Today's News: August 05, 2020

World News

Thailand’s police say protest leaders violate coronavirus emergency law

RT – Thai police have summoned five organizers of student-led protests against the government, saying they had violated a coronavirus emergency decree that forbids large gatherings.
Among those called for questioning was human rights lawyer Anon Nampa, who on Monday had demanded reforms of Thailand’s powerful monarchy, a highly sensitive topic. However, police said on Wednesday that Anon, 35, was being summoned over an earlier protest in July that was held outside the army headquarters.
The organizers were “summoned for questioning and to hear the charge of breaching the emergency decree,” police lieutenant colonel Athich Donnanchai, deputy director of Nanglerng police, told Reuters.
Last month, the government said the emergency decree in place since March would only be used as a measure against the coronavirus and from August onwards said it would not be used to prevent political rallies.

Inside Beirut’s ground zero: Astonishing images reveal the scale of devastation in Lebanese capital after mega-explosion ripped through city and left 300,000 homeless

Daily Mail – These astonishing images show the scale of the destruction in Beirut after an explosion tore through the port killing more than 100 people, leaving thousands injured and 300,000 people now homeless.
Rescuers worked throughout the night and into Wednesday morning scouring ground zero for survivors after the cataclysmic blast that has wrecked entire neighbourhoods in the Lebanese capital.
The scale of the destruction was such that the capital resembled the scene of an earthquake, with thousands of people left homeless as smoke rose from fires still burning this morning.
Hospitals across the wrecked city were overwhelmed with patients, as medics worked in impossible conditions after the electricity was knocked out in the blast. Beirut’s governor, Marwan Abboud, broke into tears as he toured the blast site. ‘Beirut is a devastated city,’ he said.
Marwan Ramadan was 500 yards away from the port but was still blown off his feet by the blast. ‘It was a real horror show,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen anything like that since the days of the war.’
The streets on Wednesday morning were littered with glass and entire buildings have been destroyed or left without roofs or balconies as people walked the streets dazed and weeping as they surveyed the ruins around them.
Prime Minister Hassan Diab vowed those responsible will ‘pay the price’ as he declared a two-week state of emergency to deal with the crisis.
As crestfallen residents surveyed the damage today, the true cost of the explosion could hit £5billion according to the governor of Beirut Marwan Abboud.
The blast – in a country already in the midst of an economic crisis – appeared to have been caused by a fire igniting 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate left unsecured in a warehouse and was felt as far away as Cyprus, some 150 miles to the northwest.
It is thought to have been sparked when a welder caused a fire at the port, which in turn set light to a warehouse storing chemicals which had been seized from a ship six years ago.

US defense officials contradict Trump: No indication yet of attack in Beirut

CNN – Three US Defense Department officials told CNN that as of Tuesday night there was no indication that the massive explosion that rocked Beirut on Tuesday were an “attack,” contradicting an earlier claim from President Donald Trump.
While speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump offered sympathy and assistance to the people of Lebanon after the explosion, which left dozens dead and thousands injured and he referred to the incident as a “terrible attack.” An estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse in the Port of Beirut exploded Tuesday, causing destruction throughout the Lebanese capital. As of Tuesday night, at least 78 people were reported killed and 4,000 injured.
“Let me begin by sending America’s deepest sympathies to the people of Lebanon, where reports indicate that many, many people were killed, hundreds more were very badly wounded in a large explosion in Beirut,” Trump said. “Our prayers go out to all the victims and their families. The United States ready to assist Lebanon.”
But the defense officials, who declined to be identified so they could speak freely, said they didn’t know what the President was talking about.

Did The “Mushroom Cloud” Explosion In Beirut Just Push The Middle East Closer To A Major War?

Michael Snyder – 2020 just keeps getting weirder. On Tuesday, an absolutely massive explosion caused a red mushroom cloud to rise high over the city of Beirut, Lebanon. It is being called “Beirut’s Hiroshima”, and the blast was heard as far away as Cyprus. You can watch a two minute compilation that contains video clips of the explosion from several different angles right here. It appears that the shockwave did even more damage than the initial explosion did, and at this hour a large portion of the city of Beirut lies in ruins. Dozens are dead, thousands are injured, and the entire city is now in a state of complete chaos…
Two enormous explosions devastated Beirut’s port on Tuesday, leaving at least 73 people dead and thousands injured, shaking distant buildings and spreading panic and chaos across the Lebanese capital.
The second blast sent an enormous orange fireball into the sky, flattened the harbourside and drove a tornado-like shockwave through the city, shattering windows kilometres (miles) away.
It is being reported that Beirut’s port “is totally destroyed”, and this comes at a really bad time because Lebanon is already in the midst of an epic economic collapse.
In recent months, we have become accustomed to hearing about “mystery explosions” all over the Middle East, and many believe that those mystery explosions indicate that the region is on the brink of a full-blown war.
But this incident was different. A large section of the capital of Lebanon has been flattened, and many eyewitnesses are comparing the blast to a nuclear explosion. Here is one example…
“It was like an atomic bomb,” said Makrouhie Yerganian, a retired schoolteacher in her mid-70s who has lived near the port for decades.
“I’ve experienced everything, but nothing like this before,” even during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war, she said. “All the buildings around here have collapsed.”
And even Beirut Governor Marwan Aboud brought up “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” when asked about the explosion…
“This reminds me of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Beirut Governor Marwan Aboud. “I have never seen such widespread destruction. This is a national catastrophe. This is a disaster for Lebanon. We’re already living through days where we can barely keep going.”
“And now this…I don’t know how we’re going to recover from this,” Aboud told Sky News, before bursting into tears.
Immediately after this happened, a lot of people began wondering if this was an Israeli attack, but that does not appear to be the case.

Australian Prime Minister: War Between America and China No Longer Inconceivable

Breitbart – Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday his government held a less dramatic view of U.S.-China strategic tensions than a predecessor who warned of a potential “hot war” before U.S. presidential elections in November.
Former prime minister and China scholar Kevin Rudd wrote in the Foreign Affairs journal this week that the risk of armed conflict between the United States and China in the next three months was “especially high.”
Morrison said his administration had expressed similar views in a defence policy update last month when he announced 270 billion Australian dollars ($190 billion) in new warfare capability spending, including longer-range missiles.
“Our defence update expresses it differently and certainly not as dramatically as Kevin,” Morrison told the Aspen Security Forum in an online address from the Australian capital Canberra.
“But in our own defence update, we’ve acknowledged that what was previously inconceivable and not considered even possible or likely in terms of those types of outcomes is not considered in those contexts anymore,” he added.
Morrison disagreed with many in Washington that the United States was in a new Cold War with China. Morrison said the “circumstances are quite different.”
He had no answers for how China’s push for power in the South China Sea, on the Indian border and in Hong Kong should be handled.
“I’m an optimist, Australians are indefatigable optimists about these things,” Morrison said.
“We have to take an optimistic attitude but not an unrealistic or naïve attitude. We’ve got to set out and wed ourselves to the objectives here and that is not the suppression or containment of any one state, it’s about the productive and strategic balance that can be achieved,” he added.
Australia and the United States share a bilateral security treaty as well as an alliance with India and Japan through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which China views with distrust.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Police in major U.S. city warn public: Prepare to be robbed, obey criminals

WND – Amid a crime wave since the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis Police Department has informed residents in an email that they should “prepare” to be robbed and to obey criminals.
“Be prepared to give up your cell phone and purse/wallet” and “do as they say,” the advisory states, reports Alpha News.

UPDATE: LA Deputies accused of being in secret societies

LA Times – Los Angeles County has paid out roughly $55 million in settlements in cases in which sheriff’s deputies were alleged to belong to a secret society, records obtained by The Times show, illuminating the entrenched nature of a subculture that has plagued the Sheriff’s Department for years.
The figure comes from a list that includes payouts in dozens of lawsuits and claims involving deputies associated with tattooed groups accused of glorifying an aggressive style of policing. The report, prepared by L.A. County attorneys, lists nearly 60 cases, some of them still pending, and names eight specific cliques.
The county has paid out nearly $21 million in cases that began in the last 10 years alone, according to the document.
The high cost underscores how these deputy groups — with monikers such as the Vikings, Regulators, 3000 Boys and the Banditos — have operated out of several Sheriff’s Department stations and jails for decades, exhibiting what critics have long alleged are the violent, intimidating tactics similar in some ways to criminal street gangs. The cases involve incidents that date to 1990.

President changes tone, backs mail-in voting in Florida!

Miami Herald – After claiming inaccurately for weeks that mail voting is rife with fraud, President Donald Trump is now backing off his attacks on mail ballots in his home state.
“Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True,” Trump tweeted Tuesday.
Trump’s tweet — in stark contrast to numerous others in recent weeks warning of a rigged election — comes as Republican mail ballot registration lags behind Democrats in Florida ahead of the November election, which will be held under the cloud of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans have requested about 1.3 million mail ballots ahead of the Aug. 18 primary election, while Democrats have requested 1.9 million. Mail ballots can be requested through the U.S. Postal Service until 10 days before the Nov. 3 election, but Democrats have held up the lead they have built up so far as a significant advantage in a state where Republicans have for years secured an edge by registering and turning out mail voters.

NYC to Impose COVID Checkpoints to Enforce Quarantine Order

Mayor Bill de Blasio in new authoritarian move.
Infowars – Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that he will set up COVID checkpoints around New York City in an attempt to catch anyone who flouts their 14 day quarantine order.
Anyone arriving in NYC from 34 states and Puerto Rico is subject to a strict 14 day stay at home order and faces large fines if they violate the rule.
That will now be enforced with manned coronavirus checkpoints where those caught violating their quarantine will be penalized.
From NBC New York;
“Starting Wednesday, the city will implement COVID-19 checkpoints at key entry points into the city, de Blasio said. They will vary daily, though the mayor said one will appear at Penn Station on Thursday. Another is planned for Port Authority.”
“The city hopes to implement “full-fledged checkpoints” where viable and hold them at other locations where they’re unlikely to create major traffic backups. De Blasio says the city stands ready to assist travelers who need a safe place to isolate for 14 days. The test and trace team has already made nearly 90,000 calls to travelers affected by the quarantine order and sent nearly 21,000 texts.”
While de Blasio threatens people traveling around NYC with astronomical fines that could run as high as $10,000, he has simultaneously overseen an emptying of prisons that has led to skyrocketing crime across New York.
As we highlighted last month, shootings soared by a whopping 277 per cent compared to the same week last year. In June, it was reported that there had been 38 murders over the last 28 days up until June 14, twice as many as the previous year.
Despite soaring crime, the Mayor also devoted no fewer than 27 police officers to guard a Black Lives Matter mural outside Trump Tower.
One method to avoid interrogation at coronavirus checkpoints may be to state that you have attended a BLM protest.
“The hundreds of contact tracing workers hired by the city under de Blasio’s new “test and trace” campaign have been instructed not to ask anyone who’s tested positive for COVID-19 whether they recently attended a demonstration,” reported The City back in June.
Lest we forget that de Blasio also urged New Yorkers to “get out on the town despite coronavirus” and visit the cinema as late as March 2nd.

Republicans Aid Kanye West Bid to Get on 2020 Ballot

DNUYZ – At least three people who have been active in Republican politics are linked to Kanye West’s attempt to get on the presidential ballot this year. The connection raises questions about the aims of the entertainer’s effort and whether it is regarded within the G.O.P. as a spoiler campaign that could aid President Trump, even as those close to Mr. West have expressed concerns about his mental health as he enters the political arena.

Watch–Joe Biden Snaps at Black Reporter over Cognitive Test Question: ‘Are You a Junkie?’

Bretibart – Joe Biden bristled at a question about whether or not he has taken a cognitive test, asking an interviewer Tuesday morning whether he would pass a drug test and stumbling over his words several times in the course of one minute.

Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden’s Poll Numbers Rely on Voters Not Hearing Him Speak

Breitbart – Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson examined the phenomenon of left-of-center media urging presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to avoid a head-to-head debate with President Donald Trump.

Navy SEALs Cut Ties with Museum over Colin Kaepernick Video

Breitbart – The commander of the Navy SEALs said the unit will suspend its support of the National Navy SEAL Museum, a nonprofit organization not overseen by the military after videos surfaced online of dogs attacking a man wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey during a demonstration.
“Each and every one of us serves to protect our fellow Americans – ALL Americans. Even the perception that our commitment to serving the men and women of this nation is applied unevenly is destructive,” Rear Admiral Collin Green, who heads the Naval Special Warfare Command, said in an email to his forces on Monday evening.
He added: “We will revisit our relationship with the Museum when I am convinced that they have made the necessary changes to ensure this type of behavior does not happen again.”
In the letter, Green said, “While the museum is an independent non-profit organization and the participants were contracted employees from outside the DoD, in many ways, these facts are irrelevant. We have been inextricably linked to this organization that represents our history.”
“We may not have contributed to the misperception in this case, but we suffer from it and will not allow it to continue,” he said.
The letter was provided to The Associated Press by a servicemember under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so. Museum officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the AP.
The letter comes one day after a pair of videos of an event at the Fort Pierce, Florida-based museum last year surfaced Sunday on social media. The videos quickly garnered more than 6.7 million views.

Furious China Warns U.S. over HHS Secretary Azar Visit to Taiwan

Breitbart – U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar will visit Taiwan in coming days, his office said Tuesday, marking the highest-level visit by a U.S. official since formal ties ended in 1979 – a move China described as “endangering peace.”
Secretary Azar will meet with senior Taiwan counterparts, coronavirus responders and experts on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump, HHS said in a statement.\
Taiwan’s strong performance in handling its coronavirus outbreak has drawn global plaudits while highlighting its exclusion from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and other U.N. bodies.
Despite its close proximity to mainland Communist China, where the deadly global pandemic first originated last December in the regional city of Wuhan, the island of 23 million has recorded just 476 cases and seven deaths from COVID-19, largely as a result of rigorous testing and case tracing.
It also tried to warn the world about the dangers posed by the coronavirus, something the W.H.O. chose to ignore due to its commitment to Communist China.

L.A. County Supervisors Vote to Put Defunding Police on November Ballot

Breitbart – The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a proposal on Tuesday to amend the city’s charter — which will be presented to voters on November 3 via ballot — to remove $880 million from law enforcement and “reinvest” the money in “direct community investment” and “alternatives to incarceration.”
Titled, “Reimagining L.A. County: Shifting Budget Priorities to Revitalize Under-resourced and Low-income Communities,” the proposal includes language frequently used by Democrat politicians and the broader left. It alleges the existence of “systemic discrimination, exclusion, and inequity” targeting blacks and yielding “racial injustice” and “racial inequity.”

Economy & Business

DOLLAR ‘CRASH RISK’

RT – After suffering its worst monthly fall in about a decade, the US currency has started August with a bounce. However, analysts predict further weakness in the greenback.
“We expect the currency to be undermined by an ebbing of safe-haven flows, a reduction in the US rate advantage, and political uncertainty ahead of the November presidential election,” UBS analysts wrote last week.
The ICE US Dollar Index, which measures the dollar against a basket of six major rivals, plunged 4.2 percent in July – its biggest one-month decline since September 2010, data showed. The index was trading up on Tuesday at around 93.69, but data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed that the dollar is well out of favor with speculative traders.
According to Steven Barrow, head of G-10 strategy at Standard Bank, the dollar’s weakness versus developed currencies comes at a time of heightened global uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Usually, the dollar behaves “a bit better” against its developed-economy peers during a crisis, he said in a note seen by Market Watch.

Trump Mulls Bypassing Congress to Suspend Payroll Tax

Sputnik – The idea of a payroll tax holiday has been floated by the Trump administration as a means to help out workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Congress, however, is divided on the issue.
President Trump has said in a wide-ranging interview with Fox News that he could suspend the payroll tax without waiting for congressional approval.
“Well I may do it myself”, Trump told Fox News. “I have the right to suspend it, and I may do it myself – I have the absolute right to suspend the payroll”.
The Trump administration has been pushing for a payroll tax cut in a bid to aid workers during the coronavirus crisis. Both employers and employees are currently levied 6.2% from their salaries for social security, in addition to a 1.45% tax for Medicare.
According to the Internal Revenue Code, the president is entitled to defer the collection of payroll taxes without waiting for congressional approval. The president, however, cannot forgive the taxes altogether on his own and should ask the Congress to endorse such a step.

Missouri voters narrowly approve Medicaid expansion

STL Today – Ignoring pleas from Republican leaders, Missouri voters approved a plan Tuesday to expand Medicaid coverage to more than 230,000 low-income people in the state.
Missouri voted to expand its Medicaid program, as 53% of voters supported the measure. Missouri now joins 37 other states that have already expanded the federally subsidized health insurance program.

More Bailout Cash Won’t Stop Wave of Credit Card Defaults

Bloomberg – Despite the coronavirus and millions of jobless claims driving the U.S. economy deeper into recession, the flood of credit card delinquencies that some predicted has yet to materialize. Instead, card debt has actually gone down since the pandemic struck, with many consumers spending less while using bailout money to chip away at balances.
But that may not last. Even if Congress passes a new rescue package with more unemployment benefits, the cumulative effect of the ongoing economic catastrophe may finally trigger that default deluge, a new survey reveals. More than half of consumers with credit card debt said they will need more bailout money to make minimum payments over the next three months, but about the same number said employment will be more critical to avoiding default.

For the unemployed, rising grocery prices stretch budgets even more

Washington Post – The cost of groceries has been rising at the fastest pace in decades since the coronavirus pandemic seized the U.S. economy, leading to sticker shock for basic staples such as beef and eggs and forcing struggling households to rethink how to put enough food on the table.
Long-standing supply chains for everyday grocery items have been upended as the pandemic sickened scores of workers, forced factory closures and punctured the carefully calibrated networks that brought food from farms to store shelves. Even while some of the sharpest price hikes have eased somewhat, the overall effects are being felt most acutely by the nearly 30 million Americans who saw their $600 enhanced unemployment benefit expire last Friday — exacerbating concerns that the recession’s long tail could worsen food insecurity for years to come.

Science & Technology

Brain Chip Will Allow Users to Take Charge of Moods and Emotions

Tech Times – Elon Musk’s Neuralink currently develops a new feature on their brain chip that will enable humans to go forth and choose the mood by balancing off a person’s hormone levels.
The secret project mentioned by Musk teased an update that will provide new feats for the company. He stated that an event on August 28, 2020, will thoroughly explain what the Tech CEO pertains.
The American Tech Company founded by Musk, Neuralink, is working on their current project, the brain-implanted chip, that is capable of controlling a human’s emotion and mood by emitting waves that are beyond the usual or natural frequency and amplitude.
Neuralink pushes through updating the software of the project, as well as the chip and other hardware of the project. The Electronics reports that this software update aims to make the project more potent by programming its algorithms to learn more and improve the overall system. The Neuralink ASIC neural processor is upgraded as well, together with the project’s proposed threads that are going to be used to collect data from the brain.
The brain chip’s function would move forward from its original innovation of helping people with an entirely severed spinal cord to restore mobility and movement. The tech would help in alleviating stress and anxiety by altering and balancing the brain’s hormone levels, relieving emotional tension.

Microphones Listening to More than Voice Commands with Google — ADT Home Security System

Activist Post – Like all wireless “Smart” devices, smart speakers emit harmful electromagnetic radiation which can make people and animals sick AND increase their cancer risk while collecting data sometimes without users knowledge or consent.
According to a recent report, smart speakers are always listening and ready to react when connected to Google’s new home security system.
Google announced support for the detection of “critical sounds” for paying subscribers of its Nest Aware home security subscription service in May. “Your Nest speakers and displays will notify you if a critical sound is detected, like a smoke alarm or glass breaking, by sending an alert to the Home app,” the company wrote in a blog post. “From there, you can hear an audio clip or listen live within the Home app to confirm the alarm.”

Interpol Reports ‘Alarming Rate of Cyberattacks’ During Coronavirus Pandemic

Breitbart – International law enforcement organization Interpol published a report Tuesday that found an “alarming rate of cyberattacks” occurring during the coronavirus pandemic, with hackers shifting their focus from individuals and small businesses to major corporate and government systems.
Interpol researchers saw an explosion of online scams and phishing schemes, which lure victims into installing malware on their systems or revealing sensitive information by sending them fake emails. Many of the latest scams take advantage of the coronavirus by impersonating government officials and health authorities.
Hackers are also setting up a great number of malicious, virus-infested domains that lure victims by offering information about the coronavirus. Interpol said one of its private-sector research partners reported a 569 percent increase in malicious domain registrations between February and March of 2020.
“Nearly 30 percent of countries which responded to the global cybercrime survey confirmed the circulation of false information related to COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus]. Within a one-month period, one country reported 290 postings with the majority containing concealed malware,” Interpol reported.
Another common tactic involves sending emails and text messages to victims that claim to offer food, medicine, or financial assistance to people worried about the pandemic. Fake offers of medicine were common across Asia and the Middle East. A large number of phishing emails claimed to be from government health agencies or the World Health Organization.
In Europe and the United States, hackers took advantage of the huge increase in teleworking, launching energetic campaigns against employees working from home in an effort to gain access to corporate networks.
Interpol’s private consultants identified the Business Email Compromise (BEC) as the “scheme of choice” for cyber-criminals during the pandemic. In short, BEC refers to deceiving people with emails that appear to be legitimate messages from their employers, or from companies their employers do business with.
Many BEC attacks trick the victim into electronically transferring payments to the hackers, or making online purchases and giving them control of the goods. Others are more subtle, quietly infecting home users or their company servers with data harvesting malware that can lurk unnoticed for months while it relays sensitive data back to its masters.
One unusual new “attack vector” described by Interpol involves hackers sending physical phishing mail to victims: letters mailed to targets that contain USB drives laced with malware code. Inserting such a device into a computer can bypass some of the security software that might block viruses sent by email or downloaded from malicious domains. Hackers could be gambling that people working from home during the pandemic are more willing to plug in USB drives that appear to come from their employers or business contacts.

Energy & Environment

Tropical storm Isaias batters US East Coast, triggering flooding and tornadoes

Deutsche Welle – Six people were killed as Isaias toggled between hurricane and tropical storm strength, moving north up the East Coast. Isaias also caused floods and fires that displaced and injured dozens of people.

Health

Mask Fatigue: Workers Claim Anxiety, Headaches And Shortness Of Breath

CBS – The mask mandate to keep Texans from spreading COVID-19 is coming with some side effects.
Some people who are forced to wear face masks all day in the workplace complain of headaches, shortness of breath and anxiety.
Whether the elastic is too tight or the cloth is too thick, there are a lot of reasons for mask fatigue that people who wear them for long periods are starting to experience.
Nearly three months of wearing a face mask everyday has taken a toll on the women who work at Southern Sisters Salon in McKinney.
Like a lot of workplaces in North Texas, masks are mandatory, but for some of those forced to wear them, they are miserable.
The salon employees say keeping candy and mints in their mouths helps and they take as many outdoor breaks as possible.
The women who work there say they know masks are necessary for the business to stay open and for now are willing to put up with the discomfort.
“When I have long days, if it’s a 12 hour day, I’m sick when I get home,” said Courtney Warnell. “Sick to my stomach. As soon as the I get in the car I’m pulling it off and I don’t want to do anything else. I just want to go home and be mask-free.
People working not only in salons but also, retailers, restaurants, factories and offices are struggling with mask fatigue, but there’s no end in sight regarding the order to keep them on.

Study Casts Doubt on Value of Cholesterol Drugs

Newsmax – Hundreds of millions of people worldwide take cholesterol-lowering drugs, like statins, but now a new review suggests that many folks don’t benefit from these medications.
The researchers said the review of 35 randomized controlled trials failed to show a consistent benefit in lowering the risk of heart attack or stroke, or for preventing deaths.
“Normally, when you have a theory that says something is beneficial, it should be beneficial all the time, but not all of these studies show the benefit,” said study author Dr. Robert DuBroff. He’s a clinical professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine in Albuquerque.
Does this mean DuBroff thinks patients should dump their cholesterol-lowering drugs?
Not necessarily.
“I think it’s a decision between a patient and a provider,” he said.
But, DuBroff added, “Don’t be misguided into thinking that you can take a statin and then not pay attention to other risk factors. Don’t underestimate the benefits of lifestyle changes: Keeping body weight at a desired level, eat healthy foods like in the Mediterranean diet, exercise regularly and don’t smoke.”

Olive Leaf Extract Benefits: Brain, Heart, Immune System, & More

Dr. Edward Group – Any time you pass along the proverbial olive branch — a sign of peace and forgiveness — you’re metaphorically passing along an ancient plant, Olea europaea. From this plant, we get olives — and olive oil. But did you know that the humble olive leaf provides many of the same health benefits as world-renowned olive oil — and more? Olive leaf extract benefits include boosting heart, digestive, and brain health, soothing joints, and supporting a healthy immune system. It may even increase longevity and reduce signs of aging!
Throughout history, the olive branch — and its leaves — have been a sign of peace and forgiveness. Scholars note that doves brought an olive leaf back to Noah’s ark to show the flood was over. The olive tree is even referred to in Ezekiel 47:12 (NIV): “The fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.” Later on, olive leaves made an appearance at the first Olympics in Greece. Winners received an olive wreath to represent peace, victory, honor, and unity.
8 Benefits of Olive Leaf Extract
Here are a few of the benefits you’ll find in olive leaf extract.