
I won't rush India-UK trade deal, says Rishi Sunak
The prime minister is on a visit to India for talks with leaders of the world's biggest economies.
2023-09-08 21:21

Police officer involved in fatal shooting of Eddie Irizarry surrenders on criminal warrant, attorney says
A Philadelphia police officer turned himself in on a criminal warrant related to the fatal August shooting of Eddie Irizarry, though an attorney for the officer said it's not yet clear what he is being charged with.
2023-09-08 21:17

Mahsa Amini's uncle arrested ahead of one-year anniversary of her death
The uncle of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death in the custody of Iran's morality police sparked nation-wide protests last year, was arrested last week, according to a family member and a human rights group.
2023-09-08 20:25

Hail ... Santa? 10 Songs That That May (Or May Not) Include Hidden Messages
The Beatles helped bring backmasking to the mainstream, but here are a few classic tracks that may (or may not) feature hidden messages, too.
2023-09-08 20:24

Johnny Kitagawa's sexual abuse: Japan's worst kept secret
For decades, sexual assault accusations marred his career - and for decades, the media failed to investigate.
2023-09-08 19:58

Scientists grow human kidneys inside a pig for the first time
Scientists have grown human kidneys in pigs, for the very first time. Researchers at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuyi University created human-pig chimeric embryos containing a combination of human and pig cells. When they transferred into 13 surrogate pig mothers, they developed kidneys that contained mostly human cells at a rate of 50 to 60 per cent, giving hope for potential transplants in the future. “Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded,” said the senior author Liangxue Lai. “Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs.” The kidneys were not entirely human as they included vasculature and nerves made mostly from pig cells, meaning they could not be used for transplantation in their current form, but it is still a pretty impressive step. And apart from the kidneys, the embryos were dominated by pig cells, with very few human cells in the brain or central nervous system. Making brains using human and pig cells is very controversial for ethical reasons, so there are tight regulations for this kind of research. Meanwhile, pig cells tend to outcompete human cells during development, so previous experiments have created embryos that are almost entirely pig. The latest work, published in Cell Stem Cell, overcame this by genetically engineering a single-cell pig embryo so that it lacked two genes needed for kidney development. This created a gap within the embryo that could be filled by human cells. “We found that if you create a niche in the pig embryo, then the human cells naturally go into these spaces,” said Prof Zhen Dai of Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, another senior author. The scientists said that being able to incubate a fully human kidney inside a pig would be likely to take many years. “We would probably need to engineer the pigs in a much more complex way and that also brings some additional challenges,” said Miguel Esteban, also of the Guangzhou institute and a senior author. A central challenge would be to allow human nerves and vasculature to develop within the target organ without nerve cells developing in the central nervous system that could lead to a humanised brain. “Even theoretically it’s not clear how you’d do that,” said Ilic. Sign up to 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.
2023-09-08 19:49

Arkansas hospital sued thousands of patients over medical bills during the pandemic, including hundreds of its own employees
As Covid cases spread in 2020, visitors to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences were greeted by a colorful sign put up by grateful neighbors outside the university's medical center: "Heroes Work Here."
2023-09-08 19:24

Fact check: Trump falsely claims polls show his Black support has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot
Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that polls show his support among Black Americans has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot was released.
2023-09-08 19:21

Human embryo created without using sperm or eggs
Scientists in Israel have created a model of a human embryo from stem cells, without using sperm, eggs or a womb. A team at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science made the model, which resembles an embryo at day 14, when it acquires internal structures but before it lays down the foundations for body organs, and the work was published in the journal Nature. But the scientists involved said it would take a long time yet to create an embryo from scratch. Team leader Jacob Hanna said the team took stem cells derived from adult human skin cells, as well as others cultured in the lab, then reverted the cells to an early state.They then manipulated them to make a model of an embryo, rather than an actual or synthetic one. "The question is, when does an embryo model become considered an embryo? When that happens, we know the regulations. At the moment we are really, really far off from that point," Hanna said. However, they said the work could open the door to new ways to test the effect of drugs on pregnancies, better understand miscarriages and genetic diseases, and maybe grow transplant tissues and organs. "They are not identical. There are differences from human embryos, but still, this is the first time, if you open an atlas or a textbook, you can say - yeah I can really see the similarity between them," said Hanna. "In about 1 percent of the aggregates we can see that the cells start differentiating correctly, migrating and sorting themselves into the correct structure, and the farthest we could get is day 14 in human embryo development," he said. Their next goal, Hanna said, is to advance to day 21 and also reach a threshold of a 50 per cent success rate. Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, a professor of development and stem cells at the University of Cambridge, said the study joins six other similar human embryo-like models published from teams around the world this year, including from her lab. "None of these models fully recapitulate natural human development but each adds to ways in which many aspects of human development can now be studied experimentally," she said. Sign up to 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.
2023-09-08 18:26

Nikki Haley's 2024 White House bid charts hazardous path in isolationist Republican Party
By Gram Slattery MANCHESTER, New Hampshire U.S. 2024 Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley wants to send special forces
2023-09-08 18:24

Gas prices jump as strikes in Australia begin
A row over pay and conditions has led to walkouts at two liquefied natural gas facilities.
2023-09-08 18:23

Ukraine war: Russia holds local elections in occupied Ukraine
Many taking part in early polling have been asked to vote in the presence of armed Russian soldiers.
2023-09-08 18:20