August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Starting a statin within a year of a diabetes diagnosis went with less dementia
Starting a statin within a year of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis went with a 15 per cent lower relative dementia risk than never starting, and starting between one and five years with a 10 per cent lower risk. The register analysis cannot prove statins prevent dementia. Under referral of prostate cancer patients to a heart doctor, statin use stood at 63 per cent against 40 per cent and cholesterol was lower; heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths did not differ.
Texas paused 1,800 data-centre projects over grid load, not a bot network
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said his moratorium on data-centre construction grew out of constituents' complaints rather than Chinese influence. He said power demand is running to 5 times what Texas can currently supply, and that his administration had halted some 1,800 AI data-centre projects in the state. X said it found a 200,000-account Chinese bot network, a few hundred of whose accounts posted against data centres. Abbott accepted that China is trying to shape sentiment and rested his pause on the grid, not that network.
TotalEnergies holds diesel at 2.25 euros while the war runs
TotalEnergies is keeping diesel capped at 2.25 euros and petrol at 1.99 euros at mainland France stations while the Middle East war runs. Researchers calculated that energy imports from March to August cost 330 billion dollars more than forecast. The fixed pump price and the swollen import bill show how war costs split between consumers and buyers.
Tricuspid repair more than doubled three-year survival without a heart failure admission
The TRIC-I-HF work presented in Munich compared catheter valve repair with drug treatment alone in 360 people with severe tricuspid regurgitation. Most enrolled carried advanced heart failure, and survival without a heart failure admission rose markedly over three years after repair. The finding adds a new option where evidence on death and admissions had long been missing in right-heart leakage.
UAE central bank opens a forensic review of Banque Misr's Emirates branches
The UAE central bank has ordered a special, urgent examination of Banque Misr's Emirates branches, including a forensic lookback over the period named by US authorities. It follows Washington's move against the branches over transactions it linked to Iranian shadow banking. Separately, Iranian state-linked reporting said oil revenue reached the central bank under the blockade, a claim that has not been independently verified.
Ukraine's Myla toll reaches 38 as Kirishi refinery and power grids come under fire
President Zelenskyy said 38 people were killed in Friday night's Russian strike on a warehouse west of Kyiv, with four still missing and 20 injured. The same day Moscow said it was preparing massive strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, while Ukrainian forces reported hitting Russia's second-largest oil refinery at Kirishi and an airbase at Yeysk.
US consumer confidence falls as business lending contracts
The University of Michigan's August survey put consumer sentiment at 51.7 and its expectations index at 51.5. Chicago's business barometer fell from 57.6 to 47.1, moving back into contraction. Federal Reserve data also showed commercial and industrial lending at US banks contracting at a 2.4 per cent annual rate in July while consumer lending accelerated to 6.9 per cent. Together, the same data-day readings show household expectations and business finance moving in different directions.
Village-led blood pressure control cut dementia over seven years in rural China
In rural China, community health workers ran a blood pressure program whose target sat below 130/80 mmHg. Over seven years dementia was recorded in 8.85 per cent of that arm and 10.55 per cent under usual care, and milder cognitive loss was 13 per cent lower. An Oxford analysis found every 5 mmHg systolic fall went with about 10 per cent fewer cardiovascular events at every risk level, while people treated to prevent one event ran from 38 to 255.
WikiSkill keeps what agents learn and lifts performance across five benchmarks
Google Research's WikiSkill framework keeps what agents learn in a persistent wiki-style knowledge base and reports double-digit gains across five benchmarks. Earlier methods discarded lessons at the end of each cycle; WikiSkill reuses traces of failures and successes on later attempts. Gemini-3.5-Flash moved from 49.5 per cent to 68.1 per cent and Qwen-3.6-27B from 39.4 per cent to 63.3 per cent in reported measurements, aiming to raise performance on repeated tasks without retraining the models.
With wartime conditions described at home, Pezeshkian heads to a summit to meet Putin
President Masoud Pezeshkian told state television that sanctions are hurting Iran's economy and that the country must accept wartime conditions, while Tehran's governor said the naval blockade had made governing exceptional and that more than 1,200 electricity sites in the province were hit. As those domestic strains were aired, Pezeshkian is due in Bishkek for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit where he is set to meet Vladimir Putin days after a rare CIA director visit to Moscow.