He said he wanted to break the bank, and he did just that

Trial on federal gun charges began Monday

News Outlander Outlander’s Seventh Season Returns in November Time-travel romance can go on forever, right? By Molly Templeton | Published on June 3, 2024 Screenshot: Starz Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Starz Is it really two halves of one season if you have to wait more than a year between them? Outlander’s seventh season came to a midway stopping point back in August of last year, and finally, Starz has set a premiere date for the rest of the season. June 1st was apparently World Outlander Day—so what better time to announce that the series return in November? The synopsis for the upcoming half-season reads: Coming off of the first half of Outlander season seven, viewers find Claire (Caitríona Balfe), Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Young Ian (John Bell) leaving the colonies and arriving in their beloved homeland: Scotland. The perils of the Revolutionary War force them to choose between standing by those they love and fighting for the land they have made their new home. Meanwhile, Roger (Richard Rankin) and Brianna (Sophie Skelton) face new enemies across time, and must battle the forces that threaten to pull their family apart. As loyalties change and painful secrets come to light, Jamie and Claire’s marriage is tested like never before. With their love binding them over oceans and centuries, can the MacKenzies and Frasers find their way back to each other? Three new characters will be along for the journey this time: Kieran Bew (House of the Dragon) as Captain Charles Cunningham; Frances Tomelty (The Woman in the Wall) as his mother, Elspeth; and Carla Woodcock (Tell Me Everything) as Amaranthus Grey. A brief teaser for the rest of the seventh season promises drama and battles, which seems about right. Outlander, which is of course based on the books by Diana Gabaldon, returns at midnight Friday, November 22 (if you watch on streaming) or at 8 pm that evening for cable viewers.[end-mark] The post <i>Outlander</i>’s Seventh Season Returns in November appeared first on Reactor.

News Venom: The Last Dance Venom: The Last Dance Promises Some Good Times Before the End But we need like six more of these movies By Molly Templeton | Published on June 3, 2024 Screenshot: Sony Pictures Entertainment Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Sony Pictures Entertainment It was pretty clear already, in the Venom cinematic universe, that humanity is not alone among the stars. But for the third and final Venom film, they’re making that a bit more explicit. Which is to say: somebody’s relatives are coming to visit, and they don’t seem very nice. The thing about a Venom movie is that the plot is kind of irrelevant; the important part is watching Tom Hardy play off himself, as both hapless Eddie Brock and gooey symbiote Venom. (Their buddy routine needs a bit of work, though.) This time around, they’ve got new supporting cast in the mix: Keely Hawes is some sort of scientist, and Chiwetel Ejiofor some sort of military man. Both are invested in keeping regular folks from knowing about aliens. They’ve more than got their work cut out for them once Venom’s home planet finds Earth. The Last Dance trailer is really, really leaning hard on the possibility of a tragic ending for these two, but I’m hoping it’s a misdirect; it feels like too normal, too ordinary an ending for this delightfully chaotic series. But if it does end, at least it does so after giving us Hardy dressed up like he’s auditioning to play James Bond. Also: Venom horse! Venom: The Last Dance is directed by Kelly Marcel, who co-wrote the first Venom film and singlehandedly scripted the second. As with that film, the story is a collaboration between Marcel and Tom Hardy. No one, clearly, understands the Eddie/Venom relationship better. Venom: The Last Dance is in theaters October 25th.[end-mark] The post <i>Venom: The Last Dance</i> Promises Some Good Times Before the End appeared first on Reactor.

Column SFF Bestiary The Softer Side of Chupacabra: Chupa (2023) What Harry and the Hendersons is to Bigfoot, Chupa is to the chupacabra. By Judith Tarr | Published on June 3, 2024 Credit: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Netflix Take any legendary monster, and sooner or later someone smooths the horror out and turns it into a fuzzy friend. Just look at Harry and the Hendersons. What Harry is to Bigfoot, Chupa is to the chupacabra. The film was released on Netflix in 2023, but it’s set in 1996. There’s good reason for that. The Latin American chupacabra sightings began the year before and were still going in the spring, when disaffected American teen Alex grudgingly travels to Mexico to spend spring break with his grandfather and his two cousins. Alex is mourning his father who recently died of cancer, and he’s had a lifelong resistance to learning Spanish. He’s been subjected to racist hazing in school. In the time-honored tradition of After-School Specials, he’s in San Javier to learn Important Life Lessons and get over his problem with embracing his heritage. It’s not nearly as preachy as it sounds. Alex’s abuelo is suitably folksy and wise, but he was also a great luchador, until a traumatic brain injury ended his career. The cousins tease Alex, but gently, and sweep him up in their adventures. And there’s the chupacabra. That’s the other plot, the one that leads off the film and makes Alex’s whole trip worthwhile. Monster hunter/researcher Quinn has been seeking the cryptid for fame and fortune, and in hopes of using its blood for medical research. His expedition finds a young cub hidden in a cave, but before he can capture it, its mother comes literally roaring to the rescue. This is not the man-sized, vaguely reptilian, kangaroo-like creature of Latin American lore, nor is it the hairless, coyote-sized canine that will turn up in Texas in another decade. Filmmaker Jonás Cuarón has created his own variation on the theme. Chupa, as Alex names it (it’s never exactly gendered, though people default to “he,” including when referring to the one who must be Chupa’s mother), is roughly coyote-sized. Thirty to fifty pounds, Quinn judges. Its basic shape is koala, but with catlike fur and a lion’s tail. There are spines down its back. It howls like a wolf or a Sasquatch. And it has wings. It’s a koala-lion-gryphon with vaguely canine overtones. Chupacabra wing feathers are a running theme. They turn up at key points in the plot. When we see a blue feather with white accents, we know a chupacabra has been here. Chupa is very young, probably not much older than newborn. The adult form is huge. 500 to 800 pounds, says Quinn. Big enough to do serious damage to a human or a vehicle. They’re not as dangerous as they look. They feed on blood, leaving dual puncture wounds. They are a threat to livestock but not to humans unless provoked. Chupa’s mother doesn’t harm the humans who try to capture her cub; she takes the cub and runs, until she finds a place to hide it and lures the hunters away. They do much more damage to her than she does to them. Mostly chupacabras live in the mountains, well away from humans. The cub ends up on Abuelo’s ranch after he accidentally hits its mother while driving down the road at night. Abuelo tames it with music and goats’ blood, and the kids quickly discover what he’s up to. Alex actually wakes up to find the cub in his bed, sucking on his arm. He isn’t horrified by the creature’s vampiric tendencies. It’s only doing what it needs to do to stay alive. Blood-sucking aside, it’s terribly cute, and it’s sweet and cuddly. The whole family comes together to save it from Quinn and return it to its own family. It’s much the same plot as Harry and the Hendersons, with bonus lucha libre, and significantly less property damage. The chupacabras are downright adorable. I want one. I’d even settle for a nice soft stuffie. There is a bit of an issue with the title. Chupa means “sucker,” which is a little weird and slightly off-key. Alex actually comments on this in the film. I suspect it plays better for English viewers, who just see it as a cute nickname. In a way it reflects Alex’s own ambivalence about his heritage. He learns to be proud of it, and he becomes a strong friend and ally to the chupacabras. I wonder if he ever tells anyone back in Kansas City what he did on his spring vacation, or if he’s content to just smile mysteriously and go on about his business.[end-mark] The post The Softer Side of Chupacabra: <i>Chupa</i> (2023) appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The European Union is eager to pull Telegram into the realm of its online censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), by declaring that it has enough users to be considered a very large online platform (VLOP) – which DSA can then regulate. The messaging app’s numbers from February said that it had 41 million monthly active users in the EU’s 27 member countries. But if the EU could find a way to officially push that statistic up to 45 million, then it could subject Telegram to a host of strict DSA rules. And to this end, an “investigation” has reportedly been launched. The bloc is “in discussion” with those behind the app, unnamed sources have told Bloomberg. What exactly they might be discussing isn’t clear at this time, but Telegram no longer mentions the DSA on its ToS pages, while the one that provided the 41 million figure has been removed from the site. Telegram has long been a thorn in the side of censorship-prone authorities around the world, and the EU – some of its member countries more so than others – is no different. Although not as large and influential as Facebook, Google, or even X, unlike these platforms, it remains “unmoderated” and “unaccountable” – i.e., governments who like to suppress online speech on a whim have a hard time trying to achieve this on apps like Telegram. The EU’s main concern seems to be to fully control the narrative around the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and be able to block content published by Russian channels as “disinformation” – having long since censored traditional media and platforms based in that country. The EU appears to be trying to now control Telegram’s reach by “investigating” the number of users it has, and if it finds (or decides) that there are more than 45 million of them in the bloc, the next step would be to try and impose DSA rules on the app. EU’s punishment for those found in violation of those rules ranges from fines amounting to 6 percent of revenue, to the banning of a platform. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU Targets Telegram: Could the Messaging App Face New Censorship Orders? appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

"Too Little, Too Late": Biden Expected to Announce Border Executive Action This Week as AMNESTY Begins

Humans like to think they’re special, but at the end of the day, they’re just another primate. For proof, look no further than our DNA: we’re up to four percent Neanderthal, 99 percent chimpanzee, and 50 percent banana (the most monkey of all fruit, and you know it.)But despite knowing all this, you still might not be too happy to be informed if you have “gorilla ribs” – which is a shame, because there’s a non-zero chance that you really do. What are gorilla ribs?Besides the obvious – the ribs which are located inside a gorilla – you may not have heard of the anatomical variant sometimes known as “gorilla ribs”. That’s not surprising: they’re rare, potentially only occurring in around one in every hundred people, and even that small group generally won’t know they’ve got them unless something goes wrong.They "are usually detected as incidental findings during routine radiographic imaging of the lumbar region,” notes one 2017 case report of a man whose gorilla ribs were only discovered at autopsy. “The majority of cases […] have been asymptomatic.”So, what precisely are we dealing with, here? Well, gorilla ribs are more properly known as “supernumerary lumbar ribs” – a name which is both completely and accurately descriptive, and at the same time entirely unhelpful to anybody outside of the medical field. Translated into plain English, though, it’s a lot more straightforward: they’re an extra pair of ribs, found underneath the normal ones.“Lumbar ribs most commonly arise from first lumbar vertebra, although it has been reported to arise from the second and third vertebrae as well,” explains a 2013 case report of a man whose extra rib was discovered after a routine examination for back pain. “Lumbar ribs are a common finding in standard developmental toxicology bioassays that are performed globally,” the report adds. They "are associated with longer ribs, increased numbers of vertebrosternal ribs, and the presence of extra presacral vertebrae.”Okay, that’s a lot of words – it might be time for a little anatomy lesson.Why are they sometimes called gorilla ribs?Outside of anomalies, the human spine has 33 vertebrae – 24 in adulthood after ones at the bottom fuse. The first seven from the top are the cervical vertebrae – the vertebrae of the neck, which are found immediately below the skull. In fact (fun side trivia here) all mammals have the same number – yes, even giraffes – with only three exceptions: the manatee, which has six; the two-toed sloth, which has five to seven; and the three-toed sloth, which has eight or nine.Below the cervical vertebrae you should find 12 thoracic vertebrae – easy to spot, because they’re the ones that have ribs attached. However, not all ribs are created equal: the top seven pairs, are known as fixed or vertebrosternal ribs, are called “true”, meaning they are connected directly to the sternum, or breastbone; the next three pairs, conversely, are “false”, because while they do meet the sternum, it’s via the cartilage of the ribs above, rather than a direct connection.Finally, there are the two “floating” ribs, so called because they – well, they kind of float there. They’re attached to your spine, obviously, but not to anything else; they just sit there, protecting your kidneys and diaphragm and occasionally sliding out of place and making you think you’re dying.So much for the ribs and thoracic vertebrae; carry on downwards, and we next come to the lumbar vertebrae. You should have five of these, making up the spinal column of your lower back. Below that is the sacrum, which is the middle bit of your pelvis (the outer wing-like bits being the ilia), and underneath that is the coccyx – the sad vestigial reminder of our once-mighty tails. These latter two parts technically make up the last nine of your vertebrae, bringing the grand total to 33, but they’re all fused together inside your butt, so we may as well ignore them.Now, supernumerary lumbar (or "gorilla") ribs are an extra 13th pair that sprout from – you guessed it – the lumbar vertebrae. That might mean you just have fewer non-ribbed vertebrae in your spinal column, or it may – as the 2013 case report noted – involve having one more vertebra than most people. Either way, it can be quite confusing for the poor radiologist who first notices them, since vertebrae are usually either counted down from the last rib or up from the sacrum – with an extra rib and/or vertebra in the mix, those two methods no longer agree.But here’s the thing: you may have noticed that we specifically said the human spine. Despite our species’ closeness on the evolutionary tree, there are quite a few differences between humans and our primate cousins – and one that you probably haven’t thought about too much is sitting just inside our trunk.“The majority of mammals possess 19 or 20 thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, for a total of 26 or 27 [cervical, thoracic, and lumbar] vertebrae,” explained researchers from New York University, following a 2019 study into mammalian spinal variations. “There is little variation in these numbers, either within species or across different species – or even different species separated by over 160 million years of evolution,” they pointed out. “Humans, with 24 [vertebrae], are one of the exceptions.”But you know who’s not an exception? Almost all the other great apes. Chimps, bonobos, and, yes, gorillas all have 13 pairs of ribs, with only four lumbar vertebrae underneath (unless you’re an eastern gorilla, in which case you have just three). The overall effect is one of a human ribcage – albeit a conical and flared-out kind of one – with an extra couple of ribs underneath the normal set.So, when a human turns out to have an extra pair of ribs below the others? Well, we could have called them “chimpanzee ribs” or “bonobo ribs”, or even “gibbon ribs” if we wanted – but for whatever reason, “gorilla ribs” was the name that stuck.When gorilla ribs go wildSupernumerary lumbar ribs may be rare, but they’re far from the only way in which the human body can give you a little extra bone in your breastplate. For a few people – estimates vary wildly depending on what populations you’re measuring, why you’re measuring them, and who is doing the measuring – their extra rib isn’t at the bottom, but the top of their ribcage.Known as cervical ribs for obvious reasons – viz, they sprout from the cervical vertebrae – these are basically, well, ribs in your neck. Like gorilla ribs, they’re rare, and usually go unnoticed even when they’re there, since they tend not to cause many problems – although they can occasionally compress the nerves in your shoulder, leading to a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome.But where things get really hinky is in the few – very, very few – people for whom one set of extra ribs just doesn’t cut it.“Lumbar ribs most commonly arise from [the] first lumbar vertebra,” says the 2013 case report, but “it has been reported to arise from the second and third vertebrae as well […] Rudimentary ribs have also been reported at the sacral site and coccyx.”And if all else fails, you can always just shove in some extra vertebrae to cope with your gorilla-esque anatomy – like one 35-year-old who, in 1969, was found to “[have] 15 pairs of thoracic ribs arising from 15 thoracic vertebrae.” “In our search of the literature we have not found another case of a patient with this many pairs of thoracic ribs,” the authors of that particular case study noted. You know what? Forget gorillas – that guy was clearly a snake.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.  

Phase III trial results for a new drug targeting advanced lung cancer have just been reported, with some experts calling them “unprecedented” and “off the chart”. The drug is called lorlatinib, and the trial team says it’s setting a “new benchmark for targeted therapies in cancer.” A staggering 60 percent of patients on the drug showed no disease progression after five years – for those taking an existing drug, this was just 8 percent.“You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the difference between these two drugs,” commented Dr Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), to the Guardian. “Sixty per cent five-year progression-free survival in non-small cell lung cancer is just unheard of.”Lorlatinib, also known by its brand name Lorbrena, was developed to target non-small cell lung cancer in which there is a specific genetic mutation involving the ALK gene. Although ALK-positive cancer only accounts for a small fraction of lung cancer diagnoses, it tends to affect younger people and nonsmokers, and can readily spread to the brain in a process called metastasis.Treating ALK-positive cancer is a challenge. Drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), of which lorlatinib is an advanced example, work well initially, but almost all patients will later experience a relapse as their cancer becomes resistant to the drugs.In this latest, trial, lorlatinib was compared to another TKI called crizotinib. It’s important to note that crizotinib is no longer routinely used in the US, although it is still in use in the UK and elsewhere. Dr Gralow explained to NBC News that the more up-to-date drugs that are used by oncologists in the US had not been approved when the trial originally started, and thus could not be included.That doesn’t take anything away from the fact that the new results show “the most impressive progression-free survival we’ve ever seen in this population,” Dr Gralow added.A group of 296 patients with ALK-positive lung cancer were randomly assigned receive treatment with either lorlatinib or crizotinib. The patients were followed up for 5 years to track their progress.As well as the unprecedented progression-free survival outcomes, only four patients taking lorlatinib developed lesions on their brains, suggesting that the cancer was spreading there. For those who were already showing signs of brain metastasis when the trial started, lorlatinib decreased the probability of their brain disease continuing to worsen by 83 percent. In the crizotinib group, every patient with brain metastases experienced disease progression during the trial.The second-generation TKIs – the ones that are too new to have been included in this trial – have led to significant improvements over crizotinib when it comes to treating brain metastases, but the authors note the prognosis for these patients remains poor. With lorlatinib, we could be looking at another big leap forward.“Lorlatinib is the only ALK TKI that has reported five-year progression-free survival, and even after this time, the majority of patients continue to have their disease controlled, including control of disease in the brain,” lead author Dr Benjamin Solomon told the Guardian.All drugs can cause side effects, and the potential side effects of chemotherapy are often among people’s biggest fears when they’re diagnosed with cancer. A majority of patients taking lorlatinib, 77 percent, did experience some adverse effects, with the most common being swelling, high cholesterol, and elevated lipid levels – these are known issues with other anticancer drugs, and may be tackled with cholesterol-lowering medications.Sometimes chemotherapy side effects can be mitigated by reducing the dose or pausing treatment for a while.Because of adverse effects, the study authors report that 62 percent of patients took a temporary break from lorlatinib treatment and 11 percent stopped it completely. Crizotinib, too, caused side-effects, with 48 percent of patients taking a break and 11 percent permanently coming off the drug.Importantly, though, the authors report that reducing the dose of lorlatinib early in treatment did not seem to have a negative impact on outcomes.Overall, the authors conclude that the results represent “the longest [progression-free survival] ever reported with any single-agent molecular targeted treatment not only in advanced [non-small cell lung cancer] but across all metastatic solid tumors.”Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Lorlatinib may only be suitable for a small fraction of cases – those with the ALK mutation – but for eligible patients, this new generation of drugs could be genuinely changing the game.  The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

China has made history on the Moon once more. It successfully landed once again on the far side of the Moon, having been the only nation to have done that before. The new mission, Chang’e 6, is going for another first. It will collect rocks and soil, bringing them back to Earth. If it does so successfully, it will be the first sample collected from the far side.The Moon is tidally locked to Earth. This means that it takes the same time to rotate on its axis as it takes to go around our planet, so we see only one face: the near side. But there is a whole other face that we have been able to study since space travel became a possibility – and still it was only with Chang’e 4 in 2019 that humanity landed there. And now we might get pieces of it back.     IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.The Moon is not all the same everywhere, and samples have revealed some intriguing insights about the history and composition of our satellite. Chang’e 6 landed at 22:23 UTC on June 1 in the Apollo crater, which is 537 kilometers (334 miles) across. This already enormous crater is part of an even bigger site: the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an area of massive interest for understanding the Moon's past.The South Pole-Aitken Basin formed around 4 billion years ago when a colossal object slammed into the Moon. That object did not disappear, and researchers believe that it remains buried underneath this region. After all, there is a massive structure under it. But even more important is the fact that the collision threw a portion of the lunar mantle out into the open. If Chang’e 6 were to find mantle rocks and bring them back, it would be revolutionary.The surface on the far side tends to be more rugged than the near side. Apollo is relatively flat, but Chang’e 6 had to be equipped with some impressive tech to guarantee success. Not an easy task, given how many crash-lands the Moon has seen in the last year alone.“During the descent, an autonomous visual obstacle avoidance system was used to automatically detect obstacles, with a visible light camera selecting a comparatively safe landing area based on the brightness and darkness of the lunar surface,” a press release on the Chinese National Space Agency website said.“The combination then hovered about 100 meters [328 feet] above the safe landing area and used a laser 3D scanner to detect obstacles on the lunar surface to select the final landing site before a slow vertical descent. As the combination approached the lunar surface, it shut down the engine and touched down via free fall, protected by a cushioning system.”Chang’e 6 is equipped with a drill and a scooping device. It will collect about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of sample from up to 2 meters (6.6 feet) below the surface. It is expected to fly off tomorrow, June 4, and all going well it will take 4.5 days to come back to Earth.