wo men have been arrested after one of them allegedly urinated on a memorial for a nine-year-old boy who died of cancer.

Bryan Bellace, 23, is accused of defacing the monument in a park in Mays Landing, New Jersey, while Daniel Flippen, also 23, allegedly held a camera and laughed.

The memorial was dedicated for aspiring veterinarian Christian Clopp, who died of an inoperable brain tumor in February 2012.

His father Mark Clopp said he was 'disgusted' by the video, calling the suspects 'scumbags', but said his friends and neighbors had come together to clean up the memorial and the park.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7050267/New-Jersey-man-caught-URINATING-memorial-child.html

According to President Trump's own Twitter feed, he detests seeing Democratic candidates on his favorite television channel.

Last month he complained about Fox News' town hall with Bernie Sanders. And on Sunday he said Fox wasted its airtime on a town hall with Pete Buttigieg.
"Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems," Trump tweeted on Sunday before Buttigieg's town hall aired.
Trump evidently expects more loyalty out of Fox, a network that he often promotes while attacking its competitors.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/media/trump-fox-news-democratic-town-halls/index.html

NEWSER) – The New York Times wrote a story critical of President Trump's dealings with Deutsche Bank, and now the president is firing back. In Monday morning tweets, Trump rejected the notion that banks have been leery of working with him—instead, he says he's been so successful in business that he often doesn't need banks because he has so much cash. "Very old fashioned, but true," writes Trump. "When you don't need or want money, you don't need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money." The Hill notes that the newspaper's financial editor then fired back at Trump.

"This is not true," writes David Enrich. "I have spent a long time looking into this, and @DeutscheBank was the only bank willing to lend to @realDonaldTrump for 20 years because of his pattern of defaults and the bank's hunger for growth in the US." The original story said bank employees flagged possibly suspicious transactions by entities controlled by Trump or son-in-law Jared Kushner. The president derided the story as "fake news" and suggested the newspaper was making up sources. "I built a great business and don't need banks," he added, "but if I did they would be there." (The president's financial disclosure form for 2018 is out.)

https://www.newser.com/story/275412/trump-i-dont-need-banks-for-my-business.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

https://thinkprogress.org/mo-brooks-cancer-health-care-comments-0d472b2bc9ef/?fbclid=IwAR35fzt9vpjCgs_4J4Qp15JbPzfzTHeIerCzhLOc8gRmmbGWVz3bE-ZiX7w

During a speech on the House floor on Wednesday, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) announced that he has prostate cancer.

“Don’t ever, ever, take your health or family for granted. During the holidays, enjoy your family, because no one, no one, is promised tomorrow,” Brooks said, adding that he learned he has cancer following a doctor’s scan in October.

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While Republicans were trying to repeal Obamacare in May, Brooks — who introduced a one-sentence Obamacare repeal bill in March — went on CNN and defended Republicans’ plan to allow insurance companies to discriminate against people who have preexisting conditions, which he characterized as personal failings.

“My understanding is that (the new proposal) will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool,” Brooks said in comments that generated swift backlash. “That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people — who’ve done things the right way — that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”


But people “who lead good lives” get cancer too, and discovering and treating it can be exorbitantly expensive. Nonetheless, Republicans like Brooks who support legislation that would result in tens of millions of people losing coverage routinely characterize insurance as a luxury item that some people

https://twitter.com/hilaryluros/status/1129546356413030401

https://twitter.com/jeffdowd/status/1129450893966024704

Just canceled my vacation and beach home rental on Alabama Gulf Shore, rental agent said many cancellations. Non of my tax dollars to a government like Alabama. Georgia here I come.

https://www.vashonbeachcomber.com/news/former-lost-boy-starts-nonprofit-in-africa/

Former “Lost Boy of Sudan” and islander, Jacob Acier, is raising money for his nonprofit organization in an effort to fulfill a long-held dream of providing dental care and educational scholarships to the people of the war-ravaged villages of his home of South Sudan.

Acier’s South Sudan Village Development is now a state-recognized non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Juba, South Sudan, and Nairobi, Kenya. With a board of directors and legal advisors already in place, Acier needs funds to register his organization as an international NGO, and to set up an office from which to operate.

“These ideas came to my mind to help my people when I was living on Vashon,” Acier said in a recent conversation with The Beachcomber. “Cavities are a big problem for people in the villages where I come from, so I am establishing how to get a mobile dental clinic around to them. And we want to provide scholarships, particularly for girls, to go to school. It is very expensive to go to school here, and most can’t afford it, so they don’t go.”

The scholarships specifically would be for young Sudanese women living in Kampala, Uganda, and Nairobi — both places have far more education opportunities than South Sudan, and are where many Sudanese refugees now live.

Acier’s journey from young boy fleeing for his life from civil war in Sudan and rebellion in Ethiopia, to running a soon-to-be international nonprofit, has been long and filled with trials many might only imagine as the plot of a book or movie.

A Rare Genetic Mutation Leads to Cancer. The Fix May Already Be in the Drugstore.
A common dietary supplement may help overcome mutations in the Pten gene. Should patients take it?

When Kelley Oliver Douglass got breast cancer, a genetic counselor posed an odd question: Do you and your children have trouble finding hats that fit?

They did, and that gave the counselor a clue to the source of the cancer: a mutation in a gene called Pten.

In addition to increasing head circumference, this rare mutation markedly raises the risk for several cancers, including prostate and breast cancer (the lifetime risk in carriers is 85 percent), as well as autism and schizophrenia in some individuals.

Ms. Douglass, 51, of Mount Dora, Fla., and her children carry a Pten mutation. Now, researchers have stumbled on a way to counter it — and the treatment may be as close as the local drugstore.

In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, researchers found evidence that a compound called indole-3-carbinol (i3c) blocks an enzyme that inhibits the activity of Pten. With the gene more active, patients with the mutation may be better protected against cancer.

They could get more i3c simply by eating brussels sprouts, broccoli or other cruciferous vegetables. But to get enough, they’d have to eat a lot: six pounds of brussels sprouts a day — raw.

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Inherited Pten mutations are rare, striking one in 200,000. If the research holds up, however, it could be important to larger numbers of cancer patients. The mutation is not just inherited; the Pten gene is spontaneously mutated in many tumors. When that happens, the patient’s prognosis is poor.
Pten activity is somewhat impaired in the vast majority of human cancers. A drug that reactivates the gene could help curb cancer growth.

Dr. Mustafa Sahin, an expert on the Pten gene at Boston Children’s Hospital, called the new research a “tour de force study.” The result is “a paradigm shift in the field and very exciting in terms of its therapeutic implications,” Dr. Sahin, who was not involved in the research, wrote in an email.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/gene-mutation-cancer.html

https://www.nrc.no/news/2019/may/violence-has-pushed-thousands-of-children-in-honduras-and-el-salvador-out-of-school/

Almost half of all children surveyed living in neighbourhoods where criminal gangs are present in Honduras and El Salvador do not have access to education, according to new reports by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“Criminal violence is wreaking havoc on the lives of countless children in El Salvador and Honduras. Bright futures are being stolen every time that children are too afraid to attend school, and are forced to drop out. The future of an entire generation of boys and girls is at risk,” warned Christian Visnes, country director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Colombia.

Two new reports called “A Generation Out Of School” found that children living in areas with violence in El Salvador and Honduras experience pressure, intimidation, sexual harassment and traumatic abuse by criminal groups. Their daily walk to school is dangerous and involves passing through gang territory or staying limited to one side of the community to not stray into rival gang territory.

Violent criminal groups are also present in classrooms and playgrounds. Gang members have succeeded in infiltrating the schools themselves and routinely promote the sale of drugs to minors, extort teachers and students, and carry out recruitment, surveillance and intelligence activities.

“My older kids weren’t able to study. I wanted them to graduate, but it wasn’t possible. All my children have fled from the violence”, said a parent in Tegucigalpa.

In some areas, families are pressured to pay ‘war taxes’ to criminal groups. They are then often unable to pay for uniforms and school materials for the children who continue to attend classes despite the many risks. Many families surveyed said that they do not feel safe in their homes. Only one third plan on staying in their homes, the rest plan on leaving their neighborhoods to find somewhere safer to live in their countries, or are completely unsure about their futures.