Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is resigning from her post over the agency’s failures to properly protect former President Donald Trump from an attempted assassination. Her resignation follows an hours-long hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday in which Cheatle  testified before the House Oversight Committee in the wake of the July 13 (failed) assassination attempt on Trump. Numerous lawmakers—from both sides of the aisle—had called for Cheatle to resign after a gunman fired multiple shots at Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 33 miles north of Pittsburgh. A former fire chief, Corey Comperatore, 50, died shielding his family from the gunfire, and two other rally attendees were injured.  Throughout the hearing, Cheatle angered lawmakers by refusing to divulge information, citing the ongoing investigation into the assassination attempt. ?BREAKING OVERSIGHT PROJECT EXCLUSIVE?Secret Service Director Cheatle is stepping down. She just emailed the work force— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) July 23, 2024 The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal. “The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades and I am keeping him and his family in my thoughts,” Cheatle said in written testimony on Monday. “I would like to offer my sincerest condolences to the family of Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief and a hero, who was killed in this senseless shooting. I would also like to acknowledge those who were injured in Butler, Pennsylvania, David Dutch and James Copenhaven, and I wish them a speedy recovery.” Fred Lucas, Virginia Allen, and Elizabeth Mitchell contributed to this report. This is a breaking news story, please check back for more details. The post BREAKING: Secret Service Director Resigns Following Attempted Trump Assassination appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Free speech supporters are alarmed after former Premier League player Joey Barton has been slapped with charges of alleged “malicious communications” directed towards sports commentator and past England Women’s team star Eni Aluko. Responding to the accusations, Barton labeled the judiciary as a “banana republic.” A court date has been set for July 30 following a probe by Cheshire Police in England. Earlier this year, Barton likened Aluko and fellow commentator Lucy Ward to Fred and Rose West. Fred and Rose West were a British married couple who committed a series of murders, sexual assaults, and acts of torture against young women and girls, including some of their own children, between the 1960s and 1980s in Gloucestershire, England. After a police investigation into Barton’s contentious actions, charges were brought by the Crown Prosecution Service. The 41-year-old ex-footballer is set to face these charges at Warrington Magistrates’ Court. Notably, Barton also compared Aluko to the notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. When the charges were made public, Barton expressed his shock on X, questioning the priorities of the police and criticizing the British legal framework for stifling voices. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK Sports Commentator Faces Court for “Malicious Communications” Charges Over Social Media Posts appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The Australian government’s commitment to online censorship is playing out in yet another way – the perceived harmful influence social platforms have on young men and boys. Aligned media outlets agree these sites are showing too much content that is branded as misogynistic and promoting harmful gender stereotypes. Meanwhile, government ministers want to see the companies behind platforms “do” (aka, censor) more. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, known for her pro-censorship stance, and Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth are both quoted in a Guardian article about an “experiment” the outlet carried out by setting up fake accounts representing “generic 24-year-old males” on Facebook and Instagram. The accounts did not interact – the goal was to see what would be showing up in their algorithmically-recommended feeds. And that the device and the email used to sign up were new, was apparently enough for the Guardian to believe they were safe from Meta’s tracking. The article’s conclusion is that over the following several months, the feeds started to “veer into more highly sexist content,” especially on Facebook. But it looks like the majority were memes about sitcoms, Star Wars, “dudebro” memes, Daily Mail, etc., news posts, while Instagram’s biggest “offense” seems to have been showing images of “scantily-clad women.” The Guardian notes Meta explaining that its algorithms rank content based on interest – and it would appear that when all the algorithm knows about a “user” is that they are a “generic 24-year-old male” – that’s the sort of content it guesses they would want to see. But, it seems that government officials in Australia would like those algorithms rewritten – to steer young men away from what some observers call “manosphere” and into more desirable areas of the internet. The report puts it this way: there is “a $3.5 million, 3-year trial to counteract the harmful impacts of social media messaging targeting young men and boys.” “We’re seeing misogynistic content pushed to young people through algorithms and recommender systems on social media. This is simply not good enough,” Michelle Rowland said. She added that the government wants platforms to “take reasonable steps to ensure Australians can use their services in a safe manner, and to proactively minimize unlawful and harmful material and activity on their services.” Although the Guardian’s “experiment” did not result in content condoning violence against women showing up in the dummy accounts’ feeds, Amanda Rishworth offered a dramatic take on the situation by adding that into the mix that was her reaction. “Around 25% of teenage boys in Australia look up to social media personalities who perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and condone violence against women – this is shocking,” she is quoted as saying. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Australian Ministers Urge Stricter Online Censorship of “Misogynistic” Speech appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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More Companies Mandating Return-To-Office and Employees Are Pissed

Trump Is Suddenly Too Old

BREAKING: Cheatle Resigns After Capitol Hill Humiliation

A breakthrough HIV drug, touted as the “closest thing we have to a vaccine”, could be produced for 1,000 times less than its current cost, according to new research. Right now, a full first-year course of the treatment costs an eye-watering $42,250 per patient, but one analysis suggests that could be slashed to just $40.Developing a vaccine for HIV has long been a top priority in infectious disease research, but it’s proven difficult. While the ultimate preventative remains just out of reach, the advent of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) has provided a new way for people to protect themselves, and treatment for the infection has progressed tremendously in recent decades.Perhaps most notably of all, we now know that when a HIV-positive person’s viral load becomes undetectable, thanks to antiretroviral drugs, they can no longer pass the infection on to others.    The drive for new and improved HIV treatments aims to help as many people as possible achieve this undetectable status. An exciting recent breakthrough was the approval of lenacapavir, marketed as Sunlenca by US pharma company Gilead Sciences, Inc. Administered as an injection, the treatment only needs to be repeated every six months, a far cry from the daily cocktail of pills that many HIV-positive people will be familiar with.And it works. Lenacapavir is currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment in cases where other HIV drugs have failed or are unsuitable, but recent trials are also showing its promise as a potential alternative to PrEP.“You’ve got an injection somebody could have every six months and not get HIV. That’s as close as we’ve ever been to an HIV vaccine,” Dr Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool told The Guardian.A clinical trial focusing on historically underrepresented groups in HIV research – cisgender women and injectable drug users – was announced earlier this year, and in the meantime, the results of a trial in 5,000 people in Uganda and South Africa were just reported by Gilead. As one of the principal investigators, Dr Linda-Gail Bekker, said in an interview for The Conversation, “There was 100 percent efficacy.”Six-monthly lenacapavir injections outperformed two currently approved forms of PrEP in the young women included in the trial, without the challenges that can come with having to take a pill every day.“For a young woman who struggles to get to an appointment at a clinic in a town or who can’t keep pills without facing stigma or violence,” Dr Bekker explained, “an injection just twice a year is the option that could keep her free of HIV.”The downside to all this? It’s expensive. The first year of lenacapavir treatment currently costs in excess of $42,000 per patient. Some scientists and campaigners are now saying that it doesn’t have to be this way.According to research conducted by Dr Hill and colleagues and presented at a recent conference, the minimum price for a mass-produced generic version of lenacapavir, following the same ingredients and manufacturing process, would be $40 per patient, based on a profit of 30 percent and 10 million annual users. In reality, they suggest that up to 60 million people a year would need to take the drug to have a marked impact on HIV spread.The research team and campaigners are calling for Gilead to allow generic licensing in low- and middle-income countries, where the vast majority of new HIV infections arise, through a UN-backed project called the Medicines Patent Pool, which has already signed agreements with the patent holders of 13 HIV drugs.In a statement released after the results of the Uganda and South Africa trial were revealed, Gilead stressed that the use of lenacapavir to prevent HIV was still investigational, but that they were “prioritizing speed to enable the most efficient path for the regulatory approval of twice-yearly lenacapavir for PrEP in countries that account for most of the global disease burden.”“You have a miracle tool that could transform access for gay men, trans people, sex workers, for young women in Africa who could be freed from the stigma and fear of being attacked just for being seen swallowing tablets,” said UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima in a direct plea to Gilead at the conference, as reported by Pharmaceutical Technology.“Right now, Gilead, lenacapavir is priced for rich countries – this inequality never served us well in HIV response.”The study was presented at the 25th International Aids Conference.

Running to the toilet to pee what seems like every five minutes, only to be greeted with a burning sensation when you do is enough to get many people reaching for the cranberry juice. Downing a glass is perhaps one of the most widely believed “cures” for urinary tract infections (UTIs), but is it backed up by science? A new review suggests it might be.A team of researchers from Bond University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Helsinki combed through scientific literature to identify a total of 20 studies in which cranberry products – including juice, but also tablets and the fruit itself – were used as interventions for UTIs.The researchers sought to answer one overarching question by analyzing these studies: should cranberry juice, or other cranberry products, be recommended to prevent and treat UTIs?The results seem to suggest yes, according to the authors, with cranberry juice in particular having the potential for benefit.Overall, the team found that, in 18 of the studies, groups of people consuming cranberry juice had a 54 percent lower rate of UTIs compared to those who had no treatment and 27 percent lower compared to those who received a placebo liquid.“Cranberry juice also resulted in a 49% lower rate of antibiotic use than placebo liquid and a 59% lower rate than no treatment,” the authors write, also finding that cranberry compounds, including juice, reduced the incidence of UTI symptoms.On this basis, the authors conclude that “the evidence supports the use of cranberry juice for the prevention and treatment of UTIs.”There’s quite a significant caveat to these findings though; the researchers’ certainty in the evidence (how strongly it proves that cranberry juice should be used as an intervention), ranged from “moderate to very low”, they write in the study.That’s not exactly a stellar assessment – much more certainty would be required in order for cranberry juice to become a fully-fledged clinical intervention. The authors also note that most of the participants in the studies were female, which means that the findings also can’t be applied to everyone and that some of the studies had a high risk of bias because of the involvement of cranberry product manufacturers.While the research isn’t necessarily convincing enough for doctors to immediately recommend ditching antibiotics in favor of chugging a carton of Ocean Spray, the fact that there was some evidence, weak as it is, highlights the need to delve deeper into its potential – research that’s particularly important in the face of an antibiotic resistance crisis.“More than half of women experience UTIs and antibiotics are a go-to treatment prescribed by doctors,” said lead researcher Dr Christian Moro in a statement.“With antibiotic resistance increasing, it is vital to identify effective non-drug interventions.”The study is published in European Urology Focus.

CBS’s Stephen Colbert reacted to President Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid on Monday’s edition of The Late Show by gushing over his supposedly “great” presidency, retiring “Joe Biden is old" jokes, and doing a happy dance because he has hope again. The fawning began even before Colbert took the stage, as the cold open included a montage of clips of everything from SpongeBob to Top Gun: Maverick as a salute to Biden. Once Colbert took the stage, Colbert got in on the saluting, “President Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. I mean, it's shocking, but this makes sense. It'll give him time to rest up for 2028. And I, for one, I want to salute this good man for the selfless act of stepping aside from being the most powerful person in the world for the greater good.”     Colbert almost had a bit of self-awareness as he continued, “This act, I believe that this act puts Joe Biden in league with history's most selfless leaders, Roman General Cincinnatus, the father of our country, George Washington, and Kim Cattrall, who has stepped down as Samantha after Pelosi showed her the polls.” However, the idea that Biden is stepping aside because of a good-old-fashioned political power play and not Washingtonian selflessness was quickly cast aside, “Courage, grace, right? You don't see that every day. Courage, grace, humility, true patriotism. I tell you one thing: That guy would make a great president.”     Later, Colbert recalled, “Speaking personally, I am going to miss Joe Biden. On this very program, right over there, on September 10, 2015, I encouraged then-Vice President Biden to run. He ignored me for five years, then he did it. And I believe he has been a great president. He steered this country out of a horrific pandemic. He saved countless lives by encouraging people to get vaccinated, he brought the economy back, he rallied our allies, he reasserted America's place in the world stage, and most inspiring of all, at no time was he Donald Trump.” With “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing in the background, he continued, “So, to honor this great president, tonight I have officially retired my Joe Biden aviators. They will reside there on my shelf forever, in a place of honor, next to Captain America's shield. They, those aviators, did the hardest job of all. They made it seem like I had a Joe Biden impression.”     While holding a binder that read “Joe Biden Old” on it, Colbert added, “I am officially retiring all of my 'Joe Biden is old' jokes. Okay, they started to get tired anyway, just like Joe Biden. That was the last one, I swear! Now, I'm going to unretire them to use on Donald Trump, who at 78, is the oldest nominee of the two major parties to ever run” as he turned the binder around to read “Donald Trump Old.” As for Harris, Colbert oozed, “Shortly after Biden posted his letter to the nation, he made another announcement to the Democratic Party endorsing Kamala Harris. And Harris was quick to accept, writing in a statement, ‘I am honored, and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,’ and changed her Twitter banner to ‘Harris for President’ and then so did Joe Biden.” With a less old Democratic nominee, Colbert got a burst of energy, “What is this strange feeling? It's like my blood is flowing again. For the first time in months, I don't want to build a little pillow fort and crawl in there with a hoagie and a tub of frosting. Is this excitement? Is this hope? Is there any way to physically embody this feeling?” After a video of Harris dancing, Colbert did his own version of the dance, “This is the dance of a man who finally has something new to talk about after five years!”  Here is a transcript for the July 22 show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 7/22/2024 11:37 PM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: President Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. I mean, it's shocking, but this makes sense. It'll give him time to rest up for 2028. And I, for one, I want to salute this good man for the selfless act of stepping aside from being the most powerful person in the world for the greater good.  This act, I believe that this act puts Joe Biden in league with history's most selfless leaders, Roman General Cincinnatus, the father of our country, George Washington, and Kim Cattrall, who has stepped down as Samantha after Pelosi showed her the polls.  Biden made this historic announcement in a letter that said, "It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president." Adding, "I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term."  There it is. Courage, grace, right? You don't see that every day. Courage, grace, humility, true patriotism. I tell you one thing: That guy would make a great president.  … Speaking personally, I am going to miss Joe Biden. On this very program, right over there, on September 10, 2015, I encouraged then-Vice President Biden to run. He ignored me for five years, then he did it. And I believe he has been a great president. He steered this country out of a horrific pandemic. He saved countless lives by encouraging people to get vaccinated, he brought the economy back, he rallied our allies, he reasserted America's place in the world stage, and most inspiring of all, at no time was he Donald Trump.  So, to honor this great president, tonight I have officially retired my Joe Biden aviators. ["Battle Hymn of the Republic" humming in the background] They will reside there on my shelf forever, in a place of honor, next to Captain America's shield. They, those aviators, did the hardest job of all. [humming stops] They made it seem like I had a Joe Biden impression.  But I do not have a Kamala Harris impression, so she's wearing aviators too. "Hey, everybody. I'm Kamala Harris. I'm gonna be your president, Jack." We're working on it! And tonight, if I can have this, please. If I can have this please, I am officially retiring all of my "Joe Biden is old" jokes. Okay, they started to get tired anyway, just like Joe Biden. That was the last one, I swear! Now, I'm going to unretire them to use on Donald Trump, who at 78, is the oldest nominee of the two major parties to ever run. I mean, that guy is so old, he used to judge the Miss Pangea agent. When he was a kid, his phone number was 8. Shortly after Biden posted his letter to the nation, he made another announcement to the Democratic Party endorsing Kamala Harris. And Harris was quick to accept, writing in a statement, "I am honored, and my intention is to earn and win this nomination," and changed her Twitter banner to "Harris for President" and then so did Joe Biden. What is this? What is this strange feeling? It's like my blood is flowing again. For the first time in months, I don't want to build a little pillow fort and crawl in there with a hoagie and a tub of frosting. Is this excitement? Is this hope? Is there any way to physically embody this feeling?  [video of Kamala Harris dancing] This is the dance of a man who finally has something new to talk about after five years!