Quartz: Scientists found a new way to slow Alzheimer’s progress

Deep brain stimulation works by continuously tickling neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain with electrodes. Over the course of two years, three patients who had these electrodes implanted maintained more of their mental faculties than a group of control patients, who started out at similar stages of the disease. One woman in the test group even started making meals for herself—an ability she had lost in 2013.

Deep brain stimulation has been used to treat hundreds of thousands of patients with Parkinson’s, another kind of neurodegenerative disease. Researchers have also tried using it to treat Alzheimer’s, but only to mixed success. Most of these studies have targeted brain regions associated with memory and spatial awareness—usually some of the first to be destroyed by amyloid and tau. [...]

The work, which was published (paywall) Jan. 30 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, isn’t promising to reverse Alzheimer’s-related brain damage, or stop it’s progression entirely. All three patients still worsened over the course of the study. But the level of independence they maintained—assessed through a Clinical Dementia Rating scale—was higher than those who did not receive this kind of stimulation. Notably, all of them chose to keep the stimulation going after the trial period ended because they liked its effects.

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The Guardian: Zero tolerance? The facts don't support the pope's claims on child abuse

In January 2014, Archbishop Tomasi, the Holy See’s envoy to the United Nations, presented to the committee on the rights of the child a document showing that since 2004, more than 3,420 credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors had been referred to the CDF. As a result, 848 priests had been dismissed, and lesser disciplinary measures had been applied against the other 2,572. That’s 75% tolerance, not zero. [...]

Francis used specious arguments of the same kind in his formal response in September 2014 to the United Nations’ committee on the rights of the child when he claimed that the Holy See was only responsible under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for the 31 children resident in the Vatican City, despite the fact that within those 44 hectares, the Holy See decides whether thousands of clerics from all over the world should continue as priests after the church had found them guilty of sexually abusing children.

Francis further claimed that attempting to implement the provisions of the convention in the territory of other states, such as by mandatory reporting to the civil authorities under canon law, could constitute a violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states. While states have differing and sometimes no mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse, none of them prohibit such reporting. Mandatory reporting to the civil authorities under canon law would assist states in the enforcement of their criminal laws designed to protect children.

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Political Critique: Where does equality start?

It is the directive concerning unfair commercial practices, which, makes it obligatory to place the product’s ingredients on the label. A product with the same name, but not always the same ingredients, can be sold in different countries but only under the condition that it is properly labelled. Meglena Kuneva, the Bulgarian Commissioner for Consumer Protection from 2007 to 2010, admitted that using well-known brands for selling low-quality products could mislead the consumers, but in her opinion, such situations should be addressed individually by state legislatures or offices for consumer protection. [...]

Politicians in the Czech Republic, the most Eurosceptic of V4 societies, are particularly eager to attack the EU on the issue of food quality. The state parliament has debated this problem on several occasions. In November 2016, Simeon Karamazov (conservative Civic Democratic Party) argued that the EU should focus on the problems of its citizens, and not foreigners, as it did during the refugee crisis. In March 2017, Marek Černoch from the populist Úsvit (Dawn), stated that Western corporations view the Czech Republic as a second-class country and “the landfill of Europe”. [...]

The V4 countries’ complaints did not go unheard. Commissioner Jourova and her superior, Jean-Claude Juncker, admitted that the problem is real and the Commission must play a role in solving it. Both of them are treating this issue as a political challenge and an opportunity to improve the relations with the Visegrad Group after the battles about the relocation of refugees and the still ongoing conflict over the breach of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. [...]

Slovakians were the first to conduct research on this issue. In 2011 they compared food products sold in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe (including Poland). The analysis of the Slovak Association of Consumers (partly financed by the EU) uncovered differences not only between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ union, but also among countries in the East. For example, Coca-Cola sold in the West, in Poland and the Czech Republic contained natural sugar (sucrose) but in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania – isoglucose – a cheaper, poorer quality sweetener.

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Haaretz: When Israel Ignorantly Blames the Holocaust on the Poles, It Boosts Their Illiberal Nationalists

Clearly, it’s a complicated situation that requires a thoughtful and yet forceful response. Israeli leaders opted instead to equate the Polish law with Holocaust denial, in an ignorant and foolish display of haughtiness and prejudice.

Ignorant, because it ignores historical facts, and foolish, because it only plays into the hands of the Polish government, which can now legitimize the law by saying it’s standing up in defense of Polish national honor. [...]

Even before we debate a "Polish culpability" for the Holocaust, it should be admitted that the very concept of collective guilt is fraught with danger. No one knows this better than the Jews, whom the Church only cleared of collective guilt for the death of Jesus in 1965. In modernity, no pogrom in Russia was carried out without the preamble of a supposed atrocity by a Jew. Even the Nazis had recourse to one, the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, to "justify" Kristallnacht in 1938, when more than 90 Jews were killed in attacks across Germany. [...]

"Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, opposes the new legislation passed by the Polish parliament, which is liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust. There is no doubt that the term "Polish death camps" is a historical misrepresentation! The extermination camps were set up in Nazi-occupied Poland in order to murder the Jewish people within the framework of the "Final Solution." However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion. Yad Vashem will continue to support research aimed at exposing the complex truth regarding the attitude of the Polish population towards the Jews during the Holocaust."

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openDemocracy: How the Italian media have helped CasaPound ‘glamourise’ fascism

Over the past five years, CasaPound Italia (CPI) has sought to build new political credibility and clean up its image in order to penetrate mainstream Italian political debate. And the media have played their own, starring role in this project, helping to normalise and even ‘glamourise’ the far-right movement.  [...]

In Ostia’s election, CPI got 9% of votes and obtained one seat in the local municipal council. These numbers are not big, and only 36% of citizens voted – but they received huge attention from the media (also because a member of one of Ostia’s crime families, who happened to support CPI, broke a journalist’s nose with a violent headbutt).

According to anthropologist and researcher Maddalena Gretel Cammelli, “since the foundation of CasaPound, women’s presence was overexposed, but in reality there was a small number of them.” [...]

Chiaraluce’s media profile is meanwhile growing steadily: in early January, she was invited to be a regular commentator on a political talk show on Rai3, a national Italian TV channel (though she only lasted a week). The anchorman of the talk show, known for being on the left of the political spectrum, “understood that he could not ignore us,” she said. [...]

“Existing research shows that, historically, the far right has struggled with the so-called ‘gender gap’, for example an overrepresentation of men, and men’s policy preferences, among members, voters and political personnel. However, this seems to be changing in contemporary Europe, in several ways. Electorally, women represent a large potential reservoir of support for the far right.”

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