Whale Going Home

On Monday, billionaire Robert Kraft spearheaded a $25 million “Stand Up to

Another ad focuses on online hate: A Jewish teen is shown crestfallen as he is trolled after posting a video of his bar mitzvah. Soon after, he sees a Harlem

In October, Kraft’s foundation aired a 30-second ad during a Patriots-Jets game urging the public to speak out against antisemitism. That ad came after antisemitic comments made by the music mogul formerly known as Kanye West and basketball star Kyrie Irving’s support for an antisemitic film.

“The rise of antisemitism, to me, is the real breakdown of what this society

It’s been five decades but Lolita is now going back home. The 5,000-pound killer whale had been spending her days at Miami Seaquarium, where she used to be the star performer in the shows.

Now 57, Lolita retired last spring, and animal activists have been calling for her release back into the wild.

Officials announced “historic” plans on Thursday to transfer the animal back to “home waters” in the Pacific Northwest.

Although releasing Lolita from captivity will involve a number of hurdles, like re-training the animal to hunt and physically moving her across the country,

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said that completing the transfer largely depends on the health of the aging whale.

“To all of you who care, we want to thank you for your care and concern of Loki,” Cava said. “The most important thing is Toki’s long-term wellbeing, and together, guided by the experts, we will continue to do what’s best for her.”

The proposed plan will likely be expensive – between $15 to $20 million –and could take up to two years. It involves creating a sequestered area, with netting, in the ocean off the coast of Washington and moving Lolita there along with two dolphins that currently live with the orca in captivity. Hired trainers would then be tasked with teaching the whale how to fend for herself. She doesn’t know how to catch fish since she’s been in captivity for so long.

“Today, March 30th, for the first time ever, a private company with marine mammals under human care, and a non-profit animal welfare organization, executed a binding agreement with one goal: return the beloved Lolita to her home waters,” the Seaquarium wrote in a separate statement.

Trump Indicted

candidate for President, has never happened before,” he said.

The case brought by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, is far from a sure bet. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., and federal prosecutors each passed on charging Trump in a stand-alone case related to the hush money. If the case goes to trial, a conviction would almost certainly require a jury to credit the testimony of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who has faced his own legal troubles and pleaded guilty to an array of federal felonies in 2018. Among them was a campaign-finance offense for the payment, as well as charges of lying to a bank and to Congress.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary chairman, tweeted one word after the indictment was made public: “Outrageous.”

In a tweet, Sen. Ted Cruz said, “The Democrat Party’s hatred for Donald Trump knows no bounds. The ‘substance’ of this political persecution is utter garbage. This is completely unprecedented and is a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”

Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, also called the indictment “outrageous.”

“The sham New York indictment of President Donald Trump is one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponizing government to attack their political opponents,” he tweeted.

Coffee Moves You

On Thursday, the grand jury voted to indict the 45th President of the United States. Donald Trump was indicted in New York in his alleged role in paying hush money to an acquaintance.

In New York, judges routinely keep charges under wraps until defendants make their initial appearance in court. Trump is likely to surrender and appear for his arraignment on Tuesday, said Susan Necheles, one of his lawyers.

Necheles and fellow Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said, “He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in Court.”

Trump said that Democrats had “done the unthinkable: indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.”

“Weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican

If you enjoy a cup or two of java, you know that coffee may help to get you through the day.

Now, a new study published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine has found that coffee can be a great – and not-so-great – beverage for you to consume.

“The big picture finding is that there isn’t just one single health-related consequence of consuming coffee, but that the reality is more complicated than that,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Gregory Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Researchers found that coffee helps people to move more, but also keeps them from sleeping. Additionally, it may put people at higher risk for one type of heart palpitation.

To get a better idea of coffee’s immediate health effects, the authors recruited 100 healthy adults who were age 39 on average and from the San Francisco area. They equipped the participants with Fitbits to track their steps and sleep, continuous blood glucose monitors, and electrocardiogram devices that tracked their heart rhythms. Each participant was randomly assigned to drink as much coffee as they wanted for two days, then abstain for two days, repeating that cycle over a two-week period.

On the days that people were allowed to drink their coffee, participants got an average of 1,058 more steps than they did on abstention days, the authors found. But those steps came with a price – with participants getting 36 fewer minutes of shut-eye. The more coffee they drank, the more physical activity and the less sleep they got.

Coffee seemed to affect the heart, too. Researchers found no evidence of a significant relationship between coffee consumption and premature atrial contractions, which are “very common, early heartbeats that we all experience arising from the top chambers of the heart,” Marcus said. They can feel like a flutter or skipped beat in your chest.

But drinking more than one cup per day resulted in about a 50% higher incidence of premature ventricular contractions, or PVCs, compared with days of no coffee intake.

These heartbeats arise from the lower chambers of the heart, and they can also feel like a skipped beat or heart palpitations.

Despite the findings, it’s important to remember that this study was conducted with a small group of healthy volunteers for just a short time. There’s no real concern about drinking coffee –unless you find your heart racing after sipping your morning cup of joe.

Interestingly, scientists have noted that some people are “slow metabolizers” of coffee. For those people, coffee may make them more anxious and may affect their sleep patterns. Other people metabolize coffee faster and won’t see that their jolt of caffeine has any interference with their sleep.