Bright light at night could raise your diabetes risk, study says

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Hunter Boyce | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS)

ATLANTA — Being exposed to light during a certain time of day can increase a person’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. According to the science, it all comes down to how you sleep.

Published in the Lancet Regional Health — Europe earlier this month, a study helmed by Flinders University researchers in Australia discovered sleep disruption can play a significant role in diabetes development.

“We found that exposure to brighter light at night was associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes,” senior study author and associate professor at the university’s College of Medicine and Public Health Andrew Phillips said in a news release.

“Light exposure at night can disrupt our circadian rhythms, leading to changes in insulin secretion and glucose metabolism,” he continued. “Changes in insulin secretion and glucose metabolism caused by disrupted circadian rhythms affect the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar levels, which can ultimately lead to the development of type 2 diabetes.”

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Researchers analyzed information from around 85,000 people and 13 million hours of light sensor data to determine being exposed to light from 12:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. increased diabetes risks in participants. The participants did not have Type 2 diabetes at the beginning of the trial, which ran for nine years.

For a near decade, in the largest known study of its kind, the scientists monitored the participants to observe who developed the disease.

“The results showed that exposure to brighter light at night is associated with a higher risk of developing diabetes, with a dose-dependent relationship between light exposure and risk,” Phillips said. “Our findings suggest that reducing your light exposure at night and maintaining a dark environment may be an easy and cheap way to prevent or delay the development of diabetes.”

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

We’re halfway through 2024. It’s a good time to check your credit

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By Lauren Schwahn | NerdWallet

We’ve reached the midpoint of 2024. As you reflect on the first six months of the year, you may be wondering how you’re doing financially. Checking up on your credit health is a good starting point.

“People’s insurance rates, the fact that they can get approved for an apartment or even be employed by certain entities is being determined in part by credit scores and their credit reports,” says Michelle Smoley, an accredited financial counselor in Elma, Iowa. “It’s really, really important for people to keep on top of their credit report and their credit scores because they’re used for more than just consumer lending purposes.”

Here’s how to figure out where your credit stands and what you can do to protect it over the next six months.

Inspect your credit reports

Pull your credit reports from the three main credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You can use AnnualCreditReport.com to get free copies as often as once per week. Checking your reports yourself doesn’t directly affect your credit score, but it can help shed light on details that may be damaging your credit.

What should you look for? Make sure personal information, such as your name and address, is correct.

“Any errors or unusual information there might be a clue that somebody is trying to steal your identity,” says Bruce McClary, senior vice president of memberships and communications at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. “It’s a tactic of identity thieves to apply for credit under P.O. boxes or addresses that are not really yours.”

Review the accounts and credit inquiries listed on your reports too. If negative items like bankruptcies or collections appear, make sure they aren’t outdated (most derogatory marks are supposed to fall off credit reports after seven years). Immediately file a dispute with the credit bureaus if you see anything inaccurate or unfamiliar. In many cases if the issue is corrected, “you’ll see a lift in your credit score,” McClary says.

Check your reports throughout the rest of the year — and beyond — for anything fishy. You can also protect yourself by freezing your credit, which blocks access to your reports.

Check your credit score

If you’re planning a big purchase, such as a car or home, knowing your credit score and whether you could positively impact it beforehand can help you get approved for credit or for a more favorable interest rate, Smoley says.

You won’t see credit scores on your credit reports, but you can get them elsewhere for free.

“So many people have access to either their FICO score or their VantageScore through their financial institution or their credit card,” Smoley says.

Generally, a score of 690 or higher puts you in a good position. But even if your credit score is strong, it isn’t guaranteed to stay that way. Always be thinking about how to keep your score at that level or grow it so you can qualify for the best possible deal when it comes time to apply for a loan or a line of credit, McClary says.

Knowing the factors that influence credit scores may guide you. Actions like paying your bills on time or becoming an authorized user on a relative’s credit card to expand your credit history can bump up your score.

Make a plan for your debt

Carrying debt can wreak havoc on your credit score because more than half of your score is based on two factors: whether you make payments on time and how much of your credit limit you use.

If you’ve lost track of your debt — maybe it’s been a while since you’ve made a payment on an account or it’s been passed around several debt collection agencies — your credit report can tell you who is managing that account and how much you owe, McClary says.

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Once you know what you’re dealing with, set due date reminders and try to make at least the minimum monthly payment on each account. Note that while medical debt may disappear from credit reports early next year, your obligation to pay it won’t.

Making extra payments on credit cards with high balances can help your score too. Keeping your credit utilization ratio below 30% is ideal.

Do your best to save up for purchases you’ll make in the often expensive second half of the year, and pay them off as soon as possible. Summer vacations, back-to-school spending and holiday shopping can put a strain on credit utilization.

If you shop for a mortgage or auto loan, limit applications to a 14-day period to avoid multiple hard pulls from lenders on your credit report, which hurt scores, Smoley says. Credit scoring models generally count all inquiries made within this time frame as a single hard pull.

Keep monitoring your credit health to avoid surprises at the end of the year. “If you don’t know where to start, you can talk to a nonprofit credit counseling agency,” McClary says. “A nonprofit credit counseling agency can work with you, first of all, to understand what you’re seeing on your credit report, and then understand your options for dealing with some of these things. So you don’t have to go through it alone.”

Lauren Schwahn writes for NerdWallet. Email: lschwahn@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lauren_schwahn.

Elizabeth Shackleford: Commentary: Little islands could spur big trouble in the South China Sea

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The South China Sea has become one of the world’s most dangerous potential flashpoints.

Territorial disputes in this area — often over uninhabitable rocks — have been a source of conflict and competing claims for a century. But China has become more aggressive recently with its claims to the area. With great power competition heating up worldwide, this could translate to big trouble.

In June, Chinese coast guard ships rammed and boarded Philippine navy vessels, using machetes, axes and hammers to damage the boats and threaten the crews. It was the latest and most violent in a series of confrontations between China and the Philippines in the area.

At the core of the clash was Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef in the Spratly Islands, a little more than 100 nautical miles west of the Philippines, where the Philippine navy has maintained a presence with a handful of marines on a grounded Navy transport ship since 1999. The Philippine vessels were attacked as they were resupplying the outpost.

Why such violence over a rocky feature that doesn’t even qualify as land? For the Philippines, it’s a matter of sovereignty and standing up to the Chinese government’s overreach. Under international law, this shoal falls well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

For many others, including the United States, China’s aggressive claim to Second Thomas Shoal is part of a bigger threat to freedom of navigation in critical shipping lanes and to accessing a wealth of natural resources, from massive oil and natural gas reserves to abundant fish and seafood.

Several countries in the region lay claim to some of the islands, rocks and territorial waters of the South China Sea, but China’s claims are the most sweeping by far. They are demonstrated by the nine-dash line first detailed in a map China issued in 1947, which encompasses nearly the entirety of the sea, in an awkward U-shape stretching far south of China’s shores.

The nine-dash line is such a source of angst that Vietnam banned last year’s blockbuster movie “Barbie” because it portrays a childlike map that appears to show a dotted trail extending into the ocean from where China would be on the Asian landmass.

China has tried to strengthen its claim by expanding the size of islands it physically controls and by building new islands and militarizing them.

By the 1990s, China expanded its claims beyond islands and rocks to include the water itself, the seabed below and the airspace above. This is in clear violation of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention — a treaty that China not only signed but also helped negotiate.

The shipping lanes mean these local skirmishes have global implications, and potentially global responses, since more than 20% of all global trade and 60% of maritime trade pass through these waters. A meaningful threat to the global economy doesn’t stay local for long.

This is a big part of America’s interest in maintaining peace and security in the region. Freedom of navigation is one of the oldest principles of international law, going back 400 years. The United States has made the defense of freedom of navigation worldwide a core U.S. national security priority.

But an even riskier element comes from U.S. security commitments in the region — one in particular.

The United States engages in defense cooperation with Vietnam, but has no clear commitments to come to its defense. The U.S. government has enshrined into law its commitment to assist Taiwan in case of an attack, but the nature of how we would do so remains intentionally ambiguous.

The Philippines, however, is a treaty ally with whom we’ve clearly agreed to mutual defense.

This means that an armed attack on the Philippines would invoke America’s commitment to defend it. If that attack comes from China, the United States could quickly find itself in direct conflict with a near-peer global power.

For decades, it wasn’t at all clear how the Philippines’ claims to these disputed islands factored into that commitment. This suited the U.S. government, since ambiguity was a deterrent to any provocations by the Philippines against China’s competing claims.

But that all changed in 2019, when then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated publicly that the islands were included in that pact. Today, U.S. government guidelines make clear that the commitment applies to Philippines assets anywhere within the South China Sea.

The good news is that the United States and its partners in the region are eager, so far, to avoid full-scale war. Since the most recent skirmish, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has publicly stated that his country is “not in the business to instigate wars,” and his government indicated that it would not invoke its treaty with the United States over the incident.

Avoiding war with China, though, requires the Philippines and its Western ally to strike the right balance by not escalating tensions with China but also not emboldening it to go further.

It will also depend on how keen China is to avoid war, and given its recent actions, that might not be a shared priority.

Elizabeth Shackelford is the Magro Family Distinguished Visitor in International Affairs at Dartmouth College and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”

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David French: Can Democratic leaders actually lead?

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One of the most consistent realities of the early Trump era in the Republican Party was the massive gap between elite knowledge of Donald Trump and voter perception of Trump. Party leaders saw him up close, knew of his scandals and deranged behavior and complained about him bitterly behind closed doors.

But then what happened? The same people not only deferred to voters who possessed a small fraction of their information; they actually contributed to public ignorance by defending Trump even from the most legitimate criticism. They made the problem worse and then complained bitterly about the predicament they helped create.

In other words, the leaders weren’t leaders at all.

I understand an elected Democrat’s desire to defend the party’s nominee until he’s not the nominee. I understand that every word uttered against President Joe Biden can be used by Trump if Biden stays in the race. But if you have real knowledge of Biden’s limitations and if you then sally forth into public to defend his competence in the face of known contrary facts, then you’ve become a version of what you hate. You’ve become a blue-hatted version of the red-hatted party loyalist.

Leadership can be a surprisingly tricky concept in a representative democracy. When you win your election, is your mission to do what your voters want? Or do you view the vote for you as essentially a vote of confidence in you as a person who can actually lead constituents rather than merely express their will?

The first model has essentially taken over the Republican Party. MAGA members of Congress enthusiastically share their voters’ love for Trump, but the remaining normie Republicans often rationalize a similar level of practical devotion to Trump (even while they still grumble behind closed doors) as simply yielding to their constituents’ demands.

The second model, however, demands more from its elected leaders. It demands a level of independent judgment commensurate with your superior access to information. If voters don’t like your judgment, they can certainly remove you in the next election. But still, what are you supposed to do with all those classified briefings, all those closed-door meetings and all that personal access?

The answers are simple to state but difficult for ambitious politicians to accept: You should speak with integrity about what you know to be true. Attempt to persuade constituents to conform their votes to that truth. And if you fail, so be it. Former members of Congress have no problem supporting their families or even exercising influence in the United States.

It’s time for Democratic leaders to lead, to tell the truth in private and in public. Republicans are determined to support a corrupt, aged and unfit man for president. It would be a political and moral failing if Democrats answered that grave challenge with an aged and unfit candidate of their own — all because Democratic leaders failed to heed the harsh lesson taught by the party to their right.

David French writes a column for the New York Times.

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