Millions of people are expected to hit airports and highways in record numbers over the Thanksgiving holiday

Vladimir Putin has accepted an invite from Xi Jinping to visit China for a Belt and Road Summit being held in October in his first known trip abroad since an arrest warrant was slapped against him for the deportation of children from Ukraine. The Russian president recently met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and is looking to cement ties with a handful of allies after being isolated on the world stage due to his invasion of Ukraine. Russia and China are “integrating our ideas of creating a large Eurasian space”, Mr Putin said, adding that the Chinese-led Belt and Road initiative is a part of that. He announced his intention to visit Beijing after a meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, who is in Moscow this week for a strategic diplomatic visit. Mr Putin told the top Chinese diplomat that the Belt and Road strategy “fully meets and coincides” with Russia’s interests, according to a statement by the Kremlin. He will be attending the summit in Chinese capital Beijing. “We believe in merging our vision of creating a Greater Eurasian space with the idea of our Chinese friends as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and we have been quite good at synchronising our efforts,” he said. After invading Ukraine in February last year, Mr Putin has increasingly relied on seeking support from his allies in Asia, prominently China and North Korea. Russia has also amped up trade with China by selling it more energy and showing diplomatic bonhomie by carrying out joint military exercises. The talks in Beijing will be thorough, said Nikolai Patrushev, a close aide to the Russian president and the secretary of Russia’s Security Council. He said Russia and China should deepen cooperation in the face of the West’s attempt to contain them both. Both countries also have strained relations with the US, with Mr Xi briefly becoming the only foreign leader to have paid Mr Putin a visit in Moscow until recently, when Mr Kim revelled in his own six-day sojourn to Russia’s far east. A flagship initiative of Beijing, the Belt and Road project has been a key prospect for China to expand its influence in developing countries through infrastructure projects. On the continuing war in Ukraine, China has shown a neutral stand and has gone to the extent of criticising Western sanctions against Moscow and the arming of Kyiv by several Western nations. It also accused Nato and the US of provoking Russia’s military action and declared last year that it had a “no-limits” friendship with Russia. Earlier this year, CIA director William Burns said Russia was becoming more and more dependent on China and was even at risk of becoming its “economic colony” in time. Read More Why Vladimir Putin needs Xi Jinping now more than ever Why Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are desperate for each other’s help Ukraine kills 130 Russian soldiers in single day in southern push Chinese foreign minister visits Russia for ‘security’ talks day after Kim Jong-un leaves country

Hundreds of people have stormed into the main airport in Russia’s Dagestan region and onto the landing field, seeking passengers arriving from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv

By Steve Holland and Humeyra Pamuk WASHINGTON Jens Stoltenberg is expected to be asked to remain as NATO

By Ruma Paul and Sudarshan Varadhan DHAKA (Reuters) -Bangladesh could face further power cuts due to higher demand, its power

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.

Whether world leaders should engage with the Taliban government is complicated, writes Lyse Doucet.

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President Joe Biden is set to meet with congressional leadership on Tuesday amid a stalemate in Washington to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default that would have catastrophic economic consequences.

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