---

For all its struggles in the last few years, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass represents a pretty phenomenal value as a subscription service. And you can take advantage of it even if you don’t have an Xbox or a gaming PC, giving it great accessibility. Well, Microsoft already undercut the value of the subscription. Now it’s delivering a crippling blow to the value of streaming.

According to a short and sweet update preceding the reveal of its new disc to digital service, Xbox has announced that Game Pass subscribers will no longer have access to unlimited streaming games. Starting in November, the Ultimate tier ($23 a month USD) will get 15 hours a month, Premium ($15) will get 10 hours, and Essential ($10) will get just five hours a month. With a new game or a dedicated player, you could blast through that Essential streaming pool in a single evening.

Oh, but don’t worry. If you use up your streaming minutes like you’re talking on a flip phone in 2003, you’ll be able to pay for more, on an hourly basis. Prices for this haven’t been announced yet.

And Microsoft has helpfully extended this offer to those who don’t subscribe to Game Pass. So I guess that would only make sense if you’ve purchased an Xbox game, that’s available on Game Pass, without subscribing to Game Pass….but you don’t have anything to play it on. Wow, that is a very small target to hit.

Microsoft says that this change comes because the service is getting more expensive to run as more people are streaming longer game sessions. (At current levels it says that the limits will impact just 4 percent of users.) But that seems like a pretty hard left turn from the goals of Game Pass streaming for years now. Isn’t all-streaming, all the time pretty much the goal of being able to access your Game Pass subscription everywhere?

If everything is an Xbox, is it only an Xbox for 15 hours a month? Unless you pay more, of course. At that point, it looks a lot like an old arcade machine, where you just keep putting in money if you want to keep playing. Suddenly the best value in gaming is looking like much less bang for the buck.

Microsoft may not have a choice in this action. It’s laid off thousands of employees, it’s sold or cut off many of the development studios it spent the better part of a decade acquiring. It seems like it’s time to pay the piper, and the costs are being passed along to Xbox players.

---

---

There are many theories as to how the diabetes drug metformin lowers blood sugar levels, but now, scientists think they've discovered the main route.

It turns out that the drug, primarily used in type 2 diabetes, forces gut cells to absorb and burn extra glucose. It achieves this by messing with gut cells' mitochondria — their internal power generators.

Although metformin was first used in patients in the 1990s, scientists have been unsure of how it works.

"Every year there's a new mechanism for metformin that says last year's mechanism was wrong," said study co-author Navdeep Chandel, a biochemist at Northwestern University.

Part of the problem is that metformin affects several organs. "Metformin has a complex mechanism of action, with effects in several organs and on different aspects of metabolism, making it difficult to identify a single mechanism that explains all of its effects," Manuel Vázquez Carrera, a pharmacology researcher at the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute who was not involved with the study, told Live Science in an email.

Some studies suggested that metformin causes intestinal cells to use up glucose, and an animal study released last year proposed that the drug causes glucose to move from the bloodstream into the intestines, where gut bacteria can then break it down. Other research pointed to the liver, proposing that the drug lowers blood glucose levels by inhibiting gluconeogenesis, a process in which the liver makes glucose from other molecules, usually to regulate sugar levels during fasting or exercise.

The scientists exploring the drug's action in the liver found that metformin interacts with a large complex of proteins inside mitochondria. Called mitochondrial complex I, it's a key player in generating cells' primary energy currency: the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP).

However, the theory that metformin mainly works by targeting this complex was quickly dismissed. That's because the drug's concentration in the liver is too low to exert an effect, Vázquez Carrera said.

But elsewhere in the body, it's a different story. In the recent study, published in May in the journal Nature Metabolism, Chandel and his colleagues found that metformin does work by targeting mitochondrial complex I — but it does so not in the liver but in the intestines, where the drug builds up to higher concentrations.

Their first clue came when they compared metabolites in the bloodstreams of people taking metformin and those unexposed to the drug. For one metabolite, called citrulline, they saw the biggest drop in concentration following a dose of metformin. This blood metabolite is produced almost exclusively by mitochondria in intestinal cells, revealing that the drug affects gut mitochondria.

In further experiments, the team genetically modified mice so they had a backup for complex I in the intestines. The backup was a different enzyme that performs a similar function but is not affected by metformin. That meant that if the drug works by inhibiting complex I, mice equipped with backups could bypass the drug's effects. When the researchers administered metformin to these mice, they found that the drug was much less effective at lowering citrulline levels in the blood, suggesting that metformin acts on complex I in intestinal cells.

Besides affecting citrulline, the genetic tweak also reduced metformin's effects on blood sugar by 80%, Chandel said. This means inhibition of complex I is probably the main mechanism behind the acute effects of the drug, he added.

Mitochondria can generate roughly 30 ATP molecules from one glucose molecule, but when these powerhouses are blocked, the cell tries to compensate by running a less-efficient ATP production line. This alternate pathway, called glycolysis, generates only two ATP molecules per glucose molecule. The researchers argued that by inhibiting intestinal mitochondria, metformin might force the cells to sequester and burn through as much glucose as possible with this less-efficient strategy. In turn, that lowers blood sugar levels.

They were able to show this in lab mice. Metformin caused glucose to accumulate in intestinal cells of normal mice, not the mice carrying backup enzymes, suggesting that the cells with blocked-up mitochondria usurp hoards of glucose to run glycolysis instead.

"Much of the mechanistic evidence comes from male mice, so it remains unclear how well the findings translate to humans and whether there are sex-specific effects," Vázquez Carrera noted.

Most of metformin's sugar-lowering activity — about 80% — involved complex I, but it's likely that the drug has additional targets. In future work, Chandel and his colleagues aim to explore how the drug affects other aspects of the body's biology, such as the liver or the gut microbiome.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

---

---

The company that supplied fuel to the discount gas stations praised by Donald Trump is being sued for allegedly stealing nearly $4m worth of gas.

Mansfield Oil Company of Gainesville sued KRSM and its president, Syed Kazmi, for allegedly picking up about 1.1m gallons of fuel from 21 May to 7 July, worth more than $3,998,000, and not paying for it.

KRSM sold some of the fuel to stations that are part of the Freedom Fuel Network, according to the suit.

The dispute comes after the Trump administration promoted the Freedom Fuel Network, which offered gas for the low price of $3.47 per gallon in July, when drivers were facing higher oil prices amid the war with Iran and the busy summer travel season was driving up demand.

“I am pleased to announce that a VERY smart Retailer, located throughout the Northeast, is stepping up,” the US president said in a Truth Social post just a few days before the Fourth of July weekend, pointing to the Freedom Fuel Network. “America has never been stronger than it is now, and Gas Prices will soon be back to the Record Low Prices Americans enjoyed at the pump before our very successful ‘excursion’ in Iran.”

The lawsuit, filed on 19 August, alleges: “KRSM was able to sell such fuel for such low prices and garner such publicity because it never paid Plaintiff for such fuel.”

Freedom Fuel Network is a private gas chain with 29 locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

A White House official said: “The Administration has had zero contact or dealings with the defendant: KRSM Inc or Sayed Kazmi.” A source familiar with the Freedom Fuel business said: “KRSM Inc and Sayed Kazmi are not associated with the Freedom Fuel Network in any capacity.”

“KRSM disputes the allegations in this case, which is an accounting dispute over fuel invoices mis-priced by Mansfield Oil,” said Mauro Tucci, a lawyer representing Kazmi.

Mansfield said in the lawsuit that a data error prevented it from receiving the information needed to invoice KRSM until early July. Mansfield later sent KRSM revised invoices and told the company it would begin withdrawing payment from its bank account on 27 July.

Under their agreement, KRSM was required to pay within 10 days of receiving an invoice. Mansfield attempted to collect the payment on 27 and 28 July, but KRSM’s bank refused the drafts, according to the lawsuit.

During phone calls between late July and early August, Kazmi told Mansfield that he would pay for the fuel.

“As of August 17, 2026, Mansfield has not received any payment for the referenced 150 loads of fuel that KRSM purchased from Mansfield at the Twin Oaks Terminal,” reads the suit.

Gas prices in August have continued to climb as peace talks between the US and Iran have stalled.

“For the first time ever, the national average in August has been above $4 per gallon every day,” said the AAA on Thursday. The national average for a gallon of gas stood at $4.08 on Sunday.

---