by Kevin Loria

The decision to demonize fat for its caloric density and heart-clogging effects — a decision that drove people away from butter and cheese and toward low-fat foods that required plenty of sugar to have some flavor — wasn't just bad science, according to a report analyzing historical food industry documents that was published September 12 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

That national dietary shift from fat to sugar came about at least in part because of a major 1967 review of dietary science. Those historical documents reveal that a food industry group called the Sugar Research Foundation paid three Harvard researchers $6,500 (about $50,000 today) to discount research that increasingly showed links between sugar and heart disease and to point the blame at fat instead.

The industry group selected the data the Harvard scientists used for the review and suggested the research to include. Their final paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, set the US diet on a new course. "The documents leave little doubt that the intent of the industry-funded review was to reach a foregone conclusion," Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, wrote in a commentary published alongside the new analysis.

by AP

ISIS has claimed responsibility for a mass stabbing at a Minnesota mall.

A knife-wielding suspect who was dressed in a private security uniform and made references to Allah while attacking at least eight people at a Minnesota shopping mall was shot dead by an off-duty police officer, authorities said. St. Cloud Police Chief Blair Anderson said during a news conference that eight people were taken to St. Cloud Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries following the attack first reported about 8:15 p.m. Saturday at the Crossroads Center. One person was admitted. 

An ISIS statement claimed the man was responding to a call to attack citizens. Anderson said an off-duty police officer from another jurisdiction shot and killed the unidentified suspect, who was armed with a knife and wearing a private security firm uniform at the time of the attack. Anderson did not say where the off-duty officer serves.

Anderson also said the suspect made at least one reference to Allah during the attack and asked at least one person whether they were Muslim.

By Pamela Engel

Most people know the world's most barbaric terrorist group as ISIS or the Islamic State.

Some world leaders have taken to calling them "Daesh," knowing the terror group hates the name so much that its militant members have threatened to "cut the tongue" out of anyone who used it. But some experts say there's one moniker the terrorist group hates even more than Daesh — and enemies of ISIS have been using it to taunt the group.

Malcolm Nance, a terrorism expert and veteran military-intelligence officer, made note of the name "Khawarij" during a terrorism debate at the Comedy Cellar in New York City last month. "They are the 7th century Islamic cult," Nance explained in an email to Business Insider. "[T]he reason they don't like it is because they are considered apostates in the Quran. The Prophet Mohammed warned about them being false Muslims."

Some Muslims — and even ISIS' jihadi rivals — refer to ISIS members as "Khawarij" or "Kharijites." The leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently referred to the followers of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by the name, according to Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert on terrorist groups.

By Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: Lebanon is witnessing the return of fresh political protests as unresolved political issues resurface. The pro-Syrian Free Patriotic Movement Party has pledged fresh demonstrations in the coming weeks to voice their anger over perceived slights in the Cabinet and National Dialogue sessions.

FPM leader Jibran Bassil, who also serves as Lebanon’s foreign minister, says the National Charter, which guarantees equal power sharing between Muslims and Christians, is not being applied properly. In a recent speech, Bassil warned that “if they [meaning the Future Movement and most Sunni deputies] do not elect Michel Aoun as president during [the next scheduled parliamentary election session] on [September] 28, then we will commence a series of escalatory measures. We will go down to the streets and we will not leave until we achieve our objectives”, he affirmed.

According to spokesman Habib Younus, the FPM planned to demonstrate in front of “all the ministries and public institutions, not to cripple them and cause people discomfort, but to show our numbers and our strengths”.

On their part, the anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces (LF) staged a sit-in on Thursday demanding the formal extradition of two Syrian officers indicted in the deadly 2013 blasts on two mosques in the northern city of Tripoli.

A week after Judge Ala’a Al Khatib indicted two Syrian officers, Mohammad Ali Ali and Nasser Juban, no formal request was made to Damascus to extradite the two men. Students demanded that Prime Minister Tammam Salam and his Cabinet make such a request as a sign of respect for the law.