Gunmen kill police officer assigned to guard polio workers in northwestern Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Suspected militants riding on a motorcycle shot and killed on Wednesday a police officer assigned to protect polio workers in a region in northwestern Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, the latest in a string of deadly attacks on polio workers.
The attack in Bajur, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, came just days after authorities launched the vaccination drive. Police official Nasir Khan said an investigation was underway.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
More than 200 polio workers and police assigned for their protection have been killed in Pakistan since the 1990s, according to health officials and authorities.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio has not been eradicated. Pakistan reported at least 74 cases in 2024 and two cases since January.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
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Hamilton Spectator
23 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Russia launches another large-scale drone and missile attack on Ukraine, killing 3 and wounding 13
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked two Ukrainian cities with waves of drones and missiles early Tuesday, killing three people and wounding at least 13 in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called 'one of the biggest' strikes in the 3-year-old war. The attack struck Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa. In an online statement, Zelenskyy said that Moscow's forces fired over 315 drones, most of them Shaheds, and seven missiles overnight. 'Russian missile and Shahed strikes are louder than the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,' Zelenskyy wrote, urging 'concrete action' from the U.S. and Europe in response to the attack. A maternity hospital and residential buildings in the southern port of Odesa were damaged in the attack, regional head Oleh Kiper said. Two people were killed and nine injured, according to the regional prosecutor's office. Another person was killed in Kyiv's Obolon district, regional head Tymur Tkachenko wrote on Telegram. 'Russian strikes are once again hitting not military targets but the lives of ordinary people. This once again shows the true nature of what we are dealing with,' he said. Explosions and the buzzing of drones were heard around the city for hours. Attacks continue despite talks but POWs swapped The fresh attacks came a day after Moscow launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight drone bombardment in the war. Ukrainian and Western officials have been anticipating a Russian response to Kyiv's audacious June 1 drone attack on distant Russian air bases. Russia has been launching a record-breaking number of drones and missiles in recent days, despite both sides trading memoranda during direct peace talks in Istanbul on June 2 that set out conditions for a potential ceasefire. However, the inclusion of clauses that both sides see as nonstarters make any quick deal unlikely, and a ceasefire, long sought by Kyiv, remains elusive. The only tangible outcome of the talks has been in the exchange of prisoners of war, with a swap that began Monday for soldiers aged between 18 and 25. Amina Ivanchenko was reunited Monday with her husband, a POW for 18 months, and she thanked Ukrainian officials for supporting her. 'My struggle was much easier thanks to them. Our country will definitely return everyone. Glory to Ukraine! Thank you!' Anastasia Nahorna waited in the Chernyhiv region to see if her husband, who has been missing for eight months, was among those being released in the latest swap. 'This pain is more unbearable every day,' she said. 'I really want to hear some news, because since the moment of his disappearance, unfortunately, there has been no information. Is he alive? or maybe in captivity? Has someone seen him?' she asked. Anna Rodionova, the wife of another Ukrainian POW, also was waiting. 'I just want him to come back soon and for this to all be over,' she said. 'We are tired of waiting, we come every exchange and he is not there.' A similar exchange also was announced for the bodies of fallen soldiers held by both sides, although no schedule has been released. Asked to comment on the exchange of bodies with Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was unclear when it could take place and how many bodies Ukraine would hand over. He again accused Kyiv of dragging its feet on the exchange. 'There is one unarguable fact, we have had trucks with bodies standing ready for it on the border for several days,' he told reporters. Kyiv residents seek shelter Plumes of smoke rose in Kyiv as air defense forces worked to shoot down drones and missiles Tuesday. Meanwhile, residents took shelter and slept in metro stations during the long attack. Nina Nosivets, 32, and her 8-month-old son, Levko, were among them. 'I just try not to think about all this, silently curled up like a mouse, wait until it all passes, the attacks. Distract the child somehow because it's probably the hardest thing for him to bear,' she said. Krystyna Semak, 37, said the explosions frightened her and she ran to the metro at 2 a.m., carrying a rug. Fires broke out in at least four Kyiv districts after debris from downed drones fell onto residential buildings and warehouses, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration. 'I was lying in bed, as always hoping that these Shaheds would fly past me, and I heard that Shahed (that hit the house),' said Vasyl Pesenko, 25, standing in his damaged kitchen. 'I thought that it would fly away, but it flew closer and closer and everything blew away.' The attack sparked 19 fires across Ukraine, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram. 'Russia must answer for every crime it commits. Until there is justice, there will be no security. For Ukraine. And for the world,' he said. Death toll from recent attacks rises The Russian Defense Ministry said an attack early Tuesday targeted arms plants in Kyiv, as well as military headquarters, troops locations, air bases and arms depots across Ukraine. 'The goals of the strikes have been achieved, all the designated targets have been hit,' it said in a statement. The death toll from previous Russian strikes also rose Tuesday. In Kharkiv, rescuers found a body under the rubble of a building that was hit in an attack Saturday, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram. The discovery brought the number of casualties there to five, with five others potentially under the debris, Terekhov said. Meanwhile, in the northern city of Sumy, a 17-year-old boy died of his injuries Tuesday after a June 3 attack, acting Mayor Artem Kobzar wrote on Telegram. It brought the number killed in the attack to six. Airports close amid strikes on Russia The Russian Defense Ministry reported downing 102 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The drones were downed both over regions on the border with Ukraine and deeper inside Russia, including central Moscow and Leningrad regions, according to the Defense Ministry. Because of the drone attack, flights were temporarily restricted at multiple Russian airports, including all four in Moscow and the Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg, the country's second-largest city. —— AP journalist Illia Novikov contributed. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? 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Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Get Ready to Hear a Lot More About Your Mitochondria
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s warning about mitochondria slipped in between the anti-vaccine junk science and the excoriation of pharmaceutical drugs as 'the No. 3 killer in our country.' He was speaking in 2023 to Joe Rogan, elaborating on the dangers of Wi-Fi—which no high-quality scientific evidence has shown to harm anyone's health—and arguing that it causes disease by somehow opening the blood-brain barrier, and by degrading victims' mitochondria. The mention of mitochondria—the tiny structures that generate energy within our cells—was brief. Two years later, mitochondrial health is poised to become a pillar of the MAHA movement, already showing up in marketing for supplements and on podcasts across the 'manosphere.' Casey Means, President Donald Trump's newest nominee for surgeon general, has singled out the organelle as the main casualty of the modern American health crisis. According to Means (who has an M.D. but no active medical license), most of America's chronic ailments can be traced to mitochondrial dysfunction. Should she be confirmed to the post of surgeon general, the American public can expect to hear a lot more about mitochondria. Among scientists, interest and investment in mitochondria have risen notably in the past five years, Kay Macleod, a University of Chicago researcher who studies mitochondria's role in cancer, told me. Mitochondria, after all, perform a variety of crucial functions in the human body. Beyond powering cells, they can affect gene expression, help certain enzymes function, and modulate cell death, Macleod said. When mitochondria are defective, people do indeed suffer. Vamsi Mootha, a mitochondrial biologist based at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute, told me that rare genetic defects (appearing in about one in 4,300 people) can cause the organelles to malfunction, leading to muscle weakness, heart abnormalities, cognitive disability, and liver and kidney problems. Evidence also suggests that defects in mitochondria directly contribute to symptoms of Parkinson's disease, and could be both a cause and an effect of type 2 diabetes. Other conditions' links to mitochondria are blurrier. Researchers see aberrant mitochondria in postmortem biopsies of patients with illnesses such as Alzheimer's, cancer, and fatty-liver disease, Mootha said; whether those damaged mitochondria cause or result from such conditions is not yet clear. But according to Good Energy, the book Means published last year with a top MAHA adviser—her brother, Calley—mitochondrial dysfunction is a veritable plague upon the United States, responsible for both serious illness and everyday malaise. In their view, modern Western diets and lifestyles wreck countless Americans' metabolic health: Every time you drink unfiltered water or a soda, or feel the stress of mounting phone notifications, you hurt your mitochondria, they say, triggering an immune response that in turn triggers inflammation. (Damaged mitochondria really can cause inflammation, Macleod said.) This chain of events, the Meanses claim, can be blamed for virtually every common chronic health condition: migraines, depression, infertility, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and more. (Casey Means did not respond to requests for comment; reached by email, Calley did not respond to my questions about mitochondria, but noted, 'There is significant scientific evidence that healthy food, exercise and sleep have a significant impact on reversing chronic disease.') Good Energy follows a typical wellness playbook: using a mixture of valid and dubious research to pin a slew of common health problems on one overlooked element of health—and advertising a cure. Among the culprits for our mitochondrial ravaging, according to the Meanses, are poor sleep, medications, ultraprocessed foods, seed oils, too many calories, and too few vitamins, as well as chronically staying in comfortable ambient temperatures. The Means siblings therefore recommend eschewing refined sugar in favor of leafy greens, avoiding nicotine and alcohol, frequenting saunas and cold plunges, getting seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep a night, and cleansing your life of environmental toxins. Some studies indeed suggest that mitochondrial function is linked with sleep and temperature, but they've all been conducted on cell cultures, organoids, or mice. According to Macleod, evidence suggests that diet, too, is likely important. But only one lifestyle intervention— exercise —has been definitively shown to improve mitochondrial health in humans. The Meanses are riding a wave of interest in mitochondrial health in the wellness world. Earlier this year, the longevity influencer Bryan Johnson and the ivermectin enthusiast Mel Gibson both endorsed the dye methylene blue for its power to improve mitochondrial respiration; Kennedy was filmed slipping something that looks a lot like methylene blue into his drink. (Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment; the FDA has approved methylene blue, but only as a treatment for the blood disease methemoglobinemia.) AG1, formerly known as Athletic Greens, formulates its drinkable vitamins for mitochondrial health. Even one laser-light skin treatment promises to 'recharge failing mitochondria.' The enzyme CoQ10 is popular right now as a supplement for mitochondrial function, as is NAD, a molecule involved in mitochondria's production of energy. NAD IV drips are especially beloved by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Kendall Jenner, and the Biebers. These supplements are generally thought to be safe, and some preliminary research shows that NAD supplementation could help patients with Parkinson's or other neurodegenerative diseases, and that CoQ10 could benefit people with mitochondrial disorders. Patients whose symptoms are clearly caused or made worse by deficiencies in a specific vitamin, such as thiamine, can benefit from supplementing those vitamins, Mootha said. But little research explores how these supplements might affect healthy adults. In Good Energy, as well as on her website and in podcast appearances, Casey Means promotes a number of supplements for mitochondrial health. She also recommends that people wear continuous glucose monitors—available from her company, Levels Health, for $184 a month—to help prevent overwhelming their mitochondria with too much glucose. (According to Macleod, glucose levels are only 'a very indirect measure' of mitochondrial activity.) As with so many problems that wellness influencers harp on, the supposed solution to this one involves buying products from those exact same people. At best, all of this attention to mitochondria could lead Americans to healthier habits. Much of the advice in Good Energy echoes health recommendations we've all heard for decades; getting regular exercise and plenty of fiber is good guidance, regardless of anyone's reasons for doing so. Switching out unhealthy habits for healthy ones will likely even improve your mitochondrial health, Jaya Ganesh, a mitochondrial-disease expert at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told me. After all, 'if you consistently beat your body up with unhealthy habits, everything is going to fall sick,' Ganesh said. But the mitochondrial approach to wellness carries risks, too. For patients with genetically caused mitochondrial disease, lifestyle changes might marginally improve some symptoms, Ganesh said, but attempting to cure such conditions with supplements and a healthy diet alone could be dangerous. Means also calls out medications—including antibiotics, chemotherapy, antiretrovirals, statins, and high-blood-pressure drugs—for interfering with mitochondria. Macleod told me that statins really do affect mitochondria, as do some antibiotics. (The latter makes sense: Mitochondria are thought to have evolved from bacteria more than a billion years ago.) That's no reason, though, to avoid any of these medications if a doctor has determined that you need them. And yet, a whole chapter of Good Energy is dedicated to the idea that readers should mistrust the motives of their doctors, who the authors say profit by keeping Americans sick. The book is less critical of the ways the wellness industry preys on people's fears. Zooming in on mitochondria might offer a reassuringly specific and seemingly scientific explanation of the many real ills of the U.S. population, but ultimately, Means and MAHA are only helping obscure the big picture.
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
A school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz leaves at least 8 people and suspected gunman dead
VIENNA (AP) — At least eight people were killed in a shooting at a school in the Austrian city of Graz on Tuesday, and the suspected perpetrator also died, the city's mayor said. Mayor Elke Kahr described the events as a 'terrible tragedy,' the Austria Press Agency reported. It added that the fatalities were seven students and one adult. Kahr said that many people were taken to hospitals with injuries. Police said they believe the assailant acted alone. Special forces were among those sent to the BORG Dreierschützengasse high school, about a kilometer (over half a mile) from Graz's historic center, after a call at 10 a.m. At 11.30 a.m., police wrote on social network X that the school had been evacuated and everyone had been taken to a safe meeting point. They wrote that the situation was 'secured' and there is no longer believed to be any danger. Police deployed in large numbers, with police and other emergency vehicles guarding the area around the school and with at least one police helicopter flying above the area, according to photos published by the regional newspaper Kleine Zeitung. Graz, Austria's second-biggest city, is located in the southeast of the country and has about 300,000 inhabitants. Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker, who is going to Graz, said the shooting 'is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country.' 'There are no words for the pain and grief that all of us — the whole of Austria — feel now,' he wrote in a statement posted on X. President Alexander Van der Bellen said that 'this horror cannot be captured in words.' 'These were young people who had their whole lives ahead of them. A teacher who accompanied them on their way,' he said. Interior Minister Gerhard Karner was also on his way to Graz. 'Schools are symbols for youth, hope and the future,' European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. 'It is hard to bear when schools become places of death and violence.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
