The foreign secretary held talks with the former president as he tries to boost Republican support for Ukraine.
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Trump, who will be his party’s presidential candidate in November, has previously said he could end the Russia-Ukraine war “within 24 hours”.
But experts have condemned the plan, which they say would see Kyiv forced to make major concessions to Vladimir Putin in return for an end to the conflict.
Cameron met with Trump overnight at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida before heading to Washington for talks with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Ahead of the meeting, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “It is standard practice for ministers to meet with opposition candidates as part of their routine international engagement.”
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However, the meeting had the potential to be awkward given Cameron’s previous comments about Trump – and the former president’s well-known dislike of being criticised.
When he was still prime minister in 2016, Cameron described Trump – who was running to be president first time around – as “divisive, stupid and wrong”.
And in his memoirs after he quit Downing Street, Cameron said Trump was “protectionist, xenophobic, misogynistic”.
The foreign secretary’s talks with the former president came amid mounting concerns that Russia is gaining the upper hand in its war with Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on the west to boost its financial support for his country – but Republicans in America have tried to block President Joe Biden’s multi-billion dollar aid package.
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Cameron has previously drawn the ire of leading Republicans over his pro-Ukraine comments.
In February, leading right-winger Marjorie Taylor Greene said Cameron could “kiss my ass” after he drew comparisons between the appeasement of Adolf Hitler when urging the US Congress not to abandon Ukraine.
William Wragg, the Tory MP caught up in the “honeytrap” sexting scam, has reportedly quit two committees in parliament following the revelations.
The MP last week said he gave the phone numbers of other MPs to a person he met on the dating app Grindr.
Wragg said he had been “weak” after becoming concerned that the man had “compromising” material on him.
Now, reports suggest the 36-year-old has resigned as vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs, and also stepped down from his role heading the public administration and constitutional affairs committee.
NEW: Understand that William Wragg has stepped down as chair of @CommonsPACAC and as vice chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 committee
Pressure has mounted in recent days amid concerns over parliamentary security.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, praised Wragg for making a “courageous and fulsome apology”
Bur Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns branded Wragg an “idiot” for “compromising security” as she revealed she had also been targeted with a spear-phishing text.
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It is understood that the Hazel Grove MP, who is standing down at the general election, will not lose the Conservative whip over the affair, which has rocked Westminster.
Nicholas Watt, “It looks like William Wragg is standing back as vice chair of the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs. And stepping back as Chair of the cross party administration and constitutional affairs select committee”
Wragg told The Times last week: “I got chatting to a guy on an app and we exchanged pictures. We were meant to meet up for drinks, but then didn’t. Then he started asking for numbers of people. I was worried because he had stuff on me. He gave me a WhatsApp number, which doesn’t work now.
“I’ve hurt people by being weak. I was scared. I’m mortified. I’m so sorry that my weakness has caused other people hurt.”
Those targeted by the phishing attack were reportedly sent unsolicited messages on WhatsApp from senders identifying themselves as “Charlie” or “Abi”.
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Police and parliamentary authorities are investigating.
The move meant Labour had to either ditch its commitments, oppose the tax cuts or find the £2bn elsewhere.
In the aftermath of the Budget, Labour said it was still working out where to find the money.
Speaking on Tuesday, Reeves will pledge to “take on the tax dodgers” and raise £5bn a year by the end of the next parliament.
Reeves will point to comments by Gareth Davies, the chief executive of the National Audit Office, who said in January that £6bn could be raised by cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance.
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She will confirm £2bn of the funding raised each year from these plans will go towards the spending commitments.
“I have been clear that everything in our manifesto will be fully costed and fully funded. There will be no exceptions,” Reeves will say.
“That is why last month I promised to go through all the government documents in an orderly way to identify the funding streams to honour our commitments to the NHS and schools.
“That process is now complete and the funding a future Labour government will raise from taking on the tax dodgers will fund more appointments in NHS hospitals, new scanners, extra dentist appointments and free breakfast clubs for all primary school pupils.”
“Our schools and our hospitals are the British people’s priorities – and they are Labour’s priorities too.”
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Labour will outline a plan to give HMRC up to an extra £555 million each year to allow it to help it collect more tax.
Under the proposal, the number of HRMC staff by up to 5,000 to ensure tax owed is collected.
There will be investment in the digitisation of the tax office and a greater use of AI.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy have developed a new method to predict the financial impacts climate change will have on agriculture, which can help support food security and financial stability for countries increasingly prone to climate catastrophes.
The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses climate and agricultural data from Brazil. It finds that climate change has a cascading effect on farming, leading to increased loan defaults for one of the nation’s largest public sector banks. Over the next three decades, climate-driven loan defaults could increase by up to 7%, according to the study.
The projections in the paper revealed that although temperatures are rising everywhere, there is substantial variation in what that looks like from region to region, which underscores the need to build distinct types of physical and financial resilience.
For example, parts of northern Brazil are predicted to have more dramatic seasonal swings around 2050, with heavier rainfall in winter and drier summers, so policymakers should be thinking about the need for water storage by building dams and reservoirs as well as increasing groundwater storage capacity. Conversely, central Brazil may have fairly steady weather, but will have higher overall temperatures, pointing to a need for heat-resistant crops.
The authors of the paper used a statistical approach pairing past climate data in Brazil with information on crop productivity, farm revenue and agricultural loan performance. They combined this data with climate simulations to predict future weather conditions and their impacts on farming and how those changes will affect financial institutions.
“A difficulty in studying climate impacts on agriculture is that there are all sorts of adaptations happening all the time that aren’t easily observed, but are really important for understanding vulnerability and how risk is changing,” said coauthor Jennifer Burney, professor of environmental science at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We were able to distinguish signals from different types of climate impacts and which ones led to this larger financial risk.”
Systematic thinking about building resilience against climate change around the globe
A key objective of the research is to support resilient food security under a changing climate, which requires understanding of when small climate shifts might have outsized impacts, spilling across regions or into other sectors through institutions like trade and banking.
Understanding the systemic risk posed by climate change is especially helpful for policymakers and disaster relief agencies, as climate change has increasingly become a national security threat. To that end, the statistical approach developed in the study could be applied around the globe.
“The technique we developed will help populations identify where they are most vulnerable, how climate change will hurt them the most economically and what institutions they should focus on to build resilience,” said study coauthor Craig McIntosh, professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy.
For example, some governments in the Western Pacific region buy extra food on the global market in emerging El Niño years, when their own crop productivity suffers. The statistical approach used in the study could help governments around the world understand their own climate conditions and whether local, regional or international institutions will be best placed to address them.
The research could be especially helpful with the development of the loss and damage fund established by the United Nations in 2022. The fund is designed to help compensate developing nations that have contributed the least to the climate crisis but have been facing the brunt of its devastating floods, drought and sea-level rise.
“Our technique could help countries think about where the resilience returns would be highest for the money spent,” said Krislert Samphantharak, professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy. “This technique also helps to identify where international reinsurance might be needed.”
The “Empirical Modeling of Agricultural Climate Risk” study was also coauthored by Bruno Lopez-Videla, who earned a Ph.D. in economics from UC San Diego in 2021 and Alexandre Gori Maia of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil.
For heart attack patients, treating only the coronary artery that caused the infarction works just as well as preventive balloon dilation of the other coronary arteries, according to a new large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and others. The results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Heart attack is a common disease with risks of serious complications. It has long been unclear what the best strategy is for treating narrowings in coronary arteries separate from the specific vessel that caused the infarction.
A new large Swedish study has investigated whether it is sufficient to treat only the coronary artery that caused the infarction, or whether long-term results are better if other narrowed vessels are also treated with balloon dilation as a preventive measure.
The clinical randomized study included 1542 patients from 32 hospitals in 7 countries. In the Swedish part, the SWEDEHEART registry was used to conduct the randomization and collect data. Patients were followed up for five years after the procedure.
The results show no difference between the groups in terms of new heart attacks, new unplanned balloon dilations or the total number of all-cause deaths.
“This is somewhat surprising. Our hypothesis was that it would be beneficial to do preventive angioplasty,” says Felix Böhm, a senior physician at the Department of Clinical Sciences, Danderyd Hospital at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study.
However, when it comes to problems with angina, the study shows that it is possible to avoid patients coming back for new balloon dilations through preventive treatment. According to Felix Böhm, this suggests that we should still aim for complete treatment of all vessels.
“But for those patients where there is some circumstance that makes a complete revascularization complicated, one might choose to wait, since there was no difference in the most serious complications — new heart attack and death,” says Felix Böhm.
If problems with angina occur, these patients can then come back later for a new treatment, according to Felix Böhm.
“A positive finding of the study was that most patients do not come back with new problems, regardless of the treatment strategy chosen. “Nowadays, heart attack patients are so well treated with drugs that it is difficult to find other interventions that provide further significant risk reduction,” says Felix Böhm.
The researchers will now go on to investigate how angina and other quality of life parameters in the patients were affected by the different treatment strategies, as well as health economic aspects of the chosen strategy.
The research was conducted by Uppsala Clinical Research Center (UCR) at Uppala University. The legal sponsor was Karolinska University Hospital. The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council, Hjärt-Lungfonden, Region Stockholm, Abbott and Boston Scientific. The companies had no influence on study design, results analysis or article writing.
Understanding heart function and disease, as well as testing new drugs for heart conditions, has long been a complex and time-consuming task. A promising way to study disease and test new drugs is to use cellular and engineered tissue models in a dish, but existing methods to study heart cell contraction and calcium handling require a good deal of manual work, are prone to errors, and need expensive specialized equipment. There clearly is a critical medical need for a more efficient, accurate, and accessible way to study heart function, using a methodology based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
BeatProfiler, new tool to rapidly analyze heart cell function
Researchers at Columbia Engineering unveiled a groundbreaking new tool today that addresses these challenges head-on. BeatProfiler is a comprehensive software that automates the analysis of heart cell function from video data and is the first system to integrate the analysis of different heart function indicators, such as contractility, calcium handling, and force output into one tool, speeding up the process significantly and reducing the chance for errors. BeatProfiler enabled the researchers to not only distinguish between different diseases and levels of their severity but also to rapidly and objectively test drugs that affect heart function. The study was published on April 8 in IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.
“This is truly a transformative tool,” said project leader Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, University Professor and the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Medical Sciences, and Dental Medicine at Columbia. “It’s fast, comprehensive, automated, and compatible with a broad range of computer platforms so it is easily accessible to investigators and clinicians.”
Software is open-source
The team, which included Barry Fine, assistant professor of medicine (in Cardiology) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, elected not to file a patent application, and instead are offering the AI software as open source, so it can be directly used — for free — by any lab. They believe that this is important for disseminating the results of their research, as well as for getting feedback from users in academic, clinical, and commercial labs that can help the team to further refine the software.
The need to diagnose heart disease quickly and accurately
This project was driven, like much of Vunjak-Novakovic’s research, by a clinical need to diagnose heart diseases more quickly and accurately. This was a project that was several years in the making in which the team added different features piece by piece. While the overarching need was to develop a tool that could better capture the function of the cardiac models that the team was building to study cardiac diseases and assess the efficacy of potential therapeutics, the researchers had an urgent need to quickly and accurately assess the function of their cardiac models in real-time.
As the lab was making more and more cardiac tissues through innovations such as milliPillar and multiorgan tissue models, the increased capabilities of the tissues required the researchers to develop a method to more rapidly quantify the function of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) and tissues to enable studies exploring genetic cardiomyopathies, cosmic radiation, immune-mediated inflammation, and drug discovery.
Collaborators in software development, machine learning, and more
In the last year and a half, lead author Youngbin Kim and his coauthors developed a graphical user interface (GUI) on top of the code so that biomedical researchers with no coding expertise could easily analyze the data with just a few clicks. This brought together experts in software development (for the GUI development), machine learning (for developing computer vision technology and disease/drug classifiers), signal processing (for processing contractile and calcium signals), engineering (translating pillar deflection on the cardiac platform to mechanical force), and user experience by lab members (to give feedback for improvements in the interface).
The results
The study showed that BeatProfiler could accurately analyze cardiomyocyte function, outperforming existing tools by being faster — up to 50 times in some cases — and more reliable. It detected subtle changes in engineered heat tissue force response that other tools might miss.
“This level of analysis speed and versatility is unprecedented in cardiac research,” said Kim, a PhD candidate in Vunjak-Novakovic’s lab at Columbia Engineering. “Using machine learning, the functional measurements analyzed by BeatProfiler helped us to distinguish between diseased and healthy heart cells with high accuracy and even to classify different cardiac drugs based on how they affect the heart.”
What’s next
The team is working to expand BeatProfiler’s capabilities for new applications in heart research, including a full spectrum of diseases that affect the pumping of the heart, and drug development. To ensure that BeatProfiler can be applied to a wide variety of research questions, they are testing and validating its performance across additional in vitro cardiac models, including different engineered heart tissue models. They are also refining their machine-learning algorithm to extend and generalize its use to a variety of heart diseases and drug effect classification. The long-term goal is to adapt BeatProfiler to pharmaceutical settings to speed up the testing of hundreds of thousands of candidate drugs at once.
It’s only natural to want to limit your exposure to these products, especially since the unfortunate reality is that most people have some level of microplastic in their system, according to Jamie Alan, associate professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University. Research is being conducted to understand the full effect of microplastics, but they’ve been found in the plaque in our arteries, in placentas, in our blood and more.
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Studies have also looked at the effect that microplastics have on our cells and organoids, Alan told HuffPost. Research shows that when microplastics get into our cells it can lead to cell death, she said. Additionally, they can attack our DNA and cause unwanted DNA changes, Alan explained.
“You can get a [DNA] change that causes zero effects, but you can get a change that can cause effects,” Alan said. This sounds scary ― and it is scary ― but it doesn’t mean you should totally panic. Our body is trained to handle these kinds of changes, she noted. However, there can be adverse effects — most notably cancer and fertility issues.
All in all, this is obviously very concerning, especially given the sheer prevalence of microplastics. While you can’t totally avoid them — they’re in our air and in our water, too — you can make some choices that limit your interactions with microplastics. Here’s what experts say you can do:
Watch how much ocean-caught fish you’re eating
Microplastics often come from food, Alan said. “If you think about fish and things like that, there’s a lot of microplastics in our oceans, and the fish are eating these, and when we consume the fish, we’re consuming microplastics from them,” Alan said.
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What’s more, microplastics are thought to be carriers of heavy metals and other elements. “And we worry about mercury and things like that in fish,” but elements such as chlorine have also been found in microplastics, Alan said.
As a result, reducing the amount of ocean-caught fish you eat can decrease the amount of microplastics you consume this way, along with other chemicals you likely don’t want in your system, she noted.
If this feels like a lose-lose situation, you aren’t wrong. We’re told to eat fish and follow a Mediterranean diet for the sake of our health, but the fish at the center of such a diet can be full of microplastics. Sigh.
So what can you do? Alan said you can be mindful of the food you’re eating and be aware of the items that are known to contain higher amounts of microplastics than others.
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Though microplastics are prevalent in a lot of our foods, chicken breast, pork loin chop and tofu have less.
Alistair Berg via Getty Images
Microplastics are found in our waterways and in our air, making it impossible to totally escape them.
Consider your clothing materials
A major source of nanoplastics in our waterways and airways is our clothing, according to Kizzy Charles-Guzman, CEO of the Center for Environmental Health, who added that “about 70% of all our clothing is made from plastic materials.”
This includes nylon, polyester, acrylic and synthetic fibers — anything that is not a natural fiber like wool, cotton and linen, she said.
“When these textiles are manufactured, when you wash them in your laundry, when you wear them, when you dry them, they are releasing tiny plastic fibers into the water and into the air,” Charles-Guzman explained.
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“So clothing, bedding, any other textiles that are not natural materials, they shed microplastics in fiber form,” she said. “And then they’re just carried off into the environment … either by air or water.”
These microplastics are too small to be filtered in wastewater treatment plants, so they end up in our waterways, she noted.
“The reason this is important is that that’s why you’re seeing [microplastics] in almost everything that we eat and drink,” such as fish and tap water, said Charles-Guzman.
“To limit our exposure … it’s consumer choice. So, selecting natural materials whenever we can — cotton, linen, wool — those are really the best products for reducing plastic microfiber pollution,” she said.
It’s worth noting that polyester blends ― when compared to fabrics like wool ― are often more affordable, making this an impossible choice for many people. (Although thrifting can be a good option, Charles-Guzman noted.)
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Rethink your plastic food storage containers
“Food containers and takeout food is a big one,” Alan said. “It goes in these plastic containers a lot of the time, and those plastic containers can leach out nanoplastics into our food.”
Then, when you eat your meal, you’re putting those microplastics in your system, she said. Microwaving these plastic containers is particularly harmful because they release even more microplastics when heated up.
“If you can get a paper food container or something non-plastic, that’s great,” Alan said. “And that’s another way you can reduce your intake of these plastics.”
You can also opt for glass containers, which are readily available online and at most home retail stores.
Choose reusable water bottles when possible
It’s well-known that plastic water bottles are bad for the environment. Even more, they are a source of the microplastics, Alan said. To avoid the microplastics, simply switch to metal or glass reusable water bottles.
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When it comes to the microplastics in our tap water, new research suggests that boiling your tap water can reduce the amount of microplastics you’re consuming, too.
Pay attention to microbeads in personal care items
Plastic microbeads, which are associated with personal care products including body scrubs and toothpaste, are another item you should try to avoid, according to Charles-Guzman. These tiny plastic beads used as scrubs or exfoliants are too small to be filtered out in wastewater treatment plans, “so they end up in our lakes and rivers and oceans and all of that,” Charles-Guzman said. From there, the microplastics get distributed in our seafood, drinking water and more.
While the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 prohibits the use of plastic microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics, such as soaps, microbeads are not banned in all self-care products, she said.
“It’s important to note that [the act]does not include microbeads found in deodorants, lotions or other non-cleansing cosmetic products,” said Charles-Guzman. “We hope the scope of the statute expands to ban microbeads in more consumer products.”
Look at product labels to determine if what you’re purchasing contains microbeads and opt for products that don’t, she said.
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Show your support for those who are working to combat microplastics
The truth is that this work should not all fall onto the consumer’s shoulders — and, in reality, there is only so much you can do to control microplastics.
“The main thing that needs to happen, and this is the boring answer … it’s a systemic change,” said Charles-Guzman. “What we need to do is governments and companies need to work together to stop the pollution and reformulate away from harmful chemicals.”
Though the actions above can limit your own microplastic use and send messages to corporations about the types of products folks want to buy, more change is necessary.
“We all can play a role, but also … there is a systemic change here that needs to be made, and we are the ones that need to be asking for that change to be made,” she added.
How? You can vote for representatives who want to protect public health, and you can use your dollars to show support for companies that give safer alternatives to shoppers, she said.
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This can mean purchasing from brands that sell 100% cotton shirts as opposed to stores that sell polyester alternatives. Or it can mean bringing your reusable mug to your local cafe for your coffee order instead of using one of their plastic cups.
Additionally, know that there are corporations doing the work to create federal and local change when it comes to microplastic use, said Charles-Guzman. You can consider getting involved with organizations like the Center for Environmental Health (Charles-Guzman’s organization), the Plastic Soup Foundation or the Environmental Working Groupto push the cause along. These organizations also have resources that can help you determine if the products you’re using are safe.
