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The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to approve the use of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. An independent advisory panel of experts reviewed the studies on June 4 and decided not to approve the treatment.Lykos Therapeutics submitted evidence from clinical trials in an effort to get the agency's approval to legally sell the drug to treat people with a combination of MDMA and talk therapy.Millions of Americans suffer from PTSD, including military veterans at high risk for suicide. No new treatments for PTSD have been approved in more than 20 years.What is MDMA?Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a synthetic psychoactive drug first developed by Merck in 1912. After being synthesized in the mid-1970s by Alexander Shulgin, a Bay...

Amanda Knox, the American convicted and later cleared of killing her roommate while they studied in Italy, is due to appear again in an Italian court on Wednesday, this time to defend herself against defamation charges linked to the 2007 murder.It is the latest twist in a dramatic legal journey whose echoes continue to resonate nearly 17 years after the murder of roommate Meredith Kercher, a British student, which sparked headlines around the world and turned Ms. Knox into a staple of the tabloids.Knox is on trial again on charges of defaming the owner of the bar where she worked by accusing him of killing Kercher, who was stabbed. She was convicted of slander in 2009 and was confirmed by various Italian courts.But a European court ruling and a change in Italian law allowed a new appeal b...

A group of OpenAI insiders are calling out what they say is a culture of recklessness and secrecy at the San Francisco artificial intelligence company, which is racing to build the most powerful artificial intelligence systems ever created.The group, which includes nine current and former OpenAI employees, has rallied in recent days around shared concerns that the company hasn't done enough to prevent its artificial intelligence systems from becoming dangerous.Members say OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit research lab and went public with the release of ChatGPT in 2022, is prioritizing profits and growth in an effort to build artificial general intelligence, or AGI, the industry term for a computer. program capable of doing everything a human can do.They also allege that OpenAI use...

The House voted mostly along party lines Tuesday to impose sweeping sanctions on International Criminal Court officials, rebuking efforts by the court's top prosecutor to charge top Israeli leaders with war crimes in connection with the offensive against Hamas.The bill would force President Biden to restrict entry to the United States, revoke visas and impose financial restrictions on anyone in court who is involved in attempting to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute “protected persons” or allies of the United States . It would also target anyone providing “financial, material or technological support” to such efforts.Biden's advisers said he is "strongly opposed" to the measure because it would impose sanctions on such a broad group of officials, including court staff membe...

An independent advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday rejected the use of MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, highlighting the unprecedented regulatory challenges of a new therapy using the drug commonly known as Ecstasy.Before the vote, committee members expressed concerns about the design of the two studies submitted by the drug's sponsor, Lykos Therapeutics. Many questions focused on whether study participants were generally able to correctly guess whether they had taken MDMA, also known as Ecstasy or Molly. The jury voted 9-2 on the effectiveness of MDMA-assisted therapy and 10-1 on whether the benefits of the proposed treatment outweighed the risks.Other speakers expressed concerns about the drug's potential cardiovascular effects...

When President Biden arrives in France on Wednesday, he will rally European leaders to his side and demonstrate the resolve he helped foster on Ukraine's behalf.But he will also challenge the leaders themselves and remain virtually alone among Western democracies still firmly in support of Israel as it wages war in Gaza.When Biden arrives in France for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, it will be his first time in Europe since the October 7 terrorist attack led by Hamas, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and triggered military retaliation which killed around 36,000 people in Gaza. Next week he will return to Europe for a summit in Italy with Group of 7 leaders, and three weeks later he will host the 75th anniversary summit of NATO countries in Washington.The series of meet...

The Chinese know that the Internet in their country is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate things they shouldn't mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation.They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it.Now they are finding that, beneath a facade full of short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet – and collective online memory – is disappearing in pieces.A widely shared May 22 WeChat post reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums and social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.“Chinese Internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace,” reads the headline. Predictably, t...

The Israeli military said Monday that four more hostages kidnapped in Hamas-led attacks on October 7 had died months ago in Gaza, a revelation likely to increase pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to proceed with a cease-and-desist. fire agreement.Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli army spokesman, said at a news conference on Monday that the four hostages were believed to have been killed together "several months ago" near Khan Younis, southern Gaza, as Israeli forces operated in the area. area. The military identified the men as Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper and Nadav Popplewell.Admiral Hagari said the decision to announce the deaths of the hostages on Monday was based on "recently verified additional intelligence information, which made it po...

Using her arms as a makeshift slat, a Sudanese woman in a black hijab and black-and-white kaftan clapped her hands, signaling the start of rehearsals. The other amateur actors, wearing comical stick-on mustaches, moved toward their goals, improvising a scene in a women's beauty salon where a customer's hair is accidentally dyed blue.By the time the scene was over, all the women were hysterical and teasing each other about how they could play their parts better next time. Scenes like this are common at the Kuluhenna Creative Workshop, held in a clubhouse on the outskirts of this Yorkshire town. The workshop is open to all local women, but with a focus on immigrant communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.The 90-minute class, which the Mafwa Theater has been holding sinc...

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party, will face off on Tuesday evening in their first debate of the British general election. But it is a third man, Nigel Farage, who catches the eye in a race characterized, so far, by a leader in decline and an adversary on the rise.Farage, a cheerful rebel who has long roamed the right-wing fringes of British politics, has said he will run as a candidate for Reform UK, a party he co-founded. This has shaken up the race and threatens to siphon votes from Sunak's Conservative Party, given Reform UK's strident anti-immigration message.Farage's entry into the race is not in itself transformative. He ran seven times for a seat in the British Parliament, losing each time. But his return could give im...