The Army is thinking big — really big — in its quest to maintain military dominance over global adversaries.
Army officials say they are putting more emphasis on research into a “game changing” cannon with an unprecedented range, one that could prove crucial in a conflict with a potential adversary such as China. The Strategic Long-Range Cannon (SLRC), which could reach well over 1,000 miles, represents a key piece of the Pentagon’s push for more advanced artillery capable of targeting enemy positions from distances that were once unimaginable.

Seven months after clinical trials for a promising Alzheimer’s drug were halted and the treatment was declared a failure, a new analysis suggests it was actually effective, and the company that makes it plans to move forward in securing federal approval.
The astonishing reversal on aducanumab, an antibody therapy which targets a protein called amyloid beta that builds up in the brain, comes after new data from the discontinued studies showed that at high doses the drug reduced cognitive decline in patients with early Alzheimer’s.
“It could be a game-changer for the field,” said Rebecca Edelmayer, director of scientific engagement at the Alzheimer’s Association. “It could be one of the first disease-modifying therapies approved for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Former Clinton adviser Philippe Reines on Hillary Clinton considering a 2020 run.
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Iran executed seven child offenders last year and two so far this year even though human rights law prohibits the death penalty for anyone under age 18, a UN independent human rights expert said Wednesday.
Javaid Rehman also told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee that he has “credible information” there are at least 90 child offenders currently on death row in Iran.
Rehman, the UN special investigator on human rights in Iran, expressed deep concern at the overall use of the death penalty in the Islamic Republic, saying its execution rate “remains one of the highest in the world” even after a drop from 507 in 2017 to 253 in 2018. So far in 2019, he said, “conservative estimates indicate that at least 173 executions have been carried out.”

The House Ways and Means Committee approved a nicotine vaping tax measure Wednesday. It would be the first tax imposed on nicotine liquids.
Democrat Tom Suozzi, one of the bill’s authors, said the point of the legislation was to increase vaping product prices to the point at which teens could not afford them and rates of teen vaping would decrease.
The bill, which passed out of committee with a vote of 25 to 14 with a majority of Republicans voting “no,” would impose a tax on nicotine vaping liquids amounting to $50.33 per 1,810 mg. For reference, the average Juul pod, with 5% nicotine content and 0.7 mL of liquid, would be taxed at $1.15.

A painting seized by the Nazis from a Jewish family in 1933 has been recovered from a museum in upstate New York by the FBI.
The work, “Winter” by American artist Gari Melchers, was part of the collection at the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie until Sept. 10, according to federal court documents. The recovery is part of an international effort to find artwork that was stolen after the Nazis’ ascension to power.
German publisher and philanthropist Rudolf Mosse first acquired the painting from the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1900. The Nazi government seized control of the family’s art collection after Mosse’s family members fled Germany in 1933.
The painting will remain at the FBI’s Albany office until it is reunited with the Mosse family.

A federal judge said Wednesday that he will order the State Department to begin releasing Ukraine-related documents in 30 days, potentially making public sensitive records and communications at the heart of an ongoing House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
The decision, by U.S. District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper of Washington, D.C., came in a public records lawsuit filed Oct. 1 by a government watchdog group, American Oversight.
The group in May asked the State Department for records related to alleged efforts by Trump and his administration to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

GOP lawmakers interrupt closed-door impeachment deposition.
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Increasingly embattled and isolated, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis used a December disagreement with President Donald Trump over a military withdrawal from Syria as a “pretext to announce a decision that he had made months before to cut his losses and move on,” according to a new book by a retired military officer who worked on Mattis’s staff.

Former president Barack Obama will speak Friday at the funeral of his friend, Rep. Elijah Cummings, who died last week at 68.
The funeral will be held in New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore where the late congressman worshiped for decades.
“At the request of Mrs. (Maya) Rockeymoore-Cummings, he will deliver remarks about the remarkable life and legacy of one of this country’s finest public servants,” Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said in a statement late Wednesday.
Cummings was an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and the congressman had a photo of the pair hanging in his office on Capitol Hill.
“Before there was Barack Obama, there was Elijah Cummings,” Brandon Scott, president of the Baltimore city council, told the Baltimore Sun.