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<title>04 April, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Social support improves nurses resilience: a cross-sectional study in Greece</strong> -
<div>
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Background: Since nursing job is perceived as personally and professionally demanding, internal resources such as resilience and coping skills are essential to improve nurses health and wellbeing and therefore work productivity and quality of patient care. Objective: To assess the effect of social support on nurses resilience. Moreover, we investigated the impact of demographic characteristics of nurses on their resilience. Methods: We conducted an on-line cross-sectional study in Greece. Data were collected during October 2022. We used the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support to measure social support, and the Brief Resilience Scale to measure resilience. We measured the following demographic characteristics of nurses: gender, age, self-perceived health status, COVID-19 diagnosis, MSc/PhD diploma, and clinical experience. Results: Study population included 963 nurses with a mean age of 37.9 years. Nurses experienced moderate levels of resilience and high levels of social support. Multivariable linear regression analysis identified that increased significant others support and increased friends support were associated with increased resilience. Moreover, we found a positive relationship between age and resilience. Also, nurses with good/very good health had higher levels of resilience compared to nurses with very poor/poor/moderate health. Finally, resilience was higher among nurses with MSc/PhD diploma. Conclusions: We found a positive relationship between social support and resilience among nurses. Understanding of factors that influence nurses resilience can add invaluable knowledge to develop and establish tailored programs. Peer support is essential to improve nurses resilience and promote patient healthcare.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.03.23288089v1" target="_blank">Social support improves nurses resilience: a cross-sectional study in Greece</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Cross sectional study of knowledge, attitude and practice among general population towards COVID19 vaccines in Duhok province, Kurdistan region of Iraq</strong> -
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Abstract Background: Vaccines are immunization against diseases and leads to saving millions of lives every year. However, after the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, little information is available on the public knowledge and attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines in Kurdistan-Iraq. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice toward the COVID-19 vaccines among general population at Duhok province, Kurdistan region, Iraq. Methods: The cross-sectional study was done between November 1st ,2022 and march 1st, 2023 at Duhok province, Kurdistan region, Iraq including Duhok City, Zakho, Semel and surrounding area toward COVID-19 vaccines. It included 759 randomly selected participants answering a structured questionnaire who were interviewed face-to-face by the authors. The participants ages ranged from 18 to 75 years. The survey questionnaire was divided into three parts, the first part was sociodemographic characteristics. The second part was composed of eight questions of knowledge regarding the COVID-19 vaccine and third part was 6 statements about Attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines. Findings: The mean age of the respondents was 32.95 years and more than half of them 52.3% were males. About 55% of the respondents reported that they had infected with COVID-19. About 25.3% of the subjects were employed and only 18.3% had chronic diseases. Around 55% of the participants reported that they have previously infected with COVID-19. The majority of the participants 99.60% had heard of COVID-19 vaccine, almost 68% of the participants trusted COVID-19 vaccine and reported that the vaccine is safe. Almost three-quarters 74.04% of the participants were strongly agreed that it is important to get a vaccine to protect the people from COVID-19. According to the survey results, a significant proportion of the participants, specifically 62.58%, believed that COVID-19 vaccines offer protection against the disease. It was notable that a high percentage of the participants, approximately 86.17%, were aware of the potential side effects associated with the vaccine. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of the participants, nearly 96.31%, were knowledgeable that the vaccination process would require two or more doses. Conclusions: The history of chronic disease, source of vaccine knowledge, education level, occupation, and employment states were factors that affected the willingness to accept the vaccine. The most trusted sources of information on COVID-19 vaccines were social media. Therefore, the willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine can be supported by utilizing social media and television to spread awareness about the vaccine safety and efficacy.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.01.23288042v1" target="_blank">Cross sectional study of knowledge, attitude and practice among general population towards COVID19 vaccines in Duhok province, Kurdistan region of Iraq</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Human Surfactant Protein A Alleviates SARS-CoV-2 Infectivity in Human Lung Epithelial Cells</strong> -
<div>
SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infects human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2)-expressing lung epithelial cells through its spike (S) protein. The S protein is highly glycosylated and could be a target for lectins. Surfactant protein A (SP-A) is a collagen-containing C-type lectin, expressed by mucosal epithelial cells and mediates its antiviral activities by binding to viral glycoproteins. This study examined the mechanistic role of human SP-A in SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. The interactions between human SP-A and SARS-CoV-2 S protein and hACE2 receptor, and SP-A level in COVID-19 patients were assessed by ELISA. The effect of SP-A on SARS-CoV-2 infectivity was analyzed by infecting human lung epithelial cells (A549-ACE2) with pseudoviral particles and infectious SARS-CoV-2 (Delta variant) pre-incubated with SP-A. Virus binding, entry, and infectivity were assessed by RT-qPCR, immunoblotting, and plaque assay. The results showed that human SP-A can bind SARS-CoV-2 S protein/RBD and hACE2 in a dose-dependent manner (p&lt;0.01). Human SP-A inhibited virus binding and entry, and reduce viral load in lung epithelial cells, evidenced by the dose-dependent decrease in viral RNA, nucleocapsid protein, and titer (p&lt;0.01). Increased SP-A level was observed in the saliva of COVID-19 patients compared to healthy controls (p&lt;0.05), but severe COVID-19 patients had relatively lower SP-A levels than moderate COVID-19 patients (p&lt;0.05). Therefore, SP-A plays an important role in mucosal innate immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infectivity by directly binding to the S protein and inhibiting its infectivity in host cells. SP-A level in the saliva of COVID-19 patients might serve as a biomarker for COVID-19 severity.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.03.535215v1" target="_blank">Human Surfactant Protein A Alleviates SARS-CoV-2 Infectivity in Human Lung Epithelial Cells</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A broadly protective CHO cell expressed recombinant spike protein subunit based vaccine (IMT-CVAX) against SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
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Protective immunity induced by COVID-19 vaccines is mediated mainly by spike (S) protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here, we report the development of a recombinant prefusion stabilized SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-subunit-based COVID-19 vaccine produced in the mammalian cell line. The gene encoding ectodomain (ECD) of the spike protein was engineered and cloned into Freedom pCHO 1.0, a mammalian expression vector, and subsequently expressed in the Chinese Hamster Ovary suspension cell line (CHO-S).The recombinant S protein ectodomain (hereafter referred to as IMT-CVAX) was purified using a combination of tangential flow filtration and liquid chromatography. Biochemical and biophysical characterization of IMT-CVAX was done to ensure its vital quality attributes. Intramuscular immunization of mice with two doses of adjuvanted IMT-CVAX elicited a strong anti-Spike IgG response.In pseudovirus-based assays, IMT-CVAX immune mice sera exhibited a broad-spectrum neutralization of several SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VoCs). Golden Syrian Hamster immunized with IMT-CVAX provided excellent protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection, and, hamster immune sera neutralized the live SARS-CoV-2 virus.The adjuvanted IMT-CVAX induced robust Tfh-cells response and germinal center (GC) reaction in human ACE2 receptor-expressing transgenic mice. The findings of this study may pave the way for developing next-generation protein subunit-based vaccines to combat the existing SARS-CoV-2 and its emerging VoCs. The IMT-CVAX is produced using a scalable process and can be used for large-scale vaccine production in an industrial setup.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.03.534161v1" target="_blank">A broadly protective CHO cell expressed recombinant spike protein subunit based vaccine (IMT-CVAX) against SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>nanoCLAMP potently neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 and protects K18-hACE2 mice from infection</strong> -
<div>
Intranasal treatments, combined with vaccination, has the potential to slow mutational evolution of virusues by reducing transmission and replication. Here we illustrate the development of a SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) nanoCLAMP and demonstrate its potential as an intranasally administered therapeutic. A multi-epitope nanoCLAMP was made by fusing a pM affinity single-domain nanoCLAMP (P2710) to alternate epitope binding nanoCLAMP, P2609. The resulting multimerised nanoCLAMP P2712 had sub-pM affinity for the Wuhan and South African (B.1.351) RBD (KD &lt; 1 pM ), and decreasing affinity for the Delta (B.1.617.2) and Omicron (B.1.1.529) variants (86 pM and 19.7 nM, respectively). P2712 potently inhibited ACE2:RBD interaction, suggesting its utility as a therapeutic. With an IC50 = 0.4 {+/-} 0.1 nM obtained from neutralization experiments using pseudoviral particles as well as patient cultured SARS-CoV-2 samples, nanoCLAMP P2712 protected K18-hACE2 mice from SARS-CoV-2 infection, reduced viral loads in the lungs and brains, and reduced associated upregulation of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Together, our findings warrant further investigation into the development of nanoCLAMPs as effective intranasally delivered COVID19 therapeutics.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.03.535401v1" target="_blank">nanoCLAMP potently neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 and protects K18-hACE2 mice from infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Community structure and temporal dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 epistatic network allows for early detection of emerging variants with altered phenotypes</strong> -
<div>
The rise of viral variants with altered phenotypes presents a significant public health challenge. In particular, the successive waves of COVID-19 have been driven by emerging variants of interest (VOIs) and variants of concern (VOCs), which are linked to modifications in phenotypic traits such as transmissibility, antibody resistance, and immune escape. Consequently, devising effective strategies to forecast emerging viral variants is critical for managing present and future epidemics. Although current evolutionary prediction tools mainly concentrate on single amino acid variants (SAVs) or isolated genomic changes, the observed history of VOCs and the extensive epistatic interactions within the SARS-CoV-2 genome suggest that predicting viral haplotypes, rather than individual mutations, is vital for efficient genomic surveillance. However, haplotype prediction is significantly more challenging problem, which precludes the use of traditional AI and Machine Learning approaches utilized in most mutation-based studies. This study demonstrates that by examining the community structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein epistatic networks, it is feasible to efficiently detect or predict emerging haplotypes with altered transmissibility. These haplotypes can be linked to dense network communities, which become discernible significantly earlier than their associated viral variants reach noticeable prevalence levels. From these insights, we developed HELEN (Heralding Emerging Lineages in Epistatic Networks), a computational framework that identifies densely epistatically connected communities of SAV alleles and merges them into haplotypes using a combination of statistical inference, population genetics, and discrete optimization techniques. HELEN was validated by accurately identifying known SARS-CoV-2 VOCs and VOIs up to 10-12 months before they reached perceptible prevalence and were designated by the WHO. For example, our approach suggests that the spread of the Omicron haplotype or a closely related genomic variant could have been foreseen as early as the start of 2021, almost a year before its WHO designation. Moreover, HELEN offers greater scalability than phylogenetic lineage tracing methods, allowing for the analysis of millions of available SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Besides SARS-CoV-2, our methodology can be employed to detect emerging and circulating strains of any highly mutable pathogen with adequate genomic surveillance data.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.02.535277v1" target="_blank">Community structure and temporal dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 epistatic network allows for early detection of emerging variants with altered phenotypes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Evaluating technology engagement in the time of COVID-19: the Technology Engagement Scale</strong> -
<div>
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers and communication scholars have developed a broad range of theories and instruments to evaluate the concept of user engagement. However, so far, the proposed instruments are not able to fully capture the processual nature of engaging experiences with technological devices, while focusing instead on state variables or dispositional factors. Therefore, this study aimed at describing and psychometrically validating a novel instrument to measure the dynamics of the engagement with technology, namely the Technology Engagement Scale (TES). Data were collected on a representative sample of 2021 participants in Italy. Results from both the confirmatory analysis and the Rasch model suggested the mono-dimensionality of the 5-item TES. Moreover, empirical ordinal alpha indicated a very good internal consistency. Findings provide also solid evidence for the convergent validity of the proposed instrument. Finally, it emerged that TES levels were able to predict the frequency of online activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, these findings suggest that the TES could be considered a reliable and valid tool, able to evaluate the complex process of the engagement with technology in a simple, quick, and easy-to-administer manner.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/jgfud/" target="_blank">Evaluating technology engagement in the time of COVID-19: the Technology Engagement Scale</a>
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<li><strong>Potential for bias in (sero)prevalence estimates</strong> -
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Objectives: The COVID-19 has led to many studies of seroprevalence. A number of methods exist in the statistical literature to correctly estimate disease prevalence in the presence of diagnostic test misclassification, but these methods seem to be less known and not routinely used in the public health literature. We aimed to show how widespread the problem is in recent publications, and to quantify the magnitude of bias introduced when correct methods are not used. Methods: We examined a sample of recent literature to determine how often public health researcher did not account for test performance in estimates of seroprevalence. Using straightforward calculations, we estimated the amount of bias introduced when reporting the proportion of positive test results instead of using sensitivity and specificity to estimate disease prevalence. Results: Of the seroprevalence studies sampled, 87% failed to account for sensitivity and specificity. Expected bias is often more than is desired in practice, ranging from 1% to 10%. Conclusions: Researchers conducting studies of prevalence should correctly account for test sensitivity and specificity in their statistical analysis.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.24.22282720v4" target="_blank">Potential for bias in (sero)prevalence estimates</a>
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<li><strong>A Comparison of the Infant Gut Microbiome Before vs. After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting public health directives led to many changes in families’ social and material environments. Prior research suggests that these changes are likely to impact composition of the gut microbiome, particularly during early childhood when the gut microbiome is developing most rapidly. Importantly, disruption to the gut microbiome during this sensitive period can have potentially long-lasting impacts on health and development. In the current study, we compare gut microbiome composition among a socioeconomically and racially diverse group of 12-month old infants living in New York City who provided stool samples before the pandemic (N=34) to a group who provided samples during the first 9-months of the pandemic (March-December 2020; N=20). We found that infants sampled during the pandemic had lower alpha diversity of the microbiome, higher abundance of Lactobacillaceae, and lower abundance of Pasteurellaceae and Haemophilus. Exploratory analyses suggest that gut microbiome changes due to the pandemic occurred relatively quickly after the start of the pandemic and were sustained. Our results provide evidence that pandemic-related environmental disruptions had an impact on community-level taxonomic diversity of the developing gut microbiome, as well as abundance of specific members of the gut bacterial community.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/df9je/" target="_blank">A Comparison of the Infant Gut Microbiome Before vs. After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
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<li><strong>Prioritizing Lifestyle Factors for Effective Emotion Regulation: A Daily Study on First-Year College Students’ Well-Being During COVID-19</strong> -
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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted emerging adult first-year college students’ daily lives and well-being. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) recognizes that effective and adaptive emotion regulation skills can be important for this vulnerable population’s well-being, who are going through a transitioning phase of development in challenging times. An ecological momentary assessment study collected 1,796 data points from 76 first-year college students’ daily usage of emotion regulation skills and momentary experiences of well-being (PERMA; Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning, Accomplishment) during COVID-19 in Spring 2020. Participants were 18 to 20 years of age, 71% female, 24% male, 4% non-binary, 1% preferred not to answer, 46% White, 36% Asian or Pacific Islander, 14% Hispanic or Latinx, 13% Black or African American, 13% mixed race, 1% Native American or Eskimo Aleut, and 4% did not specify their race/ethnicity. Results from multilevel models on intensive longitudinal data revealed that specific emotion regulation skills (accumulating positives, building mastery, coping ahead) consistently predict mPERMA even when controlling for dispositional well-being. Moreover, on days of sufficient sleep hours reported, students reported higher well-being levels; on days with more interaction with other people, students were more likely to engage in emotion regulation skill behaviors; and on weekends, students were less likely to engage in emotion regulation behaviors (but not avoid substances like alcohol). Findings add to the literature on momentary well-being and emotion regulation for the population of early adult first-year college students and the COVID-19 context.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/7gxta/" target="_blank">Prioritizing Lifestyle Factors for Effective Emotion Regulation: A Daily Study on First-Year College Students’ Well-Being During COVID-19</a>
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<li><strong>Exploratory Study to Characterise the Individual Types of Health Literacy and Beliefs and Their Associations with Infection Prevention Behaviours amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan: A Longitudinal Study</strong> -
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<b>Background. </b>During a global infectious disease pandemic such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), individuals′ infection prevention/risk-taking behaviours are likely to differ depending on their health literacy and beliefs regarding the disease. To effectively promote infection prevention behaviours, it is necessary to enable information dissemination and risk communication that consider individuals′ health literacy and beliefs. In this study, we exploratorily characterised segments based on individual health literacy and beliefs regarding COVID-19 among the Japanese during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and investigated whether infection prevention/risk-taking behaviours and fear of COVID-19 differed among these segments. <b>Methods. </b>In this study, we conducted two web-based longitudinal surveys in Japan (PHASE 1, 1–30 November 2020, 6,000 participants; PHASE 2, 1–31 December 2020, 3,800 participants). We characterised segments of the target population using cluster analysis on health literacy and beliefs regarding COVID-19 obtained in PHASE 1. We further investigated the associations between the clusters and infection prevention/risk-taking behaviours and fear of COVID-19, obtained from PHASE 2. <b>Results. </b>Five clusters were identified: ′Calm/hoax denial′, ′Hoax affinity/threat denial′, ′Minority/indifference′, ′Over vigilance′, and ′Optimism′. There were significant differences in infection prevention/risk-taking behaviours and fear of COVID-19 among the five clusters. The belief in susceptibility to infection, rather than affinity for hoaxes and conspiracy theories, was coherently associated with infection prevention/risk-taking behaviours and fear of infection across clusters. This study provides foundational knowledge for creating segment-specific public messages and developing interactive risk communication to encourage infection prevention behaviours.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.02.23287895v1" target="_blank">Exploratory Study to Characterise the Individual Types of Health Literacy and Beliefs and Their Associations with Infection Prevention Behaviours amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan: A Longitudinal Study</a>
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<li><strong>Adolescents’ future orientation and anticipatory emotion regulation in daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic: An experience sampling study</strong> -
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The COVID-19 pandemic posed a challenge for young people’s positive future orientation and mental health. To understand the role of daily-life future orientation in mental health during the pandemic, we used the Experience Sampling Method to investigate adolescents’ (aged 13 – 21) daily life future orientation and anticipatory emotion regulation in relation to psychopathology symptoms in 2020 (N = 136) and 2021 (N = 53). Adolescents generally perceived immediate future events more positively than negatively throughout the pandemic, however, differences in future orientation between phases of the pandemic were also observed. Higher psychopathology symptom levels were associated with looking forward to future events less and dreading them more early in the pandemic, and with perceiving immediate future events as less positive in a later phase of the pandemic. Furthermore, expected intensity and importance of immediate future events were related to anticipatory emotion regulation in daily life during the pandemic. The results suggest that clinical interventions to target future orientation during a crisis could be beneficial in supporting and improving young people’s mental health.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/mh7au/" target="_blank">Adolescents’ future orientation and anticipatory emotion regulation in daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic: An experience sampling study</a>
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<li><strong>Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) Brief Remote: a novel tool for the rapid and tele-evaluation of pragmatic skills in Italian</strong> -
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Healthcare services require rapid assessment tools, as well as the possibility of using them flexibly in different contexts, such as those experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, that favor remote interaction over traditional care. These needs become especially challenging when assessing language and communication skills, for which few tools exist. This work aimed to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of a novel test for the rapid and tele-assessment of pragmatic skills in Italian-speaking individuals, including an alternate form to allow for monitoring and follow-up. Inspired by Gricean pragmatics and modelled after the already validated Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) in-person test, the new APACS Brief Remote test includes 18 original items assessing discourse and non-literal language understanding in expressive and receptive modalities. The test lasts approximately 10 minutes and is suited for video-conference administration. Results from a sample of 141 healthy participants indicate that both reliability (internal consistency, test-retest, and inter-rater) and validity (measured via APACS and verbal and cognitive tests) of the APACS Brief Remote are adequate. The alternate form of the test can be considered as equivalent. Among demographic variables, the analysis highlighted especially the role of age. Perceived experience with the videoconference administration was positive, supporting the feasibility of APACS Brief Remote across ages and educational levels. The APACS Brief Remote represents a useful tool to promote evidence-based tele-assessment practices in the domain of pragmatics, for instance for online follow-up assessment, in a vast range of clinical conditions that might cause communicative difficulties.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/8uq7z/" target="_blank">Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) Brief Remote: a novel tool for the rapid and tele-evaluation of pragmatic skills in Italian</a>
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<li><strong>Knowledge of COVID-19 Symptoms, Transmission, and Prevention: Evidence from Health and Demographic Surveillance in Southern Mozambique</strong> -
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Background: Over 230,000 COVID-19 cases and over 2,200 deaths have been reported in Mozambique though March 2023. Understanding community members9 knowledge and perception of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and prevention is essential for directing public health interventions to reduce disease spread and improve vaccination coverage. Here, we aimed to describe knowledge of COVID-19 transmission, prevention, and symptoms among community residents in Mozambique. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 33,087 of 40,636 households (81.4%) in a Health and Demographic Surveillance System in Manhica, Mozambique, at the tail end of the Delta variant wave in September 2021 to the peak of Omicron cases in January 2022. Principal components analysis was used to create scores representing knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms, transmission, and prevention. Multiple imputation and quasi-Poisson regression were used to examine associations between demographic characteristics and sources of COVID-19 information, and knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms, transmission, and prevention. We examined whether sources of COVID-19 information mediated the relationship between educational attainment and knowledge of symptoms, transmission, and prevention. Results: Across this rural community, 98.2%, 97.0%, and 85.1% of household respondents reported knowing how COVID-19 could be prevented, that SARS-CoV-2 can cause disease, and how SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted, respectively. Most recognized symptoms were cough (51.2%), headaches (44.9%), and fever (44.5%). Most cited transmission mechanisms were droplets (50.5%) or aerosol (&lt;5 micrometer diameter) (46.9%) from an infected person. Most cited prevention measures were handwashing (91.9%) and mask-wearing (91.8%). Characteristics associated with greater knowledge of symptoms, transmission, and prevention included having at least primary education, older age, employment, higher wealth, and Christian religion. Respondents who had had COVID-19 symptoms were also more likely to have knowledge of symptoms, transmission, and prevention. Gathering information from TV, WhatsApp, radio, and hospital mediated the relationship between educational attainment and knowledge scores. Conclusions: Community public health measures to reduce infectious disease transmission are contingent upon perceptions of risk and knowledge. These findings support the need for outreach and for community-engaged messaging to promote prevention measures, particularly among people with low education.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.31.23288026v1" target="_blank">Knowledge of COVID-19 Symptoms, Transmission, and Prevention: Evidence from Health and Demographic Surveillance in Southern Mozambique</a>
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<li><strong>Blood biomarkers-defined subgroups show heterogeneity in post-acute COVID-19 syndrome: a rationale for precision medicine.</strong> -
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Acute COVID-19 can cause a post-infectious syndrome in a significant percentage of patients, with multifacted and long lasting symptoms. We hypothesized that this Post-Acute COVID syndrome (PASC) could result from various underlying causes, which may compromise the demonstration of efficacy for treatments evaluated on cohorts of heterogeneous patients. To assess the feasibility of stratifying or characterizing subgroups of post-COVID-19 patients consistent with different indications in a precision medicine perspective, we tested serum biomarkers in a pilot cross-sectional study of patients with neuro-cognitive symptoms from the Northwestern University post-COVID-19 clinic (Chicago,USA). Patient health status was evaluated with the use of standardized PROMIS questionnaires and underwent validated cognitive tests with the NIH Toolbox. Serum biomarkers were chosen as proteins known to be involved in the pathogenic features of a neuro-inflammatory disease, i.e., multiple sclerosis, with a final selection of the most discriminant ones. A multi-isotypes serology against SARS-CoV-2 spike and nucleocapsid antigens was performed to allow detailed analyses of the humoral immune status. Despite the limited numbers of this feasibility study, results showed that clinical data could not differentiate PASC patients with persisting neuro-cognitive impairment, while three major PASC subgroups were identified with serum biomarkers according to the presence or absence of the HERV-W ENV soluble protein combined with neurofilaments light chains and, to a lesser extent, with elevated levels of IL-6. SARS-CoV-2 serological results in PASC compared to healthy controls also revealed a significant increase of anti-Spike and/or Nucleocapsid IgM, IgA and, unexpectedly, IgE. For IgG, a significant difference was observed with Nucleocapsid only since anti-Spike IgG titers were normally elevated in vaccinated controls. This multi-Ig isotypes serology may provide additional information on the infectious and immunological status of individual patients and should be considered in face of a potential viral persistence in some individuals. Altogether the results show the feasibility of using serum biomarkers to discriminate relevant subgroups or individual patients for precision medicine indications in post-COVID syndromes. This pilot study paves the way to further exploring biological assays for the definition of subtypes of PASC, also called long COVID, useful for the choice of relevant therapeutic strategies.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.31.23288003v2" target="_blank">Blood biomarkers-defined subgroups show heterogeneity in post-acute COVID-19 syndrome: a rationale for precision medicine.</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of Safety &amp; Efficacy of MIR 19 ® Inhalation Solution in Patients With Mild COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MIR 19 ®;   Combination Product: Standard therapy<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Research Center - Institute of Immunology Federal Medical-Biological Agency of Russia<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>LACTYFERRIN™ Forte and ZINC Defense™ and Standard of Care (SOC) vs SOC in the Treatment of Non-hospitalized Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Sesderma LACTYFERRIN™ Forte and Sesderma ZINC Defense™;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Jose David Suarez, MD;   Sesderma S.L.;   Westchester General Hospital Inc. DBA Keralty Hospital Miami;   MGM Technology Corp<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>MP0420 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MP0420;   Drug: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Molecular Partners AG;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>AZD7442 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AZD7442;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   AstraZeneca;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PF-07304814 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: PF-07304814;   Drug: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Pfizer;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Suspended</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VIR-7831 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: VIR-7831;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Vir Biotechnology, Inc.;   GlaxoSmithKline;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BRII-196/BRII-198 for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: BRII-196;   Biological: BRII-198;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Brii Biosciences Limited;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>LY3819253 (LY-CoV555) for Inpatients With COVID-19 (An ACTIV-3/TICO Treatment Trial)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: LY3819253;   Biological: Placebo;   Biological: Remdesivir<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT);   University of Copenhagen;   Medical Research Council;   Kirby Institute;   Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center;   AIDS Clinical Trials Group;   National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI);   US Department of Veterans Affairs;   Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL);   Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN);   Eli Lilly and Company;   University of Minnesota<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of a Health Pathway for People With Persistent Symptoms Covid-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: usual care and follow-up by a nurse;   Other: Personalized Multifactorial Intervention (IMP)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Saint Etienne<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RCT for Yinqiaosan-Maxingganshitang in the Treatment of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Chinese Herb;   Diagnostic Test: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Chinese University of Hong Kong<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Traditional Chinese Medicine or Low-dose Dexamethasone in COVID-19 Pneumonia</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: conventional western medicine treatment;   Drug: Dexamethasone oral tablet;   Other: Traditional Chinese medicine decoction<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   China-Japan Friendship Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study of the Safety, Tolerability and Efficacy of NP-101 in Treating High Risk Participants Who Are Covid-19 Positive.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: NP-101;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novatek Pharmaceuticals<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Clinical Study on Safety and Effectiveness of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Exosomes for the Treatment of COVID-19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Extracellular Vesicles from Mesenchymal Stem Cells<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Teletechnology-assisted Home-based Exercise Program for Severe COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Telerehabilitation<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Teletechnology-assisted home-based pulmonary rehabilitation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Taiwan University Hospital<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cluster-Randomized Trial of Air Filtration and Ventilation to Reduce Covid19 Spread in Homes</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: Filtration Fan;   Behavioral: Safe-home pamphlet;   Behavioral: Mid-week phone call<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Stanford University<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Omicron Infection and Changes in Serum Antibody Response to Wild-Type, Delta, and Omicron After a Booster Dose With BNT163b2 Vaccine in Korean Healthcare Workers</strong> - CONCLUSION: Booster vaccination with BNT162b2 was significantly less effective for the neutralizing antibody responses to omicron variant compared to the wild-type or delta variant in healthy population. Humoral immunogenicity was sustained significantly high after 4 months of booster vaccine in the infected population after booster vaccination. Further studies are needed to understand the characteristics of immunogenicity in these populations.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cyanometabolites: molecules with immense antiviral potential</strong> - Cyanometabolites are active compounds derived from cyanobacteria that include small low molecular weight peptides, oligosaccharides, lectins, phenols, fatty acids, and alkaloids. Some of these compounds may pose a threat to human and environment. However, majority of them are known to have various health benefits with antiviral properties against pathogenic viruses including Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Ebola virus (EBOV), Herpes simplex virus (HSV), Influenza A virus (IAV) etc….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Heat shock protein 90 facilitates SARS-CoV-2 structural protein-mediated virion assembly and promotes virus-induced pyroptosis</strong> - Inhibition of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), a prominent molecular chaperone, effectively limits severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, but little is known about any interaction between Hsp90 and SARS-CoV-2 proteins. Here, we systematically analyzed the effects of the chaperone isoforms Hsp90α and Hsp90β on individual SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins. Five SARS-CoV-2 proteins, namely nucleocapsid (N), membrane (M), and accessory proteins Orf3, Orf7a, and Orf7b were…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>CCL12 induces trabecular bone loss by stimulating RANKL production in BMSCs during acute lung injury</strong> - In the last three years, the capacity of health care systems and the public health policies of governments worldwide were challenged by the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Mortality due to SARS-CoV-2 mainly resulted from the development of acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Moreover, millions of people who survived ALI/ARDS in SARS-CoV-2 infection suffer from multiple lung inflammation-induced complications that lead to disability and even death. The lung-bone axis refers…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The synergistic effect of Cu-MOF nanoparticles and immunomodulatory agent on SARS-CoV-2 inhibition</strong> - In this work, HKUST-1 and Cu-BDC nanoparticles were used as delivery systems for the early anti-COVID-19 drug, hydroxychloroquine. The antiviral MOF/drug combinations significantly reduced the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, which can be attributed to the nanometric size of the carriers, the presence of copper in the MOF nodes, and the semi-controlled release of the drug.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>In silico and <em>in vitro</em> evaluation of antiviral activity of wogonin against main protease of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus</strong> - The high mortality rate of weaned piglets infected with porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) poses a serious threat to the pig industry worldwide, demanding urgent research efforts related to developing effective antiviral drugs to prevent and treat PEDV infection. Small molecules can possibly prevent the spread of infection by targeting specific vital components of the pathogen’s genome. Main protease (Mpro, also named 3CL protease) plays essential roles in PEDV replication and has emerged as…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>G4-binding drugs, chlorpromazine and prochlorperazine, repurposed against COVID-19 infection in hamsters</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has caused millions of infections and deaths worldwide. Limited treatment options and the threat from emerging variants underline the need for novel and widely accessible therapeutics. G-quadruplexes (G4s) are nucleic acid secondary structures known to affect many cellular processes including viral replication and transcription. We identified heretofore not reported G4s with remarkably low mutation frequency across &gt;5 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes. The G4…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Heterologous prime-boost immunisation with mRNA- and AdC68-based 2019-nCoV variant vaccines induces broad-spectrum immune responses in mice</strong> - The ongoing evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 or 2019-nCoV) variants has been associated with the transmission and pathogenicity of COVID-19. Therefore, exploring the optimal immunisation strategy to improve the broad-spectrum cross-protection ability of COVID-19 vaccines is of great significance. Herein, we assessed different heterologous prime-boost strategies with chimpanzee adenovirus vector-based COVID-19 vaccines plus Wuhan-Hu-1 (WH-1) strain (AdW)…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Channel activity of SARS-CoV-2 viroporin ORF3a inhibited by adamantanes and phenolic plant metabolites</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 has been responsible for the major worldwide pandemic of COVID-19. Despite the enormous success of vaccination campaigns, virus infections are still prevalent and effective antiviral therapies are urgently needed. Viroporins are essential for virus replication and release, and are thus promising therapeutic targets. Here, we studied the expression and function of recombinant ORF3a viroporin of SARS-CoV-2 using a combination of cell viability assays and patch-clamp electrophysiology….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Famotidine on COVID-19: Killing Virus or Opposing ARDS?</strong> - Since the first detection of SARS-CoV-2 in China, COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) has taken the lives of more than six million people. Although some antivirals seem proper for treatment, the investigation of finding the best therapeutic approach for COVID-19 is still continuing. Some observational research showed that famotidine has promising effects in addition to its acid-suppressing characteristics in the treatment of COVID-19. The definite viricidal effect of famotidine is not…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The inhibitory and inducing effects of ritonavir on hepatic and intestinal CYP3A and other drug-handling proteins</strong> - Ritonavir, originally developed as HIV protease inhibitor, is widely used as a booster in several HIV pharmacotherapy regimens and more recently in Covid-19 treatment (e.g., Paxlovid). Its boosting capacity is due to the highly potent irreversible inhibition of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3 A enzyme, thereby enhancing the plasma exposure to coadministered drugs metabolized by CYP3A. Typically used booster doses of ritonavir are 100-200 mg once or twice daily. This review aims to address several…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Management of patients with advanced prostate cancer-metastatic and/or castration-resistant prostate cancer: report of the Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference (APCCC) 2022</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: These voting results in four specific areas from a panel of experts in advanced prostate cancer can help clinicians and patients navigate controversial areas of management for which high-level evidence is scant or conflicting and can help research funders and policy makers identify information gaps and consider what areas to explore further. However, diagnostic and treatment decisions always have to be individualised based on patient characteristics, including the extent and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Potential medicinal plants to combat viral infections: A way forward to environmental biotechnology</strong> - The viral diseases encouraged scientific community to evaluate the natural antiviral bioactive components rather than protease inhibitors, harmful organic molecules or nucleic acid analogues. For this purpose, medicinal plants have been gaining tremendous importance in the field of attenuating the various kinds of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Most of the commonly used medicines contains the bioactive components/phytoconstituents that are generally extracted from medicinal plants….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Defibrotide mitigates endothelial cell injury induced by plasmas from patients with COVID-19 and related vasculopathies</strong> - CONCLUSION: Our data, in the context of a recent clinical trial in severe COVID-19, suggest benefits to further exploration of defibrotide and these pathways in COVID-19 and related endotheliopathies.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy and Safety of Garadacimab in Combination with Standard of Care Treatment in Patients with Severe COVID-19</strong> - CONCLUSION: In patients with severe COVID-19, garadacimab did not confer a clinical benefit over placebo. Transient aPTT prolongation and suppressed FXIIa-mKA showed target engagement of garadacimab that was not associated with bleeding events even with concomitant anticoagulant use. The safety profile of garadacimab was consistent with previous studies in patients with hereditary angioedema.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Paul Vallas’s Cops-and-Crime Campaign to Run Chicago</strong> - In a recent poll, nearly two-thirds of the city’s residents reported feeling unsafe. The mayoral runoff presents two starkly different visions for how to move forward. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/paul-vallas-brandon-johnson-chicago-mayoral-runoff">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Has Modi Pushed Indian Democracy Past Its Breaking Point?</strong> - With the media and judiciary already under attack, the Prime Minister’s main opponent was just banned from Parliament. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/has-modi-pushed-indian-democracy-past-its-breaking-point">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How Brandon Johnson Broke Through to Chicago’s Mayoral Runoff</strong> - After a decade of organizing, the city’s teachers’ union could elect one of its own as mayor. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-brandon-johnson-broke-through-to-chicagos-mayoral-runoff">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Return of the Non-stop Trump News Cycle</strong> - The former President’s indictment in Manhattan means the reprieve from his dominance of American media is officially over. Will it be any better this time? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-return-of-the-non-stop-trump-news-cycle">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What’s the Point of Reading Writing by Humans?</strong> - Maybe one day journalism could be replaced with an immense surveillance state with a GPT-4 plug-in. Why would we want that? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/whats-the-point-of-reading-writing-by-humans">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why are EpiPens still so expensive?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lsJN1vdriSGKgIz0eTm8FOhX_nI=/0x0:3600x2700/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72145572/GettyImages_594746218.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
States are trying to rein in the cost of EpiPens as prices remain stubbornly high for some patients. | AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The epinephrine cost crisis never ended. Policymakers are finally doing something about it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BASfAD">
EpiPens are once again becoming a target for policymakers looking to solve one of American health care’s most egregious cost crises.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CD0U6D">
Several years ago, exponential price increases that were making it difficult for patients to afford the lifesaving medication drew widespread attention and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/8/23/12608316/epipen-price-mylan">intense public outrage</a>. The company that makes EpiPens, Mylan, paid a nine-figure fraud settlement with the federal government and introduced a moderately cheaper version of the drug. This didn’t entirely solve the medication’s affordability problem — some patients are still paying in excess of $600 a year for epinephrine — but it did mean the cost of EpiPens stopped getting so much attention.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dUG47L">
But that is starting to change. Lawmakers in Colorado are advancing legislation that would cap patients’ out-of-pocket costs for epinephrine, potentially saving families hundreds of dollars every year. Similar proposals in other states are starting to gain traction. Ultimately, experts say, Congress may need to impose a cap on how much patients pay for epinephrine — mimicking the step they took with insulin last year for people on Medicare.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S2EVFt">
As with insulin, which has recently seen dramatic price cuts recently after a prolonged advocacy campaign, a near-monopoly by Big Pharma led to EpiPen prices skyrocketing. Mylan hiked the price of a two-pack of EpiPens sixfold, from about $100 to $600, in a decade. Out-of-pocket spending doubled, as patients with serious allergies were forced to pay up in order to get access to a medicine that could save their life in an emergency.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N9Qb5X">
In the past few years, new products, including a non-branded version of EpiPen sold by Mylan, entered the market. The hope was that the increased competition would bring prices down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="haQspq">
But in reality, the effect was more muted. Some patients still must pay hundreds of dollars every year for their epinephrine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lmv0iL">
There are two problems keeping the price of EpiPen and its peers high. First, it’s a combination of a drug (epinephrine) and the device that delivers the drug. This drug-device combination is governed by a complex web of regulations that prevented the significant price drops you would expect when new competitors are introduced. And second, across the US health system, more of the cost of medical care is being passed on to patients, via high-deductible health plans and other benefit design changes, which means that many people are still exposed to high costs even if the topline price for epinephrine has started to come down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EkSaeh">
The renewed focus on EpiPens comes during a time when insulin, another high-profile drug, has received more attention from policymakers. Last year, Congress imposed a $35 monthly cap for Medicare beneficiaries and mandated steep discounts for Medicaid. In response, and with <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23574178/insulin-cost-california-biden-medicare-coverage">the looming threat of more ambitious action by states</a>, all three of the major US insulin manufacturers have <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/1/23620246/eli-lilly-insulin-price-cap-cost">slashed</a> prices for some of their products in the past month.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8LyGqs">
“We’ve just shown that we can do this for insulin,” said Kao-Ping Chua, a University of Michigan health policy researcher who has studied epinephrine’s costs. “We can improve the affordability of lifesaving drugs.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6Z9avH">
Now he and others are hoping that, rather than rest after the recent successes with insulin, policymakers will turn their attention to epinephrine next.
</p>
<h3 id="mcVezK">
Why are EpiPens so expensive, anyway?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LbL0ai">
Epinephrine is a naturally occurring hormone in people’s bodies, where it is more commonly referred to by another name: adrenaline. In that function, it is vital to the fight-or-flight response, increasing blood flow to the muscles and kicking a person’s heart into a higher gear.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AijnQU">
But since 1901, when it was first isolated by Japanese chemist Jōkichi Takamine and soon after put to use medically, it has also become an important medication primarily (but not exclusively) for people experiencing anaphylaxis — an extreme, and sometimes fatal, allergic reaction that restricts the ability to breathe.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MpxnlU">
More than 1 million Americans have an epinephrine prescription. It’s not a medicine that they take regularly, like insulin. It is used in emergencies, where it can be the difference between death and survival.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fRQqSw">
The version of epinephrine most people are familiar with is the EpiPen, an autoinjector most people can use with minimal training that delivers a precise dose. The EpiPen came onto the market in 1983, and, by the mid-2000s, it was still the dominant epinephrine product, with a 90 percent market share and $200 million in annual revenue.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qfEBXF">
In 2007, Mylan Pharmaceuticals received the rights to produce and sell EpiPens from its previous manufacturer, Merck, which had obtained the rights to produce and sell the drug through a series of mergers and acquisitions since its introduction. Mylan quickly refreshed the product: While the medicine and basic mechanisms were the same, the company made tweaks to the device that allowed it to obtain new patents that would extend its monopoly and stave off production of any generic versions of the EpiPen. The company also entered exclusive contracts with larger entities, like school districts, to protect its market share.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dyzx9D">
Over the following decade, Mylan also jacked up the list price of a two-pack of EpiPens from $94 to $609 — and, as a result, patients who depended on this medicine in a life-or-death emergency increasingly found it more and more difficult to afford, even as the product itself remained largely unchanged.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ma9Rab">
According to <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2612114">a 2017 analysis published by Chua and Rena Conti</a>, average out-of-pocket spending on EpiPens more than doubled from 2007 to 2014. The average was up to $75 per year, but that is just an average. Some people were paying less, depending on their health insurance, but other people were paying much more: The percentage of people with an EpiPen prescription who were paying $100 out of pocket annually increased from 4 percent in 2007 to 18 percent in 2014; the percentage of patients with out-of-pocket costs above $250 rose from almost nobody (0.1 percent) to 7.4 percent.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cVtj1S">
In outlier cases, such as families with multiple children who need an EpiPen prescription, a household could end up spending more than $1,000 annually just to make sure they had enough doses of the drug on hand, Chua told me. More recent research has <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22276166/us-health-insurance-out-of-pocket-costs-research">shown</a> that an out-of-pocket charge of as little as $10 can discourage patients from filling prescriptions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iz5iEp">
Stories of the drug being unaffordable for patients began to gain traction in the news around 2016, and Mylan faced significant scrutiny from public officials, including a fraud investigation that ultimately <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mylan-epipen/mylan-u-s-finalize-465-million-epipen-settlement-idUSKCN1AX1RW">led to a $465 million settlement over improper Medicaid billing</a> in 2017.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MMVx8j">
The company sought to soften the backlash by introducing an unbranded version of the EpiPen in 2016, the first significant competition to the brand-name EpiPen in years, priced at $300 for a two-pack. Mylan’s patents have also started to expire, and more competitors came to the market in the following years, usually with list prices between $200 and $400.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SGrPUC">
Over time, the egregious cost of EpiPens faded from the headlines.
</p>
<h3 id="DBOl84">
The 2 big reasons EpiPens can still be so expensive
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Az9K3v">
But the cost crisis never really left.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JkndUi">
The introduction of lower-priced competitors seemed to promise that the epinephrine affordability crisis would ease, and for some patients, prices have dropped modestly. But thousands of families are still struggling to afford this essential medication today.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kdm6gs">
Chua and Conti <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-022-07694-z">updated their research last year</a>, reviewing out-of-pocket spending on EpiPens and their peers from 2014 to 2019. They did find that, in the aggregate, average annual spending dropped from about $115 annually to $75. But there was still a sizable portion of the patient population, about 8 percent of users, who were paying more than $200 per year for their medicine. Most of those patients, about 63 percent, were children, and those families paid an average of $657 annually for their epinephrine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XDloyu">
Digging deeper into the data, two things stuck out to Chua. One, most of the people with high out-of-pocket costs were using non-branded alternatives to the brand-name EpiPen, meaning this was not simply a problem of patients and doctors sticking with a more expensive but well-known legacy product. And two, most of these patients were enrolled in a high-deductible health insurance plan.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FIto0n">
Both of those findings reveal why the epinephrine cost crisis persists for some patients, years after the initial outrage.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WOPBXV">
The first problem — high prices even for generic versions of the drug — is a bit of a surprise, given that competition is the primary mechanism by which the US health system reduces prescription drug prices. In more conventional markets, the introduction of generic competition usually leads to <a href="https://www.fda.gov/media/161540/download">prices dropping by 75 percent of more</a>. But that hasn’t happened with epinephrine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xi03Z6">
“The prices of these competing products, it’s lower, but it’s not low,” Chua said. “It appears to be a 50 percent discount. It’s relatively less, but in an absolute sense, it’s still high.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rPbeU7">
The problem is that EpiPens and their peers are not simply drugs, but drug-device combinations. The FDA regulates those products differently than other medications.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8SgzRt">
With a more conventional drug, it is fairly simple for a generic version of a drug to be approved as fully substitutable for the brand-name version. The generic company needs to show its product is similar to the original in its chemistry and, once that happens, doctors can prescribe the generic the same as they would the brand-name drug, or pharmacists are permitted to substitute the cheaper generic for the more expensive brand-name drug when the patient fills their prescription at the drug store.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gekowq">
But that is not the case with drug-device combinations, Conti said. The bar is higher.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hxIVcu">
“Basically, both the drug and the device have to be proven as equivalent, and it’s much harder to do this with a device,” she said. “Devices have patents, trade secrets, and simple sourcing features that make it very difficult to copy exactly. This, in turn, affects drug delivery in ways that may be difficult to predict.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EDHwZ6">
That makes it more difficult for a new competitor to gobble up Mylan’s market share by offering a cheap alternative. Instead, after Mylan itself began offering the $300 unbranded version of its EpiPen, competitors that have entered the market have usually set their prices in roughly the same range and tried to peel off customers with more targeted sales pitches, such as smaller injectors that are easier for kids to carry around with them. Prices are not at the forefront.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jTDLaC">
“This is not what we normally see when you have fully substitutable generics coming into the market,” Chua said. “There’s usually a much greater decrease in price and therefore out-of-pocket spending.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YwQjUE">
The stubbornly high list prices of epinephrine flow into the second problem: Patients are shouldering more of the cost of their health care. Most of the patients paying more than $200 per year in Chua and Conti’s research were enrolled in high-deductible health plans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eQiWVF">
According to <a href="https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2022-summary-of-findings/">the Kaiser Family Foundation</a>, the percentage of Americans enrolled in employer-sponsored insurance (which covers more than half of the US population) with an annual deductible of $2,000 or more has increased from 7 percent in 2009 to 32 percent in 2022.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6rBZfE">
People who purchase insurance individually through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces <a href="https://www.kff.org/slideshow/cost-sharing-for-plans-offered-in-the-federal-marketplace/">can also have deductibles in excess of $2,000</a> if they do not qualify for certain federal assistance (though most of the customers on those marketplaces do get a discount on out-of-pocket costs).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7EPuze">
“Fundamentally, I view this as a problem of insurance benefit design,” Chua said. “We as a society have decided it’s okay for insurance plans to utilize deductibles and coinsurance in this blunt way that treats epinephrine in the same way as an ineffective drug.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dn4KL6">
That is the problem policymakers have homed in on with new proposals aimed at making epinephrine more affordable.
</p>
<h3 id="zshM0v">
How policymakers are trying to make epinephrine more affordable
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Flhr5T">
Fresh off the recent progress in making insulin more affordable, state lawmakers have turned their attention back to EpiPens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ezWsFg">
The Colorado House, which had already passed an out-of-pocket cap for insulin in 2021 that became law, <a href="https://khn.org/news/article/colorado-epipen-drug-cost-law-copays/?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&amp;stream=top">approved</a> a similar measure late last month capping out-of-pocket costs for epinephrine at $60 per year. It is now under consideration in the state Senate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nhhgu0">
A similar <a href="https://legiscan.com/RI/text/H5176/2023?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&amp;stream=top">measure</a> introduced in the Rhode Island legislature would require insurers to cover the drug at no cost to the patient. Other bills under consideration in Delaware, Missouri, and Vermont would require insurers to cover epinephrine, which is not currently mandatory, though most health plans do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2nVBPx">
Chua said that an out-of-pocket cap would be an effective tool for making epinephrine more affordable. While health insurers may argue, with some justification, that this lets drugmakers like Mylan off the hook, the reality is that setting rules for insurance benefits would be simpler than overhauling how the FDA regulates prescription drugs and devices such as EpiPens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3e7V3a">
And because most people only fill an EpiPen prescription once a year, even a $100 annual cap can make a big difference when people are currently paying hundreds of dollars for the drug every year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vsnPMf">
But state action can only do so much, because self-insured employer plans — the large employer plans that cover most people with commercial insurance — are not subject to state regulations. They are instead regulated by the federal government. That means Congress would need to act to ensure epinephrine is affordable for all Americans, not just those in certain states with a certain type of insurance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="alskSL">
Congress did secure major wins on drug prices last year, including the introduction of a $35 monthly cap on insulin for Medicare beneficiaries. Chua said a permanent solution could be fairly simple, a variation of the Insulin for All Act that Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced that would cap insulin costs for all patients, not just those on Medicare.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vIQkTC">
Patient advocates are trying to maintain momentum after the recent action on insulin, fearing that otherwise, the issue may once again recede to the background, as it did after the initial outrage against Mylan a few years ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dEyJsr">
“I would hope for federal action on this,” Chua said. “This piecemeal approach is not going to affect everybody in the country.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kniwpW">
</p></li>
<li><strong>The four criminal investigations into Donald Trump, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XQUBsYZDfmjvbz5f97CJ73mRAYY=/85x0:4553x3351/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72145513/1249444620.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Former US President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to speak during a 2024 election campaign rally in Waco, Texas, March 25, 2023. | Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Trump has already been indicted once. More indictments could be coming.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tLuAS8">
In retrospect, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Donald Trump, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-the-first-presidential-debate/fact-check-has-trump-declared-bankruptcy-four-or-six-times/">many-times bankrupt</a> former president and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_(American_TV_series)">game show host</a> who <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/10/7/13205842/trump-secret-recording-women">confessed on video to sexual assault</a>, would be indicted for the most absurd crime imaginable: allegedly falsifying business records to <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/30/23663972/trump-indicted-grand-jury-what-happens-next">cover up the hush money payments he paid to a porn star</a>, which was itself intended to cover up an extramarital affair Trump allegedly had shortly after his third wife gave birth to his son Barron.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Oxnjs9">
Nor is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump, which led to this indictment, the only such investigation that could lead to criminal charges against the former president. There are three other known investigations into Trump.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0Xpjnq">
Two are federal; a federal special prosecutor, Jack Smith, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23466627/jack-smith-special-counsel-garland-trump">took over both last November</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J1v8rt">
The first federal probe involves an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida compound, which revealed that the former president kept classified documents — including, according to the Washington Post, ones “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/11/garland-trump-mar-a-lago/">relating to nuclear weapons</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L731sc">
There are also some outward signs that this federal investigation into Trump is gaining steam. In a dramatic development last month, one of Trump’s own lawyers, Evan Corcoran, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/politics/evan-corcoran-testimony-documents-probe/index.html">testified before a grand jury</a> about his conversations with Trump.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i8BWkI">
The second probe, meanwhile, involves what Attorney General Merrick Garland described as “the investigation into whether any person or entity unlawfully <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23466627/jack-smith-special-counsel-garland-trump">interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election</a>, or with the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/reK2lJnyWm2zhRSq42F1meUc3ak=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24550997/1359579000.jpg"/> <cite>Win McNamee/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Jacob Chansley, also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” screams “Freedom” inside the US Senate chamber after the Capitol was breached by a mob during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y78hvL">
And then there’s a fourth criminal probe, in Georgia, investigating whether Trump illegally tried to change the result of the 2020 election. Criminal charges against Trump could potentially arise out of a post-election call with Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump told the state’s top election official that he wanted “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/4/22213031/trump-georgia-crime-criminal-brad-raffensperger-election-call-fraud-felony">to find 11,780 votes</a>.” (Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mdOwpY">
We do not yet know if any of these investigations will end in Trump being convicted of a crime. In all but one of them, we don’t even know if Trump will be formally charged with violating a criminal statute. And, in the one investigation where Trump has been charged — Bragg’s New York-based investigation — there is <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/30/23663972/trump-indicted-grand-jury-what-happens-next">some legal uncertainty</a> about whether the felony statute Trump was indicted under actually reaches Trump’s alleged actions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ojh7z7">
When all of these investigations are complete and all of the potential charges against Trump are resolved, in other words, it is still possible that he will never be convicted of a crime.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O3qoOp">
Nevertheless, Trump is already the <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/30/23663972/trump-indicted-grand-jury-what-happens-next">first former US president ever to be indicted</a>. And many of the key facts that could lead to other indictments, including the fact that he kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and the fact that he tried repeatedly to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, are not reasonably in doubt.
</p>
<h3 id="7glSOS">
The New York indictment of Donald Trump
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1vuxze">
The Manhattan DA has been investigating financial fraud at the Trump Organization for several years. Bragg’s office has already secured a couple of convictions against Trump’s primary business and one of his close business associates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fkWdLC">
Last August, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/weisselberg-trump-guilty-plea/">pleaded guilty</a> to allegations that he did not pay taxes on $1.7 million in compensation — including <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/17/politics/allen-weisselberg-plead-guilty-trump-organization-former-cfo/index.html">an apartment, two cars, and private school tuition for family members</a>. He also agreed to testify against the Trump Organization, and this allowed prosecutors to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/6/23497150/trump-organization-convicted-fraud">convict the Trump Organization of 17 counts of tax fraud and related financial crimes</a> arising from the payments to Weisselberg.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VKinKB">
But Weisselberg did not agree to testify against Trump, and the actual charges against the former president arise out of a separate set of shady transactions: Trump’s alleged $130,000 in payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, which were made to <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/30/23663972/trump-indicted-grand-jury-what-happens-next">cover up an alleged sexual encounter between Trump and Daniels in 2006</a> (Trump denies that he had sex with Daniels).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mBwwMK">
Notably, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/31/23579526/trump-indictment-grand-jury-stormy-daniels-felony">pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance crimes</a> arising out of these hush money payments to Daniels in 2018.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vLMQ9o">
The specific criminal charges against Trump are not yet known, but he’s reportedly been charged with more than 30 counts of business fraud. New York law typically does not make it a crime to pay a former sexual partner to remain silent about an affair. But it is a crime to <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/175.05">falsify business records in New York</a> “with the intent to defraud.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UDaMZR">
So, if Bragg can prove that Trump mischaracterized his payments to Daniels in the Trump Organization’s own documents in order to cover up those payments, that could potentially allow Trump to be convicted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q34qHt">
There is, however, a catch. Ordinarily, falsifying business records is only a misdemeanor under New York law — meaning that it is a minor crime that is only punishable by up to a year in prison — and that matters because the <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CPL/30.10">statute of limitations for misdemeanors is only two years</a> in New York State. So, if Trump is only charged with a misdemeanor, Bragg would have to prove that Trump tried to cover up the payments to Daniels within the last two years — which is unlikely because those payments have been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/who-is-stormy-daniels-what-did-she-say-happened-with-trump-2023-03-30/">public since at least 2018</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dBr6Pk">
That said, it is possible to charge a defendant accused of falsifying business records with a felony, and the statute of limitations for this more serious felony is <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CPL/30.10">five years</a>. To charge Trump with a felony, however, Bragg also has to prove that Trump falsified business records with the “<a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/175.10">intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xk7NbQ">
One possibility is that Bragg could try to link Trump to the federal campaign finance crime Cohen pled guilty to in 2018.<strong> </strong>But it is far from clear that New York state prosecutors may charge Trump with a felony because he tried to cover up a federal, as opposed to a state, crime.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FsxUUM">
As Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office, wrote in a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/People-vs-Donald-Trump-Account-ebook/dp/B0BGQHPZQ8">recent book</a>, the felony statute is “ambiguous” — though it refers to “another crime,” it does not say whether this crime may be a federal criminal act or only an act that violates New York’s criminal law. Worse, Pomerantz writes, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/People-vs-Donald-Trump-Account-ebook/dp/B0BGQHPZQ8">no appellate court in New York has ever upheld (or rejected) this interpretation of the law</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JBNxst">
Alternatively, Bragg could attempt to link Trump to a second violation of New York’s criminal law, but it’s unclear what that second violation might be.
</p>
<h3 id="7h0Tmr">
The state of the investigation into Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eUja0N">
The Justice Department’s larger investigation into the January 6 attacks has been going on since they happened, focusing first on the people who stormed the Capitol. Initially, there wasn’t a consensus in the political world about whether Trump had committed crimes with his web of lies about the election. So an investigation into him does not appear to have begun immediately.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3VMQsI">
We now know that a team of prosecutors began more intensely scrutinizing Trump and his associates in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/us/politics/trump-investigation-thomas-windom.html">fall of 2021</a>. About a year ago, this team was “given the green light by the Justice Department to take a case all the way up to Trump, if the evidence leads them there,” <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html">according to a recent CNN article</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lWf9Fr">
The probe proceeded quietly at first. In January 2022, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-jan-6-investigation-garland/2022/01/15/e55a3ca2-7555-11ec-b202-b9b92330d4fa_story.html">Washington Post reported</a> that “so far the department does not appear to be directly investigating” Trump. But just a week and a half after that article, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco confirmed an investigation into one aspect of Trump’s scheme: fake electors. This was Trump allies’ effort to name Trump supporters as electors in key swing states Biden won, and to have their purported electoral votes submitted to Congress and Vice President Mike Pence and effectively dispute the actual electors’ votes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Uiul5O">
“Our prosecutors are looking at those, and I can’t say anything more on ongoing investigations,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/us/politics/justice-department-trump.html">Monaco said</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fLklBj">
By May, the investigation <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/us/politics/pro-trump-lawyers-elector-scheme.html">had subpoenaed many close Trump aides</a> for documents and was asking specifically for info about lawyers who had tried to help him overturn the election. In June, the home of Jeffrey Clark — the official Trump tried to put in charge of the DOJ so he could enlist the Department in declaring the election results fraudulent — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-justice-dept.html">was searched</a> by federal agents. The DOJ’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is involved in the investigation of Clark since he was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/us/politics/trump-investigation-thomas-windom.html">a DOJ employee</a> at the time. Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who put Trump in touch with Clark, is also <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/09/rep-scott-perry-outraged-after-fbi-seized-his-phone">a key subject of this investigation</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6oTMTH">
By late July, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/trump-justice-investigation-january-6/">Washington Post reported</a> prosecutors were asking “hours of detailed questions” about Trump’s actions specifically, on topics such as the extent of his involvement with the fake elector push and his effort to pressure Pence to throw out state electoral votes. Then, in September, investigators <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/us/politics/trump-aides-jan-6-doj.html">issued at least 40 subpoenas in a week</a>, this time focusing more on Trump’s political and fundraising operations. More recently, new subpoenas have gone out to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/special-counsel-sends-trump-subpoena-ga-secretary-state-raffensperger/">state</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/06/jack-smith-trump-communications-subpoenas/">officials</a> Trump tried to pressure.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mqasMM">
A growing number of Trump aides have gone in to testify before one of several active Washington, DC, grand juries in recent months. The former president filed a secret suit to try and block testimony of aides like former White House counsel’s office lawyers Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, citing privilege concerns, but he lost that suit, and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/02/trump-lawyers-grand-jury-00071960">they testified in December</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zQm9PL">
The new battles are over whether former White House aides like Mark Meadows — and Vice President Mike Pence — will have to testify, or whether they can cite executive privilege. District judges have already rejected their privilege claims, but they may appeal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jClYRA">
Yet though the election investigation certainly seems quite sprawling and serious, we still lack visibility into a few important questions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GeLO5q">
First, how strong is the evidence against Trump personally? Have they “flipped” members of his inner circle who can testify that he knowingly committed corrupt activity — or not? Will he be able to get out of charges by claiming (some of) his lawyers advised him everything he was doing was legally permissible?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OlAahz">
Second, what is the DOJ thinking about the legal issues at the heart of the case? The House January 6 committee <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/19/23512985/january-6-committee-trump-criminal-referral">argued</a> that Trump broke four laws in his attempt to stay in power: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and assisting an insurrection. And a federal judge, David Carter, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.260.0.pdf">already ruled last year</a> that evidence suggests Trump committed some of these crimes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3dvGTD">
Still, though DOJ investigators are clearly taking their investigation very seriously, we don’t know whether they agree with Judge Carter’s analysis of the law or whether they are even entirely sure what they think about it yet. One of Trump’s arguments in defense will likely be that he was engaging in politicking and political speech, not plotting a criminal conspiracy. If he is indicted, that argument would surely reach the Supreme Court at some point.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DNtAdS">
This is all fairly novel territory and it’s hard to point to a case quite like it. The topic is enormously important, but because Trump’s actions were so unprecedented, there’s much less of a roadmap on what the special counsel’s<strong> </strong>path forward should be.
</p>
<h3 id="UuWUs5">
The state of the classified documents investigation
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P4xAkB">
The classified documents case before the special counsel seems simpler from both a legal and evidentiary perspective than the election case, but it has its own potential problems.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2GpoXK">
When the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents in August 2022, the political world was rife with speculation about what could have justified such an extraordinary action and what Trump might have been up to. Was he selling classified material to the highest bidder? Was he trying to blackmail the deep state? These theories were never backed by evidence, but a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/11/garland-trump-mar-a-lago/">Washington Post report</a> that agents were looking for “nuclear documents” suggested this was monumental stuff indeed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mtms1J">
Yet subsequent reports suggested that DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents working on it were not always in full agreement about the strength of the case. According to a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/trump-doj-garland-mar-a-lago-january-6/">Washington Post report in December</a>, the FBI initially wasn’t sure it wanted to take up the case at all. The National Archives had asked them to get involved because they had found classified material in boxes belatedly returned to them by Trump, and they thought more material was missing. Even after Trump appeared to defy a grand jury subpoena to return documents, some FBI agents working on the case “weren’t certain” they had enough probable cause for a search, per the Post.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T9QHzW">
The search took place in August, and prosecutors claim to have found dozens of classified documents, but exactly what they found remains mysterious. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/21/trump-documents-mar-a-lago-iran-china/">Post reported</a> some documents had “highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China,” including a description of Iran’s missile programs. The government <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/us/politics/trump-affidavit-warrant.html">has expressed concern</a> that the information could jeopardize human intelligence sources. But it is difficult to evaluate those claims because, well, the information is classified.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7p5kAS">
Meanwhile, the DOJ-FBI divide reportedly persisted. Bloomberg News <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-19/trump-prosecutors-see-evidence-for-bringing-obstruction-charges?utm_content=politics&amp;cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-politics&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall&amp;sref=qYiz2hd0">reported in October</a> that though some DOJ prosecutors thought there was enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice because he defied the subpoena, some “internal critics,” including in the FBI, are questioning why Trump would be charged when Hillary Clinton wasn’t in her own classified information investigation. (Clinton <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/sep/13/hillary-clinton/clinton-exaggerates-absence-classified-information/">had some</a> classified information in email chains sent to her personal email account that she had used for work; Trump had paper documents in boxes at Mar-a-Lago.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MkgE6c">
Furthermore, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/trump-motive-mar-a-lago-documents/">yet another Washington Post story</a> suggests that the more ominous and speculative theories about Trump’s motives in keeping classified documents weren’t founded, in investigators’ eyes. They’ve come to believe, instead, that his motive was “largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos.” That would not get him off the hook for violating classified information law, but it’s certainly less of a clear-cut threat to national security than, say, the attempted selling of documents would be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="czvpeo">
Yet Trump is also potentially vulnerable to charges of obstruction and making false statements to the government.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xy5AE5">
That’s where his attorney, Corcoran, comes in. Corcoran told the government, in June 2022, that Trump had turned over all the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But the FBI search two months later revealed that was not true. Investigators <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/sources-special-counsel-claims-trump-deliberately-misled-attorneys/story?id=98024191">reportedly believe</a> that Trump lied to Corcoran, and that’s why they were so interested in getting Corcoran’s testimony.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jp0W7H">
Special counsel Smith may view these as the most straightforward charges against Trump.<strong> </strong>And though any charging recommendation Smith makes will go up to Attorney General Merrick Garland for approval, his opinion will carry great weight in determining whether Trump ends up indicted on these fronts this year.
</p>
<h3 id="YozGnk">
The Georgia investigation into Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 election
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sjZErG">
In early January 2022, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office asked a Georgia court to convene a special grand jury “for the purpose of investigating the facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22136078/graham-subpoena-order.pdf">disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0iJtfD">
This investigation includes both Trump’s “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/4/22213031/trump-georgia-crime-criminal-brad-raffensperger-election-call-fraud-felony">find 11,780 votes</a>” phone call and the Trump campaign’s attempt to create a <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/7/29/23281081/georgia-trump-fani-willis-investigation">slate of fake members of the Electoral College</a> who would fraudulently tell Congress that the state’s electoral votes were cast for Trump.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D2BGtW">
The special grand jury, whose investigation is now complete, heard testimony from several very high-profile Trump allies, including <a href="https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/rudy-giuliani-georgia-2020-election-grand-jury-testimony">former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-georgia-atlanta-88095d01932c62ee4a6dc2db1786ada9">US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0bJUaV">
While Willis has yet to file charges against Trump or any members of his inner circle, and while the full grand jury report remains sealed, the forewoman of this special grand jury told the New York Times that the report recommends multiple indictments.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SupTqD">
The forewoman also said that “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/us/trump-georgia-grand-jury-indictments.html">it’s not a short list</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mxiU8J">
It remains to be seen whether Willis files any charges against Trump. For the moment, Trump’s lawyers are trying to convince an Atlanta court to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/us/trumps-georgia-special-grand-jury.html">suppress the grand jury report</a> and to disqualify Willis from the case. But there are a few Georgia criminal statutes that could potentially reach Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1AnSjl">
Georgia laws make it a crime to <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2014/title-21/chapter-2/article-15/section-21-2-566/">willfully tamper</a> with certain aspects of an election, to <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-4/16-4-7/#:~:text=(a)%20A%20person%20commits%20the,to%20engage%20in%20such%20conduct.">solicit another person to do so</a>, or to engage in “<a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2016/title-21/chapter-2/article-15/section-21-2-604">criminal solicitation to commit election fraud</a>.”
</p>
<h3 id="ok7saS">
So what should we take away from all of this?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pYXGvQ">
The purpose of a criminal investigation, and ultimately of a prosecution, is to convince a jury to convict a defendant after a full criminal trial has taken place. It is not to provide the media or the public with regular updates about what law enforcement knows about potential suspects.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oINjKo">
Especially within the context of federal investigations, these norms exist to protect the investigation — if a suspect learns too much about what information law enforcement is seeking, they could destroy evidence or tamper with witnesses — and to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/8/11/23300933/donald-trump-justice-department-fbi-search-warrant-disclosure-merrick-garland">protect potential suspects</a>. When someone is formally charged with a crime, they have an opportunity to vindicate themselves at trial. If they are merely the subject of accusations tossed off by government officials, they have no real way to protect or rehabilitate their reputations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hYzNkQ">
For these reasons, anyone eager to see how the other investigations into Trump will end must have patience.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D16L22">
Even now that Trump is indicted in Bragg’s investigation, and even if a federal indictment does happen, this will not be the end of the story — far from it. A trial or trials would follow, as would many legal challenges from Trump’s team (some perhaps before <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/15/23355813/trump-judge-aileen-cannon-special-master-order-justice-department">sympathetic judges</a>). Trump likely can’t be stopped from continuing his 2024 presidential run <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/24/23365488/trump-legal-problems-classified-lawsuit">except by voters</a>, but despite <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/opinion/donald-trump-republicans-underperformance.html">talk of his recent political woes</a>, he continues to lead almost <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/2024_republican_presidential_nomination-7548.html">every poll of a multi-candidate GOP field</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sYMofk">
There could be many more twists and turns ahead.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Why your Twitter page is changing and may have a dog on it</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Rebel Bear street art depicting Elon Musk riding a Twitter bird logo that is escaping a birdcage." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fwWMsfrITw3iKAQhDW6_GevhYOs=/256x0:2399x1607/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72133667/1246108677.7.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Twitter is force-feeding you paid accounts from people you don’t follow. | Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Elon Musk wants to fill your Twitter feed with paid accounts being watched over by a crypto meme.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cxH0Qr">
When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he said he wanted to protect its place as a “digital town square,” where ideas from all corners of the internet could flourish. But soon, if you want your voice to really be heard in the town square, you’ll need to pay.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aZkzKo">
Musk tweeted that, starting <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1640502698549075972?s=20">April 15</a>, Twitter will only recommend content from paid accounts in the For You feed, the first screen users see when they open the app. It’s just one of several seemingly random changes Musk has been making to Twitter’s core user experience without explanation. He <a href="https://twitter.com/lorakolodny/status/1642944304007069696">changed the Twitter homepage’s icon</a> from its classic blue bird logo to “doge” — the cartoonish Shiba Inu dog meme linked to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22452151/memes-bitcoin-dogecoin-elon-musk">cryptocurrency</a> dogecoin — and for some users, the app started seemingly inserting tweets from accounts <a href="https://twitter.com/bruce_arthur/status/1642948931620315148">people didn’t follow</a> into the their Following feed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z3tmyF">
We don’t know exactly why the doge logo suddenly appeared at the top of the homepage, but there is one relevant piece of news <a href="https://twitter.com/sjvn/status/1642971498167283712">people are pointing to</a>: Elon Musk is currently facing a $258 billion lawsuit alleging that he ran a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-seeks-end-258-billion-dogecoin-lawsuit-2023-04-01/">pyramid scheme to support dogecoin</a>. Musk’s legal team asked a court to <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/elon-musk-sued-258-billion-162657493.html">dismiss the dogecoin suit</a> a few days before doge appeared on Twitter’s site.
</p>
<div id="LwgkBk">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
As promised <a href="https://t.co/Jc1TnAqxAV">pic.twitter.com/Jc1TnAqxAV</a>
</p>
— Elon Musk (<span class="citation" data-cites="elonmusk">@elonmusk</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1642976364080041984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 3, 2023</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EnyrSO">
It’s hard to make any real sense of Musk’s constant changes to Twitter, but one general trend, is that if you don’t start paying <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/4/23438917/twitter-verifications-blue-check-elon-musk">$8 a month for Twitter’s subscription plan, Twitter Blue,</a> you’ll have a harder time on the app. For people tweeting, you’ll have less of a chance that your tweets will actually get seen, and for people viewing but not posting on Twitter, you’ll be seeing a lot more content from paid accounts, which currently make up only <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch">0.2 percent of all users</a>. After Twitter users started complaining about the new plan, Elon <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1640800519894736896">clarified</a> that people you follow will also show up in the For You feed, but the main point still stands: Musk wants to turn your Twitter feed into a pay-to-play arena.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a3isaC">
The introduction of random accounts in the Following tab added insult to injury. Users used to be able to escape the randomness of the For You feed by using the Following tab, which showed you accounts of people you followed ranked chronologically. The For You offered users an approximation of the old, pre-Musk Twitter experience, but now, even that’s not the same. The sudden appearance of random accounts in the Following tab may have an explanation: Twitter seemed to <a href="https://twitter.com/davidgreene/status/1642974296925679617">stop showing some users whether tweets</a> were directly from people they followed, or retweets of other users’ tweets. Since Twitter didn’t confirm the changes, it’s unclear if this was a bug or intentional.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4S4Dlv">
Either way, Musk’s plan is to fill your Twitter feed with a higher ratio of paid accounts, and is pressuring more free users to pay for what was once considered a given. This move is the next step in Musk’s plan to try to get more people to subscribe to Twitter Blue. Musk said that on April 1 he’d <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/23/twitter-will-kill-legacy-blue-checks-on-april-1/">remove “legacy” verification checkmarks from notable accounts</a> that had them for free, including news organizations, politicians, and researchers. On March 31, some <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/03/31/twitter-verification-white-house-biden-check-mark">major accounts like the White House</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1641836984195743749">LeBron James</a> said they would not be paying for a checkmark — not a good sign for the impending rollout. <a href="https://twitter.com/WilliamShatner/status/1640706670509846528?s=20">Many are concerned</a> that it could become even easier for public figures who don’t pay for a checkmark to be impersonated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uGXMUo">
The checkmark part of Musk’s plan <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/4/23438917/twitter-verifications-blue-check-elon-musk">has received a lot of attention</a> — in part because it involves famous people — but it’s the changes to Twitter’s feed that are potentially just as, if not more, impactful.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fLIzRy">
That’s because Musk is changing the incentives to Twitter’s core product, its recommendation algorithms, to an extent that it could potentially fill the average user’s experience with lower-quality content.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Avc57V">
“The notion that by virtue of being willing to pay $8 a month means that you are a higher-quality account or worthy of being verified is a really reductive analysis,” said Jason Goldman, a VP of product at Twitter from 2007 to 2010. “There’s plenty of people who are complete trolls and are looking to just get attention for ridiculous behavior for whom $8 a month is a pittance to pay.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Upiu3E">
In his explanation of the upcoming feed change, Musk said that Twitter has to charge users to make sure people aren’t actually spam bots. But there’s a simpler reason that’s also driving this push: Twitter needs to make more money. The company, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/26/elon-musk-twitter-value-leaked-memo-less-than-half-paid">which is now valued at half</a> of what it was when Musk bought it, is <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/23/23651151/twitter-advertisers-elon-musk-brands-revenue-fleeing">still bleeding advertisers</a> that are put off by Musk’s antics. Not enough people have subscribed to Twitter Blue: There are only about 180,000 subscribers, <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch?rc=eh9iin">according to the Information</a>. They bring in roughly $28 million in annual revenue, less than 1 percent of the $3 billion Musk aimed to make in 2022. Now, in an effort to get more people to sign up for Twitter Blue, Musk is essentially threatening to make using the app harder for Twitter users who don’t pay.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g7g6MF">
Moreover, the fact that Musk is seriously proposing turning your Twitter homepage into a place where you don’t see tweets from the users you care about and only see the people who spent money shows how much he’s willing to compromise the basic utility of the app. He’s pushing an extreme version of an <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/2/21/23609375/meta-verified-twitter-blue-checkmark-badge-instagram-facebook">increasingly popular “pay-to-play”</a> model for social media, one that goes against some of the basic ideas that made apps like Twitter popular in the first place.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wu8oXH">
Early signs that people are buying into Musk’s vision for social media are not looking good.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zQhwFm">
First of all, the company is already planning major exceptions: Twitter’s top 500 advertisers and 10,000 most-followed organizations keep to their checkmarks for free, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/technology/elon-musk-ftc-chair.html">recent report in the New York Times</a>. That eliminates a major pool of potential customers that Twitter may have wisely realized were not going to pay.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Olu52U">
Some of the largest newsrooms in the country, like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico,<em> </em>have said they <a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1641460482480504832">will not be buying a Twitter Blue verification</a> for their company accounts (a one-year subscription for a company costs $12,000), nor do they intend to subsidize individual reporters’ subscriptions. In its rationale, the LA Times said that “verification no longer establishes authority or credibility.” A few celebrities, like Seinfeld star <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jason-alexander-twitter_n_6423e024e4b0a10577baa1ae">Jason Alexander</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/WilliamShatner/status/1640706675295543302">William Shatner</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/FINALLEVEL/status/1641173898053009411">Ice-T</a> have recently joined other actors, writers, and comedians who <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1587042605627490304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1587312517679878144%7Ctwgr%5Edfc9ca59f560b0ca49db06a858a4789a5d4642cf%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.9news.com.au%2Ftechnology%2Felon-musk-twitter-blue-tick-charge-stephen-king-lynda-carter-and-other-celebrities-threaten-to-leave%2Fb7c2eaae-81a6-41eb-95ae-7fd3fb2f977c">previously threatened</a> to leave if Musk took away their checkmark. If more famous people refuse to buy Twitter verification and subsequently find less value in Twitter, they could leave for other platforms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hsrxkb">
Meanwhile, Twitter’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/2/16/23603155/elon-musk-twitter-worse-degrading-quality-glitches-superbowl-boost-feed">technical quality has been degrading</a> since Musk took over. Features have been more frequently buggy, the site has had embarrassing outages, and source code <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/twitter-source-code-leak.html">has been leaked online</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Ge5L7">
“I think [changes to the For You feed and verification] are only going to expedite that decline and demise of a platform that is really in its death rattle right now,” said social media consultant Matt Navarra.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qSRJgz">
Even though Musk acquired Twitter to democratize it from the hands of elite users, in many ways his actions are doing the opposite.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ycp4or">
A major part of social media’s appeal in the past two decades of its existence is the idea that anyone, from anywhere, at any time, could go viral — for better or worse. And in turn, users see the most compelling, “engagement”-worthy media. Companies like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube are in the business of carefully fine-tuning algorithms that recommend the content they know we’ll want to click, whether that’s cat videos, political debates, or beauty tutorials. A major part of Twitter’s appeal was about seeing random interactions between powerful people and everyday citizens, like someone seeing a tweet from a senator, replying to it, and actually getting a reply back.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m0YG0l">
If Musk starts making it harder for an average user to stumble on and participate in viral exchanges, he’s taking away from the basic democratic promise of social media.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L2E0S0">
Already, under Musk’s leadership, Twitter has been promoting certain content according to the whims of the company’s new owner. Twitter has recently boosted <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/yes-elon-musk-created-a-special-system">Musk’s own tweets</a>, and for months it has boosted those of certain people the company designated as VIPs, like LeBron James, Ben Shapiro, and (somewhat surprisingly, since she’s a known foe of Musk) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/the-secret-list-of-twitter-vips-getting">according to recent reports in Platformer</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UxwgLX">
It’s important to note here that there’s a good chance Musk will not go through with this, given his track record of missing deadlines for major changes at Twitter. In the few months since he took over, Musk has promised to share revenue with creators (<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23623927/twitter-blue-ad-revenue-one-month-missing">hasn’t happened</a>). He’s <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/11/09/twitter-official-label-select-verified-accounts">warned</a> for months that Twitter will remove blue checkmarks, but he hasn’t actually done it yet. As of Monday, April 3, Twitter still hasn’t seemed to remove checkmarks for legacy accounts, which could be because it’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/31/twitter-verification-checkmark-ending/">reportedly a slow and manual process</a>. There’s one exception: Twitter <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-hasnt-removed-verified-check-marks-new-york-rcna77824">removed the checkmark on the account of the the New York Times</a>, a frequent target of <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-pulls-new-york-times-twitter-verified-check-mark-calling-propaganda">Musk’s media criticism</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nhJLoc">
Regardless of whether Musk executes his plans, he is to some extent doing what many social media platforms have often done in private: tinker with secretive algorithms and give special treatment to high-profile users. TikTok was found to be <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23564242/tiktok-heating-view-boosts-creators-businesses">“heating” certain VIP user content</a>, showing it more in people’s For You feeds. Facebook and Instagram have let <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-files-xcheck-zuckerberg-elite-rules-11631541353">celebrities</a> get away with breaking the company’s policies. The two apps, which are owned by Meta, also recently started charging users for verification and some basic services like access to customer support.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cskwvN">
But even if these companies give certain users benefits over others, they’re doing it within reason. Musk is pushing pay-to-play to the extreme. If he goes too far, celebrities and the everyday users who follow them could leave Twitter in a mass exodus. So far, though, they haven’t. Twitter’s biggest benefit is that there is <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/6/23496363/twitter-mastodon-hive-musk-replacement">no good Twitter alternative</a>. The most viable contender, Mastodon, while popular with some journalists, hasn’t reached nearly the same level of mainstream appeal as Twitter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2NXykk">
Regardless, if Musk wants Twitter Blue to succeed, he’ll need to get celebrities and everyday people not just to stay on Twitter, but to pay for an $8-a-month subscription service.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xKC898">
We’ll see if his plan to turn Twitter into a for-sale popularity contest will work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UXYGqb">
<em><strong>Update, April 3, 6:30 pm ET:</strong></em><em> This story, originally published on March 31, has been updated with new details about changes to Twitter’s Following tab.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2c1A5K">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1YIFbS">
</p>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nadal, Alcaraz pull out of clay-court Monte Carlo Masters</strong> - Rafael Nadal said he is unable to compete at the highest level; Carlos Alcaraz pulled out due to ‘physical discomfort’</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>WPL may introduce home and away format in season 2, says IPL chairman Arun Dhumal</strong> - Terming hosting of WPL the biggest challenge of his tenure, Mr. Dhumal said having home and away games immensely help teams in building a fan base</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>MI has invested in youngsters and time for them to show up: Head coach Mark Boucher</strong> - While RCB thrashed MI by eight wickets in their opening encounter, the find of IPL 2022, Tilak Varma, once again showed a lot of promise along with Punjab youngster Nehal Wadhera</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Starc, Zampa will be Australia’s go-to bowlers during ODI World Cup: Ponting</strong> - Starc was in sublime form during the three-match ODI series against India recently picking up eight wickets, including a five-for in the third game at Visakhapatnam, as the visitors won the series 2-1</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RR vs PBKS | Buoyed by huge win against SRH, Rajasthan Royals ready for Punjab Kings challenge</strong> - Punjab Kings know they have an uphill task when they clash with Rajasthan Royals for the IPL match at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium in Guwahati</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bitten by stray dog, Siddipet Additional Collector suffers thigh injury</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Wine shops, bars in Hyderabad to stay shut on Hanuman Jayanthi</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Family of three, including 3-month-old baby, found dead</strong> - Relatives sleeping in the next room could not hear anything as the victims had turned up the volume of the television</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sharmila meets leaders of TJS, CPI, CPI(M)</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nearly 14 lakh applications for CUET-UG, maximum for Delhi University</strong> - The highest number of applicants have been received from Uttar Pradesh, said UGC Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nato’s border with Russia doubles as Finland joins</strong> - Finland’s flag will be raised at Nato as the Nordic state becomes the alliance’s 31st member.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Climate change: Catalonia in grip of worst drought in decades</strong> - Water levels at a reservoir in the northern Spanish region have fallen below 10% of its capacity.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dutch rail crash: One dead after passenger train hits crane and derails</strong> - The crash happened when a passenger train hit a construction crane near the village of Voorschoten.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Darya Trepova: Russia releases video of suspect in cafe killing of Vladlen Tatarsky</strong> - In a video likely filmed under duress, Darya Trepova says she handed over a statuette that blew up.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Darya Trepova: What we know about accused in Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky’s killing</strong> - Darya Trepova seems to be an opponent of the invasion, but friends say she was not radical.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>All of a sudden, NASA’s return to the Moon feels rather real</strong> - “Artemis II is more than a mission to the Moon and back.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1928561">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Maker of eye drops linked to deadly outbreak flunks FDA inspection</strong> - FDA found brown slime, lack of sterility checks at Global Pharma’s facility. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1928824">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Judge slams Fox News for false election claims as Dominion wins key ruling</strong> - Judge rules Fox statements false; jury will decide on “actual malice” and damages. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1928803">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Proton’s mass radius is apparently shorter than its charge radius</strong> - The quarks that give it charge aren’t hanging out with the gluons that provide mass. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1928764">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Today’s best deals: Apple MacBook Air, Apple Watch, Mac mini, Amazon Kindle</strong> - The Macs are matching their lowest tracked prices, as are the latest Kindles. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1928670">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An ancient Grecian with torn clothes walks into a tailors…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Euripides?”, the tailor asks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The man replies, “Yes, Eumenides?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Yup”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/DonAltKnuth"> /u/DonAltKnuth </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12b4pf4/an_ancient_grecian_with_torn_clothes_walks_into_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12b4pf4/an_ancient_grecian_with_torn_clothes_walks_into_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath, and stopped centimeters from a shop window. For a second everything went quiet in the cab, then the driver said, “Look mate, don’t ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!” The passenger apologized and said, “I didn’t realize that a little tap would scare you so much.” The driver replied, “Sorry, it’s not really your fault. Today is my first day as a Taxi driver – I’ve been driving a funeral van for the last 25 years.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/creydth"> /u/creydth </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12baxh2/a_passenger_tapped_the_driver_on_the_shoulder_to/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12baxh2/a_passenger_tapped_the_driver_on_the_shoulder_to/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A man walks into a hotel lobby with his family and whispers to the front desk clerk, “make sure the porn in my room is disabled”. To which the clerk replies:</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
We only have regular porn you sick fuck!
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/sodafizzer77"> /u/sodafizzer77 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12ajdbi/a_man_walks_into_a_hotel_lobby_with_his_family/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12ajdbi/a_man_walks_into_a_hotel_lobby_with_his_family/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Three men pass away in a tragic car crash</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Their girlfriends are trying to figure out what to do with their ashes. The first woman says “hey, my boyfriend really loved nature. I’m going to spread his ashes throughout the forest so he can be eternally connected with the wilderness.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The second woman says “hey, my boyfriend was really into marine biology. I think I’m just going to pour his ashes into the ocean. Then he can finally be one with the sea.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The third woman says “I’m going to pour my boyfriend’s ashes into a bowl of chili and eat it.” The first woman asks her “why the hell would you do that?”. She replies “I want to feel him rip through my ass one last time”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/AntiHero515"> /u/AntiHero515 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12asybz/three_men_pass_away_in_a_tragic_car_crash/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12asybz/three_men_pass_away_in_a_tragic_car_crash/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>After ten long years, a widow finds herself in bed with a new man</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After ten long years, a widow finds herself in bed with a new man. He kisses her.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Only Reggie used to kiss me,” she mumbles.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He grabs her breast.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Only Reggie used to fondle me,” she stammers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He inserts himself inside her.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Only Reggie used to penetrate me,” she moans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He thrusts repeatedly.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Only Reggie used to ravage me,” she squeals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
She begins to orgasm.
</p>
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“Reggie or not, here I cum!!”
</p>
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/headgate19"> /u/headgate19 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12b9bhc/after_ten_long_years_a_widow_finds_herself_in_bed/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12b9bhc/after_ten_long_years_a_widow_finds_herself_in_bed/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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