Large body of misinformation is fueling American gun violence
Tom Gabor and Fred Guttenberg – June 7, 2023
Slogans like “Guns don’t kill, people do” and “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” reflect the decades-long campaign by the gun lobby and its allies to convince Americans that owning guns makes them safer. This campaign, based on a large body of misinformation, has made America a far more dangerous place. Our book American Carnage identifies and debunks close to 40 core myths that have led many Americans to mistakenly believe that carrying a gun and keeping one in the home will protect them rather than expose them to an elevated risk of harm.
Much of this misinformation stems from the radicalization of the gun lobby, beginning in the 1970s. Since then, the gun industry and gun rights organizations have made it their priority to convince Americans that an armed citizenry is the most effective way to shield ourselves from violence. This campaign has included stoking the public’s fear of crime, funding dubious scholarship by gun-friendly researchers, and shutting down federal funding of research showing that guns in the home put occupants at an elevated risk.
‘I still hate LIV:’ Rory McIlroy tries to find hope in humiliation of PGA Tour-LIV merger
Rory McIlroy, surprised by the PGA Tour-LIV merger, tried to reconcile frustration and humiliation on Wednesday.
Jay Busbee, Senior writer – June 7, 2023
Rory McIlroy tries to deal with the fallout of Tuesday’s seismic news. (Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
Rory McIlroy has known abject humiliation in his golf career. He stood alone in the pines alongside Augusta National’s 10th hole in 2011 as his Masters lead evaporated. He could only watch as Cam Smith blazed past him in 2022 at St. Andrews in an Open Championship that was McIlroy’s for the taking. Never has McIlroy been humiliated like he was Tuesday.
After a year and a half of caping for the PGA Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan, a year and a half of serving as the point of the spear, McIlroy had to just sit and watch as the PGA Tour cut a deal with the opposition. The PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund have agreed to join forces in a new, as-yet-unspecified endeavor, and McIlroy was as surprised as the rest of the golf world.
Speaking on Wednesday morning before the RBC Canadian Open, McIlroy walked through both the sequence of events Tuesday and his overall perspective on the seismic, permanent changes that flipped golf on its head.
“It’s hard for me not to sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb,” McIlroy said. He was notified at 6:30 a.m. of the impending merger, just a few hours before it became public news.
McIlroy tried to find some daylight between the PIF, which already bankrolls multiple tournaments, companies and endeavors in which McIlroy is involved, and LIV Golf, the upstart tour that’s spent more time beefing in public with McIlroy and others than actually playing tournaments.
“I’ve come to terms with [the PIF],” McIlroy said. “I see what’s happened in other sports, I see what’s happened in other businesses, and honestly I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that this is what’s going to happen.”
McIlroy also sided with Monahan, at least to the extent that he appreciates the structure of the new endeavor as it was announced. “Whether you like it or not, the PIF were going to keep spending the money in golf. At least the PGA Tour now controls how that money is spent,” he said. “If you’re thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy? At the end of the day, money talks and you would rather have them as a partner.”
As for LIV itself, there was no gray area, no equivocation.
“I still hate LIV. I hate them,” McIlroy said. “I hope it goes away.”
McIlroy’s resigned acceptance of the PIF’s incursion didn’t include acceptance of the LIV defectors. He wasn’t quite ready to extend them any courtesies. “There still has to be consequences to actions,” he said. “The people that left the PGA Tour irreparably harmed this Tour, started litigation against it. We can’t just welcome them back in. Like, that’s not going to happen. And I think that was the one thing that Jay was trying to get across yesterday is like, guys, we’re not just going to bring these guys back in and pretend like nothing’s happened. That is not going to happen.”
Still, above and beyond who makes up a given tournament field, there’s an inevitability grinding away here. Sounding like a man watching a tidal wave approach, McIlroy acknowledged the reality of the situation while holding out a faint, perhaps irrational, hope that maybe everything would work out.
“It’s very hard to keep up with people that have more money than anyone else,” McIlroy said. “And if they’re going to put that money into the game of golf, then why don’t we partner with them and make sure that it’s done in the right way?”
McIlroy has spent a lifetime staying loyal to the PGA Tour. But loyalty doesn’t fill bank accounts. McIlroy is, by nature, an optimist. But even the PGA Tour’s strongest, most eloquent defender is struggling to rationalize Tuesday’s events as anything more than a money grab, loyalty be damned.
Before you fight over the word ‘woke,’ learn its history. It will blow you away.
Phil Boas, Arizona Republic – June 7, 2023
Poster of Leadbelly at the Rusty Nail in Wilmington.
Someday when the cultural moment that many have called “The Great Awokening” is finally, mercifully, over, Americans of all races should fight to give African Americans their word back.
Less than 10 years ago, “woke” was a word so deeply layered with history and meaning it could evoke years of pain suffered by descendants of slaves coming of age in Jim Crow America.
You don’t have to be African American, however, to feel its history. The word woke is seminal to our larger culture in ways most of us have never understood.
It’s one of the great words in American English and it should be preserved in its purest form.
At the moment it is being hijacked by politics – first by white liberals, then by white conservatives.
A battle over ‘woke’ in the Republican Party primary
This week the word “woke” is igniting a family spat within the 2024 Republican primary for president, pitting Donald Trump against his former apprentice, Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis, the Florida governor, uses the word frequently to describe an ideology steeped in identity politics that has taken over our universities, media, large corporations, medicine, arts, entertainment and sports.
Trump argues he doesn’t use the word. “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear, ‘Woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”
There’s a good chance none of us would know the word today had the Library of Congress not set out in the 1930s to preserve American folk music in the South.
That project took library archivists to Louisiana where they discovered a little-known African American blues singer named Huddie William Ledbetter or “Lead Belly.”
The archivists recorded on aluminum discs Lead Belly and his 12-string guitar, preserving what would become some of the great Blues standards such as “Cotton Fields,” “Goodnight, Irene” and “Rock Island Line.”
‘Woke’ emerges with a song about race and suffering
In Lead Belly’s song “The Scottsboro Boys,” the nine African-American young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama, he admonishes his listeners to, “Best stay woke!”
As Huddie Ledbetter used “woke,” it meant that when you’re a Black person travelling through a deeply racist state such as Alabama, you need to know what you’re dealing with – a highly refined form of evil.
Ledbetter would know. He travelled the byways of Louisiana, Alabama and Texas singing his songs and confronting white bigotry and its violence against Black people.
In a way that history has of surprising us, Lead Belly would become essential to white culture in America and Great Britain. All white people reading this and learning the name Huddie Ledbetter for the first time, should know that they have likely felt his influence, far more than they could have imagined.
Lead Belly influences Rock ‘n Roll’s greatest band
Donovan became “the king” of the U.K. “skiffle craze” and eventually inspired new skiffle groups across England, such as Liverpool’s The Quarrymen, then led by an aspiring singer-songwriter named John Lennon.
By 1960, the group would evolve into The Beatles, and its lead guitarist, George Harrison, would one day tell an interviewer, “If there was no Lead Belly, there would have been no Lonnie Donegan; no Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles. Therefore, no Lead Belly, no Beatles,” as recounted by Smithsonian Magazine.
Lead Belly was inspiring many musical forms of that day. Those same early recordings that preserved his music and the word “woke,” found their way into the imagination of another young artist of some note.
“Somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Lead Belly record with the song ‘Cottonfields’ on it,” recalled Bob Dylan in his 2017 lecture to the Noble (Prize) Foundation. “That record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known.
“It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times.”
The biggest names in many genres sing his songs
By the end of the century, Led Belly’s influence on American popular music was its own constellation of stars. Artists covering his songs included Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tom Jones, Harry Belafonte, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Aerosmith, Lead Zeppelin, Tom Petty, The Grateful Dead.
When Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs wrote, “These new rock ‘n roll kids should just throw away their guitars and listen to something with real soul, like Lead Belly,” a young musician in Seattle named Kurt Cobain took up his challenge.
Years later, he recalled on an MTV stage: “I’d never heard about Lead Belly before so I bought a couple of records, and now he turns out to be my absolute favorite of all time in music. I absolutely love it more than any rock’n’roll I ever heard.”
Our chattering classes, and I include myself among them, have been poor caretakers of the word “woke.”
When this battle over wokeness is finally over, it would do us well to give the word back.
And while we’re at it, maybe we could make the name Huddie Ledbetter, one of America’s most important songwriters, as easily recognizable as say, Ringo Starr.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic:
Tens of thousands of extra patients to get access to wonder obesity jab Wegovy
Daniel Martin – June 6, 2023
Patients with additional support have been able to lose as much as 15 per cent of their total body weight on Wegovy – vitapix/E+
Tens of thousands of extra people will get access to a new wonder obesity drug after Rishi Sunak called for it to be made available outside hospitals.
The Prime Minister launched a pilot study to see whether the drug Wegovy could be prescribed by GPs – allowing far more to take advantage.
Earlier this year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) decided that obese people with heart conditions should be able to receive the drug Wegovy free on the NHS.
The drug has been proven to help adults living with obesity lose more than 15 per cent of their body weight when prescribed alongside diet, physical activity and behavioural support.
But at the moment, NICE says the drug can only be made available in specialist weight management centres based in hospitals – reaching just 35,000 people. If it could be made available outside hospitals it could reach tens of thousands more, Downing Street said.
Mr Sunak has therefore ordered a £40 million pilot to test how the drugs could be made available outside hospitals – including through GP prescriptions.
But there are supply issues with the drugs. The company making Wegovy has said that unprecedented demand means that large quantities may not be available for months.
The Prime Minister said: “Obesity puts huge pressure on the NHS.
“Using the latest drugs to support people to lose weight will be a game-changer by helping to tackle dangerous obesity-related health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer – reducing pressure on hospitals, supporting people to live healthier and longer lives, and helping to deliver on my priority to cut NHS waiting lists.”
There is evidence from clinical trials that, when prescribed alongside diet, physical activity and behavioural support, people taking a weight-loss drug can lose up to 15 per cent of their body weight after one year. Taking them alongside diet, physical activity and behavioural support can help people lose weight within the first month of treatment.
Obesity is one of the leading causes of severe health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, and it costs the NHS £6.5 billion a year. There were more than one million admissions to NHS hospitals in 2019/2020 where obesity was a factor.
NICE advises that Wegovy should only be available via specialist weight management services, which are largely hospital based. This would mean only around 35,000 people would have access to Wegovy, when tens of thousands more could be eligible.
The £40m pilot will explore how approved drugs can be made safely available to more people by expanding specialist weight management services outside of hospital settings.
This includes looking at how GPs could safely prescribe these drugs and how the NHS can provide support in the community or digitally – contributing to the Government’s wider ambition to reduce pressure on hospitals and give people access to the care they need where it is most convenient for them.
Obesity and cancer
Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary said: “Obesity costs the NHS around £6.5bn a year and is the second biggest cause of cancer.
“This next generation of obesity drugs have the potential to help people lose significant amounts of weight, when prescribed with exercise, diet and behavioural support.
“Tackling obesity will help to reduce pressure on the NHS and cut waiting times, one of the Government’s five priorities, and this pilot will help people live longer, healthier lives.”
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, the NHS medical director, said: “Tackling obesity is a key part of the NHS Long Term Plan – it can have devastating consequences for the nation’s health, leading to serious health conditions and some common cancers as well as resulting in significant pressure on NHS services.
“Pharmaceutical treatments offer a new way of helping people with obesity gain a healthier weight and this new pilot will help determine if these medicines can be used safely and effectively in non-hospital settings as well as a range of other interventions we have in place.
“NHS England is already working to implement recommendations from NICE to make this new class of treatment available to patients through established specialist weight management services, subject to negotiating a secure long-term supply of the products at prices that represent value for money taxpayers.”
Related
Yahoo! Life
What is Wegovy? The Hollywood weight loss drug which could soon be offered by GPs
Marie Claire Dorking, Contributor, Yahoo Life UK – June 7, 2023
Watch: £40m pilot scheme launched to increase access to weight-loss drugs and cut NHS waiting lists
The PM made the comments while announcing a £40 million pilot scheme to increase access to specialist weight management services in a bid to combat obesity.
The government wants to tackle the health problems and £6.5 billion cost to the NHS of obesity by making it easier to access weight-loss treatments through GPs.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) gave approval for the use of appetite suppressant Wegovy earlier this year, but said it should only be available through specialist services which are largely hospital-based.
But the government is keen to explore how approved drugs can be made available to more people by looking at how GPs could safely prescribe the drugs.
Access to Wegovy on the NHS for weight loss could soon be improved. (Getty Images)
Wegovy, or semaglutide, is usually prescribed as a type 2 diabetes medication that blunts appetite.
It has the same ingredient as Ozempic, which has been causing a stir recently having said to be used by celebrities to manage their weight.
But experts have warned that there could be some side effects to using the drug as an aid to weight loss, without medical supervision, with Dr Amir Khan previously appearing on both GMB and Lorraine to issue some advice.https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/14034102/embed?auto=1
Here’s everything you need to know about Wegovy or Ozempic in 11 points.
What is Ozempic? Ozempic, Ryblesus and Wegovy are all brand names for a compound called semaglutide. The drug is typically used as a diabetes medication, can be prescribed in various doses and can be in the form of a weekly injection – administered in the stomach, thigh or arm – or a daily oral tablet.
The drug reportedly reduces appetite. “It is a hormone that our guts naturally produce,” explained Dr Amir Khan on ITV’s Lorraine. “It sends messages up to the pancreas to start producing insulin. But one of the side effects is it slows down the movement of food in the gut so you stay fuller for longer and you don’t have much of an appetite. That means you eat less which results in weight loss.”
The drug is rumoured to be secretly used by many Hollywood stars. At the Critics Choice Awards earlier this year Chelsea Handler hinted that many celebrities were taking the injectable. “Like when celebrities joke they lost weight by drinking water, but really it’s because everyone’s on Ozempic,” she joked. “Even my housekeeper’s on Ozempic.”
Searches on social media also link the Kardashians with the drug. But despite Kim Kardashian never confirming her use of Ozempic and her sister, Khloe, issuing a statement denying that she’d used it, it continues to clock up hashtags.
Semaglutide is the official name for Ozempic, which is typically a medication for type 2 diabetes. (Getty Images)
Other celebrities have openly admitted using the drug as a weight loss aid including Elon Musk, who told Twitter he’d tried it. The Tesla founder said the once-weekly injectable was his secret weapon for being “down 30lbs”. Jeremy Clarkson also recently discussed using the drug in a bid to lose weight and help prevent type 2 diabetes.
It’s causing quite the buzz online. Thanks to its reputation as the weight loss drug du jour, Ozempic is quickly clocking up views and shares on social media. On TikTok the hashtag #ozempic already has 1.1 billion views and counting, while Instagram is littered with users sharing their “Ozempic journey” to weight loss.
The drug was hailed a potential ‘game changer’ during an official UK study. It first started causing a buzz in the UK as a weight management tool after a University College London study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found just over a third (35%) of people who took it for obesity lost more than a fifth of their total body weight.
GPs could soon prescribe weight loss drug Wegovy. (Getty Images)
Ozempic does come with risks. Dr Amir Khan warned that side effects of the medication could include “nausea, vomiting, feeling bloated, diarrhoea, but in some, more serious, cases it can cause inflammation of the pancreas, that’s pancreatitis.”
He added it can also cause gall bladder problems. “It can even cause kidney failure,” he said, “so really it should only be available on prescription. I do prescribe it to my patients living with type 2 diabetes, but it’s very carefully monitored. It is not just given online.”
Eating disorder charities also have concerns. “Weight-loss medications like semaglutide can be extremely attractive to people with eating disorders as they appear to provide quick results,” Tom Quinn, Beat’s director of external affairs, explains.
“However, these medications can be very dangerous as they can worsen harmful thoughts and behaviours for those unwell, or contribute to an eating disorder developing for someone who is already vulnerable.”
Doctors say weight loss medications aren’t a magic cure. The NHS advises speaking to your GP for advice about losing weight safely “by eating a healthy, balanced diet and doing regular physical activity”.
They can also let you know about other useful services, such as local weight loss groups (either provided by the NHS or your local council, as well as private clubs that you pay for) and “exercise on prescription” (where you’re referred to a local active health team for sessions with a qualified trainer).
Weight-loss drugs pilot to begin in UK amid uncertainty over Wegovy launch
Ludwig Burger and Maggie Fick – June 6, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Illustrations of Wegovy injector pens in Chicago
(Reuters) – Britain plans to launch a pilot programme exploring how new weekly weight-loss shots such as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy can be given to obese patients by general practitioners even as the drug’s market launch remains unclear.
The government’s announcement on the 40-million-pound ($50 million) pilot programme comes after drug cost-effectiveness watchdog NICE in March recommended the use of Wegovy in adults with at least one weight-related condition and a body mass index of 35, but only within the National Health Service’s (NHS) specialist weight management scheme.
The timing of Wegovy’s launch in Britain – which would be only the fourth country to use it – is uncertain, however, after Novo last month rationed starter doses to secure supply to U.S. patients already on the regimen, after it was overwhelmed by demand there.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday the pilot and fighting obesity-related diseases could reduce pressure on hospitals.
It would also support “people to live healthier and longer lives, and helping to deliver on my priority to cut NHS waiting lists”.
The NHS endured a tough winter in England in particular, with waiting lists hitting record highs and staff striking for higher pay amid double-digit inflation.
Obesity is one of the leading causes of severe health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, and costs the NHS 6.5 billion pounds a year.
The government said that NICE, short for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, was also considering potential use of Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro, also known as tirzepatide, currently licensed to treat diabetes but expected to win approval to treat obesity as well.
The two-year pilot will be launched after the new weight loss drugs are available in the UK, it said.
DELAYS
Novo’s inability to keep up with U.S. demand for Wegovy has effectively delayed the launch in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. It has also had to overcome production problems at a contract manufacturer.
A company spokesperson would not comment on any commitment to supply the programme, but said there had been preliminary discussion on the role of treating obesity as part of the UK government’s ambition to bring people back into the workforce.
Eli Lilly said that its Mounjaro drug could be part of the solution, once approved.
The British government said that only 35,000 people would have access to Wegovy under the specialist hospital services, but tens of thousands more could be eligible.
Phil McEwan, CEO of health economics consultancy Heor Ltd in Cardiff, who advises Novo on market access, said the need for specialist services would have been a major bottleneck.
“You have to be referred to specialist care and that’s not the easiest thing to do. The challenge will be to access reimbursement,” he said.
Keen interest in the treatment is already showing elsewhere. One of Britain’s largest pharmacy chains, Superdrug, said its remote prescriptions service was anticipating significant demand.
“Superdrug Online Doctor has seen five time anticipated levels of registration,” a spokesperson told Reuters in April, declining to give numbers.
Outside the U.S., Wegovy has only been launched in Denmark and Norway but major medical insurance schemes there will not pay for it, saying the health benefits would not justify the extra budgeting.
Britain’s move is likely to heat up a debate about whether a drug is the right answer to the growing public health problem of obesity or whether there are other ways to encourage healthier lifestyles.
Duane Mellor, a dietitian and senior lecturer at Aston University’s medical school, said drugs like Wegovy were a tool, not the solution.
“It’s a political decision to say the government is doing something to tackle health issues linked to obesity … we need to be much braver and bolder in looking at root causes around access to health care and about making healthy food enjoyable.”
Simon Cork, a senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University, said obesity had been shown to be “incredibly difficult” to manage through diet and exercise alone and that Wegovy and similar drugs offered a step change.
“Hence the excitement from the general public and why the UK government seems to be pushing to make the drug available widely,” he said.
Wegovy works by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) that triggers the feeling of fullness in the body after eating.
Trials showed it leads to an average weight loss of around 15%, alongside changes to diet and exercise.
($1 = 0.8051 pounds)
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Maggie Fick in London, additional reporting by Anusha S in Bengaluru and Helen Reid and Alistair Smout in London; editing by Lincoln Feast, Mark Potter and Jane Merriman)
Teens are spending less time than ever with friends
Daniel de Visé – June 7, 2023
America’s teenagers are seeing a lot less of one another.
The share of high school seniors who gathered with friends in person “almost every day” dropped from 44 percent in 2010 to 32 percent in 2022, according to Monitoring the Future, a national survey of adolescents. Social outings for the typical eighth grader dwindled from about 2 1/2 a week in 2000 to 1 1/2 in 2021.
The nation’s teens have traded face time for Facetime. Adolescents are spending less time gathering in shopping malls, movie theaters and rec rooms, and more time connecting on Instagram, TikTok and Discord.
Some researchers see the retreat from social gatherings as key to explaining the wave of adolescent ennui that is sweeping the nation. Numerous studies have tracked rising rates of loneliness among adolescents before, during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a national loneliness epidemic. And loneliness presages depression and other mental health maladies, which are also growing more prevalent among teens.
“Teens are spending a lot more time communicating with each other electronically and a lot less time hanging out with each other face to face,” said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of “Generations,” a new book about generational differences.
“Going to the mall has gone down. Driving in the car for fun has gone down. Going to the movies has gone down,” she said. “We’re talking about kids who are spending five, six, seven hours a day on social media.”
Twenge sees a connection between the decline of adolescent gatherings and the rise of teenage loneliness.
About half of the nation’s high-school seniors met up with friends almost daily in the 1970s, when researchers at the University of Michigan began tracking their outings in the Monitoring the Future study.
In the decades since, a gradually shrinking share of teens has reported regular meetups with friends. The steepest decline commenced around 2010, just as smartphones and social media were taking hold. U.S. smartphone ownership reached 50 percent in 2012.
The loneliness epidemic arrived around the same time. A landmark 2021 study found that levels of adolescent loneliness nearly doubled between 2012 and 2018. Prior to 2012, researchers had spotted no loneliness trend.
Twenge believes the timing of the two trends, falling face time and rising loneliness, is no mere coincidence.
“If it’s not smartphones and social media that have caused the rise in teen depression, what is it?” she said. Twenge was the lead author of the 2021 study, published in the Journal of Adolescence.
Today’s teenagers may be spending more time in front of screens than any prior generation.
The average teen spent eight hours and 39 minutes on daily screen time for entertainment in 2021, up from six hours and 40 minutes in 2015, according to Common Sense Media, publisher of a closely watched Common Sense Census.
To put those numbers into perspective: An entire household watched eight hours and 55 minutes of daily television, on average, in 2009-10, the historic peak of television consumption. But researchers caution against comparing the two.
“Screen time can be so many different things,” said Amanda Lenhart, head of research at Common Sense. “There’s all sorts of ways in which these platforms can be both good for kids and bad for kids.”
Nearly half of the nation’s teens now say they are online “almost constantly,” according to Pew Research. More than half say they are effectively addicted to social media and would have a hard time giving it up.
The surgeon general, among others, has linked social media to rising depression and anxiety in teenagers.
Loneliness deepened at the height of the pandemic. Three years later, the epidemic shows few signs of abating. New survey data from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, collected in December, shows 21 percent of teens report being lonely much or all of the time.
“I think social media has been a really significant factor in this decline,” said Richard Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at the Harvard education school.
Weissbourd and other researchers agree with Twenge that face-to-face relationships play a large role in adolescent development.
“Friendships and relationships are very important in adolescence,” said Adam Hoffman, an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University. Social media “can really only supplement, and cannot replace, in-person relationships. We need to have both of these.”
Both he and Weissbourd stress, however, that social media is only one of several societal forces that have afflicted the mental health of adolescents and young adults in recent years.
“Teens rank achievement pressure really high in terms of negatively influencing their mental health,” Weissbourd said. Adolescents and their families report heightened financial stress. Teens in the 2020s fret about climate change and political strife.
Causes of adolescent loneliness vary by race, class and culture.
“What’s going on with low-income kids in rural areas or low-income kids in areas of concentrated poverty is really different from what’s going on with affluent kids in suburbs,” Weissbourd said.
Social media itself is, psychologically speaking, a mixed bag.
The social maelstrom of Instagram drives some teens into depression. For other young people, social media can bring connection. Nonbinary and transgender teens, for example, have reported joy and empowerment in discovering people like themselves through social media.
“I’m thinking about a gay kid in Montana, and he’s completely on his own, and he doesn’t really know anyone he can talk to,” Hoffman said. “But he’s developed a community online, and he’s got connections with gay kids all over the country.”
Other research suggests teens may ultimately be better off with a social media life than without one.
One 2022 study found that teens reported lower self-esteem when their Internet access was poor or nonexistent. The survey also found that adolescent self-esteem suffered when parents wielded strict control over screen time.
“There’s such strong rhetoric out there about the harms associated with these screens, but to be honest, the data is so weak,” said Keith Hampton, a professor of media and information at Michigan State University and co-author of the study.
“All the data supports the notion that adolescents who spend more time using social media spend more time in person with their friends,” he said.
Twenge agrees with that point. But she also notes that teens are spending less overall face time with their friends today than before the social media era.
As a group of friends migrates from mall gatherings to Instagram, Twenge explains, its most sociable member may spend more time than the others in both in-person and virtual get-togethers. But the group still winds up spending less face time together, in the end.
“There’s a big difference between being in the same place with someone and interacting with someone electronically,” she said. “When you’re in the same room with someone in real time, you’re having a conversation, you can see the look on their face, you can touch each other, and all of these things are important for teens.”
U.S. eyes Russia in destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam
Preliminary U.S. intelligence suggests Russia blew a major piece of Ukrainian critical infrastructure.
Michael Weiss and James Rushton – June 6, 2023
The U.S. government “has intelligence that is leaning toward Russia as the culprit” behind the destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant in the early hours of June 6, according to a report by NBC News.
The dam across the Dnipro River, one of the country’s major waterways, was all but gone in video and satellite footage that has emerged over the last 18 hours. The Kakhovka Reservoir has been emptying into the river all day, causing catastrophic flooding downstream in the Ukrainian region of Kherson. Water from the reservoir is also used by the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to cool its reactors. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is at present no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant.
Widespread flooding
A local resident makes her way through a flooded road after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed overnight. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Upward of 40,000 people are now in danger due to floodwaters, according to the Ukrainian government. As many as 70 towns along the Dnipro are at risk, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.
Footage from Kherson showed rooftops floating down the river and other homes half submerged, and flood waters are expected to peak by Wednesday. Tragically, most of the animals at a zoo in the settlement of Nova Kakhovka, which is under Russian occupation, have drowned, according to the zoo’s management.
Even as rescue work continued, noise from Russian artillery could be heard nearby, a grim reminder that a mass ecological disaster is occurring amid the backdrop of war.
Timing of the dam incident
An aerial view of the damage at the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
Ukrainian analysts have linked the alleged Russian dam destruction to the much anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, which may already be in progress. “In the course of the Kharkiv counteroffensive operation, the Russians destroyed the dam over Oskil reservoir,” Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government-funded think tank, told Yahoo News, referring to the Ukrainian military’s recapture of thousands of square miles of terrain in September. “So there is precedent here.”
“Although one reason might be to impede the Ukrainian offensive, the Russians also have established an historical pattern of destroying infrastructure in areas they do not control — such as Kyiv — and areas they must leave behind when retreating, signaling that, if they cannot control it, no one else will be allowed to possess it,” said Dr. Alex Crowther, a retired U.S. Army colonel and strategist. “In short, the Russians did this for spite.”
The Ukrainian government was itself quick to blame Russian occupiers for blowing up the dam, originally built by the Soviets in 1956. Oleksii Danilov, chairman of Ukraine’s National Security Council, attributed the sabotage to Russia’s 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade, suggesting Kyiv was in possession of specific intelligence confirming that claim. In October 2022, a Telegram channel, purportedly belonging to a member of the 205th, outlined plans to mine and undermine the structure, with instructions for local residents in the event of “dam failure.”
Eyewitnesses have also come forward, describing hearing loud bangs at the dam they say indicate the use of large explosives.
‘An outrageous act’
Tetiana, a resident of Kherson, inside her damaged house after the Kakhovka dam was blown up overnight. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Ukraine’s Western partners wasted little time placing blame on Russian forces.
“The destruction of the Kakhovka dam today puts thousands of civilians at risk and causes severe environmental damage,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted hours after the dam was destroyed. “This is an outrageous act, which demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, described the catastrophe as “a new dimension of Russian atrocities.” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, commented: “The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam is an outrageous act of environmental destruction that imperils the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, as well as the natural environment.”
How will the West respond?
The House of Culture in Kherson is partially submerged after the nearby dam was attacked. (Alexey Konovalov/TASS/Handout via Reuters)
Previous large-scale Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have almost always led to significant increases in weapon systems from Western allies.
Most recently, after Russia began its campaign of aerial bombardment of Ukrainian power stations and energy plants in October 2022, the U.S. and other Western nations responded by sending their most advanced air defense systems, such as the Patriot platform, to Kyiv.
The Russian response, meanwhile, started with an unequivocal denial that anything untoward had happened to the Kakhovka dam, then segued into accusations that Ukraine destroyed its own critical infrastructure. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, claimed without evidence that Kyiv was behind this act of apparent sabotage and that it would result in “very severe consequences” for local residents and the environment. Meanwhile, Russia’s Investigative Committee — tantamount to the FBI — said it had launched a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, the Russia-appointed governor of Kherson Oblast, Vladimir Saldo, gave a surreal interview, filmed against the backdrop of Nova Kakhovka, visibly underwater. “Everything is fine in Nova Kakhovka,” he said. “People go about their daily business like any day.”
In destroying Ukraine’s dams, Putin is following in Stalin’s footsteps
Francis Dearnley – June 6, 2023
Murals showing Hitler, Putin and Stalin – ADAM WARZAWA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, seemingly by Russian forces, is being called the largest man-made disaster in Europe since Chernobyl in 1986, unleashing a flood of water across the war zone and putting more than 80 settlements, and 16,000 people, in danger.
Regrettably, the deliberate demolition of dams in war is far from uncommon; this is not the first time Ukraine has suffered so devastatingly. The decision of Stalin’s secret police to blow up the Zaporizhzhia dam in 1941 – only 150 kilometres away from Kakhovka and now the site of the synonymous nuclear power plant – is believed to have killed somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 people. It was motivated by the same intention: to stall the enemy advance. Indeed, the timing of Tuesday’s attack on Kakhovka can be no coincidence, impeding the Ukrainian counter-offensive just 24 hours after Kyiv began probing various points across the front.
In 1941, the demolition was apocalyptic. “People were screaming for help. Cows were mooing, pigs were squealing. People were climbing on trees”, one survivor recalled. Early reports suggest there are few human casualties from Tuesday’s attack, but thousands of animals will have perished, and the environmental consequences will be felt for decades.
There are other examples of manmade floods intended to impede an army. Perhaps the most destructive and long-lasting was in 1938, when the Chinese destroyed dykes along the Yellow River as part of their scorched-earth strategy to hamper the Japanese. It worked, but at a terrible cost: somewhere between 30,000-90,000 drowned, with as many as half a million dying from its after-effects, especially famine. The dykes were not repaired until 1947.
Another largely forgotten example took place during the Battle of the Yser in the early months of the First World War. The Belgians resisting the German invasion opened the sluices at Nieuwpoort, creating a one mile-wide floodplain which contributed to Belgium holding onto a corner of the country even when 95 per cent of it had fallen. More importantly, it brought a close to the Race to the Sea, fatally disrupting the German’s Schlieffen Plan and arguably saving the British and French armies from a decisive defeat.
Yet the destruction of dams not only disrupts troop movements. It can play a crucial psychological role, most famously in the Dambusters Raid of May 1943, when the Möhne and Edersee dams were breached by British bombers and the Ruhr valley flooded. Revisionists argue its military impact was negligible, but the morale boost for the Allies was huge, horrifying the Germans as to the damage relatively few British aircraft could wreak.
Russia’s apparent attack on the Kakhovka dam has shocked the people of Ukraine and troubled Europe. Perhaps the biggest psychological consequence will be a reassessment of just how far the Russians are willing to go to achieve victory. Many argued for months that the possibility of Putin triggering a nuclear incident was far-fetched. Not now. Indeed, Russian forces had already recklessly shelled the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia; yesterday they risked a major incident if the plant’s cooling system had failed due to flooding.
The EU has accused Russia of “barbaric aggression”, yet the fact is Volodymyr Zelensky warned back in October that the Russians had mined the dam and called for international observers to attend the site. Nothing was done. He must wonder how many more times the West can be shocked by Russia’s strategy before they consider his analysis to be realistic, not fear-mongering, forged from the suffering his country has been forced to endure.
Francis Dearnley is Assistant Comment Editor and one of the presenters of The Telegraph’s daily ‘Ukraine: The Latest’ podcast
It started with a tick bite. How I lost my husband to undiagnosed Lyme disease
Nicole Bell, as told to Genevieve Brown – June 5, 2023
It was 2016 when I got a call at work. It was the house alarm company. My husband, Russ, who picked up the kids from school each day, had arrived home and wasn’t able to turn the blaring alarm off.
I got home later that day and everything was fine. But I noticed Russ asking repetitive questions. Forgetting what time to pick up the kids. And he couldn’t remember the alarm code — the same one we had used for years.
In the time leading up to the alarm company incident, things between Russ and me had not been good. He was moody and irritable. He was angry. I thought we were headed toward divorce. But now I know those were the very first signs of tick-borne illness.
Bell describes her late husband as
Because Russ was very outdoorsy, and because I knew he had ticks on him over the years, Lyme disease was actually one of the first things that came to mind when I started looking into the symptoms of my husband’s cognitive decline. The thing was, though, that Russ had never had a fever or a rash associated with ticks that we knew of, and when tested with the standard Lyme screener had come up negative.
We also got bloodwork from an integrative medicine doctor to take a deeper look at what was happening with Russ. It showed nothing out of the ordinary. Tick-borne illnesses, like Lyme, fell off my radar. Russ went to a neurologist for cognitive testing and his decline was far worse than I even suspected. He wasn’t able to do simple math patterns that my 6-year-old could easily do at the time. He was a computer scientist and electrical engineer. I was flabbergasted. The neurologist said he either had a stroke event or Alzheimer’s.
An MRI showed no stroke event. A PET scan showed severe deficiencies in metabolism patterns, consistent with late-stage Alzheimer’s. He was 60.
Bell published a memoir about her husband’s story on what would have been his 65th birthday. (Courtesy Nicole Bell)
Early onset Alzheimer’s, however, is not typically a quick decline without a genetic component, which Russ didn’t have. In Russ’ case, though, the decline was swift. But after about nine months, I accepted the diagnosis. That is, until I spoke to my brother, Scott, whose wife had been suffering from chronic illness for years and had just been diagnosed with multiple tick-borne illnesses. Scott told me, “I think this is what’s going on with Russ.”
Russ was tested with a PCR test, the same way we now test for COVID-19, which looked for the organism itself rather than the antibodies. Russ had three tick-borne infections — the three Bs as they’re known — Borrelia (otherwise known as Lyme disease), Bartonella and Babesia. (Editor’s note: While Bell does not know which tick-borne infection caused the illness resembling Alzheimer’s, Elizabeth Landsverk, M.D., who specializes in the treatment of dementia and Alzheimer’s, told TODAY that untreated Lyme disease can cause brain fog and neurological symptoms that mirror the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, as well as “toxic scarring to the brain.”)
We had wasted 15 months. Still, there was hope. Infections, at least, can be treated. So that’s what we did. And the next year can only be described as a roller coaster. Antibiotics would help, and then Russ would come off them and decline. Some of the more well-known symptoms of Lyme came up — joint pain, swelling in his knees. But cognitively, he continued to decline.
After 18 months of treatment, I made the most difficult decision of my life — to move Russ to a respite care facility. It was three years ago this month.
For a time, Russ was OK. He had socialization I couldn’t provide at home. He was receiving good medical care. I visited him almost every day and helped with showering and things of that nature. It went on that way until March 2020. Then COVID hit, and I couldn’t see Russ for six months.
I finally did see him because he was moved to a hospital because of a seizure. It was now September of 2020. He had lost so much weight. He was hunched over. The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant. People asked if I thought he recognized me. I didn’t think so. Russ passed away in January of 2022.
Throughout this journey, I journaled. I had lost my partner, the person I communicated with every day. Journaling my experiences was an outlet. It was during 2020 that I wrote my memoir, “What Lurks in the Woods.” It was published on Oct. 23, 2021 — Russ’s 65th birthday. I wanted to honor his life, but also to raise awareness for tick-borne illnesses. They don’t always present in a typical manner, and if you or a loved one is experiencing sudden mood changes, anxiety or depression, I encourage you to find a Lyme-literate doctor through the database of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). I wish I had done that sooner.
The private armies Putin has unleashed on Ukraine may lead to his downfall
Colonel Richard Kemp – June 4, 2023
Yevgeny Prigozhin holding a Russian national flag in front of his soldiers holding Wagner Group’s flags in Bakhmut
Putin’s misadventures in Ukraine could lead to violent turmoil across Russia and the regime’s end. In recent weeks we have seen humiliating drone strikes against Moscow, in the Bryansk and Klimovsky regions, Krasnodar district and Belgorod city. There has been shelling of the Belgorod region, intensified this week and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people.
In a major blow to Putin’s authority earlier in May, the Russian Volunteer Corps and Freedom of Russia Legion launched a two-day raid across the Ukrainian border into Belgorod. This was followed in the past few days by an even more powerful ground operation. The Russian MoD reported that on Thursday, two motorised infantry companies with tanks were attacking again in Belgorod, four miles from the border with Ukraine. It had to use fighter jets and artillery on its own soil to counter them.
These attacks are hugely significant: they represent the first external military ground offensive on to mainland Russian territory since the Second World War. They might well have consequences to match.
Despite Kyiv’s denials that it was involved in either of the Belgorod raids, the intention now may be to sow panic inside Russia, forcing Moscow to pull forces away from the front line as the Ukrainian counter-offensive builds. If such raids continue they could have a more fundamental effect, perhaps creating even greater discontent among the people in the border regions who have already suffered more than most Russian civilians from Putin’s war. Taken together with the failures so far of the Russian army and the growing harm to the country’s economy, this could set off a chain reaction that spreads to Moscow itself.
Putin, once thought of as a strategic genius, has unwittingly prepared the ground for what might follow. As he sought to privatise recruitment to fuel his war rather than impose another wave of forced mobilisation, private armies have snowballed. The biggest is Wagner, active in Ukraine since 2014 and now grown into a monster. Hot on its heels is Kadyrovtsy, the private army of infamous Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It is a large force notorious for brutal war crimes in Ukraine and about to return to front-line combat there.
Many other private armies have been set up by former military officers, often made up of ex-servicemen, funded, equipped and trained by state resources. Remarkably to the non-Russian mind, even defence minister Sergei Shoigu has one of his own, Patriot. There are corporate militias as well, such as that belonging to the energy giant Gazprom, which has battalions fighting at the front.
Oligarchs including Gennady Timchenko and Oleg Deripaska have created their own combat units or attached themselves to existing private military companies. Tellingly, as Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin himself remarked: “Everyone is saying that there will be a power struggle at some point, and everyone needs their own army.”
The Kremlin has also instructed authorities in each region to create their own volunteer battalions to fight in Ukraine, with allegiance to the local leadership rather than Moscow. Some of these men will return home disillusioned and embittered.
Putin sees these armies as instruments to consolidate his own power and that of the Russian state, not as political players in their own right. But when the chips are down he may not be able to call the shots. Prigozhin, for example, is a politically ambitious and volatile man. Although he has declared war on the general staff and Moscow’s “elites”, he has remained loyal to Putin. It might not take much for that to change. He is unlikely to balk at using the forces at his disposal to manoeuvre for power and influence when he feels the time is right.
Following Bakhmut, Prigozhin’s militia is now pulling back from the front line to its bases across Russia. That leaves a large group of armed, battle-hardened men, including many convicted criminals, at their leader’s command and poised for the fray.
Alongside – or opposed to them – are many others, not just the private military companies and regional battalions, but also the plethora of armed organs of the government, including the FSB, GRU and Defence Ministry. Then there is the army itself, whose ranks include large numbers of abused, humiliated and disaffected soldiers, commanders and even generals. If Putin cannot repel the growing threats to his own homeland and at the same time secure some kind of victory in Ukraine, it is possible to envisage the Russian establishment falling apart into a violent mêlée of opposing armed camps.
Perhaps we should not wish this bleak fate on the people of the Russian Federation, but we should certainly wish to see the back of their current leadership with the industrialized murder, mayhem and misery they have inflicted and, given the chance, will continue to inflict. If that is hastened by cross-border raids, artillery barrages and drone strikes we, like Ukraine, should welcome them, rather than, like the hand-wringing Joe Biden, deplore them. At least our Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, has the resolve to make clear his support for Ukraine’s right to defend itself by hitting out against the Russian aggressors beyond its borders.
Ukrainian army destroys Russia’s mainland route to Crimea with blasts in Berdyansk and Melitopol
June 4, 2023
Explosion in Russian-occupied Berdyansk. Posted on June 2, 2023
“It’s the southern direction. It is to be considered a possible target of the Ukrainian counteroffensive (as we still don’t know what is going to happen),” he told Radio NV.
The other reason to strike military targets in occupied Zaporizhzya and Kherson oblasts.
“Berdyansk is a port city. As Melitopol and other settlements to the south, it is a part of the so-called Russian mainland route to Crimea which is used alongside the Crimean Bridge for munition supply. They need to hit key points (of the route) in order to destroy it. That is happening now.
“Explosions were heard in the Crimean city and logistical hub of Dzankoy in the northern part of the peninsula.”it’s a railway junction which has been affected before. As it was today during an overnight attack,” Popovych said, explaining that the attack was a part of a Ukrainian campaign in the south.
Ukraine is ready to launch a counter-offensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
The demining operations are carried out manually at night to avoid revealing potential positions from which the offensive will be launched.
The former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, general David Petraeus, predicted the Ukrainian counter-offensive to be very powerful with “army-wide effect.”
