Sun: Fame Won't Help You Live Forever, But This Might

The War is Heating Up ... Not That War 

Russia appears to have moved to take direct control of Wagner, after months of infighting between defence officials and the private military group.

Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov said on Saturday "volunteer formations" will be asked to sign contracts directly with the ministry of defence.

The vaguely worded statement is widely believed to target the group.

But in a furious statement on Sunday, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces would boycott the contracts.

Actually, Both Wars Are Heating Up

Fame Won't Help You Live Forever, But This Might

Taurine, an amino acid found in meat and shellfish, is a popular supplement added to energy drinks that are touted to promote sharper brain function. While those claims are unproven, new research suggests the nutrient may help with healthy aging.

Low levels of taurine can speed the aging process in several species of animals. Now scientists report that supplementing with the nutrient may slow that process down, leading to longer, healthier lives in animals — and maybe humans, too — an international group of researchers reported Thursday in Science.

“This is a really exciting time,” said study co-author Vijay Yadav, an assistant professor of genetics and development at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the medical school for Columbia University in New York City.

That’s because researchers are now exploring specific molecules, such as taurine, that might improve health and lead to longer life, Yadav said.

Yadav and his colleagues showed that taurine levels declined dramatically with age in mice, monkeys and humans. No one knows yet why levels of the nutrient decline as much as 80% with age, Yadav said.

In experiments with mice and monkeys, the researchers found that supplementing middle-age animals led to better health.

In mice, the supplementation led to less weight gain, increased bone density, improved muscle endurance and strength, reduced insulin resistance, a better-functioning immune system and a 10% longer lifespan, which in humans would be about seven or eight years.

In monkeys, supplementation prevented age-related weight gain, improved fasting blood sugar levels, increased bone density and led to healthier livers and improved immune system function.

Who Knows What Clowns Will Represent Previous Guy. Here's Who Will Represent Us.

According to NBC news, Jack Smith prosecutor David Harbach, not Jay Bratt, was at the Miami courthouse on Thursday as a grand jury indicted the former President.

That was a surprise to me. While Harbach has post-DOJ ties to Jack Smith from the Hague, at DOJ, he was primarily a corruption prosecutor.

A seasoned trial lawyer, Harbach has tried more than 35 cases to verdict in federal and state courts. He has also conducted some of the nation’s highest profile public corruption trials, including cases against former U.S. Senator John Edwards and former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell.

Harbach was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 2005 to 2010, and for four years beginning in 2015, Harbach was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. In 2016, he was appointed Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney and Criminal Supervisor of the Richmond Division office, overseeing 21 prosecutors.

From 2014 to 2015, Harbach served on detail as Special Counsel to FBI Director James Comey. Before his work with the FBI, Harbach served as a Trial Attorney in the DOJ Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, earning the Deputy Chief title after two years.

By all appearances, Smith had a corruption prosecutor present the Trump indictment to the jury, not DOJ’s head of counterintelligence Jay Bratt.

HILLARY’S REVENGE: TRUMP PROMISED VOTERS HE WOULD PROTECT CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

It's a Long, Long Way, From June to Next November

For the second time in less than three months, former President Donald Trump has been indicted. This time, it’s a federal probe in connection with his handling of classified documents. (His first indictment was by the Manhattan district attorney’s office on 34 counts of falsifying business records with the goal of disrupting the 2016 election.) Trump is scheduled to appear in federal district court in Miami on Tuesday. Sources have told ABC News that Trump will face at least seven charges, including corruptly concealing a document or record and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The legal threat of more criminal charges is obvious — but will they hurt Trump’s chances of winning back the presidency in 2024? The public’s reaction to Trump’s first indictment can give us a clue. First of all, this second indictment is unlikely to significantly dent his popularity among Republicans. After all, Trump’s standing in the GOP primary has only gotten stronger since the New York state indictment came down. On the day before that indictment, Trump led Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 19 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average of the primary. Since then, though, his lead has steadily increased — all the way to 33 points on Friday.

Trump’s bigger problem is probably with the general electorate. We’ve previously found that scandal-plagued incumbents in general elections between 1998 and 20161 performed an average of 9 points worse than they’d otherwise be expected to. Of course, voters are more dug into their partisan camps today than they were in the early 2000s, and Trump was already facing plenty of scandals when he won the presidency in 2016. But a May poll from WPA Intelligence found that an indictment in the classified-documents probe would shave a few points off Trump’s margin in a hypothetical general election against President Biden. WPA Intelligence’s initial query found Biden leading Trump nationally 47 percent to 40 percent. But when asked to suppose that Trump was indicted for mishandling classified documents, allegedly refusing to turn them over and misleading investigators as to their location, respondents said they would support Biden 50 percent to 39 percent.

Trump's First Indictment Didn't Hurt Him Politically. The Second Could Be Different.

If They Don't Hate Him By Now, They Will Never, Never Hate Him

To Insure Promptness -- It May Not Be What You Think It Is

Two recent California food service cases vividly illustrate some of the challenges facing those who make that industry hum: the workers.

In the first, a judge found that a San Francisco hotel for years illegally kept service-charge money from banquets—roughly $9 million in all—that should have gone to workers. The presiding judge ruled that “a reasonable customer” would have assumed the service charge was a gratuity for the food and drink servers.

In the other case, which is still unfolding in Los Angeles, the city attorney is investigating allegations that the operator of five upscale restaurants pocketed a 5% service fee that was added onto every diner’s bill. That would be a direct violation of a city ordinance requiring all of the money to go to the restaurants’ workers.

The cases aren’t identical, and the L.A. investigation centers on laws that are distinct to the city. But each in its way speaks to a contemporary problem facing food and drink servers and preparers across the state: Their customers often no longer understand who they’re paying.

Recently, at a midtown Sacramento establishment, a server was asked what the “equity share” charge on the restaurant’s bill meant. “It usually means I get less of a tip,” the server, who asked that their name and place of employment not be used, replied with a laugh.

That is the state of food service—not just in California, but around the country. A years-old slow-roll change in how restaurants pay their workers, with many adding or substituting mandatory fees beyond tips, went into hyperdrive during and after the pandemic as owners tried to stay in business. The fallout is still being felt.

At many establishments, service fees have become the norm. But whether those fees are meant to replace tips is often a question left either unanswered or only partially explained. Some restaurants make clear that a mandatory fee, anywhere from 2.5% to 20%, has been added to offset the cost of providing health care to employees or to ensure adequate wages for all their workers. Others levy a “service charge” without an explanation attached, and leave in place a line for including a gratuity.

It’s often left to the customer to muddle through what to do. Increasingly, workers say, the resulting confusion leads to lower tips in a business that, despite the shift toward add-on fees, still drives significant money to employees through gratuities.

“If they add a fee to the bill, you see it one time,” the Sacramento server said. “That’s better for the restaurant than making everything on the menu more expensive. But when people see that extra charge, they’re usually going to deduct it from whatever tip they were going to leave, because to them it’s all a gratuity.”

That makes it all the more important to know where the money is going. At Teleferic, a collection of Spanish restaurants that includes locations in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, a 20% service charge is automatically added to every check “in order to provide fair wages to all our employees, including those working in the back of the house or front desk,” the company says. Tipping on top of that charge “is not expected or encouraged,” language which appears on every check and every menu.

Other restaurants opt for a lesser service charge—sometimes called an equity share or, over the past couple of years, a COVID-19 recovery fee—and still leave room for gratuity. Only recently has California law become clearer as to how specific the language involved needs to be.

Just because you think you are tipping a service worker doesn’t mean you are

Could the Michigan QOP Get Any Less Democratic?  You Betcha'!

Republicans in Michigan approved a proposal on Saturday to select more than two-thirds of their state delegates for the party's 2024 presidential nomination via caucus meetings, a change that could help party front-runner Donald Trump.

The plan, which Michigan's Republican state committee approved during a meeting in Grand Rapids, would mark a departure from the battleground state party's traditional process of allocating all presidential delegates based on a primary open to the public.

The change would be significant because 70% of delegates would be decided at caucus meetings, where the party's most active members will likely exert the most sway. That could serve as an advantage for Trump given his popularity among local party officials, some Republicans and political experts said.

Under the plan, caucuses on March 2 in Michigan's 13 congressional districts would be used to appoint three delegates each, accounting for 39 of the state's 55 delegates to next year's Republican national convention. The other 16 will be based on the state's primary on Feb. 27, according to an amended plan reviewed by the state committee on Saturday.

It remains unclear if the plan will be approved by the Republican National Committee (RNC), as is required. A spokeswoman for the committee could not be reached for comment.