Rep. Crenshaw: Jon Ossoff is 'terrible idea' for America

Perdue and Loeffler campaign surrogate Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Tex., weighs in on Georgia Senate elections.

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  • Trump is reportedly planning a made-for-TV exit on Air Force One from the White House to a rally on Inauguration Day, hoping to pull viewers from Biden

    Trump is reportedly considering breaking democratic tradition by boycotting Joe Biden's inauguration and staging a rally instead.

  • Iran's activity at sea 'cautious' and 'respectful,' U.S. admiral says

    Tensions between the United States and Iran remain high, and the future of the relationship between the two countries is unclear amid the presidential transition, but things are looking calm at sea for the moment, The Associated Press reports.Vice Adm. Sam Paparo, the top U.S. Navy official in the Middle East who oversees the 5th fleet in Bahrain, said Sunday that the U.S. has "achieved an uneasy deterrence" with Iran in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea, where both navies operate. "That uneasy deterrence is exacerbated by world events and by events along the way," he said at the annual Manama Dialogue hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "But I have found Iranian activity at sea to be cautious and circumspect and respectful, to not risk unnecessary miscalculation or escalation at sea."Iran over the last few years has seized or attacked tankers at sea, but Paparo suggested those actions look like they're on the way out, a markedly different view from his predecessor Vice Adm. James Mallow, who told journalists in August that Iran's maritime activites were "reckless and provocative." Read more at The Associated Press.More stories from theweek.com The post-Mitch McConnell GOP is going to be a carnival of madness Georgia secretary of state: 'We have now counted legally cast ballots 3 times and the results remain unchanged' I'm rooting for pro-democracy Republicans

  • Virginia Military Institute removes Confederate statue

    The Virginia Military Institute removed a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on Monday, a project initiated this fall after allegations of systemic racism roiled the public college. The school's board voted to remove the statue in late October after The Washington Post published a story that described an “atmosphere of hostility and cultural insensitivity” at VMI, the oldest state-supported military college in the U.S. The piece detailed incidents such as lynching threats and a white professor reminiscing in class about her father’s Ku Klux Klan membership. Since Peay’s departure, VMI announced Cedric Wins, a retired U.S. Army major general, would serve as its interim superintendent, becoming the first Black leader to serve in that role.

  • 10 Indoor Plant Stands That Seriously Stand Out

    Take your home garden to the next level this winterOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Shark attack victim swam to shore and walked 300m in 'remarkable' survival story

    An Australian man swam to shore and walked 300 metres to get help after suffering “extraordinary” injuries in a shark attack, in a story of survival paramedics have described as “remarkable”. The 29-year-old man was badly bitten by the shark while surfing in D’Estrees Bay off Kangaroo Island, South Australia. Paramedic Michael Rushby said that the surfer had “serious” lacerations on his back, backside and leg “consistent with quite a large shark bite”. Mr Rushby said it was “remarkable” that the man had managed to swim to shore and walk to the car park to get help. “He told me he swam back to the beach by himself… then he had to walk 300 metres to the carpark where he was able to get some help from bystanders. With the extent of his injuries, this was quite remarkable.” An off-duty paramedic who was nearby rushed to the beach in his own car to treat the victim, who received further treatment at the scene from Mr Rusby and another paramedic who came by ambulance before being taken to Flinders Medical Centre. “We stabilised him on the side of the road, treated his injuries and managed his pain,” Mr Rushby said. “The young man sustained serious lacerations and this was to his back, his backside and his thigh. These injuries were consistent with quite a large shark bite.” The surfer wrote a note describing his experience and thanking the paramedics and medical staff who saved him, which has been shared on social media. “I was sitting on my board when I felt a hit on my left side,” he wrote. “It was like being hit by a truck. “It bit me around my back, buttock and elbow, and took a chunk out of my board. I got a glimpse of the shark as it let go and disappeared.” Mr Rushby said that despite his injuries the man remained conscious and spoke with the paramedics as they treated him. “He was able to hold a conversation from the time I met him to the time I handed him over. He was doing well, he was able to recall the event, and was able to hold a conversation which was good and reassuring.” In hospital, the shark attack victim said he was “incredibly lucky” and “optimistic” that he would “make a full recovery”. Eight people have been killed in shark attacks in Australia this year, a sharp increase on the two fatal attacks in the previous three years combined. Climate change has been identified as a possible factor for increased shark activity. While great white sharks are not dependent on water temperature, most of the species they hunt are, and as their prey migrates closer to shore, the great whites follow. Daryl McPhee, Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Bond University, told The New Daily after the most recent fatal attack that increasing human marine activity was also a factor.

  • 'Thanks Kelly Loeffler, I think we got the message': Fox News mocks Georgia senator for repeating herself during debate

    Loeffler's catchphrases included "Radical liberal Raphael Warnock," "I lived the American dream," and "President Trump has every right to."

  • Backlash to restrictions as California sees surge in COVID-19 infections

    Outside California’s big cities, especially in conservative areas, the backlash against tough new restrictions is growing, and some sheriffs say they won’t enforce health orders.

  • The sanitation worker who found the dead body of a Houston influencer described the moment he discovered her

    The man who found the body of Alexis Sharkey said he can't stop thinking about the moment he discovered the deceased 26-year-old in Houston.

  • Brazil's president rejects COVID-19 vaccine, undermining a century of progress toward universal inoculation

    The world is eagerly awaiting the release of several COVID-19 vaccines, but Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is not. “I’m not going to take it. It’s my right,” he said in a Nov. 26 social media broadcast. Bolsonaro, who came down with COVID-19 in July, has also criticized face masks. He and his more faithful supporters oppose any suggestion of mandatory coronavirus vaccinations. Vaccine resistance has a long history in Brazil. In November 1904, thousands of people in the city of Rio de Janeiro protested government-mandated smallpox vaccinations in a famous revolt that nearly ended with a coup. Making modern BrazilThe smallpox vaccine had arrived in Brazil almost a century earlier. But the syringes were long, left skin pockmarked and could transmit other diseases such as syphilis. Between 1898 and 1904, only 2% to 10% of Rio’s population was vaccinated yearly, according to historian Sidney Chalhoub. In 1904, smallpox killed 0.4% of Rio residents – a higher percentage of the population than COVID-19’s victims in New York City this year.But these were not the only reasons Brazil made vaccinations mandatory in 1904. As part of a “modernization” plan to attract European immigration and foreign investment, President Rodrigues Alves was committed to eradicating epidemics – not just smallpox, but also yellow fever and the bubonic plague.To rid Rio de Janeiro, then the nation’s capital, of sanitary hazards while opening space for Parisian-style avenues and buildings, hundreds of tenements were demolished between 1903 and 1909. Almost 40,000 people – mostly Afro-Brazilians but also poor Italian, Portuguese and Spanish immigrants – were evicted and removed from downtown Rio. Many were left homeless, forced to resettle on nearby hillsides or in distant rural areas. Meanwhile, public health agents accompanied by armed police systematically disinfected homes with sulfur that destroyed furniture and other belongings – whether residents welcomed them or not. Conspiracy and barricadesPoliticians and military officers who opposed President Alves saw opportunity in the outrage these health initiatives caused. They stoked discontent.With the help of labor organizers and news editors, Alves’ opponents led a campaign against Brazil’s public health mandates throughout 1904. Newspapers reported on violent home disinfections and forced vaccinations. Senators and other public figures declared that mandatory vaccinations encroached on people’s homes and bodies.In mid-November of that year, thousands of protesters gathered in public squares to rally against public health efforts. Rio police reacted with disproportionate force, triggering six days of unrest in the city. A racially diverse crowd of students, construction workers, port workers and other residents fought back, armed with rocks, housewares or the tools of their trade, flipping over streetcars to barricade the streets. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, conspirators were mobilizing young military cadets. Their plan: to overthrow Alves’ government. Their scheme was foiled when the president called upon both the Army and the Navy to contain protesters and detain alleged insurgents. Brazil’s great vaccine revolt was soon suppressed. The language of rightsAfterward, newspapers portrayed protesters as an ignorant mass, manipulated by cunning politicians. They deemed one of the uprising’s popular leaders, Horácio José da Silva – known as “Black Silver” – a “disorderly thug.”But Brazil’s vaccine revolt was more than a cynical political manipulation. Digging into archives, historians like me are learning what really motivated the uprising.The violent and segregationist features of Alves’ urban plan are one obvious answer. In early 20th-century Brazil, most people – women, those who couldn’t read, the unemployed – couldn’t vote. For these Brazilians, the streets were the only place to have their voices heard.But why would they so virulently oppose methods that controlled the spread of disease?Delving into newspapers and legal records, I have found that critics of Brazil’s 1904 public health drive often expressed their opposition in terms of “inviolability of the home,” both on the streets and in courts.For elite Brazilians, invoking this constitutional right was about protecting the privacy of their households, where men ruled over wives, children and servants. Public health agents threatened this patriarchal authority by demanding access to homes and women’s bodies.Poor men and women in Rio also held patriarchal values. But for them there was more than privacy at stake in 1904. Throughout the 19th century, enslaved Afro-Brazilians had formed families and built homes, even on plantations, carving out spaces of relative freedom from their masters. After slavery was abolished in 1888, many freed Afro-Brazilians shared crowded tenements with immigrants. By the time of Alves’s vaccination drive, the poor of Rio had been fighting eviction and police violence for decades. For Black Brazilians, then, defending their rights to choose what to do – or not to do – with their homes and bodies was part of a much longer struggle for social, economic and political inclusion. Deadly learning experienceFour years after the 1904 revolt, Rio was struck by another smallpox epidemic. With so many people unvaccinated, deaths doubled; almost 1% of the city perished.[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]It was a deadly learning experience. From then on, Brazilian leaders framed mandatory smallpox, measles and other vaccines as a means to protect the common good, and invested in educational campaigns to explain why. Throughout the 20th century, vaccinations were extremely successful in Brazil. Since the 1990s, 95% of children have been vaccinated, though the numbers are dropping.Today, Brazil is one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. As in the past, Afro-Brazilians are hurting more than others.By invoking Brazilians’ individual right not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, President Bolsonaro is ignoring the lessons of 1904 – undermining a century of hard work fighting disease in Brazil.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Pedro Cantisano, University of Nebraska Omaha.Read more: * COVID-19 is deadlier for black Brazilians, a legacy of structural racism that dates back to slavery * In Brazil’s raging pandemic, domestic workers fear for their lives – and their jobsPedro Cantisano does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

  • Mexican president wants to restrict US agents in Mexico

    Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has tossed another hot potato to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden with a proposal that would restrict U.S. agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity. The proposal submitted quietly this week by López Obrador would require Drug Enforcement Administration agents to hand over all information they collect to the Mexican government, and require any Mexican officials they contact to submit a full report to Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department.

  • Pope Francis to make risky trip to Iraq in early March

    VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Francis will make the first visit by a pope to Iraq next March, the Vatican said on Monday, a risky four-day trip that has eluded his predecessors. Spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis, who turns 84 next week, will visit the capital Baghdad, as well as Ur, a city linked to the Old Testament figure of Abraham, and Erbil, Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Nineveh. The trip, at the invitation of the Iraqi government and the local Catholic Church, is planned for March 5-8, Bruni said.

  • How one of Japan's 'secret weapons' at Pearl Harbor ended up being the US's first prisoner of war

    As Japanese planes swarmed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a secretive naval unit - "a suicide squadron" - attempted its own ill-fated attack.

  • Would Republicans believe election conspiracy theories without Trump?

    How have we gotten to this point — with the just-defeated president claiming without any verifiable evidence that the election has been stolen from him in an unprecedented act of voter fraud and a solid majority of his party's voters inclined to believe the conspiracy?Most pundits have placed the blame squarely on Donald Trump himself, the man who made a point of spreading distrust in the electoral system months before the counting began and who clearly stated in the weeks leading up to the vote that he would not accept any outcome other than his own victory.Yet in a lengthy, insightful column published over the weekend, The New York Times' Ross Douthat suggested an alternative explanation. Instead of blaming Trump and other prominent Republicans for encouraging voters to believe the election was stolen, Douthat suggests that we need to understand the spread of election-related conspiracies over the past month as being "about demand as much as supply." By this he means that many people are going in search of evidence to substantiate beliefs they for the most part already hold rather than allowing themselves to be corralled into those beliefs by dishonest, intentionally bad actors.The problem, in other words, isn't mainly the influence of Trump, the conspiracy-addled right-wing media ecosystem, and complicit members of the Republican Party. It's a broader, pre-existing tendency of people in general (and conservatives in particular) to be persuaded by the kinds of things these people are saying.Douthat's column is characteristically thoughtful and well worth reading and pondering. It's also a useful corrective to those on the center-left and the Never Trump center-right who reflexively blame the president for everything they don't like about what the GOP has become in recent years — in many cases because they fervently want to believe that after Trump is taken down, the Republican Party will be freed up to revert back to the way it was when George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney were its standard bearers. If Douthat's emphasis on the demand side of the equation inspires some deeper thinking on the part of these Trump critics about the challenge of responding to troubling trends on the right, it will have done more good than most opinion columns.Yet Douthat's focus on what conservative voters want to believe goes too far, relieving the president and other members of his party of responsibility for actively cultivating and encouraging illiberal and anti-democratic habits of thinking in the Republican electorate.The primary reason Republican voters are inclined to believe conspiracies about a stolen election is that Trump primed them to believe it by talking for months about how untrustworthy elections (and especially mail-in ballots) are — and because lots of Trump's most loyal allies in the party and a series of partisan pollsters acted as if the president was heading toward easy re-election when he was actually 8-10 points behind. Those mainstream, professional polls ended up being off by 4-5 points. But they weren't off by twice that much or more, which is what they would have needed to be to vindicate the hopes and expectations that many Republican officials and pundits actively encouraged.And then, of course, there was Trump's own reaction to the outcome of the vote, beginning with his temper tantrum at 2:30 a.m. on election night, along with countless public remarks, speeches, and tweets over the past month aggressively denying that he lost and alleging that the election was stolen from him. If Trump had behaved like any previous president in the modern era — allowing the counting to continue until it was complete and then conceding the race once the crucial states were called on Saturday, Nov. 7 — millions of Republican voters who now affirm conspiracies of voter fraud would likely have taken a very different view, placing far less faith in sinister plots.Instead, the president, along with his lawyers, media cheerleaders, and allies in Congress have thoroughly polluted the public square with lies and ill-founded insinuations of wrongdoing. And the overabundant supply of epistemic toxins has had a powerful effect.This should surprise no one.Before John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate, Republicans weren't sitting around in early 2008 pining for a sassy, trash-talking demagogue. But once they saw her and listened to her speak, they loved it and wanted more.Likewise with the "birtherism" that Trump used to launch his political career. Republican voters weren't looking for corroboration that Barack Obama was born in another country and so was literally an illegitimate president. They were unhappy with his presidency and fastened onto a ready-made conspiracy to explain their distaste once it was offered to them.This doesn't mean that everything that happens on the right is driven by politicians supplying the voters with bad ideas. But it does mean that supply and demand usually inform one another in complicated ways — and that supply often shapes demand and can even drive it.American conservatives of an economically libertarian stripe sometimes resist this fact, preferring instead to treat consumer demand as given, and business as simply (and innocently) responding to it. But as the opioid crisis shows very vividly, making a certain kind of product (powerful and addictive painkillers) easily and cheaply available can have a huge influence on shaping the preferences of consumers, sometimes even in self-destructive ways. The history of capitalism is in part a dynamic story of the way a steadily increasing supply of new products — cars, refrigerators, iPhones — has helped to conjure new "needs," and therefore new demands, in a marketplace where they didn't previously exist.That's also a good part of what's happened in the Republican Party over the past few decades. A conglomeration of mainstream politicians, pundits, publishers, radio talk-show hosts, cable news networks and on-air personalities, websites, podcasters, and populist rabblerousers have worked to shape the assumptions and preferences of the Republican electorate. As a result, a large segment of it is now ready and eager to believe the incoming president of the United States stole the election from his opponent outright — and that the refusal of Democrats, the mainstream media, and even many Republican elected and appointed officials to intervene to reverse this rank injustice is evidence that the entire system is corrupt.That shouldn't be taken as evidence of a separate conspiracy — one in which Republican elites conspire to turn the party's voters into easily manipulated rubes for the sake of political gain. Once again, supply and demand, sellers and buyers, influence and inform one another in a feedback loop. If election-fraud conspiracy theories have widely caught on among conservatives, that's probably in part because those conservatives were already in some respects predisposed to believe them, just as Ross Douthat claims.But this predisposition isn't just something given, rooted in the innate penchant of the human mind to doubt the once-authoritative institutions of American democracy and to latch onto hyperrational, comprehensive explanations of complex phenomena without adequate evidence. Both of those tendencies need to be actively encouraged before they will be widely embraced — and for some time now, Republicans have been doing their best to make it happen.More stories from theweek.com The post-Mitch McConnell GOP is going to be a carnival of madness Georgia secretary of state: 'We have now counted legally cast ballots 3 times and the results remain unchanged' I'm rooting for pro-democracy Republicans

  • Texas officer kills man suspected of hitting worker with car

    An off-duty police officer shot and killed a 30-year-old man who refused to stop after striking a highway construction worker with his vehicle in Dallas, authorities said. The Mesquite Police Department said off-duty officers from the East Texas cities of Jefferson and Seven Points were providing construction security in Dallas early Saturday when the construction worker was hit. The suspect finally stopped “after contact was made between the suspect’s vehicle and the officer’s vehicle” in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, according to the statement.

  • Chechnya buries teenager who beheaded French school teacher - rights adviser

    A teenager who beheaded a French school teacher in a killing that convulsed France has been buried in his native Chechnya after his relatives repatriated his body, a local human rights expert said on Monday. Abdullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old male born in Muslim-majority Chechnya, was shot dead in October by French police after slaying middle school teacher Samuel Paty in a suburb of Paris. Anzorov had wanted to punish Paty for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad to pupils in a lesson about freedom of expression.

  • Mellissa Carone, Giuliani's star witness in the Trump campaign's election fraud case, harassed her fiance's ex-wife by sending her sex tapes

    Mellissa Carone recently finished probation after agreeing a plea deal for sending sex videos to the woman.

  • U.S. government funding runs out Friday, and Congress will likely punt

    The federal government's funding authorization runs out on Friday, President Trump has threatened to veto a must-pass defense authorization bill, and pressure is building on Congress to approve its first major COVID-19 relief legislation since April. "The coming days will require bicameral, bipartisan coordination and some buy-in from the outgoing White House to avoid a complete debacle," Politico's Burgess Everett reports, and as Congress faces this lame-duck "hell week," Trump is mostly focusing on "his flailing legal and political attempts to overturn the election."The most promising prospect for success is the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which the House will vote on Tuesday and appears likely to get veto-proof majorities in both chambers. A bipartisan group of senators is still hammering out a $908 billion COVID-19 package that House Democratic leaders have endorsed as a good starting point. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is "noncommittal," Politico reports, and "Trump is always a question mark."House Democrats have passed two relief packages since the summer, while the Senate has approved none. The bipartisan Senate group has come to agreement on funding for state and local governments, Politico's Playbook reports. but "they are hung up on liability overhaul" and "all eyes are on McConnell" for a second round of direct checks to Americans, a provision with "new urgency" from Republican negotiators as well as most Democrats.Congress will likely pass a weeklong stopgap spending bill, keeping funding at current levels while allowing negotiators to iron out an omnibus spending package financing the federal government through September. If no omnibus deal emerges before Dec. 18, Congress will probably pass a three-month continuing resolution. "The Senate is targeting roughly Dec. 18 as its adjournment date, and McConnell is still looking to confirm nominees this week," Everett reports.More stories from theweek.com The post-Mitch McConnell GOP is going to be a carnival of madness Georgia secretary of state: 'We have now counted legally cast ballots 3 times and the results remain unchanged' I'm rooting for pro-democracy Republicans

  • Giant continental dormice spotted in England as conservationists warn they could harm native species

    To a passer-by, the fluffy, cartoonish creature on the floor could have been a cuddly toy dropped by a child on a trip to the New Forest National Park. However, to those with a knowledge of rodents, the animal which has been sighted in the park for the first time is a European dormouse which could be breeding in Britain. This year, wildlife experts have spotted the Garden Dormouse in Derbyshire and the New Forest, sparking concerns that it has been deliberately released. They are usually found in France, Spain and Italy. Unlike our native hazel dormice, this species is extremely hardy and carnivorous. While our small, honey-coloured native species prefers to feast on nuts and berries, the continental invader is predatory, eating the young of other rodents and small birds. There are fears if the species started breeding in large numbers, they could pose a threat to our native animals. Government sources say they are risk assessing the rodent, but it is not known to be rapidly breeding in the UK and is not thought to be a significant risk at this time.

  • We scanned the DNA of 8,000 people to see how facial features are controlled by genes

    Takeaways * A new study reveals more than 130 regions in human DNA play a role in sculpting facial features. * The nose is the facial feature most influenced by your genes. * Understanding the link between specific genes and facial features could be useful for treating facial malformations or for orthodontics.* * *You might think it’s rather obvious that your facial appearance is determined by your genes. Just look in the family photo album and observe the same nose, eyes or chin on your grandparents, cousins and uncles and aunts. Perhaps you have seen or know someone with a genetic syndrome – that often results from a damaging alteration to one or more genes – and noticed the often distinctive facial features.You may be surprised to learn that until very recently, geneticists had virtually no understanding of which parts of our DNA were linked to even the most basic aspects of facial appearance. This gap in our knowledge was particularly galling since facial appearance plays such an important role in basic human interactions. The availability of large data sets combining genetic information with facial images that can be measured has rapidly advanced the pace of discovery.So, what do we know about the genetics of facial appearance? Can we reliably predict a person’s face from their DNA? What are the implications for health and disease? We are an anthropologist and a human geneticist whose research focuses on uncovering the biological factors that underlie the similarities and differences in facial appearance among humans. How many genes are associated with facial appearance?We still don’t have a complete answer to this question, but recent work published in Nature Genetics by our collaborative research team has identified more than 130 chromosomal regions associated with specific aspects of facial shape. Identifying these regions is a critical first step toward understanding how genetics impacts our faces and how such knowledge could impact human health in the future.We accomplished this by scanning the DNA of more than 8,000 individuals to look for statistical relationships between about seven million genetic markers – known locations in the genetic code where humans vary – and dozens of shape measurements derived from 3D facial images. When we find a statistical association between a facial feature and one or more genetic markers, this points us to a very precise region of DNA on a chromosome. The genes located around that region then become our prime candidates for facial features like nose or lip shape, especially if we have other relevant information about their function – for example, they may be active when the face is forming in the embryo. While more than 130 chromosomal regions may seem like a large number, we are likely only scratching the surface. We expect that thousands of such regions – and therefore thousands of genes – contribute to facial appearance. Many of the genes at these chromosomal regions will have such small effects, we may never have enough statistical power to detect them. What do we know about these genes?When we look collectively at the implicated genes at these 130-plus DNA regions, some interesting patterns emerged. Your nose, like it or not, is the part of your face most influenced by your genes. Perhaps not surprisingly, areas like the cheeks, which are highly influenced by lifestyle factors like diet, showed the fewest genetic associations.The ways that these genes influence facial shape was not at all uniform. Some genes, we found, had highly localized effects and impacted very specific parts of the face, while others had broad effects involving multiple parts. We also found that a large proportion of these genes are involved in basic developmental processes that build our bodies – bone formation, for example – and, in many cases, are the same genes that have been implicated in rare syndromes and facial anomalies like cleft palate. We found it interesting that there was a high degree of overlap between the genes involved in facial and limb development, which may provide an important clue as to why many genetic syndromes are characterized by both hand and facial malformations. In another curious twist, we found some evidence that the genes involved in facial shape may also be involved in cancer – an intriguing finding given emerging evidence that individuals treated for pediatric cancer show some distinctive facial features. Can someone take my DNA and construct an accurate picture of my face?It is unlikely that today, or for the foreseeable future, someone could take a sample of your DNA and use it to construct an image of your face. Predicting an individual’s facial appearance, like any complex genetic trait, is a very difficult task. To put that statement in context, the 130-plus genetic regions we identified explain less than 10% of the variation in facial shape. However, even if we understood all of the genes involved in facial appearance, prediction would still be a monstrous challenge. This is because complex traits like facial shape are not determined by simply summing up the effects of a bunch of individual genes. Facial features are influenced by many biological and non-biological factors: age, diet, climate, hormones, trauma, disease, sun exposure, biomechanical forces and surgery. All of these factors interact with our genome in complex ways that we have not even begun to understand. To add to this picture of complexity, genes interact with one another; this is known as “epistasis,” and its effects can be complex and unpredictable. It is not surprising then, that researchers attempting to predict individual facial features from DNA have been unsuccessful. This is not to say that such prediction will never be possible, but if someone is telling you they can do this today, you should be highly skeptical. How might research connecting genes and faces benefit humans?One of the most exciting developments in medicine in the 21st century is the use of patients’ genetic information to create personalized treatment plans, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes.[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]A deeper understanding of how genes influence the timing and rate of facial growth could be an invaluable tool for planning treatments in fields like orthodontics or reconstructive surgery. For example, if someday we can use genetics to help predict when a child’s jaw will hit its peak growth potential, orthodontists may be able to use this information to help determine the optimal time to intervene for maximal effect. Likewise, knowledge of how genes work individually and in concert to determine the size and shape of facial features can provide new molecular targets for drug therapies aimed at correcting facial growth deficiencies. Lastly, greater knowledge of the genes that build human faces may offer us new insights into the root causes of congenital facial malformations, which can profoundly impact quality of life for those affected and their families.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Seth M. Weinberg, University of Pittsburgh and John R. Shaffer, University of Pittsburgh.Read more: * Joaquin Phoenix’s lips mocked – here’s what everyone should know about cleft lip * What’s in your genome? Parents-to-be want to knowSeth M. Weinberg receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. John R. Shaffer receives funding from the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institutes of Health.

  • Iranian official denies rumours of decline in supreme leader's health

    DUBAI (Reuters) -An official close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied rumours on social media on Monday that the 81-year-old's health was deteriorating. Fazaeli has worked in an office publishing Khamenei's work. The statement about Khamenei's health appeared to be a response to reports by several news organisations, which referred to a tweet by a journalist in Arabic who said Khamenei had transferred duties to his son because of his health.