📌 No Phone Link To Cancer, And Much More

A review into the potential health effects of radio wave exposure has shown mobile phones are not connected to brain cancer.

Mobile phones are often held against the head during use and emit radio waves, a kind of non-ionizing radiation. Observational studies with limited evidence gave weight to the notion they could cause brain cancer.

However, a systematic review commissioned by the World Health Organization considered over 5,000 observational studies from 1994–2022 — only 63 deemed relevant were in the final analysis.

No association between mobile phone use and brain cancer, or any other head or neck cancer, was found.

There was no association with cancer if a person used a mobile phone for 10 or more years or how often they used it – based on the number of calls or the time on the phone.

The findings align with research showing that, although wireless technologies have massively increased in the past few decades, there has been no rise in the incidence of brain cancers.

Brazil’s president says the world isn’t obliged to follow Elon Musk’s “far-right anything goes” agenda because of his immense wealth.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s comments are the latest salvo in a long-running feud with Musk over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation in the country.

Over the weekend, Brazilians, including the president, bid farewell to X, with some posting links to their profiles on other social media platforms.

Some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month, according to market research group Emarketer.

Access to the platform was blocked after Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the suspension of X nationwide because Musk refused to name a legal representative in the country.

Musk once again waded into Brazilian politics on Tuesday by sharing a link on X to an upcoming demonstration that bills itself as a march for “freedom, protesting judicial overreach and defending free speech.”

Columbia University students are starting their semester wading through volatile demonstrations and picket lines.

Protests picked up as students arrived on campus a week ago, and Monday saw protesters march in uptown New York City, some waving Hamas flags or setting off flares and smoke bombs.

Pro-Palestinian protesters' demands vary by school, but many want their schools to stop supporting companies with ties to Israel.

This new semester is already testing universities across America, including Columbia, whose embattled president resigned less than three weeks before classes began.

Columbia, like other elite universities, has dealt with lawsuits from Jewish students for failing to protect them. Nearly two dozen colleges have banned or restricted encampments and protests.

PlayStation will take its Firewalk-developed live services game “Concord” offline Friday and issue refunds two weeks after launch.

The team-based first-person shooter game is reported to have drawn a historically small audience during its initial availability across PlayStation 5 and PC. At its peak, “Concord” had 697 concurrent players.

In “Concord,” largely compared to the popular multiplayer shooter “Overwatch,” players assemble a crew of Freegunner space outlaws from the spacecraft Northstar for online games between two teams of five members each.

With so few people playing “Concord,” matchup availability became difficult during gameplay. Estimates of how much Sony paid to develop the game range from $100 million–$200 million.

A study using mice has revealed a link between nose picking and increasing the risk of developing dementia.

Where nose picking damages internal tissues, species of bacteria have a clearer path to the brain, which responds to their presence in ways that resemble Alzheimer's disease, the study finds.

Researchers ran the mouse tests with a bacteria that can infect humans and cause pneumonia — it has also been discovered in most human brains affected by late-onset dementia.

The bacteria traveled up mice’s olfactory nerve (joining the nasal cavity and the brain). When there was damage to the nasal epithelium (the thin tissue along the roof of the nasal cavity), nerve infections worsened.

This led to the mouse brains depositing more of the amyloid-beta protein, released in response to infections. Clumps of the protein are found in concentrations in people with Alzheimer’s.

“We need to do this study in humans to confirm whether the same pathway operates in the same way,” a researcher said.

Christmas will start next month in Venezuela, authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro has decreed.

“This year, and to honor you all, to thank you all, I am going to decree the beginning of Christmas on October 1. Christmas arrived for everyone, in peace, joy and security!” he said.

Maduro’s decree comes as Venezuela grapples with the fallout from July’s presidential election, which saw Maduro claim a third term despite global skepticism and outcry from the country’s opposition movement.

Thousands of Venezuelans look set to pass the holidays behind bars amid his government’s crackdown on political unrest.

Venezuelan authorities published an arrest warrant for his main rival, opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez, accusing him of “crimes associated with terrorism.”

American Joey Chestnut wolfed down a world record 83 hot dogs during Netflix's Labor Day special.

Chestnut ate nearly seven dozen of the American picnic stable during Netflix's “Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef,” streamed live on Monday.

The contestants had 10 minutes to eat as many hot dogs as possible. Chestnut's 83 not only beat Kobayashi's 67 but also his own world record of 76 that he set back in 2021.

Chestnut, 40, and Kobayashi, 46, two of the most decorated competitive eaters, ate for the title of supreme hot dog consumer at the renowned annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

The contest was their first head-to-head in 15 years. Kobayashi was Nathan's champion from 2002–2007. From 2008, Chestnut reigned supreme, winning the title all but once.