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The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has led to outrage and hundreds of protests across the United States. At an abortion protest held at the Rhode Island State House on Friday, video shows an off-duty Providence Police officer allegedly punching a woman . In a Saturday evening news release, Rhode Island state police said Providence patrolman Jeann Lugo, 35, was charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct. Jennifer Rourke, the chair of the progressive Rhode Island Political Cooperative seeking the Democratic nomination for a state Senate seat, said she had been punched in the face at least twice by Lugo, who — at the time — was running for the GOP nomination for the same seat. Providence police said earlier Saturday that Lugo had been suspended from his job with pay pending an investigation, and Lugo subsequently ended his campaign. Rhode Island based journalist Bill Bartholomew took video of the shocking moments Lugo struck Rourke in the face multiple times. Moment @JenRourke29...

A Florida lawyer has been jailed for five years for conning a 108 year-old client out of $3 million - with his victim dying just days before he was brought to justice. Matthew Roby was handed the sentence as part of a plea deal reached in Orlando, Florida, Friday. Sadly, his elderly victim Helen Kuhn died just 16 days previously, having spoken of her excitement at the prospect of hearing 'keys jangling' as Roby was sent down. Kuhn was of sharp mind when Roby began working as her lawyer in 2019, after taking over the job from his later father Ronald. But Roby somehow tricked her into signing over power of attorney, with the con only coming to light after Kuhn received a far higher tax bill than she was expecting. She grew suspicious, took her papers to a fraud investigator, and Roby was charged shortly afterwards. Roby was charged with exploitation of an elderly person and grand theft of more than $100,000, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said, Fox News reported. During...

Though Wayne Williams was convicted in two cases, who was behind the rest of the Atlanta murders that left at least 28 dead from 1979 to 1981? In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a mysterious killer terrorized Black communities in Atlanta. One by one, Black children and young adults were being kidnapped and turning up dead days or weeks later. These grisly cases would later become known as the Atlanta Child Murders. Police eventually arrested a local man named Wayne Williams in connection to the heinous crimes. But Williams was only ever convicted of two murders — far less than the 29 slayings he was implicated in. Furthermore, he was found guilty of killing two men in their 20s, not children. Although the homicides appeared to stop after Williams was arrested, some believe that he was not responsible for the Atlanta Child Murders — including some of the victims’ families. The tragic case was later explored in the Netflix series Mindhunter in 2019. And that same year, the real Atlanta C...

On the painful occasion of a mass shooting in the US, it has become customary for some politician or pundit to point an accusatory finger at video games. In late May, after two such attacks — in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, it was Texas Senator Ted Cruz. These tragedies, he said in a speech at a National Rifle Association convention, were a mirror of our culture, and specifically, where our culture is failing. In addition to “broken families” and “declining church attendance,” he said, “desensitizing the act of murder in video games” has contributed to the epidemic of mass shootings. What surprised me wasn’t what Cruz said. It was how little traction it received in the mainstream media. A Fox News host asked his guest, Arizona State University criminal justice professor Bernard Zapor, whether violent video games’ heightened realism contributed to an increase in mass homicides. Zapor dodged, instead citing the dissolution of community bonds. Most coverage of Cruz’s comments (a...

New research conducted at multiple retail stores across different countries and in the lab indicates that consuming a caffeinated (vs. non-caffeinated) beverage before shopping leads to higher shopping impulsivity in terms of a higher number of items purchased and greater spending. Additionally, the effects of caffeine on shopping impulsivity were stronger for high hedonic (vs. low hedonic) products. Also, the effects of caffeine on spending hold for people who drink up to 2 cups of coffee (or less) daily and get attenuated for heavy coffee drinkers. Caffeine is the world’s most popular stimulant and is consumed daily by a significant portion of the world’s population through coffee, tea, soda, and energy drinks. Consumers often shop online and in brick-and-mortar stores immediately after or while consuming caffeinated beverages, with this phenomenon being catalyzed by the presence of coffee shops and widespread availability of caffeinated beverages. This is further facilitated by some...

The new study compared cortisol levels in elementary school children in the UK who participated in dog-assisted intervention sessions. Dog-assisted interventions can lead to significantly lower stress in children both with and without special needs, according to a new study using salivary cortisol levels published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kerstin Meints of University of Lincoln, UK, and colleagues. Prolonged exposure to stressors can cause adverse effects on learning, behavior, health and wellbeing in children over their lifespan. Several approaches to alleviating stress have been explored in schools including yoga, mindfulness, meditation, physical activity, teaching style interventions and animal-assisted interventions. In the new study, the researchers tracked levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva of 105 eight- to nine-year-old children in four mainstream schools in the UK as well as 44 similarly aged children from seven special education needs ...

Injectable, biodegradable technology developed by the UK team works as a scaffold to help new tissue grow. British researchers have developed a biodegradable gel to repair damage caused by a heart attack in a breakthrough that could improve the health of millions of survivors worldwide. There are more than 100,000 hospital admissions every year due to heart attacks in the UK alone – one every five minutes. Medical advances mean more people than ever before survive, with 1.4 million Britons alive today after experiencing a heart attack. But hearts have a very limited ability to regenerate, meaning survivors are left at risk of heart failure and other health problems. Now after years of efforts searching for solutions to help the heart repair itself, researchers at the University of Manchester have created a gel that can be injected directly into the beating heart – effectively working as a scaffold to help injected cells grow new tissue. There are more than 100,000 hospital admissions e...

Just days after her 24th birthday in August 2015, Alison Parker and 27-year-old cameraman Adam Ward were murdered in the middle of an on-air morning interview that was broadcast in real-time. On August 26, 2015, reporter Alison Parker and Adam Ward, her cameraman, arrived at work ready to go on air. Parker worked for WDBJ7, a local news station in Roanoke, Virginia. That day, Parker and Ward were on location in Moneta for an interview with Vicki Gardner, the executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce. But then, in the middle of the interview, gunshots rang out. As the camera continued to broadcast live, a gunman fired at Parker, Gardner, and Ward. All three fell to the ground, with Ward’s camera catching a brief glimpse of the shooter. The last seconds of Alison Parker’s life were also captured by her killer – who posted the footage online. This is her chilling story. The On-Air Killing Of Alison Parker And Adam Ward Alison Parker and Adam Ward goofing off on set. Alison Parke...

A genetic and behavioural study has identified two mutations in a gene called melanocortin 2 that help explain why dogs are so social with humans. Dogs may have developed the social skills to interact with humans in part due to mutations in a stress-response gene. Miho Nagasawa at Azabu University in Japan and his colleagues analyzed genetic variations in four genes in 642 domesticated dogs. The team chose the four genes – oxytocin (OT), oxytocin receptor (OTR), melanocortin 2 receptor (MC2R) and a gene called WBSCR17 – because they are all involved in how dogs respond to stress. “Dogs’ social cognitive abilities are thought to have been acquired as a by-product of mutations of the stress response,” says Nagasawa. After looking at the dogs’ genes, the team gave the animals two tasks to test their interactions with humans. In the first, the animals were trained to find food hidden under one of two bowls. Each dog was then tasked with determining which bowl had food hidden underneath by...

On February 19th 2015, 16-year-old Becky Watts was murdered by her stepbrother Nathan Matthews via suffocation in Bristol, England. Her body was dismembered. Leading up to her murder, Matthews and his girlfriend texted each other about kidnapping a schoolgirl. Becky Watts was 16 years old when she was murdered by her step-brother. Since then her family has struggled to cope with her violent death at the hands of a loved one. What happened to Becky Watts? Becky Watts was a 16-year-old student living in Bristol with her dad Darren Galsworthy and his wife Angie in 2015. Becky Watts, 16, was suffocated and then chopped up into pieces by her step-brother and his girlfriend She was reported missing on February 20 at around 4pm by her family who said her disappearance was "out of character". A social media campaign called #FindBecky was launched, but it was already too late. It later emerged the tragic teen had been murdered the day before she was reported missing. Dan Watts, 22, w...

Dena Schlosser of Plano, Texas chopped off her daughter Margaret's arms with a kitchen knife on November 22, 2004, while suffering from postpartum psychosis. Dena Schlosser overcame tremendous odds from childhood to lead a normal life. But a deadly combination of postpartum depression and religious fervor would end her dream of normalcy in a single horrifying moment. In November 2004, Schlosser took a kitchen knife and cut off the arms of her 11-month-old daughter, Margaret Schlosser. The infant later died from her injuries, and her mother was charged with murder. And that was just the beginning of what would turn out to be a case full of shocking twists and turns. Dena Schlosser’s Early Life Born in 1969 in upstate New York, Dena Leitner suffered trauma at an early age. When she was 8 years old, she was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a disease that comes from excess cerebrospinal fluid building up in the brain. If left untreated, hydrocephalus can interfere with brain function, an...

More than half of the people with multiple sclerosis (MS) treated with Aubagio (teriflunomide) showed no evidence of disease activity after two years on treatment, according to a study in Italy. The study, “ Evolution of teriflunomide use in multiple sclerosis: A real-world experience ,” was published in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences . Aubagio is an oral disease-modifying therapy that’s been approved since 2013 in the European Union to treat adults with relapsing-remitting MS . It’s marketed by Sanofi , which was not involved in the present study. Scientists at the University of Cagliari analyzed patients who started treatment with Aubagio at their clinic between 2016 and 2020. The analysis included data for 319 patients — about two-thirds were women, and the average age was in the late 40s. Most of the patients (79%) had switched to Aubagio from a different MS treatment, while the remaining 21% were treatment-naïve, meaning Aubagio was the first MS therapy they had tried. B...

Aliens may be using rogue planets as spacecraft, a study has found. The research has been published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. Irina Romanovskaya, professor, physics and astronomy, Houston Community College, who is the author of the study, has told Motherboard that the rogue planets, who have either been knocked out of their original system by some gravitational event or formed externally, seems to have been used as spaceship as they are hard to detect in the interstellar dark between systems. There may also be a substantial number of such rogue planets in the universe. "This increases the chance that some advanced extraterrestrial civilizations if they exist, might hitch a ride on free-floating planets. Which is why I call such hypothetical civilizations Cosmic Hitchhikers," Romanovskaya said. These nomad worlds may be habitable even as they don’t draw energy from a star. It can happen if they have subsurface oceans, atmospheres with hydrogen to preserve i...