How to make a high-deductible health plan and HSA work for you

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5745203/high-deductible-health-plans-hsa-advice How to make a high-deductible health plan and HSA work for you April 9, 20265:00 AM ET Jackie Fortiér

“Woke” Professors - a law that gives more control over what’s taught at public universities

https://www.tpr.org/education/2026-04-08/political-oversight-reaches-texas-college-classrooms-with-texas-tech-and-a-m-at-the-forefront …Last year the Texas Legislature passed a law that gives more control over what’s taught at public universities to their boards of regents. In Texas, regents are appointed by the governor. And Republican Governor Greg Abbott has been pushing the idea that “woke” professors have been indoctrinating students for years. “College professors have increasingly pushed woke agendas. They have too much influence over who is hired to educate our kids. We need legislation that prohibits professors from having any say over employment decisions,” Abbott said in his 2025 state of the state address. “We must also expand the ban on DEI in our public universities. We must purge it from every corner of our schools and return the focus to merit. Texas public universities cite the new law as the reason for their course reviews and content restrictions. Former Republican State Senator Brandon Creighton wrote the law. A few months later, he was appointed chancellor of the Texas Tech system. Republican state leaders say the law was needed to stop what they perceive as indoctrination. But Peterson, the A&M philosophy professor, said public universities are instead using it to indoctrinate students with conservative ideas. “They should be free to make up their own mind, but in order to be free to do so, they must be exposed to different ideas,” Peterson said. “We can't just expose them to conservative ideology approved by the Board of Regents or the governor of Texas.” Marcela Hernández, a junior at UT San Antonio, looks towards the building on campus where they take Mexican American Studies courses. Hernández is majoring in Mexican American Studies. They're worried that consolidating the Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies department into another department will lead to its elimination. UT San Antonio student Marcela Salome Hernández also said there’s no need to tell professors to stop indoctrinating students, because that’s not been their experience. “That makes me laugh so much,” Hernández said. “I was a proud Mexican American before I even knew what (Mexican American Studies) was. I was a proud queer person, proud trans person, before I even knew what those words were. And no, I did not learn it in the university level. I did not learn it in school.” Professors and students told TPR they’re worried restricting what’s taught in their colleges will diminish the quality of students’ degrees and make it harder for universities to recruit and retain faculty. In addition to restricting course content, multiple professors in Texas have been fired over the past few months, sparking free speech concerns. Several universities, including Texas A&M and the University of North Texas, have announced cuts to women’s and gender studies programs. Both UT Austin and UT San Antonio are consolidating their ethnic and gender studies departments into other departments. Both UNT and UT officials say their cuts and mergers are about budget and enrollment concerns, but faculty and students believe they are actually part of the larger political effort to influence what students learn in the state’s public universities. Michelle Waida with KTTZ contributed to this report.

Artemis II April 2026

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/07/nx-s1-5776824/artemis-astronauts-moon-observation-nasa-human-eye https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5773282/artemis-ii-nasa-photos

A one-time treatment tweaked their genes — and lowered their cholesterol

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heart-health/lower-cholesterol-patients-got-one-time-tweak-genes-rcna263736 A one-time treatment tweaked their genes — and lowered their cholesterol Doctors have never had so many cholesterol-lowering drugs at their disposal, but getting patients to take them every day is difficult. Gene-editing could open a new frontier. April 6, 2026, 6:03 AM CDT By David Cox Christos Soteriou was 29 when he needed a quadruple bypass surgery. Four arteries in his heart had become so clogged with plaque that blood could no longer flow through them. It’s a surprisingly young age to need such a surgery, but extremely high levels of cholesterol run in Soteriou’s family — a genetic condition called familial hypercholesterolemia. His father died of heart disease at 46; his son was diagnosed with elevated cholesterol at 14; and Soteriou himself, now 51, has had two heart attacks since his operation. He’s tried statins and a newer drug, Repatha, to lower his cholesterol, but nothing worked. So, when the opportunity came to join an early-stage clinical trial investigating a cutting-edge way to lower dangerously high cholesterol with a one-time treatment, he jumped at the chance. “I wasn’t too worried, because I’ll try anything at this point,” said Soteriou, from South Australia. The experimental treatment would use CRISPR, a gene-editing tool likened to biological scissors, to make precise cuts in the DNA to turn off a liver gene that prevents lipids — fatty substances including LDL cholesterol and triglycerides — from being cleared from the blood. By turning off the gene, called ANGPTL3, blood lipid levels should fall. Gene editing has emerged as a game-changing therapy for rare genetic diseases including sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia, but it remains relatively unproven in more common health conditions. When the trial’s results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine last November, they created a stir. Patients who received the highest dose saw their LDL cholesterol levels fall by 49% and their triglyceride levels fall by 55%. “It was quite remarkable, the influx of messages we received,” said Dr. Luke Laffin, the trial’s lead investigator and a preventative cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “I still get a message once every couple weeks from physicians saying, ‘My patients saw this on TV and they want to do this.’” Soteriou was among the trial participants who benefited from a significant cholesterol reduction. “My doctors and cardiologist, they’ve been quite shocked,” he said. “They said, ‘Jeez, it’s better than it’s ever been.’” This study, funded by CRISPR Therapeutics, was carried out in just 15 people in 2024, but experts say it may represent a paradigm shift in the management of heart disease. Larger trials are already underway, including some exploring new ways of lowering lipid levels through inhibiting or switching off different genes. While there is still much to be learned about the long-term safety of this approach, and how well it works across different patient groups, some cardiologists believe it will ultimately be transformative. Read more about heart health • Cholesterol screening and treatment for younger adults, new guidelines suggest • Some older women may not need blood pressure meds just yet • New blood pressure drug helps people with uncontrolled hypertension in trial In the late 2000s, the cardiologist Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, began investigating a long-standing medical mystery: why some families reported having extraordinarily low levels of cholesterol. Using a new technology which enabled scientists to sequence all 20,000 genes in a person’s DNA at once, Musunuru and others began to uncover their secrets. Key liver genes — including ANGPTL3 and another called PCSK9 — were either dialed down or turned off entirely. When Musunuru later experimented with using CRISPR to switch off PCSK9 in mice and primates, their cholesterol levels fell and remained low. “These people won the genetic lottery,” Musunuru said. “They are protected against heart disease, and they have no adverse health consequences whatsoever.” Over the following decade, Musunuru co-founded a company, Verve Therapeutics, with the aim of using this discovery to permanently lower cholesterol in humans. The company has two trials in progress: one using gene-editing to inactivate PCSK9 in people with familial hypercholesterolemia or coronary artery disease, and another using the same approach to inactivate ANGPTL3 in people deemed at high risk of a heart attack or stroke. While the results are yet to be published, preliminary data from the PCSK9 trial indicates significant reductions in LDL cholesterol. Musurunu said he is optimistic that these treatments could become available by the early 2030s to a subset of patients, for example people recuperating from a heart attack. “Before they leave [the hospital], they get this one-time therapy that permanently reduces their cholesterol levels,” he said. “They’re protected from that next heart attack.” If safety could be guaranteed, he believes that the use cases could be expanded to high-risk groups for heart disease, such as people with Type 2 diabetes. Perhaps eventually, he said, it could be administered more broadly to certain people in early adulthood as a way of conferring lifelong protection against cardiovascular diseases. “If enough people in the population took this at like, 20 years of age, it would improve life expectancy,” he said. “People won’t be having heart attacks. That is the potential impact of this.” That vision is still a ways off, with larger and longer trials needed. But other cardiologists with no commercial stake in the technology are also captivated by the concept of using gene editing to deliver a one-time therapy to prevent people from accruing damaging levels of blood lipids. “I love the idea of one and done,” said Dr. Priscilla Hsue, chief of the cardiology division at UCLA Health. “Durably lowering cholesterol for the rest of your life, could be transformational for some patients.” The reason for this excitement is simple: Though current cholesterol-lowering medications are effective, they often require patients to take them for the rest of their lives. Many find that impossible. Marco Carabott, 54, knows he should have paid more attention to taking his medications. After 15 years managing various fast-food restaurants, and, by his own admission, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at them, he was diagnosed with high LDL cholesterol and prescribed a cocktail of statins. “But I’ve been notoriously poor at taking medication,” Carabott, of Adelaide, South Australia, said. “Forgetful, lazy. I kind of assumed I was going to die a bit younger than perhaps the average, and I just took that in my stride a little bit.” Eventually he had a heart attack, and, like Soteriou, needed a quadruple bypass to open his blocked arteries. It’s a story that reflects one of the ongoing challenges faced in heart disease prevention. On the one hand, cardiologists have never had so many cholesterol-lowering drugs at their disposal. They include statins and ezetimibe, newer drugs such as bempedoic acid, and a class of injectable medications called PCSK9 inhibitors that block the protein produced by the PCSK9 gene, allowing the liver to remove more cholesterol from the blood. But relatively few patients take them for a sustained period of time. Reasons range from patients forgetting to take multiple drugs, to costs, to symptoms of statin intolerance such as muscle and joint pains. Research has suggested that anywhere between 25-50% of statin users stop taking the drugs within one year, while another study found that more than 50% of heart attack survivors quit their statins within two years, despite being medically advised to take them for the rest of their life. “If you look at how many patients are taking these therapies at two years, at five years, the numbers are really staggeringly low, even in patients that have known cardiovascular disease,” Hsue said. Laffin, of the Cleveland Clinic, said one of the challenges is that high cholesterol is completely symptomless, and patients often feel perfectly well, up to the point where they have a heart attack. “People are walking around, they don’t feel any better taking a statin, for example,” he said. “So there’s less impetus to take these medicines.” Like Soteriou, Carabott also joined the CRISPR trial. Twelve months after he received the treatment, a blood test revealed that his triglyceride levels had fallen by more than half. He said he hopes that in the coming years, he’ll be able to take lower doses of his statins, or one day even quit them entirely. Many questions still remain about using gene editing to lower cholesterol. Chief among them: Are there any unusual or unexpected side effects that might emerge years down the line as a result? The Food and Drug Administration has recommended that researchers monitor the trial participants over the next 15 years. “We need a better understanding of, are there downsides, or is something going to turn up five years from now that we never expected?” said Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer at the Cleveland Clinic’s Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute and the CRISPR study’s senior investigator. In the short term, the side effects reported in the trial were minor back pain, nausea and elevated liver enzymes, all of which went away on their own. Musurunu said that some degree of temporary liver stress is expected, as the gene-editing machinery is being delivered to virtually all of the liver cells. “It’s typically not an issue,” he said. “You wait a few days or a few weeks, and then things come back to normal.” But there’s a more worrisome concern in the minds of scientists. Namely, what happens if something goes awry and a tool like CRISPR mistakenly edits a different spot, somewhere else in the genome? The potential consequences of these so-called off-target effects are unknown. While this has never been observed in either humans or animals, cardiologists say it is of vital importance to rule it out. “I think we’re still in the discovery phase,” Hsue said. “Could there be unintended damage to DNA that we just don’t know about? Will someone’s body react [to the treatment] in an unusual way that will lead to inflammation? We don’t really know.” According to Dr. Robert Rosenson, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, other trials are attempting to reduce the risk of off-target effects by using a different means of turning off key liver genes, known as base editing. Rosenson plans to be involved in one of those trials with Verve Therapeutics. Rosenson said that if CRISPR is a scissor that cuts both strands of DNA, base editing is an eraser that substitutes one chemical letter, or base, in a single strand of DNA. Other researchers have previously suggested that base editing may be safer, although more human studies are needed. “It’s a more specific approach, and I think this is critical as we offer this approach to larger numbers of individuals,” Rosenson said. “Safety becomes pre-eminent.” Soteriou, now 16 months out from the clinical trial, said he hopes that the treatment will manage to preserve their health for a little longer. His son Jade is set to receive the same full dose of the therapy as part of the next stage of the trial, and Soteriou is optimistic that it could prevent him from experiencing a similar fate. “For me, I know it’s not unclogging my arteries, but I just think it’s given me a little bit more hope for a few more years,” Soteriou said. “You’ve got to face reality sometimes, and before I was worried about not having long to live. I just hope my son won’t have to go through what I’ve had to go through.”

Cuộc Nam Tiến Của Người Việt -- Người Chăm, Người Khmer, Người Hoa kiều, Các Giáo Sĩ, Thực Dân Ở Đàng Trong Thế Kỷ 16-19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G15mvyq_Dg Nam tiến ở Đàng trong Sử Việt: NGUỒN GỐC Người Miền Nam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRkaMV7d5ic Campuchia Mất Tây Nam Bộ Như Thế Nào? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjtY2LcRu9g Sơ Lược Mạc Cửu Khai Phá Hà Tiên - Từ Vùng Đất Hoang Đến Thương Cảng Thịnh Vượng Alexandre de Rhodes https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/16th-and-17th-century-ignatian-voices/alexandre-de-rhodes-sj/ Alexandre de Rhodes, SJ (1591-1660) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMKs8AQ7o8#:~:text=B%C3%81%20%C4%90A%20L%E1%BB%98C%2C%20NG%C6%AF%E1%BB%9CI%20PH%C3%81P%20THAY%20%C4%90%E1%BB%94I,NAM%20%2D%20YouTube.%20This%20content%20isn't%20available. Pierre Pigneau de Béhaine BÁ ĐA LỘC, NGƯỜI PHÁP THAY ĐỔI MÃI MÃI LỊCH SỬ VIỆT NAM

How America Got Into This Mess and How We Recover: Reflections from a Columnist’s Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBHUVEUvNeU How America Got Into This Mess and How We Recover: Reflections from a Columnist’s Life

Lịch Sử Công Giáo Ở Việt Nam

https://gxdaminh.net/z/tusach/lichsugiaohoi/lsgh2-08.htm Thế kỷ XVI-XVII các linh mục truyền giáo Bồ đào nha, Tây ban nha, Pháp vào nước Việt, và cả vùng chung quanh (Đông Nam Á và Đông dương). Thế kỷ XVIII Truyền bá KTG rộng rãi vùng Bắc, Trung, Nam, nhất là vùng Trung và Nam từ Thanh hóa trở xuống. Các linh mục ngoại quốc được cho phép truyền đạo và còn giúp đỡ nhiều mặt (Chúa Trịnh Đàng ngoài, Chúa Nguyễn Đàng trong, một số vua, quan, công chúa...). Thế kỷ XIX Nguyễn Ánh dựa vàp thế lực ngoại bang như Xiêm la, Pháp, dùng ảnh hưởng các ông cố đạo để giúp diệt dòng họ ba anh em Tây Sơn, giành ngai vàng và thống nhất đất nước. Nhưng sau đó lại bắt đầu thấy mối nguy mất nước nên cấm đạo. Bế quan tỏa cảng và các phong trào khởi nghĩa bắt đầu. Thế kỷ XX Thực dân đế quốc hợp tác nhau gây ảnh hưởng, cùng quan lại phong kiến và những người tay sai theo Pháp theo đạo Ki tô bóc lột dân VN, chia rẽ. Quân phiệt Nhật cũng tìm cách áp bức dân VN nhưng sau khi thua trận phải nhường lại chỗ đứng cho phe Đồng Minh Anh-Pháp-Mỹ. Mỹ nhảy vào Đông dương thế Pháp sau Thế chiến thứ hai. Alexandre de Rhodes https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/16th-and-17th-century-ignatian-voices/alexandre-de-rhodes-sj/ Alexandre de Rhodes, SJ (1591-1660) Alexandre de Rhodes, SJ, was a missionary in Vietnam. Alexandre de Rhodes was born in France in 1591. Entering the Jesuits, de Rhodes soon decided to dedicate his life to missionary work. A Jesuit mission had been established in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1615, and de Rhodes arrived there soon after. He spent 10 years in and around the Court at Hanoi, where he wrote the first Vietnamese Catechism. He wrote many books about Vietnam, but de Rhodes’s most significant work was the first Portuguese-Latin-Vietnamese dictionary. The dictionary was later used by scholars to create a new Vietnamese writing system, based on the Roman alphabet, which is still used today. Suspicion of Christians led to a 10-year exile in the Portuguese colony of Macau, off the Chinese coast. De Rhodes was able to return to Vietnam for six years before being sentenced to death for his missionary work. The sentence was commuted to exile, and de Rhodes spent time in Rome before beginning a new mission in Persia. He died in Persia in 1660. Pierre Pigneau de Béhaine BÁ ĐA LỘC, NGƯỜI PHÁP THAY ĐỔI MÃI MÃI LỊCH SỬ VIỆT NAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMKs8AQ7o8#:~:text=B%C3%81%20%C4%90A%20L%E1%BB%98C%2C%20NG%C6%AF%E1%BB%9CI%20PH%C3%81P%20THAY%20%C4%90%E1%BB%94I,NAM%20%2D%20YouTube.%20This%20content%20isn't%20available. Related Link: https://thanhnien.vn/nhung-nha-tho-doc-dao-lang-song-noi-chu-quoc-ngu-in-dau-hon-mot-the-ky-18526032620174419.htm Tiểu chủng viện Làng Sông (xã Tuy Phước, Gia Lai; trước đây thuộc tỉnh Bình Định) không chỉ mang vẻ đẹp kiến trúc Gothic hiếm có giữa làng quê miền Trung, mà còn ghi dấu hành trình hình thành và lan tỏa chữ Quốc ngữ hơn một thế kỷ. Tiểu chủng viện Làng Sông hôm nay không còn là không gian khép kín của riêng giáo hội. Nơi đây đã trở thành điểm hành hương quen thuộc của giáo dân, đồng thời là điểm dừng chân của du khách và các nhà nghiên cứu trong, ngoài nước. Người ta tìm đến Làng Sông để ngắm một công trình Gothic phương Tây nổi bật giữa đồng lúa mênh mang ở hạ lưu sông Hà Thanh, để nghe kể về những trang sách chữ Quốc ngữ đầu tiên và chạm vào lớp trầm tích văn hóa vẫn còn nguyên hơi thở lịch sử....Theo tài liệu của Giáo phận Quy Nhơn, Tiểu chủng viện Làng Sông được hình thành trong khoảng thời gian từ sau năm 1841 đến trước năm 1850. Thuở ban đầu, nơi đây chỉ là những ngôi nhà mái tranh, vách phên tre, tọa lạc trên một gò cao, xung quanh là hào nước và đồng lúa bát ngát. Năm 1885, một biến cố lịch sử đã khiến toàn bộ chủng viện và tòa giám mục bị thiêu hủy. Hai năm sau, công cuộc tái thiết bắt đầu. Đến năm 1892, khi nhà nguyện hoàn thành, 14 cây sao được trồng dọc lối đi từ sân nhà nguyện ra cổng, cùng 4 cây khác trước các dãy nhà phía đông và tây. Qua hơn một thế kỷ, những hàng sao ấy đã trở thành biểu tượng xanh mát, in sâu trong ký ức nhiều thế hệ. Năm 1925, cha Damien Grangeon Mẫn (1857 - 1933) cho xây dựng lại Chủng viện Làng Sông theo thiết kế của cha Charles Dorgeville (1881 - 1956). Công trình được khánh thành ngày 21.9.1927 và tồn tại đến hôm nay như một dấu mốc bền bỉ của lịch sử truyền giáo tại miền Trung. NHÀ IN LÀNG SÔNG - LINH HỒN CỦA DI SẢN Nếu kiến trúc tạo nên hình hài Làng Sông, thì Nhà in Làng Sông chính là linh hồn của di sản này. Đây được xem là giá trị nổi bật nhất của Tiểu chủng viện, đồng thời là một trong ba nhà in chữ Quốc ngữ sớm nhất Việt Nam, bên cạnh Tân Định (Sài Gòn) và Ninh Phú (Hà Nội). Nhà in Làng Sông được cha Eugène Charbonnier Trí thành lập năm 1868 trong khuôn viên chủng viện. Sau khi bị phá hủy năm 1885, đến năm 1904, cha Damien Grangeon Mẫn cho tái thiết và giao cho linh mục Paul Maheu, người được đào tạo bài bản về kỹ thuật in ấn tại Hồng Kông, làm giám đốc. Theo nhà nghiên cứu Nguyễn Thanh Quang (Hội Khoa học lịch sử tỉnh Gia Lai) và linh mục Gioan Võ Đình Đệ (Giáo phận Quy Nhơn), giai đoạn 1904 - 1930, khi linh mục Paul Maheu làm giám đốc, là thời kỳ hưng thịnh nhất của Nhà in Làng Sông. Hệ thống máy in hiện đại, khổ lớn nhất thời bấy giờ cho phép nơi đây xuất bản một khối lượng sách, báo đồ sộ. Không chỉ in sách Latin và tiếng Pháp, Nhà in Làng Sông còn xuất bản một kho tàng sách Quốc ngữ phong phú: giáo lý, kinh thánh, giáo dục ấu học - trung học, truyện, tiểu thuyết, kịch, tạp chí, tuồng hát bội, lịch, sách dịch… Nhiều sách giáo khoa như Phép đánh vần, Con nít học nói, Ấu học, Trung học, Địa dư sơ lược... được tái bản nhiều lần. Đặc biệt, Hai chị em lưu lạc (1927) được ghi nhận là tiểu thuyết thiếu nhi đầu tiên của văn chương Nam Trung bộ. Tháng 11.1933, một cơn bão lớn làm sập Nhà in Làng Sông. Năm 1934, giáo phận khởi công xây dựng Nhà in Quy Nhơn. Đến năm 1935, hai nhà in hoạt động song song trước khi Làng Sông sáp nhập vào Quy Nhơn. Ấn phẩm cuối cùng được in tại Làng Sông vào tháng 12.1953, khép lại gần một thế kỷ tồn tại, để lại một di sản chữ Quốc ngữ đồ sộ hiện còn lưu giữ tại Thư viện quốc gia.