CNN health | Drinking a little each week protects your heart if you have a cardiovascular condition, study finds

(CNN) – If you are living with heart disease, having a small amount of alcohol each day is linked to a lower risk of having another heart attack, stroke, angina (heart pain because of constricted arteries) or an early death, according to a new large study.

“This is not the general population — the study applies to people who have already had something happen that relates to cardiovascular health,” said alcohol researcher Emmanuela Gakidou, who is senior director of organizational development and training at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“And what they find is that if you continue to drink after you’ve had a cardiac event, it’s not that bad for you, as long as you keep consumption low,” said Gakidou, who was not involved with the study.  —read more— 

CNN BUSINESS | Apple, Google and Microsoft made $57 billion last quarter

London (CNN Business) – A rapid shift to digitization due to Covid-19 has handsomely benefited the world’s biggest tech companies. Yet even as the pandemic eased, they still minted record sums of money.

What’s happening: Yesterday’s “Before the Bell” focused on how Tesla (TSLA) celebrated earning more than $1 billion last quarter. Amazon (AMZN), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) just announced that they netted a combined $57 billion in profit during the same period.

“That level of profitability at the current scale is difficult to comprehend,” Bespoke Investment Group said of Apple’s $21.7 billion haul in a note to clients.

Google, which earned $18.5 billion, continued to be fueled by massive demand for online advertising as consumers spent more time shopping on their phones and laptops.  —read more— 

CNN BUSINESS | A surprising tech company could be next to join the Dow

New York (CNN Business) – Chip giant Nvidia is the ninth-most valuable company in the S&P 500. With a market capitalization of almost $500 billion, the company is now worth nearly as much as semiconductor rivals Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm — combined. Could Nvidia soon wind up listed on the venerable Dow, too?

There’s a strong case to be made for Nvidia (NVDA) joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the most famous of market barometers. In fact, one could argue that Nvidia might be a better fit than current chip king Intel (INTC) or stodgy tech giant IBM (IBM).

To be sure, the chip maker’s annual sales still pale in comparison to Intel or IBM, which are both expected to generate more than $70 billion in revenue this year. But Nvidia’s revenue forecast of about $25 billion for this fiscal year isn’t too shabby.  —read more— 

CNN BUSINESS | The FTC vows to ‘root out’ illegal repair restrictions on phones, fridges, tractors and more

(CNN) – US regulators are vowing to make it easier for consumers and independent service shops to repair commercial products like smartphones without having to rely on those products’ manufacturers, effectively backing a principle known as “right to repair.”

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission led by Chair Lina Khan voted unanimously to condemn restrictions imposed by manufacturers on products that make them more difficult to repair independently. The decision commits the FTC to investigating restrictions that may be illegal under both the nation’s antitrust laws as well as a key consumer protection law governing product warranties, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

In a statement, FTC Chair Lina Khan vowed to use the agency’s full range of tools to “root out” illegal repair restrictions.  —read more— 

CNN style Architecture | WAF Awards 2021: World’s best new architecture revealed

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has unveiled its prestigious shortlist of the best new buildings and landscape designs from around the globe.

The 200-strong list spans commercial, residential and cultural projects, including the sweeping open-air Chinese Culture Exhibition Center in Lanzhou and a plan to preserve Abu Dhabi’s oldest building, the Qasr Al Hosn Fort. In the Chinese seaside city of Sanya, meanwhile, a verdant mangrove park has been restored after three decades of pollution and development.

But smaller, farther-flung endeavors were also recognized. In the remote Swiss Jura Mountains, a whimsical green-topped spiral rises out of the landscape, housing a new museum by luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet. And off the coast of Iran, on Hormuz Island, a crop of colorful domed tourist residences aims to connect visitors to the local community.  –read more— 

CNN INVESTIGATES | ‘There’s no way I can pay for this:’ One of America’s largest hospital chains has been suing thousands of patients during the pandemic

(CNN) – As the coronavirus spiked in Missouri last fall, a wave of cases hit a nursing home in the state’s rural heartland. Robin Bull, a part-time nurse, remembered an ambulance “coming and going constantly” on one especially scary morning, rushing residents to Moberly Regional Medical Center, the local hospital.

But even as Bull was helping send patients to Moberly Regional, the hospital was in the process of suing her and at least one other former employee at the nursing home. They were two of more than 600 former patients that the hospital has sued over medical bills during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a CNN analysis of court records.

Moberly Regional sued Bull last May for $9,281, costs that Bull said came from an emergency room visit for food poisoning several years ago. After a judge ruled in the hospital’s favor late last year, the company filed a motion to start garnishing part of her roughly $850-per-month salary.  —read more— 

CNN style Arts | Rarely-seen photos tell the story of America’s Black Civil War soldiers

The emancipation of slaves is central to the story of the American Civil War. But as curator and photographic historian Deborah Willis discovered growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, the Black people who served in the conflict are often ignored by the history books.

As she would later learn, almost 180,000 Black soldiers fought for the North in the name of ending slavery. By the end of the war, a tenth of the Union Army was made up of free African American men.

“When Black soldiers were fighting for their emancipation, they were fighting for not only their own (freedom), but that of their families and other Black people,” Willis said in a video interview. “They felt the cause was necessary to fight.”  —read more— 

CNN HEROES | A team of high schoolers built a device that allows people in wheelchairs to walk their babies

(CNN) – For many parents, taking their babies on a walk or cradling them to sleep is a blessing that’s easy to take for granted. But for Jeremy King, it’s something he feared he would never be able to do.

That was until a group of high school students in Maryland designed and built a wheelchair stroller attachment so that people with disabilities could walk their babies.

The idea was born when students at Bullis School, a private K-12 school in Potomac, discovered that one of their teachers was expecting a baby, and her husband, who had impaired mobility, may never be able to walk his own child.

In 2017, Chelsie King, a 32-year-old middle-school theater teacher at Bullis, had been engaged to her now-husband Jeremy King, 37, for only three months before they discovered he had a brain tumor. That October, he underwent an eight-hour surgery to remove it, and was left with a number of challenges, including an inability to balance. He was a nurse anesthetist who had traveled to Africa for medical missions before the surgery.  —read more— 

CNN style Arts | ‘Donation of the century’: South Korea unveils late Samsung boss’ 23,000-strong art collection

Museum visitors have been given a first look at some of the 23,000 artworks donated to South Korea from the collection of Samsung’s late chairman, Lee Kun-hee.

Two exhibitions of the items opened in Seoul on Wednesday, just months after the businessman’s family announced the donation as it seeks to settle an inheritance tax bill of over 12 trillion won ($10.4 billion).

The works are showing at the National Museum of Korea and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), the recipients of Lee’s vast collection. Items on display include centuries-old antiques and contemporary Korean artworks, while paintings by Western names like Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet are set to be unveiled next year.  —read more—