Pelican Press

Into the Emberlands Review (PC) Into the Emberlands Review (PC) Into the Emberlands has finally been released. The game, released on January 20, boasts a unique art style and intriguing gameplay. But does it hold up? Is it worth checking out? We’ll help you decide here by telling you what the game does well, and where the game is lacking. The Good Starting with what was done well, the art style is quite good. It has a cute, cozy vibe that I really enjoy. It helps give the game its own unique flare and helps it stand out from the crowd. While the art style isn’t the most interesting out there, especially in the modern gaming space, I still liked it a lot. The gameplay is decent. The bulk of the gameplay is resource management, especially with managing your embers. Once you are out of range of the village, your embers start to drain with each step you take. If you run out of embers, you become lost and start over with a new character. This forces the player to plan where they move and how they will be able to maintain their embers. Besides this, there are plenty of other materials for players to manage. I think the way the gameplay loop is handled not only makes it more interesting but also helps tie it into the narrative and sell the story to the player. The game also has a good chunk of content for players to enjoy. There are a total of 13 camp upgrades for the player to unlock as they traverse through several distinct areas. Collecting the materials needed for these upgrades can take quite some time. This lets players chip at progress piece by piece and keeps them coming back to the game. You can get several hours of content out of this, and the game is less than $7. For the content in the game, I think that is a great value that will allow players to have fun for a cheap price. The Bad Now I need to talk about the problems with the game. For starters, the game is very repetitive. The gameplay never really changes as the game progresses, and in general it’s way too simple. It’s always the same gameplay loop: explore outside the village, collect the materials, find lost Knacks, rinse and repeat. While more mechanics are introduced as you explore new areas, they only build off the established mechanics and are usually only there to make the game more difficult. That in itself is fine, I just wish more diverse mechanics were present in the game. Doing the same thing over and over gets tiring, so diversifying the gameplay would help alleviate that repetitiveness. The game can be very frustrating to play at times. This is mostly a problem when you run out of embers. While I liked the resource managing aspect of the game, the way running out of embers is handled is infuriating. If the counter hits zero, you become lost and have to start the game all over. The only thing you keep is your village level, that’s it. Any materials you had? Gone. Any Knacks you’ve found? Gone. All the upgrades you had? Gone. You lose everything besides the level of your village and the missions you’ve cleared. Even better, there is no way of getting any of it back. The map resets when you become lost, so you have to start all over. Some players may be fine with this aspect of the game, but all it did was frustrate me. It would be better if there was a way to recover at least some of your stuff. Maybe if you find your last explorer out in the world, you could choose some materials and upgrades to keep, then lose the rest. That way, even if you do become lost, you can at least have a way to get back on your feet. For me, it would make the game much more enjoyable. My biggest gripe with Into the Emberlands, however, is how glitchy and buggy the game is. There were multiple instances during my time playing the game where I encountered bugs. They were usually visual bugs, like loading screens popping up strangely, or menus text overlapping with default text, and while these don’t affect gameplay, they make the game look less polished. For a game that’s in its 1.0 release, it still feels like a beta. It almost feels like it was rushed. Besides the visual glitches, though, there were a few glitches that actually hindered my gameplay. While I was playing on my controller, using the metro station to fast travel caused my cursor to disappear. The only solution was to move the mouse for it to reappear. Another issue I ran into on controller was trying to use the tools. Sometimes breaking rocks and cutting down trees just didn’t work, I would have to use my mouse. The bug I encountered that hindered me the most, however, was when I tried to use one of the weeds found in the Petalogist’s realm. I planted it in the ground to restore my embers, but it didn’t work, which caused me to become lost and forced me to start all over. Glitches like that made the game more difficult to play and overall made the experience much less enjoyable. Final Thoughts Into the Emberlands is a cute game with some interesting gameplay mechanics and a decent amount of content for players to enjoy. With that said, I can’t recommend the game to everyone. The gameplay can be frustrating at times, specifically when you become lost, the gameplay can get quite repetitive, and most importantly, the game is buggy and less polished than a 1.0 release should be. If you like the art style and gameplay looks interesting, maybe give the game a try. There’s a lot of content in the game for a decent price, so there’s a lot of value to be had. However, this is an easy pass if it doesn’t interest you. The gameplay doesn’t vary much, and with all the frustrating gameplay and unnecessary bugs, it may be best to just stay away. Into the Emberlands is available now on Steam. Jeremy Lowe Contributor Jeremy is a professional writer and author who writes for The Guide Hall and Smash Jump. His love of video games started when he received a Playstation 2 for Christmas. Ever since then gaming has been his ultimate passion. He loves to play party games, JRPGs, and loves to try new fighting games. He loves to play games on Nintendo and PC and likes finding new games to try out and going back to old favorites like Xenoblade Chronicles and Rhythm Doctor. The Review Into the Emberlands Source link #Emberlands #Review Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Astronomers Discover 19 New Quasars Using DESI Legacy Surveys Data Astronomers Discover 19 New Quasars Using DESI Legacy Surveys Data A significant discovery has been made in the field of astronomy, with 19 new quasars, including strongly-lensed, dual, and projected types, identified through analysis of data from the DESI Legacy Surveys photometry catalog. This breakthrough highlights the potential of quasar observations in furthering our understanding of the universe. These objects, known for their extreme luminosity and powered by supermassive ****** holes, have long been pivotal for research into astrophysics and cosmology. Observations were conducted at the Palomar Observatory in California. Findings of the DESI Legacy Surveys According to the study led by Zizhao He of the Purple Mountain Observatory, the investigation confirmed two strongly-lensed quasars, six dual quasars, and 11 projected quasars. Observations were carried out on October 15–16, 2023, using the P200/DBSP instrument. The study noted that the lensed quasars, designated J0746+1344 and J2121-0826, were observed at redshifts of 3.1 and 2.39, respectively. J0746+1344 displayed a unique configuration, with the lensing galaxy positioned beside the brightest image—an anomaly compared to typical observations. Dual and Projected Quasars As reported by phys.org, the six dual quasars identified showed redshifts ranging from 0.59 to 3.28, with separations between their components varying from 50,300 to 73,500 light years. Among these, J1929+6009 stood out due to a remarkably small redshift difference of less than 0.0001 and a projected separation of 62,800 light years. The 11 projected quasars demonstrated separations spanning 35,700 to 123,400 light years. One such system, J0422+0047, was previously thought to be a gravitationally-lensed quasar system, though further analysis indicated a chance alignment of projected quasars with an intervening galaxy, complicating its classification. Implications of the Discovery This research underscores the importance of advanced observational techniques in uncovering unique cosmic phenomena. By analysing the behaviour, redshifts, and configurations of these quasars, astronomers aim to expand their knowledge of the universe’s structure and the dynamics of supermassive ****** holes. Source link #Astronomers #Discover #Quasars #DESI #Legacy #Surveys #Data Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Pentagon strips Gen Mark Milley of US security detail and clearance Pentagon strips Gen Mark Milley of US security detail and clearance The Pentagon has revoked the security detail and clearance for Gen Mark Milley, a former US general who has been critical of US President Donald Trump. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the move as one of his first acts in office, asking officials to investigate Gen Milley’s “conduct” and review his military grade. Gen Milley previously served as the top US general during Trump’s first term but later criticised his former boss, and was quoted calling him a “fascist”. Since returning to office, Trump has revoked security protections for a handful of former officials with whom he has clashed, including former top health official Anthony Fauci. Trump previously accused Gen Milley of treason for phone calls he held with his ******** counterpart during the final weeks of his first Trump presidency, including in the wake of a riot at the US Capitol building by Trump’s supporters in 2021. Gen Milley reportedly used one of the calls to reassure China that the US would not launch a nuclear strike. On social media the president described those calls as “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”. Gen Milley, however, testified the calls were coordinated with other defence secretaries. It was in Bob Woodward’s book War, published last year, that Gen Milley was quoted calling Trump “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country”. And in 2023, when giving his final speech as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Milley said the military did not take an oath to a “wannabe dictator”. The comment that was seen by many as a reference to Trump, the man who nominated him for the job in the first place. Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House last week, outgoing President Joe Biden issued Gen Milley – and a handful of others, including Fauci – a pre-emptive pardon in case they faced retribution from Trump. Biden’s statement said the pardons should “not be mistaken as an acknowledgment” that any of those covered “engaged in any wrongdoing”. Gen Milley thanked Biden for the move and said he did not want to spend the rest of his life “fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights”. “I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety,” he said. The news that Gen Milley was being stripped of his security detail and security clearance was confirmed in a statement to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News. The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has also been told to “conduct an inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding Gen Milley’s conduct so that the Secretary may determine whether it is appropriate to reopen his military grade review determination,” the statement said. Trump’s new administration has also revoked security protections for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton and his former envoy Brian Hook. In the hours after Trump’s second inauguration, Trump’s officials also removed from the Pentagon a portrait depicting Gen Milley’s as chair of the joint chiefs of staff. Source link #Pentagon #strips #Gen #Mark #Milley #security #detail #clearance Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The Federal Reserve should resist pressure from Trump and defend its independence, experts say The Federal Reserve should resist pressure from Trump and defend its independence, experts say What to expect from Federal Reserve’s first policy meeting of 2025 What to expect from Federal Reserve’s first policy meeting of 2025 03:13 President Trump had a message last week for the Federal Reserve while at the annual World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland: He plans to “demand that interest rates drop immediately.” Mr. Trump may be in for disappointment. The Federal Reserve widely expected to keep its benchmark rate steady when it announces its latest interest rate decision today at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Economists aren’t penciling in a 2025 reduction until at least May, according to economists polled by financial data service FactSet. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has over the years steadfastly defended the central bank’s independence. Most recently, he underlined at a New York Times event in December that insulating the Fed from political influence is “for the benefit of all Americans,” allowing it to make decisions based on economic data rather than at the behest of elected officials. The Fed’s independence allows it to pursue its dual mandate — to keep inflation low and the labor market at full employment — without political pressure, economists concur. “We know monetary policy needs to be enacted with a democratic mandate underpinning it, with a day-to-day remove from politics,” Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School, told CBS MoneyWatch. “Interest rates may need to be raised but it may be inconvenient for political interests, and [the central bank] may need to move quickly to lower rates” in case of an economic downturn. While the Fed is an independent agency, it is accountable to Congress and the public, with its chair and other officials testifying before Congress regularly. Its dual mandate was also established by Congress, as well as its structure of staggered appointments for Fed officials, designed to make the agency less vulnerable to pressures “that could lead to undesirable outcomes,” according to the Fed. What happens when a central bank isn’t independent? Those “undesirable outcomes” can be seen in nations where central bankers are more vulnerable to political influence, economists say. That’s because interest rates remain the most potent weapon that a central bank can wield against surging inflation — a tool that the Federal Reserve turned to in 2022 to tame the hottest U.S. inflation in 40 years. But elected officials sometimes decide that higher borrowing costs are politically inconvenient, because they make it more expensive for businesses to expand or for consumers to make purchases. In cases where a central bank isn’t independent, officials may succeed in pressuring a central bank to keep a lid on rates. Experts point to Turkey as an example of what can occur when political interests dictate a central bank’s monetary policies. Since 2010, its central bank has increasingly come under pressure from President Erdoğan to keep its interest rates low, even as inflation surged during the pandemic, according to the non-partisan Centre for Economic Policy Research. Instead of hiking rates as Turkey’s inflation rate topped 80% in October 2022 on an annual basis, the nation’s central bank cut its benchmark rate several times in 2022 and 2023. While the bank reversed course and hiked rates starting in mid-2023, inflation there has proved tough to tame, with prices rising by 44% in December 2024. By comparison, the highest U.S. inflation rate during the post-pandemic ******* was in June 2022, when inflation hit 9.1% on an annual basis in June 2022. In the face of the Fed’s rate hikes, inflation has cooled since then, deflating to 2.9% on an annual basis last month. “The Fed has done really well — they have raised the rates enough to try to slowly squeeze inflation out of the market,” noted Erasmus Kersting, a professor of economics at Villanova University. The Fed has “done all that while avoiding a recession — that is a delicate needle to thread.” Could Mr. Trump influence the Fed? Questions about Mr. Trump’s ability to influence the Federal Reserve or shake up its leadership are intensifying amid the president’s statements about his desire for lower interest rates. During his 2024 election campaign, Mr. Trump had insisted that as president he should have a “say” in the Fed’s interest rate policies. “I think that, in my case, I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman,” Mr. Trump said in August. For his part, Powell said last year that he would not resign even if asked to do so by Mr. Trump, adding that under the law presidents may not fire or demote the Fed chair. Powell’s term as Fed chair ends May 15, 2026. However, Mr. Trump has recently fired several government officials in ways that critics say violate the law, such as his administration’s firing of more than a dozen federal inspectors general on Friday. Federal law requires the White House to give Congress a full month of warning and case-specific details before firing a federal inspector general. Removing Powell wouldn’t necessarily change the Fed’s monetary policy decisions, given that rates are set by the 12-person Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Seven members are from the Fed’s Board of Governors; four are assigned from the 11 Reserve Bank presidents, who each serve one-year terms on a rotating basis; and one FOMC member is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Interfering with the Fed could have consequences, both legally and for the stock market, experts said. “Should any president attempt to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve without cause other than doing the job they were appointed and confirmed to do, I expect there to be swift legal challenges,” noted Tim Stretton at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government watchdog. “I suspect the market would also react negatively. Markets like stability, and this level of unprecedented interference in the Federal Reserve would be anything but stable.” Asked what advice he would give Mr. Trump about dealing with the Fed, Columbia Business School’s House said, “Stop talking.” He added, “Let the Fed conduct its business consistent with its mandate, and it’ll be more likely to get interest rates down.” Aimee Picchi Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports. Source link #Federal #Reserve #resist #pressure #Trump #defend #independence #experts Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

‘You lie’ protester shouts at RFK Jr’s confirmation hearing ‘You lie’ protester shouts at RFK Jr’s confirmation hearing Robert F Kennedy Jr has been selected as Health Secretary for the US by Donald Trump. But before taking on the role he, like all of Trump’s cabinet picks, faces a confirmation hearing. One protester interrupted the hearing shouting “you lie” as RFK Jr told Senators he wasn’t anti-vaccine or anti-safety. RFK Jr has a history of making baseless health claims, including that vaccines can cause autism and that Wi-fi technology causes *******. Source link #lie #protester #shouts #RFK #Jrs #confirmation #hearing Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

ExThera Claimed Its Device Could Cure *******. But Patients Died. ExThera Claimed Its Device Could Cure *******. But Patients Died. The private jet took off from the Caribbean island of Antigua in April carrying three highly combustible tanks of compressed oxygen and a terminally ill ******* patient. Kim Hudlow had chartered the plane for her husband, David. She crouched by his side on the five-hour journey to Florida, frantically adjusting the valve on one of the oxygen tanks as he struggled to breathe. A doctor had just told her he was dying. She was terrified he wouldn’t survive the flight. It was an abrupt turnaround. Six days earlier, Ms. Hudlow and her husband, who had late-stage esophageal *******, had arrived on the tropical island full of hope that a novel blood-filtering treatment offered there would save Mr. Hudlow’s life — or at least prolong it. They were among about two dozen families lured to Antigua by a California start-up called ExThera Medical and its secretive billionaire partner, Alan Quasha. ExThera, which has about 50 employees, makes a single product: a filter that it says can be used to remove the tumor cells that circulate in patients’ blood and enable ******* to metastasize. Early last year, the company sold thousands of the devices to Mr. Quasha’s private equity firm, Quadrant Management, which began using them on late-stage ******* patients at a small clinic in Antigua. Quadrant, which invests on behalf of Mr. Quasha and his family and doesn’t have outside investors, charged $45,000 for each course of treatment and advised patients to return to the clinic for regular sessions. It also urged them to abstain from chemotherapy between treatments. ExThera and Quadrant promoted the blood filtering to the Hudlows and other couples by citing a Croatian study of patients with metastatic ******* that they said had yielded extraordinary results, according to phone recordings obtained by The New York Times. In one call with the Hudlows, John Preston, an ExThera board member and longtime business partner of Mr. Quasha, claimed that three patients in the study had been cured of their cancers. During another call, Dr. Sanja Ilic, ExThera’s chief regulatory officer, told Ms. Hudlow that one of the study’s patients had recovered from inoperable colon ******* to such an extent that he was training for a marathon. “I don’t know of any other treatment available in the world, on this planet, that can do better stuff,” Dr. Ilic told Ms. Hudlow. But those statements have yet to be backed up by any published data, and the Croatian study — with only 12 participants — was too small to draw any reliable conclusions, according to the doctor who conducted it. There is no data from a human clinical trial showing the device slows or reverses *******. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized ExThera’s blood filter for use only in emergency Covid-19 cases. The filter appears to work well for that purpose, having been administered successfully to hundreds of severely ill patients infected with the coronavirus. Last summer, the F.D.A. allowed ExThera to test the filter on five pancreatic ******* patients in Oklahoma — the first phase of what is likely to be years of clinical trials to seek the agency’s approval to use the filter to treat *******. By carrying out the treatments in Antigua, where the F.D.A. has no jurisdiction, ExThera and Quadrant circumvented that long, drawn-out regulatory process. But Mr. Preston and Dr. Ilic may have nonetheless violated federal law by promoting ExThera’s filter to American ******* patients on U.S. soil. In February, two months before the Hudlows’ ill-fated trip to Antigua, Jonathan Chow, ExThera’s director of medical affairs, warned the company’s top executives in a letter that the Antigua operation amounted to an unethical and unsafe experiment on patients and urged them to shut it down, according to three people familiar with the matter. During a brief visit to the island, Dr. Chow had witnessed patients bleeding from catheter wounds and screaming in pain. ExThera didn’t act on his pleas. More than 600,000 Americans die of ******* each year. For all the medical advances achieved in recent decades, the number of therapies offered to patients whose ******* has spread to multiple organs remains limited. In most cases, the standard of care is still chemotherapy and radiation, which can buy patients time but rarely cures them. Patients with grim prognoses are often willing to try anything that might offer hope. And plenty of providers — many of them operating in countries with regulations less stringent than those in the United States — are willing to seize on that desperation. Some patients have sought treatment from a doctor in Austria who says he will cure them with a machine he built underground that supposedly restores “balance” to cells. Others have gone to Mexico for injections of immunotherapy drugs straight into their tumors. Like the blood-filtering sessions in Antigua, these treatments are expensive and not covered by insurance, saddling patients and their families with enormous out-of-pocket costs. But ExThera and Quadrant seemed to offer more credibility than the usual offshore clinic. ExThera is a U.S. company with an F.D.A.-approved device, albeit not for the purpose it was being touted. Quadrant, too, is an American corporation, run by a wealthy investor with a successful track record. The treatment the companies were marketing was experimental, but its promoters had the veneer of legitimacy. In hindsight, Ms. Hudlow said, the possibility of a miracle cure acted on her “like a drug.” She added, “I feel so duped by all these people. The way this was spun up and the way it was explained, they got me.” Mr. Quasha said in an email that Quadrant “made no recommendations for what therapies patients should receive.” Patients opted for the filter treatments on their own in consultation with their doctors, and the company took care to remind them “at multiple steps in the process” that the therapy was experimental, he said. He and Quadrant declined to address the specifics of Mr. Hudlow’s or any other patient’s case. Of the more than 20 patients treated in Antigua, The Times has identified at least six who have died since their treatments. However, one patient, a woman from Oklahoma, did appear to benefit from the blood filtering. Her husband said that the treatments provided her significant relief from her pancreatic ******* pain and that she no longer requires any pain medication. After The Times sent ExThera a list of detailed questions, the company said it asked Mr. Preston to leave its board and told its employees it had parted ways with Dr. Ilic. It also said it terminated its partnership with Quadrant. ExThera did not elaborate on the reasons, but Mr. Quasha said it was a mutual business decision and “had nothing to do with our belief in the efficacy of the filter treatment.” Despite the split, Quadrant says it continues to treat ******* patients in Antigua with ExThera’s devices. Quadrant has several thousand filters stored at a warehouse on the island. A Military Origin ExThera’s blood filter came out of a military contest. In 2012, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon department behind early versions of the internet, solicited proposals for a new medical device that would remove pathogens from blood. The goal was to deploy it in the field to treat soldiers exposed to infections or biological agents. ExThera, founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by two chemical engineers, won the contest with a three-by-nine-inch transparent cylinder containing more than 20 million tiny beads. The beads are covered in heparin, a substance similar to a molecule found inside blood vessels that pathogens bind to. When blood flows through the device, the beads mimic the inner walls of blood vessels and capture viruses, bacteria and fungi. The device works in tandem with a dialysis machine, which pumps blood out of a patient’s body and into the device before returning it, filtered of pathogens, to the patient. The European Union approved ExThera’s filter, which the company christened the Seraph 100 Microbind Affinity Blood Filter, to treat bloodstream infections in August 2019. When the pandemic reached U.S. shores six months later, Army doctors tried it on two critically ill Covid-19 patients. The patients’ viral counts plummeted, and both recovered. The F.D.A. subsequently approved the device for use on Covid patients on the cusp of respiratory failure. ExThera says its Seraph filter has since been used on thousands of U.S. and European patients with Covid or bloodstream infections. But as the pandemic ebbed, ExThera’s sales to hospitals peaked at a few million dollars and then began to decline. The company began looking for new uses for its filter. One idea was to see if the heparin beads could also capture the tumor cells that float in ******* patients’ blood. Known as circulating tumor cells, or C.T.C.s, they play an important role in enabling ******* to metastasize. The initial signs were encouraging: A small ******* laboratory study showed that, at least in test tubes, C.T.C.s attached to the heparin beads. ExThera took the research a step further in the spring of 2023. Dr. Ilic, who had worked at major medical device companies before becoming ExThera’s chief regulatory officer, met a Croatian doctor named Vedran Premužić at a conference in Zagreb, and over dinner at a seafood restaurant, they decided to test the filter on ******* patients, according to a person familiar with the matter. The study began with eight patients in September 2023 and later expanded to 10 and then to 12 patients. Normally a study to gauge a device’s effectiveness at treating ******* would be run by an oncologist, but Dr. Premužić wasn’t a ******* expert. He specialized in kidney diseases. In December 2023, Dr. Ilic discussed promising early findings from the study with ExThera’s top executives, including results for a lung ******* patient whose tumor appeared to have shrunk and several patients whose biopsies had come back negative, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. A few days later, Mr. Preston, the ExThera board member, informed the company that he knew someone who was interested in becoming its partner in the Caribbean. It was Mr. Quasha, with whom Mr. Preston had worked on private equity deals for 15 years. Mr. Quasha had deep pockets. Over four and a half decades, he had quietly built a fortune buying up companies and restructuring them. One of his early acquisitions was a Texas oil firm whose chairman was the future president, George W. Bush. Following Mr. Preston’s introduction, ExThera shared the Croatian ******* data with Mr. Quasha. Impressed, he invested $3 million in the company. He also created a subsidiary of his investment firm called Quadrant Clinical Care and appointed his daughter, Dr. Devon Quasha, a physician at Mass General Hospital in Boston, as one of its executives. Quadrant Clinical Care paid ExThera an additional $10 million — several times what ExThera was generating in annual revenue — to become its Caribbean distributor. A ‘Dubious Foreign Operation’ In early January 2024, Dr. Ilic and another ExThera official loaded a dialysis machine and hundreds of filters onto Mr. Quasha’s private jet at an airport in San Diego and flew them to Antigua. On the way, the jet made a refueling stop in the Bahamas, where it picked up Mr. Quasha. Dr. Chow, ExThera’s director of medical affairs, followed on a commercial flight two days later. Quadrant had contracted with a local clinic to begin administering the treatment. The ExThera team was traveling to the island to teach the clinic staff how to use the filter. Unlike the F.D.A., the government in Antigua had authorized Mr. Quasha’s firm to use the device on ******* patients. The operation had the potential to be lucrative. Quadrant was paying ExThera around $1,000 per filter, according to a person with knowledge of their contract, and three filters would be used per treatment regimen in Antigua. With a $45,000 price tag for patients, the profit margins for Quadrant could be huge. But when the ExThera employees arrived in Antigua, some of them quickly grew worried. The clinic Quadrant had hired lacked modern medical equipment, and the doctor in charge, a surgeon named Joey John, was making incisions under some patients’ collarbones to install dialysis catheters without using any medical imaging or sufficient anesthesia, according to two people familiar with what the ExThera team encountered. Dr. Chow witnessed patients bleeding profusely and, in one case, screaming in pain. He was also alarmed to learn that a patient was forgoing chemotherapy, a pillar of ******* care, for an experimental treatment. ExThera had flown in Sarah Mobbs, a nurse who had experience treating Covid patients with the filter, to help administer the therapy. Company officials had told Ms. Mobbs that she would be assisting with a ******* study. But when she arrived at Dr. John’s clinic, she saw no signs of the guardrails that would normally accompany a clinical trial, three people with knowledge of the matter said. There was no treatment plan, no oversight from a medical board to ensure the supposed study was conducted safely and ethically. There wasn’t even an oncologist on site. Ms. Mobbs later told associates that her unease grew when she overheard Dr. Ilic tell ******* patients that the filter would cure them, the three people said. She worried Dr. Ilic was giving them false hope. To extricate herself from the situation, she made up a story that her mother and daughter had been in a car accident and left the island in a hurry. Dr. Ilic said she shared some of Dr. Chow’s and Ms. Mobbs’s misgivings. But she denied telling any patients that the filter treatments would cure them. Dr. Chow voiced his concerns to Erin Borger, ExThera’s chief executive, and others on several video calls, according to someone with knowledge of the conversations. He then sent Mr. Borger and Robert Ward, one of ExThera’s founders who was also chairman of its board, a letter outlining his worries. In the absence of data supporting the use of the filter to treat *******, the company was taking “undue risks” with patients and subjecting them to “human experimentation,” he wrote. Referring to the Antigua clinic as a “dubious foreign operation,” he urged ExThera to end its association with it. But ExThera continued providing Quadrant with filters and the treatments in Antigua continued. Frustrated that his warnings were ignored, Dr. Chow resigned from ExThera in June. Asked about Dr. Chow’s letter, Mr. Borger said: “We take matters of safety and workplace conduct very seriously. When these issues arise, we immediately investigate the matter and take appropriate action.” He declined to say what, if any, actions had been taken. Dr. Ward declined to comment. The ******* Wives Club Nearly a month after Dr. Chow began airing his complaints inside ExThera, Mr. Preston, the board member who had introduced the company to Mr. Quasha, spoke by phone with Mr. and Ms. Hudlow and Jaime Baskin. Ms. Hudlow, who lives in Panama City, Fla., and Ms. Baskin, an elementary school special ed teacher in Chicago, had met 18 months earlier through a common friend. Ms. Baskin’s husband, Brian Withey, was eight years younger than the 55-year-old Mr. Hudlow, but they both had metastatic *******. Mr. Withey’s had started in his ******* and spread to his liver. Along with the wives of three other ******* patients, Ms. Hudlow and Ms. Baskin had formed what they jokingly referred to as “The ******* Wives Club,” texting and calling one another daily to lend emotional support and share new medical insights. One member of their group had heard about ExThera and its blood filter through a friend who had breast ******* and had been treated — unsuccessfully, it would turn out — in Antigua. Intrigued, Ms. Baskin arranged a call with Mr. Preston. The Hudlows dialed in from Florida. It is ******** in the United States to promote a medical device or a drug for a use that has not been approved by the F.D.A. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Preston did, according to a recording of the call. Mr. Preston began by explaining the filter’s origin and the science behind it. By eliminating circulating tumor cells from patients’ blood, he said, the filter freed up the immune system to attack the tumor itself. (There is no published clinical data to support this theory.) Mr. Preston then brought up the Croatian study and said that four of its eight patients were “doing well” and that another three seemed “to be fully recovered from their *******.” When Ms. Baskin asked what he meant by “fully recovered,” Mr. Preston replied: “We can’t find it, I’ll put it that way.” Mr. Preston also mentioned three metastatic ******* patients whose blood had been filtered in Antigua the previous month. He said the change in how those patients felt after their treatments was “remarkable.” One patient — the woman from Oklahoma — was doing so well that she no longer needed her pain medicine, he said. The call with Mr. Preston lifted the hopes of the Hudlows and Ms. Baskin. But the reality was not as promising as Mr. Preston had implied. In an interview with The Times in September, Dr. Premužić, the nephrologist conducting the Croatian study, said it would be “highly suspicious” to describe the filter treatment as effective at such an early stage of research without larger randomized clinical trials. He said that while his study had produced encouraging results, it was too small to reach any firm conclusions. In November, the journal Blood Purification published a short paper about the study online. The paper said that the number of circulating tumor cells measured in 10 patients treated with the filter declined by a median of 71 percent during the treatment. But it said nothing about how the patients fared longer term and made no mention of three patients being cured of their cancers. Dr. Premužić did not respond to follow-up questions after the paper was published. Dr. Ilic, who is a co-author with Dr. Premužić on the Blood Purification paper, said more papers based on the Croatian study are forthcoming. Mr. Preston said in an email that his communications with the Hudlows and Ms. Baskin were “true and accurate to the best of my knowledge” and took place “at the request of the treating physicians.” But Ms. Baskin said no doctor was involved in setting up the call. Ms. Hudlow, who had been a nurse before she started a roofing business with her husband, decided to do some of her own research. She spoke with Dr. Ilic, who talked in glowing but vague terms about the Croatian study. She also learned that a Boca ******, Fla., oncologist named Mark Rosenberg, who had previously consulted on her husband’s care, was referring patients to Antigua. She reached out to him. Dr. Rosenberg told Ms. Hudlow that he didn’t have much data to go on but that patients who had undergone a filtering session felt “amazing” afterward, according to a recording of one of their calls. He also told her that Dr. Ilic had shared with him scans showing that a patient’s lung tumor had shrunk 80 percent within three weeks of being treated with the filter. “If this is true, what we’re seeing, this is the most exciting advance in oncology ever,” Dr. Rosenberg told Ms. Hudlow. Dr. Rosenberg has since changed his view. In an interview, he said he stopped referring cases to the Antigua clinic months ago because he didn’t see any positive results among his patients. He said Dr. Ilic never shared any data with him beyond the scans he mentioned to Ms. Hudlow. In the absence of data, “it’s difficult to know what’s real and what’s not real,” he said. As an ExThera employee at the time, Dr. Ilic said she was not authorized to share clinical data with company outsiders. The Times reviewed the scans — showing a patient’s lungs before and after treatment — that Dr. Ilic showed Dr. Rosenberg. The post-treatment scan does appear to show a smaller tumor, but the angles and scales of the two images are different, which makes it difficult to tell whether the tumor actually shrank. Ms. Hudlow doesn’t begrudge Dr. Rosenberg for his change of heart. But at the time, his enthusiasm helped sell her on the treatment. After talking things over with her husband, she contacted Tom Pontzius, the president of Quadrant Clinical Care, to make an appointment and wired $45,000 to the company. On Feb. 27, she and Mr. Hudlow flew to Antigua. When they got to Dr. John’s clinic, Ms. Hudlow’s trained nurse’s eye picked up on things that bothered her. The nurses weren’t washing their hands. The surgical scissors they were using to cut away the dressings around patients’ catheter wounds weren’t sterilized. And one of the patient rooms didn’t have a machine to monitor vital signs. But, she said, she tried to remain upbeat for her husband’s sake. Over the next seven days, Mr. Hudlow underwent three filtering sessions. Afterward, Ms. Hudlow said, he felt weaker, and his pain increased. Soon after the Hudlows returned to Florida, there were signs that his ******* was growing more aggressively. A test called Signatera showed that the amount of cellular tumor DNA in his blood rose nearly sixfold. As she was cutting his hair one day, Ms. Hudlow noticed an ugly-looking growth on his back. Soon, another one appeared on his ear, followed by one on his scalp. They were skin tumors. Mr. Hudlow was also having difficulty breathing. Ms. Hudlow took him to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a pleural effusion — a buildup of fluid in the lining of the lungs. Doctors tapped his lungs and drained a liter of reddish-brown liquid. Ms. Hudlow wondered whether her husband should get back on chemotherapy, but Mr. Preston, the ExThera board member, had advised against it on their call. He had said that chemotherapy worked at cross purposes with the filter by weakening the immune system. She called ExThera’s Dr. Ilic for advice. Dr. Ilic said that if Mr. Hudlow felt worse after the filter treatments, it was a good sign, according to a recording of the call. It meant that he “had strong immune activation,” Dr. Ilic said. Dr. Ilic dismissed the Signatera test because she said it didn’t differentiate between live and dead ******* cells. Quadrant had said it would send samples of Mr. Hudlow’s blood to a lab in Germany to measure the change in his circulating tumor cells. That C.T.C. test was the one to pay attention to, Dr. Ilic said. Ms. Hudlow was still looking for more evidence that the treatment worked, so she inquired again about the Croatian study. Dr. Ilic said its data was “amazing,” and she repeated something she’d mentioned once before: The tumor loads of the patients in the study had shrunk by a minimum of 49 percent six to eight weeks after their treatments. Ms. Hudlow was in awe. “Wow, that is just, that’s just unbelievable,” she said. (There is no evidence of this in the Blood Purification paper.) Even so, Ms. Hudlow sensed that there were simmering tensions between Dr. Ilic and Quadrant. After three weeks of waiting for results of the C.T.C. test, Ms. Hudlow had contacted the ******* lab directly and learned that Quadrant had bungled the blood shipment. Her husband’s samples had arrived there coagulated and useless. When Ms. Hudlow told Dr. Ilic about the mishap during another call, Dr. Ilic called Mr. Pontzius, the Quadrant Clinical Care president, a “total ******” who didn’t understand medicine. But in the next breath, she gave Ms. Hudlow new hope, the recording of that call shows. She had previously mentioned a “Patient No. 4” from the Croatian study with inoperable colon ******* whose condition was similar to Mr. Hudlow’s. That morning, Dr. Ilic said, she had learned that 60 percent of Patient No. 4’s tumors had disappeared. In fact, the patient was doing so well that he was training for a marathon, she said. (There is no mention of this in the Blood Purification paper.) Dr. Ilic then confided to Ms. Hudlow something that she asked her not to repeat to anyone: British doctors had contacted her to discuss the filter in connection with the care of Catherine, Princess of Wales, who, Dr. Ilic suggested, had colon *******. A person with knowledge of the princess’s medical care said that was not true. Three Husbands in the I.C.U. Hearing about Patient No. 4’s recovery convinced the Hudlows to return to Antigua for another round of treatments. They flew there on April 3. Mr. Hudlow’s health had declined sharply, but he was still able to walk on his own. Ms. Baskin and Mr. Withey were to fly in from Chicago four days later, on April 7. They would be joined by another member of the ******* Wives Club, Stacey Bowen, and her husband, John, who had colon *******. Ms. Baskin had been in contact with Dr. Ilic, too, but what had really sold her on the treatment was the call with Mr. Preston and his description of the three Croatian patients’ full recoveries. The same was true of the Bowens. By the time the two other couples arrived on the island, Mr. Hudlow was in bad shape. During the second of his three scheduled filtering sessions, his pulse had quickened and he had begun gasping for air. The nurses transferred him to a small intensive care unit on the other side of the building. Tests showed that his blood counts were dangerously low, so Dr. John ordered a blood transfusion. But that didn’t help with his breathing. Mr. Hudlow spent three nights in the I.C.U. on intermittent oxygen. On April 8, Dr. John offered a grim prognosis: He told Ms. Hudlow that her husband was dying. Dr. John was traveling to Miami for a conference the next day and recommended that they get on the same commercial flight. If Mr. Hudlow struggled to breathe onboard, Dr. John said he would declare a health emergency and pull down the oxygen mask from the panel above his seat. That sounded like a terrible idea to Ms. Hudlow. On their last call before leaving Florida, Dr. Ilic had called Dr. John “a cowboy” and his clinic “the Wild West.” Ms. Hudlow now wished she had taken her words more seriously. Ms. Hudlow tried instead to arrange an air ambulance to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where her husband had been treated before. But Mayo told her it couldn’t accept an international transfer. Running out of options, she pleaded with Dr. John to sell her oxygen tanks and then started dialing charter jet companies. Three pilots turned her down before she found one who agreed to fly with the oxygen tanks aboard. In the meantime, John Bowen and Brian Withey had begun their own filtering treatments. After his first session on April 8, the incision Dr. John had made in Mr. Bowen’s groin to insert his dialysis catheter began oozing blood. In the next room, Mr. Withey’s blood clogged three filters before a fourth one finally seemed to work. Two days later, during his second filtering session, Mr. Withey clogged another five filters. According to Quadrant, if a filter became clogged, it was because it captured a large quantity of circulating tumor cells and other pathogens. But there was another possible explanation the company didn’t discuss: Blood could coagulate inside the filter if the dialysis machine’s flow rate was set too low. Videos taken by Ms. Hudlow during her husband’s first round of treatments showed the flow rate set at 80 milliliters per minute, less than half of what ExThera considered the optimal range. Ms. Baskin became worried, because whenever a filter got clogged, the nurses would just throw it away with Mr. Withey’s blood inside. Including the blood in the connecting tubes, 335 milliliters of blood were being discarded each time. After five filter changes that day, Mr. Withey had lost nearly one-third of his blood. When Mr. Withey was finally disconnected from his sixth filter around midnight, he looked white as a sheet. He stood up and walked over to his wife but then slumped to the floor unconscious and began shaking. Ms. Baskin became hysterical. A nurse rushed in and spent 10 minutes trying to resuscitate Mr. Withey before a doctor arrived and transferred him to the I.C.U. The next day, Dr. John called Ms. Baskin from Miami and told her it looked like her husband had come down with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, a condition where platelets in the blood become dangerously low. Ms. Baskin was dubious because she knew H.I.T. was a rare condition, and she suspected the real problem was simpler: Her husband had lost too much blood. But Dr. John assured her that Mr. Withey’s blood loss was manageable. When lab tests later showed her husband’s platelets rebounding — indicating that H.I.T. was not the culprit — Dr. John agreed to order a blood transfusion. While Mr. Withey recovered in the I.C.U., Mr. Bowen had his third filtering session. His wife looked on anxiously as his blood pressure kept dropping. She said that she called Dr. John, who assured her that everything was under control. But Ms. Bowen was beginning to panic. When the filtering session was over and the nurse pulled the dialysis catheter out of her husband’s groin, he wouldn’t stop bleeding. Ms. Bowen frantically tried to reach Quadrant’s Mr. Pontzius, but he was on a flight to Asia. Another doctor on call eventually determined that Mr. Bowen, too, needed a blood transfusion. Citing patient confidentiality, Dr. John said he couldn’t comment on Mr. Hudlow’s, Mr. Withey’s and Mr. Bowen’s cases. “I am confident in the high quality of care provided at the clinic,” he said. In a statement, Mr. Pontzius said that Dr. John is “a respected U.S. board-certified surgeon with more than 30 years of medical experience” and that he leads “a safe and thriving clinic.” Mr. Pontzius said that many of the issues raised by The Times were “not factually accurate,” but he, too, declined to address specific patient cases. Mr. Hudlow’s Final Hours The jet carrying the Hudlows touched down on a private landing strip in Jacksonville around 2 a.m. on April 10. Ms. Hudlow rented a car near the airport and rushed her husband to the Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus. She knew that if she wheeled him into the emergency room, the hospital wouldn’t be able to turn him away. She was right. Mayo admitted him within five minutes of their arrival. As she had suspected, Mr. Hudlow suffered from pleural effusions. Doctors drained the fluid from his lungs, which helped him breathe. The bad news was that tumors in his liver, adrenal glands, bones and soft tissue had multiplied and grown. Other than offering hospice care, there was nothing the Mayo doctors could do. On April 16, Ms. Hudlow drove him home to Panama City so he could spend his final hours with his family. He died two days later. Ms. Hudlow announced her husband’s death on a Facebook group she had created to share information about the filter treatments. In her post, she wrote that she didn’t blame the treatments for Mr. Hudlow’s death and that she remained hopeful that “there may be some magic there.” Looking back, though, she thinks the treatments accelerated his *******’s progression. She says the ordeal also unnecessarily worsened the end of his life. Instead of putting him through exhausting travel and ineffective filtering sessions that increased his pain, she says, she could have provided him palliative care at home and kept him comfortable. The Bowens flew back to Chicago from Antigua on April 15. Mr. Bowen vomited on the plane. The next morning, Ms. Bowen rushed him to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Doctors there found a clot in the same vein in which Dr. John had placed the dialysis catheter. They also diagnosed Mr. Bowen with tumor lysis syndrome, a condition in which ******* cells fall apart and flood the bloodstream with chemicals and toxins faster than the body can get rid of them. Upon seeing Mr. Bowen’s blood work, one of the Northwestern Memorial doctors predicted he wouldn’t survive more than 48 hours. In the end, he lasted a week. He died on April 24, six days after Mr. Hudlow. Ms. Bowen said she and her husband had hoped the filter treatments would “be the miracle that would give him more time.” That did not happen. “I’m angry,” Ms. Bowen said. “They preyed on our desperation.” Lab tests initially suggested that the ******* of Mr. Withey, the lone survivor among the three husbands, regressed slightly in the first few weeks after returning from Antigua. But his tumor cell counts soon soared to as much as five times their levels before the trip. Scans also showed growth in the tumors in his liver. He went back on high-dose chemotherapy. Like Ms. Hudlow and Ms. Bowden, Ms. Baskin believes that the filter treatment supercharged her husband’s *******. That may be in part because it led him to stop undergoing chemotherapy, but it is impossible to know for sure. Mr. Pontzius said Quadrant “has no reason to believe that the therapy had a negative impact on any patient’s health” and pointed out that many of the patients Quadrant treated “were terminally ill and had exhausted other treatment options.” Mr. Quasha said the perceptions of grieving family members “are simply not reliable when compared to sound medical review and judgment of their care.” He encouraged The Times to ask Dr. Rosenberg, the Boca ****** oncologist who consulted on both Mr. Hudlow’s and Mr. Bowen’s care, for his clinical perspective. Dr. Rosenberg said that Ms. Hudlow and Ms. Bowen may be right to think that the filter treatments accelerated their husbands’ cancers — and therefore their deaths. “Did it cause hyper progression? I asked myself that,” he said. Dr. Rosenberg said it was possible that the blood filtering caused Mr. Bowen’s tumor lysis by sparking “an overwhelming immune response,” though he said such a scenario would be “unusual.” In addition to Mr. Hudlow and Mr. Bowen, The Times has learned of four other patients who died following their treatments in Antigua. One of them was Kyle Chupp, who was diagnosed with metastatic abdominal ******* in December 2023. During a call the following month, Mr. Preston convinced Mr. Chupp and his wife, Vanessa, to delay Mr. Chupp’s scheduled chemotherapy and radiation by telling them that the three patients who had fared the best in the Croatian study and were now *******-free hadn’t had chemotherapy or radiation beforehand, Ms. Chupp said. Mr. Chupp’s blood was filtered in Antigua in February. His health declined precipitously afterward, and he died on April 19. Two of the other deaths involved patients that Mr. Preston had described as feeling remarkably better during his phone call with the Hudlows and Ms. Baskin, according to people with knowledge of the patients’ treatments. One of them was Ashley Sullivan, who had metastatic breast *******. Her husband, Edmund Mudge, said she did feel better after her first two filter treatments. But not long after the second treatment in March, she learned of a large new tumor between her ribs and lungs. Ms. Sullivan, 42, texted Dr. Ilic and asked her why the filter had worked so well for the Croatian patients but not for her, according to copies of the messages reviewed by The Times. “Have NO idea who told you is not working for you,” Dr. Ilic texted back. “We got your CTCs down to zero.” Three months later, Ms. Sullivan was dead. Source link #ExThera #Claimed #Device #Cure #******* #Patients #Died Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Meta Q4 earnings report 2024 Meta Q4 earnings report 2024 Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Meta is slated to report fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday after the close of regular trading. Here is what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting: Earnings per share: $6.77 Revenue: $47.03 billion Meta shares are up about 14% since Oct. 30, when the social networking giant reported third-quarter earnings and said it would raise the low end of its 2024 capital expenditures guidance from $37 billion to $38 billion. At the time, the company’s shares dipped slightly in after-hours trading, indicating some investor trepidation that Meta could be spending too much on artificial intelligence-related computing infrastructure without seeing many near-term returns. CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Meta would invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 as part of its AI strategy. Afterward, Meta shares hit a record, indicating that investors appear more tolerant of the company’s heavy spending as long as it is related to AI and not the still-nascent metaverse. “They’ve been really adamant that there’s a lot to be excited about,” Raymond James managing director Josh Beck said about Meta’s AI spending. “They’re not going to be left behind the cycle.” The high costs associated with AI have become more prescient after last week’s emergence of DeepSeek, a ******** lab that claimed to have created a large language model that performs better and costs less to train than its American counterparts. DeepSink’s unverified claims will not have an immediate effect on Meta’s AI spend, said Ralph Schackart, an analyst at investment bank William Blair. “There’s too much to gain or lose by not investing,” Schackart said. Wall Street expects Meta to report fourth-quarter capital expenditures of $15.33 billion. Investors want to know how TikTok’s removal from the Apple and Google app stores in the U.S. has affected Meta. The company has offered deals to creators to promote Instagram on other short-form video apps, including TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, CNBC reported this week. Meta last week said its Threads microblogging platform would begin testing ads in the U.S. and Japan. The ads show Meta is trying to capitalize on TikTok’s “volatility” in the eyes of brands seeking alternatives, Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst with eMarketer, said in an email. The company’s relaxation of its content moderation policies, however, might concern advertisers, Enberg said. “It may have been smarter to wait for a less politically charged social media environment,” Enberg said. Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO Source link #Meta #earnings #report Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Merge Flavour: Decor Restaurant brings more casual puzzle fun to Android, soon to iOS Merge Flavour: Decor Restaurant brings more casual puzzle fun to Android, soon to iOS Merge Flavor: Decor Restaurant offers a new entry in the sizeable cooking sim genre Upgrade and decorate your kitchen, serve delectable dishes and more Find it out now on Android, coming soon to iOS Looking to beef up your merge puzzle options? Fan of cookery, melodrama and everything in between? Well then maybe TAAP Game Studio’s latest effort Merge Flavor: Decor Restaurant is for you, with its mix of culinary sim, merge puzzles and more! It’s out now on Android via Google Play and expected to land for iOS on May 20th, so let’s dig in. If you’ve played a cookery-based merge puzzler, of which there are a great many, you’re probably already familiar with what Merge Flavor: Decor Restaurant has to offer. You build up and decorate your own restaurant, play out merge puzzles and slowly follow along a fairly melodramatic storyline that hopes to keep you engrossed. Now, it’s likely clear that this genre is not particularly for me, but I can definitely see the appeal. And if you’re the kind of person who bounces around releases like this I’m sure an extra entry for your to-do list is more than welcome. But if you’re looking for a standout that adds a new twist to the genre, you might want to look elsewhere. Love the decor Admittedly, while I don’t exactly get the appeal myself I do understand it from a theoretical point of view. I know that June’s Journey, Wooga’s big flagship point-and-click puzzler, has a major audience invested in the monthly stories related to it. But at the same time, it also feels as if Merge Flavor is one of those that puts everything and the kitchen sink together to see what works. At the same time, with good graphics, simple gameplay and all the requisite features I mentioned earlier, for the right person, it’s likely up their alley. Meanwhile, if you’re looking to up your game (pun intended) with puzzles why not check out some of our lists to guide you? We’ve ranked the top 25 best puzzlers for iOS and Android to give you all the options you need! Source link #Merge #Flavour #Decor #Restaurant #brings #casual #puzzle #fun #Android #iOS Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Rachel Reeves’s growth plan comes under scrutiny from her own side Rachel Reeves’s growth plan comes under scrutiny from her own side A Labour government gives the green light to a third runway at Heathrow. The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, and other cabinet ministers are reportedly uneasy about the environmental implications but bite their tongues publicly. Green-minded Labour MPs or those with constituencies under the flight path are furious. Those sentences were as true in January 2009 as they are in January 2025. In the event the third runway was dropped, then fitfully revived, by the Conservatives. You could be forgiven for thinking this is just the same debate all over again. Yet ask Labour MPs – and only 33 are still around now who were in parliament back in 2009 – and many are adamant that there is a very big difference. Like Rachel Reeves, these MPs believe the parlous state of the economy requires this project to finally get going, and to get going quickly. Many of those Labour MPs most in favour of what the chancellor has said in her speech on economic growth are part of the Labour Growth Group, a new alliance formed last year to push the government to deliver major infrastructure projects and housebuilding as fast as possible. MP Chris Curtis, the group’s co-chair, told the BBC: “Anyone worrying about the opposition the Chancellor will face should know there’s more than 100 MPs in the Labour Growth Group who are ready to back her every step of the way in bringing this bold vision to life.” He added: “This speech was bullish and that’s exactly what it needed to be – bullish on the potential of our economy and in taking on those who will stand in the way of realising that potential.” It is clear this afternoon that one person determined to stand in the way of Heathrow expansion is Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London. His instant restatement of his opposition to the scheme – because of its “severe impact” on noise, air pollution and climate change – may well embolden Labour critics in the House of Commons, including within the government. One senior government source insisted this morning that Reeves’s decision to publicly invite Heathrow to submit an application should be seen as just that – an invitation that will kick off a long process with plenty more opportunities for internal opponents to make their case. Some inside Labour argue that there is a generational divide within the party on many controversial growth issues, including this one. One member of the 2024 Labour intake told me this afternoon that they expected opposition to Heathrow expansion among Labour MPs to be limited mostly to “nimby boomers”. Of course, Heathrow was not the only meaty part of the chancellor’s speech. There is some private unease among Labour MPs who represent seats in the Midlands and the north of England that the projects are mostly, but not all, located in the south. Even one Labour MP for a seat in the south of England urged the government to talk not only about the benefits of the developments to Oxford and Cambridge, but also to stress the benefits for the communities in between the two cities – noting acidly that Reeves, Sir Keir Starmer and all the previous five Conservative prime ministers went to Oxford University. While the response of Labour MPs will play a big role in determining how Reeves’s speech is assessed in Westminster, the actual delivery of her plans will rely in large part on private finance and local government. The entire speech was designed to boost business confidence in Britain’s prospects. The decisions firms make over the coming weeks, months and years will help to show whether that was a success. When it comes to local government, some of the signs are not auspicious. The BBC revealed last month that local councils, many of them Labour-led, had told the government its housebuilding plans were “unrealistic” and “impossible to achieve”. Ministers are eager to strike devolution deals across the country but in some areas on the growth corridor this is proving complicated. More housebuilding will also require new Labour MPs, many of whom claimed long-term Conservative seats in last year’s election landslide, to face down local campaigners arguing against development and argue for prioritising growth instead. It was striking this afternoon how many centre-right think tanks, disappointed by the pace of building projects under the Conservatives, praised Reeves’s approach this afternoon. Even among those most supportive of Reeves’s agenda, some argue that plans for long-term growth need to be accompanied by short-term ways to boost Britons’ living standards. The prime minister’s “plan for change” shift at the end of last year was in part an attempt to move the main focus of the government away from targeting GDP and towards “milestones” tangible to people’s everyday lives. One Labour adviser said: “We need to do what we did today, but that’s not about winning the next election. For that we need to give the voters we need to keep what they want and need.” Source link #Rachel #Reevess #growth #plan #scrutiny #side Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Cats May Have Gotten Bird Flu From Raw **** Food. Here’s What to Know. Cats May Have Gotten Bird Flu From Raw **** Food. Here’s What to Know. Federal officials who spent the last year grappling with a surge of bird flu infections in cows and people are now confronting a spate of new cases in cats, some of which have died after eating contaminated, uncooked **** food. Since early December, more than two dozen cases have been confirmed in domestic cats in the United States. Officials have linked some of the cases to virus-laden raw milk, which is known to pose a serious risk to cats. But other cats fell ill after eating commercially available raw **** food — the first known cases in the country linked to **** food. The cases have already prompted one **** food manufacturer to recall some of its products. And last week, federal officials announced new **** food safety rules and poultry surveillance efforts. Bird flu “is an emerging contaminant in animal food,” Dr. Steve Grube, a chief medical officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said at a briefing last week. Still, experts and officials said that there was no need for **** owners to panic. There is no evidence that infected cats have passed the virus on to people, and the cases have been linked specifically to unpasteurized milk and uncooked meat or poultry products. Most commercial **** foods are cooked or heat-treated. “The heat of processing should be enough to inactivate the virus,” said Phyllis Entis, a food safety microbiologist who worked for Canada’s food safety agency. But the cat cases highlight the risk of raw food products and raise questions about safety and surveillance gaps in parts of the food supply chain. “We really don’t have a sense of how widespread this virus is, and we’ve already seen several cases of it sneaking up in the **** food supply,” said Kristen Coleman, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Maryland who is studying bird flu in cats. “It’s a really big vulnerability.” Although dogs appear to be less susceptible to the virus than cats, and generally experience milder symptoms, contaminated food products pose risks to canines, too. Here’s what to know. How are cats getting infected? Experts have long known that cats are susceptible to the virus, which is called H5N1 and is often fatal in felines. There have been sporadic deaths in cats that preyed on wild birds, and there was a spike in cat cases after bird flu began circulating in dairy farms about a year ago. Raw milk from infected cows often contains very high levels of the virus; farm cats that died after lapping up raw milk often served as an early sign of an outbreak. (Pasteurization, a process in which milk is rapidly heated and then cooled, inactivates the virus and makes milk safe to drink, according to the F.D.A.) Many of the recent infections occurred in indoor cats that had no known contact with wild birds or dairy farms. In December, Oregon officials announced that a **** cat had contracted bird flu and died after eating raw, frozen **** food from Northwest Naturals. Samples of the food — the company’s Feline Turkey Recipe — tested positive for H5N1 and the virus was a genetic match for the one found in the cat, officials said. In an emailed statement, Northwest Naturals said that the company had “deep concern about the accuracy of testing an open bag of **** food, which can contribute to cross-contamination and the introduction of external contaminants that could lead to false positive or inaccurate test results.” Nevertheless, the company decided to issue a voluntary recall. California has also reported bird flu infections in cats fed raw milk or **** food. In one Los Angeles household, five cats got sick — and two died — after eating two kinds of raw **** food. Samples from one of the two brands, Monarch Raw **** Food, tested positive for the virus, officials said. “Monarch is complying with outreach from local agencies; however, they are not asking for a recall, and to the best of our knowledge there have been no other cases that involve Monarch,” Stephanie Greene, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email. How is the virus getting into **** food? It’s not entirely clear, and there could be different sources for different cases. But in an email on Wednesday, a U.S.D.A. spokesman said that some viral samples from infected cats were closely related, genetically, to samples from turkey farms in Minnesota. When bird flu is detected in a farmed turkey or chicken, federal regulations require that all birds in that flock be killed. Those birds “are not permitted in any food product at all,” Dr. Eric Deeble, an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said at the briefing last week. Turkeys and chickens typically become severely ill and die soon after they are infected. But if a bird picked up the virus right before it was slaughtered, or somehow had a very mild infection, it could potentially slip into the food supply undetected, experts said. The F.D.A., which regulates commercial **** food, requires animal food manufacturers to develop written safety plans, outlining the steps they are taking to ensure that their products are safe for consumption. The agency “has zero tolerance for pathogens like salmonella or listeria or E. coli or any other potential pathogen in ready-to-eat **** food, and that includes raw **** foods,” said Ms. Entis, who is the author of the book “Toxic: From Factory to Food Bowl, **** Food Is a Risky Business.” (The F.D.A. does not have a formal definition for raw **** food, but in general, products marketed as “raw” have not undergone any kind of heat treatment, such as cooking or pasteurization.) But in practice, Mr. Entis said, the agency does not have a lot of resources for **** food regulation and oversight. “So there’s a lot that doesn’t get caught, or only gets caught when there are illness reports,” she said. Northwest Naturals said that its **** food was processed at a facility that had a U.S.D.A. inspector on site and also produced food for human consumption. “We remain fully confident in our rigorous quality control and its ability to ensure that our customers’ pets are being served safe and nutritious food,” the company said. What are officials doing about it? Last Friday, the F.D.A. announced new rules that require companies making **** food containing certain uncooked or unpasteurized ingredients to update their food safety plans to account for the potential hazards of bird flu. Whether that will result in meaningful safety reforms remains to be seen, Ms. Entis said. Some companies may decide to implement new precautions, such as buying ingredients only from suppliers that regularly test their animals for the virus. But others could say that they’ve reviewed their existing safety plans and determined that no new safeguards are necessary, Ms. Entis said. Northwest Naturals said it was working to “reanalyze and strengthen our already stringent food safety plan.” The U.S.D.A. also announced new bird flu surveillance guidelines for large, commercial turkey farms in Minnesota and South Dakota. The guidelines, which could be expanded to other states in the future, call for turkeys to be isolated, monitored and tested for the virus 72 hours before they are sent to slaughter. What can **** owners do? The easiest way to protect your pets is to avoid feeding them raw milk, meat or poultry, experts agreed. Those products, which can harbor an array of food-borne pathogens, have always posed health risks, and bird flu ratchets them up. “It’s just not safe right now,” Dr. Coleman said. Owners whose pets are doing well on a particular raw **** food — and don’t want to or can’t suddenly switch to a new product — can significantly reduce the risks by cooking the food before serving it. **** owners should also use this as an opportunity to become more familiar with what’s in the food that they are serving their pets and how it’s processed, Dr. Coleman said. People who have questions or concerns can reach out to the **** food companies directly to ask where they source their ingredients and what food safety measures are in place. “And if they can’t give you an answer to those just very simple questions, then there’s your answer — stop buying their product,” Dr. Coleman said. People should also try to limit their pets’ contact with birds — and wild animals in general — and report sick and dead birds to local officials. Source link #Cats #Bird #Flu #Raw #**** #Food #Heres Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Sony’s PlayStation division will once again have a single CEO Sony’s PlayStation division will once again have a single CEO Sony is once again shaking up its leadership ranks. Effective April 1, Hideaki Nishino will be president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE). Nishino was CEO of the division’s Platform Business Group last year. He ran SIE in partnership with Hermen Hulst, who will remain in his role as the head of PlayStation’s studios but now report to Nishino. The pair replaced former SIE CEO Jim Ryan. “I am truly honored to take the helm at Sony Interactive Entertainment,” Nishino said in a statement. “Technology and creativity are two of our biggest strengths as we continue to focus on developing experiences that deliver entertainment for everyone. We will continue to grow the PlayStation community in new ways, such as IP expansion, while also delivering the best in technology innovation.” Hulst, meanwhile, will continue to oversee Sony’s first-party games. He’s also responsible for helping adapt the company’s video game franchises via PlayStation Productions. The pair have had a tumultuous first year in charge of SIE. Just before they took the reins, Ryan announced that the division was and shutting down London Studio. Since then, Nishino and Hulst have been dealing with the fallout of Ryan’s to focus on live-service games. After the — a hero shooter that , never to return — Sony , as well as Neon Koi. A subsequent review of Sony’s live-service efforts led to the company two other projects that were in development at Bluepoint and Bend Studio, with the former said to be a God of War title. Elsewhere within the company, SIE Chairman Hiroki Totoki is giving up that post to become the new CEO of Sony. He’ll succeed Kenichiro Yoshida, who will remain the company’s chairman. Totoki is also the current president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Sony. Replacing him as CFO is Lin Tao, a senior vice-president of finance, corporate strategy and development at SIE. Source link #Sonys #PlayStation #division #single #CEO Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Tesla TSLA 2024 Q4 earnings Tesla TSLA 2024 Q4 earnings André Thierig, plant manager of the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, stands at the final inspection of the production of Tesla Model Y electric vehicles. Patrick Pleul | Picture Alliance | Getty Images Tesla plans to release fourth-quarter results after the bell on Wednesday. Here’s what analysts are expecting, based on an average of estimates compiled by LSEG: Earnings per share: 76 cents Revenue: $27.26 billion Tesla’s earnings report follows a steep rally in the company’s stock price tied to the election of President Donald Trump. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the biggest backer of Trump’s campaign efforts and is now leading the president’s new government efficiency advisory board. The electric vehicle maker’s stock price is up 58% since Trump’s victory in November as investors bet that Musk’s influence would lead to both favorable policies and less oversight of his companies. In early January, Tesla reported deliveries for the fourth quarter of 495,570. For the full year, deliveries came in at about 1.8 million, marking the company’s first annual decline. Deliveries are the closest approximation of sales reported by Tesla, but are not precisely defined in the company’s shareholder communications. To end 2024, Tesla offered a range of discounts on inventory vehicles and special discounts for buyers in North America who were referred by another Tesla customer. In China, Tesla cut prices on its popular Model Y SUVs before debuting a refreshed version, the Model Y Juniper. Given the discounts on its vehicles in the quarter, margins are likely to be in focus on Wednesday’s call, along with guidance for Tesla’s core automotive and energy businesses in 2025. Tesla previously reported that it had deployed 31.4 gigawatt-hours in battery energy storage systems in 2024, with 11 GWh of that deployed in the fourth quarter. Tesla’s growing energy division makes most of its revenue from sales and use of its big, backup batteries, including versions for home, business and utility-scale projects. Tesla uses online forum Say Technologies to solicit and choose investor questions for execs to answer on earnings calls. As of Tuesday, more than 100 inquiries had flooded in about Tesla’s plans around autonomous vehicle technology. Musk has been promising Tesla will turn its existing cars into robotaxi-ready vehicles for years but so far the company has not delivered a system safe to use without a driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time. In October, Tesla drummed up excitement among fans by showing off an early prototype version of a Cybercab at its “We, Robot” event. However, Tesla still doesn’t produce robotaxis. Instead, the company sells a premium version of its partially automated driving system called “FSD,” short for Full Self-Driving Supervised. Meanwhile, competitors including Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S., and China’s WeRide and Pony.ai are already testing and commercially operating driverless ride-hailing services. Besides the FSD-related inquiries, more than 100 shareholders submitted questions to the Say forum about Musk, seeking information about his obligations at the White House, and about the impact of his political and public conduct on the company. Musk has recently made offensive jokes and gestures making light of the Holocaust, and has promoted Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant party AfD, or Alternative fur Deutschland, ahead of the country’s elections in February. His remarks and behavior have drawn rebuke from Democrats in the U.S. and leaders in Germany, Poland, the U.K. and France as well as from Jewish groups. As CNBC previously reported, Tesla’s brand value shed $15 billion in 2024, owing to multiple factors including the company’s aging lineup of EVs, and Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric and conduct, according to research by Brand Finance. WATCH: Musk ‘resisting’ budget Tesla model Source link #Tesla #TSLA #earnings Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Mordallup Angus to offer 80 yearling bulls, including Kiwi genetics Mordallup Angus to offer 80 yearling bulls, including Kiwi genetics The Muir family of Mordallup Angus stud in Manjimup will host their Annual Yearling Bull ***** with 80 lots on offer at the Boyanup saleyards on March 26. Source link #Mordallup #Angus #offer #yearling #bulls #including #Kiwi #genetics Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Full interview with Sen. Mark Kelly | Playbook The First 100 Days: Immigration Full interview with Sen. Mark Kelly | Playbook The First 100 Days: Immigration Full interview with Sen. Mark Kelly | Playbook The First 100 Days: Immigration lead image Source link #Full #interview #Sen #Mark #Kelly #Playbook #Days #Immigration Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Why ASML Is Advancing Today Why ASML Is Advancing Today Netherlands-based ASML (ASML), which markets equipment used to make computer chips, is climbing 5% today. The company’s bookings came in way ahead of analysts’ average outlook, and its fourth-quarter results beat the average estimates by significant amounts. ASML asserted that its strong results were driven by powerful demand for AI. Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) Capitalizes on AI Demand, Solid Q1 Results Lead to Price Target Upgrade to $120 An innovative technician wearing a lab coat manipulating semiconductor chipsets in a modern laboratory. A Look at ASML’s Q4 Results and Comments The Dutch firm generated bookings of 7.1 billion euros last quarter, which was much higher than analysts’ average estimate of 3.5 billion euros. Moreover, its EPS came in at 6.85 euros, versus the mean outlook of 6.73 euros. ASML’s top line soared 28% versus the same ******* a year earlier to 9.26 billion euros. That was 200 million euros above analysts’ average outlook. For Q1, ASML predicted that its revenue would come in at 7.5 billion euros to 8 billion euros, well above the average estimate of 7.24 billion euros, “AI is the clear driver. We truly believe that AI is going to bring even more opportunity to this semiconductor industry.” CEO Christophe Fouquet stated. AI ” has created a shift in the market dynamics that is not benefiting all of our customers equally, which creates both opportunities and risks,” he added. The Recent Price Action of ASML Stock In the last month, the shares are up 3%, while they have risen 4.5% in the last three months. While we acknowledge the potential of ASML, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ASML but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ ALSO 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Source link #ASML #Advancing #Today Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

New Research Finds Potential Alternative to Abortion Pill Mifepristone New Research Finds Potential Alternative to Abortion Pill Mifepristone A new study suggests a possible alternative to the abortion pill mifepristone, a drug that continues to be a target of lawsuits and legislation from abortion opponents. But the potential substitute could further complicate the politics of reproductive health because it is also the key ingredient in a contraceptive morning-after pill. The new study, published Thursday in the journal NEJM Evidence, involved a drug called ulipristal acetate, the active ingredient in the prescription contraceptive Ella, one of two types of morning-after pills approved in the United States. (The other, Plan B One-Step, which does not require a prescription, contains a different drug and does not work in a way that would terminate a pregnancy, according to scientific evidence.) In the study, 133 women who were up to nine weeks’ pregnant took twice the dose of the ulipristal acetate contained in Ella, followed by misoprostol, the second drug used in the typical medication abortion regimen. All but four of the women completed the termination of their pregnancies without further intervention, a 97 percent completion rate that is similar to the regimen using mifepristone. (The others finished the process with additional medication or a procedure.) There were no serious complications, and the study concluded that using ulipristal acetate in the two-drug medication abortion regimen was safe. Dr. Beverly Winikoff, the lead author of the study and the president of Gynuity Health Projects, a reproductive health research organization, said that after the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in 2022, she became increasingly interested in a possible role for ulipristal acetate, which has a similar chemical structure to mifepristone. “I was thinking, there’s maybe something else we can do,” she said. “Another option. And this one is already on the market.” The political implications of the study are complex because of their potential to blur the line between the public perception of emergency contraception and abortion. For years, abortion opponents have opposed morning-after pills by saying they can cause abortions, and reproductive health experts have countered by pointing to scientific evidence that the pills do not terminate pregnancies but instead act to prevent pregnancy after sex. Some reproductive health experts are concerned that research showing that a morning-after pill ingredient can be used for abortion could stoke attempts to crack down on emergency contraception and sow confusion that could bolster the larger anti-abortion strategy. Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for Students for Life of America, said her organization would “absolutely” consider litigation over Ella. “The pro-life movement should be vindicated,” Ms. Hamrick said. “We’ve been arguing for years that Ella acts as an abortifacient.” Mary Ziegler, a law professor and abortion expert at the University of California, Davis, said the study could present challenges for both sides of the abortion debate. “It’s going to put wind in the sails of abortion opponents who have been saying things like contraceptives can be abortifacients,” she said, adding, “This study being released will be difficult, I think, for abortion rights supporters to manage.” But Ms. Ziegler said the study’s findings could also be “politically risky” for abortion opponents because public support for contraception is high and many voters in conservative states endorsed ballot measures protecting abortion rights. “I think it’s one of those things that’s going to tempt social conservatives to push probably faster than politics would currently permit in the direction of regulating contraception,” she said. “And I think that could backfire.” Reproductive health experts said the new study did not refute the science showing that morning-after pills don’t induce abortions, because it involved a different dose of the drug. Several experts said that because it was a relatively small first study with no comparison group of patients, more research was needed before ulipristal acetate should be used as a substitute for mifepristone in the two-drug regimen. “We can’t change clinical practice based on this study,” said Kelly Cleland, a researcher who is the executive director of the American Society for Emergency Contraception. Abortion opponents said they were not surprised by the study’s findings. “After years of denying ulipristal acetate’s potential to end the life of an embryo, abortion advocates are now starting to use it as a substitute for the abortion drug mifepristone,” Dr. Donna Harrison, director of research for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement. “The reason for this is simple. Ulipristal and mifepristone function in the same way.” Ella was already a target for some conservatives. Project 2025, a right-wing policy blueprint that has been strongly tied to the new Trump administration, said that Ella should be removed from required insurance coverage of contraception under the Affordable Care Act because it is “a potential abortifacient.” Mifepristone, the first pill in the standard two-drug medication abortion regimen, is the only drug specifically approved for abortion in the United States. Typically used through 12 weeks’ gestation, mifepristone stops the development of a pregnancy by blocking the hormone progesterone. The second drug, misoprostol, is taken 24 to 48 hours later and causes contractions similar to a miscarriage. Ulipristal acetate is in the same class of medications as mifepristone and also blocks the activity of progesterone, a hormone that prepares the uterus to receive and hold an embryo, said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a reproductive health physician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the new study. In the study, a 60 milligram dose of ulipristal acetate (double the 30 milligrams in Ella) was substituted for mifepristone and followed by misoprostol, which has various medical uses and has not been targeted as much by abortion opponents. (Misoprostol can also facilitate an abortion on its own, but is considered more effective in a combination regimen.) Reproductive health experts said they welcomed the search for alternatives to mifepristone because abortion opponents have been waging efforts to sharply restrict the medication across the country, most notably with a federal lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration. The Supreme Court rejected that lawsuit last year, ruling that the initial plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, but the suit has since been revived with three states as plaintiffs. Dr. Grossman, who wrote an editorial about the study, said the prospect of a substitute for mifepristone was “certainly a promising finding.” But, he added, “if because of this new evidence that at higher doses, ulipristal acetate could cause an abortion, that were to lead to ulipristal acetate being taken off the market for emergency contraception, that would be really, really bad.” Perrigo, the company that manufactures Ella, issued a statement saying that because the new study tested ulipristal acetate at a higher dose than one pill of Ella, and in combination with misoprostol, “there continues to be no evidence to show that, on its own, Ella causes an abortion.” The company added that “Ella is an F.D.A.-approved emergency contraception pill that acts before pregnancy can occur.” The study was conducted in Mexico City and was co-led by researchers there. Scientists have long understood that hormone-based drugs may be able to play different functions at different doses along the spectrum of a woman’s reproductive health cycle. In Europe, researchers including Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician and founder of telemedicine organizations that provide abortion pills globally, are studying low doses of mifepristone as a weekly birth control pill. Dr. Gomperts said she considered the new ulipristal acetate study sufficient to prescribe the drug off-label in combination with misoprostol. “The more uses we have for these medications, the harder it will be for people to take them away,” said Dr. Paul Blumenthal, an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University who was in an advisory group for the study. Plan B is a much more widely used morning-after pill in the United States, but Ella is considered more effective for some women, including people who are overweight. Plan B is intended to be taken within three days after unprotected sex, while Ella can be taken within five days. Both pills prevent pregnancy by blocking ovulation, the release of eggs from the ovaries that occurs before eggs can be fertilized, scientific studies have shown. The claim by some abortion opponents that morning-after pills are abortion drugs is based on a theory that they might also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. Most scientific research has not found that to be the case. For years, despite scientific evidence to the contrary detailed in an investigation by The New York Times, the F.D.A.-approved label and packaging for Plan B One-Step said that while the pill worked by blocking ovulation, there was a possibility it might prevent implantation. In 2022, the agency changed the language to make it clear that Plan B acts only before fertilization, “will not work if you’re already pregnant, and will not affect an existing pregnancy.” The F.D.A. label for Ella says that its “likely primary mechanism of action” is to stop or delay ovulation. The label adds that the medication may also affect implantation. Studies in recent years, however, suggest that Ella does not operate by blocking a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. Source link #Research #Finds #Potential #Alternative #Abortion #Pill #Mifepristone Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

PlayStation Announces Focus On PS5 Games For Future PS Plus Games PlayStation Announces Focus On PS5 Games For Future PS Plus Games Sony has announced that it is shifting away from adding PlayStation 4 (PS4) games to the free monthly PlayStation Plus games and PlayStation Game Catalog. As part of the reveal of the free games for February 2025 on the PlayStation Blog, Sony says that it will putting more of a focus on adding PlayStation 5 (PS5) games starting next year. “As many of our players are currently playing on PS5 and have shifted toward redeeming and accessing PS5 titles from the Monthly Games and Game Catalog benefit, PlayStation Plus is also evolving with this trend and will focus on offering PS5 titles through the Monthly Games and Game Catalog benefit starting January 2026,” the company said. “As we shift to PS5, PS4 games will no longer be a key benefit and will only be occasionally offered for PlayStation Plus Monthly Games and Game Catalog starting January 2026. We may still provide titles that can be playable on both PS4 and PS5 consoles after this date.” The company did make it clear that any PS4 games that have already been redeemed via PlayStation Plus’ monthly games will still be playable as long as you have an active membership. PS4 games in the game catalog, Sony says, will be available until they leave the service. “We’ll continue to evolve the experience of PlayStation Plus and optimize the benefits you receive, including exclusive discounts, online multiplayer access, online game save storage and more,” they said. “As we shift our focus to PS5, we look forward to adding new PS5 titles monthly for you to enjoy.” What do you think of PlayStation making a move to focusing on PS5 games for the monthly games and game catalog? Let us know down below, and join more discussions in the official Insider Gaming forums. For more Insider Gaming, read about why the planned story DLC for The Division 2 has been delayed and what NASCAR series is making its console game debut. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter. SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter to receive the latest news and exclusive leaks every week! No Spam. Source link #PlayStation #Announces #Focus #PS5 #Games #Future #Games Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Japanese retailer will host a lottery to give buyers a chance to purchase an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Japanese retailer will host a lottery to give buyers a chance to purchase an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Japanese PC components retailer Goodwill Nagoya Osu will conduct a lottery for customers who want to buy an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 GPU. According to its X (formerly Twitter) post, the next-generation GPUs will go on ***** this Friday, January 31, at 11 a.m. The shop will start distributing raffle tickets from 10:20 a.m. only to those in line by that time, so if you’re late, you’ll miss out on the raffle. When everyone has raffle tickets, there will be a draw, and winners can choose only one product in order of selection. The store also asked customers not to leave the line until the lottery results were announced. This move by the retailer shows how poor the inventory for these brand-new Nvidia cards is, with even the company admitting a looming RTX 50-series shortage. Stock problems aren’t limited to the far side of the world, either. A *** retailer said last week that it only had a single-digit inventory for the RTX 5090 and that its stock would sell out in seconds, while RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 buyers in the U.S. have already been camping at Micro Center branches three days before launch. 抽選券配布完了次第、抽選を行い発表します。当選順にお一人様1点、商品をお選びいただきます。抽選券配布から抽選発表までの間、列を離れないようお願いいたします。1/30　23時以降に入荷商品、入荷数をお伝えします。 pic.twitter.com/VKyPuhpEKXJanuary 29, 2025 Goodwill Nagoya Osu said that it will announce which items and how much of their quantities they will have in their inventory the day before at 11 pm. That way, its customers would know what to expect if they get picked in the lottery. We don’t expect this announcement to show a good amount of stock; after all, there won’t be a need for a lottery if the store has plenty of GPUs in its warehouse. Because of these stock issues, a few scalpers are taking advantage of the situation, with some selling the “rights” to buy the GPU for up to $7,000 without any returns or refunds. This is over three times the up over the MSRP, so please don’t fall for tactics like these. Instead, you can check out these places to legitimately buy the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. That way, a store warranty covers you, and you’re sure you’re not being scammed with a fake or defective GPU. Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Source link #Japanese #retailer #host #lottery #give #buyers #chance #purchase #RTX #RTX Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Antarctic ice sheet may be less vulnerable to collapse than expected Antarctic ice sheet may be less vulnerable to collapse than expected The Ronne ice shelf in West Antarctica survived a warm ******* long ago MODIS/ZUMA Wire/Shutterstock A major ice shelf in Antarctica appears to have survived a ******* of hot temperatures more than 120,000 years ago, indicating that the West Antarctic ice sheet may not be vulnerable to complete collapse caused by climate change – a worst-case situation that could raise sea levels by metres. But large uncertainties remain. “It’s good news and it’s bad news,” says Eric Wolff at the University of Cambridge, ***. “We didn’t get the worst-case scenario. But I can’t put my hand on my heart and say this wouldn’t happen in the next century or two.” Human-caused climate change has made the future of the West Antarctic ice sheet uncertain. If we continue emitting high levels of greenhouse gases, some models project the ice sheet will completely disappear over the next few centuries. In the most extreme scenario, this could raise sea levels by as much as 2 metres by 2100. In other models, however, the ice is less sensitive to warming. Wolff and his colleagues looked at the Ronne ice shelf, a large section of the ice sheet that extends into the ocean, to see how it behaved between 117,000 and 126,000 years ago. During that time, which was part of the last interglacial *******, changes in Earth’s orbit raised Antarctic temperatures even higher than they are today. To determine the extent of the Ronne ice shelf during that warm *******, the researchers measured concentrations of sea salt in an ice core drilled about 650 kilometres away from the shelf’s edge. If the ice shelf had melted during the last interglacial, its edge would have drawn closer to the core’s location. As a result, the researchers expected salt concentrations in the core would rise eightfold during those years, because the core’s location would have been much closer to the open ocean. “It would have been a seaside resort,” says Wolff. Instead, they found salt concentrations during the last interglacial were similar or even lower than those of today, indicating that the edge of the ice sheet remained far away. Other measurements of water isotopes in the core, which preserve evidence of weather patterns influenced by changing ice sheets, also suggest the Ronne ice shelf persisted during the last interglacial. The ice’s stability in this previous warm ******* suggests a lower likelihood that the West Antarctic ice sheet will totally collapse as climate change drives up global temperatures, says Wolff. However, he and other researchers say sea level rise due to melting ice still poses a major risk. “It implies there was not a complete deglaciation of western Antarctica, but it doesn’t give us enough information to relax,” says Timothy Naish at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. For one, the survival of the Ronne ice shelf doesn’t mean that other areas of ice, like the Thwaites or Pine Island glaciers, didn’t melt. In fact, the water isotope record in the core suggests they did, says Wolff. The ice core the researchers used also didn’t cover the warmest ******* of the last interglacial. The dynamics of warming in the last interglacial, which varied by region, are also different from global warming today, when temperatures are rising across the whole planet. For example, warmer ocean waters reaching Antarctica could accelerate melt by intruding under the ice, says Wolff. “This is a really important observation, but I think it’s going to take us longer to figure out what it means,” says Andrea Dutton at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She says researchers have spent 50 years trying to work out what happened to the West Antarctic ice sheet during the last interglacial. Topics: Source link #Antarctic #ice #sheet #vulnerable #collapse #expected Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Bank of Canada cuts rates, says tariff war could be very damaging Bank of Canada cuts rates, says tariff war could be very damaging Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada, during a news conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. David Kawai | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Bank of Canada on Wednesday trimmed its key policy rate by 25 basis points to 3%, cut growth forecasts and warned Canadians that a tariff war triggered by the United States could cause major economic damage. U.S. President Donald Trump is promising to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada on Saturday. Canada sends 75% of all goods and services exports to the United States. “A long-lasting and broad-based trade conflict would badly hurt economic activity in Canada,” Governor Tiff Macklem said in opening remarks to a press conference. The prospect of such a war is clouding the economic outlook. If Canada and other nations slapped a retaliatory 25% tariff on the United States, this could cut ********* growth by 2.5 percentage points in the first year and another 1.5 percentage points in the second year, the bank said, noting that this was not a forecast but a hypothetical scenario. Wednesday’s cut marked the sixth time in a row that the bank has reduced borrowing costs. Inflation has consistently stayed around the mid-point of the bank’s 1-3% target range but economic growth is still sluggish. “With inflation around 2% and the economy in excess supply, Governing Council decided to reduce the policy rate a further 25 basis points to 3%,” the bank said in a statement. The ********* dollar extended its losses after the rates decision, falling by 0.24% to 1.4433 against the U.S. dollar, or 69.29 U.S. cents. Money markets see an almost 50% chance of another 25-basis-point cut at the BoC’s next monetary policy decision announcement on Mar. 12. “The Bank of Canada would be in a tough situation but our view is that they would become more aggressive in terms of rate cuts if that’s (U.S. tariffs) what we’re faced with,” said Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. The bank’s challenge is that U.S. tariffs might both drive up inflation – in theory prompting the need for higher rates – and also cut growth, which could on paper mean more stimulus in the form of lower rates. “With a single tool – our policy interest rate – we can’t lean against weaker output and higher inflation at the same time,” Macklem said. The bank though could help the economy adjust, especially given that inflation is low, he said. The bank also announced that its quantitative tightening program, designed to drain the excess liquidity it pumped into the economy during the pandemic, would end in March. The BoC, which has been among the most aggressive top central banks in cutting rates, trimmed the country’s economic growth outlook to 1.8% in 2025 from the 2.1% predicted in October. The economy will grow by 1.8% in 2026, down from growth of 2.3% forecast earlier. The central bank lifted its forecast for inflation to 2.3% from 2.2% in 2025 and to 2.1% from 2.0% for 2026. The projections do not take into account possible U.S. tariffs. Canada’s economy has been shrinking on a per-capita basis for six consecutive quarters and most of the growth observed has been supported by an increase in population. With the federal government’s new curbs on immigration, Canada is likely to see a population decline of 0.2% in both 2025 and 2026. Source link #Bank #Canada #cuts #rates #tariff #war #damaging Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Derek Humphry, Pivotal Figure in Right-to-Die Movement, Dies at 94 Derek Humphry, Pivotal Figure in Right-to-Die Movement, Dies at 94 Derek Humphry, a British-born journalist whose experience helping his terminally ill wife end her life led him to become a crusading pioneer in the right-to-die movement and to publish “Final Exit,” a best-selling guide to suicide, died on Jan. 2 in Eugene, Ore. He was 94. His death, at a hospice facility, was announced by his family. With a populist flair and a knack for speaking matter-of-factly about death, Mr. Humphry almost single-handedly galvanized a national conversation about physician-assisted suicide in the early 1980s, at a time when the idea had been little more than an esoteric theory batted around by medical ethicists. “He was the one who really put this cause on the map in America,” said Ian Dowbiggin, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and the author of “A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine” (2005). “The people who support the notion of physician-assisted suicide absolutely owe him a big thanks.” In 1975, Mr. Humphry was working as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London when Jean Humphry, his wife of 22 years, was in the final stages of terminal bone *******. Hoping to avoid prolonged suffering, she asked him to help her die. Mr. Humphry procured a lethal dose of painkillers from a sympathetic doctor and mixed them with coffee in her favorite mug. “I took her the mug and told her if she drank it she’d die immediately,” Mr. Humphry told The Daily Record of Scotland. “Then I gave her a hug, kissed her and we said our goodbyes.” Mr. Humphry chronicled the pursuit of his terminally ill first wife’s hastened death in the 1979 book “Jean’s Way.”Credit…Norris Lane Press Mr. Humphry chronicled the emotional, taboo and legally fraught pursuit of his wife’s hastened death in the book “Jean’s Way” (1979). Excerpted in newspapers around the world, it was a sensation. Readers sent letters to the editor discussing the suffering of their loved ones. Many wrote directly to Mr. Humphry. “I wish we had a solution like yours,” a woman wrote, describing her husband’s last eight weeks of life as “a horror.” “How much more beautiful, how much more ‘love.’ We did what others forced us to do and experienced that dreadful ‘death’ the medical world gives by prolonging life in every possible way.” In their letters, some readers pleaded for instructions to help their loved ones die. That prompted Mr. Humphry, by then remarried and working in California for The Los Angeles Times, to think about creating an organization to advocate for assisted suicide and end-of-life rights for the terminally ill. Ann Wickett Humphry, his second wife, suggested using the word Hemlock as a title for the organization, “arguing that most Americans associate the word with the death of Socrates, a man who discussed and planned his death,” Mr. Humphry later wrote in an updated edition of “Jean’s Way.” In August 1980, he and his wife rented the Los Angeles Press Club to announce the establishment of the Hemlock Society, which they ran out of the garage of their home in Santa Monica. The organization grew quickly. In 1981, it issued “Let Me Die Before I Wake,” a guide to medicines and dosages for inducing “peaceful self-deliverance.” The group also lobbied state legislatures to enact laws making assisted suicide legal. In 1990, the Hemlock Society moved to Eugene. By then it had more than 30,000 members, but the right-to-die conversation hadn’t yet reached most dinner tables in America. That changed spectacularly in 1991, after Mr. Humphry published “Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying.” The book was a 192-page step-by-step guide that, in addition to explaining suicide methods, provided Miss Manners-like tips for exiting gracefully. “If you are unfortunately obliged to end your life in a hospital or motel,” he wrote, “it is gracious to leave a note apologizing for the shock and inconvenience to the staff. I have also heard of an individual leaving a generous tip to a motel staff.” “Final Exit” quickly shot to No. 1 in the hardcover advice category of The New York Times’s best-seller list. “That is an indication of how large the issue of euthanasia looms in our society now,” the bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan told The Times in 1991. “It is frightening and disturbing, and that kind of sales figure is a shot across the bow. It is the loudest statement of protest of how medicine is dealing with terminal illness and dying.” Reactions to “Final Exit” were generally divided along ideological lines. Conservatives blasted it. “What can one say about this new ‘book’? In one word: evil,” the University of Chicago bioethicist Leon R. Kass wrote in Commentary magazine, calling Mr. Humphry “the Lord High Executioner.” “I did not want to read it, I do not want you to read it. It should never have been written, and it does not deserve to be dignified with a review, let alone an article.” But progressives embraced the book, even as public health experts expressed concern that the methods it laid out could be used by depressed people who weren’t terminally ill. “I’ve read ‘Final Exit’ out of curiosity, but I’ll keep it for another reason — because I can imagine, having once nursed a ******* patient, the day when I might want to use it,” the New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen wrote. She added, “And if that day comes, whose business is it, really, but my own and that of those I love?” Rather than worrying about the book’s contents, Ms. Quindlen said, “we should look for ways to insure that dignified death is available in places other than the chain bookstore at the mall.” Derek John Humphry was born on April 29, 1930, in Bath, England. His father, Royston Martin Humphry, was a traveling salesman. His mother, Bettine (Duggan) Humphry, had been a fashion model before marrying. After leaving school at age 15, Derek got a job as a newspaper messenger. The next year, The Bristol Evening World hired him as a reporter. He went on to report for The Manchester Evening News and The Daily Mail before moving to The Sunday Times of London and then to The Los Angeles Times. Before turning to books about death, Mr. Humphry wrote “Because They’re ******” (1971), an examination of racial discrimination written with Gus John, a ****** social worker, and “Police Power and ****** People” (1972), about racism and corruption in Scotland Yard. In his earlier journalism career in Britain, Mr. Humphry wrote books about race relations, including this one, from 1972, about racism and corruption in Scotland Yard. Credit…Panther Books Mr. Humphry was a polarizing figure even within the right-to-die movement. In 1990, he and Ms. Wickett Humphry divorced and fought bitterly in the news media. She called him a “fraud,” accusing him of leaving her because she had been diagnosed with *******. Mr. Humphry denied the allegation. “This was a very shaky marriage,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “This is extremely painful, as bad as Jean’s death. I’ve lost my home; I’ve lived in a motel for three months.” Ms. Wickett Humphry killed herself in October 1991. In a video recorded the day before, she expressed misgivings about the work they had done together, including helping her parents end their lives at home. “I walked away from that house thinking we’re both murderers,” she said in the video, which was reviewed by The Times. Mr. Humphry went into “damage control” mode, he told The Times. He placed a half-page advertisement in the paper explaining his side of the story. “Sadly, for much of her life Ann was dogged by emotional problems,” the advertisement said, adding that “suicide for reasons of depression has never been part of the credo of the Hemlock.” Ms. Wickett Humphry’s death and reservations about the right-to-die movement caused strain within the Hemlock Society. Mr. Humphry resigned as executive director in 1992 and started the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization. The Hemlock Society eventually splintered into several new groups, including the Final Exit Network, which Mr. Humphry helped start. He married Gretchen Crocker in 1991. She survives him, along with three sons from his first marriage; three grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Lowrey Brown, a Final Exit Network “exit guide” who helps terminally ill patients plan their deaths, said in an interview that her clients sometimes credit Mr. Humphry and “Final Exit” for giving them the courage to end their lives. “It was the Hemlock Society and the book ‘Final Exit’ that really crossed the threshold of getting this into ordinary Americans’ living rooms as a discussion topic,” Ms. Brown said. “You could talk about it at the Thanksgiving dinner table.” If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Source link #Derek #Humphry #Pivotal #Figure #RighttoDie #Movement #Dies Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

No Man’s Sky’s latest update, Worlds Part II, adds ‘trillions’ of new planets No Man’s Sky’s latest update, Worlds Part II, adds ‘trillions’ of new planets The latest major update for No Man’s Sky has been released today. Worlds Part II brings the game up to version 5.5 and includes new planets, new stars and new story elements. The update features new landscapes. In a blog post, developer Hello Games said: “The algorithm of the universe has evolved to generate beautiful new mountains, deep valleys, and sprawling plains on untouched planets, waiting to be discovered.” It also adds new purple-class solar systems, offering “countless new worlds” and a new storyline to follow. New deep ocean environments have also been added, with Hello Games promising “shadowy ocean floors [which] harbour many otherworldly landscapes and secretive aquatic lifeforms”. Players can now organise their inventory with a single button press and collect a series of fishtank-themed helmets via fishing milestones. A new Abandoned mode has also been added, which removes all alien lifeforms from the game. The full list of new additions and features can be found on the No Man’s Sky website. Worlds Part II Gas Giants New Terrain Lighting Overhaul Inventory Sorting New Solar Systems Deep Oceans New Biomes Weather Hazards Starship Archiving Abandoned Mode Deep Sea Creatures Dynamic Water Improved Cooking Evolving story Titan Expedition pic.twitter.com/eUZhedoSN3 — Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) January 29, 2025 “One of the biggest reasons people play No Man’s Sky is for that sense of adventure and discovery, that feeling of flying to a planet, and landing to explore, knowing no one has ever been there before,” Hello Games founder Sean Murray said in a statement. “With Worlds Part II, we added billions of new star systems and trillions of new planets to the universe. This allows us to push the boundaries of our engine and technology without changing the things people love about the game already. “If you settled on your home planet with a beautiful base that you lovingly crafted, that is safe – but now there are new worlds to explore with a level of variety no one has seen before.” Source link #Mans #Skys #latest #update #Worlds #Part #adds #trillions #planets Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Muscle patch made from stem cells could treat heart failure Muscle patch made from stem cells could treat heart failure Illustration of the heart muscle patch Eva Meyer-Besting/UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN GÖTTINGEN A muscle patch crafted from stem cells has improved cardiac function in monkeys with heart disease. It is now being tested in a small number of people, with early results from the first recipient suggesting it could treat advanced heart failure. Heart failure – when the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands – usually occurs after a heart attack permanently damages or weakens the organ. Short of receiving a transplant or fitting a pump, no treatment can fully restore cardiac function, only slow its decline.… Source link #Muscle #patch #stem #cells #treat #heart #failure Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Saving Children’s Eyesight and Their Future in Mozambique Saving Children’s Eyesight and Their Future in Mozambique Over the past year, Muanema Fakira noticed something odd about the eyes of her 1-year-old daughter Sumaya. Her left eye was cloudy. It did not gleam with curiosity or glint in the sun. When the problem persisted, Ms. Fakira made the rounds to health clinics in their town in central Mozambique. Doctors said they could not help. But they knew of someone who could, if Ms. Fakira could take Sumaya, now 2, on a 100-mile journey to the coast. The family made the trip to the city of Quelimane, where Dr. Isaac Vasco da Gama examined Sumaya’s eyes and quickly diagnosed a congenital cataract. Ms. Fakira was skeptical — cataracts are for old people, she said. But Dr. da Gama explained that an infection at birth, or shortly after, can cause cataracts in children. The condition is particularly worrying because vision problems affect the development of a child’s physical function. But the good news, he said, was that the problem can be solved with a simple surgery, one he does a dozen times a week at Quelimane Central Hospital. This was particularly lucky for Sumaya because Dr. da Gama is one of just three pediatric ophthalmologists in Mozambique, a country of 30 million people. Sumaya had her surgery in November, and a day later headed home, already recovering. Dr. da Gama was pleased to have seen her while she was still young, before permanent damage was done. It was a sign that a system he and colleagues have been trying to put in place for the last few years might be taking hold: Sumaya’s parents sought help from the medical system for an eye problem — rather than a traditional healer, or a sorcerer to remove a curse. When Sumaya was referred for care, it was a long and expensive trip, but she got help relatively quickly for a problem that might otherwise have blighted her life. Ideally her cataract would have been spotted at birth by a midwife. “I do believe that by pushing forward, we can slowly overcome this challenge,” Dr. da Gama said. In Mozambique, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, awareness of vision problems is so low, and access to help so limited, that few children get the care they need, even though many suffer from easily treatable problems. In 2021, a global commission on eye health reported that 510 million people around the world, 90 percent of them in low- and middle-income countries, had uncorrected vision impairment. That is, they could not see properly because they did not have glasses. The consequences are enormous: Children with vision loss in these countries are significantly less likely to be in school. One study found that for those who do attend school, those with uncorrected vision problems learn half as much as their peers with normal vision. Access to treatment is so limited because of a scarcity of trained staff and a failure to integrate vision care into health systems. Children are not screened for vision loss, and parents and teachers don’t understand the simple causes of eye trouble that can manifest in distraction, lack of physical coordination and behavior issues. Mozambique has just 20 ophthalmologists, up from six two decades ago. Almost all of them are based in the capital, Maputo, in the south. Dr. da Gama completed his studies in India in 2017 and set up a clinic in Quelimane, a seaport town halfway up Mozambique’s long Indian Ocean coastline. But to his surprise, he saw very few patients in the first year. He discovered that no one was being referred to him because health workers did not recognize treatable eye diseases. He started traveling to local clinics to tell medical workers about screening and solutions. Then he teamed up with the charity Light for the World, which had sponsored him to complete specialized training in pediatric eye care in Tanzania. They designed an outreach program to show teachers, community health workers, traditional healers and local leaders how to spot vision problems and to refer children to the new ophthalmology ward at the Quelimane hospital. Now, a couple of times a year, for up to a month at a time, he takes a mobile clinic to small communities to do surgeries on children with cataracts, glaucoma or strabismus (misaligned eyes). Cataracts cause nearly half the preventable blindness in Mozambique’s children; they can be genetic, or the result of trauma (like a stick or a stone in the eye), or of an untreated eye infection. On his outreach journeys, Dr. da Gama teaches other health care workers how to perform the simple surgeries, and how to spot the conditions. “Operating per se is not a problem: We can train in a week, two weeks, how to operate on a cataract,” he said. “But it is how to identify the children who need the operations.” Mozambique’s Ministry of Health is trying to build awareness of vision problems and refractive errors, for which a pair of glasses is a life-altering intervention. Glasses or simple surgeries that keep children in school can change the future for their families, and for the country as a whole. “If you have children less educated or with fewer skills,” he said, “the future of the economy is affected.” In Quelimane, Dr. da Gama also sees cases of retinoblastoma, a ******* of the retina. When patients come early enough, he can save their lives, if not their eyes. Camilo Rosario brought his daughter Grace, 3, to his clinic in November, from their home in a village 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) away. She had a tumor protruding from her eye that caused her excruciating pain. Mr. Rosario said she had begun to complain about her eye just weeks before. He shifted anxiously from foot to foot while Dr. da Gama explained that he would operate quickly to remove the tumor, but that he feared the disease was already in her brain. Grace soon recovered from the first surgery, clinging to her father with a bulky bandage around her head. But as Dr. da Gama had feared, she had come to him too late; she died in early January. Aminata Kaba was screened alongside her classmates in high school last year — and was surprised to learn that she was myopic. After she got glasses, school became significantly easier, she said, and her grades soon improved. Now, she said, she will continue on in school, and she hopes to be a lawyer. Screening older children is easy; coaxing cooperation out of the small ones is a much greater challenge, Dr. da Gama said. They rarely look where he needs them to for eye exams. The eyedrops, the equipment, even his white coat, all can be frightening. He said he smiles and sings to distract, removing the coat when required. “I like difficult things,” he said. Source link #Saving #Childrens #Eyesight #Future #Mozambique Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Town of Salem 2 is out now on iOS and Android bringing the hit social deduction series back to mobile Town of Salem 2 is out now on iOS and Android bringing the hit social deduction series back to mobile Town of Salem 2 is out now on the iOS App Store and Google Play It brings one of the original werewolf-likes to mobile In Town of Salem 2 there’s 50+ roles to choose from in protecting or destroying the titular settlement Do you think that if you were murdered your friends could find out whodunnit? Er, well in my case likely not. But if you want to put that to the test why not get them all together to play a round of Town of Salem 2, as this classic social deduction game finally hits iOS and Android? Now this is one of those few times where I reckon all among us (pun not intended) young and old know about Town of Salem. This werewolf-like was doing it well before astronauts were murdering each other in space, and despite the simplistic graphics, it hid an incredibly paced and detailed multiplayer ******* mystery simulator. Town of Salem 2 sees you dropped into a town nominally resembling the titular location in Puritan New England. Your job? Discover who’s trying to destroy the town of course. But with 50+ possible roles for players, different modes and the usual shenanigans when players try to solve problems, you’ll have your work very much cut out for you. Burn the witch! I’d argue that Town of Salem 2 is superior to Among Us if only because of the depth of modes, roles and possible actions available. Among Us definitely has the edge in terms of accessibility, especially since it was the first to come to mobile, but if you want to experience the intrigue and chaos of mob justice first hand there’s no better avenue than Town of Salem 2. The original Town of Salem was already a classic, so with enhanced graphics and gameplay I can’t see why the second instalment finally hitting mobile won’t be a big hit too. In the meantime if you’re looking to find out what we’re chatting about when it comes to gaming, why not check in on our latest edition of the official Pocket Gamer Podcast? Source link #Town #Salem #iOS #Android #bringing #hit #social #deduction #series #mobile Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]