Datasets:

meetrathi97

/

Dialog-Summarization-Dataset

like 0

Four people accused of kidnapping and torturing a mentally disabled man in a "racially motivated" attack streamed on Facebook have been denied bail.

Jordan Hill, Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, all 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, appeared in a Chicago court on Friday. The four have been charged with hate crimes and aggravated kidnapping and battery, among other things. An online fundraiser for their victim has collected $51,000 (£42,500) so far. Denying the four suspects bail, Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil asked: "Where was your sense of decency?" Prosecutors told the court the beating started in a van and continued at a house, where the suspects allegedly forced the 18-year-old white victim, who suffers from schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder, to drink toilet water and kiss the floor. Police allege the van was earlier stolen by Mr Hill, who is also accused of demanding $300 from the victim's mother while they held him captive, according to the Chicago Tribune. The court was also told the suspects stuffed a sock into his mouth, taped his mouth shut and bound his hands with a belt. In a video made for Facebook Live which was watched millions of times, the assailants can be heard making derogatory statements against white people and Donald Trump. The victim had been dropped off at a McDonalds to meet Mr Hill - who was one of his friends - on 31 December. He was found by a police officer on Tuesday, 3 January, a day after he was reported missing by his parents. Prosecutors say the suspects each face two hate crimes counts, one because of the victim's race and the other because of his disabilities.

The pancreas can be triggered to regenerate itself through a type of fasting diet, say US researchers.

Restoring the function of the organ - which helps control blood sugar levels - reversed symptoms of diabetes in animal experiments. The study, published in the journal Cell, says the diet reboots the body. Experts said the findings were "potentially very exciting" as they could become a new treatment for the disease. The experiments were on mice put on a modified form of the "fasting-mimicking diet". When people go on it they spend five days on a low calorie, low protein, low carbohydrate but high unsaturated-fat diet. It resembles a vegan diet with nuts and soups, but with around 800 to 1,100 calories a day. Then they have 25 days eating what they want - so overall it mimics periods of feast and famine. Previous research has suggested it can slow the pace of ageing. But animal experiments showed the diet regenerated a special type of cell in the pancreas called a beta cell. These are the cells that detect sugar in the blood and release the hormone insulin if it gets too high. Dr Valter Longo, from the University of Southern California, said: "Our conclusion is that by pushing the mice into an extreme state and then bringing them back - by starving them and then feeding them again - the cells in the pancreas are triggered to use some kind of developmental reprogramming that rebuilds the part of the organ that's no longer functioning." There were benefits in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in the mouse experiments. Type 1 is caused by the immune system destroying beta cells and type 2 is largely caused by lifestyle and the body no longer responding to insulin. Further tests on tissue samples from people with type 1 diabetes produced similar effects. Dr Longo said: "Medically, these findings have the potential to be very important because we've shown - at least in mouse models - that you can use diet to reverse the symptoms of diabetes. "Scientifically, the findings are perhaps even more important because we've shown that you can use diet to reprogram cells without having to make any genetic alterations." BBC reporter Peter Bowes took part in a separate trial with Dr Valter Longo. He said: "During each five-day fasting cycle, when I ate about a quarter of the average person's diet, I lost between 2kg and 4kg (4.4-8.8lbs). "But before the next cycle came round, 25 days of eating normally had returned me almost to my original weight. "But not all consequences of the diet faded so quickly." His blood pressure was lower as was a hormone called IGF-1, which is linked to some cancers. He said: "The very small meals I was given during the five-day fast were far from gourmet cooking, but I was glad to have something to eat" Peter Bowes: Fasting for science Peter Bowes: Intermittent fasting and the good things it did to my body Separate trials of the diet in people have been shown to improve blood sugar levels. The latest findings help to explain why. However, Dr Longo said people should not rush off and crash diet. He told the BBC: "It boils down to do not try this at home, this is so much more sophisticated than people realise." He said people could "get into trouble" with their health if it was done without medical guidance. Dr Emily Burns, research communications manager at Diabetes UK, said: "This is potentially very exciting news, but we need to see if the results hold true in humans before we'll know more about what it means for people with diabetes. "People with type-1 and type-2 diabetes would benefit immensely from treatments that can repair or regenerate insulin-producing cells in the pancreas." Follow James on Twitter.

West Brom have appointed Nicky Hammond as technical director, ending his 20-year association with Reading.

The 48-year-old former Arsenal goalkeeper played for the Royals for four years. He was appointed youth academy director in 2000 and has been director of football since 2003. A West Brom statement said: "He played a key role in the Championship club twice winning promotion to the Premier League in 2006 and 2012."

A "medal at any cost" approach created a "culture of fear" at British Cycling, says former rider Wendy Houvenaghel.

Media playback is not supported on this device The Olympic silver medallist accused the organisation of "ageism" and having "zero regard" for her welfare. She is the latest high-profile cyclist to come forward after Jess Varnish, Nicole Cooke and Emma Pooley criticised the World Class programme. Houvenaghel told the BBC she felt "vindicated" by a leaked draft report detailing British Cycling's failures. The report said British Cycling "sanitised" its own investigation into claims former technical director Shane Sutton used sexist language towards Varnish, who went public last April about her treatment. British Cycling subsequently admitted it did not pay "sufficient care and attention" to the wellbeing of staff and athletes at the expense of winning medals, an approach Houvenaghel attested to in her BBC interview. Both Sutton and predecessor Sir Dave Brailsford have now left British Cycling. Houvenaghel, 42, spoke to BBC Sport during its State of Sport week, which on Thursday examines the issue of athlete welfare versus a win-at-all-costs culture. A government-commissioned review, headed by 11-time Paralympic champion Baroness Grey-Thompson, into safety and wellbeing in British sport, is due to be published imminently. It is expected to recommend significant reforms designed to improve the way athletes are treated by governing bodies. Houvenaghel claimed: British Cycling said it "has acknowledged and takes very seriously previous cultural and governance failings in the World Class Programme". It said it has accepted the draft report's findings and already put into a place a 39-point action plan to "systematically address the cultural and behavioural shortcomings". The statement added: "Our new chair Jonathan Browning has apologised for instances where we have fallen short in our commitment to athlete welfare and has offered to meet with anyone who can help improve British Cycling." Who else has spoken out? Houvenaghel won silver in the individual pursuit at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and gold in the World Championship team pursuit in 2008, 2009 and 2011. She retired in 2014, aged 39, after withdrawing from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow with a back injury. Houvenaghel was critical of both Sutton and her team-mates in the aftermath of the London 2012 Olympics, where she was left out of all three team pursuit races as Dani King, Laura Trott and Joanna Rowsell-Shand won gold in a world record time. Speaking to BBC Sport this week, the Northern Irish rider said that experience was "very traumatic" and she felt "torment" at having "no explanation" for her last-minute omission. At the time, Brailsford, then performance director, defended the selection saying they had to "take the personal element out of it, and look at the data and be professional". He added: "I think when a team steps up and makes six world records on the trot and a gold medal, then I don't think you can argue with that." British Cycling reiterated that point on Thursday, adding it was "proud to support Wendy in what was a wonderfully successful cycling career" and she was "part of a pioneering generation of riders who set new standards of excellence", but was dropped in London 2012 "based on her performance". Other elite cyclists, including King and Roswell-Shand have praised the leadership at British Cycling. Asked whether she was simply not good enough for the 2012 team, Houvenaghel replied: "It was definitely not about performance. I don't think the fastest team on the day were permitted to race. "There are certain chosen riders on the team who will not have experienced the culture of fear and will not have been on the receiving end of that - the bullying, the harassment, being frozen out of opportunities. "It was horrid - it was not the training environment I expected. There was no choice. If you rocked the boat, you were out. There was no alternative. "Medals at any cost, that's how it was whenever I was there, certainly in 2012." Houvenaghel said she also witnessed the sexism that has been highlighted by other female riders, and also claims she was discriminated against because of her age. "I can certainly relate to the bullying," she said. "For me personally, I felt it was more ageism - being a little bit older than my team-mates, it didn't seem to be something that the staff necessarily wanted for our team in 2012. "They didn't care about what happened to me afterwards. I never heard another thing from them. "After six years of constantly medalling at World Cups, World Championships, nationals, both on the track and on the road, they discarded me in a very undignified way from the team, which I don't feel was right." Fourteen-time Paralympic gold medallist Dame Sarah Storey told BBC Sport that elite level sport in Britain is "cut-throat" but there are "no excuses for crossing that line" into bullying. Asked about the balance between winning and athlete welfare, the 39-year-old replied: "It's a really difficult question because you have to be a human being, you have to allow for people to make mistakes. But the currency is race wins, the currency is gold medals. "It's not an excuse but you have to have a thick skin in sport, you have to be able to take the rough with the smooth because of the racing that you go through. "But there are no excuses for crossing that line, and if those lines have been crossed they will be found out and they'll be dealt with."