Breastfeeding may lessen socioeconomic disparities in child health through differences in the infant gut microbiome Darlene Dai, Charisse Petersen, Stuart Turvey, and colleagues report that breastfeeding may mitigate the adverse effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on early risk factors for non-communicable diseases. The authors link this effect to differences in infant gut microbiota, including enrichment of Bifidobacterium infantis, highlighting potentially modifiable pathways underlying intergenerational health inequities.

Online now: Breastfeeding may lessen socioeconomic disparities in child health through differences in the infant gut microbiome

World-first discovery of noma-linked bacteria opens path to early diagnosis and prevention | Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine For the first time, LSTM scientists have uncovered a Treponema bacterium strongly associated with noma — a disease fatal in up to 90% of untreated children. The discovery opens the door to earlier dia...

Hasta la victoria siempre.

Millions will go hungry if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed Expensive fuel and fertiliser will lead to smaller harvests and higher prices

The World Food Programme estimates that if the blockage continues until mid-year, an extra 45m lives will be at risk, on top of the more than 300m people who already struggle to feed themselves

The United States is destroying itself | Rebecca Solnit The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment

The United States is destroying itself | Rebecca Solnit

Oh hey @ama-assn.org, maybe a chance to use that massive lobbying apparatus you’ve built up to advocate for your workforce and the patients they serve?

Q&A: Kerala taps microbe for health, farming gains Kerala’s new ‘state microbe’ and microbiome research hub eye sustainable solutions for health and environment.

You’ve heard of state flags, birds and flowers. Well Kerala has just named Bacillus subtilis the world’s first official state microbe. Learn more about India’s push to shine a light on the vast potential of versatile microbiomes: bit.ly/4mh1qoy Via SciDev.Net

Mine in this week’s Future Issue of the @newyorker.com Plus more new cartoons here open.substack.com/pub/paulnoth...

Regime change starts at home.

🤬

They Pay $34 for Burgers. Should Their Child Care Be Free?

yes you fucking morons free preschool for everyone or it becomes just "free preschool for the poors" and then you call them leeches and ask for tax breaks when really we want free preschool for everyone because we want smart well adjusted kids why is this so hard?

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/n...

Quite a lot of WAR funding from the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.

South Sudan: As people die in Nyatim humanitarian access must be opened | MSF People who have been displaced by recent violence in Lankien and Pieri, South Sudan, need humanitarian assistance in Nyatim, where they have sought safety.

Around 30,000 people are seeking safety in Nyatim, South Sudan, following recent violence in Lankien and Pieri. They are exposed to the elements and living without basic essentials.

People in the area urgently need access to humanitarian assistance:

The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish Researchers at Stanford University modeled how many people could die or be disabled in 25 years if vaccines for polio, measles, rubella or diphtheria were no longer available.

NEW: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been transforming a government that long championed vaccines into one that questions their safety.

This is what could happen over the next 25 years if shots are unavailable even to the people who want them.

I'm happy to announce this new paper — we compile evidence on the extraordinary harms caused by IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes in the global South since the 1980s.

gh.bmj.com/content/11/S...

5/5 Also worth noting that, in Plutarch's telling--the telling that the Founding generation would have known intimately--it was Caesar's raiding of the treasury and threatening of the tribune Mettellus, who tried to defend it, that was one of the clearest signs that he intended to become a dictator.

Opinion | The $1.3-Million-a-Minute War

We spent more on the first three days of war than we spent ($4 billion) on all humanitarian aid in 2025

Heroism, horror and the ‘pits of hell’: inside the last days of El Fasher Over two days in October 2025, up to 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred; a further 40,000 civillians from the Sudanese city are still unaccounted for. This is the story of what happened

Yes, I know we're all focused on Iran. But the slaughter in Sudan continues, and this excellent piece in The @guardian recounts the mass atrocities that unfolded in El Fasher, Darfur, enabled by our pals in the UAE -- as world leaders looked away. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

There’s a New Place to Store Greenhouse Gases: In Your Beer

As a craft beer snob, this may be my new favorite brewery.

The United States is driving a public health emergency of international concern Matthew Herder and colleagues call for broader mobilisation to avoid the deaths and morbidity in low and middle income countries likely to result from recent US policy changes Announcing the United ...

Brilliant way of phrasing it.

A world with zero wasting is possible. Indeed, for the cost of 3 days of the Netanyahu-Trump-Iran war.

5m tonnes of CO2 emitted in just 14 days of US war on Iran, analysis finds Exclusive: War in the Middle East is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined

The US-Israel war on Iran has emitted 5 million tonnes of CO₂ₑ in its first 14 days. The world currently has 0.6 million tonnes of novel and permanent CO₂ removal (CDR) capacity annually.

WFP projects food insecurity could reach record levels as a result of Middle East escalation | World Food Programme • Roughly 45 million more people could be pushed into acute hunger this year if conflict persists • Global numbers of food-insecure people could reach levels last seen at start of Ukraine war • Import...

The death and destruction spreads far beyond the battlefield.

American taxpayers have paid over $11 billion in the first week for Trump’s illegal war in Iran.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration cut $10 billion for social services, child care and aid for five Democratic-led states.

Our most vulnerable children are paying the price of Trump’s illegal war.

The United States is contemplating threatening to kill people with HIV in another country as leverage to get that country's minerals.

We have become a sick nation, just as depraved and disgusting as its leader.

Hasta la victoria siempre.