More anti-COVID protests in China triggered by deadly fire

More anti-COVID protests in China triggered by deadly fire

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Protests against China’s restrictive COVID-19 measures appeared to roil in a number of cities Saturday night, in displays of public defiance fanned by anger over a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region. Many protests could not be immediately confirmed, but in Shanghai, police used pepper spray to stop around 300 … Read more

Taiwan president resigns as party leader after election loss

Taiwan president resigns as party leader after election loss

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party following local election losses on Saturday in which voters chose the opposition Nationalist party in several major races across the self-ruled island. Concerns about threats from rival China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, took a backseat to … Read more

Workers protest, beaten at virus-hit Chinese iPhone factory

Workers protest, beaten at virus-hit Chinese iPhone factory

BEIJING (AP) — Employees at the world’s biggest Apple iPhone factory were beaten and detained in protests over pay amid anti-virus controls, according to witnesses and videos on social media Wednesday, as tensions mount over Chinese efforts to combat a renewed rise in infections . Videos that said they were filmed at the factory in … Read more

Biden admin to ask high court to take up student debt plan

Biden admin to ask high court to take up student debt plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration plans to ask the Supreme Court to reinstate the president’s student debt cancellation planaccording to a Thursday legal filing warning that Americans will face financial strain if the plan remains stalled in court when loan payments are scheduled to restart in January. The Justice Department is fighting to keep … Read more

EXPLAINER: Where does student loan forgiveness stand?

EXPLAINER: Where does student loan forgiveness stand?

A federal appeals court in St. Louis has created another roadblock for President Joe Biden’s plan to provide millions of borrowers with up to $20,000 apiece in federal student-loan forgiveness. The court on Monday agreed to a preliminary injunction halting the program in one of several cases challenging the debt relief plan. With the forgiveness … Read more

Silver bullet for cancer? Scientists use CRISPR to unlock patients’ true tumor-fighting potential

Scientists isolated immune cell receptor genes directly from the blood of 16 patients with different tumors and then, using CRISPR gene editing to engineer those isolated genes to target cancer cell mutations, infused them back into the patients' own immune cells with the capacity to recognize and attack the patient's own cancer.

Scientists have tailored DNA-editing technology to turbocharge how the body fights cancer cells — in a potential breakthrough. They modified patients’ genes to instruct cancer-fighting cells to swarm tumors using CRISPR, which is given as a one-off injection. CRISPR has been previously used in humans to remove specific genes to allow the immune system to … Read more

Impotence drugs that may kill off cancer cells could boost survival rates

The UK has one of the highest rates of oesophageal cancer in the world, with 9,300 new cases every year

Drugs routinely used to treat erectile dysfunction could boost survival rates in people with certain cancers by making their treatment more effective. Researchers at Southampton University have found that drugs called phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) inhibitors, which include Viagra, can potentially improve how well patients with esophageal cancer respond to chemotherapy. The hope is it … Read more

Up to one in 7,000 American teens suffered heart inflammation after their Covid vaccine

The above graph shows the risk of suffering myocarditis by doses, based on people under 40 years old and up to seven days after getting their jab.  Risk was highest after the second dose

Thousands of American teenagers may have suffered heart inflammation after getting a Covid jab, a study suggests. Researchers found up to one in 7,000 boys aged 12 to 15 years old developed myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The condition — which is mild for most but can cause a recurrent heart palpitation in rare … Read more

Vegetarians are twice as likely to be depressed: study

Vegetarians are twice as likely to be depressed: study

Could a burger a day keep the depression away? A new study published by the Journal of Affective Disorders found that beef was the only food linked to a lower risk of depression. Researchers wanted to look into the association between vegetarianism and depression among adults. They asked 14,216 people in Brazil between the ages … Read more

CDC Says We Probably Can’t Get Rid of Monkeypox Now

CDC Says We Probably Can't Get Rid of Monkeypox Now

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock) A new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers some good and bad news about the country’s ongoing monkeypox outbreak. New cases are slowing down, likely thanks to a combination of vaccination and education efforts. But it’s also likely that the virus won’t be eradicated here and will … Read more