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Puberty often begins early for children who are obese. Now, a team of scientists offers what may be a partial explanation. Early puberty, also known as precocious puberty, can leave children with psychological and social problems, as well as causing them to be shorter than they would otherwise be. The more body fat a child has, the greater their likelihood of beginning puberty at an earlier age. Professor Rewitz and the research team tested their hypothesis by putting fruit fly larvae on a fatty diet of cholesterol-packed foods. "We observed that larvae on the cholesterol diet consistently grew faster and...

A Vermont school district has just reached a settlement to pay one local family $125,000 in damages after disciplining them for speaking out against a transgender student that was creeping out high school girls in a school locker room. In addition, the school has promised to reinstate Travis Allen as a middle school soccer coach, as well as remove any records of discipline against him and his daughter in the school database. -snip As reported by The Daily Signal, the legal battle began last October with the Allen family filing a lawsuit claiming that Travis and his daughter Blake "were...

A team of rehabilitation researchers has discovered that prism adaptation therapy (PAT) is as beneficial for treating right-sided spatial neglect as left-sided spatial neglect in a cohort of individuals with stroke and traumatic and non-traumatic brain injuries. Spatial neglect, a disorder of spatial cognition commonly experienced by individuals with acquired- or traumatic-brain injury, increases the risks for prolonged hospitalization, injuries, poor motor recovery, and discharge to long-term care facilities. Left-sided spatial neglect is well recognized and known to respond to prism adaptation treatment (PAT). However, little is known about PAT's effectiveness for individuals with right-sided spatial neglect. Using a clinical...

SINGAPORE — China put European patience to the test on Saturday, with a seasoned Chinese diplomat attributing Russia’s war on Ukraine to a failed security architecture in Europe. It fell to Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren to challenge that very Chinese interpretation. “I was actually a little bit surprised to hear it,” Ollongren told POLITICO in an interview moments after she made an impromptu rebuttal of ex-ambassador Cui Tiankai on a panel at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “It’s very, very false.” Cui, a former envoy to the U.S. and unofficially an adviser to the Chinese delegation at this top...

Evacuations and shelter-in-place orders were in effect for residents and businesses around an oil industry tank farm in Louisiana after part of it erupted in flames Saturday, producing a plume near the Lake Charles area. It wasn't clear what sparked the blaze at Calcasieu Refining Co. No injuries have been reported. The refinery did not answer phone calls seeking comment. Mandatory evacuations were in effect for those as far as a 1.5 miles from the tank farm; outer boundaries of a shelter-in-place order have been reduced from 5 miles to 3 miles, according to the Lake Charles Fire Department. In...

Salespeople promoting Bud Light for a Florida–based distributor have grown accustomed to car horns, middle fingers and jokes amid a weekslong boycott, but say they have struggled to ignore thousands of dollars in lost commission pay, two sales supervisors at the distributor told ABC News. A typical salesperson at the distributor made roughly $2,000 less in May than he or she would have over each of the previous two years, suffering primarily from a decline in Bud Light sales that reached as much as 60% over the week ending on Memorial Day, the sales supervisors said. "This has really, really...

An expert and entrepreneur in the field of artificial intelligence warned that while the new technology has the potential for massive benefits, it could also prove "too powerful and too disruptive" for humanity, expressing doubt about the federal government's ability to address such a challenge. Kevin Baragona worked as a software engineer but recognized the potential impact of AI, which led him to start DeepAI in 2016 to help bring the new technology to fruition. The free online service is growing rapidly, with users increasing tenfold over the past year. DeepAI was the first company to offer an online AI...

U-571 U-571 is truly an "on the edge of your seat" film about a US Navy crew trying to sail a Nazi U-Boat to England in 1942 (won't explain how that happens, see the movie). In one scene, the boat is attacked by depth charges from a German destroyer. The crew turns to the young skipper for guidance and asks what they should do to save the boat and their lives. He says he doesn't know. Somehow they survive this attack. The wise, crusty Chief then has a fatherly chat with the skipper in a quiet moment over coffee....

Former Target executive said the retailer's biggest mistake was selling 'tuck-friendly' swimwear for Pride, which has led to a $12billion loss since mid-May. Former Target Vice Chairman Gerald Storch believes the company's controversial 'tuck-friendly' swimwear set Target's Pride collection apart from others for the worst. 'I've never seen a case where one item, that tuck swimsuit, that's really what made the difference versus the competitors. That's where the big mistake [was] made,' he told Fox and Friends. He said other companies carried colored plates and gingerbread houses and that's 'fine' because 'who cares? Everybody carries that stuff.' Target suffered another...

Former Defense Secretary General James Mattis famously said, "PowerPoint makes us stupid." Like many among today's top military brass, he sees our culture's addiction to PowerPoint as a threat to the efficiency and effectiveness of our armed forces. Similarly, many CEOs have banned PowerPoint from their meetings, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Twitter's Jack Dorsey, LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and the late Steve Jobs. Smart leaders hate PowerPoint because business presentations straitjacket meetings into a slow-moving linear direction. This discourages conversation and discussion, turning the other attendees into passive chair potatoes. PowerPoint--when used as designed--reduces attention, understanding,...

MIAMI -- North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo was arrested Wednesday and has been charged with three felony counts of voting in a North Miami Beach district even though he no longer lived in the area for which he cast a ballot. Each count carries a possible five-year-prison sentence. Later in the day, CBS News Miami's cameras captured DeFillipo as he left jail, refusing to answer questions from reporters. DeFillipo's attorney Michael Pizzi, calls the arrest politically motivated. "The mayor has explained over and over again, and under oath, he always intended to and always lived in North Miami Beach."...

[Catholic Caucus] Francis Fights against “Sterile Traditionalism”n a message to the May 28 Festa del Voto in Sassari - celebrated since 1943 when a vigil to Our Lady of Grace protected Sassari while other Sardinian cities were bombed - Francis mentions the Mediatrix of all graces which in December 2019 he called "foolishness."He added his inevitable buzzwords ("pastoral conversion", "spiritual renewal", "synodality") and then threw a tantrum, “Do not give in to the temptation to remain anchored in a nostalgic popular piety that consists only of external rites or in a sterile traditionalism that is rather the expression of the...

Miami-Dade Police Officer Anna Elicia Perez found herself in handcuffs last week after she and a pregnant woman allegedly confronted and beat up a man who was dating them both, say local authorities. The alleged incident went down at Miller's Ale House in Palmetto Bay last Friday, after Perez, 34, and Mila Zuloaga, 35, apparently discovered their unnamed boyfriend was seeing them both. Both women reportedly thought they were in monogamous relationships with the victim, while Zuloaga is seven months pregnant and lives with him. It's unclear how they made the connection or linked up, but according to CBS...

A pair of senior partners at the California-based mega-law firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith split from the company last month to build their own “compassionate” firm, but internal emails show they used wildly offensive and demeaning language — repeatedly referring to women as “c–ts” and a judge as “sugar t-ts.”

Russia has enough Iranian-made suicide drones to keep up attacks on Ukraine every day, a Ukrainian Air Force official warned. Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said Russian forces have more than enough supply of Shahed-136 drones to keep up the attack, Ukrainian news outlet NV reported. "Shaheds are now launched so often that it is not clear whether they are (supposed to be) detecting or depleting our air defense," Ihnat said, according to NV. "It's all in one: both detecting and, surely, depleting." Russia has been using the unmanned loitering munitions to relentlessly bombard Ukrainian cities and targets in recent...

[Catholic Caucus] Burke Warns of "Persistence Of An Ideology"Recent statements by Cardinal Roche confirm "the persistence of an ideology" which, through the [failed] Novus Ordo, sought to "manipulate and betray" the Church's infallible teaching on the Eucharist and Holy Orders, writes Cardinal Burke.In the preface to a French republication of Cardinal Ottaviani's prophetic Critical Examination of on the Novus Ordo (1969) he explains that it is clear that many find in the Roman Rite a living source through which they can unite with Christ," and that there is "no reason to discourage them."Burke analyses that in the Novus Ordo there...

Fusion GPS, a contractor that worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, reportedly withheld over 1,500 documents from Special Counsel John Durham. These documents were sought during Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe. Fusion GPS cited attorney-client privilege in their refusal to hand over the documents, a claim that has been contested by many legal experts​. According to the initial report, Durham did not take legal action to acquire the documents. On Friday, Paul Sperry, a senior reporter for Real Clear Investigations, broke the news on Twitter, stating, “BREAKING: Hillary Clinton campaign contractor Fusion GPS held back...

At least three school pupils have been injured in a knife attack in Sweden after two rival gangs fought at a sports event, according to local media reports. The students were rushed to hospital following the stabbing at a sports facility in the town of Eskilstuna, reports TV4. The TV station had initially reported that the attack took place at a school but the headmaster later said the pupils had been at a different location at the time of the incident. .....

This isn’t surprising. The committee, which was entirely handpicked by Nancy Pelosi, was never concerned with an objective presentation of facts. In fact, we’ve known since 2021 that the committee doctored text messages to make them look incriminating. Just the News identified at least two instances where the committee’s video montage, which was broadcasted live and on C-SPAN in June 2022, did not disclose that the audio had been overlaid from another unidentified source onto the original silent footage. Numerous current and former Capitol Police officials, along with important lawmakers and congressional aides, have confirmed that the closed-circuit cameras used...

A supervising detective involved in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Donald Trump prosecution has been suspended for his contact with the former president’s ex-lawyer and bitter adversary Michael Cohen, law enforcement sources told The Post. Jeremy Rosenberg who investigates financial crimes for Bragg, had his gun removed recently for his interactions with Cohen, the sources claimed. “The office is conducting a review of an investigator’s compliance with internal office protocols,” a Bragg spokeswoman said. A law enforcement source said Bragg’s office is looking at how Rosenberg shared communications about Cohen with the office. Cohen’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis said: “The...