What happened
Venezuelan officials last night raised the official death toll from Wednesday’s powerful back-to-back earthquakes to 235, with at least 4,300 injured and hundreds more missing or trapped under collapsed buildings. With international aid beginning to arrive, “rescue crews and residents dug through rubble in an increasingly desperate search for survivors,” The New York Times said. The “first 48 to 72 hours after a quake are widely regarded as the ‘golden’ window to reach people buried alive,” CNN said.

Who said what
The magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes “hit a country already weakened by years of economic turmoil” that “left much of its infrastructure fragile and complicated rescue efforts as aftershocks rattled the capital and surrounding coastal areas,” Reuters said. “Affected residents have nowhere to go,” CNN said, and many Venezuelans “are enduring a second night out on the streets” near damaged and collapsed apartment buildings. “They’ve pulled out a lot of dead people,” La Guaira resident Yorliana Colmenares told the Times. “Injured people, children, animals.”

What next?
The “number of dead and injured was virtually certain to rise,” the Times said. A website created to track the missing “listed more than 46,000 people as unaccounted for” last night, Reuters said. 

What happened
The International Maritime Organization yesterday paused a nascent effort to evacuate ships stranded in the Persian Gulf after Iran struck a cargo vessel, causing damage but no casualties, according to the ship’s owner. The IMO, a United Nations body, earlier this week began shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz along a route hugging Oman’s coast. Hundreds of ships and more than 11,000 seafarers have been stranded in the Gulf since the Iran war broke out, and Iran’s drone strike demonstrated its “continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States,” CNN said. 

Who said what
The attacked vessel did “not transit under IMO’s evacuation framework,” IMO chief Arsenio Dominguez said, but “the evacuation plan will be paused until further clarity is obtained” on “necessary safety guarantees.” Hours before the strike, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that transiting the strait outside routes “authorized” by Iran was “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” The opening of an alternate passage “would relieve pressure on the world economy,” The Associated Press said, but also “remove Iran’s main source of leverage in ongoing peace talks.” 

What next?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday during a “visit to the Gulf to reassure American allies” that “Washington was committed to the new route” and free passage through the strait, the AP said.

Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder that gradually degrades a person’s cognitive and memory functions, is the No. 1 cause of dementia. There’s currently no cure, but according to a study published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, a new copper-based treatment may be on the horizon.

Alzheimer’s is “caused by the buildup of toxic proteins called amyloid-beta,” Australia’s Monash University said in a release on the study. These proteins are usually flushed out into the bloodstream through the blood-brain barrier. But in Alzheimer’s patients, the “pumps doing the heavy lifting, called P-glycoprotein (P-gp), weaken significantly, clogging the drain and trapping the toxic proteins in the brain.” 

A buildup of amyloid-beta proteins leads to memory loss and cognitive decline. But the copper-based compound Cu(ATSM) may be able to clear them from the brain. Cu(ATSM) has both “anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties,” said study senior author Joseph Nicolazzo. The compound improves the long-term spatial memory of mice, showing promise for future human clinical trials. 

The drug has “already progressed to clinical testing for conditions like Parkinson’s and ALS,” said Nicolazzo. But what works with mice doesn’t always translate to humans. “Despite its promising results in animals, a pilot comparative analysis found that Cu(ATSM) provided no significant benefit to humans with ALS,” said Science Alert.

More than 7 million Americans 65 and older are estimated to be living with Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. A drug that could prolong cognition and lifespan would be a game-changer for patients and their families.