Doctors have hit back against a controversial study that linked diet soda to autism.

Research by the University of Texas (UT) found boys diagnosed with autism were three times as likely to have mothers who drank diet soda daily while pregnant or breastfeeding.

They theorized that aspartame, the popular sugar substitute found in Diet Coke, may release toxins that cause oxidative stress in cells and tissues — a process linked to autism. 

But Dr Deirdre Tobias, a nutritionist at Harvard University who was not involved in the research, told DailyMail.com it was ‘shocking that the authors would feel confident enough in this design to draw those conclusions.’

Dr Rachel Moseley, principal academic in psychology at Bournemouth University in the UK, told DailyMail.com: ‘It would be highly premature and irresponsible to suggest a relationship between aspartame and autism based on this study. As every scientist knows, correlation between two things does not mean that the one causes the other.’

Dr Tobias said the study was ‘extremely flawed’ because the data was collected retrospectively and based on the mother’s memory of how much aspartame they consumed.

Dr Moseley added that the sample size is small and was recruited from a panel of parents with an autistic child.

‘Since autism has a large genetic component, having one autistic child is already associated with a higher risk of having another autistic child,’ she said.

‘Moreover, the authors did not rigorously confirm whether either or both of the parents were themselves autistic.’

In the study, the diets of mothers of 235 children with autism spectrum disorder were compared to a control group of mothers of 121 children who didn’t have autism.

The mothers completed questionnaires that asked: ‘While you were pregnant or breastfeeding your child, how often did you drink diet drinks containing artificial sweeteners?’

Diet Coke, Diet Dr Pepper, Diet Sprite, Crystal Light, sugar-free Kool-Aid, and Slim-Fast were suggested as prompts.

Each mother was also asked: ‘While you were pregnant or breastfeeding your child, how many little packets of low-calorie sweeteners (such as Sweet ‘N Low, Equal or Splenda) did you use in your coffee, tea, or other foods and beverages?’

Intake of the three leading sweeteners — Equal/Nutrasweet (blue), Splenda (yellow), and Sweet’N Low (pink) — was recorded. 

The researchers found that males diagnosed with autism disorder were between 3.1 and 3.5 times more likely to have mothers who reported an aspartame intake equivalent to one or more diet sodas a day during pregnancy or breastfeeding, compared with male controls. 

The association was greatest among males with non-regressive autism — where the condition is apparent before 18 months, also known as early onset.

The study did not find a statistically significant trend in autistic girls.

Conditions such as obesity and diabetes in mothers are associated with an increased risk of autism in children and may also influence a decision to use diet products. 

The researchers did not collect data on these risk factors, nor smoking, drinking, birth weight, prematurity, or the age of the parents. They did have data for household income, educational attainment, and ethnicity, which they adjusted for in the results.

Dr Tobias added that the three artificial sweeteners they examined are ‘completely different compounds, metabolized very differently in humans, and have been extensively evaluated for their safety. 

‘Thus, the fact that the signal for aspartame was essentially the same as the other chemicals further points to the bias in this study, perhaps due to errors in the mothers’ recall or other factors related to women who chose diet sodas.

‘It is extremely unlikely that any association they are observing has anything to do with the chemical aspartame itself.’

The study was published in the journal Nutrients.

During pregnancy, aspartame can cross the placenta and accumulate in fetal tissue. 

The substance can also cross into breastmilk, but other studies have suggested the mother’s body rapidly breaks it down.

Autism affects one in 36 children, meaning that more than 90,000 children are born annually with the developmental disorder in the US.

It is characterized by problems with social communication and interaction, difficulty expressing oneself and repetitive behaviors and interests.

Autism is a lightning rod issue and often comes up in antivaxxer messaging. 

In a recent poll, one-quarter of American adults said they believed the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism – a widely studied and discredited claim that emerged in the 1990s.

Claims that shots can lead to autism have been peddled by anti-vaxxers for almost 25 years, but the link has been repeatedly disproven.

The disgraced British physician Andrew Wakefield made the claim in a now-retracted 1998 Lancet study.

Dr Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, publicly described the research as ‘fundamentally flawed’ in 2004 – nine years after it was published.

Dr Horton alleged that Andrew Wakefield, the gastroenterologist behind the paper, was paid by a group pursuing lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

The prestigious medical journal finally retracted the paper in 2010.

Just three months after his paper was pulled, Wakefield was banned from practicing medicine in Britain by the General Medical Council.

In 2011, the British Medical Journal conducted a damning probe into the findings of Wakefield’s original study.

Its investigation found only two of the 12 children included developed autistic symptoms after being vaccinated – as opposed to the eight Wakefield claimed.

Since then, studies involving millions of children have failed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and the neurodevelopmental disorder.  

Nikki Haley ramps up criticism of ‘thin-skinned’ and ‘easily distracted’ Trump: 2024 hopeful says he’s ‘weak in the knees’ on Ukraine in most direct attack on her rival – as she rises in the polls

• GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said Thursday that history will remember former President Donald Trump as ‘thin-skinned and easily distracted’ 
• She’s touring New Hampshire as she rises in the polls in the Granite State
• Haley, who served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador, was asked how the ex-president will be remembered 100 years from now 

By Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com In Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Published: 15:26 EDT, 21 September 2023 | Updated: 15:28 EDT, 21 September 2023

Read any interview with an Olympian, A-lister or high-flying entrepreneur and they’ll likely reference rising at the crack of dawn, whether to train, meditate or start firing off emails.

The idea that ‘the early bird catches the worm’ has such a grip on society that getting up as early as 5am has become semaphore for good health and great success – even those of us who’d rather have a lie-in are lucky to set an alarm for much past 7am, thanks to the timing of the typical working day.

But in fact experts say as few as 5 to 10 per cent of people are true ‘larks’ (early to bed and early to rise) with most (myself included) preferring to both go to bed, and get up, later.

The bad news is that we night owls (late to bed and late to wake) could be at a serious disadvantage when it comes to long-term health.

A study published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggested that late types could be 19 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than early birds.

The research, undertaken at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, looked at the health outcomes of almost 64,000 middle-aged female nurses over a period of eight years and also found that those who described themselves as night owls were 54 per cent more likely to have unhealthy lifestyle habits including smoking, inadequate sleep and low levels of physical activity.

The good news is that it could be possible to ‘retrain’ yourself to have a healthier sleep type.

Every one of us has a ‘chronotype’ – also known as a circadian preference – which refers to our preferred timing of sleep and waking.

This is mostly genetically determined, but can be dynamic as it’s also influenced by factors such as our hormones (more on that later). Our chronotype lies on a spectrum between being a lark and an owl. Inbetween types are known as doves.

As Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience and head of the Sleep & Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University, explains: ‘Our internal clocks – located within our suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), an area deep within the brain – are set to a cycle of around 24 hours.

‘However, it is only around 24 hours: they tick a little faster or a little slower depending on the individual. These differences are due to changes in one or more of our clock genes.’

This wide spread of sleep-wake times is specific to humans, he says, and is thought to be adaptive: ‘In early human societies, it would have probably been very useful for tribes to have a certain number of their population vigilant at different times of the day.’

Today, however, being a night owl can be a burden. But it is possible to change your chronotype to better fit with modern life – within reason.

Experts say that it could take only a few days if you keep to a strict regimen. Our sleep-wake times have roughly two hours of ‘flex’ built in – so if you’re a night owl, heading to bed at midnight and waking around 8am, you could realistically become a lark happily bedding down by 10pm and rising at 6am.

Professor Foster says: ‘With a good routine and commitment to early light exposure, this degree of shifting your chronotype is realistic.’

But he adds: ‘Sleep is as fundamental [to our existence] as being awake. I can see that for many people today, having larkish tendencies would be much more convenient – but it mustn’t come at the expense of sleep duration.’

I certainly think I would be better off as a lark. I was born a late type and have always had a fractious relationship with sleep, having spent years unable to balance my inability to fall asleep in good time with the need to get up early for school and, later, work.

Now, added to the mix, I have a six-month-old who likes to begin the day anywhere between 4am and 6am – and I’d love to greet the morning with as much enthusiasm as he does.

But before you set about trying to shift your chronotype, it’s important to understand the factors that shape it.

‘The first is your genes,’ says Professor Foster. ‘There are subtle changes in the clock genes, Per and Cry1, which can speed up or slow down our internal master clock, the SCN.’

‘Second, our chronotypes change over time, from childhood to old age,’ he adds.

‘From about the age of ten, there’s a tendency to want to go to bed later and later.

‘Then from your 20s onwards there’s a slow shift towards becoming more of a morning type again, and by the time you’re in your late 50s, early 60s, you’re getting up and going to bed at about the time you did as a pre-teen.’

This amounts to a difference in ideal sleep and wake times of on average two hours – meaning if you enjoyed a midnight bedtime in your 20s, by your 60s around 10pm will feel more natural.

This change is associated with the alteration in hormonal levels associated with puberty: ‘The sex steroids – oestrogen in women and testosterone in men – interact with the master clock within the brain,’ says Professor Foster.

As I am breastfeeding, my oestrogen levels are likely to be quite low – so perhaps that would help make mornings easier for me at the moment, I wonder. Professor Foster hypothesises that it could well do.

Excellent news – this should make my journey from owl to lark easier.

The third, and most important factor to consider in altering your chronotype is light exposure.

Light helps keep our 24-hour body clock running to time, entering through the eyes and signalling, via the retina, to the SCN.

‘The key thing to remember is that morning light advances the clock,’ says Professor Foster.

‘So if you want to train yourself to be a lark, get outdoors in the morning light as soon after dawn as you can for at least 30 minutes; you’ll find it easier to go to bed earlier and get up early the next day. Exposure to light at dusk has the opposite effect.’

And simply sitting by a window won’t do when it comes to becoming ‘more lark’ – nor will switching on the lights.

‘We have data to show that just 30 minutes of light at 10,000 lux can have an effect on our brains, but average domestic lighting conditions are about 100 lux, office lighting is maybe 400 lux, so we’re effectively living in dim, dark caves,’ says Professor Foster.

He suggests using a lux metre (around £15 online; free on an app on your phone) to assess the lighting conditions in your home. To really make you feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, add in some movement – ‘morning light exposure and exercise can act synergistically,’ says Professor Foster.

He adds: ‘There’s evidence that the timing of physical exercise will also shift the clock – as well as morning exercise being good for your metabolism.’

So would making these kinds of changes help me? I decided to try it out for a month. As it turns out, I had a secret weapon: my cocker spaniel Vincent.

‘There’s some data that suggests people who own dogs have better sleep-wake patterns,’ says Professor Foster.

One theory is that this is because you have to get up and get them out in the morning. ‘And that gives you a ‘photon shower’ [shower of light particles],’ he explains.

The first morning I took Professor Foster’s advice and threw open the curtains at daybreak: but the light on that cloudy day measured just 410 lux. Even outdoors on my patio it was just 3,426 lux.

This suggests that in the UK even a half-hour outdoor photon shower may not cut it – especially as we head into winter.

‘The answer may be to use a lightbox,’ says Professor Foster, ‘and have your breakfast in front of it.’ (Popular models will set you back around £60 to £90.)

As well as throwing open the curtains and hitting the patio first thing, I try to take an early dog walk – well before noon – and head to bed at a respectable 10pm (OK sometimes closer to 10.59, rather than my standard midnight-ish).

After a month, while my chronotype isn’t quite transformed – partly because a new baby makes my nights so unpredictable – on the days that I’m able to follow my ‘lark’ routine, I feel so much better, and find the following morning – and the next, and the next – considerably easier.

The key is consistency, says Professor Foster. But I know the darkening mornings will make it hard to keep up momentum. Time to look into that light box…

When Meghan Markle stepped out in a $1,600 wool coat, Hermes scarf and Chanel flats last month, it wasn’t her outfit that caught attention. 

Her most talked-about accessory was a small blue sticker on her left wrist – an anti-stress NuCalm patch that has become popular among wellness gurus and biohackers and promises to provide ‘resonance and frequencies’. 

As a person with a high baseline stress level, I was immediately intrigued – and was prepared to pay the $80 for a pack of 20 NuCalm stickers (plus the $30-a-month for the company’s companion app).

If it is good enough to keep the Duchess of Sussex calm,  I figured it would be an easy counter to my daily stressors.

When I went to NuCalm’s website to learn what I was in for, I was met with jargon that only a Ph.D. student could understand.

The site said the sticker works by ‘tapping into the body’s Pericardium Meridian with particular electromagnetic frequencies of inhibitory neurotransmitters to interrupt the HPA axis and downregulate sympathetic tone.’ 

Come again? 

I couldn’t help but feel the jargon was intentional to mask the fact the sticker is based on traditional Chinese medicine techniques rather than sound science.

For 10 days straight, I wore the sticker on the ‘pericardium-6 acupuncture point’, which is a fancy way of saying the inside of my left wrist.

In traditional Chinese medicine, that pressure point is said to be part of the ‘Pericardium meridian energy pathway’ which, when stimulated through acupressure, can influence the flow of vital energy or ‘qi’ and blood along that pathway. 

If you rolled your eyes while reading that description, you’re like me. But for the first two days of my trial, I was surprised by how much I felt the reduction in general stress.

Whether it was a placebo effect or sheer optimism about a possible anxiety treatment that’s not a pill made by big pharma, I’m still not quite sure.

When you wear the sticker, you get a mild sense of pressure on your wrist which took a bit of getting used to.

After around day three, and I started to forget the sticker was there, the stress and anxiety came back – which makes me confident there’s something psychosomatic going on when it comes to NuCalm’s anti-anxiety effects.

There were long periods throughout the test where I noticed that my breathing felt smooth and more consistent than usual – but again, was I just hypersensitive to my body? I’m still undecided.

As the week went on, I would feel bouts of uneasiness creep back in – waiting on the claustrophobic subway platform during rush hour or holding my breath on the phone as the dial tone buzzed hoping my source on the other end would pick up. 

But periodically, when I spotted the sticker on the inside of my wrist again, my breathing would ease up, my thoughts would slow to a normal pace, and my muscles would loosen.

It was as if the sticker were a reminder rather than an actual medical device. 

I attempted to dig up some scientific research that could offer an answer to my question – was it all in my head? 

But the answer eluded me, even after following up with the NuCalm website’s repeated claims to be ‘clinically proven’. 

I found no such clinical trial or research on any sort of wearable bio-signaling disc.

When it comes to sleep quality, I did feel  marginally more rested over the 10 days. 

The NuCalm Deep Sleep channel on the app features music that can run for hours, though it’s not the actual music that lulls you sleep.

The frequencies from the music are said to synchronize brain waves to other frequencies associated with different states of being – alpha and theta, which mimic the body’s natural communication processes to initiate sleep.

The difference after a night of wearing the disc and listening to hours of low frequencies was marginal, though I noticed myself hitting the snooze button fewer times, suggesting the quality of my sleep was improved. 

Given the spotty science and tepid reviews from neuroscientists, it’s worth dissecting the company’s claims. 

The company likens the small disc inside each sticker to a battery holding a charge. 

When the sticker is pressed against a pressure point, the body pulls frequencies of energy from it that activate the part of the nervous system that modulates our responses to stress. 

The question of what exactly is inside this disc to prompt the sort of communication between neurons the company is so proud of remains a bit murky. 

The company credits frequency tuning and sound resonance to make its discs work but elsewhere on the site it says that the discs include ‘a proprietary blend of inhibitory neurotransmitters, primarily GABA.’ 

But elsewhere, NuCalm’s CEO Jim Poole has said the discs each contain a tiny Tesla coil to emit frequencies. 

The technology was developed over a period of 20 years by the late neuroscientist Dr Blake Holloway.

But Mr Poole is not himself a scientist, rather he was a business major from Babson College in Massachusetts.

Sophie Summers, a blogger on the Fitness Junkie Blog, said of her experience with a 30-minute session of meditation through the app coupled with the sticker on her wrist: ‘As the beautiful sounds swirled around me I could feel my whole body relax.

‘It was as though I could feel my entire body as once but also parts of it individually. My whole body, but especially my arms and chest became very heavy.

‘The thought of moving my arms seemed like an impossible task. But the feeling was so wonderful that I wouldn’t dare even try for the fear of losing the deep relaxation.

‘I was calm, relaxed, grounded.’

The price tag likely will not deter people who pride themselves on being attuned to their personal health, nor will its lofty promises deter so-called wellness gurus who have successfully monetized the quest for self-improvement.

Hurricane Lee to hit US TODAY with 80mph winds and 20ft waves: Maine declares state of emergency as Long Island homeowners batten down the hatches

• Lee will trigger potentially life threatening storm surges on Friday and Saturday 
• Category 1 storm sparked first hurricane warning in Maine in 15 years 
• Nantucket, Cape Cod and coastal Long Island also bracing for storm’s impact  

By Jen Smith, Chief Reporter and Associated Press

Published: 08:22 EDT, 15 September 2023 | Updated: 10:51 EDT, 15 September 2023

Advertisement

Sandra Bullock‘s partner Bryan Randall’s death has sparked a 500 per cent increase in donations to the ALS (known as MND in the UK) Association.

The photographer died on Saturday aged 57 after a secret three-year ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) battle. 

After the family asked for people to donate to the ALS Association instead of sending or buying flowers. 

Sandra’s sister Gesine wrote in an Instagram post: ‘In lieu of flowers, please donate to ALS Association and Massachusetts General Hospital (links in bio).’

The ALS Association told TMZ that now donations were up 500 per cent over the same time last year in a funding spike. 

They told the publication: ‘We’re grateful for the amazing outpouring of support in honor of Bryan.’

‘The money pouring in will help our urgent work to make ALS a livable disease through local care, national advocacy, and global ALS research.’

Sandra called her partner Bryan ‘very patient,’ ‘a saint’ and ‘evolved on a level that is not human’ in a 2021 interview amid his secret ALS battle that led to his tragic passing on Saturday.

The 59-year-old actress spoke about Randall, a photographer, in a 2021 edition of Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris.

‘He’s the example that I would want my children to have,’ the Oscar-winning star said of Randall, who died after battling the disease for three years privately.

In the exchange, Bullock also said that she didn’t feel the need to exchange vows with Randall amid their committed relationship.

‘I am someone who went through the divorce process,’ Bullock said. ‘I found the love of my life. We share two beautiful children – three children, his older daughter. It’s the best thing ever.

‘So, I don’t want to say do it like I do it, but I don’t need a paper to be a devoted partner or a devoted mother.’

Bullock, who was previously wed to Jesse James from 2005-2010, said she didn’t ‘need to be told to be ever-present in the hardest of times’ or ‘to weather a storm with a good man.’.

The Speed actress spoke about the relationship dynamics she shared with Randall, a one-time model, and the example he set for her two children – son Louis, 13, and daughter Laila, 10. Randall was also father to daughter Skylar Staten, 29, from a past relationship.

‘There’s two very different ways of looking at things,’ Bullock said. ‘And I don’t always agree with him. He doesn’t always agree with me.

‘But he is an example even when I don’t agree with him that I go, “If they can take away from that, and if that is where they feel drawn to, then he’s the exact right parent.”‘

The Bird Box actress attested to Randall’s faith in the chat, saying, ‘I have a partner who’s very Christian.’

The Blind Side star and Bryan initially crossed paths in 2015 when he was on hand to take pictures for her son’s birthday celebration.

They were last seen publicly in July of 2020 in Studio City, California while out with her two kids.

In the Red Table Talk outing, she said that Randall was a positive presence for her as a parent, though he was not involved in the adoption process.

‘I had Louis first,’ she said. ‘And then when I met Randall, and I was like, and we hadn’t been together that long.’

She continued: ‘I go, “You remember that NDA you signed when you photographed my son?” He was like, “Yeah.” He’s still scared. His whole life had been unraveled because of me.

‘And I said, “You know, that still holds.” And he was like, “Yeah, OK, OK, OK, why?” And I was like, “Cause I’m bringing a child home when I come back from Toronto.” And he was like, “Sorry, what?”‘

Bullock said that her partner was simultaneously ‘so happy, but … scared’ at the development.

Randall’s family issued a statement to People confirming his death, saying, ‘It is with great sadness that we share that on Aug. 5, Bryan Randall passed away peacefully after a three-year battle with ALS.

‘Bryan chose early to keep his journey with ALS private and those of us who cared for him did our best to honor his request.’

The statement continued: ‘We are immensely grateful to the tireless doctors who navigated the landscape of this illness with us and to the astounding nurses who became our roommates, often sacrificing their own families to be with ours.

‘At this time we ask for privacy to grieve and to come to terms with the impossibility of saying goodbye to Bryan.’

Before her relationship with Randall, Bullock was in a high-profile romance with Monster Garage host Jesse James.

They met after she brought her motorcycle-obsessed godson on a trip to West Coast Choppers’s Long Beach headquarters in 2003. 

The pair ultimately wed in 2005, in front of 270 of their closest friends and family at a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley.

In March 2010, days after she took home an Academy Award for her performance in The Blind Side, several women came forward about their affairs with Jesse.

A month later, Jesse checked himself into a rehab facility in Arizona for sex addiction after apologizing profusely to Bullock, although that wasn’t enough to save the marriage – they divorced the following June.

In 2017, he told DailyMail.com: ‘Yeah, I did cheat on my wife, yeah… I stood up and took accountability for it and apologised. And that’s [the] end of story.’

Bullock other exes include Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling, Bob Schneider, Matthew McConaughey, Don Padilla, Troy Aikman and Tate Donovan.

Beyonce left out Lizzo‘s name from lyrics of her remixed version of Break My Soul amid claims the singer sexually harassed three dancers. 

The Crazy In Love singer, 41, has been performing Break My Soul (The Queens Remix) on her Renaissance tour, in which she ists off a number of boundary-breaking Black female artists.

Yet during her performing in Boston, Massachusetts on Tuesday night, Lizzo’s name was left out of her performance. 

The show came hours after news that Lizzo, 35, is being sued by three of her former dancers for alleged sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.

The lyric mentioning Lizzo goes: ‘Betty Davis, Solange Knowles / [Erykah Badu], Lizzo, Kelly Rowl’ (You know you can do it)’ 

But in concert footage shared to Twitter, Beyonce purposely replaces Lizzo’s name with four repetitions of ‘Badu.’

Lizzo — whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson — faces a legal battle after her ex backup dancers alleged she commented on their weight and pressured one to touch a nude performer in a strip club.

The plaintiffs — her former dancers — are named in the lawsuit as Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez. Williams and Davis both appeared on the recent Amazon Prime reality show ‘Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls’ – about the singer’s quest to find backup dancers. 

It accused the famous singer of ‘inviting cast members to take turns touching the nude performers,’ inside an Amsterdam strip club, the suit states.

She allegedly encouraged ‘catching dildos launched from the performers’ vaginas, and eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas.’

The About Damn Time singer is known for her gregarious body positivity, but the lawsuit paints her in a much different light. 

Ron Zambrano, the women’s lawyer, said in the suit, revealed first by NBC News: ‘The stunning nature of how Lizzo and her management team treated their performers seems to go against everything Lizzo stands for publicly.

‘While privately she weight-shames her dancers and demeans them in ways that are not only illegal but absolutely demoralizing.’ 

Lizzo is not the only named defendant in the case, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday.

Her dance captain, Shirlene Quigley, is also facing a slew of accusations.

Quigley, according to the lawsuit, shared ‘lewd sexual fantasies,’ and publicly discussed the virginity of one of the plaintiffs while berating those who had had pre-marital sex. 

The complaints for all damages include: Hostile work environment, sexual harassment, religious harassment, racial harassment, disability discrimination, and failure to prevent or remedy the harassment. 

Lizzo is specifically accused of disability discrimination, creating a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, and failing to stop said issues. 

Her touring company Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. is also named as a defendant. 

Inside the Amsterdam strip joint, Lizzo allegedly ‘turned her attention to Ms. Davis and began pressuring Ms. Davis to touch the breasts of one of the nude women.’

Davis refused multiple times, while the popstar allegedly chanted louder and louder to encourage her to do the act, the lawsuit claimed. Davis eventually did touch the performer. 

‘Plaintiffs were aghast with how little regard Lizzo showed for the bodily autonomy of her employees and those around her, especially in the presence of many people whom she employed,’ the filing read.

In another instance, the plaintiffs claim Lizzo invited the dancers to a club in Paris – but failed to mention that it was a nude cabaret bar. This ‘shocked’ the dancers, who said Lizzo ‘robbed them of the choice not to participate,’ the suit said. 

Lizzo also allegedly made a claim the dancers were drinking before performances, which Williams then spoke out about. The popstar allegedly made the group go through an ‘excruciating’ 12-hour rehearsal. 

Williams lost her job days after, the lawsuit claimed. 

Davis, meanwhile, soiled her pants during the intense rehearsal because she was so fearful she’d lose her job, the documents state. She was then handed a see-through outfit with no undergarments to finish the performance, the suit said. 

Rodriguez complained to a manager about the decision to publicly fire Williams, after Lizzo had told the group she had ‘eyes and ears everywhere.’

Davis recorded the meeting on April 27, because she claimed she suffers from an eye condition that leaves her disoriented.

But as a result, Lizzo held a meeting and had security confiscate dancers’ phones, the lawsuit claimed. 

‘Lizzo became furious, hurling expletives at the group and stated that she was going to go around the room, person-by-person until someone told Lizzo who made the recording,’ the filing contended. 

When Davis tried to tell Lizzo and Quigley she meant no harm recording the meeting, they berated her and Lizzo fired her on the spot, the suit read. 

Rodriguez then expressed how she felt disrespected and threatened to resign – to which Lizzo said she was ‘lucky.’ 

When Rodriguez did indeed quit, Lizzo showed her two middle fingers and yelled a slur at her, the lawsuit claimed. 

Lizzo has yet to respond to the lawsuit.  

Reserve Bank boss cops a subtle dig at his academic credentials – as his misleading advice that interest rates would not rise until 2024 is slammed

• Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe’s PhD credentials downplayed by MPs
• Hansard and parliamentary report refer to him as a ‘Mr’ even though he has PhD
• Labor MPs with doctorates Daniel Mulino, Andrew Charlton referred to as a ‘Dr’ 
• Parliamentary report slammed Lowe’s vow that rates would stay still until 2024  

By Stephen Johnson, Economics Reporter For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 22:07 EDT, 22 December 2022 | Updated: 22:42 EDT, 22 December 2022

Elon Musk is one of the most prominent names and faces in developing technologies. 

The billionaire entrepreneur heads up SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring company. 

But while he is on the forefront of creating AI technologies, he is also acutely aware of its dangers. 

Here is a comprehensive timeline of all Musk’s premonitions, thoughts and warnings about AI, so far.   

August 2014 – ‘We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.’ 

October 2014 – ‘I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence.’

October 2014 – ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.’ 

June 2016 – ‘The benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence we’d be like a pet, or a house cat.’

July 2017 – ‘I think AI is something that is risky at the civilisation level, not merely at the individual risk level, and that’s why it really demands a lot of safety research.’ 

July 2017 – ‘I have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.’

July 2017 – ‘I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.’

August 2017 –  ‘If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.’

November 2017 – ‘Maybe there’s a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe].’

March 2018 – ‘AI is much more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?’ 

April 2018 – ‘[AI is] a very important subject. It’s going to affect our lives in ways we can’t even imagine right now.’

April 2018 – ‘[We could create] an immortal dictator from which we would never escape.’ 

November 2018 – ‘Maybe AI will make me follow it, laugh like a demon & say who’s the pet now.’

September 2019 – ‘If advanced AI (beyond basic bots) hasn’t been applied to manipulate social media, it won’t be long before it is.’

February 2020 – ‘At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake.’

July 2020 – ‘We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.’ 

April 2021: ‘A major part of real-world AI has to be solved to make unsupervised, generalized full self-driving work.’

February 2022: ‘We have to solve a huge part of AI just to make cars drive themselves.’ 

December 2022: ‘The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly.’