The sentence was the maximum Gutierrez-Reed could have received for loading a live round of ammunition into a prop revolver that went off while held by actor Alec Baldwin in 2021. Aside from fatally wounding Hutchins, the live round also injured "Rust" director Joel Souza.

Gutierrez-Reed, who originally pleaded not guilty, was convicted following a two-week trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico in March. She was remanded to custody at the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Facility while awaiting the results of her appeal, which Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer denied. Prosecutors at the time argued that Gutierrez-Reed "was negligent, she was careless, she was thoughtless," adding that she seemed more “worried about her career” than about those directly impacted by the tragic shooting. 

According to a report from the New York Times, Judge Sommer's sentencing followed the release of summaries of phone calls Gutierrez-Reed made from the detention facility, post-conviction. The armorer in the calls referred to jurors in her criminal case as “idiots,” and said that Sommer was on a "power trip." She also gratuitously claimed that the judge was "getting paid off." In another call, Gutierrez-Reed stated that she was attempting to get her attorney's paralegal to connect with Hutchins' family to speak on her behalf at the sentencing. Additionally, she claimed that she wanted prosecutors to “put Alec Baldwin in jail.”

“Your honor, when I took on ‘Rust,’ I was young and I was naïve, but I took my job as seriously as I knew how to,” Gutierrez-Reed, now 26, said while reading a statement before the court on Monday. “Despite not having proper time, resources and staffing when things got tough I just did my best to handle it.

“The jury has found me in part at fault for this God-awful tragedy but that doesn’t make me a monster, that makes me human," she also said. 

Sommer, however, argued that Gutierrez-Reed had demonstrated little remorse for her actions. “You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon,” the judge said, per Variety. “But for you, Ms. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner, and a little boy would have his mother.”

“I did not hear you take accountability,” Sommer said, as noted by IndieWire. The outlet also reported that the armorer had conceded to sometimes neglecting to shake dummy rounds to confirm that they were not live. “Every time a gun was loaded with ‘dummy’ rounds, it was a game of Russian roulette,” lead prosecutor  Kari T. Morrissey wrote in a court filing prior to sentencing, per the NYT report. 

“It was my sincere hope during this process that there would be some moment when Ms. Gutierrez took responsibility, expressed some level of remorse that was genuine, and that moment has never come,” the attorney said during Monday's hearing. 

Gutierrez-Reed's legal team refuted the phone calls, painting them as evidence of her “frustration at the system,” and argued that they did not take away from the armorer's “heartbreak and extreme sadness over what occurred on the ‘Rust’ set.”

Ahead of the sentencing, Sommer heard statements from Hutchins' friends and family and Souza, per Rolling Stone. Hutchins' mother, in a pre-recorded video from where she lives in Ukraine, said, “The day of her death ruined my entire life. It’s heart-wrenching to see her child grow without his mother.”

“What I want is simply not possible," Souza said in his statement. "I want that none of this ever happened, that everyone is OK, that lives weren’t destroyed. One moment, the world made sense. The next moment, it didn’t, and it still doesn’t, and I don’t know if it ever will again."

Baldwin has separately pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and has a trial set to be underway in July; however, as the NYT noted, a judge is currently considering a defense motion to dismiss the actor's indictment. 

Taking to the stage to join Reneé Rapp’s set with a performance of her 2010 hit song, "Tik Tok," Kesha made a notable amendment to the opening lyrics. After being welcomed to the stage by Rapp, Kesha sang, "Wake up in the morning like, f**k P. Diddy!" A video posted online by gossip blogger Perez Hilton shows Kesha and Rapp holding up their middle fingers while singing the line. 

New lyrics! 💣 Via @1027kiisfm. #Coachella #Kesha #Diddy pic.twitter.com/0XOqC1RKon

— Perez (@ThePerezHilton) April 15, 2024

When Kesha debuted the song nearly 15 years ago, the original opening said, “Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy," with the billionaire hip-hop artist featuring on the track with a response to the lyrics: “Hey, what’s up, girl?” 

Kesha's lyrics swap follows the litany of lawsuits aimed at Sean "Diddy" Combs, which allege sex trafficking and sexual assault. A federal investigation prompted a raid of the mogul's estates last month. Diddy's legal woes stemmed from a suit filed by his ex-partner and singer, Casandra Ventura — better known as Cassie — over what she claimed had been a physically and sexually abusive relationship. 

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Kesha had previously changed the lyrics to reflect Ventura's settlement with Diddy in November of 2023. During a Los Angeles stop on her Only Love tour, a day after Ventura and Diddy settled, Kesha changed the opening line to, “Wake up in the morning feeling just like me.” 

The researchers used data from people who were enrolled in a large population-based study between 2013 and 2019. In addition to reporting on their oral health, participants were also asked questions about their diet, weight and waist circumference – the size of their waistline.

Analysis of the data showed no relationship between chewing gum and oral health.

However, out of the of 15,178 participants in the study, 2.4% reported to chew gum on a regular basis. Gum chewers appeared to have a healthier diet, including a lower intake of added sugars compared to those who don't chew gum.

So, should we all be rushing out to buy gum to chew ourselves to better health?

Chewing away at obesity?

The answer is no and here's the reason why.

The study doesn't actually say that chewing gum leads to better dietary choices. All the data tells us is that some of the participants who chew gum also happen to consume fewer refined sugars and have a healthier diet. The research does not find any causality between chewing gum and improved health.

There could be a number of reasons why the researchers found this relationship. For example, it might be that people who try and have a healthy diet might also be keen to keep their teeth healthy and follow the widespread advice that chewing sugar free gum is good for teeth. Or, it might simply be that they like to have fresh breath. Your guess is as good as mine.

In the study, however, gum chewers did not eat less, were no less likely to be overweight or did not have a slimmer waistline. So, no relationship was found between the amount of food consumed, weight and whether or not people chewed gum.

Fixes for long-term health

The overconsumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks, foods and processed foods is, unfortunately, very common.
Increased consumption of sugar has led to a sharp rise in the number of people who are overweight or obese and those who have type 2 diabetes.

In addition to the health risks associated with these conditions – and the cost of treating them – they can have a significant impact on quality of life.

The standard medical advice for obesity is to get plenty of exercise and maintain a healthy diet – especially one low in saturated fats, refined carbohydrates and sugar.

This "eat less, move more" approach to obesity treatment has been criticised for being simplistic, overlooking the social and biological factors that can contribute to weight problems. Even so, even this most basic advice – to eat a healthy diet and increase exercise – proves difficult for many.

As anyone who's attempted to kick a habit or to stick to a new year's resolution past January will know, changes to our lifestyle, including diet, are often tough to implement and even trickier to maintain. Seemingly easy, accessible options for weight control like chewing gum, or other social media fads like drinking apple cider vinegar or olive oil, are always welcome and newsworthy, then.

Easy, accessible weight loss 'fixes' are always newsworthy.

In order to claim that chewing gum affects the way we eat – healthier food choices and consumption of less sugary foods – would require a trial where a group of participants are instructed to chew gum and have their food choices and intake compared to another non-gum chewing group.

These studies have actually been conducted, but the reason chewing gum hasn't been included in any health and nutritional advice is that the results of these studies did not provide strong evidence that chewing gum affects what and how much we eat.

It's not the first time chewing gum has been reported to aid weight loss.

So, I am afraid, chewing gum won't help you make the right choices when it comes to food. It's back to us making the difficult decisions, and governments and the food industry promoting healthy food choices; and making sure that healthy food is affordable to us all.

Sandra Sunram-Lea, Professor in Biological Psychology, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

According to a report last week by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, more than half of the 1,000 reefs analyzed (out of more than 2,900 in total) had either high, very high or extremely high levels of bleaching. Only a quarter were relatively unaffected. Perhaps most ominously, the bleaching in many regions stretched as far down as 18 meters (roughly 60 feet). Overall it is the fifth mass bleaching event to impact the reef in eight years.

“I feel devastated,” Dr Selina Ward, a marine biologist and former academic director of the University of Queensland’s Heron Island Research Station, told The Guardian. “I’ve been working on the reef since 1992 but this [event], I’m really struggling with.”

The main culprit behind coral bleaching is rising ocean temperatures. Although bleached coral is not the same thing as dead coral, the fact that it is bleached indicates that it is unhealthy and more vulnerable to death. Unfortunately for the reef, Earth's temperature continues to increase because humans keep burning fossil fuels, which contribute to global heating and climate change, which make bleaching events a regular occurrence.

“What are we doing to stop the reef from being lost?” Ward said. “We cannot expect to save the Great Barrier Reef and be opening new fossil fuel developments. It’s time to act and there are no more excuses.”

As PBS reported, prosecutors on Monday singled out Truth Social posts that called Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels — both key prosecution witnesses —“two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!” Prosecutors are asking Merchan to not only fine the former president but order him to take down the posts.

“The defendant has demonstrated his willingness to flout the order. He’s attacked witnesses in the case,” said prosecutor Christopher Conroy, who filed the official motion. While he read the posts, reporters with CNN observed Trump leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

Trump's lawyers argued that the posts did not violate the gag order, as they were responses to the witnesses' own statements. "It’s not as if [former] President Trump is going off and targeting individuals," argued Trump attorney Todd Blanche. "He’s responding to salacious repeated attacks by these witnesses."

Merchan will hold a hearing next Tuesday on whether or not to sanction Trump for the posts on his social network. Trump's attorneys have until Friday to file opposing arguments.

Christy Carlson Romano, known for lending her voice to the titular role on "Kim Possible" and starring alongside Shia LaBeouf in "Even Stevens," acknowledged on this week's podcast episode of "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown" about being approached by ID to appear in a documentary about children's television. "I've chosen not to speak about this with anybody, including ID, who originally came to me looking to see if I'd be interested in a doc like this," Romano said. "I don't know if it was this doc ['Quiet on Set']. But I was approached when I first started advocating three years ago for my own YouTube channel with my own experiences that I did in different and separate episodes, so to speak. I started to be approached by many reality-show-type producers, and they were like, 'Hey, how do we do this?' and I would combat them with saying, 'Hey, guys, the only way we would do this is if we talk about how do we fix it?'

"I felt like there's no hope being inserted into the narrative," Romano continued. "These are people who don't belong to our community. These are outsiders. . . . These are trauma tourists."

Speaking about "Quiet on Set" and her decision to not watch the series, Romano said, "I think that it's extremely triggering. I've made a choice for several reasons to opt out of watching that imagery. I know a lot of the details, I know a lot of the folks involved."

The 21-year-old star player is at the center of a maelstrom of hate and internet trolling that began last year. When Reese led her team to a national championship against Clark, an interaction that some characterized as "trash-talking" went viral, prompting attacks from basketball fans, commentators and even sports journalists. 

During a post-game press conference last week following LSU's loss to Iowa in a highly-anticipated rematch, Reese showed vulnerability and cried, opening up about the exchange with Clark and telling reporters that she's "been through so much." 

"I’ve seen so much," she continued. I’ve been attacked so many times, death threats. I’ve been sexualized. I’ve been threatened ... I’ve been so many things, and I’ve stood strong every single time.”

So why was the leader of 2023's national championship team, an All-American player and this year's Southern Conference Player of the Year, a target of unyielding hate, sexualization and racism? Here's the breakdown. 

Last year's championship game

2023's NCAA women’s basketball final game ended with LSU snagging the win with a score of 102 points to Iowa's 85. During the game, Reese taunted Clark by waving her hands in front of her own face, a nod to the "you can't see me" gesture created by rapper Tony Yayo and then popularized by WWE star John Cena. 

ANGEL REESE HIT CAITLIN CLARK WITH THE "YOU CAN'T SEE ME" 👀 pic.twitter.com/Zj3mqIzkk9

— ESPN (@espn) April 2, 2023

Both Clark and Reese used the gesture during last year's March Madness. Clark waved a hand in front of her face when Iowa beat Louisville, allowing them to enter the Final Four. Clark, who is white, was not criticized by fans and commentators, though. She actually received a nod from Cena himself on social media. Cena congratulated Clark for a historic win and said, "Even if they could see you…they couldn’t guard you!"

Even if they could see you…they couldn’t guard you!

Congrats on the historic performance @CaitlinClark22 and to @IowaWBB on advancing to the Final Four! @MarchMadnessWBB #WFinalFour https://t.co/QvpYDTESwb

— John Cena (@JohnCena) March 28, 2023

However, the same sentiment was not shared when Reese, who is Black, made the gesture. Reese also pointed to her ring finger in front of Clark to insinuate that she and LSU would be taking home the championship, which they did. This gesture is one male basketball stars, including Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, have done in championship games. 

The fallout

The response to Reese's gesture was uncontrollable and devolved into insidious racism.She was called an "a "f—king idiot" by former MSNBC journalist Keith Olbermann, while CBS Sports anchor Danny Kanell called the move "classless."

The Los Angeles Times ran a story in which columnist Ben Bolch referred to LSU players as “dirty debutantes” and “villains.” The racist language was later edited from the article and the LA Times said that the story "did not meet its standards," NPR reported.

Even First Lady Jill Biden showed some favoritism to Iowa after LSU's win. In a statement, Biden said, "I know we'll have the champions come to the White House, we always do, so we hope LSU will come. But, you know, I'm going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come too, because they played such a good game."

As the online hate continued to spiral, AI-generated, deepfake pornography featuring the player began to appear online. Reese took to X to address the photos saying, "Creating fake AI pictures of me is crazy and weird AF."

Reese's response and support from teammates 

Last year, immediately after the interaction, Reese told ESPN that she was waiting to do the gesture. "Caitlin Clark is a hell of a player for sure, but I don't take disrespect lightly," she said.

Reese insituated that Clark had disrespected members of her team and South Carolina players. "I wanted to pick her pocket," Reese continued. "But I had a moment at the end of the game. . . I was just in my bag, in my moment."

Following the win, Reese further discussed the interaction on social media. 

"I don't fit in the box that you all want me to be in," Reese wrote. "I'm too hood, I'm too ghetto. You told me that all year. But when other people do it, y'all don't say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me, that want to speak up on what they believe in. It's unapologetically you. It was bigger than me tonight."

Clark said that she had "no idea" that Reese was taunting her. She was "just trying to get to the handshake line and shake hands and be grateful that my team was in that position."

This year, LSU was knocked out of the March Madness competition by Iowa, in a tense game that ESPN said drew in an audience of 12.3 million views making it the “most-watched college basketball game EVER on ESPN platforms.” 

In a post-game conference, NBC News reported that Reese shared how the racism, sexism and sexualization in the past year had affected her. "All this has happened since I won the national championship," Reese said. And it sucks, but I still wouldn’t change anything, and I would still sit here and say I’m unapologetically me. I’m going to always leave that mark and be who I am and stand on that.”

Flau’jae Johnson, one of Reese's teammates, said: "I know the real Angel Reese, and the person I see every day is a strong person, is a caring, loving person. But the crown she wears is heavy.”

Fellow teammate Hailey Van Lith also said racism was the reason for the harsh and unrelenting criticism at Reese.“People speak hate into her life," Van Lith said. "I’ve never seen people wish bad things on someone as much as her, and it does not affect her. She comes to practice every day. She lives her life every day."

Van Lith continued, "She lives how she wants to live, and she don’t let nobody change that. That’s the key to life right there. Y’all do not get to her. Let me say it again. Y’all do not get to Angel Reese. So you might want to throw the towel in because you’re wasting your energy.”

"Well, Jake, he appeared to be asleep," the Times' Maggier Haberman said in an interview Monday afternoon with CNN's Jake Tapper. "Routinely his head would fall down," Haberman continued. "He didn't pay attention to a note that this lawyer, Todd Blance, passed him. His jaw kept falling on his chest and his mouth kept going slack."

"Sometimes people fall asleep during court proceedings, but it's notable, given the intensity of this morning," Haberman added.

At other times, Trump was more animated, whispering to his legal team and reacting to the proceedings with scornful expressions. When Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump's hush money trial, warned Trump that he could be thrown in jail for disrupting the trial, the Republican candidate signaled that he understood.

This isn't the first time Trump might have dozed off during a trial, Haberman told Tapper. "There were other moments in other trials like in the E. Jean Carroll trial, which was around the corner in January, when he appeared very still and seemed he might be sleeping but then he would move," she said.

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 felony counts in connection to the falsification of business records to conceal $130,000 in hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, a payment made to buy her silence ahead of the 2016 election. Several issues are being dealt with as the trial begins, including routine procedures like jury selection, as well as whether or not Trump should be punished for violating a gag order with his angry Truth Social posts.

Here are two immediate ways the judge will be tested: the questions of 1) who will truly be the boss in the courtroom; and 2) whether Trump will find a juror willing to vote to acquit him no matter how strong the evidence is regarding his attempted election interference.

As to the first question, trials often involve lawyers battling with judges for control of the courtroom. A trial lawyer wants the jury looking to him or her as the one in charge, the one to rely upon.

This case is different. The war will be between the judge and Donald Trump. From the get-go, the former president will probe for weakness. He wants the jury looking at him.

We can expect an audible running commentary from Trump, all day every day. (If he doesn't keep dozing off.) You can easily imagine the types of things he’ll say with the jury pool present. 

“Witch hunt!”

“I'm only on trial because a Democrat prosecutor wants me off the campaign trail.” 

“None of us should be here today.”

“You can see this judge is a Trump-hater. His daughter works for Democrats, and so does he.”

These attacks on the court and the process will escalate until they are stopped. Judge Merchan has a plan, rest assured. He understands that Trump will test him, hoping to bait him into overreaction. 

Trump figures he wins either way — judicial inaction allows him to send his messages to the jury. Being treated firmly allows him to keep posturing as a victim for his voters. The court is between the rock of wielding firm control and the hard place of seeking to mute Trump without amplifying his claims of martyrdom.

Like any good lawyer, Merchan must patiently build his case. He’ll start with warnings. When they fail, he must gradually ratchet up the consequences. 

Journalists will eagerly report every one of Trump’s violations of courtroom decorum. Eventually, the sensible majority of Americans will understand that Merchan has no choice but to increase sanctions to avoid a mockery of justice.

Merchan can levy financial fines against Trump, and even against his lawyers if, after being warned, they fail to quiet him. Such fines can continue to multiply until they hurt. 

If Trump continues to misbehave, Merchan can threaten to remove him from the courtroom to a separate room with a video feed and one of his lawyers present. This judge is highly experienced, and will understand that for justice to occur, the jury must see that he, not Trump, is master of the courtroom.

The second way in which Merchan’s dexterity will be tried involves jury selection. As trial lawyers know, it can be make-or-break between winning and losing. For Trump, the best route to winning is getting a clandestine Trump cultist placed on the jury, ready and willing to hang it. 

The legal test to qualify for jury duty is whether one can make fair-minded determinations based solely on the evidence presented in court. The judge’s task will be to separate impartial-juror wheat from sleeper-cell chaff. 

The process involves potential jurors being sworn, with the judge and the lawyers exploring what they know of the case and whether they’re willing to put aside preconceptions, opinions and bias. (Meanwhile, lawyers use leading questions to educate the entire jury pool  about their theory of the case.)

Jurors will answer a questionnaire, asking questions ranging from "Have you ever served on a jury before?" to "Have you ever attended a rally or campaign event for Donald Trump . . . or for any anti-Trump group or organization?" The judge will excuse citizens who say they cannot be fair, or if, despite asserting fairness, their answers strongly imply the opposite. 

For prospective jurors who remain, it’s the in-person follow-up questions that determine who is empaneled and who will be excused. The parties each get 10 “peremptory challenges” – the right to dismiss potential jurors just because lawyers’ experience and antennae tell them that the person might be leaning against their side. 

Those “peremptory challenges” can be spent quickly. Before using them, lawyers often ask the judge to excuse a prospective juror “for cause” when they sense someone leans the other way, asserting that the juror cannot be impartial. During this process, Merchan will face difficult decisions.

Here's how it might play out — hypothetically, of course:

Prosecutor to potential juror: What do you know about the case?

Juror: Didn’t Trump have some kind of affair?

Prosecutor: Maybe. What would you think about that?

Juror: No big deal.

Prosecutor: Even if he’s a candidate for president?

Juror: Doesn’t matter.

Prosecutor: What if, just before the election, he paid off his sex partner to keep her quiet?

Juror: That’s not illegal, is it?

Prosecutor: What if he won the election, and then falsified his business records to keep the payments secret?

Juror: Doesn’t sound too serious. But if the judge told me that’s a crime, I’d try to follow the law. . .  I mean, yeah, I'd follow the law.

To save a peremptory challenge, the prosecutor might ask the judge to remove that potential juror for expressing doubt about his ability to follow the law. And from the prosecution’s perspective, the juror seemed disinclined to credit the seriousness of Trump falsifying business records to cover up his 2016 election interference. 

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At the same time, Merchan knows that if he excuses that juror and then Trump is convicted, Trump could later claim on appeal that his right to a fair trial had been prejudiced. But the judge also knows that trial courts have broad discretion in such matters and their decisions are rarely reversed.

Now take this possible scenario:

Trump lawyer: Juror no. 3, you said you watch MSNBC, and follow Laurence Tribe on Twitter, correct?

Juror: Yes, mainly to find out what liberals are saying. I judge for myself.

Lawyer: Can you be fair to my client?

Juror: Absolutely.

Lawyer: How can we be assured of that?

Juror: I watch "Law and Order.”

Trump’s lawyer asks the judge to excuse the person on grounds of political bias. The prosecutor disagrees: The juror said she could be fair. The judge buys that; afterall, jury selection has gone on for days on end, and he wants to start the trial. If Trump’s lawyers have a peremptory challenge left, of course, they can strike that juror anyway.

Judge Merchan has tried hundreds of cases and is sure-footed. But he’ll definitely earn his salary this time. 

“I'm going to be in Paris in May, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, isn't she going to be in Paris in May?’” Garten said. “At 3:00 in the morning, I was online, seeing if I could get two good tickets, and I did.” She confirmed that she is indeed going to go see the Eras Tour in Paris, not with her husband Jeffrey Garten, but instead with “a very good friend” who is local to the area.

“Now I'm trying to figure out what I can wear that's sparkly,” Garten continued, speaking about her outfit for the concert.

Garten said she is “totally a fan” of Swift and first met the pop star a decade ago. “I met Taylor actually when Food Network Magazine asked rock stars 10 years ago who their favorite Food Network people were, and Taylor chose me,” Garten recalled. “So she came for a photo shoot for the day, and then we saw each other for a while afterwards. She invited me to lunch and she came back for lunch one day in East Hampton. I just so admire her.”

Garten also saw Swift during her 1989 world tour in support of the singer’s studio album of the same name: “She invited us to come to the party afterwards, and we just had an incredibly wonderful time.”

Swift is also a huge fan of Garten. In October 2022, Swift celebrated the 20th anniversary of Garten's “Barefoot Contessa.” Swift hailed Garten as a “magnificent woman” who “changed my perspective on cooking and reframed it as something relaxing.”

“There is no agenda here,”  Merchan said Monday, The New York Times reported. “We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.”

Trump's lawyers had sought a recusal on the grounds that Merchan's daughter works for a Authentic, a firm that has done business with Democrats, including the Biden campaign.

“Authentic and Your Honor’s daughter are making money by supporting the creation and dissemination of campaign advocacy for President Trump’s opponent, political rivals, and the Democrat party,” Trump's lawyers argued in the rejected motion, as The Hill noted. A similar motion was rejected last year, part of a months-long campaign to delay Trump's election interference trial.

Merchan said Monday that the latest Trump motion relied on “a series of references, innuendos and unsupported speculation.” His comment came after a meeting with the state ethics advisory committee, which determined that his daughter’s employment and political donations did not provide adequate reason for him to step aside.

Merchan's decision to stay on the case is a tough if predictable blow to the Trump team, which had been pursuing a strategy to throw as much sand in the gears as possible. With jury selection beginning Monday, that strategy can be said to have failed.

Over the weekend, Trump fumed about his predicament on Truth Social, accusing "a totally conflicted Judge, a Corrupt Prosecutor, a Legal System in CHAOS, a State being overrun by violent crime and corruption, and crooked Joe Biden's henchmen" of rigging the system against him.

The prosecuting team, led by Manhattan District Attorney Adam Bragg, has filed 34 felony charges against Trump, accusing him of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, buying her silence on the eve of the 2016 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Humans understandably struggle considerably more with consistent fasting than a subset of the rat population whose diet is entirely overseen by caretakers in lab coats, but the bulletin pointed to research that suggests “the circadian rhythm fasting approach, where meals are restricted to an eight to 10-hour period of the daytime, is effective” for many people, according to metabolic expert Dr. Deborah Wexler, Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Diabetes Center and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. 

Especially for people at risk for diabetes, there is some solid scientific evidence that suggests circadian rhythm fasting, when combined with a healthy diet, can be an effective approach to weight loss and can help improve several cardiometabolic health measures, such as blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels (though scientists are still debating whether it actually provides different outcomes than simply reducing one’s calorie intake). 

But then, at a late March American Heart Association conference, a new poster was presented that actually linked intermittent fasting to cardiac death. 

Soon thereafter, the organization published a release about the research with the headline “8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death,” which quickly garnered a lot of attention online. As the study’s virality increased, and as mainstream outlets began running headlines of their own like “Intermittent fasting may raise the risk of cardiovascular death” and “Shocking dangers of intermittent fasting diet revealed,” the nuance of its actual contents was flattened, including some crucial limitations of the study — which is to say, adherents of the diet shouldn’t worry just yet. 

What is intermittent fasting and why is it so popular? 

Fasting to lose weight isn’t a novel approach, but the idea of regimented, intermittent fasting first gained mainstream popularity after the 2012 broadcast of “Eat Fast, Live Longer,” a television documentary by BBC broadcast journalist Dr. Michael Mosley. This was quickly followed by the best-selling books “The 5:2 Diet,” which recommends patients eat normally five days a week and in a more intense calorie-deficit the other two days, and “The Obesity Code,” which has the subtitle: “Why Intermittent Fasting Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight.” 

“IF makes intuitive sense,” the Harvard Health bulletin read. “The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don't use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.”

It continues: “Between meals, as long as we don't snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.” 

However, Victor Wenze Zhong, one of the senior authors of the intermittent fasting study presented at the American Heart Association conference, remarked that the “long-term effects of time-restricted eating, including risk of death from any cause or cardiovascular disease, are unknown.”

“We were surprised to find that people who followed an 8-hour, time-restricted eating schedule were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease,” Zhong said in a statement to the American Heart Association. “Even though this type of diet has been popular due to its potential short-term benefits, our research clearly shows that, compared with a typical eating time range of 12 [to]16 hours per day, a shorter eating duration was not associated with living longer.”

How was the study conducted? 

In “Association of 8-Hour Time-Restricted Eating with All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality,” researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Northwestern University, Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Wuhan University began with a hypothesis: Eight-hour time-restricted eating, or consuming one’s daily calories across a span of just eight hours, would be associated with a lower-risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality. 

To assess the long-term health impact of intermittent fasting, researchers reviewed information about dietary patterns for participants in the annual 2003-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) in comparison to data about people who died in the U.S., from 2003 through December 2019, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Death Index database.

What were the findings? 

The analysis found a few key pieces of information that seemed antithetical to prior research about intermittent fasting. According to their data, people who followed a pattern of eating all their food across less than eight hours per day had a 91% higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease. The increased risk of cardiovascular death was also seen in people living with heart disease or cancer and, among people with existing cardiovascular disease, an eating duration of no less than 8 but less than 10 hours per day “was also associated with a 66% higher risk of death from heart disease or stroke.”

“We were surprised to find that people who followed an 8-hour, time-restricted eating schedule were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease,” Zhong told the American Heart Association. “Even though this type of diet has been popular due to its potential short-term benefits, our research clearly shows that, compared with a typical eating time range of 12 [to]16 hours per day, a shorter eating duration was not associated with living longer.” 

In the end, the researchers concluded that time-restricted eating did not reduce the overall risk of death from any cause.

What are the study’s limitations? 

The study had some key limitations, which weren’t really reflected in the headlines about its bombastic findings, namely that this analysis has yet to be peer reviewed or published in full (and, as pointed out by the British Heart Federation, includes different numbers in the study summary and press release). The observational study also relied on self-reported dietary information, which may include errors or distortions, and it’s unclear whether the subjects continued time-restricted eating beyond the two days they reported. 

Additionally, factors that may play a role in health — such as activity level, tobacco and drug use, or socioeconomic status — were not included in the analysis. 

“Overall, this study suggests that time-restricted eating may have short-term benefits but long-term adverse effects. When the study is presented in its entirety, it will be interesting and helpful to learn more of the details of the analysis,” Dr. Christopher D. Gardner, the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University in Stanford, California, told the American Heart Association. 

“One of those details involves the nutrient quality of the diets typical of the different subsets of participants. Without this information, it cannot be determined if nutrient density might be an alternate explanation to the findings that currently focus on the window of time for eating. Second, it needs to be emphasized that categorization into the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake,” he said.

“It will also be critical to see a comparison of demographics and baseline characteristics across the groups that were classified into the different time-restricted eating windows – for example, was the group with the shortest time-restricted eating window unique compared to people who followed other eating schedules, in terms of weight, stress, traditional cardiometabolic risk factors or other factors associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes?” Gardner asked. “This additional information will help to better understand the potential independent contribution of the short time-restricted eating pattern reported in this interesting and provocative abstract.”

What now? 

The researchers will continue working on their full analysis to prepare it for peer-review. In the meantime, senior researcher Victor Wenze Zhong has a message for patients concerned about their health. 

“It’s crucial for patients, particularly those with existing heart conditions or cancer, to be aware of the association between an 8-hour eating window and increased risk of cardiovascular death,” Zhong told the American Heart Association. “Our study’s findings encourage a more cautious, personalized approach to dietary recommendations, ensuring that they are aligned with an individual’s health status and the latest scientific evidence.” 

He continued: “Although the study identified an association between an 8-hour eating window and cardiovascular death, this does not mean that time-restricted eating caused cardiovascular death.”

"I think it's just something I always had in the back of my mind. 'Why is it like this?'" Beletsky asked in a recent Zoom interview. "I knew it couldn't be because of people's innate potential. It had to be something more structural."

ABC's landmark airing of "Roots" piqued that nagging feeling, too. A rerun that Beletsky watched when she was younger helped her begin to piece together how her father might walk differently through the world than either she or her mother did.

America's shared history is comprised of countless personal histories, with some puzzle pieces hidden or reshaped along the way. Some lost parts would remain forgotten if it were up to far too many people. Those require some rebuilding through fabrication along with the will to fill in the gaps left unquestioned in often told stories.

This was Beletsky's opportunity and challenge with "Manhunt," the Apple TV+ thriller exploring the search to bring John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) to justice after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln (Hamish Linklater).

Instead of recreating the nearly two-week cavalry chase meticulously described in James L. Swanson's bestseller, "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer," Beletsky created an action thriller that cast Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) as both the lead investigator and a man struggling to maintain his close friend's political legacy.

Beletsky's work in TV, including "Friday Night Lights" and "Fargo," enabled her to see the potential in introducing voices to the story that aren't typically represented yet help explain the consequences of what she described as America's "Sliding Doors" moment.

"It's this huge 'what if' for our culture," she said. "If he had lived, what would our society be like today?"

"Manhunt" dispenses with the details of what most Americans learn as part of a basic history class, but here is a refresher nevertheless: Almost 159 years ago to this day, on April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife Mary attended a production of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

As the Lincolns watched the onstage action, Booth quietly snuck into their booth and shot the president in the back of the head. Lincoln died a few hours later. Booth escaped, setting off a 12-day pursuit that ended with him trapped inside a Virginia tobacco farmer's barn in Virginia, where he was fatally shot.

The drama's penultimate episode, "Useless," depicts that ending in tandem with a precipitous decline in Stanton's health as the stress of the hunt becomes too much for a man with chronic asthma to pit himself against. The hour's title is drawn from Booth's reported last words: "Useless, useless, useless," he is said to have mumbled while staring at his hands.

Building a narrative connection between that moment and Booth's motivation afforded Beletsky to compose a morality-defining monologue for Boyle to deliver, one which also captures his arrogance and smallness.

That much is to be expected from any historic dramatization. Beletsky, however, was acutely aware of how closely this point in American history is observed — and to no small extent mythologized and sanitized.

"Manhunt" lingered in development hell for around 20 years before she took on the project. At one point, Harrison Ford was supposed to star in a movie adaptation of the book. From the start, Beletsky said, "I was looking to do something that went beyond what the show is on its surface."

First, she established what she wasn't going to do, which was to make Booth the protagonist. "I think that is what a lot of people tried before me," Beletsky observed, but she didn't want to glorify his white supremacy.

Reading further into history made Stanton a better choice as a hero. Beletsky realized that in the hours between the assassination and Johnson being sworn in the next day, the weight of everything fell on Stanton's shoulders, from establishing the investigation's logistics to protecting Lincoln's political mandate. "He was a de facto president for about 12 hours, and that really fascinated me as a dramatic situation," she said, along with the chance to treat a broadly known historic event as a pre-forensics crime thriller.

"This is a true crime take on American history, and I think that is what makes it accessible for a big studio to take on a project like this," Beletsky added. "I could bring an audience that wasn't just there to learn the history but is there because they like a murder mystery. They just happen to be seeing a show that takes place in the 19th century."

Most people know the high-level details about Lincoln's assassination. Beletsky, herself, admitted that she wasn't aware until she started working on the story that Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered five days before Booth assassinated Lincoln. "I thought of Lincoln as a two-term president, but the inauguration was like a month before the assassination," she said. "We basically lost his second term, and we lost the mandate that he had by winning the war."

"It was just a huge loss for our society and for our culture," Beletsky continued. "Part of what I wanted to look at and explore with the show is: How did that affect our democracy, and how did that affect our society and our culture today?"

The answer is, in a word, Reconstruction — rather, the fact that Lincoln's death ensured it would fail before its full promise would be realized. But that wasn't a story Beletsky could easily sell to a studio; besides Henry Louis Gates, Jr. had already spearheaded a concise PBS documentary series a few years ago.

Instead, Beletsky worked backward from the trial transcripts of Booth's collaborators — another surprise for her, she said — and, in doing so, found testimony from free or former enslaved Black people that she used to create characters who could speak for them.

"There were about 10 witnesses for the prosecution in the trial who, until now, have really been left in the shadows," Beletsky recalled. "It was a thrill for me to find them. It wasn't like Black history was something that I had to work very hard to intertwine in the story. It's a part of American history, and it's a part of the story."

One major character in "Manhunt," Mary Simms (Lovie Simone), is based on a real person who once worked for Samuel Mudd (Matt Walsh), the physician who treated Booth's broken leg while he was on the run. Beletsky sustained critiques for presenting Mary as having been present when Booth was at Mudd's when, according to documented history, she hadn't worked for Mudd for some time.

That is the danger in dealing with a part of history that has "a lot of super fans who love a lot of attention to detail and have that detail memorized," Beletsky admitted. "But all the experts I've talked to are so excited about it because they understand what I'm doing isn't a Ken Burns documentary."

Besides, Beletsky pointed out, a pair of Black girls named Louise and Letty, who were around 11 and 13 years old, were working for Mudd at the time of Lincoln's assassination. Since they didn't testify at the trial, Beletsky employed dramatic license to fill in the blanks through Mary, through whom she also dramatized what it was like for a newly freed person to have received a land grant from the government, only to have the country's new president rescind it to pacify white southern landowners.

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"We know more about Booth's horse than we know about Mary Simms in the historic record," Beletsky observed. "So that sort of tells you everything right there."

She added: "That's kind of why it's hard to hear sometimes when some of the feedback on the show is 'Oh, I wish she had made it as a movie,' or 'I wish she had made it as one guy chasing another guy' . . . Because it feels like those people are saying, 'Well, we wish that you left these other people out.' And part of my whole point in telling this is that I think stories after the Civil War are few and far between."

New episodes of "Manhunt" stream Fridays on Apple TV+.

That was Judge Juan Merchan's warning to the Republican candidate on Monday, NBC News reported, as jury selection continues in a case where prosecutors allege Trump conspired to falsify business records, covering up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election.

As NBC News noted, the warning is a standard reminder for criminal defendants. But it is the first time the warning has ever been delivered to a former U.S. president.

Katie Phang, a legal analyst with MSNBC, reported that Trump acknowledged his right and responsibility to attend the trial in an exchange with Merchan (who he has repeatedly attacked on Truth Social). Trump also promised to behave himself.

"If you disrupt the proceedings, you can be excluded from the courtroom and committed to jail based on your conduct and the trial will continue on in your absence," Merchan told Trump, per a transcript that Phang posted on X. "If you do not show up, there will be an arrest," the judge continued. "Do you understand?"

"I do," Trump responded.

One of the investors, Jerry Dean McLain, bought up hundreds of shares collectively worth $25,000. In the last two weeks, he's lost half of that money. But he is putting his trust in Trump. “I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”

Many users of Truth Social, taking the former president's lead, migrated there from Twitter, now X, after the former president accused the platform of silencing him. Being an investor signals additional commitment to Trump and his brand.

"Truth Social has created a free-speech beachhead against Big Tech for a fraction of the start-up and operating costs and the legacy tech corporations incurred, while having no debt, more than $200 million in the bank, and the support of hundreds and thousands of retail investors who fervently believe in your mission," said Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media & Technology Group, an umbrella corporation that controls Truth Social.

Their loyalty may be put to the test as Truth Social continues to hemorrhage money. The company lost $3.5 million since its public debut last month. Trump Media has largely served to enrich its chief executives with generous salaries and bonuses worth millions, even as it lost $58 million last year after generating just $4 million in revenue. And even if Truth Social can claim a devoted following, that following remains tiny compared to the traffic on other platforms.

For now, some investors, like Florida interior designer Toff Schlanger, are willing to dismiss their loses as a product of "stock manipulation" from an "organized effort" to discredit the company by an anti-Trump deep state. At the same time, others have acknowledged the financial losses on Truth Social itself, with one user admonishing Trump: "Come on DJT, every time I buy more, the price drops more."