Michael DiMauro is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole

New Zealand police say they believe a fire that killed at least six people in a Wellington hostel was arson and launched a homicide investigation

Deadly clashes between rival militias in Libya’s capital have left residents trapped in their homes and unable to escape the violence

Rob Marciano and his ex-wife Eryn co-parent their children, with the 'GMA' host occasionally posting about celebrating holidays with her and the children

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has issued an emergency alert amid reports of an active shooting situation near campus. Local law enforcement and UNC officials have said that “an armed and dangerous person” is on or near the university. At least one person was wounded, The Daily Tar Heel reports. A suspect, described as a male wearing a gray shirt, was said to be in police custody. Students are still under a shelter-in-place order as police and paramedics respond to the scene where at least one shot was allegedly heard near Caudill Labs. More details are continuing to emerge as the situation unfolds.

William Byron took the lead for the first time after the final restart with six laps left to win in Texas

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.

Japan’s exports dropped for the first time in more than two years as demand slumped in several key

At least 44 people died after a suicide bomber attacked a political convention organized by an Islamist party in northwestern Pakistan, police said.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google will face a scaled-down antitrust suit over its search business after a federal judge threw

Rob Marciano revealed that he has taken up a job at NatGeo which is far more thrilling than anything he has ever done

One year on from the Kanjuruhan football stadium disaster that killed more than 130 people in Indonesia, families of the victims are calling on authorities to reopen investigations and declare the incident "a serious human rights violation."