Rio Tinto Shares Hit Record High After Ending Glencore Merger Talks 
AI is driving down the price of knowledge – universities have to rethink what they offer 
Gold and Silver Prices Climb in Asian Trade as Markets Eye Key U.S. Economic Data 
FDA Targets Hims & Hers Over $49 Weight-Loss Pill, Raising Legal and Safety Concerns 
Trump Lifts 25% Tariff on Indian Goods in Strategic U.S.–India Trade and Energy Deal 
Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly Cut Obesity Drug Prices in China, Boosting Access to Wegovy and Mounjaro 
CK Hutchison Launches Arbitration After Panama Court Revokes Canal Port Licences 
OpenAI Expands Enterprise AI Strategy With Major Hiring Push Ahead of New Business Offering 
California Jury Awards $40 Million in Johnson & Johnson Talc Cancer Lawsuit 
Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly Cut Obesity Drug Prices in China as Competition Intensifies 
Uber Ordered to Pay $8.5 Million in Bellwether Sexual Assault Lawsuit 
Weight-Loss Drug Ads Take Over the Super Bowl as Pharma Embraces Direct-to-Consumer Marketing 
Dollar Near Two-Week High as Stock Rout, AI Concerns and Global Events Drive Market Volatility 
Locked up then locked out: how NZ’s bank rules make life for ex-prisoners even harder 
Indian Refiners Scale Back Russian Oil Imports as U.S.-India Trade Deal Advances 
A sugar replacement called erythritol found in Splenda and Equal has been linked by a study to blood clotting, stroke, heart attack, and death.
Erythritolused is used to add bulk or sweeten stevia, monkfruit and keto reduced-sugar products.
Lead study author Dr. Stanley Hazen, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, warned that “the degree of risk was not modest.”
The study, released on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, found that people with pre-existing risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, were twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke if they had the highest amounts of erythritol in their blood.
According to Hazen, there was an approximately two-fold increased risk for heart attack and stroke for those whose blood level of erythritol was in the top 25 percent as opposed to the lowest 25 percent. It is comparable to the most serious cardiac risk factors, such as diabetes.
Additional lab and animal research presented in the paper revealed that erythritol appeared to be causing blood platelets to clot more readily. Clots can break off and travel to the heart, triggering a heart attack, or to the brain, triggering a stroke.
Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health, a hospital in Denver, said there appears to be a clotting risk from using erythritol, and that it might make sense to limit erythritol in your diet for now.”
Freeman was not involved in the research.
In response to the study, Robert Rankin, executive director of the Calorie Control Council, an industry association, said that “the results of this study are contrary to decades of scientific research showing reduced-calorie sweeteners like erythritol are safe, as evidenced by global regulatory permissions for their use in foods and beverages.”
Rankin added that the results “should not be extrapolated to the general population, as the participants in the intervention were already at increased risk for cardiovascular events.”
