Posts tagged with "The New York Post"

TikTok to limit screen time for under-18 users to one hour a day

March 2, 2023

Tick-tock … Time could be running out for the teens of TikTok.

The New York Post reports that, on Wednesday, March 1, the juggernaut viral video platform announced major changes for under-18 users, with a one-hour daily screen time limit set to be introduced in the coming weeks in an effort to curb endless scrolling that some argue is turning youths into “boring beasts.”

The goal: Reining in the way teens interact with the increasingly popular—and controversial— app. The new restrictions come after the White House on Monday ordered government agencies to rid their devices of the Chinese-owned TikTok within 30 days in an effort to prevent China’s communist government from spying on the United States.

“We believe digital experiences should bring joy and play a positive role in how people express themselves, discover ideas, and connect,” said Cormac Keenan, TikTok’s head of Trust and Safety, in a statement. “We’re improving our screen time tool with more custom options, introducing new default settings for teen accounts, and expanding Family Pairing with more parental controls.”

The new 60-minute time limit will be automatically applied to every user under 18 years of age, who will be asked to enter a passcode to continue scrolling after an hour.

For users under 13, the limit also will be set to 60 minutes—but a parent or guardian will need to set or enter an existing passcode to enable 30 minutes of additional watch time.

Keenan said TikTok consulted current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital when deciding how long the time restriction should be.

“Research also shows that being more aware of how we spend our time can help us be more intentional about the decisions we make,” Keenan said. “So, we’re also prompting teens to set a daily screen time limit, if they opt out of the 60-minute default and spend more than 100 minutes on TikTok in a day.”

According to Keenan, tests that implemented this feature “helped increase the use of our screen time tools by 234%.” In addition to the limit on screen time, the app will also send every teenage account a weekly recap of their screen time.

The video-sharing app will also introduce new features to Family Pairing. Parents or guardians will be able to link their TikTok account to a younger user’s account and custom daily screen time limits will be introduced, which allows families to increase or decrease screen time depending on their schedules (i.e. school holidays).

A screen time dashboard will also be introduced to Family Pairing, providing a breakdown of the number of times TikTok has been opened, and a breakdown of total time spent on the platform during the day and night.

Mute notifications will be introduced, allowing a new setting that enables parents to set a schedule to mute notifications. Accounts held by users aged 13 to 15 already do not receive push notifications after 9 p.m., and accounts aged 16 to 17 have push notifications disabled from 10 p.m.

Studies have shown the effect of TikTok on the brain, with researchers linking it to short attention spans and an increase in ADHD diagnosis in children

Research contact: @nypost

Donald Trump gets a tax break by burying ex-wife Ivana at his golf club

August 2, 2022

Donald Trump’s first wife Ivana was buried in a gold-hued coffin at the former president’s New Jersey golf club last month, following an Upper East Side funeral service  at which she was remembered as a woman who was “adored,” reports Fortune Magazine.

However, the Trump family has been accused of having ulterior motives, Fortune says, for choosing the golf course as her final resting places—motives that could benefit the family patriarch’s finances.

Trump’s first wife—and mother to his three oldest children Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric—passed away in July.

She was laid to rest at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to the New York Post, which reported that her grave was “not too far from the main clubhouse” and below the backside of the first tee.

Documents  published by ProPublica show that the Trump Family Trust previously sought to designate a property in Hackettstown—around 20 miles from the golf course where Ivana now is buried—as a non-profit cemetery company.

Indeed, defining the golf course as a cemetery could grant the business a whole raft of tax breaks.

Under New Jersey law, land being used for cemetery purposes is exempt from real estate and personal property taxes, as well as sales tax, inheritance tax, business tax and income tax.

Cemetery property is also exempt from sale for collection of judgements, with cemetery trust funds and trust income exempt from both tax and sale or seizure for collection of judgments against the company.

Ivana Trump is the only known person to have been buried onsite at Trump National Golf Club, according to reports.

Brooke Harrington, a tax researcher and professor of sociology at Dartmouth, said in a tweet on Sunday, July 31, that using the golf course as a cemetery was “a trifecta of tax avoidance.”

She added that in New Jersey, there was “no stipulation regarding a minimum [number] of human remains necessary for the tax breaks to kick in.”

“Looks like one corpse will suffice to make at least three forms of tax vanish,” she said.

A representative from the Trump Organization told Fortune in an email on Monday that links being made between Ivana Trump’s grave site and tax laws were “truly evil.”

Trump himself has previously expressed wishes to be buried at his New Jersey golf club, telling the New York Post  in 2007 that he wanted to be laid to rest in the “beautiful land” of Bedminster.

“Mr. Trump … specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property,” his company wrote in a 2014 filing  seen by The  Washington Post.

The filing sought approval to build a ten-plot private family mausoleum at Trump National Golf Club.

Resistance from local decisionmakers reportedly led to withdrawals and resubmittals of proposed burial sites over the years, with Trump’s ideas ranging from a small but opulent family mausoleum to a 1,000-grave site that would see plots for sale to members of the golf club.

While registering the golf course as a cemetery would exempt it from taxes, the former president already found a way to slash his tax bill for the New Jersey club by registering it as a farm, the Huffington Post  reported in 2019.

Trump reportedly owns several goats and farms hay at the resort, which reduced his tax bill by around $88,000 a year, according to a Huffington Postanalysis

Under this arrangement, the golf course was taxed at just over $6 an acre in 2019, rather than $462 an acre.

Research contact: @FortuneMagazine

Bloated Vladimir Putin video emboldens chatter that Russian leader is sick

April 25, 2022

New video shows Russian President Vladimir Putin looking bloated and awkwardly gripping a table for support—heightening suspicions that the warmongering president is seriously ill, reports The New York Post.

The footage— released by the Kremlin on Thursday, April 21—shows Putin, 69, tightly gripping the table with his right hand as soon as he sits down; then, keeping it there throughout the nearly 12-minute clip.

Putin sits with hunched shoulders and regularly fidgets and taps his toes during the briefing with his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who also is rumored to be suffering health woes.

The clip shows Putin and his key adviser “both depressed & seemingly in bad health,”  tweeted Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who was previously an adviser to Russia.

Former UK politician Louise Mensch said that  the footage appeared to back earlier reports that “Vladimir Putin has Parkinson’s D

isease.”

“Here you can see him gripping the table so that his shaking hand is not visible but he cannot stop his foot from tapping,” she wrote.

Other reports have suggested that Putin has recently had 35 secret meetings with a cancer doctor— and has been bathing in the blood of deer antlers. The Kremlin has denied he has the disease.

Professor Erik Bucy, a body language expert from Texas Tech University, noted to The Sun that Putin’s face looked clearly bloated, saying it “reinforces an unhealthy appearance.”

“It’s an astonishingly weakened Putin compared to the man we observed even a few years ago,” Bucy told the outlet.

“An able-bodied president would not need to keep himself propped up with a hand held out for leverage and would not be concerned about keeping both feet planted on the ground.”

Research contact: @nypost

YouTuber MrBeast recreates ‘Squid Game’ with $456,000 top prize

November 30, 2021

Hundreds of cash-strapped “Squid Game” fans recently competed in a real-life recreation of the dystopian smash-hit Netflix series for a $456,000 cash prize, reports the New York Post.

Popular YouTuber MrBeast, who boasts 81.5 million subscribers, said he spent US$3.5 million on the elaborate reenactment, in which 456 contestants battled for the jackpot.

The social media star, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, said on Twitter that it cost him around $2 million to build and produce, while he spent around $1.5 million on prizes.

In addition to the six-figure first prize, Donaldson doled out $2,000 to every competitor and $10,000 to the runner-up.

The recreation included the same Korean children’s games played in “Squid Game,” such as Red Light, Green Light; marbles and tug-of-war —played within huge sets that took weeks to construct.

However, there was one major difference from the real-life show: No contestants were harmed.

Instead, players were rigged with “wireless explosives” packed with fake blood that burst open when a player was eliminated. In the tug-of-war and glass bridge challenges, losing contestants fell into a foam pit rather than plummeting to their deaths.

Yet, true to form, the real-life “Squid Game” contestants were seen in footage of the game trembling as they tried to carve shapes out of honeycomb in the “dalgona challenge.”

According to the Post, the “Squid Game” reenactment isn’t the first time Donaldson has pulled off an extravagant stunt like this for his YouTube channel. Donaldson is famed for offering outlandish prizes to his online followers willing to compete in absurd challenges, such as when contestants stood in a circle for 12 days for $500,000 cash.

The social media sensation was the second-highest paid YouTube star in 2020—earning about $24 million and garnering some 3 billion views, according to Forbes.

But his latest video has attracted harsh criticism from viewers who slammed Donaldson for reenacting a game about rich people exploiting the poor for their macabre viewing pleasure.

Finally, in the latest, stunning development kickstarted by the original Netflix series, the stunt video was released just a day after a smuggler who sold copies of “Squid Game” in North Korea was sentenced to death by firing squad.

Research contact: @nypost

‘You are as old as you feel’: Queen Elizabeth II refuses ‘Oldie of the Year’ award

October 21, 2021

Queen Elizabeth II, who turned 95 last April, has declined an award for “Oldie of the Year” from a British magazine, with a polite—if slightly cheeky—response, reports Page Six of The New York Post.

“Her Majesty believes you are as old as you feel; as such the Queen does not believe she meets the relevant criteria to be able to accept and hopes you find a more worthy recipient,” Tom Laing-Baker, the Queen’s assistant private secretary, said in a letter shared by the magazine on Tuesday, October 19.

The Oldie, a British monthly, is aimed at the mature set “as a light-hearted alternative to a press obsessed with youth and celebrity,” its website trumpets. Every year the editors bestow an Oldie of the Year award in a light-hearted ceremony. Previous winners have included Eileen Atkins, Glenda Jackson, Peter Blake, and David Hockney.

But at least one member of the royal family approves of the ceremony. The Queen’s daughter-in-law, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, turned up at Oldie’s awards lunch to hand out honors like Champion Knitter of the Year and Truly Scrumptious Oldie of the Year.

In her remarks, Camilla, 74, acknowledged the advantages of aging: “Watching one’s children growing up; enjoying one’s grandchildren—knowing that they’ll be going home after the visit; finding more time to read; finding time to read The Oldie—and coming to jolly lunches like this one,” Prince Charles’s wife said, according to People.

The Oldie magazine clearly has a soft spot for the Royal Family. The Queen’s husband, Prince Phillip, who passed away in April at age 99, was named Consort of the Year at the awards in 2012.

He accepted the award warmly, writing: “There is nothing like it for morale to be reminded that the years are passing—ever more quickly,” and adding, “but it is nice to be remembered at all.”

Research contact: @PageSix

Bermuda Triangle in Britain? Thousands of UK racing pigeons disappear in midair

July 8, 2021

They flew the coop—and vanished into thin air. British bird handlers are devastated after a mind-boggling 5,000 homing pigeons seemingly disappeared during a race across the United Kingdom in late June, the New York Post reports.

“We’ve seen one of the very worst ever racing days in our history,” pigeon hobbyist Richard Sayers wrote in a Facebook post chronicling the feathery fiasco, which occurred after 9,000 racing birds took off from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, on a journey to the northeast. And while the 170-mile round-trip flight should only have taken three hours, over half the avian competitors were unaccounted for at the finish line.

They were reportedly part of 250,000 pigeons released in approximately 50 racing events across the country—

It’s unclear what prompted the squab squadrons to seemingly vanish—however,  many breeders are “blaming the atmospheric conditions, possibly a solar storm above the clouds that created static in the atmosphere,”according to the Post,

Ian Evans, CEO of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, finds the Bermuda Triangle-esque disappearance especially baffling as “weather conditions across the country were good.” He added that “there was nothing to suggest that any birds would struggle to get home.”

To help re-coop-erate losses, Sayers is imploring “anyone who comes across a racing pigeon to feed, water and let it rest,” whereupon “there’s an 80% chance the birds will get on their way after a few days,” he told The Daily Mail. The North Yorkshire native added that the homing pigeons can be identified by a leg ring denoting their “code and number.”

To prevent such disasters in the future, Royal Pigeon Racing Association boss Evans is holding talks with the UK’s national weather service to obtain reports on any unusual solar activity.

Research contact: @nypost

How he does it: Tom Brady’s extreme diet and fitness routines

February 9, 2021

On February 7, Tom Brady broke his own record as the oldest QB ever—at age 43—to win a Super Bowl; when his Tampa Bay Buccaneers took on the reigning champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, on the Bucs’ home turf, defeating them 31-9.

According to NBC News, “The game was supposed to be an epic battle of the ages, pitting the all-time great Brady against Patrick Mahomes, 25, widely regarded as the best young quarterback in the game.”

But it obviously didn’t work out that way, as the Buccaneers took a decisive lead in the first half and never lost it.

Suffice it to say, The New York Post reports, “Brady is one of a kind, a phenomenon who shows no sign of slowing down any time soon in a sport where longevity is rare.”

But how does Brady do it? The Post notes that he follows a stringent diet, exercise, and study routine—not only to keep in shape, but to exceed expectations on every level.

Put simply, Brady is an obsessive—a man with a plan and the determination (and money) to execute it, as John Burns, CEO of Brady’s TB12 health and wellness organization, explains.

“Tom’s sustained success over the past 20-plus years is a testament to his incredible drive and his meticulous approach to everything he does.” Burns says. “It’s that mindset that allows him to keep going.”

Here’s how he does it, according to the Post:

Daily schedule

  • 5:30 a.m.:  Wake up, drink electrolyte water and smoothie
  • 7 a.m.: Breakfast with family
  • 8 – 10:30 a.m.: Hit the gym for strengthening and conditioning
  • 10 a.m:  Beach time
  • 11 a.m.:  Review game footage
  • Noon: Lunch
  • 3 -5  p.m.: Team practice or, in the off-season, surf and workout
  • 5-6 p.m.: Post-workout pliability session
  • 6 p.m:  Dinner with family
  • 7 p.m.: Review films, strategy w/ Coach, charity work
  • 7:30 p.m.: Family time, including reading to kids
  • 8:30 p.m.: Lights out and sleep

Fitness

It’s been said that trainer Alex Guerrero knows Tom Brady’s body better than the QB’s wife, Gisele Bündchen. As well as being his business partner in the TB12 health-and-wellness brand—including a chain of fitness centers that they plan to expand nationwide—Guerrero has  been described by Brady as his “body engineer,” the Post says.

He’s micromanaged the athlete’s training schedule month—and even year—in advance. An average day will begin early with a pre-workout “deep force” massage session with Guerrero. It only lasts four minutes, but targets 20 muscle groups for around 20 seconds each. It helps prepare Brady’s body for an intense workout, beginning with 40 minutes of resistance bands, to make muscles more pliable, soft, and resilient.

As the quarterback has aged, he works out less with weights, which could leave him prone to muscle tears. Now it’s all about planks, lunges and squats, followed by more pliability exercises, such as doing crunches with a vibrating roller beneath his back.

After, there’s another massage, this time with the focus of flushing out the lactic acid that builds up during exercise, to help improve muscle recovery time.

During the NFL season, he’ll work out with teammates in the afternoon. Off season, he might get in some surfing. There’s also another pliability session, to improve muscle recovery time, before bed.

Diet

First thing every morning, Brady has a smoothie. His favorite is made with blueberries and banana, hemp and chia seeds, walnuts, almond butter and hemp milk. He’ll also start drinking electrolyte water.

While there’s no denying that Brady’s spartan diet has played a major part in prolonging his playing career, some of his former New England Patriots teammates thought it obsessive and unappetizing — or as one put it, “that birdseed s–t.”

Caffeine is off the table. So is white flour, white sugar, dairy products and anything with gluten. He steers clear of veggies—tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, mushrooms —that could cause inflammation. Everything has to be organic. Brady each day tries to drink “a couple of hundred ounces” of water, usually enhanced with electrolytes. (He sells those, along with various nutritional supplements, through his TB12 site.)

Allen Campbell was Brady’s personal chef from 2013 to 2016; and helped him to create the TB12 Nutrition Manual, published in 2017. He told the Post that, at this time of year, “We focused on dark leafy greens, some grass-fed animal protein as well as legumes and whole grains.”

But that’s not what Brady will eat before the Super Bowl. His game-day meals are even more basic: a smoothie and a sandwich of almond butter and jelly.

It’s all a far cry from his rookie season in 2000; Brady admitted that his pregame snack used to be nachos while his default lunch was ham-and-cheese subs with onion rings and a large orange soda.

Brady sticks to an 80/20 (plant-based/animal protein) diet. Even his favorite ice cream is plant-based; made from avocado with a little cacao mixed in, so it tastes like chocolate.

Mind

Besides having worked with a life coach in the past,   Brady practices transcendental meditation, striving to become what Guerrero has described as “emotionally stable and ­spiritually nourished.”

He’s also had neuroscans so he can better understand the way his brain processes information and create strategies to improve that.

Brady exercises his brain using apps such as BrainHQ. Although the app was designed to help those with brain conditions such as cognitive damage or memory loss, Brady has used it to sharpen his reactions—working his way through two dozen brain games or more each day.

“Tom explained it like this,” said Henry Mahncke, CEO of the app’s creators, Posit Science. “When he gets the [ball], he remembers the play, then he has to scan the field, locate the receivers, figure out which ones are on their routes and which are open, and make the pass. All in about three seconds.”

Sleep

Finally, the Post reports, Brady loves sleeping. Before his first Super Bowl in 2002, he even took a nap in the locker room only to be woken up with just 12 minutes left before the Patriots were due on the field.

These days, he hits the hay at 8:30  each night and wakes at 5:30 a.m. But everything has to be right. From sleeping on a mattress with a layer of diamond memory foam to setting the bedroom thermostat to between 60 degrees and 65 degrees and shutting down all digital distractions at least 30 minutes before he retires, Brady is as obsessive about sleep as he is about, well, everything else in his life.

And then there’s his magic pajamas: bioceramic-infused sleepwear made by Under Armour to increase energy, promote recovery and improve performance. And you can, too, can sleep like Tom, although a complete set will set you back nearly $200.

Research contact: @newyorkpost

If you’re registered to vote, Samuel L. Jackson will enroll you in his Masterclass on that art of cursing

September 17, 2020

He may be a scholar, but is he a gentleman?

F**king register to vote, says Samuel L. Jackson. The swear-happy actor and producer, 71, is offering to teach an epic, multi-language course on the art of cursing, if enough people double-check that they’re registered to vote, The New York Post reports.

“Listen up — if 2,500 of you click a voting action below to make sure that you’re #GoodToVote, I will teach you to swear in 15 different languages,”  Jackson tweeted on Monday, September 14.

The tweet also includes a link to his page on voter registration website HeadCount, which offers red, white, and blue buttons that will help Americans to:

  • Register to vote,
  • Check your registration status, and
  • Make your “vote plan.”

Jackson is well-known for being among the Hollywood actors with the most prolifically dirty onscreen mouths—although a survey conducted earlier this year found that The Wolf of Wall Street star Jonah Hill beat Jackson for the top slot, according to the Post. While Jackson has sworn onscreen 301 times in his career, Hill has sworn 376 — mostly in the swear-heavy Martin Scorsese flick.

In addition to cussing on-screen and using obscenities to encourage Americans to vote, Jackson also produced a profane PSA in April. “Stay the f ** k home,” the Pulp Fiction actor said during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in response to quarantine orders designed to help flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also riffed on the book Go the F ** k to Sleep during the appearance, presenting the 2011 kids bedtime story as a public order that people should not leave their homes, including the verse:

“Stay the f ** k at home
Corona is spreading; this s -** t is no joke
It’s no time to work or roam
The way you can fight it is simple, my friends
Just stay the f -** k at home

Research contact: @nypost

No joke: Scientists believe cannabis might help block and treat coronavirus

May 25, 2020

Okay, we can’t resist it: A team of Canadian scientists has ‘high hopes.” They believe they have found strong strains of cannabis that could help prevent or treat novel coronavirus infections, The New York Post reports.

Researchers from the University of Lethbridge say that a study they conducted in April showed at least 13 cannabis plants were high in a form of CBD that appeared to affect the ACE2 pathways—which are gateways to cells—that the virus uses to access the body.

“We were totally stunned at first, and then we were really happy,” one of the researchers, Olga Kovalchuktold CTV News on April 21. Indeed, she and her husband, Igor—both of whom have been working with cannabis since 2015—believe that, while clinical trials still need to be done, the data they have collected show promise that some cannabis extracts may be used to effectively block and address the symptoms of COVID-19.

The results, posted in the online journal, Preprints, indicate that hemp extracts high in CBD may help block proteins that provide a “gateway” for COVID-19 to enter host cells.

Igor Kovalchuck is optimistic that the forms of cannabis that he and Olga have identified will be able to reduce the virus’ entry points by as much as 70%. “Therefore, you have more chance to fight it,” he told CTV.

“Our work could have a huge influence—there aren’t many drugs that have the potential of reducing infection by 70% to 80%,” he told the Calgary Herald.

Cannabis even could be used to “develop easy-to-use preventative treatments in the form of mouthwash and throat gargle products,” the study suggested, with a “potential to decrease viral entry” through the mouth.

“The key thing is not that any cannabis you would pick up at the store will do the trick,” Olga told CTV, with the study suggesting just a handful of more than 800 varieties of sativa seemed to help.

All were high in anti-inflammatory CBD—but low in THC, the part that produces the cannabis high.

The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, was carried out in partnership with Pathway Rx, a cannabis therapy research company; and Swysh, a cannabinoid-based research company.

The researchers are seeking funding to continue their efforts to support scientific initiatives to address COVID-19.

“While our most effective extracts require further large-scale validation, our study is crucial for the future analysis of the effects of medical cannabis on COVID-19,” the research said.

“Given the current dire and rapidly evolving epidemiological situation, every possible therapeutic opportunity and avenue must be considered.”

Research contact: @nypost

The Vend at New York City’s 30 Rock offers kimchi, an engagement ring, jade face rollers, and emergency socks

September 6, 2019

If you want to buy a jar of kimchi, an RBG action figure, an engagement ring, a chicken pesto sandwich, and a shaving kit at the same place at the same time, that’s now possible at a new storefront in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.

Located in 30 Rock’s downstairs concourse, The Vend has been created by Tishman Speyer, a major player in the real estate industry and the owner of the famed center.

The store has six self-service vending machines—open 24/7—that carry everything you might need in a pinch, such as jade face rollers, emergency socks, and Brooks Brothers dress shirts.

“It’s a very modern twist on the classic, old school New York automat—the place where you’d go to get all the essential things you needed,” Tishman Speyer Managing Director EB Kelly told News 4/NBC Miami.

The machines are divided into several categories: joy, savory, sundries, sweets, and drinks.

In a city that never sleeps, you can get a yellow rose diamond ring from Fitzgerald Jewelry of Williamsburg (Brooklyn) any time day or night, in case you wanted to spontaneously pop the question. The machines also have Polaroid cameras for you to document the occasion.

On a recent afternoon, several New York City shoppers stopped by to check out The Vend. One of them appeared to be concerned about the freshness of the refrigerated food, according to a report by The New York Post.

“Seared tuna from a vending machine,” said David Lepelstat, who works nearby, scrutinizing a packaged lunch dish priced at $13.95. “That chocolate cookie looks safer to me.”

A Vend associate said the fresh fare from Proper Food — which includes gourmet salads and sandwiches—is delivered every morning and donated to charity at night if it’s not sold.

Shoppers have been weighing in on what else they want stocked, the associate confirmed. They want “more energy drinks,” she told The Post. And “phone chargers.”

Research contact: @NBCNews