The real total is likely much higher. More than one million people in Gaza face “catastrophic food insecurity,” and more than 50,000 children are acutely malnourished. 

In other words, the people of Gaza are starving. Without a dramatic influx of food, water, and medicine, many thousands more innocent men, women, and children will perish. This is morally unacceptable and must end NOW.

 

As a result of President Biden’s conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, Israel has committed to a number of steps to improve humanitarian conditions and aid access. These commitments include opening additional border crossings, increasing the number of trucks cleared for entry into Gaza, improving aid distribution within Gaza, and reopening some bakeries and a water pipeline to supply northern Gaza. President Biden made clear that “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.

 

On Sunday, more than 300 trucks were cleared to cross into Gaza, the highest total since the war began, though still short of the 500 trucks per day that humanitarian organizations say are needed. Israel says aid will begin to flow through new crossings in the north later this week.

These are welcome if long-overdue steps. But, given Israel’s horrendous humanitarian record thus far, these commitments must be closely monitored on a daily basis. This is an urgent crisis. Food, water, and medical supplies must immediately reach people in desperate need throughout Gaza. The United States government must demand daily updates on implementation of these steps.

 

A significant majority of the American people now believe that Israel should not receive additional U.S. military aid while this horrific humanitarian crisis endures. I agree. The United States must focus on saving innocent Palestinian people and advancing steps that can secure a lasting peace, not sending Netanyahu’s extreme, right-wing government more money or weapons. The United States cannot be complicit in the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

 

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress.

-CounterPunch

"We have heard the universe singing" -Maria Popova

 

I remember singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in the choir of the Bulgarian Math Academy as a child. I remember my awe at learning that across centuries of warring nationalisms, this piece of music, based on an old Schiller poem and born of Beethoven’s unimaginable trials, had become the official Hymn of Europe — a bridge of harmony across human divides. I remember wondering as I sang whether music is something we make or something we are made of.

That is what Pythagoras, too, wondered when he laid the foundation of Western music by discovering the mathematics of harmony. Its beauty so staggered him that he thought the entire universe must be governed by it. He called it music of the spheres — the idea that every celestial body produces in its movement a unique hum determined by its orbit.

The word orbit did not exist in his day. It was Kepler who coined it two millennia later, and it was Kepler who resurrected Pythagoras’s music of the spheres in The Harmony of the World — the 1619 book in which he formulated his third and final law of planetary motion, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe.

For Kepler, this notion of celestial music was not mere metaphor, not just a symbolic organizing principle for the cosmic order — he believed in it literally, believed that the universe is singing, reverberating with music inaudible to human ears but as real as gravity. He died ridiculed for this belief.

Half a millennium after his death, our radio telescopes — those immense prosthetic ears built by centuries of science — detected a low-frequency hum pervading the universe, the product of supermassive black holes colliding in the early universe: Each merging pair sounds a different low note, and all the notes are sounding together into this great cosmic hum. We have heard the universe singing.

To me, this is what makes music so singular — the way it bridges the cosmic and the human, the ephemeral and the eternal. It is at once the most abstract of the arts, made of mathematics, feeling, and time, and the most concrete in its inescapable embodiment — we sing because we have a body, this bittersweet reminder that we are mortal, and we sing to celebrate that we are alive.

Alongside love, music may be our best way of saying “yes” to life, and to our life together — I know from the most etymologically passionate person in my life that the Latin root of the word person means “to sound through,” in turn implying a listener:

We sound through to something other than ourselves. When we speak, when we sing, when we channel this sound wave of the soul, we reach beyond the self and partake of the great harmonic of belonging. That harmonic comes alive with uncommon beauty and ecstatic tenderness in Marie Howe’s poem “Hymn.” […]

 

HYMN by Marie Howe

It began as an almost inaudible hum,
low and long for the solar winds
     and far dim galaxies,

a hymn growing louder, for the moon and the sun,
a song without words for the snow falling,
     for snow conceiving snow

conceiving rain, the rivers rushing without shame,
the hum turning again higher — into a riff of ridges
     peaks hard as consonants,

summits and praise for the rocky faults and crust and crevices
then down, down to the roots and rocks and burrows
     the lakes’ skittery surfaces, wells, oceans, breaking

waves, the salt-deep: the warm bodies moving within it:
the cold deep: the deep underneath gleaming: some of us rising
     as the planet turned into dawn, some lying down

as it turned into dark; as each of us rested — another woke, standing
among the cast-off cartons and automobiles;
     we left the factories and stood in the parking lots,

left the subways and stood on sidewalks, in the bright offices,
in the cluttered yards, in the farmed fields,
     in the mud of the shanty towns, breaking into

harmonies we’d not known possible. finding the chords as we
found our true place singing in a million,
     million keys the human hymn of praise for every

something else there is and ever was and will be:
     the song growing louder and rising.
          (Listen, I too believed it was a dream.)

 

-Maria Popova, Marginalian

A Possible Alzheimer's Treatment

 

• Sildenafil, a compound in drugs that treat erectile dysfunction and one type of hypertension, could be used to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease, the results of a new study suggest.
• Among people who already take sildenafil, the main ingredient in Viagra, the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease was significantly less than in people who did not.
• At least one expert warned that an observational study such as this may not be telling the whole story, and should be approached with caution.

The compound sildenafil is a main ingredient in Viagra, and it forms the basis of Revatio, a medication for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Now, a new study suggests sildenafil may also help in treating Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers, led by the Cleveland Clinic, observed a 30% to 54% reduction in the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease among people who were taking sildenafil for erectile dysfunction or pulmonary arterial hypertension, compared to those who did not.

The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Sildenafil lowers tau levels in the brain

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia. The Alzheimer’s Association estimatesTrusted Source that about 6.7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s. It is the fifth-leading cause of death in the U.S., and its prevalence is expected to rise as the population ages.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association between 2000 and 2019, deaths from stroke, heart disease, and HIV decreased, whereas reported deaths from Alzheimer’s increased more than 145%.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, getting worse over time, typically beginning with memory loss and ultimately leading to difficulties communicating with others, or responding appropriately to the environment in which one finds themselves.

The authors of the new study utilized computational models to parse the data for millions of patients in two medical databases, MarketScan Medicare Supplemental and Clinformatics. In the MarketScan database, the reduction in Alzheimer’s was 54%. In the Clinformatics database, it was 30%.

After sildenafil was identified as a drug of interest from the analyzed data, further research occurred in the lab. Working with brain cells from Alzheimer’s patients, researchers found that sildenafil lowered levels of neurotoxic tau proteins. Such proteins build up in the brain as Alzheimer’s progresses.

For many years, these tau proteins were coupled with amyloid plaques as likely causes of Alzheimer’s. However, the foundational research on amyloid plaques has been discredited. Even so, neurotoxic tau proteins are still considered to be a crucial aspect of Alzheimer’s.

They also observed that neurons they had exposed to sildenafil promoted improved brain function, cell growth, and also reduced inflammation and metabolic processes associated with the cognitive degeneration that occurs with Alzheimer’s.

PDE 5 inhibitors to treat Alzheimer’s?

Sildenafil, as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, is a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor, or PDE 5 inhibitor.

Dr. Ozama Ismail, Ph.D., Alzheimer’s Association director of scientific programs, who was not involved in the new study, noted that there was a recent and large UK study that suggested PDE 5 inhibitors may be able to reduce the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s, but “there is no evidence that these drugs are able to treat Alzheimer’s disease.”

As far as the current study goes, said Dr. Ismail, “This observational study is based on electronic healthcare records and cannot determine if the connection is meaningful without further exploration.”

“Further research and specifically designed clinical trials are a necessary step before considering phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors for Alzheimer’s treatment. Such trials would need to include diverse participants — including women — to conclusively determine if this class of drug can meaningfully treat Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Ismail.

He also cited as an “important limitation” of this study that Alzheimer’s was not diagnosed “using ‘gold standard’ testing that included imaging biomarkers and/or assessment at autopsy.”

If sildenafil is helpful for addressing Alzheimer’s, suggested Dr. Neil Paulvin, it may have to do with “activating [the] pathway and increasing blood flow.”

The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathwayTrusted Source is key to various cellular processes, and has been implicated in cancer, so understanding its mechanisms better could theoretically provide clues as to what occurs in Alzheimer’s. Dr. Paulvin was likewise not involved in the study.

Safety concerns about repurposing drugs

The identification of sildenafil is an example of what may be possible with computer searches for valuable molecules. Dr. Paulvin noted such searches have turned up drugs such as “gemfibrozil [for cholesterol control], astaxanthin [an antioxidant], [and] minocycline [for treating bacterial infections].”

“This study highlights a potential new avenue for drug repurposing. Repurposing of existing, already-approved treatments can be a valuable part of drug development because, through already-completed testing, we know much about their safety and side effects. This can sometimes reduce the length and cost of studies needed for the new indication,” Dr. Ismail said.

He noted, however, that Alzheimer’s disease is especially “complex and multifaceted.” As a result,” he noted, “it is likely that combination therapies targeting different mechanisms are needed.”

“When considering repurposing an existing drug as an Alzheimer’s treatment, however, it is often important to conduct new studies over longer periods of time and in older people that reflect the diversity of individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Ismail explained.

He cited the Alzheimer’s Association Part The Cloud initiative that has already invested more than $68 million supporting 65 clinical trials. These trials are aimed at “targeting various known and potential new aspects of the disease, including new and repurposed treatments for Alzheimer’s and other dementia.”

He noted that the endeavor is focusing on different pathways to treatment, such as how immune responses affect Alzheimer’s-related brain changes, the manner in which brain cells utilize energy and fuel, how they remove debris, and how the brain’s blood supply is maintained.

As regards to sildenafil, Dr. Ismail stressed that people should not use such prescription medications or over-the-counter [supplements and products similar to] phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors in hopes of preventing Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia based on these preliminary findings. “Always consult your physician before starting or changing your medications,” he added.

 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad231391

"Six Russian warplanes were destroyed and eight others suffered significant damage in a Ukrainian drone strike on a military airbase"

 

Six Russian warplanes were destroyed and eight others suffered significant damage in a Ukrainian drone strike on a military airbase on Friday, Ukrainian officials said. 

The overnight attack targeted the Morozovsk airfield, in Russia's Rostov region, and was a joint-operation conducted by Ukraine's SBU security service and the military, a Kyiv intelligence source told the Reuters news agency. Around 20 personnel are believed to have been killed or injured in the attack. 

The airbase, located around 60 miles from the border, is reported to house tactical bombers, including the Sukhoi Su-24 and Su-34, which Moscow has used to target front-line positions in Ukraine . 

Unverified videos posted on social media appeared to show tracer fire from air defense units and loud explosions close to the airbase overnight on Friday. 

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that a total of 44 drones were "intercepted and destroyed" in the Rostov region on Friday morning. Newsweek has been unable to verify either side's claims. There were also reports of an attack on Engels airbase in the Saratov region, which hosts strategic bombers, and Russia said other drones had been destroyed elsewhere in the country. 

"Last night and on the morning of 5 April 2024, the Russian Armed Forces have foiled attempts by the Kiev regime to launch terrorist attacks using UAVs against the facilities in the Russian Federation,"

Russia's Defense Ministry said in a statement. "The air defense units on duty intercepted and destroyed enemy's drones over the territories of Rostov (44 UAVs), Saratov (1 UAV), Kursk (1 UAV), and Belgorod (1 UAV) regions, as well as Krasnodar (6 UAVs) regions." 

Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev claimed on Telegram that eight people were injured in the Morozovsky district when an explosive device in one of the fallen drones detonated around noon. 

He added that a power substation had suffered damage, cutting electricity supplies to around 600 residents, and that the windows in one apartment building had been blown out. Ukraine has stepped up aerial attacks on Russian territory in recent months, targeting military and energy facilities deep behind the front line . 

Oil facilities across a wide area of Russia have been targeted, including in Ryazan and Pervyy Zavod south of Moscow, the Rostov region near the Ukrainian border, as well as Nizhny Novgorod and Kirishi, close to St. Petersburg. Bloomberg said the refineries hit were responsible for 12 percent of Russia's oil refining capacity. 

Ukraine has also had success against Russian warplanes in recent weeks, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claiming in March that 15 military aircraft had been downed in a month. 

Kyiv says it has destroyed Su-34 fighter-bombers, Su-35 fighters and an A-50 airborne early warning and control plane so far this year. In total, Kyiv claims to have shot down 347 Russian planes since the start of the war in February 2022. 

Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry for comment.

 

"Jack Smith argues that the Presidential Records Act does not apply because the charges against Trump relate to actions taken after he was president"

 

April 3 (UPI) -- Special prosecutor Jack Smith says the judge in the classified documents case against Donald Trump has issued an order that would distort the trial.

Smith told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a court filing Tuesday that her order for the prosecution and defense to propose jury instructions is based on a "fundamentally flawed legal premise."

The premise Smith is referring to is an interpretation of the Presidential Records Act argued by Trump's defense. The former president's attorneys argued that he had the authority to take and keep classified documents after he left the White House. Cannon ordered the prosecution and defense to offer proposals based on the concept that Trump's argument is valid.

"That legal premise is wrong, and a jury instruction for Section 793 that reflects that premise would distort the trial," Smith writes. "The PRA's distinction between personal and presidential records has no bearing on whether a former president's possession of documents containing national defense information is authorized under the Espionage Act, and the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions on the elements of Section 793."

Smith argues that the Presidential Records Act does not apply because the charges against Trump relate to actions taken after he was president.

Smith also expresses concern that Cannon may wait to make a decision after jeopardy attaches. If she determines at that point that Trump is allowed to possess the documents in question, the case would end and the government would not have the ability to appeal. It would also not be allowed to try Trump again due to double jeopardy.

"Whatever the court decides, it must resolve these crucial threshold legal questions promptly," Smith says. "The failure to do so would improperly jeopardize the government's right to a fair trial and deprive it of its right to seek appellate review."

Two scenarios are meant to be under consideration under Cannon's order.

The first is that the Espionage Act allows a former president to possess any document that a jury determines is a personal record, as defined by the Presidential Records Act. Jurors would be instructed to make those determinations.

The second is that a president can remove any document from the White House when he leaves office, and that those records are his personal records. This would effectively end the prosecution if adopted. Smith says the prosecution should be entitled to a prompt review in the court of appeals in that case.

The filing reveals that Trump was contacted by Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit group. During conversations between Trump, his attorneys and the group's president as late as February 2022, Trump's team acknowledged that the documents in question were presidential, not personal.

Trump faces 32 charges for mishandling classified documents, including national security secrets.

-United Press International 

https://www.upi.com/

 

Incredible drone footage from the frontlines of Ukraine

 

Incredible drone footage from the frontlines of Ukraine has revealed how defenders in Donetsk miraculously fended off one of Russia's largest single attacks of the war so far. 

A mammoth battalion of 36 Russian tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles launched an all-out assault toward the Ukrainian town of Tonenke on March 30, as Vladimir Putin's forces seek to consolidate their advances west of Avdiivka. 

Drone clips showed how a string of tanks charged through Ukrainian fields bearing down on Tonenke - until they were met with a furious defence by Ukraine's 25th Airborne Brigade 'Sicheslav'. 

With the fields and the dirt track lined with mines, the armoured column from the 90th tank division of Russia's army was forced to slow, making them easy targets for the paratroopers and their expert drone pilots. 

One by one the Russian tanks were blown to bits, with drone-mounted cameras capturing how several erupted into flames after being struck by the Ukrainian munitions. Some 20 tanks and armoured vehicles succumbed to the furious airborne assault before Russian commanders ordered a retreat. 

The losses were reported by Ukrainian officials but were later confirmed by Russian milbloggers and satellite footage shared by the Institute for the Study of War.

-Daily Mail

 

The way the Earth is rotating is changing because of climate change and the experts are concerned

 

Scientists have long been concerned about the effects of global warming, with research suggesting that up to half of the entire world will change climate by the end of the century. New research published in the journal Nature has revealed that melting ice at the poles of our planet may change the Earth’s spin.

This could see a delay to the “leap second” that was due to be added to the world clock, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), in 2026. It may now have to be delayed until 2029.

It is down to the Earth spinning slightly quicker and is linked to melting ice caps, which are contributing to the constant decrease in the angular velocity of the planet’s liquid core. This has led to an increase in the angular velocity of the solid Earth.

As a result, the melting ice caps may influence the Earth’s orbit to such a significant extent it affects the world’s time-keeping. The impact on computer networks could be huge, affecting everything from the financial markets and other industries that rely heavily on a standard global clock (UTC).

UTC is adjusted by experts when the Earth’s rotation varies, in order for it to remain consistent in relation to the stars.

Over the last 30 years, a few seconds have been added to the global clock, with the next one due to be scheduled in 2026. But, it may have to be delayed due to the impact of melting ice caps. Duncan Agnew, from the University of California San Diego, explained in the paper: “Extrapolating the trends for the core and other relevant phenomena to predict future Earth orientation shows that UTC as now defined will require a negative discontinuity by 2029.

“This will pose an unprecedented problem for computer network timing and may require changes in UTC to be made earlier than is planned. If polar ice melting had not recently accelerated, this problem would occur 3 years earlier: global warming is already affecting global timekeeping.”

-Ellie Abraham, Indy100