Class 4A baseball state quarterfinal: East Ridge 7, Eastview 1

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East Ridge jumped on Eastview early, scoring five runs in the first two innings, and before Luke Skinner sealed the deal by smacking a pitch out of the park as the Raptors beat the Lightning, 7-1, in a Class 4A state baseball quarterfinal Thursday at CHS Field.

Max Arlich pitched five scoreless innings, retiring the side in the fourth after Eastview put the first three batters on base, as East Ridge (19-7) advanced to meet Suburban East rival Forest Lake (14-11) in Friday’s semifinals.

Jack Blink, Alex Mazzetti, Luke Ryerse and Cole Widen each drove in runs for the Raptors, helping chase Lightning left-hander Cooper DeSutter after 1⅔ innings. He stayed in the game and went 2 for 4 with a spectacular catch at the warning track in left field.

Eastview loaded the bases in the top of the seventh on a pair of hits and a walk, and finally dented the scoreboard when Nick Brandt drew a bases-loaded walk.

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President Biden says he won’t offer commutation to his son Hunter after gun sentence

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By COLLEEN LONG (Associated Press)

FASANO, Italy (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday that he will not use his presidential powers to lessen the eventual sentence that his son Hunter will receive for his federal felony conviction on gun crimes.

Biden, following the conclusion of a news conference held at the Group of Seven summit of the world’s wealthiest democracies, responded he would not when asked whether he plans to commute the sentence for his son. Hunter Biden’s sentencing date has not been set, and the three counts carry up to 25 years in prison.

Whether Hunter Biden actually serves any time behind bars will be up to U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was nominated to the bench by former Republican President Donald Trump,

Biden’s remarks came one day after the White House declined to rule out a potential commutation for Hunter Biden. Both the president and the White House have said for months that Biden would not pardon his son.

“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the brightest most decent men I know,” Biden said earlier during the news conference Thursday. “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report from Washington.

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Trump refers to Milwaukee as ‘horrible’ just before the city hosts the Republican convention

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By SCOTT BAUER (Associated Press)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump used the word “horrible” in talking about Milwaukee — the city where he will accept the Republican nomination next month — during a closed-door meeting Thursday with GOP congressmen, according to several people in the room who spoke afterward.

The comment, first reported by Punchbowl News while the meeting was in progress, immediately drew disagreements from those there about what Trump meant.

Several congressmen who support Trump and attended the meeting argued he was referring to crime and voter fraud. Trump frequently denounces Democratic-led cities as unsafe — even as violent crime decreased nationally in the most recent FBI statistics — and repeats falsehoods about his loss in the 2020 election.

President Joe Biden’s campaign and his Democratic allies pounced on the reported remark even as Wisconsin Republicans contested how it was being interpreted. Biden posted a photo on the X social platform of himself greeting the Milwaukee Bucks after their 2021 NBA championship with the message: “I happen to love Milwaukee.”

Milwaukee is hosting the Republican National Convention starting July 15 and is the largest Democratic stronghold in swing-state Wisconsin.

Trump is scheduled to be in Racine, Wisconsin, for a campaign rally on Tuesday, just three weeks before heading to Milwaukee for the convention.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung posted on X that Trump “was talking about how terrible crime and voter fraud are.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin, said Trump was talking about the “terrible or horrible” crime rate in the city.

“He was directly referring to crime in Milwaukee,” said Van Orden, who told The Associated Press he was sitting just feet from the former president.

He said Republicans in the room concurred. “They’re like, yeah, crime is terrible.”

U.S. Rep, Scott Fitzgerald, also from Wisconsin, told WISN-TV in Milwaukee that Trump was referring to election integrity.

“That’s where the comment came from, that Milwaukee’s just terrible,” Fitzgerald said. “What he was talking about was the elections in Milwaukee, their concerns about them.”

But Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents southeast Wisconsin, disputed that Trump made the comment.

“I was in the room,” Steil posted on X. “President Trump did not say this. There is no better place than Wisconsin in July.”

And Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents northern Wisconsin, said he never heard Trump call Milwaukee a “horrible city.”

“What I heard is to make sure there’s election integrity in Milwaukee,” Tiffany said in a telephone interview. “He’s talking about the states that are in play and the states of greatest importance and Wisconsin is top of the list.”

A Trump aide and two attorneys who advised him in 2020 were charged with felonies last week in Wisconsin for their roles in a scheme to get Republicans to cast Wisconsin’s electoral ballots to Trump even though he lost the state.

Government and outside investigationshave uniformly found there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have swung the 2020 election. But Trump has continued to spread falsehoods about the election, particularly in Wisconsin.

Republican Rep. Jim Banks, of Indiana, said he was also in the room and “Trump never disparaged Milwaukee.”

“Just another Democrat hoax,” Banks posted on X.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, when asked about Trump’s reported remarks, said at a news conference, “If Donald Trump wants to talk about things that he thinks are horrible, all of us lived through his presidency, so right back at you buddy.”

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat who represents and lives in Milwaukee, made a nod to Trump’s recent felony convictions in her response. Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York on July 11, days before the convention opens.

“Once he’s settled in with his parole officer, I am certain he will discover that Milwaukee is a wonderful, vibrant and welcoming city full of diverse neighborhoods and a thriving business community,” Moore posted on X.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is up for reelection this year, said on X that Milwaukee is “part of what makes Wisconsin the best state in the nation. Donald Trump wouldn’t understand even if a jury told him so.” She used the Trump comment in a fundraising plea hours after it was first reported.

Local and statewide Democratic leaders, including Gov. Tony Evers, worked with Republicans to land the convention this summer.

Evers, in response to Trump’s comment, posted on X: “Add it to the list of things Donald Trump is wrong about.” He followed it with an emoji of a clown face.

Milwaukee was supposed to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention, but that was moved almost entirely online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

___ Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

Gross-tasting medications can be a barrier to treatment. Philly researchers developed a ‘bitter blocker’ to help.

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Aubrey Whelan | (TNS) The Philadelphia Inquirer

Peihua Jiang knows how difficult it can be to convince a child to take a sip of a bitter liquid medication.

When they were young, his kids sometimes balked at taking medicines because they didn’t like how they tasted. And as a neurobiologist, Jiang knew the medical issues at stake went beyond a minor inconvenience.

Swallowing pills can be difficult for many young children and elderly people. Liquid medications are easier to consume, but their taste is often so off-putting that some patients will avoid them entirely — a significant barrier to good health for those who need to take lifesaving medications.

“My kids would refuse to take medicine when they were young,” he said, laughing. “It’s evolution; it makes perfect sense. A bitter taste is a sign you’re not supposed to eat something. But with medicine, it’s a different story.”

That’s why Jiang and his colleagues at Philadelphia’s Monell Chemical Senses Center, have spent years taking on what they describe as one of the most enduring challenges in medicine ― finding a “bitter blocker” substance that can prevent a patient from tasting anything bitter.

This month, Jiang and several colleagues announced a breakthrough: They identified a nerve inhibitor in liquid form that temporarily blocks all taste entirely. The center says it’s the first temporary taste blocker that works universally in humans, and a game-changer in a yearslong research journey.

“We are very pumped,” said Carol Christensen, a consultant to the director at Monell and a coauthor with Jiang of a paper on the compound recently published in British Journal of Pharmacology.

How bitter medication hurts health outcomes

Researchers at Monell, an independent research institution devoted to studying the senses of taste and smell, first began developing a bitter blocker in 2016 with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation was concerned about bitter tastes preventing the uptake of medications in developing countries, where many people need to take regular medication for serious chronic illnesses like HIV and tuberculosis.

Ninety percent of U.S. pediatricians cited “a drug’s taste and palatability” as the biggest barrier to getting their patients to complete a course of medication, according to a 2013 review of existing research on bitter medications for children.

The paper noted it’s also hard for young children to swallow pills, even in small sizes, and that people of all ages, especially elderly adults, can have issues taking pills.

And what one might call the Mary Poppins method — a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down — comes with its own risks. Adding sweeteners to medications can cause cavities or damage tooth enamel.

For patients with serious conditions that require a long course of treatment, such as HIV, avoiding bitter medications can be dangerous.

“Many, many children, especially in developing countries, are not taking medicines and are dying,” said Linda Flammer, a senior research associate at Monell and the lead author on the new paper. “Simply giving them medication they can tolerate will save their lives.”

‘It’s actually really wonderful’

At first, Monell researchers hoped to develop a bitter blocker by targeting the taste receptors on the tongue that handle bitter sensations. But that’s more complicated than it seems.

Sweet tastes are easier to block, because they affect only two taste receptors on the tongue. But at least 25 taste receptors are devoted to detecting bitter tastes. And a person’s reaction to a bitter taste can vary depending on their genetics.

“Some may have a strong response to one bitter receptor. Some people may not have any response at all,” Flammer said.

So the researchers pivoted to target the nerve receptor that receives signals from the taste buds, Jiang said. In their search, they identified clinical trials for medications that targeted the same nerve receptor to treat various health conditions.

In trials for one of those medications, designed to treat chronic cough, the researchers noticed a curious side effect. “People were taking these medications for chronic cough, but they were saying, ‘It messed up my taste,’” Jiang said. They theorized they might be able to adapt a nerve inhibitor used in the medication to intentionally target a person’s sense of taste.

They discovered that the compound in liquid form, swished around the mouth for less than a minute, blocks all taste for about an hour and a half. Then, taste returns to normal, allowing a patient to go about their daily lives without a bitter taste lingering in their mouths.

The researchers tested it on adult humans and on mice, and found that the inhibitor only blocks taste — not any other sensations in the mouth, like temperature or even the tingling felt from a sip of a carbonated beverage.

“It’s actually really wonderful. We’ve never seen that before,” Jiang said.

Getting the treatment to patients

The bitter blocker is a long way from seeing practical applications in medicine, the researchers said. In general, between further research and safety testing, it can take years for a scientific discovery to roll out to the general public. But drug manufacturers could one day deliver the drug through lollipops, popsicles, or other kid-friendly forms to help young children feel more confident about taking their medications, Jiang said.

“We just hope now that we can take this very exciting finding and then find the right partners and the next funding to really make it happen,” said his colleague, Christensen.

Jiang is also hoping to continue studies on other bitter blockers, including ones that specifically target taste buds.

“We tried to provide a toolbox for blocking bitterness,” he said.

___

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.