Microplastics Found in 84% of Serious Heart Attack Patients

Plastic pollution may be reaching the heart through the bloodstream

By European Society of Cardiology

In a study published in the European Heart Journal, researchers detected microplastics and nanoplastics in the coronary blood of 84% of patients who had experienced a serious heart attack. That compared with 40% of patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and 32% of those whose coronary arteries appeared normal.

The heart attack group also had a wider variety of plastics in their blood. Polyethylene, one of the world’s most widely used plastics and a common ingredient in packaging and consumer products, was the material found most often.

Although the results do not show that plastic particles trigger heart attacks, they add to concerns that pollution may be connected to cardiovascular disease through inflammation, lung exposure, and damage to blood vessels.

How Microplastics Enter the Human Body

“Micro and nanoplastics are tiny plastic particles that are found virtually everywhere in the environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and many foods we consume,” said first author Dr. Pasquale Paolisso of Sant’Andrea Hospital at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. “In recent years, scientists have begun to detect these particles in human tissues and organs, raising concerns about their potential health effects.”

“However, very little was known about whether these particles are present in the coronary circulation, the blood flowing through the arteries that supply the heart, or whether environmental exposures such as smoking and air pollution might influence their presence.”

Microplastics generally measure less than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches), while nanoplastics can be small enough to interact with cells and biological tissues. Scientists have already reported plastic particles in human blood, lungs, placenta, and breast milk, but their long-term health effects remain uncertain.

How we got to have clam cakes and stuffies

Stanford Scientists Solve a 252-Million-Year-Old Mass Extinction Mystery

By Stanford University

Representative samples of the modern fauna
(left three samples) and the Paleozoic fauna
(right four samples). Credit: Sarah Leibovitz

The shells scattered along modern beaches are clues to an ancient catastrophe. Clams and snails are common today partly because their distant relatives survived the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history, while many of their former rivals nearly vanished.

A new Stanford-led study helps explain why.

About 252 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction event eliminated 96% of marine species and 70% of land animals. Known as the “Great Dying,” it was far more destructive than the later disaster that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.

Why Some Ocean Animals Vanished

Yet the crisis was not equally deadly for every branch of animal life. Some groups that had dominated the oceans for hundreds of millions of years suffered catastrophic losses, while others endured and eventually took their place.

Brachiopods were among the biggest casualties. These shelled animals resemble clams but belong to a completely different evolutionary group. Before the extinction, they were among the most abundant creatures on the seafloor. Crinoids, or sea lilies, and several other mostly stationary bottom dwellers also declined sharply.

The antifa terrorism threat the Trump administration describes does not exist

But since when is being imaginary not a feature in Trump's rants?

Jason M. Blazakis, Middlebury College

The State Department on July 16, 2026, hosted what officials billed as a ministerial on the resurgence of left-wing political terrorism.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited representatives from more than 60 countries to Washington to hear an argument that many of them appear not to believe: that a transnational far-left terrorist movement called antifa threatens the democratic world. 

At the event, allies were asked to mobilize against that enemy despite nations like the Netherlands and Germany politely noting to their host that they cannot find evidence of any such group.

Some intelligence analysts have declined to brief on antifa at interagency meetings because they do not regard it as a serious counterterrorism threat.

As a terrorism scholar who spent a decade running the State Department office that designates terrorist organizations, I understand their confusion. The threat the administration describes does not exist in the form the administration describes it.

Antifa is not a group

Jan. 6 insurrectionist and former Republican state
Rep. Justin Price claims Antifa and not him stormed the Capitol

As I and others have written before, antifa is not a group. It is a movement and an ideology, a loose commitment to opposing fascism. In its most organized form, it amounts to scattered local collectives like Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon.

There is no membership roll, no command hierarchy and no funding structure. There is no leader of antifa – the Trump administration has not named one – and there is no record of deadly attacks attributed to a U.S.-based organization called antifa.

Groups like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have killed tens of thousands of people and have a documented chain of command. Antifa does not. You cannot decapitate a movement with no head, and you cannot sanction an organization that does not exist.

As such, the Trump administration created one.

Trump would love to steal the election. But he's floundering.

Republicans would rather talk about almost anything else than his conspiracy theories.

Paul Waldman

Whenever Donald Trump does something alarming, disturbing, or seemingly ill-considered, his opponents immediately begin trading theories about what his true motivations are.

Is today’s crazy statement or decision just a ruse to distract the public from something else, probably Jeffrey Epstein? Is he laying the groundwork for future actions that are even worse?

The assumption underlying this kind of speculation is that when Trump seems at his most deranged, he actually has a plan. But these days, when it comes to the only subject that occupies Trump’s mind as much as his ballroom or the Reflecting Pool — his obsession with phantom voter fraud — we should stop looking for the hidden strategy. Because there is none.

Last week’s speech revealed Trump’s impotence

In advance of the primetime address he delivered last Thursday, Trump went through the usual motions, promoting it as an earth-shaking speech that would alter the American political landscape.

“It doesn’t get bigger,” he said beforehand. “It’s going to be a very big announcement.” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt tried to tamp down speculation about the content of the speech while heightening the dramatic tension, saying “nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say, which is why everyone should tune in.”

But nobody was fooled.

Just as there are only so many times you can hear Trump say “It’s like nothing anyone has seen before” before the hyperbole loses all meaning, yet another allegation that elections are being stolen no longer registers as revelatory or urgent. That’s especially true when Republicans have worked so hard for so many years to prove that voter fraud is organized and widespread, with an enormous amount of time, effort, and money spent by the entire conservative movement, yet have come up with essentially nothing.

Everyone knew what Trump would deliver — some lies, some innuendo, some banal facts portrayed as deeply sinister. And no one was less enthusiastic about the speech than the Republicans actually trying to win elections this November.

Greatness like we've never seen before

Big races in the Democratic Primary: House District 36, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General

Trump and Hegseth have been covering up the number of US casualties in Iran war

Consistent with the cover-up of the actual costs from this war

Stephen Prager for Common Dreams   

After months of downplaying the number of American casualties from Donald Trump’s war in Iran, The New York Times revealed that the Pentagon once again hid dozens of US military injuries from Iranian strikes on bases in Jordan last week.

As the Times reported on Monday:

In the week leading up to the Iranian attack on Friday that killed two US soldiers and left one service member missing in Jordan, Iran carried out three other strikes against US forces in the country.

Those attacks injured dozens of US service members and damaged several helicopters, according to several US officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted.

The Pentagon’s failure to disclose full information about US casualties is not a new development.

In the early days of the war, Defense Department officials said fewer than a dozen American troops had been injured before abruptly acknowledging that more than 140 had been wounded after Reuters obtained the full figures.

After six American soldiers were killed during the war’s opening salvo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth derided the press’s inquiries about the number of casualties, claiming they were only seeking “to make the president look bad.”

The Intercept’s Nick Turse found in April that US Central Command (CENTCOM) had repeatedly sent outdated and incomplete casualty figures to journalists in what one defense official referred to as a “casualty cover-up.”

How many cups of caffeinated coffee are safe to drink each day?

Up to five cups of coffee per day OK for heart health. Energy shots, not so much

American Heart Association

The latest research indicates that consuming up to 400 mg of caffeine/day (equivalent to up to 5, 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day) is generally safe for most adults and appears to be linked to a lower risk of several cardiovascular conditions, including heart failure, heart disease and stroke in some individuals.

However, higher amounts of caffeine, such as levels found in energy drinks including energy shots, may increase the risk of high blood pressure and/or irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia.

 
More research is needed to better understand caffeine’s impact on the body, how different sources of caffeine impact heart health and how its impact may vary among different people, according to the scientific statement.

Previous studies have found that caffeine is the world’s most popular stimulant and psychoactive sub­stance, and coffee is the most common way people consume caffeine. The latest research supports the conclusion that for most adults, consuming up to 400 mg of caffeine/day (or up to 5, 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day) is safe and appears to be linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease for some individuals. 

However, higher doses of caffeine, such as levels found in energy drinks including energy shots, may cause cardiovascular harm, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement, “Caffeine and Cardiovascular Disease,” published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship peer-reviewed scientific journal Circulation.

MAGA declaring war on seniors — and it could be their downfall

Is Trump testing to see how much he can take away from seniors before they rebel?

Alex Henderson

According to data from the Roper Center at Cornell University, 50 percent of U.S. seniors — those who are 65 or older — voted for Donald Trump in 2024 compared to 49 percent for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. 

The senior vote was close in 2024, and seniors, Roper says, played an important role in getting Trump past the finish line. But according to Salon's Heather Digby Parton, seniors could be the ones who doom Republicans in the 2026 midterms.

Parton notes that because so many seniors vote GOP, "it's always been a mystery" to her "why Republicans have always been so bent on destroying the safety net that brought the elderly out of poverty and assured them a baseline level of subsistence and medical care." And she points that crucial safety-net programs used by seniors — Social Security and Medicare — came from liberal Democratic presidents.

"From the moment Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935 to the day Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid Act 30 years later," Parton explains, "the right has been trying to destroy them. In the early days, it sprang from their obsession with anti-communism, arguments that the country couldn't afford it, and that individuals and their families are rightfully responsible for their own care in old age.

“In a 1961 radio address — 20 years before he became president — Ronald Reagan said, 'One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine' ... Before Medicare was created, only 54 percent of elderly people had health insurance, and that could be cancelled without cause when they got sick — which, as you know, tends to happen when you get old."

Parton continues, "Three years after it was enacted, 96 percent of people over 65 had hospital insurance. It was literally a life saver. Over the years, Medicaid, created at the same time to assist people living below the poverty line, came to cover many of the health expenses that Medicare didn't for elderly people, most importantly for nursing homes and caregivers. The GOP has been hacking away at these vital programs ever since, and yet, senior citizens have been voting for them in greater numbers than any other age cohort."

Westerly culture war erupts again

After victory for trans student rights in Cumberland, all eyes turn to Westerly

Steve Ahlquist

Credit: Mel Woods/Xtra

As the Cumberland School District wrestled with and ultimately declined to pass changes to its transgender student policies last week, Westerly School Committee Solicitor William Nardone provided a freewheeling and imaginative overview of a recent United States Supreme Court decision, West Virginia v. B.P.J., regarding the eligibility of transgender athletes in female sports at last Wednesday’s meeting during his “solicitor’s report.”

In the decision, SCOTUS ruled that under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, schools may maintain women’s and girls’ sports teams based on “biological sex.” The decision permits—but does not strictly mandate—the exclusion of trans girls from female sports, said Solicitor Nardone. The solicitor advised the School Committee that the district should align itself with the court’s decision, even though the ruling did not affect Rhode Island General Laws or the Department of Education’s mandated Guidance for Rhode Island Schools on Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students.

Nardone went even further than the court’s decision, interpreting the ruling’s “umbrella” to apply to spaces such as locker rooms and bathrooms. Christian nationalist Committee member Peter Nero was quick to point out the difficulties of enforcing a ban based on “biological sex,” noting that birth certificates can be legally altered in many states. Solicitor Nardone dismissed the concern and noted that the Supreme Court decision does not address the issue of verification, and that the “day-to-day” policing of the policy is up to the district administration.

Committeemembers Seth Logan and Lori Wycall cited Mirabelli v. Bonta, the case that was at the center of the kerfuffle in Cumberland. Unaware that Cumberland would conclude that altering their policy was, at the very least, premature (if not dangerous for the health and well-being of students), they suggested the district ensure parents are informed if a student begins to socially transition at school (that is, adopt names, pronouns, or the dress of a gender different from the one assigned at birth. Committeemember Logan is fairly new to the Committee, but Committeemember Wycall has long wanted to impose policies to discriminate against trans children. (See: here, here, and here.)

Though the opponents of trans girls playing sports couch their arguments in terms of competitiveness, safety, and fairness, their true agenda is Christian Nationalism, complete with Christian prayers and Bibles in public schools.

Committeemember Peter Nero formerly served as the Superintendent of the Cranston Public Schools until his retirement in 2012. During his tenure, an atheist student, Jessica Ahlquist (full disclosure, Jessica is my niece), was a plaintiff in a successful case brought against the city by the RI ACLU to remove a Christian prayer banner from the auditorium wall of Cranston High School West:

“We wanted to keep the banner,” said Committeemember Nero at Tuesday night’s meeting. “We thought it was the relic. It was Christian, and I’m a practicing Catholic, so I didn’t find a problem with it. We ended up getting a pro bono [lawyer] from the Diocese, but the [ACLU] won the case…

“…if the Supreme Court was empowered back in 2012, that prayer banner would still be up … because you can see now they’re putting Bibles in some schools, Bible studies… I had the prayer banner cut down from the wall, and I’ve had it hidden. And someday, if [the Supreme Court] turns that around, I’ll have it put back up.”

Here’s the transcript of the relevant parts of the committee meeting. You can watch the video here.

Begone

New MAGA merch

More testosterone won’t make a better soldier or a tougher man

Pete Hegseth's 'Roid Rage

Adam Stanaland, University of Richmond

How low is too low when it comes to testosterone levels? 

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in July 2026 that U.S. service members ages 30 and older will have their testosterone tested every year, neither he nor the Pentagon specified what level of the hormone would be considered “low” enough to require treatment – a telling omission, since where “low” begins depends on the lab conducting the test and the guidelines your doctor follows.

The announcement lands amid a national testosterone craze: Prescriptions have climbed to nearly 12 million in 2025, up 154% since 2020, and fastest among men in their late 30s and 40s. Online clinics that sell testosterone as a lifestyle upgrade have largely driven this rise in prescriptions.

As a psychologist who studies masculinity, I’m certain that while the idea that more testosterone makes a man tougher and more fit to fight seems intuitive, it’s also mostly wrong.

This looks like the perfect challenge for ICE

“Weird Clams” Reveal a New Invasion Along the U.S. Northeast Coast

By University of Massachusetts Amherst

Empty Manila clam shells blanketing the
 intertidal zone in Boston Harbor’s Spectacle
Island. Credit: Aly Putnam

A stretch of Atlantic shoreline that had remained free of Manila clams now appears to support reproducing populations of the invasive shellfish.

Biologists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT Sea Grant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for Coastal Studies confirmed that Ruditapes philippinarum has established itself along the northwestern Atlantic coast. Published in Biological Invasions, the findings capture a rarely documented stage of biological invasion, when a species is first becoming established and beginning to spread through a new region.

Manila clams are native to waters extending from Russia’s Sakhalin Islands through Japan and southern China. Since at least the early 20th century, however, people have introduced them both intentionally and accidentally to the Pacific coast of North America and to Europe, allowing the species to spread across much of the Northern Hemisphere.

The clams are widely valued as food and support an industry worth about $7 billion annually. At the same time, dense populations can compete with native shellfish, hybridize with related species, and alter surrounding ecological communities.

Co-author Bastidas in Squantum, Massachusetts,
holding a native quahog clam. Mussels and Manila
clams are visible in the tray. Credit: Carolina Bastidas

Their arrival may also bring some benefits. Manila clams can provide abundant food for seabirds, crabs, raccoons, and other animals that prey on shellfish.

“Given that Manila clams are everywhere else in the northern hemisphere, it was only a matter of time before they showed up here, and we’ve been keeping an eye out for them,” says marine scientist Aly Putnam, who is a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst and lecturer at Smith College, as well as the paper’s lead author.

A text message starts the search

The Northeastern U.S. had represented the last major gap in the Manila clam’s Northern Hemisphere range. Evidence that the species had reached this coastline emerged from something remarkably ordinary: a text message.

During the summer of 2025, Putnam was leading a small workshop on intertidal biodiversity at Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor when El Fernekees Hartshorn sent her a photograph of an unfamiliar clam. Fernekees Hartshorn, a recent University of Rhode Island graduate who had worked with Putnam on regional Rapid Assessment Surveys for marine invasive species, suggested that the shellfish might be a Manila clam. Fernekees Hartshorn is also a co-author of the paper.

Rhode Islanders need to earn $33.95/Hour to afford housing

And that's if you can find it

Steve Ahlquist

A full-time worker in Rhode Island must earn $33.95 per hour — or $70,617 annually — to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment at today’s Fair Market Rent (FMR), up from $31.71 per hour in 2025. This is Rhode Island’s “2026 Housing Wage” according to Out of Reach, a report published jointly by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the Housing Network of Rhode Island.

From a press release

Released annually, Out of Reach underscores the significant disparity that exists between actual wages and the wages people need to earn to afford their rents nationwide, reflecting the broader trend of rising income inequality across the U.S. The report’s “Housing Wage” is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at FMR without spending more than 30% of their incomes.

In Rhode Island, the FMR for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,765. To afford this level of rent and utilities without paying more than 30% of income on housing, a household must earn $5,885 monthly or $70,617 annually.

This level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage of $33.95. The average Rhode Island renter earns only $19.24 per hour. Minimum wage is just $16 an hour.