The Home Depot’s robust growth during the coronavirus pandemic is starting to slow as anticipated, with the retailer’s fiscal first-quarter revenue missing Wall Street’s estimates and a key sales figure declining

By Jennifer Rigby LONDON New highly-effective weight loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy are not a “silver

The leaders of the Writers Guild of America on Tuesday called off a monthslong strike that has paralyzed Hollywood, accepting a pay deal...

By James Oliphant and Trevor Hunnicutt WASHINGTON The 2024 presidential election promises to be like no other modern

Because of a procedural change in how the U.S. government processes some green cards, faith communities across the country may lose thousands of leaders and workers

North Carolina’s state House speaker is being sued for damages by a local elected official who alleges the powerful Republican ruined his marriage by having an affair with his wife

Greek officials are assessing the staggering cost of repairing the damage from record flooding and compensating residents and businesses

Vladimir Putin said mutiny organisers tried to force the Wagner group’s soldiers “to shoot their own”, without naming the mercenary unit’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, as he issued a desperate message to the Russian public. The Russian president blasted the organisers of a weekend mutiny, the gravest threat yet to his power, and dubbed them as traitors who played into the hands of Ukraine’s government and its allies. In an address last night, Mr Putin insisted that he directly ordered that steps were taken “to avoid a lot of bloodshed” during the mutiny which he claimed was “resolutely rejected by society” – despite clips appearing to show Rostov-on-Don residents bringing Wagner troops food as they occupied the city. Missing since Saturday night, Yevgeny Prigozhin broke his silence yesterday, claiming his aborted march on Moscow gave a “masterclass” in what Mr Putin’s troops could have achieved with their botched invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky cheered his troops last night after marking a successful day in the battlefield where he claimed that the Ukraine’s soldiers progressed in all directions. Read More Putin appeals to public after Wagner leader Prigozhin breaks silence over mutiny Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? The exiled Wagner Group mercenary chief who rebelled against Putin Russia claims two British warplanes spotted near border

Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson has formally announced her campaign for U.S. Senate in 2024

Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Hyundai Motor and Kia said on Thursday they are recalling more than 113,000 newer vehicles

Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the United States is ready to protect American forces or personnel in the Middle East should the Israel-Hamas war escalate as he expects