Tag: US news

Nxivm trial hears of debauchery and cruelty within alleged ‘sex cult’

Slave master Lauren Salzman says of Keith Rainiere, 58, accused of sex trafficking and other charges: He was my mentor

A top” slave master” in the alleged sexuality cult Nxivm said in testimony on Friday she herself was sexually and psychologically enslaved by Keith Raniere, the sole defendant in a sex-trafficking trial that has produced a rolled tableau of alleged debauchery and cruelty.

Such was Raniere’s control over his adherents, Lauren Salzman said, they came to accept claims about his ability to control the weather or to disable electronics. It was rumoured, she said, that Raniere could stroll through a rain shower without getting wet.

” He would say that his technology was acting up and that he had these types of problems ,” Salzman witnessed.” That it was something special about him. That it was his energy. His impact on the world countries .”

Nxivm, pronounced “Nexium”, operated in New York country and was ostensibly devoted to wellness and personal developing. Within it, however, there was allegedly an inner organisation of ” masters” and “slaves” devoted to Raniere’s sex gratification.

Raniere, 58, was arrested in March 2018. He has pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering conspiracy, identity stealing, extortion, forced labor, money laundering, wire fraud and sex trafficking. In federal court in Brooklyn on Friday, he watched impassively as prosecutors questioned a former senior aide.

Lauren Salzman, daughter of the group co-founder Nancy Salzman, said that for many years Raniere, who was known to followers as Vanguard or sometimes Grandmaster, was the most important person in her life.

” He was my mentor ,” she said.” School teachers. We had a romantic relationship. A physical and sexual relationship .”

Salzman said the relationship began when she was 21, in 1995. Over time, she said, she became a member of a secret society within Nxivm known as ” DOS” which arranged adherents into a hierarchical order of “masters” and “slaves”, focused on sex obedience to Raniere. Salzman said she was a” first-line slave” who answered directly to the leader.

” I was a slave with Keith as my master ,” Salzman said.” I had other slaves under me .”

Jurors were proven photographs of women ” branded” with Raniere’s initials. Group member Marc Vicente testified that the pictures were kept in an online folder created by the actor Allison Mack, a group member. DOS members were allegedly warned that if they broke with or irritated Raniere, the pictures would be released to families and the press.

Salzman testified that when Raniere could not attend DOS meetings, she and other women were directed toward take nude photographs of themselves and send them to him.

When Raniere was present, she said, followers would strip naked and sit on the floor in front of him while he held tribunal, fully clothed, describing objectives and projects such as a volume or a new dungeon.

Over the course of their 17 -year relationship, she said, Raniere took closeup photographs of her genitalia and forced her into threesomes with other alleged slaves, including Mack.

” Initially, I participated because I was curious ,” she said. Later, she said, she participated because” he wanted that “.

Prosecutors have repeatedly sought to describe Raniere’s hold over his adherents. Witnesses have testified that adherence to his wants often came with strict weight-control guidelines. Saltzman told jurors Raniere gave her a target of 100 lb.

Vicente told the court he had grown concerned about Mack’s weight loss. Raniere’s matter-of-fact reply, he said, was:” Well, I’m trying to break her .”

Salzman and co-defendants including her mother, who was known as ” Prefect”, Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman and Mack have pleaded guilty to crimes ranging from visa fraud to racketeering. Vicente testified that Bronfman, an important group benefactor, was once forced to wear a jock strap, for misbehaving.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Weight loss linked to healthy eating not genetics, study finds

Participants who ate the most vegetables and consumed the fewest processed foods, sugary drinks and unhealthy fats shed the most kilograms

The amount and quality of food and not a person’s genetics will lead to weight loss, a US study has found.

It has been suggested that variations in genetic makeup make it easier for some people to lose weight than others on certain diets.

To test this theory researchers at Stanford University conducted a randomised control trial involving 609 overweight adults, who all underwent genetic and insulin testing before being randomly assigned to either a low-fat or low-carb diet for 12 months.

Gene analysis identified differences are connected with how the body processes fats or carbohydrates. But weight loss averaged around 5kg to 6kg at follow-up regardless of genes, insulin levels or diet type.

What seemed to make a difference was healthy eating, researchers said.

Participants who ate the most vegetables and devoured the fewest processed foods, sugary drinks and unhealthy fats lost the most weight.

Prof Lennert Veerman from the School of Medicine at Griffith University in Queensland said the study presented there was probably no such thing as a diet right for a particular genetic make-up.

” We feed to fill our belly and, if that’s with veggies, we tend to lose weight, whereas if it’s with chocolate or French fries, flushed down with a soda, we gain weight ,” Veerman said.

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Participants had 22 health education class during the study and were encouraged to be physically active but the focus was on what they ate.

They were advised to choose high-quality foods but were not given indicated calorie restrictions nor were they provided with specific foods. Outcomes are based on what they reported eating.

Fat intake in the low-fat group averaged 57 grams during the study versus 87 grams beforehand, while carb intake in the low-carb group averaged 132 grams versus 247 grams previously.

Both groups reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of about 500 calories.

The leading Australian nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton, from the school of medical sciences at the University of New South Wales, said the “excellent” study highlighted the importance of eating plenty of vegetables.

Stanton advises people to attempt professional help to choose quality foods because the macronutrient content of of a diet” does not really matter “.

” Some previous studies that have damned carbohydrates have not taken note of the foods that rendered it ,” Stanton said.” For instance, lentils and lollies are both’ carbs’ but one is a nutrient-dense high quality food while the other is junk. Simply calling them’ carbs’ does not provide this vital distinction .”

While most diets worked, the real challenge was sticking with them, Veerman said.

” Instead of’ going on a diet’ it would be better to find new, healthier habits ,” he said.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Selfies, influencers and a Twitter president: the decade of the social media celebrity

From Gyneth Paltrow to Trump, todays starrings speak directly to their fans. But are they genuinely controlling their message?

I have a friend, Adam, who is an autograph seller- a niche profession, and one that is getting more niche by the day. When we gratify for breakfast last month he was looking despondent.

” Everyone takes selfies these days ,” he said sadly, picking at his scrambled eggs.” It’s never autographs any more. They just want photos of themselves with celebrities .”

Anyone who has attended a red carpet event or watched one on Tv, knows that selfies have securely supplanted autographs, with fans careening desperately towards celebrities with outstretched phones instead of pens and paper. Celebrities have adapted accordingly. In 2017, a video of Liam Payne ran viral that depicted him miserably working his way down a line of selfie-takers, his smile lasting as long as it took for each fan to press click.

A photo of oneself with, say, Tom Cruise, feels more personal than a mere scribbled signature, which he could have given anyone( and could have been signed by anyone ). But the real reason selfies have abruptly rendered autographs as obsolete as landline telephones is because of social media. Instagram is constructed for photos , not autographs, and what’s the point of having your photo taken with Payne if you don’t then immediately post it and watch the ” OMG !” s and” NO Way !!!!” s come flooding in? If you stand next to a celebrity and your friends don’t like the photo, did it ever happen? Do you even exist?

Instagram launched in 2010, four years after Twitter, six years after Facebook. Although social media was originally pitched as a way for people to keep in touch with their friends, it quickly also became a way for people to feel greater proximity to celebrities, and to flaunt this closeness to others. Facebook, with characteristic hamfistedness, attempted to monetise this in 2013, when it announced it was trialling a feature that would allow users to pay to contact celebrities for a sliding scale of fees: 71 p for Jeremy Hunt, PS10. 68 for Tom Daley. But there was no need for people to spend money for the privilege, because celebrities had already proven extremely keen to bend down low and share their lives with the peasants. When Demi Moore appeared on David Letterman in 2010, she was already so addicted to Twitter she continued to tweet while live on air to millions. (” This stinks ,” Letterman griped .)

The appeal of social media for a celebrity is obvious, in that it allows them to talk to the public without those awful middlemen: journalists. The past decade is littered with examples of why celebrities( and their publicists) now prefer social media( which they can control) to giving interviews( which they cannot .) It’s unlikely that Michael Douglas would have tweeted that his throat cancer was caused by cunnilingus, as he told the Guardian’s Xan Brooks in 2013( and for which he later publicly apologised to his wife, Catherine Zeta Jones ). It’s even less likely that Liam Neeson would have made an Instagram story about the time he went out hoping to kill a” black bastard” after a friend was raped, as he said in an interview this year. Why risk such disasters when, instead, you can just take a flattering photo, slap a filter on it and post it to your already adoring followers? Mega celebrities with a hyper-online fanbase- Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Frank Ocean- can now go for years without giving an interview and their careers are helped rather than harmed for it.

Instagram is an airbrushing app, one that lets people touch up their photos, specifically, and their own lives, generally, by determining what they choose to post.( When Jennifer Aniston ultimately joined social media last month, and momentarily broke the internet, she naturally chose Instagram over the bearpit of Twitter .) Some are more honest about this than others: after he married Kim Kardashian- the celebrity who more than any other has made a virtue out of artifice- Kanye West proudly told reporters in 2014 that the two of them expended four days of their honeymoon in Florence playing with the filters on the wedding photo, that they eventually posted on Instagram,” because the flowers were off-colour and stuff like that “.

Frank
Frank Ocean: a mega celebrity with a hyper-online fanbase. Photograph: Rex/ Shutterstock

You wonder what they’d do with all that time if the internet didn’t exist- remedy cancer, perhaps? Musician John Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen have established a new kind of fame for themselves with their regular social media posts: with Teigen complaining about Donald Trump on Twitter; both of them posting photos of their perfect household on Instagram. Teigen is considered more “real” than her friend Kardashian because she is funny and doesn’t take money to advertise dodgy weight-loss supplements. But their photos are as idealised and managed as any Hello! shoot. The reason Teigen- a heretofore relatively little known model- has over 26 million adherents on Instagram is because she hits that social media sweet place, which is to be( to use two of the more grating buzzwords of the decade) aspirational and authentic.

At the beginning of this decade, it was the aspirational side of the equation that was deemed more important- leading to the rise of a new kind of celebrity: the influencers. This bewilder group of people indicate their lives are so perfect that, by showing us photos of how they eat, dress, mother, travel, decorate, exert, put on makeup and even remedy themselves of illness, they will influence us to do the same. For the successful, the money was suddenly limitless, as brands realised that the public trusted influencers more than adverts, and so threw money at them to endorse their products; Kylie Jenner, a makeup influencer, currently makes$ 1m per sponsored post. This was always a delicate bubble and it finally began to burst last year, when the Advertising Standards Authority decreed that influencers need to spell it out when they’re being paid to promote something. Writing ” ADVERT ” beneath that perfect photo of you chugging some Smart Water next to a waterfall doesn’t really boost one’s authenticity.

Even more problematic were the Fyre Festival debacle and the fall of YouTube superstars such as Logan Paul and PewDiePie, scandals that eroded the relationship between online celebrities and their followers. It turns out influencers weren’t more trustworthy than adverts; in fact, in the unregulated world of the web, they were markedly less so.

An older demographic has sneered at influencers, as they did with the previous decade’s reality Tv stars, indicating they are not ” real” celebrities. This is an absurd complaint, in recognition of the fact that some influencers have more adherents than traditional movie stars do. Yet influencers atomise audiences in a way traditional celebrities don’t: even if you have never bought Vogue, you’ll know who Cindy Crawford is; unless you follow Chiara Ferragni on social media you will likely have no idea who she is- and yet the style influencer has four times as many adherents as Crawford.

Ironically, the rise of the influencer began with a very old-school celebrity, one who is frequently accused of being the personification of the worst kind of elitist privilege: Gwyneth Paltrow. When Paltrow launched her wellness website, Goop, in 2008, few would have predicted it would reshape both Paltrow’s career and cultural notions of what constitutes an aspirational lifestyle. Paltrow helped usher out the 2000 s trend for bling and Cristal, swapping them for yoga clothes and gluten-free kale crisps, stimulating discreet asceticism the ultimate -Alister look. Which is more authentic is debatable, but the biggest swap Paltrow stimulated was personal: “shes gone” from being an Academy Award-winning actor to online influencer. And, in recognition of the fact that her company is now estimated to be worth $ 250 m, she probably stimulated the more lucrative choice.

Happily , not everyone uses social media to hawk fantasy images of themselves. Occasional glimpses of reality peek through, to everyone’s delight, and by “reality” I entail “feuds”. We’ve had Katy Perry and Taylor Swift’s long-running snarky subtweets aimed at one another. There were Kim Cattrall’s explicit swipes at Sarah Jessica Parker on Instagram. After her brother died, she wrote:” I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time @ sarahjessicaparker. Let me make this VERY clear.( If I haven’t already .) You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your’ nice girl’ persona .” Most recently, Coleen Rooney accused” Rebekah Vardy’s account” of selling tales about her to the tabloids. One can only feel deep stabs of regret that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford died before either had access to an iPhone.

As much as young celebrities tout the importance of authenticity, those who come across as most genuine tend to be the older ones- perhaps because they are less internet savvy, or, more likely, have fewer media directors. Bette Midler and, in particular, Cher have really come into their own on Twitter, gleefully sharing their often emoji-heavy supposes on Trump and politics in general. (” What do you think of Boris Johnson ?” one tweeter asked Cher.” F-ing idiot who lied to the British ppl ,” the goddess replied, rightly .) And while Instagram may be best known for hyper-stylised photos of, say, Beyonce holding her newborn twins, the most purely enjoyable celebrity accounts belong to Glenn Close- she posts candid videos of herself and her puppies, always liked by Michael Douglas- and Diane Keaton, who posts decidedly unstylised photos of herself.” YES, I AM WEARING[ TROUSERS] UNDER A SKIRT” is a typical all-caps caption. Ever wanted to know what Annie Hall would be like online? Now you know.

Actor
Sarah Jessica Parker, target of Instagram swipes from fellow Sex And The City star Kim Cattrall. Photograph: Reuters

Of course, the downside to being able to reach one’s public immediately is that the public can reach back. Stars from Stephen Fry to Nicki Minaj have publicly left social media sites after the audience proved a little less admiring than they hoped. “Stan”- or obsessive fan- culture has blossomed. Sometimes this has been to the celebrity’s benefit: Lady Gaga’s fan squad, the Little Monsters, amped up her Oscar campaign for A Star Is Born. But if stans feel they have been let down by the object of their preoccupation, they will viciously bully the( usually female) star, as Katy Perry and Demi Lovato have experienced. As a outcome, many celebrities have turned off the comments on their accounts, so we can hear them but they can’t hear us. So much for getting closer.

And yet, for all the fascination social media currently exerts, the celebrity narratives that will have the most enduring impact did not start there. There had been rumors about Harvey Weinstein for years, but he was ultimately undone by good old-fashioned investigative reporting, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey at the New York Times, and Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker. Michael Jackson, R Kelly, Woody Allen, Max Clifford, Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer became pariahs( in Jackson’s case, posthumously) when their accusers spoke to journalists. Caitlyn Jenner introduced herself to the world , not on social media, but on the covering of Vanity Fair. When Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, the artist formerly known as Meghan Markle, spoke out against the “campaigns” against her, they directed their rage towards the print media( and the Mail on Sunday in particular ). Ironically, this could be seen as instead reassuring to the newspaper industry: sure, our sales are falling, but for a certain kind of celebrity, publish is still what matters.

Nonetheless, this decade has, in a very profound way, been shaped by the social media celebrity. Donald Trump did not emerge from the online world; he came to prominence through the traditional format of TV. But he has taken advantage of the route Twitter prioritises personality over expertise: it doesn’t really matter what you say, as long as you say it in a way that captures the most attention; and the public has grown accustomed to this kind of communication. In the early part of the decade, Trump devoted himself a Twitter makeover; it was a platform where he could move from being the embodiment of obnoxious Manhattan privilege( bragging in interviews that he wouldn’t rent an apartment to anyone on welfare ), to the say-it-like-it-is kinda guy, the one who tweets about the dangers of vaccination. When he ran for the presidency, Trump maintained this persona, and many people assumed that’s all it was- a persona- and one he would fell once in office. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Now he, and in this country, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, treat their offices as if they were a form of social media: they rely on the web to build a dedicated following, and complain about journalists who venture anything but adoring coverage. They disdain traditional interviews, preferring instead to put out their messages via Facebook or Twitter, metaphorically turning off the comments, staying comfortably inside their respective bubbles. Social media was never supposed to reflect the real world, but the real world is increasingly being bent to reflect social media. And it’s not only autograph vendors who will suffer for that.

* If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in publish, please email weekend @theguardian. com, including your name and address( not for publishing ).

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Cokie Roberts, famed journalist and political commentator, dies at 75

Roberts expended decades at ABC News, wrote books and never became cynical, colleagues say: When I think of politics, I think of Cokie Roberts

Cokie Roberts, the daughter of politicians who grew up to cover the family business in Washington for ABC News and NPR over several decades, died on Tuesday in Washington of complications from breast cancer. She was 75.

ABC contravene into network programming to announce her demise and pay tribute.

Roberts was the daughter of Hale Boggs, a former House majority leader from Louisiana, and Lindy Boggs, who succeeded her husband in Congress. Roberts ran in radio and at CBS News and PBS before joining ABC News in 1988.

She was a congressional reporter and analyst who co-anchored the Sunday political show This Week with Sam Donaldson from 1996 to 2002.

Roberts, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, kept running virtually to the end. She appeared on This Week in August, drawing enough concern about her evident weight loss that she released a statement saying ” I am doing fine” and was looking forward to covering next year’s election.

She co-wrote a political column for many years with her husband of 53 years, Steven, who survives her. They had two children.

Roberts wrote books, focusing on the role of women in history. She wrote two with her husband, one about interfaith households and From This Day Forward, an account of their marriage.

Current ABC News political reporter Jonathan Karl recalled being in awe of Roberts when he first started working at the network.

” When I think of politics, I think of Cokie Roberts ,” he said.

Her colleagues said she never became cynical or “losing ones” love for politics. She did force NPR to clarify her role as a commentator when she wrote a column in 2016 calling on” the rational wing” of the Republican party to reject Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Marianne Williamson: the ‘leftwing Trump’ preaching the Politics of Love

As 20 nominees prepare for todays second Democratic presidential debate, Stefanie Marsh satisfies the celebrity self-help guru accused of being a dangerous wacko who just wants the United Country to harness love

The left-wing version of Donald Trump– perhaps soon to be his nemesis- could well turn out to be a highly groomed and imposingly articulated best-selling writer of spiritual books. Marianne Williamson was written off as a joke until last month when, virtually 30 minutes into the televised Democratic debate, as if emerging from a pupa of deep meditation, she calmly blindsided Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and the entire line-up of career legislators beside her, with a solemn pledge to” harness love” to defeat the fear-mongering president.

Within seconds the author of volumes such as The Age of Miracles and A Course in Weight Loss , the Tweeter of bon mots such as” The power of your intellect is greater than the power of nuclear radiation”, and the proponent of what some Democrat are now describing forcefully as dangerous medical quackery was trending on social media. Now she’s through to this week’s second round of debates, and there are a great many Americans who will be watching for her unpredictable contribution alone.

Williamson grew up in Texas, has lived most of her life in California and, in a bid to garner precious elections in the early caucus nation of Iowa, recently took the unusual step of moving to its capital, Des Moines. But her accent is strangely borderless- she doesn’t so much speak as orate, in the low, deliberate, somewhat husky tones of a philosopher: the voice of, it was noted on Twitter,” someone who merely dumped Humphrey Bogart “.

She knows she’s not the” safe option ,” she says gravely,” but I believe that this is a moment and situation where what some might consider a safe choice is the most dangerous choice we can make. Donald Trump is not a politician. Donald Trump is a phenomenon. And it will take a phenomenon to defeat him .” She often was talking about” Trump the phenomenon” in interviews, which neatly positions her as his diametric foe. But will she be the phenomenon to beat Trump? She’s collected enough unique donations to make it back into the overcrowded field of Democrat but is polling at just half a per cent. Can” conscious politics” and” conscious capitalism” vanquish Trump?” Nobody knows who’s going to win. This is a very volatile moment in the United State. I am going to do my best to be the Democratic nominee, and if I’m not a nominee I’m going to do my best to support who is .”

‘Some
‘ Some might consider a safe choice is the most dangerous choice we can stimulate ‘: Williamson with John Hickenlooper at the first Democratic presidential debate, 27 June, Miami, Florida. Photograph: Drew Angerer/ Getty Images

I first fulfilled Williamson last October, in a too-noisy cafe in London, around the corner from where her daughter lives. Nine months is a long time in politics: Williamson was just a lowly world-famous self-help author and lecturer then- a name you’d probably know if you were into Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins or Louise Hay, or if you were going through the kind of personal crisis where even ultra-rationalists find themselves drawn to the” intellect, body, spirit” aisle of bookshops.

A room-mate of the actor Laura Dern in her 20 s, Williamson had transformed herself into Hollywood’s spiritual darling by her mid-3 0s. She’s unique among the Democratic candidates in having been both Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual adviser and the officiator at Elizabeth Taylor’s eighth and final wedding at Neverland( where Michael Jackson was best man ). The performer Jeff Bridges donated $2,050 to her campaign in May. Williamson is said to have advised Hillary Clinton prior to Clinton’s re-election to the Senate in 2006, teaching her the word ” channelling”, which Clinton then used on the campaign trail. It shows how much American politics has absorbed the language- even the ideology- of New Age thinking that, six years later, Bill Clinton said his wife” was known to commune” with the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Williamson is 67 , single, and her daughter is 29- that’s all she’ll share about her private life. Professionally, “self-help guru” is not a description she would use. The day I fulfill her, she was taking a day off midway through the European leg of a speaking tour- Love America – on the way to Dublin, then the continent. I determined myself sitting across the table from a poised and serious woman, a strange hybrid of Lauren Bacall and a Jungian therapist.

” I don’t think of myself as a self-help guru and I do not guess anybody who has actually heard me talk or read my volumes thinks of me as flaky ,” she told me sternly. Forbes publication, which has quoted her a lot over the years, describes her as a businesswoman, but she says she sees herself as a spiritual educator( of 35 years’ stand ), an activist, an entrepreneur,” a bestselling novelist, a woman, a mother, an American and a Jew “.

Good
Good cause: Williamson with David Hockney at an Aids charity party. Photograph: Richard Perry/ Sygma via Getty Images

Nine months on from that dialogue, what Williamson has decided to do about Trump is to become president herself. She calls me on the road, living out of a suitcase, she says- not dissimilar to her usual existence, though she’s now sermon the Politics of Love to the as-yet-unconverted. People mock her love-can-beat-Trump message but don’t actually dislike it.

She’s had time to reflect on her performance at the debate and the impact she made.” I can’t really complain about some of the mock. I mean, some of it has been hilarious. Very little of it was malevolent and a lot of it is quite fascinating. Politics is a long-form conversation. It’s a journey. It’s not a one-night debate .”

One of the more memorable moments in Williamson’s stage day came when nominees were asked to name the person they’d call first as chairman. Biden and Harris gazed on in astonishment at Williamson’s reply:” The prime minister of New Zealand, who said her goal is to stimulate New Zealand the best place in the world for a child to grow up. And I would tell her:’ Girlfriend, you are so on .'” Williamson became the most Googled candidate on the second night of the 2020 Democratic debates.” Some people guess I’m absolutely bonkers ,” she laughs.

Like her foes on the far right, Williamson calls for a” new kind of politics”, but she’s been accused by some on the left of being a Republican-funded plant.” What I would say is, true, there are a lot of Republican who love what I’m saying ,” she says.” There are many people who voted for Trump who say they would vote for me. I think if anything, that would construct me most attractive to Democratic voters as a nominee .”

It’s a delightful image- angry Trump voters casting off the president’s hate-filled message to embrace Williamson’s mantras of peace, love and mindfulness. But it’s the left-wing establishment she wants to disrupt just as thoroughly.” The Democratic party is seen as too cool. Too cool to use words like’ patriotism’ and’ morality ‘. I think that’s been very damaging to us politically .”

The biggest test to her campaign came when she described mandatory vaccination policies as “draconian” and “Orwellian”. There was an outcry- George Orwell died of TB. Although she later apologised, her claim that she” supports vaccinations” came with the caveat” “whether theyre” called for “. It’s unclear what her policy would be.” I’m not anti-vaccine ,” she tells me quite angrily, after an article in the Daily Beast calls her” a dangerous wacko “.” I am pro-science. I have never told anyone to pray away their cancer […] I regret, however, calling it draconian or Orwellian. The government must always come down on the side of public safety .”

What about when she said,” The Aids virus is not more powerful than God “?” I would hope ,” she says,” that if you’re writing an article you might have read my books. Integrative medication means body, mind and spirit .” In today’s world, she says, the three are no longer considered separate even by the mainstream.” An oncologist is likely to be the first person to tell someone to go to one of those spiritual support groups. It’s not a fringe activity. If person does a meditation or a prayer with person regarding the boosting of their immune system, it is in no way to denigrate or to argue against or to criticise medicine. That is absurd. I’ve never said anything like that. I’ve never written anything like that and my entire career proves otherwise .”

She says narcotic companies pathologise unhappiness, a claim that some have furiously interpreted as:” Depression is all in your head ,” and is suggested that antidepressants are an exploitative, money-making scheme. Then Williamson ran further.” How many public personalities on antidepressants have to hang themselves before the FDA does something ?” she Tweeted last June, when the designer Kate Spade killed herself.” Big Pharma policemen[ sticks] to what it knows, and the average person stops falling for this? The tragedies keep compounding. The awake is the beginning .”

Depression, stress and unhappiness are big themes in her work, as one would expect, and there are plenty who have read her books who say she’s changed, if not saved, their lives. But does she really think people who have been prescribed antidepressants should come off them? Isn’t that dangerous?” Over the past few years ,” she says,” the psychopharmacological and pharmaceutical industries have medicalised depression. Now, I’m not saying there is no such thing as mental illness, but I am saying there is a spectrum of normal human hopelessnes “thats really not” mental illness. When someone you love dies, when you go bankrupt, lose something professionally, go through a divorce … that’s very painful but it’s not a mental illness, and can be better addressed through spiritual rather than pharmaceutical entails .”

A day or two after the Democrat debate, Williamson was trending again, this time because she had been left out of a Vogue publication shoot by Annie Leibovitz dedicated to “all” the women running for chairperson. Williamson responded by retweeting the picture with her face Photoshopped into it and a Facebook post:” The framers of the constitution did not stimulate Vogue magazine the gatekeeper of America’s political progress .” The Vogue editor responsible was hauled up on morning talk shows to defend the magazine’s decision on the basis that Williamson, unlike her five female competitors, is not a member of Congress.

Williamson’s CV has nothing patently presidential to recommend it. The daughter of a naturalised Russian immigration lawyer and a homemaker mom, she grew up in Houston, the youngest of three children, and was a teen protester against the Vietnam war, with a rebellious streak and aspirations to be an actor.

In her 20 s she found herself living an aimless party life in New York when a gift from her then boyfriend changed her life and career. It was a book by the psychologist Helen Schucman, a self-study spiritual curriculum called A Course in Miracles , the greatest ” miracle” of all being full” awareness of love’s presence “. Williamson saw it inspiring and moved to Los Angeles, where she worked at the Philosophical Research Society library. Here, she was invited by its president to lecture about what she’d learned studying Schucman.

Williamson began to build on Schucman’s ideas. Her quasi-religious talks and volumes began to attract Hollywood’s attention. Shirley MacLaine, Cher and Bette Midler absorbed her lessons on forgiving your mothers, saving the world and why demise does not exist. David Geffen, then the richest film mogul in the world, became a key advocate. When her run gained traction in the 1980 s among homosexual humen with Aids, Geffen donated $500,000 to help set up Project Angel Food, a free meal service for men and women too unwell to shop and cook for themselves. David Hockney, Diane von Furstenberg and Kim Basinger joined the honorary advisory board of a subsequent charity. The last period she was as talked about as she is now was probably in 1991, when, at 38, she was profiled in Vanity Fair as” guru of the moment “.

She has written 12 books, four of them bestsellers. The last one, Tears to Triumph , sold 3m copies when it was published in 2016. The names of her books coupled with the calibre of celebrities( including members of the Kardashian clan) who supported her failed 2014 congressional bid in California resulted even the Democrat incumbent, Henry Waxman, to reject her as too woo for a more serious career in Washington. That failure weighed heavily on her, though she sees the criticism of her as gendered.” I’m barely the first female whose career and contribution is considered differently because of my sexuality ,” she says, and it’s true that the respected philosopher John Gray, who endorsed her candidacy, for example, never get called a “self-help guru”.

So what are her policies? There follows a long shopping list of Democrat ideals, starting with a” massive infusion of hope and economic opportunity into the sinews of American civilisation “. She would” repeal the 2017 taxation cut which gave 83 cents in every$ 1 to the richest individuals and firms. I’d stop the corporate subsidies, such as the $20 bn that went to the fossil fuel companies in one year alone. I want to see a $15 -an-hour minimum wage. I want to see Medicare for all .” She wants to reverse climate change and give citizenship to America’s 11 m undocumented immigrants.

As a speaker she has millions of adoring adherents, but the majority are women. Does she think her message can appeal to men?” There’s a saying in publishing ,” she says: “‘ the wives buy the books and their spouses read them .'” In politics, she adds:” Angela Merkel is liked by humen in Germany, so my sense is that there are many instances where the fact that the leader is a woman has not made a misogynist backlash even though I think misogyny was definitely involved in the defeat of Hillary Clinton. And so when President Trump said,’ Make America Great Again’- there are so many dog whistles in that statement. What is the great American that he’s talking about, precisely? It implied to a lot of people an America where the men operated the show and the women stood there and appeared pretty .”

She says that Trump’s recent” Go back” Tweets are” out of every fascist’s playbook “. How does love deal with an auditorium full of Trump voters chanting” Go back “? Williamson constructed a career on helping others work through their personal crises, but can she convince the nation to apply her abilities to an entire demographic? Come 2020, will we be watching her leading America in a broadcasted group mindfulness meditation? Laugh all you want, then recollect who’s president.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Weight loss linked to healthy eating not genetics, study determines

Participants who ate the most veggies and ingested the fewest processed foods, sugary drinks and unhealthy fats shed the most kilograms

The amount and quality of food and not a person’s genetics will lead to weight loss, a US study has found.

It has been suggested that variations in genetic makeup make it easier for some people to lose weight than others on certain diets.

To test this theory researchers at Stanford University conducted a randomised control trial involving 609 overweight adults, who all underwent genetic and insulin testing before being haphazardly assigned to either a low-fat or low-carb diet for 12 months.

Gene analyses identified differences are connected with how the body processes fats or carbohydrates. But weight loss averaged around 5kg to 6kg at follow-up regardless of genes, insulin levels or diet type.

What seemed to make a difference was healthy eating, researchers said.

Participants who ate the most veggies and ate the fewest processed foods, sugary beverages and unhealthy fats lost the most weight.

Prof Lennert Veerman from the School of Medicine at Griffith University in Queensland said the study demonstrated there was probably no such thing as a diet right for a particular genetic make-up.

” We feed to fill our stomach and, if that’s with vegetables, we tend to lose weight, whereas if it’s with chocolate or French fries, flushed down with a soda, we gain weight ,” Veerman said.

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Participants had 22 health education class during the study and were encouraged to be physically active but the focus was on what they ate.

They were advised to choose high-quality foods but were not given suggested calorie limits nor were they supplied with specific foods. Results are based on what they reported eating.

Fat intake in the low-fat group averaged 57 grams during the study versus 87 grams beforehand, while carb intake in the low-carb group averaged 132 grams versus 247 grams previously.

Both groups reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of about 500 calories.

The resulting Australian nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton, from the school of medical sciences at the University of New South Wales, said the “excellent” study highlighted the importance of eating plenty of vegetables.

Stanton advises people to attempt professional help to choose quality foods because the macronutrient content of of a diet” does not really matter “.

” Some previous studies that have damned carbohydrates have not taken note of the foods that furnished it ,” Stanton said.” For instance, lentils and lollies are both’ carbs’ but one is a nutrient-dense high quality food while the other is junk. Simply calling them’ carbs’ does not provide this vital distinction .”

While most diets ran, the real challenge was sticking with them, Veerman said.

” Instead of’ going on a diet’ it would be better to find new, healthier habits ,” he said.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

‘ I was scared I’d get sick ‘: the pregnant migrant women detained by the US

Esther Ramos lost 20 pounds when she was sent to a Texas facility while pregnant and critics say experiences like hers are becoming more common

Esther Ramos was 16 years old and two months pregnant with her second child when she, her husband, Fredy Aldana, and their then 19 -month-old daughter, Milagro, intersected the border in Tijuana to seek asylum in the US on 13 January.

Upon entry into the San Ysidro border station, Esther and Milagro were separated from Aldana and they haven’t seen him since. Esther and her daughter spent three days in a Customs and Border Protection( CBP) holding cell, where she said she wasn’t offered any food on her first day and she barely ate during the next two days.

” They gave us burritos in the morning and at night and a small sandwich during the day, but I merely drank the juice because I was scared I would get sick- all of the food looked like it was prepared a really long time ago ,” Esther said.

Because she and her daughter are both under 18, they were then sent to a facility for unaccompanied minors in San Benito, Texas, where they were held for over two months. During her time in detention, as her pregnancy progressed, Esther lost 20 pounds.

Critics say experiences like Esther’s are becoming more common as pregnant migrants- whether minors like Esther or adults- are being detained in increasing numbers and for longer periods of time as the Trump administration cracks down on border crossings. Under the Obama administration, Migration and Customs Enforcement( Ice) had a policy of presumption of release for all pregnant women, except under “extraordinary circumstances”.

” Pregnant women shouldn’t be in detention, period ,” said Dr Ranit Mishori, an expert medical consultant for Physicians for Human Rights and professor of Family Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, referring to the Trump administration’s decision to overrule the previous policy in March 2018.

In February, a 24 year-old Honduran detainee went into premature labor at the Point Isabel detention center in Texas and dedicated birth to a stillborn newborn. Ice later revealed that as many as 28 females had miscarried in their custody in the last two years.

Migrant proponents and pregnant asylum seekers waiting to cross the border in Tijuana have heard about the increase in miscarriages while in Ice custody.

” There have been anecdotes of women having miscarriages in detention and Ice policemen denying they were ever pregnant, so we’re offering pregnancy exams for those who want a record of their pregnancy ,” said Phil Canete, result coordinator for the Refugee Health Alliance, a clinic based in Tijuana.

Esther’s description of her time in detention offers a stark painting for a pregnant woman, especially one whose first infant had been born premature. Mishori said Esther being a minor also increases the risk for her second pregnancy.

Esther said that during the week she and the other detained minors at her facility were only given two meals a day.

On a typical weekday she was woken at 5am and given a prenatal vitamin that made her nauseous. At 6am she had breakfast, and at 7am she and her daughter were separated for the working day and she went to class until 4pm. She said some teachers brought them a snack of apples or pears, but on most days she said she didn’t eat again until dinner at 5pm.

“[ Esther] didn’t receive adequate nutrition and that’s very regarding and can affect her and plainly the fetus ,” said Mishori.

Esther suffered from daily nausea and vomiting, which Mishori said is common for the first trimester, but that it’s vital pregnant women continue gaining weight.

In addition to being hungry, Esther recalled constant fatigue, as she was often not allowed to return to her room to rest between her 5am wakeup and her 10 pm bedtime.

” When you think about a woman in that first trimester it’s a period of very great physiological changes that often cause girls to be more tired ,” Mishori said.

In a statement to the Guardian, Patrick Fisher, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services’s Administration for Children and Household, said that every child in custody receives” three meals a day plus snacks” in addition to other services such as medical and mental healthcare, education and recreation.

Esther said that during her time in detention she was taken to three medical visits, and at the second visit she was given an ultrasound and told her baby was a girl. She said the doctors did not mention her weight loss as a number of problems but did tell her she needed to be drinking a lot of water, which was readily available in the facility.

Despite having several family members in the US prepared to be her sponsor, it took two months for Esther to be released.

Esther and Aldana decided to flee Honduras because a group of narco-traffickers started killing Aldana’s family members one by one after his brother refused to hand over his small plot of land. They traveled by foot and bus with the migrant caravan to reach the US-Mexico border, where they waited two months for their chance to turn themselves in.

Aldana was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana where he has been for more than seven months away. Esther said her daughter and husband have always been close but they became especially attached in their last month together because he was always the one holding her; he didn’t want any heavy lifting to hurt Esther’s pregnancy.

” When he calls, I hold the phone to Milagro’s ear so she can hear him, but she doesn’t say anything, she merely cries ,” Esther said.

They both hope he’s released from detention before her newborn is due next month, but they have no idea if that will happen.

About Esther and her time in detention, Mishori said she ticks a lot of boxes of some of the most vulnerable people: being a woman, pregnant, having a child and being a child herself.

“ So, that’s sort of the big picture here, that she shouldn’t have been in detention at all ,” Mishori said. This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in the Americas .

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Al Sharpton on Donald Trump: ‘He’s a white nationalist’

The civil rights activist, who recently find himself at the sharp end of the presidents tweets, discusses his history with Trump and the recent mass gun violence

Among the many framed mementoes that clutter the white vinyl walls of the Rev Al Sharpton’s midtown Manhattan office, there is one he treasures merely a little more than the others. It’s an official program for the state memorial service held for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg back in 2013.

Sharpton, the American civil rights stalwart, had been unable to travel to the event in person, and received a copy in the mail signed by a close friend. Across the program’s gold lettering, a short message is scrawled in thin black marker:” To Rev Sharpton- A fellow warrior for justice !” The signature is Barack Obama’s, who back on that wet December day gave a speech in honor of Mandela that framed his legacy and post-apartheid reconciliation as a clarion call for global justice and peace.

There’s a degree of beleaguered nostalgia as Sharpton looks at the frame , now a relic not just of a previous presidency but a different epoch of politics, defined by optimism, ideas and nuance.

The Obama years thrust Sharpton, often a divisive and radical figure in American politics, further into the mainstream. It was at this time that the Baptist minister, once a direct action campaigner at the heart of some of New York City’s most torrid racial conflicts, was given a primetime show on the cable news channel MSNBC and described as the White House’s informal consultant on race.

” I don’t care if Donald Trump does 20 tweets on me. Nothing will ever mean more to me than the first black president calling me a warrior for justice on the program of Nelson Mandela, in his own penmanship ,” he says, pointing to the signature.

Barack
Barack Obama strolls alongside Amelia Boynton Robinson, the Rev Al Sharpton, Michelle Obama, and Georgia representative John Lewis, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 50 th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marchings in Selma, Alabama, on 7 March 2015. Photograph: Saul Loeb/ AFP/ Getty Images

It has been less than a week since the 64 -year-old preacher, bear across the East River in Brooklyn, detected himself at the sharp end of a typically divisive and inflammatory tweetstorm from the current president of the United States.

Last week, Trump labelled him a” conman, a troublemaker” who” Hates Whites& Cops !” as Sharpton travelled to the majority African American city of Baltimore, Maryland, which the president had earlier described as” a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” in an attack on the district’s veteran black Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings.

It was just the latest salvo in Trump’s culture war, which has seen a potent mixture of thinly disguised racism directed at black leaders, hardened anti-immigrant rhetoric and Islamophobic slurs.

A few days later, a 21 -year-old white gunman killed 22 people in the border city of El Paso, Texas, in a domestic terror attack allegedly fueled by white nationalism and immigrant hatred.

Sharpton was shocked, but not entirely astounded, when he heard the news.” This country is in a very dangerous place if we do not legislatively deal with this and set a different moral tone than this president ,” he says, his voice rising with the crescendo and intonation you would expect of a lifelong preacher.

Since Trump’s online attack, he claims, he and his civil rights group, the National Action Network, have received a substantial increase in threats.

” They have probably tripled since he’s come into office, and quadrupled since he tweeted about me ,” Sharpton says.” You’ve got a president of the United States saying I’m a troublemaker, so what does that say to someone like the guy that shot up El Paso? Even though you hope that it doesn’t lead to that, you’d be foolish not to take precautions, because you don’t know what nut he may wake up .”

Of course, Sharpton is no stranger to volatile politics. His career as a civil rights campaigner has spanned over 30 years, and he has met his fair share of controversy and, on occasion, violence. He points to the left side of his chest, where in 1991 he was stabbed by a white resident in Brooklyn as he led a protest over the death of Yusuf Hawkins, a black 16 -year-old, at the hands of a white mob.

” I know what it is to be hurt. I mean, physically, I’ve paid the price. But that stabbing got me past the fear of[ being threatened ].”

Since then, Sharpton has been on the frontlines of many of America’s most notorious police barbarism examples. He marched with the family of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager from Florida gunned down by a neighborhood watchman in Florida. He attended the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police shooting of another unarmed black adolescent, Michael Brown. He has worked on nearly every high-profile police killing in New York City for the past two decades , none more so than the chokehold death of Eric Garner, who died on Staten Island in 2014.

Sybrina
Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin, talk to the lawyer Benjamin Crump and the Rev Al Sharpton on 11 April 2012. Photograph: Evan Vucci/ AP

It’s a bright summer morning, and Sharpton is looking typically trim, his hair slicked back, a neatly fitted shirtdisplaying the weight loss he experienced about a decade ago. He leaves the television on throughout our dialogue, keeping an eye on cable news and checking his phone, which buzzes constantly.

It’s a quirk he appears to share, ironically, with Trump- also a cable TV addict. But their connection goes well beyond this and their recent spat. The pair have known each other for 25 years as flamboyant personalities in this city’s social and political scene. Both are lifelong New Yorkers who moved from the outer boroughs to the bright lights of Manhattan, albeit under markedly different circumstances. Their paths have frequently collided.

Sharpton recalls the first time he gratified Trump, on a helicopter ride to Atlantic City in New Jersey, accompanied by the boxing promoter Don King in the late 1980 s. King and Trump were trying to broker a deal over venue and promotion rights to Mike Tyson’s opposes and, according to Sharpton, had met resistance from the majority black city council. They lobbied him to get involved but he declined.

” I didn’t even want to get on the helicopter because I didn’t like Donald Trump ,” he says.

Sharpton went on to protest outside a Trump building in the midst of the Central Park Five scandal , in 1989, during which the real estate tycoon took out advertisements in all the city’s newspapers calling for the death penalty against five teens falsely convicted, and years later acquitted, over the rape of a white girl in the park.

More than two decades later, in 2008, emails watched by the Guardian show that Trump called Sharpton to personally offer him a slot on The Apprentice. Sharpton declined.

” He begged me and I wouldn’t do it .”

Trump, perhaps predictably, has characterized “the two countries relations” somewhat differently.

” Went to fights with him& Don King, always got along well. He’ loved Trump !’ He would ask me for favors often ,” the president tweeted last week.

Al
Al Sharpton attends the 2016 Democratic national convention at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 25 July 2016. Photograph: Earl Gibson III/ WireImage

In 2002 and 2006 the billionaire appeared at Sharpton’s National Action Network conventions , now among the largest civil rights symposiums in America, as an invited guest. The pair posed for photos, both beaming.

Does he regret bringing him now?

” I wanted to show bipartisanship ,” Sharpton says, striking a surprisingly defensive tone.” You can’t have a civil rights convention where you say I’m only going to have one side, and so it was in that spirit .”

But it was after the election of Obama, he says, that his assessment of Trump went from being one of a” cynical manipulator of race” to” a white patriot”, as he led the “birther” conspiracy movement.

” At our last sit-down meeting he argued with me about Barack Obama not being born here but being born in Kenya. If you’re not one of us, you’re one of them. That’s when I was convinced … That’s who he is. He’s a white nationalist. This is not just some maneuver of his. He deep down inside believes that .”

In the years since Obama’s presidential candidacy, Sharpton has played an increasingly prominent role during the Democratic primary season. In 2016, he invited Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to dine with him in Harlem, in carefully managed media events near the National Action Network headquarters. He declined to endorse either ahead of the New York primary.

Barack
Barack Obama and the Rev Al Sharpton greet patrons at the restaurant Sylvia’s before an Obama fundraiser in Harlem, New York, on 29 November 2007. Photograph: Seth Wenig/ AP

He was present for both Democratic debates in Detroit last month, and says he has spoken in depth with all of the frontrunners during the campaign. It was telling that shortly after Trump’s attack, most nominees were quick to tweet their support for Sharpton, many of them describing it as a personal friend.

He’s equally coy on endorsements this time around, too, undoubtedly aware that playing it cool will lead to more courtship from the key players, eager to appeal to the African American vote, which will be crucial in the early voting state of South Carolina.

He is not shy when asked to define his own political capital, though. He lists off his now weekly cable present on MSNBC, his daily radio present, his broadcasted weekly rallies in Harlem, and National Action Network offices around the country. All of this, he claims, is a way to tap tens if not hundreds of thousands of” prime voters in black America “.

” My role is that I represent a constituency that rallies around these issues ,” he says.” You can say you don’t want that constituency. Or you can get to them another way. Be my guest. But we have a proven track record .”

So, candidates aside, what sort of politics does he guess will have a chance of beating Trump next year?

” A motion of people who don’t want to see a president that is the personification of white patriotism and nativism ,” he says.” The only route the Democrats can miss it is if they have a candidate that is not courageous enough to use that issue. But if they stand up, Trump beats himself .”

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Nxivm trial hears of debauchery and brutality within alleged ‘sex cult’

Slave master Lauren Salzman says of Keith Rainiere, 58, accused of sex trafficking and other charges: He was my mentor

A top” slave master” in the alleged sex cult Nxivm said in witnes on Friday she herself was sexually and psychologically enslaved by Keith Raniere, the sole defendant in a sex-trafficking trial that has rendered a rolled tableau of alleged debauchery and cruelty.

Such was Raniere’s control over his adherents, Lauren Salzman said, they came to accept claims about his ability to control the weather or to disable electronics. It was rumoured, she said, that Raniere could stroll through a rain shower without get wet.

” He would say that his technology was acting up and that he had these types of problems ,” Salzman testified.” That it was something special about him. That it was his energy. His impact on the world .”

Nxivm, pronounced “Nexium”, operated in New York country and was ostensibly devoted to wellness and personal developing. Within it, however, there was allegedly an inner organisation of ” masters” and “slaves” devoted to Raniere’s sexual gratification.

Raniere, 58, was arrested in March 2018. He has pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering conspiracy, identity stealing, extortion, forced labor, money laundering, wire fraud and sex trafficking. In federal court in Brooklyn on Friday, he watched impassively as attorneys questioned a former senior aide.

Lauren Salzman, daughter of the group co-founder Nancy Salzman, said that for many years Raniere, who was known to followers as Vanguard or sometimes Grandmaster, was the most important person in her life.

” He was my mentor ,” she said.” My teacher. We had a romantic relationship. A physical and sexual relationship .”

Salzman said the relationship began when she was 21, in 1995. Over time, she said, she became a member of a secret society within Nxivm known as ” DOS” which arranged adherents into a hierarchical order of “masters” and “slaves”, focused on sex obedience to Raniere. Salzman said she was a” first-line slave” who answered immediately to the leader.

” I was a slave with Keith as my master ,” Salzman said.” I had other slaves under me .”

Jurors were depicted photographs of women ” branded” with Raniere’s initials. Group member Marc Vicente testified that the pictures were kept in an online folder created by the actor Allison Mack, a group member. DOS members were allegedly warned that if they violate with or annoyed Raniere, the pictures would be released to households and the press.

Salzman testified that when Raniere could not attend DOS meetings, she and other women were directed to take nude photographs of themselves and send them to him.

When Raniere was present, she said, followers would strip naked and sit on the floor in front of him while he held tribunal, fully clothed, describing goals and projects such as a book or a new dungeon.

Over the course of their 17 -year relationship, she said, Raniere took closeup photographs of her genitalia and forced her into threesomes with other alleged slaves, including Mack.

” Initially, I participated because I was curious ,” she said. Later, she said, she participated because” he wanted that “.

Prosecutors have repeatedly sought to describe Raniere’s hold over his adherents. Witnesses have testified that adherence to his wishings often came with strict weight-control guidelines. Saltzman told jurors Raniere dedicated her a target of 100 lb.

Vicente told the court he had grown concerned about Mack’s weight loss. Raniere’s matter-of-fact reply, he said, was:” Well, I’m trying to break her .”

Salzman and co-defendants including her mother, who was known as ” Prefect”, Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman and Mack have pleaded guilty to crimes ranging from visa fraud to racketeering. Vicente testified that Bronfman, an important group benefactor, was once forced to wear a jock strap, for misbehaving.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

Weight loss linked to healthy eating not genetics, study determines

Participants who ate the most vegetables and ate the fewest processed foods, sugary beverages and unhealthy fats shed the most kilograms

The amount and quality of food and not a person’s genetics will lead to weight loss, a US study has found.

It has been suggested that variations in genetic makeup make it easier for some people to lose weight than others on certain diets.

To test this theory researchers at Stanford University conducted a randomised control trial involving 609 overweight adults, who all underwent genetic and insulin testing before being randomly assigned to either a low-fat or low-carb diet for 12 months.

Gene analyses identified variations are connected with how the body processes fats or carbohydrates. But weight loss averaged around 5kg to 6kg at follow-up regardless of genes, insulin levels or diet type.

What seemed to make a difference was healthy eating, researchers said.

Participants who ate the most veggies and ate the fewest processed foods, sugary drinkings and unhealthy fats lost the most weight.

Prof Lennert Veerman from the School of Medicine at Griffith University in Queensland said the study presented there was probably no such thing as a diet right for a particular genetic make-up.

” We feed to fill our stomach and, if that’s with veggies, we tend to lose weight, whereas if it’s with chocolate or French fries, flushed down with a soda, we gain weight ,” Veerman said.

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Participants had 22 health education class during the study and were encouraged to be physically active but the focus was on what they ate.

They were advised to choose high-quality foods but were not given suggested calorie restrictions nor were they provided with specific foods. Results are based on what they reported eating.

Fat intake in the low-fat group averaged 57 grams during the study versus 87 grams beforehand, while carb intake in the low-carb group averaged 132 grams versus 247 grams previously.

Both groups reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of about 500 calories.

The leading Australian nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton, from the school of medical sciences at the University of New South Wales, said the “excellent” study highlighted the importance of eating plenty of vegetables.

Stanton advises people to attempt professional help to choose quality foods because the macronutrient content of of a diet” does not really matter “.

” Some previous studies that have damned carbohydrates have not taken note of the foods that rendered it ,” Stanton said.” For example, lentils and lollies are both’ carbs’ but one is a nutrient-dense high quality food while the other is junk. Simply calling them’ carbs’ does not provide this vital distinction .”

While most diets worked, the real challenge was sticking with them, Veerman said.

” Instead of’ going on a diet’ it would be better to find new, healthier habits ,” he said.

Read more: www.theguardian.com