To Fix the H-1B Visa Mess, Take a 'Moneyball' Approach | Opinion
Claims of a "civil war" within MAGA ranks may be exaggerated, but a holiday exchange on X underscored a growing fault line in the Republican Party between the working-class voters and the billionaire elites.
newsweek.com
What to know about the investigation into the New Orleans attack
Investigators are questioning those who knew the New Orleans attacker, in search of possible accomplices. No arrests have been made, though, as the FBI and local law enforcement continue their investigation. CBS News' Nicole Sganga has the latest.
cbsnews.com
Your complicated passwords may not be as effective as you think
Have we finally cracked the code on password security?
nypost.com
1 dead after Tesla Cybertruck explodes outside of Trump hotel in Las Vegas
A Tesla Cybertruck explosion just outside of Trump hotel in Las Vegas is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism. One person inside the vehicle was killed and seven others nearby were injured.
cbsnews.com
Eye Opener: New details on New Orleans terror attack
There are new details on the investigation into the truck attack that killed and injured dozens. Also, a Cybertruck explosion in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas is investigated as a possible act of terrorism. All that and all that matters in today's Eye Opener.
cbsnews.com
Jennifer Lopez reflects on her ‘challenging relationships’ amid Ben Affleck divorce
The "On the Floor" singer is currently going through her fourth divorce.
nypost.com
Passenger Discovers Just How Strong Plane Toilet Flushes Really Are
A passenger was shocked when their experiment in an airplane lavatory worked, revealing that she learned the trick on TikTok.
newsweek.com
Ukraine Halts Russia's Gas Pipe to Europe: How Will Putin Respond?
Ukraine hailed the end of the gas transit deal amid Russia's invasion. But Russia said European living standards will suffer.
newsweek.com
The 19 best things to do in D.C. this weekend and next week
Take the kids to make art or watch the Capitals practice, drink $3 beers at local bluegrass showcases, or see glowing holiday lights one last time.
washingtonpost.com
2025 F1 Season Sees $1.5 Billion Partnership Begin With Luxury Brand
Formula 1 will celebrate its 75th anniversary alongside a $1.5 billion, decade-long partnership with TAG Heuer as the new timekeeper.
newsweek.com
North Korean Troops Turn to Alcohol As 'Fighting Spirit' Plummets
NATO has previously described the deployment of North Korean soldiers to Russia as a "significant escalation" in the conflict.
newsweek.com
Most On-Time Airlines in 2024 Announced with American Carrier in Top Three
A new report has revealed which airlines had the most success when it came to arriving on schedule in 2024, with two U.S. airlines making the global top ten.
newsweek.com
Woman Discovers Foreign Object Inside Her Arm, Asks Internet for Help
"I assumed I had scraped it on something and brushed it off as a minor irritation," Kelsey Pierce from Utah told Newsweek.
newsweek.com
FBI to brief House Homeland Security Committee on New Orleans attack
The Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterterrorism will brief the committee members and staff in a call on Thursday morning, according to a committee aide.
cbsnews.com
Justin Baldoni’s former agency denies pressure from Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds to drop him
The "It Ends With Us" actor claimed in his libel lawsuit that the couple pressured his agent at the "Deadpool & Wolverine" premiere.
nypost.com
El veterano estadounidense que mató a 15 en Nueva Orleans se inspiró en el grupo Estado Islámico
Un veterano del Ejército de Estados Unidos que mató a 15 personas en Nueva Orleans al arremeter con una camioneta contra una multitud que celebraba el Año Nuevo había publicado videos en redes sociales horas antes de la masacre en los que dijo que estaba inspirado por el grupo Estado Islámico y expresaba su deseo de matar, dijo el presidente.
latimes.com
When Is the Sugar Bowl Kick Off Time? Event Postponed After New Orleans Attack
After the New Orleans attack that killed 15 people, the Sugar Bowl has been delayed to Thursday.
newsweek.com
Fireworks hit woman in the chest, causing second-degree burns
A tourist watching New Year’s Eve fireworks from an apartment in Navegantes, Brazil suffered second degree burns from a misfiring pyrotechnic. Bianca Miranda was leaning out of the window when the rogue firework landed on her chest and burned through her clothing. “I was desperate. The dress stuck to my body, I had to go...
nypost.com
Meghan Markle filmed carefree Instagram video multiple times, eagle-eyed fans notice
In the clip, shared Wednesday on her newly launched account, the Duchess of Sussex happily ran barefoot along the sand at a beach in Montecito, Calif.
nypost.com
11 must-try spots in L.A. for a comforting bowl of pho
Dive into a soul-soothing bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup at these exceptional pho spots.
latimes.com
WME fires back at claim Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds pressured agency to drop Justin Baldoni
The talent agency spoke out about the ongoing Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively legal war.
nypost.com
Biden to award Presidential Citizens Medal to Cheney, Thompson
Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and former Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, served as chair and vice chair of the House Jan. 6 select committee.
cbsnews.com
Woman Finds Man She's Dating on Hinge, Gets Perfect Revenge: 'Icon'
"I wanted to confront him in a way that showed I knew, without being too direct," the woman told Newsweek.
newsweek.com
CNN slammed for airing Luther Vandross documentary after New Orleans terror attack: ‘So disrespectful’
In November, CNN announced that it would air "Luther: Never Too Much" on New Year's Day at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
nypost.com
Rams rookie edge rusher Jared Verse earns Pro Bowl selection
Jared Verse has had a standout rookie campaign, and the Rams edge rusher was recognized for his efforts by being voted into the Pro Bowl Games.
latimes.com
Car Insurance 'Going To Go Up' for Millions of Drivers
Drivers in several U.S. states could face higher rates as a result of a new law increasing minimum coverage requirements.
newsweek.com
New Orleans police official gives message to NFL fans on fence about attending Super Bowl LIX after attack
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick gave a message to fans who are on the fence about attending the Super Bowl in February after a terror attack.
foxnews.com
Hysterics Over Different Ways Mom and Dad Reply to Daughter's Outfit Photo
TikTok users can't get enough of the dad's contrasting response, with one viewer writing that he "said so much" with one word.
newsweek.com
Dog Thinking Engagement Ring Is for Him Delights Internet: 'If You Insist'
One person commented under the viral video that hopefully Murphy's owner "doesn't mind being the flower girl" instead.
newsweek.com
This roasted vegetable bibimbap brings balance to every bite
A variety of vegetables brings balance — visually, texturally and nutritionally — to each bite in this bibimbap recipe from “Korean Made Easy.”
washingtonpost.com
How four missing bolts ruined Boeing’s 2024 flight plan
The aviation company started 2024 still recovering from two crashes. Days into the year, a door panel broke off mid-flight and upended the company’s “progress.”
washingtonpost.com
Ask Sahaj: I want to break up, but I’m scared of ‘being alone in my old age’
Angry partner blames the letter writer for his frequent outbursts.
washingtonpost.com
Commanders’ Jayden Daniels, Terry McLaurin selected to Pro Bowl Games
After being shut out last year, Washington has two offensive players earn nods for the first time since 2017.
washingtonpost.com
Your Body Has 30 Trillion Genomes
In the summer of 2018, 59-year-old David Gould went for his annual checkup, expecting to hear the usual: Everything looks fine. Instead, he was told that he was newly—and oddly—anemic.Two months later, Gould began to experience a strange cascade of symptoms. His ankles swelled to the width of his calves. The right side of his face became so bloated that he could not open his eye. He developed a full-body rash, joint pain, fever, and drenching night sweats. His anemia worsened, and he was requiring frequent blood transfusions. Gould’s physicians were baffled; he was scared. “I started to get my will and affairs in order,” he told me.Almost two years into his ordeal, Gould learned of an initiative at the National Institutes of Health that focuses on solving the country’s most puzzling medical cases. He applied for the program, and his file soon reached the desks of Donna Novacic and David Beck, two scientists then at the NIH. The pair had helped identify a still-unnamed disease, which they had tied to a particular gene and to a particular somatic mutation—a genetic change that had not been passed down from a parent and was present only in certain cells. Gould’s symptoms seemed uncannily similar to those of patients known to have this new disease, and a blood test confirmed the scientists’ hunch: Gould had the mutation.The NIH doctors reached Gould by phone the day he was set to start chemotherapy, which had proved dangerous in another person with the same disease. A bone-marrow transplant, they told him, could be a risky but more effective intervention—one he ultimately chose after extensive discussions with his own physicians. Within weeks, he was no longer anemic, and his once unrelenting symptoms dissipated. A few months after his transplant, Gould felt normal again—and has ever since.When the NIH team published its findings in 2020, the paper created a sensation in the medical community, not only because it described a new genetic disease (now known as VEXAS) but also because of the role a somatic mutation had played in a condition that appeared in adulthood. For many doctors like me—I practice rheumatology, which focuses on the treatment of autoimmune illnesses—the term genetic disease has always implied an inherited condition, one shared by family members and present at birth. Yet what physicians are only now beginning to realize is that somatic mutations may help explain illnesses that were never considered “genetic” at all.Somatic mutations occur after conception—after egg meets sperm—and continue over our lives, spurred by exposure to tobacco smoke, ultraviolet light, or other harmful substances. Our bodies are adept at catching these mistakes, but sometimes errors slip through. The result is a state called “somatic mosaicism,” in which two or more groups of cells in the same body possess different genetic compositions. In recent years, the discovery of conditions such as VEXAS have forced scientists to question their assumptions about just how relevant somatic mosaicism might be to human disease, and, in 2023, the NIH launched the Somatic Mosaicism Across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Network, meant to deepen our understanding of genetic variation across the human body’s cells.Over the past decade, genetic sequencing has become dramatically faster, cheaper, and more detailed, which has made sequencing the genomes of different cells in the same person more practical and has led scientists to understand just how much genetic variation exists in each of us. Tweaks in DNA caused by somatic mutations mean that we have not just one genome, perfectly replicated in every cell of our body. Jake Rubens, the CEO and a co-founder of Quotient Therapeutics, a company that uses somatic genomics to develop novel therapies, has calculated that we each have closer to 30 trillion genomes, dispersed across our many cells. Two adjacent cells, seemingly identical under the microscope, can have about 1,000 differences in their genomes.One medical specialty has long understood the implications of this variation: oncology. Since the 1990s, doctors have known that most cancers arise from somatic mutations in genes that promote or suppress tumor growth, but discoveries such as VEXAS are convincing more researchers that these mutations could help explain or define other types of illnesses too. “We have the data that says many conditions are genetic, but we don’t understand the machinery that makes this so,” Richard Gibbs, the founding director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor University, told me. “Maybe somatic mutations are the events that serve as the missing link.” James Bennett, a SMaHT-funded researcher, is confident that the more scientists look at mutations in different cells of the body, the more connections they are likely to find to specific diseases. Until recently, genetic sequencing has been applied almost exclusively to the most accessible type of cells—blood cells—but, as Bennett told me, these cells sometimes have little to do with diseases affecting various organs. The result of SMaHT, he said, will be that “for the first time, we will have an atlas of somatic mutations across the entire body.”The brain, for instance, is often thought of as our most genetically bland organ, because adult brain cells don’t replicate much, and it has rarely been subject to genetic investigation. But in 2015, scientists in South Korea demonstrated that people with a disease called focal epilepsy can develop seizures because of somatic mutations that create faulty genes in a subset of brain cells. This finding has led researchers such as Christopher Walsh, the chief of the genetics and genomics division at Boston Children’s Hospital, to consider what other brain disorders might arise from somatic mutations. He hypothesized that somatic mutations in different parts of the brain could, for instance, explain the varied ways that autism can affect different people, and, in a series of studies, demonstrated that this is indeed the case for a small portion of children with autism. Other researchers have published work indicating that somatic mutations in brain cells likely contribute to the development of schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease (though, these researchers note, mutations are just one of several factors that contribute to these complex conditions).As much as these mutations might help us better understand disease, some scientists caution that few other examples will be as tidy as cancer, or VEXAS. Yiming Luo, a rheumatologist and genetics expert at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (which I am also affiliated with), told me told me that finding germ-line mutations, which are changes to DNA that a person inherits from a parent’s egg or sperm cell, is much easier than finding significant somatic mutations. A germ-line mutation looks like a red ball in a sea of white balls—difficult, but not impossible, to spot; a somatic mutation is gray, and more easily blends in. “In genetics, it can be hard to separate sound from noise,” Luo said. And even when a scientist feels confident that they have found a real somatic mutation, the next steps—understanding the biologic and clinical implications of the mutation—can take years. Oncologists have had a head start on translating somatic-mutation science into practice, but doing the same in other specialties—including mine—may prove challenging. Dan Kastner, a rheumatologist and one of the lead NIH scientists responsible for the discovery of VEXAS, told me that, although cancer involves mountains of cellular clones that are easily identifiable and begging to be genetically analyzed, pinpointing a single cell that drives, say, a rheumatologic disease is much harder. The story of VEXAS was remarkable because the mutation causing the disease was found in blood cells, which are easy to sample and are the cells most often tested for genetic variation. Finding other disease-causing somatic mutations in rheumatology and related specialties will take skill, cunning, and a willingness to test cells and organs throughout the body.Yet my colleagues and I can no longer ignore the possibility that somatic mutations may be affecting our adult patients. VEXAS, which was unknown to doctors five years ago, may be present in 15,000 people across the U.S. (making it as common as ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease); if its global prevalence matches that of this country, it could affect about half a million people worldwide. And if, while seeking diagnoses for patients, we stop and consider the possibility that diseases we already know are linked to somatic mutations, this could help improve our practice.Recently, I was called to evaluate a man in his 60s whose medical history was littered with unexplained symptoms and signs—swollen lymph nodes, joint pain, abnormal blood-cell counts—that had stumped his team of specialists. I was struck that his skin was riddled with xanthomas—yellowish, waxy-appearing deposits of fatty tissue—even though his cholesterol levels were normal, and I learned through Googling that among their potential causes was Erdheim-Chester disease, a rare blood-cell disorder that arises due to somatic mutations.I wondered whether I was losing perspective, given my newfound obsession, but because the patient had already had biopsies of a lymph node and his bone marrow, we sent those off for molecular testing. Both samples came back with an identical finding: a somatic mutation associated with Erdheim-Chester. When I emailed a local expert on the disease, I still expected a gentle admonishment for being too eager to invoke an exceedingly uncommon diagnosis. But within minutes, he replied that, yes, this patient likely had Erdheim-Chester and that he would be happy to see the man in his clinic right away.I sat at my computer staring at this reply. I could not have even contemplated the likely diagnosis for this patient a year ago, yet here it was: an adult-onset condition, masquerading as an autoimmune illness, but actually due to a somatic mutation. The diagnosis felt too perfect to be true, and in some ways, it was. Fewer than 1,500 patients have ever been found to have this particular condition. But, at the same time, it made me wonder: If rethinking genetic disease helped this one person, how many others out there are waiting for a similar answer?
theatlantic.com
Liz Cheney To Receive Presidential Citizens Medal From Joe Biden
The outspoken Republican critic of Donald Trump will receive the second-highest civilian award at a White House ceremony.
newsweek.com
Your passport might not work in 2025 — and it has nothing to do with expiration
If your New Year's resolution was to travel more, don't just double-check your passport expiration.
nypost.com
Saints' Cam Jordan donates $25K to New Orleans terror attack victims relief fund
New Orleans Saints defensive end Cam Jordan donated $25,000 to a fund to help the victims of the New Year's Day terror attack in the city.
foxnews.com
Tom Brady celebrates New Year’s Eve with all 3 kids, admits ‘no year ever goes exactly the way we want’
The retired quarterback shares his children with exes Gisele Bündchen and Bridget Moynahan. The former is now expecting a baby with Joaquim Valente.
nypost.com
Jeffrey Maddrey Suspended as NYPD Probes Allegations, Executes Raids
Former Police Chief Jeffrey Maddrey has been suspended as NYPD probes allegations and executes raids.
newsweek.com
US unemployment claims fall to the lowest level since March
The number of Americans applying for unemployment checks dropped last week to the lowest level since March, suggesting that most workers enjoy unusual job security
abcnews.go.com
MTA worker stabbed at Bronx subway station
An MTA employee was stabbed on a subway platform in the Bronx on Thursday morning in the latest violent incident on the city’s troubled transit system, police and sources said.
nypost.com
Louisiana gov will attend Sugar Bowl, vows Superdome is 'completely secure'
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" that he will be at the Sugar Bowl after the terror attack in New Orleans.
foxnews.com
Stay on top of your fitness resolutions in stylish Fox News Shop gear
Workout in FOX News style with these eight picks from the FOX News Shop.
foxnews.com
Is Gladiator II Available on Streaming? – How To Watch
Gladiator II is now available to watch from home.
newsweek.com
Cancer: 'Speckles' May Reveal Best Treatment
The discovery could help explain why some cancer patients respond well to certain treatments, while others are not so lucky.
newsweek.com
Patrick Roy’s idiosyncratic ways haven’t been wrong for the Islanders, but are they right for the future?
Nearly a year into his tenure as head coach, one thing is certain: this is who Patrick Roy is, for better or worse.
nypost.com
Delight at Maltipoo Who Always Knows What To Do Before Coming Inside
"Showing this to my family, [because] apparently they don't know how to wipe there shoes on the carpet before entering," one user said.
newsweek.com