Oregon has recently become the first state in the US to offer free nurse visits to new mothers and fathers statewide. No one can deny that the United States and its citizens have an array of problems and are facing major challenges, but one which isn’t well reported on is the high rates of death […] The post Babies Don’t Come with Instructions. But in Oregon, They Now Come with a Nurse appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV Superhero Movie Rewatch “Now you’re really showing off” — Madame Web The Venom movies are delightfully bonkers, and “Morbius” was incredibly dumb, but this latest addition to Marvel’s Spidey-adjacent universe is just kinda… there. By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on August 15, 2024 Credit: Sony Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Sony Pictures From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through. Cassandra Webb, a.k.a. “Madame Web,” was created by Denny O’Neil & John Romita Jr. in Amazing Spider-Man #210 in 1980. An elderly precognitive who suffers from both blindness and myasthenia gravis, leaving her both sightless and immobile, she has assisted Spider-Man on any number of occasions, starting with her first appearance where she aided Spidey in rescuing the publisher of the Daily Globe from a murderous underling. She continued to appear periodically in Spidey’s titles, during which she was temporarily de-aged and also had her ability to see and walk restored. She was later re-aged and then killed at the conclusion of the “Grim Hunt” storyline in 2010’s Amazing Spider-Man #637 by Joe Kelly, Michael Lark, Marco Checchetto, Stefano Gaudiano, & Matt Southworth. She transferred her powers to Julia Carpenter, the second Spider-Woman, later Arachne, and who is now the current Madame Web. Carpenter first appeared as Spider-Woman in 1984’s Secret Wars maxiseries by Jim Shooter & Mike Zeck. Based out of Denver, Carpenter was the victim of a government experiment that gave her powers. She later joined the government agency Freedom Force—the only hero in the group, which was otherwise made up of members of Mystique’s iteration of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She later joined the West Coast version of the Avengers, and was also part of the Secret Defenders, Force Works, and Omega Flight, at one point losing her powers. When they were restored, she went by the name Arachne. That’s because someone else had the Spider-Woman name at that point: Mattie Franklin. First appearing in 1998’s Amazing Spider-Man #441 by John Byrne & Rafael Kayanan, she was part of a ritual called the Gathering of Five, conducted by Norman Osborn, and which resulted in her getting powers. Franklin had her own series for a while, during which she changed her costume on a regular basis, but it only lasted eighteen issues. Since then, she has appeared in various titles, among them Alias, Loners, Silk, and Contest of Champions II. Then there’s Anya Corazon, a.k.a. Araña and Spider-Girl. Created by Joe Quesada, Fiona Avery, & Mark Brooks for the 2004 revival of Amazing Fantasy, Corazon had her own Spider-Girl title for a time, the second such (the first was an alternate future starring the daughter of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson). She, too, has continued to be a regular presence in the Marvel Universe. Then there’s Ezekiel Sims, a businessman who undergoes a ritual to give himself spider-powers similar to that of Spider-Man. He first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #30 in 2001 by J. Michael Straczynski & John Romita Jr. All of the above were adapted for the screen in Madame Web. This is the latest part of Sony’s attempt to build a Spider-Man-adjacent cinematic universe despite not really being able to feature Spider-Man, following two Venom movies and Morbius (and continuing later this year with Kraven the Hunter and a third Venom film). The film primarily takes place in 2003, with Cassandra Webb first getting her precognitive powers and figuring out how to use them properly. One of her visions shows Ezekiel Sims killing Mattie Franklin, Anya Corazon, and Julia Cornwall (Carpenter’s maiden name in the comics). None of the three girls have powers yet, though they will in the future. However, the movie sets up a present-day status quo with Madame Web as an older blind paraplegic like she is in the comics. The film features Dakota Johnson as Webb, Sydney Sweeney as Cornwall, Isabela Merced as Corazon, Celeste O’Connor as Franklin, Tahar Rahim as Sims, Adam Scott as Ben Parker (yes, that Ben Parker, previously played by Cliff Robertson in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3, and by Martin Sheen in The Amazing Spider-Man), Emma Roberts as the very pregnant Mary Parker (played by Embeth Davidtz in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and yes she gives birth to her son Peter in the film), Mike Epps as O’Neil, Kerry Bishé as Webb’s mother, Zosia Mamet as Sims’ pet hacker Amaria, José María Yazpik as Santiago, and Jill Hennessey as an NSA agent. The film did poorly both in terms of reviews and box office, and a sequel seems unlikely. Johnson has reportedly said she’s not interested in doing another superhero film of any kind… Credit: Sony Pictures “Seriously, don’t do dumb things.” Madame WebWritten by Kerem Sanga and Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker & S.J. ClarksonDirected by S.J. ClarksonProduced by Lorenzo di BonaventuraOriginal release date: February 14, 2024 In 1973, a pregnant woman, Dr. Constance Webb, is in the depths of the Amazon jungle in Peru trying to find a particular spider that allegedly has healing properties. Handling her security is Ezekiel Sims, who is very eager for her to find the damn spider. Rumor has it that locals use the spider’s venom to give themselves paranormal abilities. When she finally finds it, Sims shoots Webb’s assistants and stabs Constance, leaving her to die. After Sims buggers off with the spider, the aforementioned locals, Las Arañas, find Constance and have one of the spiders bite her. However, she only survives long enough to give birth to a daughter, Cassandra. In 2003, Cassie Webb is a paramedic, working alongside Ben Parker. As they’re driving their ambulance to the hospital, a kid crosses in front of them and gives them the finger. They get their patient to the hospital, where the patient’s daughter gives them a drawing by way of thanks, and they witness an awkward moment involving the patient’s stepdaughter. A barbecue at their boss O’Neil’s place is interrupted by a call at a warehouse on the pier that is a deathtrap, and currently on fire. Webb falls into the water, and seems to be surrounded by a web-like thing, which is probably important given the title of the film. Parker revives her. She then has a premonition of O’Neil’s death and tries to convince him to let her drive, but he dismisses her concerns as ridiculous, especially given what she’s been through. A few minutes later, he dies just the way she saw in her vision. We see Sims, now much older, who has precognitive abilities of his own. He’s seduced and killed an NSA agent and gotten his hands on her password, enabling him to use the agency’s brand-new technology that enables them to listen in on phone calls and see traffic cams and such. (How the password continues to work after the agent’s death, when it would be discontinued, is left as an exercise for the viewer.) He explains to the hacker he’s hired, Amaria, that he’s had a premonition of being killed by three spider-powered women in the future. He wants to kill them now before their powers are activated, and has provided descriptions of all three to Amaria. Webb goes to the baby shower for Parker’s sister-in-law Mary. Mary’s husband Richard is away for work (apparently something in intelligence). Webb once again gets flashes of what will happen before it happens. She’s given some time off to recover from her trauma as well as the trauma of O’Neil’s death. She arrives at Grand Central Terminal to head out of town, but then sees three teenagers on the train being assaulted. She manages to get them to safety, though the person attacking them—Sims, wearing a very Spider-Man-like outfit—does attack several cops. Webb steals a taxi and drives out of town, leaving the girls in a forest and telling them to stay put, promising to return. The girls—Mattie Franklin (the one who gave Webb the finger earlier), Julia Cornwall (the stepdaughter from earlier), and Anya Corazon—are not sure they can trust this woman, though she did save their lives. They wind up going to a local diner so they can at least get something to eat. Webb finds her mother’s old notes and sees a picture of Sims, whom she recognizes from her visions. She returns to the forest, and doesn’t see the girls, but does have a vision of them being killed in a diner by Sims. A diner patron recognizes the girls from the news and calls 911. Sims has Amaria intercept the police frequency and he fakes a responding officer who says the girls aren’t at the diner. Then he heads there to kill them, but Webb drives the cab through the diner wall to stop him. Leaving the girls with Parker, she travels to Peru to track down Las Arañas. Their leader, Santiago, provides her with a vision of her mother visiting her OB/GYN. To Webb’s shock, Constance wasn’t seeking out the spider for fame and money. Genetic testing had revealed that Webb would be born with myasthenia gravis. (How genetic testing revealed an auto-immune disorder is also left as an exercise for the viewer.) While the spider-bite applied to Constance didn’t save her, it did cure her daughter of that disease, at least. Santiago also tells her that if you accept responsibility, the power will come. Which sounds vaguely familiar… She returns to New York. Mary goes into labor, and so they all drive to the hospital, where they’re caught on a camera, revealing their location to Amaria. Sims ambushes them. Webb, who now has a better handle on her precognition, is able to get the Parkers to safety and keep the three girls safe. They lead Sims to the warehouse by the pier where O’Neil was killed, setting traps for Sims along the way. Eventually, they are able to kill Sims, though not before Webb is hit with a dose of Sims’ neurotoxin (which he also used to kill the NSA agent) and she is blinded by burning debris. Though she is now blind and wheelchair-bound, Webb promises to mentor the three girls. And they all live happily ever after. Or something. Credit: Sony Pictures “Hope the spiders were worth it, mom.” Where the two Venom movies were cheesily and entertainingly ridiculous, and Morbius was incredibly dumb, Madame Web is just kind of—well, there. It’s got a pedestrian plot, a fairly standard script with dialogue that neither crackles nor is actively bad, acting that’s completely serviceable, special effects that are fine… It’s the damning-with-faint-praise movie. It doesn’t have the atrocious performances and awful script of, say, Captain Battle: Legacy War, but that’s pretty much it as far as redeeming features go. Dakota Johnson plays a pretty standard plucky hero type, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor play your ordinary slightly snarky twenty-first-century teens, Adam Scott nicely inhabits the best friend role, and it’s all very, well, perfunctory. The only truly bad (as opposed to boring) performance is by Tahar Rahim, who creates no impression whatsoever as the bad guy… Where the movie actually suffers, as opposed to just coasting along, is that it’s going out of its way to avoid having old-person cooties in it—which is hilarious in a movie about a character who is mostly known as an elderly blind paraplegic woman. The timeline is bounced back to 2003 so everyone can be nice and young. Except that by giving us Cornwall, Franklin, and Corazon before they’re super-powered, it takes the fun out of seeing them in action (aside from the occasional precognitive vision, anyhow, where they look like Arachne, Araña, and Spider-Woman). Ultimately, it feels like an unnecessary prelude. The notion of Madame Web guiding a team of young spider-powered women in their lives as superheroes sounds a lot more compelling than this rote action movie is. It’s the same oversight made by My Name is Modesty, mistaking moderately interesting backstory for compelling frontstory. Next week, we get another blast from the past, as we look at the pilot movie for the TV series Night Man from 1997, based on the Malibu Comic.[end-mark] The post “Now you’re really showing off” — <i>Madame Web</i> appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. In the past, UK’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer was among those expressing concern for free speech on the internet and how a law that results in fines and arrests because of social media posts could have “a chilling effect on free speech.” Right now, his government is carrying out mass arrests of people who get convicted for precisely that reason: the things they’ve said on the internet. But back in 2012, speaking about the Communications Act 2003 and its section 127, Starmer was worried about the law resulting in “a lot of prosecutions” – even though his comments overall can hardly be interpreted as coming from a strong advocate for freedom of expression. Referring to what is considered “grossly offensive messages” and criminalization of communications of that nature, Starmer wanted to see what he called a high threshold for people’s right to be offensive and insulting. That, he said, needed to be protected. Otherwise, a large number of prosecutions would have “a chilling effect on free speech, and I think that’s a very important consideration,” Starmer told the BBC. According to him, the criminal offense here was “overarching,” hence the fear that it would apply to the type of communications he mentioned, and if the only response was a criminal one, he warned, “there might be the temptation to resort too quickly to that response.” In 2012, Starmer would have preferred to have the option of using different kinds of remedies, such as lodging a complaint. The “high threshold,” as he advocated for it, was to prosecute what would be considered online harassment campaigns that presented “a credible and genuine threat” and differentiate that from speech that is simply grossly offensive. But Starmer wasn’t above prosecuting those expressing themselves in that way, either – he wanted “a slightly different” approach and a set of guidelines that would be used to determine when grossly offensive speech was enough to prosecute people over. When pressed about specific scenarios where people were making “unpleasant” comments about British soldiers who were killed or missing children – and were at the time prosecuted for that, having to pay fines or were ordered community service, Starmer said: “Well we live in a democracy and if free speech is to be protected there has to be a high threshold people have the right to be offensive, they have the right to be insulting and that has to be protected.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/starmer-2012.mp4 Effectively, Starmer wasn’t challenging the law as such but was in favor of avoiding a large number of prosecutions. And he supported to all intents and purposes pressuring social media companies into removing content, citing their “responsibility.” “In many of these cases the appropriate response may be for you (social media companies) to take this material down swiftly and that may reduce the requirements for a criminal prosecution,” he said. The debate is not abating over the way protests and riots in the UK have been handled from the viewpoint of the crackdown on free speech online, an approach to the crisis chosen by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. Among his critics is Baroness Claire Fox, who is worried that the government is essentially intimidating people when it warns them to “think before they post,” and that this produces an atmosphere in society akin to that once present in old-style communist regimes. “A Stasi-like (former East Germany secret police) atmosphere of looking over your shoulder in case somebody’s listening,” as Fox put it. She is concerned that things won’t be looking up going forward, either, and believes Starmer’s government will be responsible for introducing even more “explicit censorship” by way of expanding the Online Safety Act – an already controversial, sweeping censorship law – to cover “legal but harmful content.” The baroness also noted that currently, the authorities are moving in the direction of using legal means to go after people not only for speech that is found to have incited violence or rioting – but also for speech that they decide could have had that effect. Fox spoke about the lack of clarity over what hate speech, misinformation or disinformation are, noting that these are “very often subjectively interpreted.” As for “two-tier policing” – that is, people receiving different treatment that is believed to be the result of a politicization of law enforcement – Fox doesn’t think some people perceive that to be true “because somebody saw a meme on X.” “It’s because that idea of two-tier policing spoke very deeply to the fact that people do not feel they get fairly treated by the police,” she said. And while all this is happening in the UK, some politicians there, like Lord David Frost, are keeping an eye on the EU – specifically the extraordinary case of Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton threatening X with censorship ahead of Elon Musk’s Donald Trump interview. Frost slams this as the EU saying it could “censor or block X, or punish it after the fact, for broadcasting a live interview conducted outside its own territory, and in that of a friendly allied country.” Frost is also not pleased that Breton went for the UK riots as a way to justify this move. But even if the EU doesn’t have jurisdiction over the UK, as Frost, a member of the House of Lords, remarked, the government’s actions in his country are clearly emboldening others to try to crack down on online speech. “If the EU get away with this, it won’t stop there,” Frost warned, adding, “Any interview they consider harmful in some way will be at risk of the same treatment, even those conducted in this country.” And he summed up the situation: “To judge by their statements in recent days, it’s difficult to believe our own government will be particularly troubled by this.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Starmer’s Free Speech Flip-Flop: From Once Defending Offensive Speech to Now Jailing People For Tweets appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

This Disney Wrongful Death Lawsuit is Simply Absurd

NYT: Here's *How* Biden Stepped Down, But ...

Astronomers have announced new evidence on a bit of a controversial topic in the field: the number of bright galaxies that existed in the early universe, specifically within the first 600 million years following the Big Bang. Hubble had shown that the number was higher than expected but ground observations disagreed with this assessment. Now, new JWST observations suggest that the Hubble analysis was right.The galaxies were selected from the largest Hubble Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) pure-parallel survey. They came from 200 different lines of sight to ensure the sample was universal rather than just from a lucky spot. Their distance was based on their colors, which JWST calculates by measuring the spectrum of light of these galaxies, confirming that over 50 percent of the BoRG were indeed from the distant universe.“The highlight of what I find in this recent study is that we're truly having this many bright galaxies, and this is important to see how reionization happens,” Dr Sofía Rojas Ruiz of UCLA, who presented this work at the 32nd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union that took place in South Africa this week, told IFLScience.Reionization is a not completely understood early epoch of the universe. Once the cosmos cooled down enough, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, hydrogen atoms were able to hold on to their electrons. They were no longer ionized as they had been since the first proton popped into existence.This neutral hydrogen gas made the universe opaque, not that there was much to see then. The first stars were yet to begin to shine. It took many tens of millions of years for the first stars and then the first galaxies to form. Those stars emitted a lot of ultraviolet light and that light ionized hydrogen once again, hence reionization.This is why the BoRGs are important. Just like the Borgs of Star Trek, for the neutral hydrogen, resistance was futile. Their light ripped the electrons from the hydrogen nucleus. The new research showed that while bright as a whole, the population has a lot of diversity. These objects are not just forming stars at a constant high rate, but they are also experiencing bursts of star formation. More bright galaxies with different star-formation histories paint a specific picture of the early universe.If the early bright galaxies are few then they had to do a lot of work to reionize the whole universe. That means that they are powerhouses that dramatically changed the cosmos. But with a lot more objects taking turns becoming bright as their star-formation rate picked up, the whole process can be more gentle.“When you look at the abundance of these galaxies, you can precisely say [whether] reionization is happening fast or more smoothly. What we see now with the higher abundance is that it's going more smoothly," Dr Rojas Ruiz told IFLScience.So, JWST appears to back up Hubble's initial analysis that there were more bright galaxies in the early universe. It is not clear why these galaxies were not seen by ground-based observatories, but as Rojas Ruiz points out, “Doing infrared astronomy from the ground is very difficult. It might be that it's really hard to find this specific population of galaxies. Or perhaps they were more aggressive in their contamination assessment, which is fair because we do have a lot of contaminants in the infrared."Dr Rojas Ruiz also runs the Bringing Astronomy to Rural Communities of Colombia (BARCo) project, as part of the International Astronomical Union – Office for Office of Astronomy for Development.

From the edges of the Arctic to the hottest deserts, humans have eked out survival – flourished, even – in pretty much every corner of the globe. Mapping out exactly how that happened, however, is an ambition that has long evaded researchers – particularly those studying the history of human dispersals across the Pacific Ocean.A new discovery out of Waigeo Island, in the Raja Ampat archipelago of West Papua, has upended the standard picture of prehistoric migration in the area. There, during an excavation of Mololo Cave – the name means “the place where the currents come together,” explained Dylan Gaffney and Daud Aris Tanudirjo, two of the researchers behind the new find, in a corresponding article for The Conversation, making it “fittingly named for the choppy waters and large whirlpools in the nearby straits” – a team of archaeologists uncovered not only the oldest sign of human habitation in the Pacific Islands, but anywhere at all outside of Africa.“Excavation uncovered several layers of human occupation associated with stone artefacts, animal bones, shells and charcoal – all physical remains discarded by ancient humans living at the cave,” the pair wrote.“These archaeological findings were rare in the deepest layers,” they added, “but radiocarbon dating at the University of Oxford and the University of Waikato demonstrated humans were living at Mololo by at least 55,000 years before the present day.”Of particular interest to the team was a tiny artifact, barely a couple of centimeters across, made from tree resin. The researchers aren’t even totally sure what its function was – they suggest, based on modern practices, that it may have been used as a fuel source – but that’s not what makes it so important: as a clearly human-made tool, created purposefully over several stages, it represents the development of complex and culturally specific skills by communities living in the rainforests of West Papua.Tree resin artefact excavated from Mololo Cave, dated to 50,000-55,000 years old.Image credit: Dylan Gaffney (The Raja Ampat Archaeological Project); CC BY-SA 4.0“The use of complex plant processing indicates these humans were sophisticated, highly mobile, and able to devise creative solutions to living on small tropical islands,” said Tanudirjo, a professor of archaeology at Universitas Gadjah Mada and co-director of the study, in a statement.But while the excavation is important for what it tells us about ancient West Papuans – a population that has so far been relatively under-researched due to the political and social crises that plague the region – it also adds a vital piece to the puzzle of human history in the wider area. See, precisely when and how our ancestors moved out of Asia and across the Pacific is something of a hot-button issue in the archaeological community: “it has major implications for how rapidly our species dispersed out of Africa to Asia and Oceania,” wrote Gaffney and Tanudirjo, as well as impacting how prehistoric people may have interacted with other species – both animal and human. Generally, researchers fall into one of two camps: either they believe humans entered the Pacific along a southern route, via Australia, or a northern route, traveling up into West Papua. So far, the evidence in either direction has been circumstantial – but with this excavation, and particularly the analysis of the resin artifact, the team have found “the first firm, directly radiocarbon dated evidence that humans moved through the northern route to the Pacific region before 50,000 years ago,” the statement confirms.Ancient migration routes from Asia to the Pacific region.Image credit: Dylan Gaffney (The Raja Ampat Archaeological Project)Waigeo Island, then, was not just a home to complex ancient societies, populated by skilled seafarers and craftspeople well-adapted to life in the rainforest – it was also their gateway to the entire Pacific. “We know from other archaeological sites […] that once humans arrived in the Pacific region, they kept venturing as far as the New Guinea Highlands, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands by 30,000 years ago,” Gaffney and Tanudirjo explained. “Their descendants later voyaged as far as Hawaii, Rapa Nui and Aotearoa.”“Charting the archaeology of West Papua is vital,” they concluded, “because it helps us understand where the ancestors of the wider Pacific came from and how they adapted to living in this new and unfamiliar sea of islands.”The study is published in the journal Antiquity.

The US has the lowest life expectancy of high-income English-speaking nations, while Australia continues to lead the pack with the highest. Poverty and poor health are big influences on the differing outcomes, but a major factor is also the number of young Americans dying from drug abuse, car accidents, and guns, researchers say.Researchers from the University of Southern California and Pennsylvania State University compared life expectancy in six Anglophone countries – the US, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand – between 1990 and 2019. They broke down the data by sex, age, and 18 causes of death categories, including a range of diseases plus "preventable deaths" like accidents and overdoses. Australia has led the English-speaking world in life expectancy for the last three decades and these findings suggest they’re still top of the class. As per the recent findings, life expectancy for men in Australia, the best-performing country, was 4.75 years higher than in the US, the worst-performing country. "One of the main drivers of why American longevity is so much shorter than in other high-income countries is our younger people die at higher rates from largely preventable causes of death, like drug overdose, car accidents and homicide," study co-author Jessica Ho, associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State, said in a statement.It’s also noteworthy that Americans also suffer from higher rates of cardiovascular disease mortality, impacting the life expectancy of middle-aged people. “Some of the latter could be related to sedentary lifestyle, high rates of obesity, unhealthy diet, stress and a history of smoking. It’s likely that these patterns of unhealthy behaviors put Americans at a disadvantage in terms of their health and vitality,” Ho explained.The data also indicated that the US has huge geographical inequalities across different parts of the country. California and Hawai'i had some of the highest life expectancies at birth, with women averaging 83 to 83.9 years and men averaging 77.5 to 78.4 years. On the other hand, the American Southeast had some of the lowest life expectancies at birth, with women averaging 72.6 to 79.9 years and men averaging 69.3 to 74.4 years.Another interesting tidbit: the UK dropped to the second worst-performing country in recent years, while Ireland showed the largest gains in life expectancy, with men's lifespans increasing by approximately 8 years and women's lifespans by more than 6.5 years. The study provides a few pointers for high-income Anglophone countries looking to increase their life expectancy: be more like Australia. Australia does have the second-highest obesity rate of the group, but it does have relatively low rates of smoking, gun ownership, and drug-related mortality, all of which the study credits to “strong public health efforts.”“What the study shows is that a peer country like Australia far outperforms the US and was able to get its young adult mortality under control. It has really low levels of gun deaths and homicides, lower levels of drug and alcohol use and better performance on chronic diseases, the latter of which points to lifestyle factors, health behaviors and health care performance,” said Ho."Australia is a model for how Americans can do better and achieve not only a higher life expectancy but also lower geographic inequality in life expectancy," she added.The new study is published in the journal BMJ Open.

On Thursday's Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle echoed the Harris talking points:"It's literally -- the campaign is yesterday versus tomorrow." Donald Trump calling America a "Third World country" now is bizarre. "I don't know anyone who believes that," he said. He said Trump's act is old and plays on fear factors about "immigrants raping your daughter," lots of "huge, huge, ugly racial overtones, especially when it comes to the Vice President." Then Barnicle predicted that Kamala Harris will finish Trump off in their debate: "You wonder how long will it be before he really goes out of control. And I think what's going to happen is that when that debate occurs, and he's in the ring with the Vice President of the United States, a woman, a very sophisticated, very intelligent, woman, and she hammers him like a prosecutor, and doesn't let him off the hook, he will go -- I can't say it. But something will snap [see screencap] in him, and that'll be it. Earlier, Katty Kay struck a much more cautious tone: "I think Donald Trump is one of the hardest people to debate.  I think Kamala Harris is excited about the prospect of debating him. But he's not an easy person -- ask anyone who has debated him -- he's not an easy person to debate....And be careful about prepping for the debate, right, because it's not going to be easy for them. You have to assume that the Harris campaign would prefer not to set debate expectations as high as Barnicle did. The way he projects it, unless Kamala scores a Mike Tyson-esque KO, she will have failed, in liberal lingo, to "meet the moment." At least in theory—unless one of the moderators goes Donna Brazile and supplies the questions to Kamala in advance—debates are unscripted events where candidates must be quick on their feet. If Harris's handlers were certain of her ability to speak spontaneously—without stumbling into a word salad or musing on the passage of time—why haven't they dared let her do a sit-down interview or hold a press conference? Which in turn raises the question: what makes Barnicle so confident about Harris's ability to relentlessly "hammer" Trump until he snaps? Questions for Barnicle: If, as you claim, Harris is "very intelligent," why did she flunk the bar exam on her first go-round? And if she's "very sophisticated," why does she believe that in cloud computing, data is literally up in the sky? Here's the transcript. MSNBC Morning Joe 8/15/24 6:13 am EDT KATTY KAY: When it comes to debating him, I think Donald Trump is one of the hardest people to debate. I think Kamala Harris is excited about the prospect of debating him. But he's not an easy person -- ask anyone who has debated him -- he's not an easy person to debate because of all of this. And I think Democrats have to be careful not to underestimate how, yes, everything is moving in their direction. Yes, like you say, Kamala Harris is a massive TikTok phenomenon at the momen. But they have to make sure that those young people actually turn out and vote. And historically, obviously, young people turn out to vote than older people. And be careful about prepping for the debate, right, because it's not going to be easy for them. . . .  MIKE BARNICLE: It's literally -- the campaign is yesterday versus tomorrow. I mean, we just saw it yesterday. We saw a man standing there on the stage saying we are literally a Third World country. I don't know anyone who believes that we are literally a Third World country.  WILLIE GEIST: Of course not. BARNICLE: And the thing about the Trump campaign now that makes me wonder a lot about it is, Suzie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, running the campaign, are extremely good at what they do. But they seem to have lost control of their candidate. Their candidate has a tired, 20-year-old act. We just saw it. The, updates with figures from the past two or three years. But it's a tired old act. The election was stolen, we're a Third World country, crime is up. Immigrants are going to rape your daughter. All sorts of fear factors. And a lot of it, a lot of it with huge, huge, ugly racial overtones, especially when it comes to the Vice President. And you wonder how long will it be before he really goes out of control? And I think what's going to happen is that when that debate occurs, and he's in the ring with the Vice President of the United States, a woman, a very sophisticated, very intelligent, woman, and she hammers him like a prosecutor, and doesn't let him off the hook, he will go -- I can't say it -- MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. GEIST: Yeah. BARNICLE: But something will snap in him, and that'll be it.

In normal years, which were not that long ago, students would look forward to returning to or entering college as freshmen. After violent anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations on some college campuses, many fear this semester might see a repeat of the prior ugliness. This is how bad it has gotten. Police in Montgomery County, Maryland, are investigating after antisemitic and pro-Palestinian graffiti was discovered outside Bethesda Elementary School Sunday morning. An elementary school! Rather than condemning the incident, the pro-Hamas lobby group known as CAIR issued a statement that sounded like “what can you expect,” given Israel’s justifiable attempt to wipe out the terrorist group in Gaza. Columbia University in New York, where some of the worst rioting occurred last semester, is reportedly considering granting arrest powers to campus police, hoping it will curb the demonstrations. That’s fine, but it’s not just about the arrests, most of which have resulted in quick releases, it’s about prosecuting lawbreakers. In liberal New York that has become nearly impossible to do thanks to District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who often releases and fails to prosecute even violent offenders. Columbia is also employing a “lockdown” system to keep “non affiliates, with bad intentions” off campus. Good luck with that. If current laws and regulations are being violated why should anyone believe new laws and regulations will be obeyed, especially when some professors agree with and encourage the demonstrators? DePaul University in Chicago is preparing to reopen its campus Quad before students return for fall classes. Demonstrations last semester caused$180,000 in damages, resulting in the Quad’s closure for three months for necessary repairs. What’s to prevent a repeat performance? Columnist Jason Riley wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this month that Penn suspended several students who were part of an illegal anti-Israel encampment that ended in May with the arrest of 33 people. Yet Penn looks to be an outlier. … Harvard reversed an earlier decision to suspend students who participated in pro-Hamas demonstrations on its campus that violated school policy and local ordinances. The Harvard Crimson wrote that it was at least the second time administrators caved in to pressure from student activists and sympathetic faculty members.” Jewish students wishing to return to certain college campuses don’t seem optimistic they will receive better treatment than last semester. While some university presidents resigned after being accused of aiding and abetting the protests and antisemitism, the problem will remain so long as administrators allow students (and non-students) to dictate to those who are in charge and supposed to be enforcing the rules. Here’s what might work. If students wish to demonstrate they should be assigned a secure area where their presence won’t impede other students from attending classes, visiting libraries, or exercising other rights. If professors encourage the demonstrators and make anti-Jewish remarks making Jewish students feel unsafe, they should be placed on leave or fired. By following through on law enforcement and prosecution perhaps students will get the message that a criminal record will likely harm their prospects for future employment and a successful career. When police in Boston went on strike in 1919, unleashing looting and other criminal activity, Massachusetts governor and later president Calvin Coolidge sent a telegram to American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers which said in part: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” The same should be said of rioting students who impede the rights of other students to feel safe and attend classes without mobs confronting especially Jewish students. They have a right to feel safe and protected from persecution.