On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Hilbert, the commanding general in charge of joint training exercises between U.S. and Ukrainian troops in Germany, revealed what he believed is "the worst thing the Russians did" that ensured they would struggle to seize control in their invasion of Ukraine.
Specifically, Hilbert argued, the problem is that Russia telegraphed its intentions early — giving Ukraine "eight years to prepare" for the attack.
"Hilbert, the commanding general for the 7th Army Training Command, also said Ukraine has participated in more than a dozen large exercises with U.S. troops in Germany since 2015," reported Greg Norman and Liz Friden. "'The Ukrainian soldiers are motivated, they are professional,' Hilbert added, noting that the U.S. is currently training 50 to 60 Ukrainian soldiers on how to operate M777 howitzer artillery in Grafenwoehr, Germany."
"Hilbert also said the U.S. has trained more than 23,000 members of Ukraine's armed forces from 17 different battalions and 11 different brigades, spending a total of $126 million on this program," said the report. "He added that the U.S. was planning for Ukrainian troops to lead a division-level exercise across the country before over 160 Florida National Guard troops pulled out of Ukraine in February, days before the invasion began."
The invasion of Ukraine was launched on the pretense of Russia providing security to two so-called "independent republics" declared in the east of Ukraine by separatist rebels backed by the Kremlin.
Military experts initially feared that the capital city of Kyiv would fall fairly quickly. However, the Pentagon has claimed Russian troops have been plagued with low morale and face a fierce level of resistance from Ukraine. This has forced them to retreat from Kyiv and to focus on shoring up their position in the east.
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has been informed that he is now the target of a criminal probe related to election interference in the state of Georgia, according to New York Times reporter Danny Hakim.
Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York City, was a central figure in former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In recent weeks, Giuliani has been involved in a dispute with the Fulton Country District Attorney's office over whether he will testify before a special grand jury in its probe of the Trump campaign's efforts to overturn President Joe Biden's win in the Peach State.
Melissa Carone, who served as a "star witness" for attorney Rudy Giuliani in his failed attempts to get President Joe Biden's win in Michigan overturned, is now being sued by a Republican clerk whom she had accused of a wide variety of crimes.
The Detroit Metro Times reports that Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot filed a lawsuit in Macomb County Circuit Court late last week that accused Carone of making repeated defamatory statements about him, including claims that he took, conducted "illegal elections," and took money from "an illegal immigrant to turn in a lottery ticket."
Interestingly, Grot cannot be accused of being insufficiently loyal to former President Donald Trump, as he was one of the Republicans who agreed to serve as a fake presidential elector in Michigan as part of Trump's scheme to stay in power.
The Detroit Metro Times describes the feud between Carone and Grot as "the latest clash between Michigan Republicans who are turning on themselves less than three months before the general election," while also noting that "the lawsuit was filed one day after the Macomb County GOP held two competing county conventions as Republicans squabble over control of the party."
Carone, who appeared besides Giuliani at a hearing in Michigan, was so over-the-top that she ended up going viral and being lampooned on the comedy show "Saturday Night Live" in 2020.
Carone had already been deemed "not credible" by a Michigan judge but that did not stop Giuliani from parading her before the Michigan House hearing.
Giuliani helped to lead the Trump campaign's legal effort to contest the 2020 election, filing lawsuits that purported to expose ballot fraud and staging public hearings in the swing states where Trump lost narrowly.
But when the lawsuits filed by Giuliani and other Trump allies actually reached the courts, they ended up being tossed out by judges -- sometimes in scathing terms.
"The People have spoken," wrote US District Court Judge Linda Parker. "This case represents well the phrase: 'this ship has sailed.'"
Parker said the suit seeking to overturn Biden's victory in Michigan was "stunning in its scope and breathtaking in its reach."
When you hear about the gut microbiome, does it ever make you wonder what tiny creatures are teeming inside your own body? As a microbiologist who studies the microbiomes of plants, animals and people, I’ve watched public interest in gut microbes grow alongside research on their possible dramaticinfluence on human health. In the past several years, microbiome testing techniques used by researchers like me are now available to consumers at home. These personal gut microbiome testing kits claim to tell you what organisms live in your gut and how to improve your gut microbiome using that data.
I became very interested in how these home test kits work, what kind of information they provide and whether they can really help you change your gut microbiome. So I ordered a few kits from Viome, Biohm and Floré, tried them out and sifted through my own microbiome data. Here is what I learned.
Your gut microbiome can be a partner in your health – if you have the right bacteria.
How do gut microbiome kits work?
All gut microbiome kits require you to carefully collect fresh fecal material. You put it in the various tubes provided in the kit and mail the samples back to the company. Several weeks later, you’ll receive a report describing the types of microbes living in your gut and suggestions on how to change your diet or activities to potentially alter your gut microbiome.
What consumers don’t exactly know is how companies generate the microbial profile data from your fecal sample. A typical approach I and other microbiome researchers use is to extract and decode the microbial genetic material from a sample. We use that genetic material to identify what species of microbes are present. The challenge is that this process can be done in many different ways, and there are no widely agreed-upon standards for what is the best method.
Different home gut microbiome test kits can give conflicting results.
For example, microbiome analyses can be done on two types of genetic material, RNA or DNA. If the profile is based on DNA, it can give you a snapshot only of what types of microbes are present, not what microbial genes are active or what activities they are doing in your body. On the other hand, if the profile is based on RNA, it can tell you not only what microbes are present, but also whether they’re playing a role in your digestion or producing metabolites that can reduce gut inflammation, among other functions. Viome generates its profiles by looking at RNA, while the other companies use DNA.
Other data analysis choices, such as how different types of genetic sequences are sorted or which databases are used to identify the microbes, can also affect the level of detail and utility of the final data. Microbiome scientists are usually very careful to point out these nuances when interpreting their own data in scientific papers, but these details are not clearly presented in home microbiome kits.
What I learned about my gut microbiome
Though I used the same fecal sample for each kit, mixed well to ensure uniformity, I was surprised that each of the three products I tried gave me different impressions of my gut microbiome.
Each company gives an overall “score” on how your microbiome compares with what they consider to be “good” or “healthy.” My scores ranged from 39% (not great) to 72% (good). Interestingly, Viome, which infers microbial activity by using RNA, gave the lowest score. It noted that certain microbial activities happening in my gut, such as methane production and digestion efficiency, were not optimal.
I was also surprised by the variation in total microbial diversity each company reported. While there was general agreement in the overall groups of microbes present at the phylum level, a more general biological grouping, there was a huge range of variation at the species level, the most specific grouping. One company reported 527 species of microbes in my microbiome, while another reported 312. One reported only 27.
Organisms like microbes can be classified into groups of relatedness, from highly specific (species) to very general (kingdom).
Perhaps the most surprising most surprising finding was that my gut may harbor a microbe that could (there are many caveats here!) pose a problem for me in the future if I experience certain medical situations. Even though all companies explicitly looked for this microbe in my gut microbiome sample, only two actually found it. While I won’t name the exact microbe to protect my health privacy, I am not too worried about this result because more information, such as full genome sequencing of the microbe, is needed to better understand if this is actually a concerning strain of this microbe. But this finding does point to some surprising variation in results across different testing kits.
Can this data really improve your gut microbiome?
Many microbiome scientists like me would probably argue that the data these kits provide are limited in terms of giving you the power to alter your health. This is partly because gut microbiome science is still a new field with many unanswered questions.
One challenge is that different people can have different proportions of microbes present in their gut. This variation has made it difficult for scientists and health professionals to agree on what type of microbial community makes a gut “healthy.” Some specific species, such as the bacterium C. diff, and some broad groups, like Proteobacteria, are usually considered undesirable in high amounts. But there is no clear consensus on why one microbiome might be better than another.
Even if you did try to improve your gut microbiome based on what your gut test told you, the results might not turn out as you hoped. Probiotics or diet changes can alter the diversity of your gut microbiome and how it functions, but studies often find that each person can have different responses to these interventions, possibly because of their own unique microbiome composition. The personalized ecology of gut microbial communities, combined with genetics, diet and other factors, makes it challenging to prescribe universal solutions.
So why bother getting a gut microbiome test? For me, it was illuminating to learn what microbes I carry around with me each day. When I eat my lunch, go for a run or get stressed out, the microbes in my gut respond to changes in my body. Researchers may not completely understand what those changes mean and how to manage our microbial partners, but getting to know who they are is a great first step.
