Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25 to 49 year olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Australia, Canada, Norway and Argentina.

The investigation's early findings, presented by an international team at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in September 2024, were as eye-catching as they are concerning.

[...]

Breast cancer is one form of cancer where the trend is apparent. A new report from the ACS found that while deaths from breast cancer in women have dropped by around 10% in the past decade, incidence rates are rising by 1% per year overall – and 1.4% per year for women under the age of 50.

[...]

Cancer specialists say that patients presenting with diseases like pancreatic cancer, an illness where most people are diagnosed in their early 70s, are sometimes decades younger than would usually be expected.

[...]

The White House swiftly rebutted the claims and accused Republicans of spreading "bold-faced lies" about funding for the disaster response.

[...]

Trump and his allies expressed outrage that the agency had spent over $640m (£487m) on housing migrants.

But officials pointed out that this funding, authorised by Congress, was part of an entirely different programme run by Fema unconnected to disaster relief.

[...]

Republicans have attempted to link the disaster relief effort to immigration - an issue seen as a strength for Trump - but have spread misinformation about how government money is used.

At an event in Evans, Georgia, on Friday, Trump said, without evidence, that: "A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina and all of the others is going and has gone already.

"It's been gone for people that came into the country illegally, and nobody has ever seen anything like that. That's a shame."

Fema did receive a budget from Congress - $640m in the last fiscal year - to provide housing to immigrants applying for US citizenship.

Speaking at an event in her home state of Tennessee on Friday, the 78-year-old said the money would come "from my own bank account".

Parton's local commercial ventures - including the Dollywood amusement park - would also donate the same amount to the Mountain Ways Foundation, which is aiding those affected by flooding in the region.

[...]

Helene is the deadliest mainland storm since Katrina in 2005.

Making landfall as a category four hurricane, Helene damaged structures, caused flash flooding and knocked out power to millions of homes. Over half a million properties remain without electricity as of Saturday.

The US government has said the clean-up effort could take years.

Amnesty International has designated three prominent human rights defenders from Hong Kong and mainland China prisoners of conscience today as the organisation called for their immediate and unconditional release.

Human rights lawyers Chow Hang-tung and Ding Jiaxi, along with the free media advocate Jimmy Lai, are all currently imprisoned solely because of their peaceful human rights activism.

Amnesty International has designated three prominent human rights defenders from Hong Kong and mainland China prisoners of conscience today as the organisation called for their immediate and unconditional release.

Human rights lawyers Chow Hang-tung and Ding Jiaxi, along with the free media advocate Jimmy Lai, are all currently imprisoned solely because of their peaceful human rights activism.

Archived version

Former GOP official Michael Steele unfurled an epic rant bashing voters who would consider sending "incompetent" Donald Trump back to the White House.

[...]

"He is a fool, an incompetent individual who does not read even the briefings that he still gets as a former president on some of these things, so he'd at least have some workable knowledge of events there," Steele said. "He has to wait to be told what [Russian president Vladimir] Putin tells him to think about this affair because that's where his alliances, his allegiance is. The most galling and assaulting part of this is to minimize the traumatic injuries to our servicemen and women who took the incoming barrage from Iranian missiles and who, as has been reported, have been – were denied their Purple Hearts as a consequence of that because the Pentagon was dancing around how not to offend the president because he didn't think it was that important – these were just headaches, these were minor injuries."

Archived version

[...]

The Comstock Act is an 1873 law that, if enforced, would outlaw all abortions in America by banning the shipping via mail, UPS, FedEx, etc., of any device, drug, or instrument that can be used to produce an abortion. It would even shut down hospital abortions.

It could also be used to empower new state or even federal police agencies specifically overseeing women violating its provisions. Like the menstrual police, which a Trump senior advisor just said was a very real possibility.

[...]

It’s the opinion of the Biden Administration that the Comstock Act — which is still on the books — is no longer enforceable, and the Biden DOJ (along with those of every president since Richard Nixon) refuses to enforce it.

Senator JD Vance disagrees.

He (and a few other Republican senators) sent a letter to Merrick Garland demanding that the Comstock Act be enforced by the FBI and DOJ now. He wrote:

“It is disappointing, yet not surprising, that the Biden administration’s DOJ has not only abdicated its Constitutional responsibility to enforce the law, but also has once again twisted the plain meaning of the law in an effort to promote the taking of unborn life.”

[...]

The authors of Project 2025 agree as well, saying that the next Republican president should immediately restore enforcement of the law to end all abortion in America. They propose the next Republican president should launch:

“[A] campaign to enforce the criminal prohibitions” of the Comstock Act, including “against providers and distributors of abortion pills.”

[...]

Former NY Postmaster and anti-pornography crusader Anthony Comstock lobbied for and shepherded through Congress his law; it passed on March 3, 1873 and was titled “An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, obscene Literature and Articles of immoral Use.” Today we refer to it as the Comstock Act.

Its language with regard to abortion is not at all ambiguous:

“Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance … designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and “Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and “Every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of such mentioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means abortion may be produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and “Every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and “Every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing— “Is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier."

The penalty is also not ambiguous. Persons mailing information about abortion, or drugs or devices to produce an abortion:

“[S]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both, for the first such offense, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense thereafter.”

Archived version

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years for allowing a man to use a security card to access her county’s election system, and deceiving investigators about who the person was. He was later determined to be working with MAGA gadfly and pillow magnate Mike Lindell, a prominent election denialist and supporter of Donald Trump.

"I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” District Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters in announcing the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Barrett said that Peters, a Republican, didn’t take her job seriously, espousing claims about rigged voting machines even after they were disproven. During the trial, prosecutors said that Peters was seeking attention after associating with election denialists, and Peters remained unrepentant about her crimes.

Archived version

Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks are billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think tanks, media organizations, political action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on.

Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that [Republican lobbyist] Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. “They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.”

[...]

The duo’s ambitions extend beyond Texas. They’ve poured millions into “dark money” groups, which do not have to disclose contributors; conservative-media juggernauts (Wilks provided $4.7 million in seed capital to The Daily Wire, which hosts “The Ben Shapiro Show”); and federal races. Dunn’s $5 million gift to the Make America Great Again super PAC in December made him one of Donald Trump’s top supporters this election season, and he has quietly begun to invest in efforts to influence a possible second Trump administration, including several linked to Project 2025.

[...]

Dunn and Wilks are often described as Christian nationalists, supporters of a political movement that seeks to erode, if not eliminate, the distinction between church and state. Dunn and Wilks, however, do not describe themselves as such. (Dunn, for his part, has rejected the term as a “made-up label that conflicts with biblical teaching.”) Instead, like most Christian nationalists, the two men speak about protecting Judeo-Christian values and promoting a biblical worldview. These vague expressions often serve as a shorthand for the movement’s central mythology: that America, founded as a Christian nation, has lost touch with its religious heritage, which must now be reclaimed.

Archived version

Special counsel Jack Smith has built an airtight case against former President Donald Trump in his superseding indictment and in the new, massive filing released Wednesday, a retired Harvard Law professor argued.

Laurence Tribe told CNN's Erin Burnett on Wednesday that the case surmounts every obstacle the Supreme Court put in its way with the recent ruling that grants presidents a presumption of immunity for official acts.

"What stands out most clearly is that the Supreme Court, despite its effort to protect the former president and to erect a hurdle that was almost sky-high, made clear that it is possible to overcome that hurdle by specific proof that the former president, in his capacity as office-seeker, private capacity ... sought to overturn an election that he knew he had lost," said Tribe.

[...]

"The evidence is overwhelming and to the extent that there is any overlap between public and private, it occurs in the very limited context of communications between the president and the vice president," said Tribe. Even in that narrow slice of evidence, most of the communications were with Pence in his capacity as president of the Senate, making presidential immunity irrelevant, he argued.

[...]

"I said, 'Wow' about 25 times in a quick reading of this document. I bet there are another 25 that I will encounter," said Tribe "There are lots of jaw-dropping things. You've named some of them. You know, 'So what' if the vice president is hung, it doesn't matter whether we won or lost. That's just a sampling. It's the tip of a horribly large and scary iceberg."

Archived version

Here is the report (pdf)

A new report shows how U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing disinformation about climate change.

Co-author Chuck Collins is co-founder of the Climate Accountability Research Project. He said people with ties to the fossil fuel industry are bankrolling groups trying to block action on climate change through tax-deductible donations.

“There are 137 organizations that are actively involved in promoting climate disinformation,” said Collins, “challenging the science, sowing doubt, blocking alternatives. Their goal is to run out the clock and keep extracting their profits.”

[...]

Many donors are now listed online at ClimateCriminals.org (archived version), which also features a countdown to a deadline set in Paris to cut fossil fuel emissions in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Archived version

Here is the report (pdf)

A new report shows how U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing disinformation about climate change.

Co-author Chuck Collins is co-founder of the Climate Accountability Research Project. He said people with ties to the fossil fuel industry are bankrolling groups trying to block action on climate change through tax-deductible donations.

“There are 137 organizations that are actively involved in promoting climate disinformation,” said Collins, “challenging the science, sowing doubt, blocking alternatives. Their goal is to run out the clock and keep extracting their profits.”

[...]

Many donors are now listed online at ClimateCriminals.org (archived version), which also features a countdown to a deadline set in Paris to cut fossil fuel emissions in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.