Latest news with #UniversityofNorthCarolinaatChapelHill
Perth Now
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
New gf of sporting legend pokes fun at age gap relationship
Legendary American football coach Bill Belichick and his new girlfriend Jordon Hudson have dominated headlines in recent weeks because of their 48-year age gap relationship. But, Ms Hudson, 24, proved she was unfazed by critics when she took to Instagram on Thursday with a sassy story. Sharing a photo of the dinner table, set against a romantic sunset, she wrote, 'Old Bay with my old bae.' In the shot were their plates of chicken wings, celery, dipping sauce and a can of Old Bay seasoning. She then re-shared the snap to her feed, although users were seemingly unamused by the pun. 'Unhinged,' one commenter wrote. 'Bill blink twice if you need help,' another chimed in. Jordon Hudson's Instagram story. Credit: Instagram 'You do too much,' a third said. Belichick, 73, is an American football coach who is the head coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is featured heavily in several loving photos on Hudson's Instagram account. She has also immersed herself in his business dealings. 'She does the business things that don't relate to North Carolina that come up in my life so I can concentrate on football, and that's really what I want to do,' Belichick said in a recent interview on Good Morning America. 'We have a good personal relationship, but I'm not talking about personal relationships, Michael, you know that.' If you'd like to view this content, please adjust your . To find out more about how we use cookies, please see our Cookie Guide. The couple haven't been clear on how they met although word on the street is that they met on an on plane one day. Hudson is also telling people she is engaged to the sports star, according to the New York Times. The former New England Patriots coach was seen supporting Hudson as she competed in the Miss Massachusetts beauty pageant earlier this month.
Daily Mirror
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'I'm an American and these funfair foods would send Europeans into a coma'
People have been left gobsmacked by what is on offer to eat at the Los Angeles County Fair in the US as a resident of the area insists that the offerings would 'send Europeans into a coma' An American woman has shared some "crazy" food items she spotted at a county fair in Los Angeles. She believes the bizarre treats would be enough to "send Europeans into a coma." The US is famous for its huge fast food eateries, large portion sizes, never-ending menu options, and wild food combinations - a stark difference to meals offered across Europe. Over time, companies have increased their serving sizes, meaning meals are getting bigger and bigger across the pond. In surveys involving 60,000 Americans, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that serving sizes have grown over the past 20 years, not only at fast-food eateries, but at other restaurants and in homes, ABC News reports. A social media user has proved that this is also the case at funfairs; she showed just how large and outrageous food combinations are at the Los Angeles County Fair in a post to TikTok recently. The resident, who visited the fair over the weekend, showed pictures of food vans and stalls around the fair at Fairplex in Ponoma, saying: "I'm at the LA County Fair and here are some foods that I fear would put a European into a coma. They would not survive this." It is always fun to treat yourself to a delicious treat or shop for sweet treats in between playing games at a fair. But could you stomach these combinations? @dandydemon on TikTok went up to the first food van, and spotted a chicken donut sandwich - comprised of two glazed donuts with a large piece of fried chicken in the middle, plus a side of fried pickle chips. Also on offer at another van, named Biggy's, there were some "crazy" options. She could not believe there was a Cheetos Flamin' Hot Crunchy chicken burger, but most of all, a cereal burger - Cap'n Crunch cereal inside chicken burger with honey and raspberry glaze. At another stall, she noticed Flamin' Hot Cheetos pickle, and an 'Ohhh Big Daddy' corn dog with Flamin' Hot Cheetos and cheese. Spotting fries made out of Spam, she described them as "probably the most normal thing" at the fair. She added: "Ok here's where we start getting crazy again." She found bacon wrapped chicken legs, fried avocados, and a triple cheeseburger with donuts as the burger buns. "Obviously the donuts are the buns," she joked. There were also fried frog legs being served at the fair, cotton candy tacos with ice cream, plus the attendee found a hut with "walls and walls" of sweets. She even found a mac and cheese stuffed turkey leg. She concluded: "I will leave you with this, this was truly crazy to me. Fried cheese cake, fried Oreos, fried butter." "And I'll defend this food with my life," she added. "And they call beans on toast weird," a Brit pointed out. One other agreed and commented: "I'm British. it was beans yous were worried about? What do you mean Krispy Kreme triple decker cheeseburger?" "Never want to hear an American make fun of European food again. fried butter?," wrote a third. One other added: "I thought 'how bad can it be' then number one slapped me across the face." "If I lived in the US I would be the size of a whale," commented another Brit. One American noted: "Guys, it's a fairground, these foods are purposely outrageous for the novelty and the experience. It's not like we eat this stuff every day, only like a third of the country does that." For the full list of outrageous food served at LA County Fair, see the event's website. The fair runs until May 26. Would you try these unusual food combinations? Comment below.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Trump-approved policy that's actually good for kids
This story originally appeared in , Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. . The pronatalists have entered the White House. Last week, news broke that the Trump administration was considering a variety of policies to get Americans to have more kids, inspired by figures like Elon Musk (who has 14 known kids) and activists Simone and Malcolm Collins (who have four but want as many as 10). Those suggestions, which included a $5,000 baby bonus and a 'National Medal of Motherhood' uncomfortably reminiscent of Nazi Germany, triggered immediate backlash. Many wondered how any of them would actually help parents, at a time when $5,000 only covers a few months of child care in some places. Today, however, I want to look at pronatalist policies through a slightly different lens: whether they benefit kids. People who want to boost birth rates generally talk about the importance of children to society as a whole: We need more kids, they often say, to pay into Social Security and take care of us when we're old. But what about the kids themselves? Are pronatalist policies, and pronatalism in general, in their best interest? In some cases, these questions can be easily answered with data. In others, they're more about values. Is a world with more kids inherently better for kids? Is championing childbirth the best way to show kids that they're valued? The answers to these questions are complex, but the experts I spoke to were clear about one thing: If the United States aims to be a pro-child country, we have a long way to go. Of all the pronatalist policies reportedly under consideration, one is straightforwardly good for kids, experts told me. That would be the one where the government gives parents money. Five thousand dollars may not pay for day care — and it may not substantially boost birth rates — but it could be enough to allow a parent to stay home for a few more weeks with a new baby, said Karen Guzzo, a family demographer and director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That extra leave would benefit baby and parents alike, research suggests. The money could also help defray the costs of a birth (often expensive even with insurance) and of necessities like car seats and strollers (which could be about to go up in price). If it helps keep families solvent during a time of financial upheaval, a baby bonus could benefit children in the long run, since financial stability is good for kids' health and learning. 'I'm all for giving families money,' Guzzo said. In fact, a similar policy already had impressive results. During the Biden administration, the American Rescue Plan expanded the child tax credit from a maximum of $2,000 to between $3,000 and $3,600 per child per year, and made it fully available to poor families. As a result, child poverty dropped to the lowest level on record, and the number of kids going hungry appeared to decrease as well. However, the expanded child tax credit lapsed at the end of 2021, and child poverty immediately spiked again. Republicans are reportedly interested in bringing the expanded credit back, but the path for any legislation remains unclear. For now, 'it is frustrating to hear that we are thinking of giving one-time bonuses when we already had a plan that worked' to reduce child poverty, 'and we got rid of that,' Guzzo said. Other policies reportedly under consideration, like giving a medal to moms with more than six children or reserving a certain percentage of Fulbright scholarships for married people or parents, are unlikely to do much of anything for kids or birth rates, according to Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who studies demographic trends. But more broadly, it's worth thinking about whether the pronatalist project in general — producing more births — is good for children. Some observers argue that certain countries with low birth rates have become actively anti-child. In South Korea, for example, hundreds of restaurants, museums, and other public spaces bar children from entering. These 'no-kids zones' make life difficult for parents, who have begun to campaign against them, but they arguably limit kids' opportunities to enjoy and learn about the world as well. 'We don't fund school systems, we don't fund child care, we do not fund leave programs. We are so not pro-family in the United States.' Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at UNC at Chapel Hill If pronatalism led to more children and therefore more tolerance of children in public space, or even to child-friendly urban design, it could benefit kids. For example, child-centric neighborhoods where kids were able to 'flow out their doors' and form 'their own little society' would be both fun for kids and beneficial for them as adults by potentially making them more self-sufficient and able to advocate for themselves, Trent MacNamara, a history professor at Texas A&M University who has written about fertility rates, told me. Some experts worry about the decline of autonomy and free play among children today, and for MacNamara, it's possible to imagine that having more children around could bring some of that freedom back. 'Maybe if you do build a more child-centered society, it's easier for parents to think of kids as running their own show,' he said. There are also intangibles to think about — the joys (and trials) of growing up with a lot of siblings, or a lot of cousins, or as part of a big generation. Having a lot of kids around helps both adults and other children get in touch with 'their wilder side' and 'let go a little bit,' MacNamara said. However, because pronatalism often goes hand in hand with patriarchal values, it's not necessarily great for the roughly half of children who happen to be girls, Cohen noted. It's also not completely clear that a world with more births is always a better one for kids. Around the world, 'the decline of fertility has been a key part of rising living standards' for kids and adults alike, Cohen said. Fewer kids can mean more resources per kid — for example, falling birth rates in the US are one reason that state and local governments have been able to expand publicly supported preschool. Birth rates falling below a certain point could be bad for kids — if, for example, their schools close. But when it comes to policy, the most pro-child ideas aren't necessarily the ones advocates typically bring up to increase birth rates. Kids need food, housing, health care, and education, and they need 'the confidence that those things will be there for them in the future, and that their families will be there for them in the future,' Cohen said. Policies that would bring stability to parents and kids include robust paid leave, access to health care before and after birth, and subsidized high-quality child care, Guzzo told me. Some pronatalists have pushed for such supports, but right now, they feel out of reach in many parts of the country. 'We don't fund school systems, we don't fund child care, we do not fund leave programs,' Guzzo said. 'We are so not pro-family in the United States.' Three children who are US citizens were sent to Honduras last week along with their mothers, who were deported. One is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer who was removed from the country without his medication, advocates say. Cuts to the federal government have had a profound effect on programs serving kids, affecting everything from education to safe drinking water. 'Chicken jockey' is a thing now, I guess. My little kid and I have been reading Nothing's Wrong! a picture book about an anxious rabbit and the bear friend who makes him feel better. My kid refers to this only as 'the cool book,' for reasons that remain unclear. Last week, my story about mental health days for kids reached Sean, a reader who is a high school student in California, when he was, in fact, taking a mental health day. 'There is a freedom in knowing that when I take on things outside of school to boost my college resume, I can also alleviate some of the pressure that school puts on me,' he wrote. 'Yesterday, the thought of going to school made me feel zombified and my usual motivation had melted away, but by the time Monday rolls around, I expect to feel at least somewhat motivated to go.' As always, you can share your experiences, ask questions, or propose future topics at
Boston Globe
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
US birth rates languish in record lows, CDC reports
These numbers, and the reasons that they have experienced such a consistent decline, are widely seen as a problem that could affect the US economy in coming decades, as fewer young workers support a growing aging population. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up President Trump has called for a 'baby boom,' joining with a conservative 'pronatalist' movement that aims to persuade more Americans to get married and have many babies. Advertisement Vice President JD Vance and others in the pronatalist movement have criticized childless young Americans, arguing that they are contributing to the potential collapse of the US population because of their disdain for nuclear families and traditional gender roles. The decrease is due in part to a remarkable shift in who is giving birth: Much of the long-term trend can be attributed to the substantial reductions in teenage pregnancies over the last several decades. Advertisement In 1991, the most recent national peak in teen births, 61.8 births occurred per 1,000 15- to 19-year-olds, but that number was down to 12.7 births by 2024, a record low. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the fertility rate in the United States was around two children per woman, roughly at the level needed to maintain the population through births alone, said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a family demographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But those numbers were actually propped up by the high rate of teen pregnancies, distinguishing the United States from nations in Europe and Asia, which were already grappling with fertility rates well below replacement levels without the high levels of teen pregnancies. 'We were really unique in that, embarrassingly so,' Guzzo said. Starting around 2000, expanded access to contraception slowly helped drive down the rate of unintended pregnancies and teen pregnancies, which have continued to decline since. But especially since the Great Recession, birth rates have fallen off in another group: women in their 20s. In 2007, there were 106.3 births per 1,000 20- to 24-year-olds, but those numbers were down to 56.7 by 2024. The highest birth rate in 2007 was among 25- to 29-year-olds, at 117.5 births per 1,000 women; those numbers dropped to 91.4 in 2024. Those declines have not been matched by similar increases in births among women in their 30s. 'One of the big questions is all these births that haven't occurred — are they just being delayed?' Johnson said. 'Are these women going to have these babies later than they would have otherwise? Or are a lot of these births going to be forgone entirely?' Advertisement The recent data seems to suggest that at least some people are forgoing having children altogether, Johnson said, adding, 'Births in older women are up a little bit, but not enough to make up for all those births that didn't occur.' But in surveys, many young Americans still say they want to have two children. While shifting attitudes may play a role in the decline in childbearing, demographers point to the increasing number of obstacles faced by people who might want to start families. Economic conditions — crushing student debt, no federally mandated paid family leave, the high cost of child care and out-of-reach homeownership — and a general sense of instability in the world are likely to be playing a big role in Americans' postponement of parenting, Guzzo said. 'People don't have kids when they don't feel good about their own futures,' she said. A raft of proposals discussed within the Trump administration to give Americans incentives to have more babies includes increasing funding to parts of the country with higher-than-average birth and marriage rates, giving a $5,000 'baby bonus' to new mothers and increasing prestigious Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have children. While some of those ideas have drawn support from Democrats who have long argued for more help for working families, it's doubtful that one-time interventions will actually meaningfully increase the birth rate, experts said. And it's unlikely that an increased fertility rate alone will fuel the population gain needed to get back to replacement levels, Johnson said. 'Of course immigration is another factor,' he added. Most immigrants are young and are relocating in order to start families. 'Immigrants don't just bring themselves,' he said. 'They bring the potential for babies in the future.' Advertisement
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump consistently frames policy around 'fairness,' trading on American frustration
In a sit-down interview with Fox News last month, President Trump and his billionaire "efficiency" advisor Elon Musk framed new tariffs on foreign trading partners as a simple matter of fairness. "I said, 'Here's what we're going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I'm charging,'" Trump said of a conversation he'd had with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "I'm doing that with every country." "It seems fair," Musk said. Trump laughed. "It does," he said. "It's like, fair is fair," said Musk, the world's richest person. The moment was one of many in recent months in which Trump and his allies have framed his policy agenda around the concept of fairness — which experts say is a potent political message at a time when many Americans feel thwarted by inflation, high housing costs and other systemic barriers to getting ahead. "Trump has a good sense for what will resonate with folks, and I think we all have a deep sense of morality — and so we all recognize the importance of fairness," said Kurt Gray, a psychology professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the book "Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground." "At the end of the day," Gray said, "we're always worried about not getting what we deserve." Read more: Trump-appointed judge dissents in California ammo case with gun-filled YouTube video In addition to his "Fair and Reciprocal Plan" for tariffs, Trump has cited fairness in his decisions to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, ban transgender athletes from competing in sports, scale back American aid to embattled Ukraine and pardon his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has invoked fairness in meetings with a host of world leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He has suggested that his crusade to end "diversity, equity and inclusion" programs is all about fairness, couched foreign aid and assistance to undocumented immigrants as unfair to struggling American taxpayers, and attacked the Justice Department, the media and federal judges who have ruled against his administration as harboring unfair biases against him. Trump and Musk — through his "Department of Government Efficiency," which is not a U.S. agency — have orchestrated a sweeping attack on the federal workforce largely by framing it as a liberal "deep state" that either works in unfair ways against the best interests of conservative Americans, or doesn't work at all thanks to lopsided work-from-home allowances. "It's unfair to the millions of people in the United States who are, in fact, working hard from job sites and not from their home," Trump said. In a Justice Department speech this month, Trump repeatedly complained about the courts treating him and his allies unfairly, and reiterated baseless claims that recent elections have been unfair to him, too. "We want fairness in the courts. The courts are a big factor. The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor," Trump said. "We have to have honest elections. We have to have borders and we have to have courts and law that's fair, or we're not going to have a country." Before a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this month, Trump complained — not for the first time — about European countries not paying their "fair share" to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, and the U.S. paying too much. "We were treated very unfairly, as we always are by every country," Trump said. Almost exclusively, Trump's invocations of fairness cast him, his supporters or the U.S. as victims, and his critics and political opponents as the architects and defenders of a decidedly unfair status quo that has persisted for generations. And he has repeatedly used that framework to justify actions that he says are aimed at tearing down that status quo — even if it means breaching norms or bucking the law. Trump has suggested that unfavorable media coverage of him is unfair and therefore "illegal," and that judges who rule against him are unfair liberal activists who should be impeached. Of course, grievance politics are not new — nor is the importance of "fairness" in democratic governance. In 2006, the late Harvard scholar of political behavior Sidney Verba wrote of fairness being important in various political regimes but "especially central in a democracy." Verba noted that fairness comes in different forms — including equal rights under the law, equal voice in the political sphere, and policies that result in equal outcomes for people. But the perception of fairness in a political system, he wrote, often comes down to whether people feel heard. "Democracies are sounder when the reason why some lose does not rest on the fact that they are invisible to those who make decisions," Verba wrote. "Equal treatment may be unattainable, but equal consideration is a goal worth striving for." According to several experts, Trump's appeal is in part based on his ability to make average people feel heard, regardless of whether his policies actually speak to their needs. Read more: Federal Reserve sees tariffs raising inflation this year, keeps key rate unchanged Gray said there is "distributive fairness," which asks, "Are you getting as much as you deserve?" and "procedural fairness," which asks, "Are things being decided in a fair way? Did you get voice? Did you get input?" One of Trump's skills, Gray said, is using people's inherent sense that there is a lack of distributive fairness in the country to justify policies that have little to do with such inequities, and to undermine processes that are in place to ensure procedural fairness, such as judicial review, but aren't producing the outcomes he personally desires. "What Trump does a good job at is blurring the line between rules you can follow or shouldn't follow," he said. "When he disobeys the rules and gets called out, he goes, 'Well those moral rules are unjust.'" People who voted for Trump and have legitimate feelings that things are unfair then give him the benefit of the doubt, Gray said, because he appears to be speaking their language — and on their behalf. "He's not just saying that it's him. He's saying it's on behalf of the people he's representing, and the people he's representing do think things are unfair," Gray said. "They're not getting enough in their life, and they're not getting their due." Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the Center for Right-Wing Studies at UC Berkeley and author of "Empire of Resentment: Populism's Toxic Embrace of Nationalism," said Trump and his supporters have built him up as a leader "interested in fixing the unfairness to the working class." Read more: 'Freaked out': Fear, uncertainty grip California's immigrant community as Trump rolls out crackdown plan But that idea is premised on another notion, even more central to Trump's persona, that there are "enemies" out there — Democrats, coastal elites, immigrants — who are the cause of that unfairness, Rosenthal said. "He names enemies, and he's very good at that — as all right-wing authoritarians are," Rosenthal said. Such politics are based on a concept known as "replacement theory," which tells people to fear others because there are only so many resources to go around, Rosenthal said. The theory dovetails with the argument Trump often makes, that undocumented immigrants receiving jobs or benefits is an inherent threat to his MAGA base. "The sense of dispossession is absolutely fundamental and has been for some time," Rosenthal said. John T. Woolley, co-director of the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, said Trump has "a remarkable capacity for constructing the world in a way that favors him" — even if that's as the victim — and appears to be an "outlier" among presidents in terms of how often he focuses on fairness as a political motif. "Certainly since his first term with impeachment, 'the Russia hoax,' 'dishonest media,' 'fake news' and then 'weaponizing' of justice — he's constructed a kind of victim persona, in battle with the deep state, that is now really basic to his interaction with his core MAGA constituency," Woolley said. In coming to terms with Trump's win in November, Democrats have increasingly acknowledged his ability to speak to Americans who feel left behind — and started to pick up on fairness as a motif of their own, in part by zeroing in on mega-billionaire Musk. In an interview with NPR last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) evoked the idea of unfairness in the system by saying American government is working for rich people like Musk, but not for everyone else. "Everything feels increasingly like a scam," she said. She and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have since embarked on a nationwide "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, where they have blasted Musk's role in government and questioned how his actions, or those of Trump, have helped average Americans in the slightest. "At the end of the day, the top 1% may have enormous wealth and power, but they are just 1%," Sanders wrote Friday on X. "When the 99% stand together, we can transform our country." Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
