Watch: Little Girl Announces on Live TV at Glastonbury Festival That She Has a Boyfriend

A little girl had something “crazy” to announce to the world at the start of Glastonbury Festival 2024 on Wednesday: she has a boyfriend.

When BBC reporter Colin Patterson asked 5-year-old Elske to elaborate on her new boyfriend, the little girl proceeded to share his name, proudly sharing it is “Toby Ogden.” Patterson then turned to her parents, who amusingly had differing opinions on the boy.

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“It’s a no from me,” the girl’s father told Patterson, teasing, while her mother adopted a more positive attitude. “No, he’s lovely. They’re good friends,” she said, sharing that the youngsters are set to enjoy tea [an evening meal] together after Glastonbury.

Elske, adorning a bucket hat with smiley faces patched across, turns six tomorrow. Ahead of her big birthday, it seems her dad is feeling protective when it comes to her having a boyfriend.

'I have a boyfriend'

The Glastonbury Festival is underway and among the thousands of people arriving at Worthy Farm Colin Paterson met 5 year old Elske who was attending her first one with her family #BBCBreakfast https://t.co/pPxo5sSCW0 pic.twitter.com/01rFhUnDcW

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) June 26, 2024

“My daddy said he will lock him in a tower,” she said, though her father denied it. “I never said that,” he told Patterson, shaking his head.

The adorable moment aired on BBC Breakfast, ahead of Glastonbury’s annual showcase in Somerset, which runs from June 26 to June 30 this year.

The festival brings around 200,000 attendees from across the globe to watch some of the world’s most popular musical artists. This year, the line-up includes Dua Lipa, ColdPlay, SZA, and Shania Twain, among others.

source https://time.com/6992093/glastonbury-festival-2024-little-girl-announces-boyfriend-bbc-live-tv/

Supreme Court Rules for Biden Administration in Social Media Dispute With Conservative States

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.

The justices threw out lower-court rulings that favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that officials in the Democratic administration leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view.

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The case is among several before the court this term that affect social media companies in the context of free speech. In February, the court heard arguments over Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express. In March, the court laid out standards for when public officials can block their social media followers.

The cases over state laws and the one that was decided Wednesday are variations on the same theme, complaints that the platforms are censoring conservative viewpoints.

The states had argued that White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who applied “unrelenting pressure” to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms.

But the justices appeared broadly skeptical of those claims during arguments in March and several worried that common interactions between government officials and the platforms could be affected by a ruling for the states.

The Biden administration underscored those concerns when it noted that the government would lose its ability to communicate with the social media companies about antisemitic and anti-Muslim posts, as well as on issues of national security, public health and election integrity.

The Supreme Court had earlier acted to keep the lower-court rulings on hold. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the restrictions on government contacts with the platforms to go into effect.

Free speech advocates had urged the court to use the case to draw an appropriate line between the government’s acceptable use of the bully pulpit and coercive threats to free speech.

A panel of three judges on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that the Biden administration had probably brought unconstitutional pressure on the media platforms. The appellate panel said officials cannot attempt to “coerce or significantly encourage” changes in online content. The panel had previously narrowed a more sweeping order from a federal judge, who wanted to include even more government officials and prohibit mere encouragement of content changes.

The case is Murthy v. Missouri, 23-411.

source https://time.com/6992119/supreme-court-rules-biden-administration-social-media-dispute-conservative-states/

King Charles Makes Rare Public Comment About His Grandchildren During State Banquet

King Charles III welcomed the Emperor and Empress of Japan, Naruhito and his wife Masako Owada, to Buckingham Palace on Tuesday for a three-day visit to celebrate the cultural, economic, and diplomatic ties between the two nations.

“Your Majesties, my wife and I are so delighted to be able to welcome you to Buckingham Palace this evening,” the King told the Japanese royals at a state banquet on Tuesday. During his speech, he also made a rare reference to his grandchildren—seemingly referencing their appreciation for Japanese pop culture—while discussing his friendship with the Emperor and their previous experience fly fishing together. 

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“I am only sorry to report that I haven’t had any better luck with more recent attempts at fishing—the Pokémon phrase ‘gotta catch ’em all’ may resonate with my grandchildren, but for me it is, perhaps, aspirational,” the King said. 

Charles has fivegrandchildren. His eldest son, Prince William, who is married to Kate Middleton, is dad to Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 9, Prince Louis, 6.. Meanwhile Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are parents to Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3.

The King also expressed his deep desire for continued cultural exchange between the two island nations, which he said would enrich the creativity of both countries. After discussing how delighted he had been with Japanese influence on British arts and culture, naming films such as The Boy and the Heron and Spirited Away, which has been re-imagined as a stage show and is currently gaining strong reviews at the London Coliseum theater. Charles also made note of a famous Japanese icon that had British roots. 

“Perhaps you would allow me to note one particular individual who turns 50 this year, raised in a London suburb with her twin sister, the self-made entrepreneur worth billions of dollars and a Unicef children’s ambassador on top of all that. So I can wish a very happy birthday to Hello Kitty,” he said humorously, leading to many chuckles from the audience. 

source https://time.com/6992056/king-charles-grandchildren-royal-family-comment-japanese-state-banquet/

Before There Was Caitlin Clark, There Was Jimmer Fredette

If you missed out on, or have since forgotten about, what was known as “Jimmermania,” or “Jim-Sanity”—that period of time in 2011 when Brigham Young University (BYU) guard Jimmer Fredette took over college basketball, much like Catilin Clark did this season—let’s revisit that era for a moment. Even in a pre-Instagram and pre-TikTok age, Fredette’s long-range shooting exploits lit up social media, especially on YouTube and Twitter, where none other than Kevin Durant, the best scorer in the world at that time, called Fredette “the best scorer in the world!!” 

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In late January of that year, Fredette dropped 43 points on an undefeated San Diego State quad which featured Kawhi Leonard; after BYU’s nationally televised home victory over the Aztecs, Fredette had to retreat behind a Marriott Center scorer’s table to shield himself from the Provo, Utah, faithful who wanted to hoist their hero over their shoulders. One fan held up a sign—“Shoot it from here, Jimmer”—about 25 rows above the court, a nod to his Clark-like range. ESPN’s SportsCenter dedicated countless segments to Fredette, who won the National Player of the Year award that season. The Deseret News, based in Salt Lake City, even published “The Jimmer Glossary.”

v. Jimmer: to school, beat-down, thrash, dominate, as in one’s opponent.

Jimmered verb 1: The act of being punked, embarrassed, shown up, humbled, shamed, owned, outclassed, humiliated, served, schooled, crushed, disgraced, and utterly disrespected on the basketball court. San Diego State got Jimmered when Fredette carried BYU with 43 in Wednesday’s victory.

Clark’s exclusion this month from the USA women’s basketball team headed to the Paris Olympics set off a fiery debate that lasted for days. Given Clark’s power to draw audiences, said one side, leaving her off the roster was a missed opportunity to grow the women’s game. The other side argued that as Clark finds her way as a WNBA pro, giving a nod to more experienced players was the fair call.

Read More: This Is What Team USA Will Wear at the Paris Olympics

But Fredette, one of Clark’s precursors in the logo-three-pointer game—in a sense, he was Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark—will be in Paris. More than a dozen years after Jimmermania, and following an NBA career that fell well short of expectations—but a professional revival in China that cemented his contributions to basketball—Fredette, 35, will lead Team USA’s first men’s 3-on-3 team at the Games. He now has a chance to finish his singular basketball journey at the top of the podium, a gold medal draped over his neck. 

“I’m all in,” says Fredette. “This is a unique opportunity. And I’m not one who is afraid to jump into something new.” 

The 3-on-3 route to the Games—it’s actually officially called 3X3, and you pronounce the X—was something Fredette never could have imagined until recently. Like almost every youth basketball player in the United States, he grew up playing 3-on-3 in gyms and schoolyards; from his home base in Glens Falls, N.Y., about three hours north of New York City, he even entered a few 3X3 tournaments in places like Hartford, Conn.; Springfield, Mass.; and Boston. To hone his 5-on-5 skills, Fredette and his older brother TJ—who was also an aspiring rapper—would play pickup basketball with inmates at local penitentiaries. Fredette scored 2,404 points at Glens Falls High School and chose BYU for college (he’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

Stephen Curry had displayed his shooting brilliance during the 2008 NCAA tournament when he led Davidson to the Elite 8, and he returned to college for one more season. But Davidson didn’t receive the same sort of national exposure as BYU, and by 2011, Curry hadn’t yet established himself as a regular NBA MVP candidate. Fredette’s flurry of ridiculous range threes, regardless of the resistance provided by the defense, on the college level felt entirely novel. 

And like Clark, he was appointment viewing. 

Although scouts wondered if his height—he’s 6 ft. 2 in.—and lack of raw athleticism would hold him back, Fredette was still a lottery pick. The Milwaukee Bucks selected him with the 10th overall pick in that year’s draft and traded him to the Sacramento Kings. Sacramento, however, was a rough landing spot. The 2012 Kings were a young, inferior team who finished 22-44 in the lockout-shortened season: the five players who started the most games for Sacramento were all 25 and under. “We didn’t have a ton of leadership on that team,” says Fredette. “You need a couple of veterans who are like, ‘Hey, this is how it works. This is how you do things. If you want to be good, this is how you win.’ There was a lot of ‘Hey, it’s my turn,’ then ‘it’s my turn,’ then ‘it’s my turn.’‘ It’s not an easy way to play basketball.” 

The Curry-led three-point revolution in the NBA hadn’t taken hold. So the Kings weren’t about to entrust their offense to an undersized rookie gunner. “I think I was a little ahead of my time,” says Fredette. Without a green light to shoot at will, his confidence suffered. In a few games, he didn’t play a single minute. “I never had a situation where I never played in the game,” says Fredette. “It just messes with your head. You’re like, ‘Man, am I good enough? Should I be here? What do I need to do to get on the floor?’ Once you get on the floor, it’s like, ‘I don’t want to make a mistake.’ And that’s not a way to play.”

Read More: Fred Richard Is Team USA’s Next Olympic Hope for Men’s Gymnastics

As the reigning college player of the year who received outsize attention, he also had a target on his back—much like Clark does now in the WNBA. “Some of the best defenders would come up and try to guard me right away, just to kind of prove a point,” says Fredette. Back in 2012, NBA teams still threw the ball down low, something they’re loath to do in the space-and-pace three-point world; Fredette was an easy mark. “Basically every single time I came into the game, they’d be like, ‘Alright, first play, we’re gonna throw it in the post on him,’” says Fredette, laughing at the memory.  

Fredette has spoken with Clark, who looked up to him when she was younger. What advice would he offer the young WNBA star? “She has to keep being who she is,” says Fredette. “It’s something that I didn’t do a great job of when I got to the NBA. What got me there was the swagger, the outside shooting from anywhere at any point, the irrational confidence to be able to go in there and kind of just do whatever. That’s what made me great in college and what would have made me great in the NBA.” Fredette notes—and Clark’s statistics, and the Fever’s win totals bear out—that Clark is doing just that, improving her WNBA performance as the season progresses. “It’s only going to go up from here,” he says. Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson and Clark are leading the WNBA All-Star voting. 

Fredette averaged 7.6 points and 18.6 minutes per game as a rookie in 2012. Those were both his NBA career highs. Sacramento waived him in 2014; he made a stop in Chicago, then spent the 2014-2015 season with the New Orleans Pelicans, appearing in 50 games. He spent most of the next year with the New York Knicks’ G League team, the Westchester Knicks, making just a pair of brief appearances with the big club.

He signed on with the Shanghai Sharks for the 2016-2017 season and immediately started selling out the team’s 5,000-seat arena. ESPN basketball analyst—and future senior advisor to USA Basketball’s 3X3 program—Fran Fraschilla sat with the team’s owner, Yao Ming, during one game in Shanghai that season. “Jimmer had a quiet 53 [points] that night,” Fraschilla says. Fredette achieved rock-star status in China, winning the 2017 Chinese Basketball Association international MVP award and averaging 34.2 points per game. He signed a deal to spend two more seasons in China, reportedly at $1.8 million per year and scored 75 points in a game in 2018. Fredette earned the nickname “Jimo Dashen,” which is Chinese for “The Lonely Master.”

He tried an NBA comeback, with the Phoenix Suns, in 2019, but it didn’t go well: he got limited playing time in just six games, and missed all 13 of his three-point attempts. He spent the pandemic-shortened 2019-2020 season in Greece, with top team Panathinaikos, then returned to Shanghai for the 2020-2021 season. With China still under strict pandemic restrictions, that was an isolating year for Fredette, who could not see his kids, who are now ages 7 and 5. (He now has a third child, who’s 2.)

“I played games and came back to the hotel,” says Fredette. “I was basically in a quarantine hotel for seven months.” 

So Fredette was reluctant to return to China for the 2021-22 season. He took the year off but still stayed in shape, playing in The Basketball Tournament (TBT), a $1 million winner-take-all event broadcast each year on ESPN and its networks. Fraschilla, a TBT analyst for ESPN, was impressed with Fredette’s play. Given Fraschilla’s involvement with the U.S. 3X3 team, two summers ago he pitched Fredette on helping the men’s side qualify for the Games for the first time. (3X3 made its Olympic debut in Tokyo; the U.S. women won gold.) “I said, ‘If you do this, you’ll be the face of our Olympic program,’” says Fraschilla. For Fredette, a chance to play in the Olympics was too compelling to turn down. 

In the fall of 2022 Fredette joined with 3X3 veterans Kareem Maddox, who played college ball at Princeton; Canyon Barry, from the College of Charleston and Florida—he’s the son of hoops Hall of Famer Rick Barry—and Dylan Travis, who won a Division 2 national championship at Florida Southern back in 2015. Though he did have to pick up some of the game’s nuances, such as the physicality of 3X3—the refs let a lot more rough stuff go—and the different spacing angles on offense, he fit right in. “I give him credit for coming in and saying, ‘You know, I have a lot to learn,’” says Maddox. “In my experience, we’ve had a harder time integrating much more inferior basketball players than Jimmer. He’s made it so easy.” 

Fredette’s shooting is even more valuable in 3X3, where shots within the arc are worth one point and those beyond are worth two. (Games last 10 minutes: whoever gets to 21 points first, or leads after the 10 minutes are up, wins the game.) So a long shot is worth double a regular basket, whereas in 5-on-5, threes are worth 1.5 times a two-point layup.

But you can’t just throw four NBA players together and send them on a summer trip to Paris – 3X3 players are specialists. They have to participate in international tournaments and acquire ranking points in order to be eligible for the Olympics. So Fredette’s had to roll with crazy travel itineraries—since October 2022 he has played in 3X3 tournaments in 15 countries outside the United States. During one stretch last summer, the team zigzagged from France to Macau to Kosovo and back to France, before bouncing back to Asia (Mongolia), then back to Europe (Switzerland, then Hungary) over a nine-week span. He wasn’t globetrotting with NBA-style amenities. “You’re not staying in five-star hotels,” says Maddox. “A lot of times you’re roughing it.” 

In Kosovo, the squad got a 40-minute ride from some guy to a national park and found cracked courts, in the middle of the woods, on which to practice. They offered him $100 bucks to stick around and drive them back after the workout: the players had no idea where they were, cell service was nonexistent, and Uber was not an option. “3X3, that’s what it is,” says Fredette. “You find what you can to prepare, then go play.” 

The U.S. men’s 3X3 team opens pool play on July 30, vs. Serbia, at Place de la Concorde, the largest public square in Paris, which is also hosting BMX freestyle, breaking, and skateboarding. Maddox is the veteran of the team: he played his first 3X3 event sanctioned by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), the sport’s world governing body, in 2015. “He’s seen every possible situation you can see on 3X3, and he’s an elite defensive player,” says Fredette. Barry is a slasher who can get to the foul line and make his underhand free throws, just like his dad. Travis, says Fredette, “is the heart of our team. He’s the one that gets me hyped when he dives for a loose ball or gets a steal or blocks a shot and then yells at the crowd.” 

Fredette’s role: put the ball in the basket. He promises to bring the irrational confidence of Jim-sanity to the Games. “That’s what my teammates expect,” he says. “They know if I’m scoring the ball, it opens up a lot of things for them as well. They get a lot of easy shots, a lot of easy layups from it. So it’s about being aggressive. You’ll definitely see the swagger. You’ll see everything that you’re hoping to see.”  

source https://time.com/6991461/jimmer-fredette-olympics-basketball-2024-caitlin-clark/

How Climate Change Is Punishing Asthma Sufferers

Jillian Alfieri didn’t even make it through her first seven months before asthma started having its way with her. The now 13-year-old had just been placed in her stroller for an early evening walk when her parents noticed that she seemed to be battling to breathe. 

“At first, we thought she was choking,” says her father, Rob, a stay-at-home parent in New York City. “She couldn’t catch her breath or make a sound. She finally started to cry, and we looked at the base of her neck and saw it going in and out as she was trying to inhale.”

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Rob and his wife, Jaimee, an HR director for a Manhattan law firm, rushed Jillian to the pediatrician, who put her on a nebulizer mask to stabilize her breathing and diagnosed the episode either as a possible one-off that would not repeat itself or a first bout with asthma—depending upon whether the problem returned. It did, six months later, and with that, Jillian joined the nearly 4.7 million other asthmatic children in the United States—children who know the special fear of having to fight for their very breath.

It’s a bad time to have what is already a bad disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that asthma diagnoses have not budged much in the past generation, going from 7.4% of the U.S. population in 2001 to just 7.7% in 2021. But the severity and frequency of asthma attacks is another thing entirely. Across the country, pulmonologists, pediatricians, and other doctors are reporting more and more visits to their offices and to emergency rooms by more and more people—especially children—suffering from worse and worse asthma torment. One of the biggest likely reasons: climate change.

Last summer was the hottest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the 10 warmest years the Administration has tracked were all from 2010 to 2022. Before summer even officially arrived this year, the U.S. suffered through a Northeast and Midwest heat dome that saw temperatures records broken across the map. Weather like that is murder on the lungs, with pollen counts rising, ozone levels soaring, and diesel exhaust and other particulate pollution getting trapped by stagnant air.

“We understand a lot more about asthma, and we have great therapies to treat it,” says Maureen George, a registered nurse at the Columbia University School of Nursing and an expert in asthma in urban settings. “But we haven’t made good inroads in the incidence of it, and so we think climate change is one of several things that is going on.”

George is not alone in seeing a link between a warmer world and worsening breathing. “The peak of the complaints I see from patients are mostly happening as the seasons are getting hotter,” says Dr. Jessica Hui, an allergy and immunology physician at National Jewish Health in Denver. “With climate change, not only is our pollen season longer, but our pollens have become more allergenic.”

All age groups can suffer from asthma: Jillian’s mother, Jaimee, is 51 and has battled the disease on and off since she was 18. More than 20 million adults are diagnosed as asthmatics, according to the CDC, but children suffer more severe symptoms—for a number of reasons, not least being simple anatomy.

“Kids aren’t just little adults,” says George. “Their bodies are different. They have higher respiratory rates and take in a greater volume of air per kilogram of body weight, so they’re getting more exposure to inhaled allergens.”

What’s more, children are not only likelier to be playing outside than adults are, but they’ll roll and tumble close to the ground. “Ozone and allergens hang just above ground level,” says George. “So children’s smaller lungs and their pattern of breathing and their outdoor play all put them at greater risk.”

Asthma tends to run in families, as Jillian and her mother suggest. For reasons that are not yet clear, boys have a somewhat higher rate of asthma than girls: 8.3% to 6.7%. But in the 18 and above group, that differential flips, with 5.5% of men and 9.7% of women diagnosed with the disease, according to the American Lung Association.

“It would seem that it may be hormonally driven,” says George, “but I don’t know that anyone understands what the mechanism is.”

Read More: How Complementary Medicine Can Help People With Asthma

Why summer is the cruelest season

Even before the onset of climate change, summertime was always a punishing stretch for people with asthma. Hot, humid, sticky air not only leads to greater inflammation of sensitive airways, it also can also entrain pollutant particles, especially those measuring less than 2.5 micrometers—or millionths of a meter. So-called PM 2.5 particles easily penetrate deep into airways and lung tissue and lodge there, causing irritation and constriction. 

“Exhaust particles, particularly from diesel fuel, are carried into the body and retained by tissues,” says Hui. “The pediatric population is especially vulnerable because their airways are smaller.”

Tailpipe and smokestack emissions are not the only source of PM 2.5 particles. Pollen grains can be a problem too. Pulmonologists have long observed that asthma attacks often occur during summertime thunderstorms, partly because wind gusts can lead to greater dispersal of pollen, but also because lightning can rupture the grains, fragmenting them below the PM 2.5 threshold. 

“You see this during the most extreme storms,” says Dr. Jonathan Spergel, chief of the allergy program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “You get really acute exacerbations of asthma because the fine particles are easier to breathe in.”

Summertime ozone levels are another pulmonary irritant. A three-atom oxygen molecule, ozone is found naturally in the upper atmosphere, but can form closer to the ground when nitrogen oxides, produced by smokestacks and tailpipes, and volatile organic compounds, produced by consumer products like paint and household chemicals, combine in the presence of sunlight. Exposure to the gas, like exposure to PM 2.5 particles, can be an acute airway irritant. The problem is worse in urban settings and especially in lower-income communities, which are likelier to be situated hard up against highways. Just shy of 11% of Black, Native American, and Native Alaskan communities have asthma, compared to 7.7% of whites, according to the American Lung Association.

“We see this interplay between ozone and hot weather,” says George. “That leads to lung inflammation, and it’s all kind of tied up in global warming.”

Wildfires fueled by climate-change related droughts and heat waves are another increasing problem for people with asthma. Last year’s Canadian blazes put 71,000 square miles of land north of the border to the torch and caused a yellow haze to descend across much of the U.S., from the Midwest to the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic states. California’s wildfire season now runs from April through October, peaking in the summer. Of the state’s 20 largest fires, half occurred from 2017 to 2022. 

“Smoke is a big trigger for me,” says Jillian’s mom, Jaimee. “When we had those wildfires last year I was on my [rescue] inhaler quite a bit.”

Mold is yet another asthma trigger, one that is especially common in hot, humid air. And while closed windows and air conditioning can keep ozone and PM 2.5 particles at least partly outside, mold is often an indoor scourge. Indeed, the mere fact of trying to shelter in place indoors when heat and humidity are at their worst can expose kids to a range of asthma triggers, including exhaust from gas stoves, formaldehyde given off by furniture fabrics, indoor pests and pesticides, and secondhand smoke. 

“People think, ‘Hey, just don’t go outside today,’” says Hui. “But indoor conditions can actually be much worse.”

September, which technically spells the end of summer, is by no means the end of asthma. Indeed, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) warns patients of what it calls the September Asthma Epidemic. For one thing, summer heat can easily persist straight through the month—and well into October as global temperatures climb. What’s more, ragweed pollen peaks in September, and falling leaves, often made sodden by rain, can cause mold to grow. And as schools reopen, kids are exposed to more respiratory illnesses like colds, RSV, and COVID-19.

“Whenever Jillian gets a cold, it goes straight to her chest,” says Rob, her dad. “When she was little, the doctor would tell us to pull up her shirt to see if her stomach was going in, as if she was digging deep, trying to breathe.”

Read More: What to Know About the Latest Advances in Managing Severe Asthma

Easing the breathing

Asthma patients are hardly without recourse. More medications than ever are available both to treat acute flares and prevent them before they happen. So-called rescue inhalers are more technically known as short-acting beta-agonists, because they bind to beta receptors surrounding the airways, causing them to relax. More prophylactically, patients can take corticosteroids, which reduce inflammation in the lungs, keeping airways clear in a more consistent way. Those drugs too are commonly dispensed by inhalers.

“Corticosteroids work to reduce swelling inside the lungs, while rescue inhalers relax the muscles that are squeezing airways from the outside,” says George. Increasingly, doctors are prescribing combination inhalers that include both drugs in a single dose. “That’s one of the big paradigm changes in asthma treatments,” George adds. “The new products have come on the market just in the last year.”

Other medications include what are known as leukotriene modifiers, which block the action of inflammatory chemicals the immune system produces in the presence of allergens. Also increasingly used are drugs known as biologics. They target a class of inflammatory white blood cells known as eosinophils, which are also produced in the presence of dust mites, pet dander, and other allergenic triggers.

“Sixty percent of kids who have asthma have the allergic variety, and the same is true of 40% of adults,” says George. In many people, asthma is part of what’s known as an atopic march—a genetically driven cascade of disorders culminating in pulmonary symptoms. “People first develop eczema as a child, and then later develop hay fever and seasonal allergies, and then the next thing they do is get asthma. It’s pretty much a clear pathway.”

That march may be slowed or even stopped, however. The simple passage of time can often help. As children pass into their teens and young adulthood, asthma will often go quiescent. But about half of people who had asthma in childhood will manifest it again in their 30s and 40s, according to the AAFA.

Taking medications as prescribed is, of course, another critical tool. So too is staying active. That can be a challenge in summer—the very season in which non-asthmatic kids are outside the most. But timing outdoor activities for early in the morning or closer to sundown, when temperature and pollen counts are lower, can help.

“Being active and having the ability to go outside is still a mainstay for treatment,” says Hui. 

Jillian’s parents planned to keep her indoors when the June heat dome descended over New York, but otherwise are mindful of her need for exercise and freedom. And as she enters her teens, her symptoms have subsided at least a little. 

“She’s not on steroids right now,” says Rob. “We wanted to see if she still needs it because she’s 13. Luckily, she hasn’t had to go to the hospital or go back on the medication.” Like any parents of an asthmatic child, Rob and Jaimee can only hope their luck—and Jillian’s—will continue to hold.

source https://time.com/6991204/climate-change-affects-asthma-sufferers/

I Am: Celine Dion Is the Opposite of a Vanity Project

In one of I Am: Celine Dion’s many philosophizing monologues, the eponymous global singing icon compares herself to an apple tree. In the past, Dion explains, she gave people apples—“the best, and I shine them”—a metaphor for the talents she has shared with her massive global audience. But now, “my branches are starting to fall sometimes, get crooked, and those branches are starting to produce a little less apples.” Yet, she continues, “there are still as many people in line.” Dion’s conclusion to this analogy is heartbreaking: “I don’t want them to wait in line if I don’t have apples.”

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The documentary, directed by the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Irene Taylor and now streaming on Prime Video, finds the French-Canadian chanteuse contemplating a life without a big enough yield for her adoring public. In December 2022, after multiple rounds of concert cancellations that year, the singer announced that she had been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare autoimmune neurological disorder that can cause spasms and muscle stiffness. Since then, she has not performed in public and has released just a handful of new songs. I Am: Celine Dion captures a portion of the time she has taken off to rehabilitate (roughly a year before and some time after her announcement)—time, per a title card, that found Dion rarely leaving home.

I Am: Celine Dion is intimate and gently moving, more a portrait of a superstar in her downtime than one of superstardom itself. We watch Dion, now 56, play with her three sons (two of whom are now 13, their older brother 23) in the Vegas mansion they share. She feeds her dog Bear (who, per the pre-credits dedication, died between filming and release), nurses a guinea pig to health with a syringe, fixes her own coffee, and vacuums her own floor. She is often without makeup, and the grays in her hair have not been dyed over. Contemporary slice-of-life documentaries about musical personalities are often indistinguishable from audio-visual press releases, but I Am: Celine Dion is, in many ways, about as far from a vanity project as one of these things gets. Even her trademark goofiness, which has been so endearing to even those who aren’t fond of her dramatic adult contemporary balladry, is turned down to a whisper or presented via a few vintage clips.

Read more: What It’s Like to Live With Stiff Person Syndrome

For much of the doc, we see subtle signs of her illness, for as Dion explains, “It’s not seeable.” Some immobile fingers here, difficulty walking there, a bit of balance lost. But as Dion tells and shows viewers, SPS has ravaged the pristine voice that made her such an undeniable draw for millions of fans worldwide since she debuted as a pre-teen more than 40 years ago. She explains in one scene that the rigidness of her chest in front of her lungs makes singing a challenge and then illustrates via a blown-out and raspy rendition of Foreigner’s “I Wanna Know What Love Is.” After missing a shocking amount of notes for a vocalist who for decades has been known as a perfectionist powerhouse, Dion notes that, “It’s very difficult to me to show this to you,” while crying.

That leads right into live footage from past performances of Dion annihilating her signature English-language song, “My Heart Will Go On” (from the soundtrack to the 1997 blockbuster Titanic). Taylor and editors Richard Comeau and Christian Jensen routinely flip back and forth between archival footage, in which Dion delivered the seemingly impossible, and contemporary footage, in which the impossible is no longer within reach. This temporal flashing back and forward allows the audience to understand the stakes here on a sensory level. Also featured is vintage home-video footage of Dion pregnant with her first child, René-Charles Angélil, while trying to find flats in her wall-to-wall, moving shoe closet (she fails). There’s footage of her son’s birth and, in a surreal turn, a news broadcast about her delivery on the TV in her hospital room.

In a way, I Am: Celine Dion is a meditation on aging and what happens to stars whose abilities diminish with time, rare diagnosis or not. As tragic and debilitating as it is, Dion’s condition gives her a reason to externalize a lot of feelings that many stars never want to acknowledge. Nobody wants to talk about what it means to be past their prime, but SPS has forced Dion to contemplate just that. The documentary is also an excuse to clear the air in far greater depth than her 2022 announcement offered. “I can’t lie anymore,” says Dion, who blamed concert cancellations on sinus and ear infections as she struggled to understand just what was going on with her health. She had been stricken with SPS symptoms for nearly two decades before her diagnosis. While initially concealable with some strategic maneuvering (like holding out the mic to the audience on particularly difficult notes), they eventually took an unmistakable toll on her voice, finally causing her to leave the stage.

Because of her disease’s general subtlety and Taylor’s light hand, the big, tragic moments are relatively spare—the sadness that permeates the film is the creeping kind, the gradual realization both for her and for us that the Celine Dion that many know and love may never be the same performer again. The movie takes a more explicit turn in its last act, as Dion records the title song from the 2023 rom-com in which she appeared, Love Again. The singer, who once could record three songs in a night, struggles to get through a few lines. She prefaces the session by saying, “If it cracks and it doesn’t work, there’s nothing I can do,” but clearly she is demoralized by her voice’s lack of cooperation. “I wanna sing with joy. I wanna sing without thinking. I wanna sing without speed bumps along the way,” she says. 

She’s initially disappointed by the early playback and resolves to do better. And then, seemingly magically, she does. She finds a way to make the song work with her more brittle voice and nails several lines in a row. It’s a triumphant moment made only more so when that take is played back to her. She’s ecstatic at her performance.

Read more: The 21 Best Documentaries to Stream Right Now

And then, she starts to spasm. A brutal, extended scene captures her in a full-on seizure, face down on a table with a massage-style headrest, while under the observation of her sports medicine therapist. For minutes, all she can do is whimper while she spasms, her hand bunched up tightly at her side. And then starts the wailing. This level of raw vulnerability is uncommon for stars of any echelon, let alone someone as reliably pristine (and consequently consumer-friendly on a global scale) as Dion. After the spasming subsides, Dion talks about her embarrassment. Her therapist suggests overstimulation from playback may have spurred the episode. For someone as animated, someone who seems naturally excitable and whose job is to be so, this presents a dilemma that the documentary leaves unresolved. How can Celine Dion be Celine Dion if she can’t get overexcited?

No matter, she leaves in an air of determination: “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. But I won’t stop.” The documentary’s sleight of hand is to leave viewers both with a sense of hope and a lack of firm narrative resolution. We know that there aren’t guarantees in Dion’s future, but we also admire her will. A completely unhappy ending would make I Am: Celine Dion almost too much to bear, but the refusal to tie things up neatly underlines the relative grittiness of the project. It sticks the landing with the kind of calculation fit for a perfectionistic diva.

Before the New York premiere of I Am: Celine Dion on earlier this month, Dion previewed the apple story that she tells in the documentary. “I don’t want you to wait in line anymore if I don’t have any shiny apples for you,” she told the crowd plaintively. But then, she said, she received a fan message that made her think differently. It said, “We’re not here for the apples. We’re here for the tree.” The crowd roared in solidarity and Dion seemed genuinely touched at the prospect of being taken for whom she is now. It may not be how she’d prefer to be seen, but it’s real.

source https://time.com/6990981/i-am-celine-dion-documentary-review/

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Begins Journey to Freedom, After U.S. Plea Deal

A plane carrying Julian Assange has landed in Bangkok for refueling enroute to Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, where the WikiLeaks founder will appear in a federal court on Wednesday following a plea deal with American prosecutors.

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Assange is expected to plead guilty to a felony for conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information. In exchange for his plea, Assange will be allowed to return to his home country of Australia without serving any additional prison time.

“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks said in a post on X. The publisher added that he “paid severely” for exposing “government corruption and human rights abuses.” 

Assange had been wanted by U.S. authorities since 2010 after WikiLeaks published one of the biggest leaks of classified U.S. government documents and videos in history. The leaks were related to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2012, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after the U.K. government ordered him to be extradited to Sweden for separate sexual assault charges he was facing there. Assange’s lawyers had sought assurances that Sweden would not extradite him to the U.S., citing concerns he could face the death penalty and would not have free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.

In 2015, the Swedish government dropped its sexual assault case, saying that the statue of limitation had passed. Nonetheless, the U.S. charges remained in place and Assange continued to stay in the Ecuadorian embassy until 2019, when the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum. He was subsequently arrested by British authorities and was kept in a British prison until 2024, when the plea deal with the U.S. government was reached.

Read More: Biden’s Shifting Approach on the Assange WikiLeaks Extradition Case 

Supporters of Assange say that the footage and cables WikiLeaks released with the help of former U.S. army soldier Chelsea Manning revealed possible war crimes committed by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that publishing them was an act of public service.

“He never should have spent a single day deprived of his liberty for publishing information in the public interest,” Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement. “Nothing can undo the past 13 years, but it is never too late to do the right thing, and we welcome this move by the U.S. government,” she added.

Assange’s detractors, however, say that the leaks jeopardized U.S. national security. “Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” former Vice President Mike Pence wrote in a post on X.

Australian leaders have cautiously welcomed the U.S. plea deal. “Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long. There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament.

In 2017, Manning’s 35-year sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. She had been charged and convicted of espionage in 2013.

source https://time.com/6991555/wikileaks-julian-assange-freed-us/