Question: Hack Attacks: From Colin Powell to the DNC, cyberthieves are driving our election

It suddenly seems that hackers have seized control of the presidential election.

That’s disturbing enough. What’s worse is that Russian hackers appear to be in the driver’s seat.

It practically makes Watergate seem quaint. Burglars associated with the Nixon reelection committee actually had to break into the DNC headquarters to gather files from the opposition—and got caught thanks to a security guard. So 1972.

But is there any security guard that can stop the rampant cyberwarfare against political organizations, politicians and other public figures?

This is happening so frequently that there’s almost a ho-hum aspect to it: Oh look, another batch of hacked emails, let’s see what’s in them. Privacy seems an outdated concept.

The latest victims are Colin Powell and the DNC (again).

Powell’s emails are big news because he rips Donald Trump and takes swipes at Hillary Clinton as well. He’s been thrust into a campaign spotlight that he was doggedly trying to avoid.

In the leaked messages, reported by Buzzfeed and other media outlets, Powell wrote that he had repeatedly told Clinton’s “minions” that they are “making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try.” In another email, Powell said: “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.” Clinton had said that Powell told her it was all right to use a private email server, the details of which he disputed.

Powell said he respects Clinton but would rather not vote for “a 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational,” with a husband still having sex with “bimbos at home”—which he attributed to the New York Post.

The former secretary of State also went after Trump in the leaked emails, calling him a “national disgrace” and “international pariah” who “is in the process of destroying himself, no need for Dems to attack him.” Powell said “the whole birther movement was racist.”

And in another indication of his reluctance to be drawn onto the political battlefield, Powell told CNN host Fareed Zakaria, “You guys are playing his game, you are his oxygen.” Powell’s office confirmed the leaks but declined further comment.

So who did the hacking? Buzzfeed says the emails were posted to a site called DCLeaks.com, which according to some news reports is believed to have ties to Russian intelligence. The site describes itself as launched by “American hacktivists.”

Meanwhile, following the hacked DNC emails that cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as chairman, there was another batch leaked. This material includes information on party finances and personal information on Democratic donors, some of them seeking administration jobs.

This was described in news reports as apparently the work of Guccifer 2.0, who identifies himself as a Romanian hacker and who claimed responsibility for the haul that was released just before the Democratic convention. Guccifer is said to have ties to the Russian government.

Acting party chair Donna Brazile said the DNC “is the victim of a crime: an illegal cyberattack by Russian state-sponsored agents” designed to hurt the Democrats and boost Trump.

The latest DNC emails were made public through WikiLeaks. Founder Julian Assange had promised during a TV blitz to release more material that would damage the Clinton campaign.

So it’s come to this: the media and political agenda is being driven by outlaws with partisan agendas, some most likely Russian or with ties to Russia. It’s like one Watergate after another, with no fingerprints on the door.

Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Summary: It suddenly seems that hackers have seized control of the presidential election.


Study: Antidepressants May Relieve Hot Flashes

Menopausal or postmenopausal women may benefit from taking an antidepressant — not because they're depressed, but because the drug could help reduce the often insufferable hot flashes that characterize menopause, according to new research.

According to the study of 205 women who were just beginning menopause or were postmenopausal, those who took the antidepressant Lexapro (escitalopram), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), had significantly fewer and less severe hot flashes than women who got a placebo pill. (More on Time.com: Study: More Evidence for the Harms of Hormone Replacement Therapy)

Many women currently have no effective long-term treatment for hot flashes — the sudden feeling of intolerable heat that flares up without notice. Doctors had long prescribed hormone therapy as the go-to treatment for menopausal symptoms, but largely stopped doing so in 2002, when the results of the large, federally funded Women's Health Initiative showed that the risks of hormone treatment — including heart disease and breast cancer risk — outstripped its benefits.

Last year, further results from the same trial showed that women who took hormone therapy were not only more likely to develop breast cancer than women who didn't take hormones, but were also more likely to die from the disease.

For the new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers lead by Dr. Ellen W. Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine gave 10 to 20 mg/d doses of Lexapro or placebo to healthy women in an eight-week clinical trial. The women were asked to record the frequency and severity of their hot flashes in daily diaries, which researchers evaluated at weeks 4 and 8. (More on Time.com: Why Obesity May Not Raise Breast Cancer Risk in Mexican Americans)

On average, women reported suffering 9.8 hot flashes per day at the beginning of the study. By week 8, the group taking Lexapro reported having 5.26 hot flashes per day — a 47% reduction, compared with the start of the study. Women in the placebo group had reduced their hot flashes by 33%, to an average 6.43 per day. The Lexapro group also reported less severe hot flashes compared with the placebo group.

The difference in hot-flash frequency between the two groups was modest — and the overall benefit of Lexapro was small, when compared with the 80% or so reduction in hot flashes seen in trials of hormone therapy — but the study's authors say that it was still meaningful for study participants.

"Our findings suggest that among healthy women, 10 to 20 mg/d of escitalopram provides a nonhormonal, off-label option that is effective and well-tolerated in the management of menopausal hot flashes," wrote the authors. "Further studies are needed to directly compare the relative efficacy of SSRIs and SNRIs [serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors] with hormone therapy in the treatment of menopause-related hot flashes." (More on Time.com: Are You Fertile? Don't Rely on a Drug-Store Fertility Test to Tell You)

For more, check out the video, below, produced by JAMA on the study:

Summary:
Answer: Menopausal or postmenopausal women may benefit from taking an antidepressant — not because they're depressed, but because the drug could help reduce the often insufferable hot flashes that characterize menopause, according to new research.