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Friday, July 14, 2023

7/14 WAKE-UP CALL: It's A Cover-Up At TWH

NY Post 7/14/23
The conclusion of an 11-day Secret Service probe that failed to find which White House staff member or visitor left cocaine in the West Wing looks like a whitewash, former federal investigators told The Post Thursday. “This is a cover-up. How can they say they have no leads?” one ex-agent said. “It is a restricted area and they have a log book, you don’t have to be Columbo to figure out who was there.

“Suppose it was anthrax,” the same person raged. “Would they have the same answer?”

“We have a tale of two countries,” another former fed said. “They identified hundreds of people who were in the Capitol building on Jan. 6 after an extensive investigation, but they don’t know who left something in an 8 x 10 room in the White House?” The Secret Service concluded its inquiry Thursday without identifying a suspect, citing “a lack of physical evidence” after FBI forensic testing yielded no fingerprints and insufficient DNA evidence.


➤FDA OKAYS OTC BIRTH-CONTROL PILL: The FDA approved the first over-the-counter birth-control pill. The decision significantly expanding access to contraception among women across the U.S. comes a year after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, leaving the issue to the states to decide. Opill’s manufacturer said it would be available without a prescription by early 2024, but declined to discuss pricing. The FDA approved Opill for prescription use in 1973.

➤FEDS PROBE AI: The FTC is investigating whether OpenAI’s ChatGPT has harmed people by publishing false information about them. The focus is on whether the popular app that generates eerily humanlike content using AI “engaged in unfair or deceptive practices” that could damage people’s reputations. FTC Chair Lina Khan said the agency is concerned that ChatGPT and other AI-driven apps have no checks on the data they can mine. For critics of the FTC, the probe represented another venture into uncharted territory. OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.

➤ARTIFICAL SWEETENER COULD CAUSE CANCER: A World Health Organization agency declared on Thursday that aspartame, an artificial sweetener widely used in diet drinks and low-sugar foods, could possibly cause cancer. A second W.H.O. committee, though, held steady on its assessment of a safe level of aspartame consumption. By some calculations using the panel’s standard, a person weighing 150 pounds could avoid a risk of cancer but still drink about a dozen cans of diet soda a day. The declaration by a W.H.O. agency of a cancer risk associated with aspartame reflects the first time the prominent international body has weighed in publicly on the effects of the nearly ubiquitous artificial sweetener. Aspartame has been a contentious ingredient for decades. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, or I.A.R.C., said it based its conclusion that aspartame was a possible carcinogen on limited evidence from three observational studies of humans that the agency said linked consumption of artificially sweetened beverages to an increase in cases of liver cancer — at levels far below a dozen cans a day. 


HERE'S WHAT KILLED LISA MARIE: It's been revealed that Lisa Marie Presley died aged 54 in January from a small bowel obstruction caused by previous weight-loss surgery - with opioids found in her blood at the time of her death. The daughter of Elvis Presley was rushed to hospital on January 12 after going into cardiac arrest - with an L.A. County Coroner report revealing the star died from  sequelae (a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury) of small bowel obstruction. The bowel obstruction was in the form of strangulated small bowel, caused by adhesions that developed after bariatric surgery (stomach stapling) many years prior.

➤SAG-AFTRA ON STRIKE: Fran Drescher admitted that part of the reason the SAG-AFRA union is joining screenwriters on the picket line is through fears that advancing AI technology could soon steal jobs throughout Hollywood. The union president shook her fists in anger as she slammed showbiz fat cats for failing to negotiate, which had earlier in the day led the SAG-AFRA union to join screenwriters on the picket line for the first time in more than six decades. 'I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business are treating us,' she said at a news conference Thursday. Drescher's comments came as her union, which represents around 160,00 entertainers including some of the most famous A-listers in the world, announced its historic strike in a row over wages and artificial intelligence.

➤DETROIT POLICE COMMISSIONER BUSTED WITH SEX-WORKER: A police commissioner has resigned after he was busted with a prostitute in his car and, when confronted, asked officers if they could “help him out.” Bryan Ferguson (left), who represented district one on the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, announced on Thursday that he was resigning after he was hit with a misdemeanor charge. Undercover officers from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department saw Ferguson committing a lewd act with a sex worker at around 7.15am on Wednesday, according to the law enforcement agency. When deputies approached him, Ferguson asked if they could “help him out” and told them his position, Captain Jason Bates said. “At that time, Mr Bryan Ferguson stepped out and identified himself as a Detroit police commissioner,” Bates told Fox 2 Detroit.

➤DOCTORS RE-ATTACH BOY'S HEAD: Doctors in Israel have re-attached a boy's head after he was hit by a car while riding his bike. Twelve-year-old Palestinian Suleiman Hassan, from the West Bank, suffered an internal decapitation — where the base of the skull and the top of the spine become detached, but the skin is still intact. Decapitation is the total separation of the head from the body. Internal decapitation occurs when sudden impact to the head causes the ligaments and muscles holding the skull in position on the top vertebrate of the spine to tear. The injury is very rare — accounting for less than one percent of spinal injuries. Doctors said Suleiman's head was 'almost completely detached from the base of his neck.' He underwent painstaking surgery carried out by an intensive care team that took several hours.

➤IGER DISMISSES DISNEY WORLD ATTENDANCE: Disney CEO Bob Iger pushed back on reports of worrisome drops in Disney World attendance, claiming that foot traffic is down because of difficult comparisons with 2020, when Florida’s lax COVID restrictions sparked an unusual boom at the theme park. “Florida opened up early during COVID, and it created huge demand. It didn’t have competition because there were a number of other places — states — that were not open yet,” Iger said during a televised CNBC interview on Thursday. Since 2019, lines for attractions at Magic Kingdom, Disney’s most-visited park, have gotten increasingly shorter, it was reported this week. Average wait times fell from 47 minutes per ride in 2019 to 31 minutes in 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal. So far this year, lines at Magic Kingdom are averaging 27 minutes, according to The Journal. Shrinking wait times are also reportedly a trend that are apparent at EPCOT, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom.

🏀LeBRON ISN’T READY TO RETIRE: Fans of Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James have been worrying that he might be considering retiring. Nothing to worry about yet. At the 2023 ESPYs show on Wednesday night, James said he’s hanging in there for a 21st NBA season. “The day I can’t play without giving everything on the floor is the day I’ll be done,” he said. “Lucky for you guys, that day is not today.” The announcement came during his acceptance of the Best Record-Breaking Performance award in honor of surpassing the all-time scoring record set by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

🎾ONS JABEUR MAKES IT TO WIMBLEDON FINALS AGAIN: Number six seed Ons Jabeur got a place in the Wimbledon finals for a second consecutive year yesterday by defeating number two-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-3. Jabeur is the first player since Serena Williams to beat three top-10 opponents at Wimbledon. Another Wimbledon first was chalked up to Marketa Vondrousova. She defeated Elina Svitolina 6-3, 6-3 and became the first unseeded women’s finalist at Wimbledon since Billie Jean King in 1963. That means it’s Jabeur versus Vondrousa for the 2023 Wimbledon women’s title.
  • On the men's side, Novak Djokovic plays number eight-seeded Jannik Sinner in today's semifinals.

➤WHEN YOU'RE HOT, YOU'RE HOT: The National Weather Service at one point this week forecast a high of 131F on Sunday at a station near the national park's Furnace Creek visitors' center, which would set a new world record. 'There's a decent chance that Death Valley will see a high temperature this weekend between 130 and 132F, which (if it occurs) would either tie or break record for the hottest temperature reliably measured on Earth,' tweeted climate scientist Daniel Swain. Death Valley's 1913 record high of 134F has been disputed for decades by experts who believe the measurement resulted from a sandstorm that caused superheated particles to hit the thermometer.

➤ONE-THIRD OF AMERICANS ARE UNDER A HEAT ALERT: The heat wave roasting the southern United States just isn’t letting up. The National Weather Service predicts temperatures that tie or exceed records through the weekend and into next week in parts of California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas. Temperatures well above 100 degrees are expected in Phoenix, and it could top 123 degrees in the desert near Palm Springs, California. The weather service has issued a heat alert that covers much of the southern part of the country from parts of California to Florida.
  • CHECK IT OUT: Click here for the National Weather Service Heat Index for the next few days.



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