SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 17, 2023--

By Devayani Sathyan BENGALURU The Reserve Bank of Australia will keep its key interest rate unchanged at 4.35%

It's the type of duff you hope cameras aren't present for.

Coca-Cola Co. raised its full-year guidance after second-quarter results show continued momentum and consumer willingness to pay higher

Shrugging off higher interest rates, America’s consumers spent enough to help drive the economy to a brisk 5.2% annual pace from July through September, the government reported in an upgrade from its previous estimate

It is a chilling statement uttered with the most flattering of intentions: “We’re dealing with a freak.” Those are the words of boxing promoter Ben Shalom, speaking over Zoom, pacing back and forth in a room that appears to have just a few small windows – just below the ceiling, along the back wall. You’d think he was a military commander fruitlessly planning how to take down Godzilla, but the Boxxer chief is in fact on the side of the monster in question here. And that monster is Adam Azim. It might seem an odd way to describe the 5ft 11in, 20-year-old super-lightweight, but put a pair of boxing gloves on the Briton and the results really are terrifying. “I remember when I was four years old,” the monster tells The Independent while lurking in a hallway inside Shane McGuigan’s gym. “My dad made me learn the basics at the back of the garden in Slough, he got me a speed ball in the garage. He used to put weighted hand wraps on me and make me do shadow boxing for like 20 minutes straight. Even when I was punching the speed ball, he used to put ankle weights on my legs and hands. I was very fast when I was young.” He is even faster now, his speed perhaps his greatest asset at this point in a fledgling professional career that is expected to grow into a captivating one. “When we saw him for the first time, we knew he was special,” says Shalom. “Everyone in boxing was talking about Adam Azim for a long time. We knew that a lot of promoters were going to be looking at him, and that we needed to secure him for a long time, because we believe that he can be literally one of the biggest stars that the country has seen – a household name. “We want him on the screens all the time. He almost reminds me of Amir Khan in 2005. Those were some of my earliest memories of boxing, Amir was boxing every couple of months on ITV and drawing huge audiences. We want to emulate that and take that to a new level.” Azim is still just 8-0, but with six emphatic knockout wins. “He looks at a lot of the world champions and believes that he would beat them in his next fight,” Shalom says, unquestionably serious, his eyes shark-like. “And Shane believes that. This is not a joke. “It’s high-risk, low-reward [for opponents]. I cannot tell you how feared this guy is; there’s world champions right now who would no way take a fight with him, even on a full camp’s notice, and I know that for a fact. We’re dealing with a freak, we’re dealing with a talent that you don’t see very often.” There is almost something humorous about the contrast between Shalom’s – clearly credible – observations and the unassuming way in which Azim speaks. He is, after all, just 20. But his life is not that of the average 20-year-old. Azim, like his highly-touted, 22-year-old brother Hassan, has been reared to be a champion. We discuss his love of action films – “The Raid, The Raid 2, all the Mission: Impossible films, I’m into DC and Marvel” – but that is the only extracurricular pastime that Azim allows himself. And it has been that way since he was young. Well, even younger. “I didn’t go out much,” he says. “I was always dedicated to boxing. I’d go swimming, cinema, or just chill out at a mate’s house. I didn’t really get to go out and explore, which... You’ve got to make sacrifices in your life. “Even now, I could go out and do a lot of stuff, but I’m just dedicated to my craft, because you can’t switch off in boxing. Footballers can do that because they have a team. All I really do on a weekend off is go for a walk, go round my mates’, or go to the cinema. That’s the same routine I’d done when I was younger. I ain’t gonna change it now, because you don’t wanna go the wrong way. I’ve got a goal to achieve, that’s all I wanna do.” Was there ever a threat of Azim going the ‘wrong way’? “I only went to secondary school for three months, because I was messing about, and my dad actually took me out and made me do home schooling so I could focus on boxing,” Azim says. “I believe if I’d gone to that school... I don’t know what I’d be doing now. My dad did the right thing, I thank my dad a lot for that.” Azim does seem genuinely grateful to be on this path, and to his dad for setting him on it. “He got me where I am today. He noticed I had that fighting spirit. In my family, our cousins and uncles are all fighters. I was meant to be a fighter – I can just feel it, you know?” Shalom agrees. “All he wants to do is fight; he would do it for free, he absolutely loves it. I’ve never met someone as focused as he is. It’s sometimes hard for Shane to calm him down. “It does take a lot for someone to become a star in boxing, there are so many elements that you can get wrong, [but] he’s made some really good decisions early on. His dad knows the game inside-out, and they’ve been preparing for this moment since he was about six years old. It literally is something that they knew was gonna come; they planned meticulously for the last 15 years. “You see tennis stars who’ve been taken around the world since they were young, they were almost bred to be No 1 in their sport. I really believe that’s how Adam has grown up. “He’s also a person who wants to stand for the right things and be the face of British boxing. We think he’s gonna be the one who really becomes synonymous with British boxing over the next five to 10 years.” You’d be a brave man to bet against a monster like this. Read More Built to survive, Dillian Whyte is fighting back and still here Dillian Whyte: ‘I was disappointed to lose to Tyson Fury, but if I lost 10 quid I’d be disappointed’ The Independent’s pound-for-pound boxing rankings Boxxer’s Ben Shalom: ‘I sacrificed my twenties, I sacrificed absolutely everything’ Leigh Wood and Chris Billam-Smith win world titles with victories over familiar foes Leigh Wood given message by trainer Ben Davison after controversial stoppage

Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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By Humeyra Pamuk, David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Wednesday played down expectations of any