Author: CNN
America travels for Thanksgiving
Planes are going to be packed. Patience will be tried. Some level of aggravation is all but inevitable. Throw in a seat-kicker, a tipsy stranger and someone who’s blissfully barefoot in November and the Thanksgiving odyssey becomes a little more challenging.
And this year is poised to be a record-setter for air travel. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen more people on the Sunday after the holiday (November 26) than any day in its more than 20-year history, and some airlines are expecting their busiest Thanksgiving travel season ever.
It’ll all go more smoothly if every passenger brings some common courtesy along for the ride, so CNN Travel spoke with experts about the best approaches to airplane etiquette.
The missing ingredient, in many cases, is self-awareness. People tend to get wrapped up in their own journey and forget that there’s a whole planeload of other passengers.
“It’s always kind of mind-blowing to see that because it’s my bag, and my overhead bin, and my seat, and my flight, my connection and, you know, my drink, and it’s very me me me when it comes to just how people behave on an airplane.
“And it’s like, there’s hundreds of you,” said Rich Henderson, who’s been a flight attendant for a decade. “You’ve got to be aware of your surroundings, you’ve got to be respectful of the people around you.”
It starts with ‘hello’
Be polite to the flight crew greeting you. “It goes a long way when you’re pleasant to the first person you see on the plane,” said Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert and owner of The Protocol School of Texas.
Andrew Henderson, a flight attendant with 20 years of experience, seconds that notion.
“A simple ‘hello’ or ‘thank you’ or acknowledgment of our existence is polite. I think that’s some of the etiquette that’s being lost these days with all the noise-canceling headphones and devices we’re on. We’re all so busy that we forget that humans exist in the world,” said Andrew Henderson.
He is married to Rich Henderson and together they run the website and social media accounts Two Guys on a Plane, where “the sass is complimentary.”
How to prevent a hangover, and 3 ways to treat one
Editor’s Note: Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.
CNN
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You had a little too much to drink last night, and now you’re nursing that dreaded morning aftermath — a hangover.
What seemed like fun at the time is now causing your hands to shake, your head to pound and your heart to race, not to mention other unpleasant symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity and excruciating thirst.
Why are you suffering? Because the liquor that smoothly passed your lips is now wreaking havoc in your body, causing dehydration, stomach distress and inflammation. These ailments peak about the time all the alcohol leaves your body.
There is no scientifically proven way to cure a hangover, but experts say you can prevent one — or at least keep that morning-after misery to a minimum. Here’s how.
Forget a late-night meal after a night of drinking — that’s much too late, experts say. Instead, eat before your first drink and keep noshing as the night goes on.
“Food in the stomach slows gastric emptying and can reduce hangover symptoms,” said Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.
Why does food help? Because most alcohol isn’t absorbed by an empty stomach but via the intestinal tract just below it, Swift said.
“If somebody does shots on an empty stomach, for example, all that pure alcohol is not diluted by the stomach and is passed to the intestine very quickly,” said Swift, who has studied alcohol abuse since the 1990s.
“If the stomach contains food, however, there are gastric juices and enzymes that mix the food and the alcohol, and only small amounts of food are passed into the intestine,” he said. “Now the alcohol is diluted in the stomach, and only a small quantity of alcohol is absorbed at any time.”
The same principle applies to water and other nonalcoholic beverages, Swift said. “If alcohol is mixed with fluid, it’s diluted, so when it goes into your intestines, it’s not as irritating. You’re less likely to have inflamed intestines or an inflamed stomach lining.”
There’s another benefit to downing water between drinks, said Dr. John Brick, former chief of research at the Center of Alcohol Studies, Education and Training Division, at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
“The primary cause of hangovers is dehydration and the loss of fluids, along with vitamins and minerals,” said Brick, who authored “The Doctor’s Hangover Handbook” and published scientific papers on the biobehavioral effects of alcohol and other drugs.
Downing just 3½ alcoholic drinks can result in the loss of up to a quart of water over several hours, Brick added. “That’s a good amount of water that has to be replenished.”
Dehydration from alcohol may affect a woman even more, and she is more likely to suffer a hangover, even if she drinks less than a man, Swift said. That’s because a man has a higher percentage of body water than a woman of the same height and weight, so the same amount of alcohol will be more diluted in a man, he said.
The alcohol we drink, called ethyl alcohol or ethanol, is the byproduct of fermenting carbohydrates and starches, usually some sort of grain, grape or berry.
We use byproducts of fermentation in other ways: Ethanol is added to the gasoline in our cars, and methyl alcohol or methanol — a toxic substance — is used as a solvent, pesticide and alternative fuel source. Also called wood alcohol, methyl alcohol made by bootleggers blinded or killed thousands of people during Prohibition.
That’s not all — the list of byproducts or chemicals added by manufacturers for flavor and taste can read like a list of supplies at an industrial warehouse: ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, n-propanol, isobutanol, n-butanol, isopentanol and isoamyl alcohols. While these congeners, as they are called, are added in small, nontoxic amounts, some people are overly sensitive to their effects.
Overall, dark-colored beer and spirits tend to contain more congeners and thus may be more likely to cause hangovers, experts say. A 2010 study investigated the intensity of hangovers in people who drank the darker-colored liquor bourbon versus clear vodka.
“Congeners in bourbon … significantly increased hangover intensity, which is not too surprising since bourbon has about 37 times the amount of congeners as vodka,” Brick said.
Chemical preservatives called sulfites, known to cause allergic reactions in sensitive people, are also a natural byproduct of fermentation in small quantities. However, many manufacturers of beer and wine add sulfites to their products to extend shelf life. (Sulfites are also added to soda, cereals, sweeteners, canned and ultraprocessed foods, medications and more.)
Sweet and white wines tend to have more sulfites than red, but red wines contain more tannins, which are bitter or astringent compounds found in the skin and seeds of grapes. Like sulfites, tannins can trigger allergic reactions in people who are sensitive.
As a result, limiting your drinking to light beers, clear liquors and white wine might help keep hangovers at bay.
In the end, however, experts say there is only one true preventive — or cure — for a hangover: Don’t drink.
“There’s no simple cure because there are so many complex factors that are producing the multiple symptoms of a hangover,” Swift said. “And that’s why the only real cure for a hangover is to not drink alcohol or drink such a low amount of alcohol that it won’t trigger a hangover.”
• Drinking coffee can speed up recovery
• Electrolytes help
• Drink as much water as you can
We know that alcohol dehydrates, so a headache and other hangover symptoms may be partly due to constricted blood vessels and a loss of electrolytes, essential minerals such as sodium, calcium and potassium that your body needs.
And if you’re a coffee drinker, skipping your morning cup of joe may lead to caffeine withdrawal on top of your hangover.
“If you have a hangover, have a quarter of a cup of coffee,” Brick suggests. “See if you feel better — it takes about 20 minutes for the caffeine to start to have some noticeable effect.
“If coffee doesn’t make you feel better, don’t drink anymore.”
Replacing lost fluids with water or a type of sports drink with extra electrolytes can help boost recovery from a hangover, Swift said.
And while most alcohol is handled by the liver, a small amount leaves the body unchanged through sweat, urine and breathing.
Get up, do some light stretching and walking, and drink plenty of water to encourage urination, Brick said.
“Before you go to sleep and when you wake up, drink as much water as you comfortably can handle,” he said.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the process through which alcohol is absorbed in the body.
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Michael Chertoff Fast Facts
CNN
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Here is a look at the life of Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security.
Birth date: November 28, 1953
Birth place: Elizabeth, New Jersey
Birth name: Michael Chertoff
Father: Gershon Chertoff, rabbi
Mother: Livia Chertoff
Marriage: Meryl (Justin) Chertoff (1988-present)
Children: Two
Education: Harvard University, BA, 1975; Harvard University, JD, 1978
Religion: Jewish
Helped write the Patriot Act after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Played a key role in the government investigations of WorldCom, Enron and Arthur Andersen.
Prosecuted the former boss of the Genovese crime family, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno; the founder of Crazy Eddie electronics, Eddie Antar; and Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann.
1978-1979 – Law clerk to Judge Murray Gurfein, US Court of Appeals Second Circuit, New York.
1979-1980 – Serves as a law clerk to Justice William Brennan, US Supreme Court.
1980-1983 – Associate at Latham & Watkins in Washington, DC.
1983-1987 – Assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
1987 – Recipient of the John Marshall award from the US Department of Justice.
1987-1990 – First assistant US attorney for the District of New Jersey.
1990-1994 – US attorney for the District of New Jersey.
1994-1996 – Special counsel for Senate Whitewater Committee.
2001-2003 – Assistant US attorney general, the criminal division.
2003-2005 – Judge for the US Court of Appeals Third Circuit.
January 11, 2005 – Is nominated as secretary of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush.
February 15, 2005-January 21, 2009 – Serves as the second secretary of Homeland Security.
March 26, 2009-present – Senior counsel at the DC law firm Covington & Burling LLP.
2009-present – Chairman and co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a global security advisory firm.
May 1, 2012-December 2021 – Chairman of the board of directors of BAE Systems, Inc.
April 27, 2022 – Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says that DHS has established a Disinformation Governance Board, with the intention of coordinating department activities related to disinformation aimed at the US population and infrastructure. In May, the disinformation board initiative is halted after weeks of attacks, and Chertoff is named co-chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council subcommittee which later issues a set of recommendations to the secretary, including its assessment that there is “no need for a separate Disinformation Governance Board.” The disinformation board is formally terminated on August 24, 2022.
January 2023 – CNN reports that the Supreme Court did not disclose its longstanding financial relationship with Chertoff, even as it touted him as an expert who independently validated its investigation into who leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
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Rosalynn Carter Fast Facts
CNN
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Here is a look at the life of Rosalynn Carter, wife of former US President Jimmy Carter.
Birth date: August 18, 1927
Death date: November 19, 2023
Birth place: Plains, Georgia
Birth name: Eleanor Rosalynn Smith
Father: Wilburn Smith, a mechanic
Mother: Allethea (Murray) Smith
Marriage: Jimmy Carter (July 7, 1946-November 19, 2023, her death)
Children: Amy, October 19, 1967; Jeff, August 18, 1952; James Earl III (Chip), April 12, 1950; Jack, July 3, 1947
Education: Georgia Southwestern College, 1946
Founder of the “Rosalynn Carter Institute of Caregiving” at Georgia Southwestern State University. The mission of this organization is to help professional and family caregivers with the important role they play in our long-term health care system.
Along with the Carter Work Project, partnered with Habitat for Humanity, an international group of volunteers who build affordable homes for those in need.
Advocate for mental health, early childhood immunization, human rights, and conflict resolution.
1953 – The Carters return to Plains, Georgia, and run the family peanut, seed and fertilizer business.
1962 – Jimmy Carter enters politics and wins a seat in the Georgia Senate.
1977-1981 – As first lady, she focuses national attention on performing arts and mental health.
1977-1978 – Serves as the Honorary Chairperson of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, and is instrumental in the passage of the 1980 Mental Health Systems Act.
1982 – Founds the Carter Center with her husband.
1984 – Her book, “First Lady from Plains,” is published.
1985 – Initiates the annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy.
1987 – “Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life,” with Jimmy Carter, is published.
1991 – Co-launches Every Child By Two, a nationwide campaign to promote childhood immunizations, with Betty Bumpers, the wife of Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas.
1991-1999 – Serves on the policy advisory board of The Atlanta Project, a program of the Carter Center that addresses the social ills associated with poverty and quality of life around Atlanta.
1994 – “Helping Yourself Help Others: A Book for Caregivers” is published.
1999 – Is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1999 – The book, “Helping Someone with Mental Illness: A Compassionate Guide for Family, Friends, and Caregivers,” with Susan K. Golant, is published.
2001 – Carter is inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
March 22, 2005 – Carter and her husband step down as the leaders of the Carter Center’s Board of Trustees.
2010 – The book, “Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis,” with Susan K. Golant and Kathryn E. Cade, is published.
August 22, 2012 – Speaks at the ribbon cutting for phase one of the Rosalynn Carter Health and Human Sciences Complex at Georgia Southwestern State University.
October 13, 2014 – Announces the next Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter Habitat Work Project will be building homes in Nepal. The Carters’ goal, with thousands of volunteers, is to help build shelter for 100,000 Nepali families by 2016.
February 18, 2018 – Undergoes surgery to remove scar tissue from a portion of her small intestine. The scar tissue formed after a cyst was removed many years ago.
May 16, 2019 – Carter is released from the hospital after being admitted for feeling “faint.” Her husband is released from the hospital the same day after being admitted for falling on his way to go turkey hunting.
October 17, 2019 – Having been married 26,765 days, Carter and her husband are now the longest-married presidential couple in history (George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush previously held the record).
December 10, 2020 – The US House of Representatives passes a resolution recognizing Carter’s 50 years of mental health advocacy.
February 18, 2023 – In a statement, the Carter Center says that Jimmy Carter will begin receiving home hospice care after a series of short hospital stays.
May 30, 2023 – The Carter Center announces that Rosalynn Carter has dementia.
November 17, 2023 – Enters hospice care at her home in Plains, Georgia.
November 19, 2023 – Passes away at the age of 96.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter through the years
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Don't serve disordered eating to your teens this holiday season
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.
CNN
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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.
The fact that diet culture all over social media targets grown women is bad enough, but such messaging also trickles down to tweens and teens. (And let’s be honest, a lot is aimed directly at young people too.) It couldn’t happen at a worse time: There’s been a noticeable spike in eating disorders, particularly among adolescent girls, since the beginning of the pandemic.
“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.
Take a few moments to reflect on your own eating patterns. Teens tend to emulate what they see, even if they don’t talk about it.
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.
November 16, 2023 Israel-Hamas war
The United Nations human rights chief has called on Israel to grant his team access to Gaza to investigate competing claims about the Al-Shifa Hospital.
“We need to look into this by having access. We cannot rely on one or the other party when it comes to this,” Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told CNN’s Beck Anderson when asked about allegations by the Israeli military that Hamas was hiding weapons at the hospital.
He said the situation needs an “independent international investigation, because we have different narratives.”
Pressure on Israel: Israel is under growing international pressure to uncover proof of what it has described as a Hamas command and control center under the Al-Shifa Hospital, as Israeli forces launched a raid at the facility early Wednesday. The Hamas-run government media office denied it was using the hospital as a command and control center — calling the Israeli claims “baseless lies.”
Türk said hospitals had special protection at all times under humanitarian law.
“You cannot use civilian, especially hospitals, for any military purposes. But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence,” Türk said.
Request for access to Gaza and the West Bank: Türk said investigators could not go to Gaza “while the bombs are falling or while military operations are taking place,” and so his team was monitoring the situation from afar for now. He said he previously asked the Israeli government for access to Gaza and the occupied West Bank but was “still waiting for the answer.”
The actions of both Israel and Hamas since the militant group’s massacre of an estimated 1,200 people on October 7 must be investigated, Türk said.
International humanitarian law in the conflict: Since Hamas launched its brazen October 7 attacks and Israel responded with intensive air strikes and a ground offensive, both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.
“We have seen … grave breaches of international humanitarian law,” Türk said, speaking broadly of the actions from both sides.
“What Hamas did — the horrific killing of civilians, the fact that they took hostages — are clear violations of the law. The fact that we have seen a collective punishment by Israel of Gaza, by cutting off supplies, of medical necessities, of food, of electricity, of water is also [a] very serious matter under international humanitarian law,” Türk said.
“In fact, we consider it a crime, [just] as Hamas was acting criminally by taking hostages and killing civilians. So, indeed, there are issues that we all have to look into because they are very serious. And they require answers. And they require accountability,” Türk said.