Tue: Who's Electing Idiots and Clowns?

Tonight They're Gonna' Party Like It's 2013

Ukrainian forces are "highly likely" to have recaptured land in the country's eastern Donbas region occupied by Russia since 2014, the UK says.

On Saturday, a Ukrainian commander said land had been retaken near the Russian-occupied village of Krasnohorivka.

Airborne forces have since made "small advances" east from that village, in Donetsk, the UK's MoD says.

It comes as Ukraine's leader said his country's counter-offensive was making advances on all fronts.

Speaking during his overnight address, Volodymyr Zelensky said it was a "happy day" for Ukraine but did not give details or talk about any areas specifically.

In 2014 Russia illegally annexed the southern Crimean peninsula and Russia-backed forces took control of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts bordering Russia in the east.

In its daily intelligence briefing, the UK defence ministry said Ukraine's advances east of Krasnohorivka constituted "one of the first instances since Russia's February 2022 invasion that Ukrainian forces have highly likely recaptured an area of territory occupied by Russia since 2014".

Note to Congress:  This is How You Do It.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democrats who control the state Legislature agreed late Monday on how to spend $310.8 billion over the next year, endorsing a plan that covers a nearly $32 billion budget deficit without raiding the state's savings account.

The nation's most populous state has had combined budget surpluses of well over $100 billion in the past few years, using that money to greatly expand government.

But this year, revenues slowed as inflation soared and the stock market struggled. California gets most of its revenue from taxes paid by the wealthy, making it more vulnerable to changes in the economy than other states. Last month, the Newsom administration estimated the state's spending would exceed revenues by over $30 billion.

The budget, which lawmakers are scheduled to vote on this week, covers that deficit by cutting some spending — about $8 billion — while delaying other spending and shifting some expenses to other funds. The plan would borrow $6.1 billion and would set aside $37.8 billion in reserves, the most ever.

The Fast Way to Lose Weight

When Krista Varady began studying intermittent fasting two decades ago, she felt her research wasn't taken very seriously.

"All the previous diet fads focused so much on calorie counting or low-fat diets," she said.

But a new study from Varady and a team of researchers, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that limiting food intake to a specific time window was as effective as calorie counting for weight loss.

Varady, a nutrition professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and her collaborators enrolled 77 people with obesity in Chicago — most of them Black or Hispanic — in their study, then assigned the participants to one of three routines for six months.

The first group practiced intermittent fasting, eating all of their calories between noon and 8 p.m. each day. The second group could eat whenever they wanted, but they tracked their calorie intake and reduced the total they normally ate in a day by 25%. The last group was the control group, so did not change their regular eating habits.

After the six-month period ended, the researchers tested whether the changes helped people keep weight off. For six more months, the intermittent fasting group expanded their eating window to 10 hours and the calorie counting group ate enough calories to satisfy their energy needs.

Both of the groups that followed a diet in the study's first six months generally maintained the weight loss after their diets ended and lost 5% of their body weight over the course of a year, Varady said.

By the end of the year, the intermittent fasting group had consumed 425 fewer calories per day, on average, than the control group and lost about 10 more pounds. The calorie counting group, meanwhile, ate around 405 fewer calories per day than the control group and lost about 12 more pounds.