HellsBelle

Scientists don’t have a clear explanation for why drugs like Ozempic appear to lessen cravings for vices, including for addictive substances. But they have some ideas that they’re testing — some here in Canada, where any advance would help significantly, as the country faces a growing opioid crisis.

There haven't been many randomized clinical trials — which are considered the gold standard for evaluating medical claims — on whether GLP-1 RAs reduce addictive behaviours.

There have only been two such trials studying their impact on alcohol addiction, none for opioid addiction and two for nicotine addiction, according to a recent review published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

Christian Hendershot, a California-based Canadian researcher, co-authored one of those randomized controlled trials, published recently in JAMA Psychiatry, looking at alcohol consumption.

Liberal House leader Steve MacKinnon signalled Tuesday that he’s concerned the government’s budget might not get support from the opposition benches, while at the same time dismissing some demands other parties have laid out.

On Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre penned a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney saying he wants to see an “affordable budget” that includes broad tax cuts and keeping the deficit under $42 billion.

Meanwhile, the Bloc Québécois has said they have six key priorities for the budget including: an increase to the federal health transfer to the provinces, new infrastructure investments, an expansion of the rapid housing initiative, interest-free loans for first-time homebuyers and boosting Old Age Security (OAS) payments for those ages 65 to 75.

Canada’s auditor general found serious problems with the military’s aging living quarters, including deteriorating exterior walls, toilets that don't flush and a lack of safe drinking water.

There are 227 high-priority repairs needed across 32 buildings, according to Karen Hogan’s latest report released Tuesday. But out of a sample audited, only five per cent of repairs had been completed.

The auditor general’s team found the average age of the buildings housing military members is 60 years old, and most required at least one high-priority repair.

Her audit found there were 3,706 military members on a waitlist for residential housing units at bases this spring, but only 205 units available.

Long-term exposure to high levels of inorganic arsenic can cause cardiovascular disease and cancers of the bladder and lungs. But now, scientists from Denmark have developed a new treatment that turns arsenic-rich groundwater waste into useful raw materials.

While current methods to clean arsenic from groundwater are successful, they create another problem—an arsenic-rich sludge that requires complex, specialist and expensive disposal methods. The residue is also a major environmental and health hazard if not disposed of properly.

In a study, published in the journal Science Advances, Kaifeng Wang and Case van Genuchten at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland detail a two-step process to convert the hazardous sludge into a raw material for electronics,

Fyi -- neither the Nature link or the DOI link work.

Patients with cancer who received mRNA-based COVID vaccines within 100 days of starting immune checkpoint therapy were twice as likely to be alive three years after beginning treatment, according to a new study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

These findings, which include more than 1,000 patients treated between Aug. 2019 and Aug. 2023, were presented today at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress. The study was led by Steven Lin, M.D., Ph.D. professor of Radiation Oncology, and Adam Grippin, M.D., Ph.D., senior resident in Radiation Oncology.

"This study demonstrates that commercially available mRNA COVID vaccines can train patients' immune systems to eliminate cancer," Grippin said. "When combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors, these vaccines produce powerful antitumor immune responses that are associated with massive improvements in survival for patients with cancer."

A Vermont state lawmaker has resigned over racist and antisemitic chat messages that circulated within the Young Republican political group, another substantial consequence in a scandal that on Friday saw the New York state Young Republicans’ charter revoked.

State senator Samuel Douglass, the only elected official known to have taken part in the leaked group chat exposed by Politico, resigned Friday over his participation.

In one exchange, Douglass replied to a message about a “very obese Indian woman” by saying: “She just didn’t bathe often.” In another, Douglass was said to have described how a Jewish person may have made a procedural error. His wife, Brianna Douglass, also on the chat, responded with an antisemitic remark, Politico reported.

For a man with no formal role in the White House, Jared Kushner last week literally took centre-stage as Donald Trump’s emissary to the Middle East.

As the administration took a victory lap for hammering out a Gaza ceasefire last week, Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, stood in Tel Aviv’s ‘hostages square’, addressing a feverish crowd that had booed the mention of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and later broke into chants of: “Thank You Trump!”

It was a strong diplomatic sentiment for a man whose boss had threatened to unleash “hell” in Gaza. But the soft-spoken heir to his father’s real estate empire has quietly become a key conduit for Trump’s outreach to the Middle East, leveraging his Rolodex of leaders in the region and positioning himself to win a lucrative windfall if the goal of redeveloping Gaza ever comes to fruition.

Now, Kushner, who manages billions of dollars in investments including from Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in his investment company Affinity Partners, sits at the nexus of power in Washington DC.

“Of course there’s an enormous conflict of interest here,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, who described the influence-peddling in the administration as open corruption.

The Metropolitan Police said it is "actively" looking into media reports that Prince Andrew tried to obtain personal information about his accuser Virginia Giuffre through his police protection.

According to the Mail on Sunday, Andrew asked his police protection officer to investigate her just before the newspaper published a photo of Ms Giuffre's first meeting with the prince in February 2011.

The paper alleged that he gave the officer her date of birth and confidential social security number.

Israel has launched air strikes in southern Gaza, accusing Hamas of attacks in a "bold violation of the ceasefire".

A military spokesman said Hamas had carried out "multiple attacks against Israeli forces beyond the yellow line" - which they say is the area Israeli troops have withdrawn to in accordance with phase one of the US-brokered deal.

Hamas said it was committed to the ceasefire and accused Israel of breaking it several times.

It's likely to be a long night — and for many municipalities, long days — to tally election results in Alberta, thanks to the switch this year away from machines in favour of a hand count.

The province banned electronic vote tabulators in legislation passed last year, a change some cities warn will take longer, cost more, and increase the risk of spoiled ballots.

"We have prepared significantly, we have increased the number of voting stations, we have increased the number of election workers," said Calgary chief returning officer Kate Martin.

Calgarians are likely to learn the mayoral results on election night Monday, Oct. 20, but it could take a bit longer to learn the winners of the council and trustee races.

Sam Rivers, a founding member and bassist for the nu metal band Limp Bizkit, died on Saturday at the age of 48, his bandmates said in a social media post.

"Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat," lead singer Fred Durst, guitarist Wes Borland, drummer John Otto and turntable DJ Lethal wrote in a tribute posted on Instagram Saturday evening.

"Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player — he was pure magic. The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound," the message read.

The waters of the north Pacific have had their warmest summer on record, according to BBC analysis of a mysterious marine heatwave that has confounded climate scientists.

Sea surface temperatures between July and September were more than 0.25C above the previous high of 2022 - a big increase across an area roughly ten times the size of the Mediterranean.

While climate change is known to make marine heatwaves more likely, scientists are struggling to explain why the north Pacific has been so hot for so long.

But all this extra heat in the so-called "warm blob" may have the opposite effect in the UK, possibly making a colder start to winter more likely, some researchers believe.