Here’s a look at the Boston Marathon, run from Hopkinton to Boston. The finish line is in front of the Boston Public Library on Boylston Street.
April 15, 2024 – The 128th Boston Marathon is scheduled to take place.
April 17, 2023 – The 127th Boston Marathon takes place. The winners are Evans Chebet of Kenya in the men’s division and Hellen Obiri of Kenya in the women’s division.
The race is organized by the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.), and the principal sponsor is John Hancock Financial Services.
Participants must be 18 years of age on the day of the race and must meet certain time standards to qualify for their age group.
Visually impaired runners are allowed to participate, but they must have a five hour qualifying time. There are also categories for wheelchairs and handcycles.
Runners come from all over the world to participate.
Best Men’s Open time – 2:03:02 – Geoffrey Mutai, Kenya – (2011) Best Women’s Open time – 2:19:59 – Buzunesh Deba, Ethiopia – (2014) Best Men’s Wheelchair time – Marcel Hug, Switzerland, 1:18:04 (2017) Best Women’s Wheelchair time – Manuela Schar, Switzerland – 1:28:17 (2017)
April 19, 1897 – The first marathon is run and is 24.8 miles. The winner is John J. McDermott of New York, with a time of 2:55:10. There are 18 entrants, 15 starters and 10 finishers.
1897-1968 – The race is run on April 19, Patriots’ Day, a holiday commemorating the start of the Revolutionary War only recognized in Massachusetts and Maine. In those years that April 19 falls on a Sunday, the race is held the next day, Monday the 20th.
1918 – A military relay is held instead of the marathon due to the United States’ involvement in World War I.
April 19, 1924 – The race is lengthened to 26.2 miles to conform to Olympic standards.
April 17, 1967 – Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to receive a number to run in the Boston Marathon. She enters the race under the name K.V. Switzer and wears baggy clothes to disguise herself. Females are not officially allowed to enter until 1972.
1969 – Patriots’ Day is changed to the third Monday in April, so the date of the race is also changed.
1975 – A wheelchair division is added to the marathon. Bob Hall finishes the race in two hours and 58 minutes in a wheelchair.
April 15, 1996 – The 100th Boston Marathon is run. There are a record 35,868 finishers.
May 15, 2015 –Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is sentenced to death for his role in the 2013 marathon bombings. In July 2020, an appeals court vacates Tsarnaev’s death sentence and rules he should be given a new penalty trial. In March 2021, the Supreme Court agrees to review the lower court opinion that vacated Tsarnaev’s death sentence. The Supreme Court upholds his death sentence in March 2022. In January 2023, attorneys for Tsarnaev request his death sentence be vacated during a federal appeals court hearing.
October 26, 2016 – Three-time winner Rita Jeptoo of Kenya, loses her 2014 title and record for the fastest women’s finish ever (2:18:57), as part of a ruling on her two-year ban for doping.
July 22, 2011 – Her wedding dress is put on display at Buckingham Palace.
January 5, 2012 – Announces the four charities she will support as a patron: the Art Room, which helps disadvantaged children express themselves through art; the National Portrait Gallery, which houses a famous collection of royal paintings and photographs; East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices, which helps children with life-threatening conditions; and Action on Addiction, which assists those with addiction issues.
March 19, 2012 – Gives her first official public address at East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice facility in Ipswich, England.
September 2012 – The French magazine Closer runs photographs of the Duchess privately sunbathing topless. The pictures also run in the Irish Daily Star newspaper.
September 17, 2012 – The Duchess and William file a complaint in France against the photographer who took the topless sunbathing pictures. They are seeking damages and would like to prevent further publication of the photos. The French magazine Closer, the Irish Daily Star and the Italian magazine Chi have each published some of the topless photos.
December 3, 2012 – The royal household announces that the Duchess is pregnant. According to the announcement, she is admitted to hospital with acute morning sickness.
June 18, 2021 – The Duchess launches The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. In a video announcing the center’s creation, the duchess says the goal is to “raise awareness of why the first five years of life are just so important for our future life outcomes.”
March 11, 2024 – Apologizes for an edited official photograph that was recalled by a number of international news agencies over concerns it had been manipulated. Catherine says she is sorry for “any confusion” caused by the image after her “experiment” with photo editing. The photograph, released to mark Mother’s Day in the UK, was the first official picture of Catherine since she underwent abdominal surgery in January.
“While many women obtain medication abortion from a clinic or their OB-GYN, others obtain the pills on their own to self-induce or self-manage their abortion,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.
“A growing body of research indicates that self-managed abortion is safe and effective,” he said.
Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone, which is needed for a pregnancy to continue. The drug isapproved to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks’ gestation, which is “70 days or less since the first day of the last menstrual period,” according to the FDA.
In a medication abortion, a second drug, misoprostol, is taken within the next 24 to 48 hours. Misoprostol causes the uterus to contract, creating cramping and bleeding. Approved for use in other conditions, such as preventing stomach ulcers, the drug has been available at pharmacies for decades.
Together, the two drugs are commonly known as the “abortion pill,” which is now used in more than half of the abortions in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
“Some people do this because they cannot access a clinic — particularly in states with legal restrictions on abortion — or because they have a preference for self-care,” said Grossman, who is also the director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research group that evaluates the pros and cons of reproductive health policies and publishes studies on how abortion affects a woman’s health.
What happens during a medication abortion? To find out, CNN spoke with Grossman. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
CNN: What is the difference between a first-trimester medication abortion and a vacuum aspiration in terms of what a woman experiences?
Dr. Daniel Grossman: A vacuum aspiration is most commonly performed under a combination of local anesthetic and oral pain medications or local anesthetic together with intravenous sedation, or what is called conscious sedation.
An injection of local anesthetic is given to the area around the cervix, and the cervix is gently dilated or opened up. Once the cervix is opened, a small straw-like tube is inserted into the uterus, and a gentle vacuum is used to remove the pregnancy tissue. Contrary to what some say, if the procedure is done before nine weeks or so,there’s nothing in the tissue that would be recognizable as a part of an embryo.
The aspiration procedure takes just a couple of minutes. Then the person is observed for one to two hours until any sedation has worn off. We also monitor each patient for very rare complications, such as heavy bleeding.
A medication abortion is a more prolonged process. After taking the pills, bleeding and cramping can occur over a period of days. Bleeding is typically heaviest when the actual pregnancy is expelled, but that bleeding usually eases within a few hours. On average people continue to have some mild bleeding for about two weeks or so, which is a bit longer than after a vacuum aspiration.
Nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, diarrhea and headache can occur after using the abortion pill, and everyone who has a successful medication abortion usually reports some pain.
In fact, the pain of medication abortion can be quite intense. In the studies that have looked at it, the average maximum level of pain that people report is about a seven to eight out of 10, with 10 being the highest. However, people also say that the pain can be brief, peaking just as the pregnancy is being expelled.
The level of cramping and pain can depend on the length of the pregnancy as well as whether or not someone has given birth before. For example, a medical abortion at six weeks or less gestation typically has less pain and cramping than one performed at nine weeks. People who have given birth generally have less pain.
CNN: What can be done to help with the pain of a medication abortion?
Grossman: There are definitely things that can be used to help with the pain. Research has shown that ibuprofenis better than acetaminophen for treating the pain of medication abortion. We typically advise people to take 600 milligrams every six hours or so as needed.
Some people take tramadol, a narcotic analgesic, or Vicodin, which is a combination of acetaminophen and hydrocodone. Recent research I was involved in found medications like tramadol can be helpful if taken prophylactically before the pain starts.
Another successful regimen that we studied combined ibuprofen with a nausea medicine called metoclopramide that also helped with pain. Other than ibuprofen, these medications require a prescription.
Another study found that a TENS device, which stands for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator, helps with the pain of medication abortion. It works through pads put on the abdomen that stimulate the nerves through mild electrical shocks, thus interfering with the pain signals. That’s something people could get without a prescription.
Pain can be an overlooked issue with medication abortion because, quite honestly, as clinicians, we’re not there with patients when they are in their homes going through this. But as we’ve been doing more research on people’s experiences with medication abortion, it’s become quite clear that pain control is really important. I think we need to do a better job of treating the pain and making these options available to patients.
CNN: Are there health conditions that make the use of a medication abortion unwise?
Grossman: Undergoing a medication abortion can be dangerous if the pregnancy is ectopic, meaning the embryo is developing outside of the uterus. It’s rare, happening in about two out ofevery 100 pregnancies — and it appears to be even rarer among people seeking medication abortion.
People who have undergone previous pelvic, fallopian tube or abdominal surgery are at higher risk of an ectopic pregnancy, as are those with a history of pelvic inflammatory disease. Certain sexually transmitted infections can raise risk, as does smoking, a history of infertility and use of infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).
If a person is on anticoagulant or blood thinning drugs or has a bleeding disorder, a medication abortion is not advised. The long-term use of steroids is another contraindication for using the abortion pill.
Anyone using an intrauterine device, or IUD, must have it removed before taking mifepristone because it may be partially expelled during the process, which can be painful.
People with chronic adrenal failure or who have inherited a rare disorder called porphyria are not good candidates.
CNN: Are there any signs of trouble a woman should watch for after undergoing a medication abortion?
Grossman: It can be common to have a low-grade fever in the first few hours after taking misoprostol, the second drug in a medication abortion. If someone has a low-grade fever — 100.4 degrees to 101 degrees Fahrenheit — that lasts more than four hours, or has a high fever of over 101 degrees Fahrenheit after taking the medications, they do need to be evaluated by a health care provider.
Heavy bleeding, which would be soaking two or more thick full-size pads an hour for two consecutive hours, or a foul-smelling vaginal discharge should be evaluated as well.
One of the warning signs of an ectopic pregnancy is severe pelvic pain, particularly on one side of the abdomen. The pain can also radiate to the back. Another sign is getting dizzy or fainting, which could indicate internal bleeding. These are all very rare complications, but it’s wise to be on the lookout.
We usually recommend that someone having a medication abortion have someone with them during the first 24 hours after taking misoprostol or until the pregnancy has passed. Many people specifically choose to have a medication abortion because they can be surrounded by a partner, family or friends.
Most people know that the abortion is complete because they stop feeling pregnant, and symptoms such as nausea and breast tenderness disappear, usually within a week of passing the pregnancy. A home urine pregnancy test may remain positive even four to five weeks after a successful medication abortion, just because it takes that long for the pregnancy hormone to disappear from the bloodstream.
If someone still feels pregnant, isn’t sure if the pregnancy fully passed or has a positive pregnancy test fiveweeks after taking mifepristone, they need to be evaluated by a clinician.
People should know that they can ovulate as soon as two weeks after a medication abortion. Most birth control options can be started immediately after a medication abortion.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, sentenced to death in the Boston Marathon bombings, has been moved to Supermax, the nation’s most secure federal prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
He had been held in USP Florence, a separate prison in Florence, Colorado.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons was in charge of determining whether Tsarnaev was placed in Supermax or death row at the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, to wait out the lengthy appeals process.
Supermax is home to criminals such as Ramzi Yousef, who plotted the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center; 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui; “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski; and Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber.”
Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Eat, But Better: Mediterranean Style. Our eight-part guide shows you a delicious expert-backed eating lifestyle that will boost your health for life.
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Children and teens in the United States now get more than two-thirds of their calories from ultraprocessed foods, an analysis of almost two decades worth of data has found.
Ultraprocessed foods – such as frozen pizza, microwave meals, packaged snacks and desserts – accounted for 67% of calories consumed in 2018, up from 61% in 1999, according to research published in the medical journal JAMA Tuesday. The study analyzed the diet of 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide.
While industrial processing can keep food fresher longer and allow some foods to be fortified with vitamins, it modifies food to change its consistency, taste and color to make it more palatable, cheap and convenient – using processes that aren’t used in home-cooked meals. They are also aggressively marketed by the food industry.
“Some whole grain breads and dairy foods are ultra-processed, and they’re healthier than other ultra-processed foods,” said senior author Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition and cancer epidemiologist at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.
“But many ultra-processed foods are less healthy, with more sugar and salt, and less fiber, than unprocessed and minimally processed foods, and the increase in their consumption by children and teenagers is concerning.”
The information on children’s diets used in the study was collected annually by trained interviewers who asked the children or an adult acting on their behalf to detail what they had eaten in the preceding 24 hours. The information was gathered as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Between 1999 and 2018, the proportion of healthier unprocessed or minimally processed foods decreased from 28.8% to 23.5% of consumed calories, the study found.
The remaining percentage of calories came from moderately processed foods such as cheese and canned fruits and vegetables, and flavor enhancers such as sugar, honey, maple syrup and butter, the study said.
The biggest increase in calories came from ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat meals such as takeout and frozen pizza and burgers: from 2.2% to 11.2% of calories, according to the study. The second largest increase came from packaged sweet snacks and desserts, the consumption of which grew from 10.6% to 12.9%.
The link between child health and ultraprocessed food is complex but one recent study in the United Kingdom found that children who eat more ultraprocessed food are more likely to be overweight or obese as adults.
Experts said the study’s implications for future health were significant given that childhood is a critical period for biological development and forming dietary habits.
“The current food system is structured to promote overconsumption of ultra-processed foods through a variety of strategies, including price and promotions, aggressive marketing, including to youths and specifically Black and Latino youths, and high availability of these products in schools,” wrote Katie Meyer and Lindsey Smith Taillie, both assistant professorsin the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina’ Gillings School of Global Public Health, in a commentary on the study. They were not involved in the research.
There was good news that suggested efforts to tackle consumption of sugary drinks such as soda taxes had been effective: Calories from sugar-sweetened beverages dropped from 10.8% to 5.3% of overall calories.
“We need to mobilize the same energy and level of commitment when it comes to other unhealthy ultra-processed foods such as cakes, cookies, doughnuts and brownies,” said Zhang.
Black, non-Hispanic youths experienced a bigger increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in their diet compared to their White counterparts. The study said it did not assess trends in other racial or ethnic groups because of a lack of nationally representative data. However, it noted that Mexican American youths consume ultraprocessed foods at a consistently lower rate, which authors saidcould reflect more home cooking among Hispanic families.
The education level of parents or family income didn’t have any impact on the consumption of ultraprocessed foods, suggesting that they are commonplace in most children’s diets, the study added.
The authors said their study had some limitations: Asking people to recall what they ate isn’t always an accurate measure of dietary intake. Plus, there is a tendency to under report socially undesirable habits such as consumption of unhealthy food.
In addition, it can be a challenge to accurately classify ultraprocessed food because it requires a full list of ingredients – information unlikely to be given by children answering a questionnaire.
“Better methods for dietary assessment and classification of foods are needed to understand trends and mechanisms of action of ultra-processed food intake,” Mayer and Taillie wrote.
Editor’s Note: Katie Hurley, author of “No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident and Compassionate Girls,” is a child and adolescent psychotherapist in Los Angeles. She specializes in work with tweens, teens and young adults.
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“I have a couple of spots for anyone who wants to lose 20 pounds by the holidays! No diets, exercise, or cravings!”
Ads for dieting and exercise programs like this started appearing in my social media feeds in early October 2022, often accompanied by photos of women pushing shopping carts full of Halloween candy intended to represent the weight they no longer carry with them.
Whether it’s intermittent fasting or “cheat” days, diet culture is spreading wildly, and spiking in particular among young women and girls, a population group who might be at particular risk of social pressures and misinformation.
“My mom is obsessed with (seeing) her Facebook friends losing tons of weight without dieting. Is this even real?” The question came from a teen girl who later revealed she was considering hiring a health coach to help her eat ‘healthier’ after watching her mom overhaul her diet. Sadly, the coaching she was falling victim to is part of a multilevel marketing brand that promotes quick weight loss through caloric restriction and buying costly meal replacements.
Is it real? Yes. Is it healthy? Not likely, especially for a growing teen.
Later that week, a different teen client asked about a clean eating movement she follows on Pinterest. She had read that a strict clean vegan diet is better for both her and the environment, and assumed this was true because the pinned article took her to a health coaching blog. It seemed legitimate. But a deep dive into the blogger’s credentials, however, showed that the clean eating practices they shared were not actually developed by a nutritionist.
And another teen, fresh off a week of engaging in the “what I eat in a day” challenge — a video trend across TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms where users document the food they consume in a particular timeframe — told me she decided to temporarily mute her social media accounts. Why? Because the time she’d spent limited her eating while pretending to feel full left her exhausted and unhappy. She had found the trend on TikTok and thought it might help her create healthier eating habits, but ended up becoming fixated on caloric intake instead. Still, she didn’t want her friends to see that the challenge actually made her feel terrible when she had spent a whole week promoting it.
During any given week, I field numerous questions from tweens and teens about the diet culture they encounter online, out in the world, and sometimes even in their own homes. But as we enter the winter holiday season, shame-based diet culture pressure, often wrapped up with toxic positivity to appear encouraging, increases.
“As we approach the holidays, diet culture is in the air as much as lights and music, and it’s certainly on social media,” said Dr. Hina Talib, an adolescent medicine specialist and associate professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, New York. “It’s so pervasive that even if it’s not targeted (at) teens, they are absorbing it by scrolling through it or hearing parents talk about it.”
Social media isn’t the only place young people encounter harmful messaging about body image and weight loss. Teens are inundated with so-called ‘healthy eating’ content on TV and in popular culture, at school and while engaged in extracurricular or social activities, at home and in public spaces like malls or grocery stores — and even in restaurants.
Instead of learning how to eat to fuel their bodies and their brains, today’s teens are getting the message that “clean eating,” to give just one example of a potentially problematic dietary trend, results in a better body — and, by extension, increased happiness. Diets cutting out all carbohydrates, dairy products, gluten, and meat-based proteins are popular among teens. Yet this mindset can trigger food anxiety, obsessive checking of food labels and dangerous calorie restriction.
An obsessive focus on weight loss, toning muscles and improving overall looks actually runs contrary to what teens need to grow at a healthy pace.
“Teens and tweens are growing into their adult bodies, and that growth requires weight gain,” said Oona Hanson, a parent coach based in Los Angeles. “Weight gain is not only normal but essential for health during adolescence.”
The good news in all of this is that parents can take an active role in helping teens craft an emotionally healthier narrative around their eating habits. “Parents are often made to feel helpless in the face of TikTokers, peer pressure or wider diet culture, but it’s important to remember this: parents are influencers, too,” said Hanson. What we say and do matters to our teens.
Parents and caregivers can model a healthy relationship with food by enjoying a wide variety of foods and trying new recipes for family meals. During the holiday season, when many celebrations can involve gathering around the table, take the opportunity to model shared connections. “Holidays are a great time to remember that foods nourish us in ways that could never be captured on a nutrition label,” Hanson said.
Practice confronting unhealthy body talk
The holiday season is full of opportunities to gather with friends and loved ones to celebrate and make memories, but these moments can be anxiety-producing when nutrition shaming occurs.
When extended families gather for holiday celebrations, it’s common for people to comment on how others look or have changed since the last gathering. While this is usually done with good intentions, it can be awkward or upsetting to tweens and teens.
“For young people going through puberty or body changes, it’s normal to be self-conscious or self-critical. To have someone say, ‘you’ve developed’ isn’t a welcome part of conversations,” cautioned Talib.
Talib suggests practicing comebacks and topic changes ahead of time. Role play responses like, “We don’t talk about bodies,” or “We prefer to focus on all the things we’ve accomplished this year.” And be sure to check in and make space for your tween or teen to share and feelings of hurt and resentment over any such comments at an appropriate time.
Open and honest communication is always the gold standard in helping tweens and teens work through the messaging and behaviors they internalize. When families talk about what they see and hear online, on podcasts, on TV, and in print, they normalize the process of engaging in critical thinking — and it can be a really great shared connection between parents and teens.
“Teaching media literacy skills is a helpful way to frame the conversation,” says Talib. “Talk openly about it.”
She suggests asking the following questions when discussing people’s messaging around diet culture:
● Who are they?
● What do you think their angle is?
● What do you think their message is?
● Are they a medical professional or are they trying to sell you something?
● Are they promoting a fitness program or a supplement that they are marketing?
Talking to tweens and teens about this throughout the season — and at any time — brings a taboo topic to the forefront and makes it easier for your kids to share their inner thoughts with you.
Micromanaging how your child eats candy this Halloween might be more of a trick than a treat, experts say.
Once you’re a grown-up raising kids, that bag full of candy might be the scariest part of Halloween — whether it’s concern about a potential sugar rush, worries of parenting perfectionism or diet culture anxiety.
“It makes sense to be scared, because we’ve been taught to be scared,” said Oona Hanson, a parent coach based in Los Angeles. “Sugar is sort of the boogeyman in our current cultural conversation.”
But micromanaging your child’s candy supply can backfire, leading to an overvaluing of sweets, binge behavior or unhealthy restriction in your child, said Natalie Mokari, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Charlotte, North Carolina.
As stressful as it may be to see your child faced with more candy in one night than they would eat in an entire year, the best approach may be to lean into the joy, she added.
“They are only in that age where they want to trick or treat for just a small glimpse of time — it’s so short-lived,” Mokari said. “Let them enjoy that day.”
Experts aren’t suggesting kids have sugar all day every day. The American Heart Association and the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee — groups charged with providing science-based recommendations every five years — have recommended lower daily levels of sugar. Too much added sugar has been associated with cardiovascular disease and lack of essential nutrients.
But a healthy relationship with food has balance, and you can keep your kids’ diets full of nutrients while allowing them to eat sweets, Mokari said.
She and Hanson shared some tips on how to relieve candy-eating stress this Halloween.
Some stress over limiting children’s Halloween candy may reflect the adults’ relationship with food.
If you look at the candy in your child’s bag and worry that you will binge on it or get anxiety about weight, it may be a good idea to talk to a mental health professional or dietitian about reworking your own relationship with food, Mokari said.
It is especially important because what we say about food in front of children can make a big impact on the relationship they have with it and their bodies, Hanson said.
A passing comment of “I really need to work out after all that sugar” or “I can’t have that in the house — I’m going to get so fat” can have long-lasting impacts of overeating or under eating, she said.
Should you trade out the candy?
Many communities have their own traditions to encourage kids to give up their Halloween loot. Maybe it’s making a “donation” to dentists for a reward or switching candy with the Switch Witch for a toy instead.
There is a place for weeding out candy after Halloween for some children, Hanson said.
If your children just aren’t excited by the candy, they may ask to trade it for toys, Mokari said. Or if they have allergies or aversions to certain candies, they may welcome an opportunity to get rid of what they can’t or don’t want to eat, Hanson said.
But if your child looks at the full candy bag with glee, enforcing a reduction could turn the sweets even more valuable in their minds and heighten a fixation that may not have been there initially, Mokari said.
Should Halloween be a candy free-for-all? Maybe, Mokari said.
Just as adults find themselves craving whatever they have outlawed for themselves on a restrictive diet, kids who have their candy highly managed may start to value it more than they would have otherwise, she said.
“The forbidden Twix tastes the sweetest,” Hanson said.
Enjoying different foods on different occasions is part of a healthy relationship with food — so try to relax and lean into the holiday, Mokari said. And remember that though they may be breaking into a lot of candy on Halloween, that isn’t how they always eat, she added.
If you are worried about a candy binge in the days following, make a plan with your child to divvy up the treats in ways that are exciting, Mokari said. Maybe that means packing a few pieces up with lunch or adding them to an afternoon snack with a few more food groups, she added.
It can be difficult to relax around a pound of chocolate, however, when you are worried about the negative impact that candy might have on your child.
Maybe it’s a stomachache from eating too much. It isn’t the worst outcome, Hanson said. That upset stomach can be an important lesson in how to listen to what their body needs and know when they’ve had too much of something that tastes good, she added.
Maybe you worry about a sugar rush. Well, sugar affects everyone differently, and some kids might seem to get a boost, while others grow irritable, Mokari said. But both will likely end in a crash.
And either way, kids will likely be extra enthusiastic on Halloween, Hanson said. Even without all the sugar, she said to remember it’s exciting for them.
Jane Chen is racing against the clock, again. She knows well how every minute that passes is crucial for a new life that emerges prematurely into the world in the most vulnerable of circumstances — in the midst of war, in the aftermath of a natural disaster or in a remote village far away from a medical center.
Embrace, based in San Francisco, California, makes low-cost portable baby incubators that don’t require a stable electricity supply.
The Embrace incubator resembles a sleeping bag, but for a baby. It’s a three-part system consisting of an infant sleeping bag, a removable and reusable pouch filled with a wax-likephase-change material which maintains a constant temperature of 98 degrees F for up to eight hours at a stretch when heated, and a heater to reheat the pouch when it cools.
Chen said the pouch requires just a 30-minute charge to be fully ready for reuse. “This is really ideal for settings that have intermittent access to electricity, which is a lot of places where we work in the world,” she said.
The stats are startling to Chen, who is bracing for a swell of need there. She’s learned how access to incubators becomes critical in conflict areas through the organization’s efforts to donate 3,000 Embrace incubators with the help of UNICEF to doctors and hospitals in Ukraine where a war with Russia rages on. The nonprofit also sent the devices to Turkey and Syria after devastating earthquakes there earlier this year.
Medical experts point to elevated stress as a potentially serious factor that could trigger preterm deliveries in these situations.
“There’s been plenty of data that show stress not only causes preterm birth but also low-birth-weight,” said Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell, an obstetrician-gynecologist and associate professor with Ochsner Health in New Orleans, Louisiana
In general, babies born preterm or before 37 weeks, have difficulty maintaining their body temperature, said Bell. “Specifically, if we are speaking of disasters…. in my own experience of being here during [Hurricane] Katrina, in those very stressful situations, we have seen an uptick during those times in preterm birth and low birth weight,” she said.
Because preterm and low-birth-weight babies don’t have as much body fat, it’s harder for them to maintain their body temperature, which for a healthy baby is between 96.8 and 99.5 degrees F, she said. “The lower it is below that, the more oxygen and energy they need to stay warm. So they would have use even more energy.”
In both cases of preterm and low-birth-weight infants, quick and constant access to an incubator is vital.
In Ukraine, Chen said doctors have indicated that preterm births are on the rise across the country at the same time that intermittent power outages have made the use of conventional incubators very challenging. Several doctors and nurses, she said, also must consistently take babies and mothers to basement shelters as bombings continue.
Dr. Halyna Masiura, a general practitioner, is experiencing this first hand at the Berezivka Primary Healthcare Center in the Odesa region of Ukraine.
“Half of the babies being born in this area need more care,” Masiura told CNN. “They are being born early and with low birth weight. When air raids happen, we all have to go into shelters.” Masiura said her staff members have been relying on donated Embrace incubators for babies born with a birth weight of 2 kg (4 lbs) and up.
In Gaza, where half of the overall population are children, access to medical aid, food, water, fuel, electricity and other normal daily necessities of life have evaporated in recent days amid sustained Israeli bombardment.
Over the weekend, after days of a complete siege of the exclave by Israel, the first trucks reported to be carrying medicine and medical supplies, food and water entered Gaza on Saturday.
For Chen, the most pressing problem is to figure out how to get the incubators to where they are most needed on the ground there. “As we did for Ukraine, we’re looking for partnerships with organizations that can get into the region effectively and also for funding,” she said. As a nonprofit, Chen said donations are sought through GoFundMe and a mix of individual donors, foundations and corporate donations.
Her team is working on a partnership with a humanitarian relief organization to respond in Gaza. “We’re also reaching out to organizations in Israel to assess the need for our incubators there,” she added.
A couple of hundred incubators are ready to immediately be sent to Israel and Gaza. Said Chen, “Depending on the need, we would go into production for more. But the big question is, can we get into those areas? We don’t want to ship products and then have them sit there.”
Linus Liang, along with Chen, was among the original team of graduate students at Stanford University who, as part of a class assignment in 2007, were given a challenge to develop a low-cost infant incubator for use in developing countries.
Liang, a software engineer who had already created and sold two gaming companies by then, was intrigued. “This class deliberately brought together people from different disciplines – law, business, medical school, engineers – to collaborate to solve world problems,” he said.
“Our challenge was that about 20 million premature and low-birth-weight babies are born globally every year,” he said. “Many of them don’t survive, or if they do, they live with terrible health conditions.”
The reasons why came down to factors such as a shortage of expensive conventional incubators or families living far away from medical centers to access quickly for their newborns.
The team formed their company in 2008 and then took a few years to engineer and produce the solution, with Liang and Chen both moving to India for a few years to get it off the ground and market test it there. Chen said the incubators, made in India, underwent rigorous testing and are CE certified, a regulatory standard that a device must meet to be approved for use in the European market and in Asia and Africa.
“We chose that route instead of seeking FDA approval because the need really is outside of the US,” said Liang. The cost per incubator is about $500, including cost of the product, training, distribution, shipping, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, said Chen. That compares to as much as $30,000 or more per conventional incubators, she said.
Chen estimates some 15,000 babies benefited from Embrace incubators in 2022.
Dr. Leah Seaman has been using Embrace incubators for three years in Zambia. Seaman is a doctor working in pediatrics for the last 12 years, including six years focusing on neonatal care at the Kapiri Mposhi District Hospital in the Central Province of Zambia.
Seaman has also been busy setting up a new specialized neonatal ward in the rural district hospital. “When I first came to Zambia, we had one old incubator that would draw a lot of power,” she said. “We often struggle with power cuts here, so even the voltage can be too low for the incubator to function well. Having enough space to set up conventional incubator was an issue as well.”
So she reached out to Chen in late 2020 after researching solutions that would work for the specific conditions in Zambia.
“In Zambia, 13% of births are premature, and that’s not even including low-birth-weight babies born at term,” she said. “We needed an effective solution.”
Embrace Global donated 15 incubators to the hospital. The new neonatal ward, set to open this month, is built around the Embrace incubator stations with Kangaroo mother care, or skin to skin contact between mother and baby.
“Last year we had 800 babies through the ward and maybe half of them used the Embrace incubator,” said Seaman. “This year we’ve had over 800 already. We haven’t asked for any conventional incubators because from 1 kg (2.2 lbs) and above, the Embrace incubator does the work.”
Because of their heavy use, Seaman said the main challenge with the incubators is making sure that the heating pad is kept warm and reheated in a timely manner. “We’ve built a mattress station where we will be teaching the new mothers how to do that,” she said.
“Why do we keep babies warm? It’s not just a nice thing. It literally does save lives,” Seaman said.
There are countless things about our homeland that Australians miss after moving abroad: the magnificent landscape, the laid-back lifestyle and that endless blue sky, to name a few.
But something as simple as a trip to the supermarket can leave us expats – according to some reports there are an estimated one million of us – feeling desperately homesick.
While some foods are the result of cultural influencessuch as the Chiko Roll,others are uniquely Aussie, like Golden Gaytime ice cream.
And who could forget the most famous of them all, Vegemite, which turns 100 on October 25.
According to the National Museum of Australia, it was invented by chemist CP Callister in Melbourne in 1923 when Australian food manufacturer Fred Walker asked him to create a product similar to British Marmite.
“During the Second World War, Vegemite captured the Australian market. Marmite was unobtainable and the Australian Army supplied Vegemite to its troops,” says the museum in a post highlighting defining symbols of Australia.
“In the 1950s and 60s, despite acquisition by the American company Kraft, Vegemite became a distinctively ‘Australian’ food. It featured in songs, on souvenirs and other popular culture ephemera. Vegemite returned to Australian ownership in 2017 when purchased by dairy company Bega.”
More on this famed brown spread below as we round up the A-Z of Aussie favorites:
Introduced in 1927, this simple dessert is an Australian classic.
Every Australian child grew up singing the famous 1930s jingle: “I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!”
The brand’s “Bertie the Aeroplane” mascot was named after inventor Bert Appleroth – a Sydney tram driver who is said to have made the first batch in his bathtub.
Although now owned by an American company, Aeroplane Jelly has hardly changed since grandma was a girl.
Sure, there are plenty of brands of jelly available worldwide, but when it comes time to make a trifle or treat for the kids, Aussie parents can’t resist this familiar favorite.
An Australian variety of mango that isn’t grown anywhere else in the world, the Bowen is considered the best of the best.
It was first discovered in the northern Queensland town of Bowen, hence the name, but is also known as Kensington Pride.
Bigger and juicer than other varieties, Bowen mangoes account for 80% of mangoes produced in Australia. Some are exported but arguably not enough for the huge number of mango-loving expats.
To Aussies, mangoes are the taste of summer. No matter where we are in the world, the craving for a Bowen mango usually kicks in around Christmas.
This strange little deep-fried snack has been an Australian icon since 1950 when it was first sold by an enterprising boilermaker at football games.
Inspired by Chinese spring rolls, the exact recipe is a little unclear but the combination of meat, veg and some unknown spices hits the spot.
Best consumed with a couple of potato scallops and a soft drink, the Chiko Roll is the go-to for tradieson their lunch break or those 3 a.m. munchies on your way home from the pub.
And the only place to get them is a typical Aussie takeaway joint.
Dukkah – a humble blend of crushed Middle Eastern spices, herbs and nuts from Egypt – has been embraced by Australian foodies.
Its versatility is one of the reasons this condiment is so popular. Dukkah can be used as a garnish, a coating on a piece of meat or mixed with olive oil as a dip for bread.
A number of producers have given the basic dukkah recipe an Australian twist by adding native ingredients, such as lemon myrtle, macadamia nuts, wattleseed, saltbush and pepperleaf.
Expats can find many variations in Australian supermarkets and, fortunately, they’re often sold in packets small enough to sneak into a suitcase.
Australia is one of the few countries where it is considered perfectly acceptable to eat the coat of arms.
Exceptionally lean and gamey, emu and kangaroo tend to be popular among adventurous chefs in Australia.
But when living abroad, neither is easy to get your hands on.
A number of restaurants and specialty butchers offer native meats, but the expense involved in raising emus, in particular, means it’s harder to come by.
Thanks to the influx of Greek and Italian immigrants who brought “proper coffee” to Australia post WWII, we have become a nation of coffee snobs.
The flat white is almost Aussie enough to be called the national drink.
All over the world, café goers and baristas have been confounded as Aussie expats seek out their favorite brew abroad.
With less milk than a latte and without the froth of a cappuccino, the flat white requires special attention (it’s all in the pouring).
One of the first questions asked on expat forums: “Where can I get a decent flat white in this town?”
And it’s usually the first thing ordered at the airport café when back on home soil.
Ice creams feature highly on the most-wanted lists of expats, so it’s only natural we highlight them here.
Milky Paddle Pops and fruity Splice have been popular summer treats since the 1960s.
Likewise, Weis Bars have also been around for more than 60 years, and the mango and cream concoctions invoke memories of lazy summer afternoons.
But the number one, the crème de la crème, is the Golden Gaytime – a vanilla and toffee ice cream coated in chocolate and dipped in crunchy biscuit pieces that has inspired many a replica over the years.
While the burger itself is not an Australian invention, we have added some unconventional ingredients that make the Aussie version truly memorable.
Take the essentials – a beef patty, cheese, tomato, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato sauce (ketchup) – and add beetroot, pineapple, a fried egg and bacon, and you have yourself a massive mouthful.
A quick online search reveals variations that include pickled beetroot and spicy mayo, among others, but the classic Aussie burger celebrates simplicity.
It’s easy enough to replicate at home, but nothing beats the experience of ducking into the local milk-bar (café), or fish and chip shop, to enjoy a burger and a milkshake after a day at the beach.
The Iced VoVo – a biscuit covered in pink fondant, raspberry jam and shredded coconut – is a national treasure.
Produced by Arnott’s since the early 1900s, the iconic treat was mentioned by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his victory speech after the 2007 election, leading to a spike in sales.
“Friends, tomorrow, the work begins. You can have a strong cup of tea if you want, even an Iced VoVo on the way through. But the celebration stops there,” Rudd said.
Not often found for sale overseas, this sweet treat is one to enjoy with a cup of tea when you’re home visiting mum.
Ask any Australian expat what they miss most about ‘home’ and their list is sure to include at least one type of junk food – the absence of which is felt most keenly at kids’ birthday parties.
Allen’s Lollies (candy) have been around for decades and Minties, Fantales, Jaffas, Snakes and the Classic Party Mix remain as popular as ever.
The Aussie public doesn’t seem to mind that they are all owned by Nestlé, which is headquartered in Switzerland.
Fairy Bread – essentially white bread covered in butter and sprinkles – is another party staple that manages to be devoid of nutrition but highly nostalgic.
On return trips to Australia, expats are known to bulk-buy chocolate bars like Cadbury Cherry Ripes, Caramello Koalas and ever-popular Violet Crumbles.
When it comes to savory junk foods, Smith’s Chips, cheesy Twisties and Nobby’s nuts are synonymous with snacking – and nothing produced overseas comes close.
We tend to lump all Middle Eastern meat-and-pita combos under the heading of “kebab” and be done with it.
Of course, there are subtle differences between doner kebabs, shawarma, souvlaki, and gyros – in both ingredients and quality – depending on the source.
Connoisseurs agree that pork gyros (Greek flatbread filled with rotisserie-roasted meat) found in more legitimate venues around Australia are the best.
Consider the sauce dripping down the front of your shirt an essential part of the experience.
Proving that Aussies love anything with jam and coconut, the lamington is the country’s favorite cake.
Named after Lord Lamington, Queensland’s eighth governor, these delightful squares of sponge cake – dipped in chocolate and coated with coconut – have become nothing short of a culinary icon.
There are entire websites (and an Australian Lamington Appreciation Society) devoted to the origins of the lamington and how to make them. Achieving the right ratio of chocolate, jam and coconut is essential.
There are pies, and then there are Aussie meat pies.
Synonymous with afternoons at the football pitch, brands like Four ‘N Twenty and Vili’s have cornered the market for mass-produced pies.
Small local outfits (like the Bemboka Pie Shop and Harry’s Café de Wheels) are institutions in their own right.
Everyone has a favorite type, whether it’s shepherd’s pie, a floater with peas, cheese and bacon or straight-up meat.
The only requirement? The pie is served piping hot with tomato sauce … and eaten one-handed.
With Four ‘N Twenty now exporting to the United States and parts of Asia, some expats can get their pie fix without venturing too far.
Australia’s love affair with Asian food is no secret, and our northern neighbors strongly influence what we put on our plates.
Even Aussies living in Asia admit to craving “Aussie Chinese” or “Aussie Thai” – dishes that give a nod to the original but are not as authentic as the real thing. In fact, some would say they’re potentially even better.
We’d argue the fresh, high-quality produce and quality meats available in Australia bring out the best in Asian dishes.
It’s fair to say that oysters are an acquired taste, but for those with a penchant for the salty mollusks, Australia produces some of the best in the world.
You’ll find two main species in Aussie waters: rock oysters and Pacific.
As bivalves, oysters filter the water around them and their location dictates their flavor.
The pristine waters along Australia’s coastline provide the perfect conditions for oysters, and they rarely need any accompaniment.
There’s nothing quite like eating these slippery snacks straight off the rocks – export just doesn’t do them justice.
The origins of this meringue-based dessert are hotly contested.
Recent research suggests that the Pav didn’t come from the antipodes at all, but nevertheless it remains a firm favorite.
Meringue, cream and plenty of fruit are the key ingredients, though there are no hard and fast rules about what has to be included.
Expats living in tropical climes often bemoan how challenging it is to get a decent meringue, given humid weather can turn it soft and sticky, so Pavlova is a rare treat.
Q: Quandong and quince
Both the native quandong and the foreign quince lend themselves to some of our favorite condiments and desserts.
Similar to a wild peach, the quandong is incredibly versatile and nutritious and can be made into juice, jam, filling for pies or eaten raw.
The quince is a relative of the apple and pear, and while several varieties are grown commercially in Australia the fruit is best known as the star in Maggie Beer’s quince paste – the only way to eat soft cheese.
Bundaberg Rum, to be more specific. Or just Bundy, as it’s known to locals.
This Australian beverage was created way back in 1888 to deal with an oversupply of molasses in Queensland’s sugarcane region.
Producers believe that it’s the sugar, grown in volcanic soil, that gives Bundy its distinct, rich flavor.
The distillery produces 60,000 bottles a day and the factory was the subject of a National Geographic documentary in 2013.
To say this drop has cult status would be an understatement.
There are so many foods starting with S – smashed avocado, SAO biscuits, sausages – that could represent the land down under.
But Australia’s best produce comes from the sea and expats fondly reminisce about mornings spent at the fish markets picking up the catch of the day before special occasions.
While we’re known to “throw a shrimp on the barbie” there are some creatures that are far more popular.
Barramundi, Balmain or Moreton Bay bugs, abalone, and of course, prawns are just some of the native seafood worth queuing for.
Technically a junk food, Tim Tam biscuits are so famous, so overwhelmingly popular, that they deserve their own spot on this list.
The original Tim Tams are the best: A chocolate-coated sandwich of two malted chocolate biscuits with chocolate cream filling.
Arnott’s, the manufacturers, now export to more than 40 countries around the world, so you can get your fix whether you’re skiing the slopes of Niseko, in Japan, or catching rays on a Tahitian beach.
Uncle Tobys began producing oats way back in 1893. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, when convenience foods started hitting the shelves, that they developed their now famous muesli bars.
The ultimate lunchbox treat or after-school snack, kids had the luxury of choosing not only the flavor, but also the texture.
Many a playground war has been fought over which was best – crunchy or chewy. For the record, we’re firmly in the crunchy camp.
These days the range has grown to include yoghurt and choc-chip toppings. There’s even a lamington flavor.
No round-up of Aussie foods would be complete without this ubiquitous salty brown spread, which turns 100 on October 25.
Twenty million jars of Vegemite are sold each year – that’s one for every Australian citizen.
Now owned by Bega Cheese, there was great joy when the icon returned to Australian ownership several years ago.
No one else quite understands the appeal of our favorite toast topping.
For those living in countries where it’s not yet exported, Vegemite comes in massive 560 gram jars and travel-sized tubes.
While there are similar cereals available around the world, there’s nothing quite like “Australia’s favorite breakfast.”
These small biscuits made from wholegrain wheat are occasionally available in supermarkets overseas, but they generally sell out pretty quickly.
Aussie mums have been known to stock up on them on trips to the motherland.
Best eaten with a little bit of sugar, some chopped banana and a lot of milk, Weet-Bix is promoted as family-friendly health food. But we’d love them even if they weren’t good for us.
Another product of sunny Queensland, XXXX (pronounced four-ex) originated in Victoria in 1878 before moving north, where it is still produced today.
XXXX has endeared itself to Aussies as a great brew and a big supporter of sports and small communities.
It’s not widely available outside of Australia, but if you’re an expat in China or Dubai, you may be able to find it in a bar near you.
Small freshwater crustaceans, yabbies are similar to lobsters – both prized as delicacies.
They’re hardy little creatures, and if you grew up on a farm chances are you spent your summers fishing for yabbies in the local creek.
Yabbies have a lot of meat on them, mostly in the tail and claws, and it tastes sweet and succulent when cooked right.
Expats might find these clawed crustaceans in restaurants, but you’re unlikely to find them in your local supermarket.
The zucchini fritter is yet another delicious byproduct of immigration.
Depending on who you ask, they’re either Turkish and served with yogurt, or Greek, in which case they come with tzatziki.
Either way, olive oil should ooze out when you take a bite.
In some parts of Australia, you can find zucchini fritters at a local takeaway,next to the potato scallops and Chiko Rolls.
These fried pancakes may have more health benefits than your average fried snack, but they are no less delicious.
A sweltering heat wave in Australia took its toll on runners in the Sydney Marathon on Sunday, with 26 people taken to the hospital and about 40 treated for heat exhaustion by emergency services.
Large parts of Australia’s southeast, including Sydney, are experiencing a spring heat wave, the national weather bureau said, with temperatures Monday expected to peak at up to 16 degrees Celsius (60 Fahrenheit) above the September average.
The rising heat wave has been building in the country’s outback interior over the weekend and is likely to last until Wednesday across the states of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
The Bureau of Meteorology said it expected several early spring records to be broken over the next few days, calling the heat “very uncommon for September.”
“A reprieve from the heat is not expected until Wednesday onwards, as a stronger cold front crosses the southeastern states,” the weather bureau said in a Facebook post on Sunday.
Temperatures in Sydney’s west are expected to hit 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 Fahrenheit) on Monday before dropping to about 22 degrees Celsius (71 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, the weather bureau forecasts showed.
The heat wave has also elevated the risks of fires, with several regions given “high” fire danger ratings, and authorities urging residents to prepare for bushfires. About 50 grass or bushfires are burning across New South Wales but all have been brought under control.
Australia is bracing for a hotter southern hemisphere spring and summer this year after the possibility of an El Niño strengthened, and the weather forecaster said the weather event could likely develop between September and November.
El Niño can prompt extreme weather events from wildfires to cyclones and droughts in Australia, with authorities already warning of heightened bushfire risks this summer.
A thick smoke haze shrouded Sydney for several days last week as firefighters carried out hazard reduction burns to prepare for the looming bushfire season.
Australia’s hot spring follows a winter with temperatures well above average. Scientists warn that extreme weather events like heat waves are only going to become more common and more intense unless the world stops burning planet-heating fossil fuels.
A surgical tool the size of a dinner plate was found inside a woman’s abdomen 18 months after her baby was delivered by cesarean section, according to a report by New Zealand’s Health and Disability Commissioner.
An Alexis retractor, or AWR, which can measure 17 centimeters (6 inches) in diameter, was left inside the mother’s body following the birth of her baby at Auckland City Hospital in 2020.
The AWR is a retractable cylindrical device with a translucent film used to draw back the edges of a wound during surgery.
The woman suffered months of chronic pain and went for several checkups to find out what was wrong, including X-rays that showed no sign of the device. The pain got so severe that she visited the hospital’s emergency department and the device was discovered on an abdominal CT scan and removed immediately in 2021.
New Zealand’s Health and Disability Commissioner, Morag McDowell, found Te Whatu Ora Auckland – the Auckland District Health Board – in breach of the code of patient rights, in a report released on Monday.
The health board initially claimed that a nurse, who was in her 20s, attending to the woman during the cesarean had failed to exercise reasonable skill and care towards the patient.
“As set out in my report, the care fell significantly below the appropriate standard in this case and resulted in a prolonged period of distress for the woman,” McDowell said. “Systems should have been in place to prevent this from occurring.”
The report explained that the woman had a scheduled C-section because of concerns about placenta previa, a problem during pregnancy when the placenta completely or partially covers the opening of the uterus.
During the operation in 2020, a count of all surgical instruments used in the procedure did not include the AWR, the commission report found. This was possibly “due to the fact that the Alexis Retractor doesn’t go into the wound completely as half of the retractor needs to remain outside the patient and so it would not be at risk of being retained,” a nurse told the commission.
McDowell recommended the Auckland District Health Board make a written apology to the woman and revise its policies by including AWRs as part of the surgical count.
The case has also been referred to the director of proceedings, an official who will determine whether any further action should be taken.
Dr Mike Shepherd, Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand group director of operations for Te Toka Tumai Auckland, apologized for the error in a statement.
“On behalf of our Women’s Health service at Te Toka Tumai Auckland and Te Whatu Ora, I would like to say how sorry we are for what happened to the patient, and acknowledge the impact that this will have had on her and her whānau [family group].”
“We would like to assure the public that incidents like these are extremely rare, and we remain confident in the quality of our surgical and maternity care.”
When Dr. Janelle Cooper, an OB/GYN, pulled into the parking garage of the hospital where she works in Annapolis, Maryland, and walked toward the building, she saw a man running and thought, “Oh, that’s unusual.”
She noticed “a truck that was parked in the middle of the street, and the doors were flung open,” Cooper told CNN.
And then, she heard a cry from the backseat that pieced everything together.
“I’d know those screams anywhere,” Cooper said.
The running man was the grandfather of Elsa Antunez. He had rushed her to the Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center.
He stopped the truck in the parking garage by an entrance which would have put Artunez only a few feet from the front desk, where she would have been transported by a wheelchair to the delivery unit.
But by the time the car was in park, it was too late. The baby was coming.
When Cooper reached the truck, the baby’s head was already out.
“My instinct took over and I just jumped into action and delivered the baby,” Copper said.
Jean Andres, the hospital’s labor and delivery director, arrived at work a few moments later.
Andres heard the “very distinct scream” delivery room teams recognize instantly.
“I put my lunch bag down, called the team to let them know we had a delivery in the garage,” Andres told CNN. “And I proceeded to assist Dr. Cooper with the delivery that she had performed.”
Artunez gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Yesenia Patricia, and surprisingly for a first-time mother, the doctor noted, it went quickly. “She did really well.”
Once Yesenia was born, Andres dried her off and kept her warm until the medical team came and took the family to a maternity room in the hospital.
“The fact that it was in a garage was very unconventional, but it was not chaotic,” Andres said. “It was actually a very beautiful birth,” she recalled.
And although Cooper has delivered thousands of babies, she said this time was different.
“I’ve delivered in different places around the hospital before, but never in the back of a pickup truck,” she said.
Baby Yesenia isn’t the first to be born in the medical center’s parking garage, Andres and Cooper noted, nonplussed.
“We delivered a baby in the elevator this week,” Cooper told CNN.
Newly released police body camera footage shows an officer firing through the windshield of a pregnant woman’s car after she was accused of shoplifting at a grocery store in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb last week.
Ta’kiya Young, 21, was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
The video shows a Blendon Township police officer approaching Young’s driver’s side window outside a Kroger in Westerville and repeatedly telling her to get out of the car.
A second officer, who is also wearing a body camera, then steps in front of the vehicle.
“They said you stole something….get out of the car,” the officer at the window says, telling Young not to leave.
“I didn’t steal sh*t,” Young can be heard saying as the two argue back and forth with her window slightly ajar.
Police previously said a grocery store employee had notified police officers a woman who had stolen bottles of alcohol was in a car parked outside the store.
“Get out of the f**king car,” the officer standing in front of the car says, with his gun drawn and his left hand braced on the hood of the car, the video shows.
Young can then be seen turning the wheel of the car as the officer next to her window continues to urge her to exit the vehicle.
“Get out of the f**king car,” the officer in front of the car repeats as the vehicle begins to move slowly forward, the video shows.
A few seconds elapse and then the officer standing in front of the hood fires into the vehicle.
After the shot is fired, the officers run alongside the car yelling at the driver to stop.
The car rolls onto a sidewalk between two brick columns and into a building.
Police then call for backup and work to break the window to get to the driver, who appears to be slumped over to one side.
The body camera footage released by the Blendon Township Police Department blurred the faces of the officers. The footage is also edited and spliced together.
Young was pregnant at the time of her death and the fetus did not survive, the Franklin County Coroner’s Office previously said. Her cause of death is pending.
Police say the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is conducting an independent investigation of the incident.
The BCI probe could take “several weeks or months,” according to Steve Irwin, the press secretary for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which includes BCI. After investigators finish the examination, their findings will be forwarded to the county prosecutor who will make a decision on pursuing any potential charges, he said.
“Having viewed the footage in its entirety, it is undeniable that Ta’Kiya’s death was not only avoidable, but also a gross misuse of power and authority,” lawyers representing Young’s family said in a news release.
“After seeing the video footage of her death, this is clearly a criminal act and the family demands a swift indictment of this officer for the killings of both Ta’Kiyah and her unborn daughter,” they said.
Police say the officers haven’t “waived their rights as victims” in this incident and are withholding their identities, according to a news release from Blendon Township police.
“When Ms. Young drove her car directly at Officer #1, striking him, Officer #1 became a victim of attempted vehicular assault,” police said in a news release.
“When Ms. Young pulled away from Officer #2 while his hand and part of his arm was still in the driver’s side window, Officer #2 became a victim of misdemeanor assault,” they said in the news release.
Authorities said the officers worked quickly to help Young after the shooting, saying EMS was called 10 seconds after she was taken out of the car. The officer who fired the shot also grabbed a trauma kit and applied a chest seal to her wound in under two minutes after she was removed from the vehicle.
The officer who fired his weapon is still on administrative leave, but the second officer who was at the window is back at work. Chief John Belford said after he reviewed the videos, he didn’t see a reason to keep the second officer on leave.
“I returned him to duty, as our staffing is already very limited,” he said, noting both officers would still be subject to a “full administrative review” after the BCI investigation.
“Last week, there was a tragedy in our community,” Belford said in a statement. Due to potential pending litigation, he says the department is “very limited in what we can say.”
“We’re being as transparent and forthcoming as we can, given these significant legal constraints.” He cited an ongoing BCI investigation and potential “personnel actions” regarding the officer who opened fire.
The local police union said others would make any decisions regarding whether either officer is charged in the incident. But, Brian Steel, executive vice president of Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge #9, noted “a weapon is not just a firearm. A weapon is also a 2000-pound vehicle that somebody puts in gear and is driving at you.”
“I understand why it could be justified but, again, I don’t make that decision,” Steel said at a news conference Friday, adding he was assuming the officer believed he could not get out of the way of the vehicle quickly enough.
The Blendon Township Police Department’s use of force policy says when it’s “feasible,” officers should take “reasonable steps” to get out of the way of an approaching vehicle instead of firing a weapon.
“An officer should only discharge a firearm at a moving vehicle or its occupants when the officer reasonably believes there are no other reasonable means available to avert the imminent threat of the vehicle, or if deadly force other than the vehicle is directed at the officer or others,” the policy says.
Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty Tuesday to amended fraud and money laundering charges, appearing in court for the first time since his bail was revoked and he was sent to a Brooklyn jail to await trial.
Lawyers for the former crypto billionaire, who is vegan, said the detention center is not accommodating his diet and failing to regularly dispense his prescription Adderall.
“He’s literally now subsisting on bread and water, which are the only things he’s served that he can eat, and sometimes peanut butter,” his attorney, Mark Cohen, told the court.
Magistrate Judge Netburn said she would contact the Bureau of Prisons about the accommodations.
Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, has spent the past 11 days in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a notoriously overcrowded facility that’s been regularly accused of keeping inmates in inhumane conditions. It’s a far cry from his house arrest, which he spent in the relative luxury of his parents Palo Alto home in California.
On August 11, Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked SBF’s bail and remanded him to the facility, ultimately siding with prosecutors’ argument that he had attempted to intimidate potential witnesses against him, including his former business partner and ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.
Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty to multiple conspiracy and fraud charges relating to the collapse of his exchange, FTX, in November. He faces a potential life sentence if convicted on all the charges.
Before its collapse, FTX was one of the largest crypto-trading platforms in the world, backed by A-list celebrities and featured in Super Bowl commercials. But the company came unglued in the span of a week as concerns about its financial ties to SBF’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, spurred investors and customers to yank their funds. The company filed for bankruptcy and quickly became the center of the federal fraud investigation.
While awaiting his trial, SBF will be granted a window of time, from 8:30 am to 3 pm, on weekdays to meet with his attorneys, according to a court filing released Monday.
Female reproductive health experts are calling on Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to rethink its restrictions on reproductive health content.
The company has long faced criticism for removing and restricting female reproductive health information with a prominent report from the Center for Intimacy Justice early last year accusing Meta of systematically rejecting many female and gender diverse reproductive health ads. The CIJ report also accused Meta of having bias algorithms, stating that male reproductive health ads were found to be permitted, including ads that referenced male sexual pleasure.
In bid to combat those concerns, Meta tweaked its “adult products or services” advertising policy last October to include clearer guidelines about reproductive health, clarifying that it allows the promotion of “reproductive health products or services” if the content is targeted to “people aged 18 or older.”
Meta
(FB) argues the topic is sensitive, stating that as a global company it needs to take in to account the “wide array of people from different cultures and countries” to “avoid potential negative experiences.”
However, female reproductive experts tell CNN that the advertising policy is still too restrictive and is creating barriers for how younger people around the world access information about female reproductive health issues, including the menstrual cycle, which can start as early as 8 years old.
They argue that censoring content about normal and natural bodily functions plays into the shame that has long plagued how people learn about the female body and hormone cycle. That can hinder how people with uteruses advocate for their bodies in healthcare settings, including obtaining care for misunderstood and underdiagnosed conditions like endometriosis.
The practice of censoring female reproductive health content is not unique to Meta, with similar issues reported on other social media platforms. However, Meta is under specific scrutiny for failing to adequately address the issue within its policy updates last year.
The founder and CEO of the Center for Intimacy Justice, Jackie Rotman, told CNN that despite the policy update, Meta’s algorithms still seem to have a problem with female reproductive health content.
“The policy says that reproductive health is allowed, but in practice their technology is still rejecting it,” Rotman said, explaining that images of uteruses are often mistakenly flagged as nudity, and words like period, menopause, endometriosis and vagina also commonly triggering sexually inappropriate warnings.
Rotman outlined that while Meta’s reproductive health guidelines are targeted toward advertising content, unpaid posts are also often being impacted by Meta’s algorithms. She says shadow-banning, which refers to content being partially blocked from certain audiences, is common practice for organic content. Several reproductive health content creators told CNN that they experience shadow-banning, explaining that it is time consuming game of trial and error to determine what is considered too taboo.
Dr. Hazel Wallace, author of “The Female Factor” told CNN she wishes she could be more direct in how she speaks about the female body and hormone cycle, including menstrual health. However, said has learned that “to educate people, you almost have to play the game.”
She says she often experiences shadow banning, with her analytics showing less engagement if she uses words like period. She explained that her team experimented with Meta’s algorithm, finding they could often dodge restrictions by mis-spelling the word period as p3riod.
“We found that it increased engagement because it doesn’t flag your content as being inappropriate to certain audiences,” Wallace outlined.
While Meta on several occasions has apologized and re-instated female reproductive health content that it says was mistakenly removed, it still stipulates an age restriction in its policy. Therefore, even if the updated policy was perfectly implemented, Meta would still be green lighting the practise of censoring crucial content from certain audiences.
CNN asked Meta about the reports that it is continuing to remove, restrict, and shadow-ban female reproductive health content. CNN also asked Meta why all female reproductive health, including menstrual health, is classified as an 18+ issue.
In response, a spokesperson for Meta, Ryan Daniels, said, “We welcome ads for women’s health and sexual wellness products, but we prohibit nudity and have specific rules about how these products can be marketed on our platform.”
In a bid to change the conversation, female reproductive health content creators are not letting Meta’s restrictions silence their voices.
Wallace, a like so many others in her field, says she should not need to self-censor how she speaks about female reproductive health, arguing that censorship perpetuates a “hush hush” narrative about “normal experiences.”
“Imagine a world where we are teaching young girls and women from puberty – this is what to expect, this is normal, this is not normal, this is when to ask for help. We would feel a lot more empowered,” Wallace stated.
Categorizing reproductive health as an R-rated topic is an issue that extends far beyond Meta advertising policies, reflecting wider societal views, from politics to sex education curriculums.
Tracey Lindeman, the author of “BLEED: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis,” says classifying all female reproductive health issues under the umbrella of sexual health “perpetuates the idea that our sexual organs are to be exploited and used for sexuality, even at a young age.”
“You’re born with a reproductive system. Whether or not you’re having sex, you still have that system in your body, and it’s still affecting your body in different ways,” Lindeman reasoned.
“How about we just teach people about how their bodies work first, before we start teaching them how they work to have sex,” Lindeman stated.
As soon as Tracy Area Schools in Minnesota resumed charging for breakfast and lunch last year, students started dropping out of the program. Many of their families simply couldn’t shell out up to $2.65 for a meal each day.
“We have some kids who didn’t eat because Mom and Dad can’t afford it,” said Michele Hawkinson, food service director for the rural district of 700 students. “These kids are hungry. This is maybe the only nutritious, healthy meal they’re getting a day.”
But Hawkinson no longer needs to worry about children in her district skipping meals. Starting this year, Minnesota students at schools that participate in the federal school meals program can eat breakfast and lunch for free, thanks to a law that state legislators passed in March. The initiative will cost about $200 million a year.
Minnesota is one of nine states that are picking up the tab for students’ breakfast and lunch in many of their schools. California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico and Vermont have also approved permanent universal free meals programs, while Nevada launched a two-year effort last year.
Other states have extended free meals to more students. For instance, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are providing free breakfasts this school year. And lawmakers in other states have introduced legislation to establish universal free meal programs.
“There’s been a tremendous momentum for states to move forward on offering free school meals for all,” said Crystal FitzSimons, director of school programs at the Food Research & Action Center. “Offering free meals to all students just changes the culture of the cafeteria. (It) increases participation and makes the cafeteria a really positive environment for all students.”
States are paying for the initiatives in different ways. Massachusetts is using revenue from its new millionaires’ tax to help cover the cost of the $172 million program, while Colorado is raising around $100 million a year by limiting state tax deductions for affluent residents. Other states are drawing from their general budgets.
The states’ actions build upon a federal Covid-19 pandemic relief program that provided free meals to all students, regardless of income, for more than two years.
During that time, around 30 million students were receiving free meals at school, according to the US Department of Agriculture, up from about 20 million children who qualified based on their household income prior to the pandemic.
Allowing all students to eat in the cafeteria at no charge minimized the stigma felt by some kids who received free meals, increasing the likelihood that they would actually partake in breakfast and lunch, school nutrition officials said.
School nutrition staffers, meanwhile, had to once again distribute the forms and convince eligible parents to complete them, while also contending with mounting school meal debt.
Meanwhile, the number of kids getting meals at school dropped. Some 28.3 million students, on average, participated in the lunch program daily in May, down from 30.2 million the same time a year earlier. And 14.6 million kids partook in the breakfast program, down from 16.1 million.
Many schools are taking a more holistic approach to children’s education, focusing on more than just reading, writing and arithmetic, said Chris Derico, president of the School Nutrition Association.
“Research has shown if kids are hungry, they’re not going to be ready to learn,” said Derico, who is also the child nutrition director at Barbour County Schools in West Virginia.
States are also realizing that improving children’s ability to learn could better prepare them to enter the workforce, said Annette Nielsen, executive director of the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center, which has been tracking the implementation of universal free meals programs nationwide.
“There may be a financial cost, but there’s probably a larger financial benefit to keeping it long term,” she said.
Benefits and challenges for schools
In addition to the benefits for children, free school breakfast and lunch for all means districts don’t have to hound families with meal debt.
The end of the federal free meals program caused debt levels to soar. The median reported debt was $5,164 per district, as of November, compared with $3,400 at the end of the 2017-18 school year, according to the School Nutrition Association.
In Colorado’s Littleton Public Schools, the debt level skyrocketed to $32,000 at the end of last year, said Jessica Gould, director of nutrition services in the affluent suburban Denver district of just over 13,000 students. Prior to the pandemic, it was typically between $4,000 and $6,000 a year.
“Now we don’t have to worry about that. We’re not the debt collectors anymore,” Gould said, noting that last year’s tab was paid by donors. “We’re just able to focus on providing good quality meals to our students.”
However, the universal free meals programs also pose challenges to school districts. They no longer have the ability to increase breakfast and lunch rates when their costs of food, equipment and labor rise. Instead, they must make due with the state reimbursement.
But the even bigger problem is that the state programs rely on districts still getting federal funding to cover the cost of feeding children who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. And certain state funds for general education also depend on the share of lower-income students in a school district.
That requires getting parents to complete the applications, which can be challenging especially when schools are telling families that everyone can eat for free.
So far, Gould has received forms from about 1,500 eligible families, but she is expecting more than 2,300.
“Our community is confused,” she said, noting that the district created a flyer to explain the new universal free meals program. “It’s been challenging at best to just figure out how to communicate to our families.”
Zookeepers at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium arrived to a pair of unexpected discoveries Thursday morning: a newborn baby gorilla and the news that its mother wasn’t a male gorilla.
The gorilla, Sully, has lived at the facility with her mother since 2019 and was thought to be male until “the gorilla care team discovered her holding the unexpected baby gorilla early Thursday,” the zoo announced in a news release.
But how could the facility not know 8-year-old Sully was actually a female? And that she was pregnant?
Well, gorillas “don’t have prominent sex organs” and males and females look mostly alike until around age 8, the zoo said in the release, noting it’s only later in life that males develop their large size, silver backs and distinctive head bumps.
Along with the hard-to-distinguish features, veterinarians at the zoo where the gorilla was born took a “hands-off approach” with their care and allowed the primate to be cared for by its mother, the Columbus Zoo noted.
When Sully arrived in Columbus, she was a “young and healthy animal” and didn’t require any medical procedures that would have led to the discovery sooner, the zoo said.
The pregnancy was also missed because “gorillas rarely show outward signs” they are carrying because “newborns are smaller than human babies and gorillas naturally have large abdomens,” the release notes.
With the gestation period for gorillas being eight and a half months, the zoo estimates Sully became pregnant in the fall.
The zoo says the adorable infant appears to be a healthy female. “The veterinary and animal care teams have not yet approached the infant, giving them time to bond with one another and with the rest of the troop, but will conduct a wellness exam soon,” the facility said in the release.
A DNA test will be performed later to determine the newborn’s father.
The new mother and baby will be on display for guests at the zoo’s gorilla habitat starting Friday, according to the release.
Western lowland gorillas – the subspecies that lives at the Columbus Zoo – are critically endangered, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. There are an estimated 100,000 left in the wild across central Africa, says the Columbus Zoo. Their population has been depleted due to habitat loss, deforestation and hunting for bushmeat.
The surprise discovery builds on a history of gorilla conservation at the Columbus Zoo. The facility “was the first zoo in the world to welcome the birth of a baby gorilla” in 1956, according to the release.
Sully’s yet-to be named infant is the 34th gorilla born at the zoo, says the release. “She’s an important part of our work to conserve these magnificent animals,” the facility wrote.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Sunday she would support allowing limitations on abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy, breaking with many Democrats in Congress who have been hesitant to offer specifics on abortion limitations.
“I support allowing for limitations in the third trimester that do not interfere with the life or health of the women,” Klobuchar told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.
The third trimester in a pregnancy begins at 27 weeks. Less than 1% of abortions are performed at 21 weeks or later, according to a 2020 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Abortion has become an especially potent political topic in the year since the monumental US Supreme Court decision one year ago to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate the federal constitutional right to abortion nationwide. More than a dozen US states have banned or severely restricted access to the procedure since the ruling.
“What I support – and I will be very clear about this – is Roe v. Wade, which does allow for limitations, but it also protects the life of the woman and the health of the woman,” Klobuchar said Sunday.
“I think that is the best way to go. But you look at what they are doing, their leading Republican candidates, Dana, are asking for abortion bans. Trump was on just last night gloating about how he had put these Supreme Court justices in place that had reversed Roe v. Wade.”
Klobuchar has long articulated the need for some restrictions on late-term abortions, telling Bloomberg in 2019 “there are limits there in the third trimester that are very important – about – except for the health of the woman.”
In the 2022 midterms, abortion was a crucial motivator for many voters, as CNN exit polls showed that 46% of people said that abortion was the most important issue to their vote. Abortion is also likely to be a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, as administration officials highlight what Democrats have done to protect access to abortion.
“MAGA Republicans made clear that they don’t intend to stop with the Dobbs decision. No, they won’t, until they get a national ban on abortion,” Biden said this week, promising to issue a veto if a national ban is ever passed by Congress.
The reality star and Poosh founder revealed she was pregnant in a video on Instagram Saturday in which she’s seen in the audience at a Blink 182 concert holding a sign that read, “Travis I’m pregnant.”
Kardashian posted more behind-the-scenes photos from the concert on Sunday, showcasing her growing baby bump.
“Overwhelmed with gratitude and joy for God’s blessing and plan,” she captioned the post, which features a photo of Barker playfully holding his drumsticks over Kardashian’s belly.
Kardashian and Barker got engaged in October 2021 and wed last year in multiple ceremonies.
Following a not-technically-legal walk down the aisle in Las Vegas after the Grammy Awards in April 2022, the pair exchanged vows at the Santa Barbara Courthouse in May and wrapped up the wedding festivities with a lavish Italian ceremony at Dolce & Gabbana designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s private villa.
This will be Kardashian and Barker’s first child together, but they each have children from previous relationships.
Kardashian shares three children – Mason, Penelope and Reign – with her former longtime partner Scott Disick. Barker is father to Landon, daughter Alabama and stepdaughter Atiana, whom he shares with ex-wife Shanna Moakler.
The two have shared a bit about their fertility journey on Hulu’s reality series, “The Kardashians.”
Kardashian told The Wall Street Journal in September 2022 she had paused in vitro fertilization treatments leading up to getting married because it was “a lot” and she wanted to focus on planning her wedding ceremony.
On Sunday, Barker added to the chorus in the joyous comment section of Kardashian’s post with his own message of gratitude, saying, “God is great.”
Rick Hoyt, the man who was pushed in a wheelchair by his father in 32 Boston Marathon races, died Monday morning.
Hoyt, 61, died due to complications with his respiratory system, according to a family statement posted on The Hoyt Foundation’s Facebook.
“It is with profound sadness that the Hoyt Family announce the passing of our beloved brother and uncle, Rick Hoyt this morning,” the Hoyt family said in a statement Monday. “As so many knew, Rick along with our father, Dick, were icons in the road race and triathlon worlds for over 40 years and inspired millions of people with disabilities to believe in themselves, set goals and accomplish extraordinary things.”
Rick, who had cerebral palsy that left him a quadriplegic, and his father, Dick, who passed away in March 2021, ran their first Boston Marathon in 1980 with a custom racing chair for Rick, according to the Boston Athletic Association and became fixtures in the race until their last as a team in 2014.
The father and son began running in races in 1977 when Rick told his dad he wanted to participate in a 5-mile race to benefit a lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident, according to the Hoyt Foundation’s website.
Though he could not talk, Hoyt learned when he was 12 years old how to use his head and buttons mounted on his chair to type out sentences.
“I wanted to show this person that life goes on and he could still lead a productive life,” Hoyt told HBO’s “Real Sports” correspondent Mary Carillo in 2005. He said he told his father they had to run in the race.
They completed the 5-mile event with his father pushing his chair, finishing next to last.
Hoyt told his father that when they were running it felt like his disability disappeared, Dick Hoyt told “Real Sports.”
Rick Hoyt was a 36-time Boston Marathon finisher, according to the marathon race organizers.
“Rick Hoyt will always be remembered as a Boston Marathon icon and for personifying the ‘Yes You Can’ mentality that defined Team Hoyt,” the Boston Athletic Association said in a statement. “We are fortunate to have been able to call Rick a friend, mentor, pioneer, and Boston Marathon finisher.”
The father-son duo completed more than 1,000 marathons, duathlons and triathlons, according to the Team Hoyt website.
There is a statue honoring the pair in Hopkington, Massachusetts, near where the marathon starts each April.
A “Yes You Can” race is planned for this Saturday in Hopkintonin honor of Dick, but the family says they will make a decision at a later date whether it will be postponed.
