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Worldnews
As Deadly Storms Subside, Texas Flooding Puts Spotlight On Govt Response
~2.5 mins read
Questions are mounting about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents. The hope of finding survivors of the catastrophic flooding in the US state of Texas continues to dim a day after the death toll surpassed 100, and crews kept up the search for people missing in the aftermath. As the storms that had battered the Hill Country for the past four days began to subside, more attention was being paid to the government’s response. Questions are mounting about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were spending the July Fourth holiday weekend in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley”. At public briefings, officials in hard-hit Kerr County have deflected questions about what preparations and warnings were made as forecasters warned of life-threatening conditions. “We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said on Monday. “We’re looking forward to doing that once we can get the search and rescue complete.” Some camps were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather. At least one moved several hundred campers to higher ground before the floods. But many were caught by surprise. Debate has also intensified over how state and local officials reacted to weather alerts forecasting the possibility of a flash flood and the lack of an early warning siren system that might have mitigated the disaster. On Monday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick promised that the state would “step up” to pay for installing a flash-flood warning system in Kerrville by next summer if local governments “can’t afford it”. “There should have been sirens,” Patrick said in a Fox News interview on Monday. “Had we had sirens here along this area … it’s possible that we would have saved some lives.” The Houston Chronicle and New York Times reported that Kerr County officials had considered installing a flood-warning system about eight years ago, but dropped the effort as too costly after failing to secure a $1m grant to fund the project. In San Antonio and in Washington, Democrats are questioning whether cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) affected the forecasting agency’s response to catastrophic and deadly flooding in Central Texas. The White House and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have denied the allegations and accused them of “politicising” the disaster. The NWS’s San Antonio office is responsible for forecasting the area’s weather, collecting climate data and warning the public about dangerous conditions. Texas officials criticised the NWS over the weekend, arguing it failed to warn the public about impending danger. The office issued a stream of flash flood warnings on Thursday and Friday across its digital and radio services, which are used to communicate with public safety professionals, according to alert records. The messages grew increasingly urgent in the early hours of Friday morning. The team sent an emergency text message to area mobile phones at about 1:14 am, calling it a “dangerous and life-threatening situation”. Phones must have reception or be near a cell tower to receive that message, said Antwane Johnson, former director of the Public Alert Team for the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Mobile coverage is spotty in areas around the Guadalupe River, according to Federal Communications Commission records last updated in December. “Even though those messages were issued, it does not mean it got to the people who needed them,” said Erik Nielsen, who studies extreme rain at Texas A&M University. Here’s a closer look at the timeline of how the floods hit Texas and what warnings were sent when: Follow Al Jazeera English:...
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Healthwatch
A Muscle-building Obsession In Boys: What To Know And Do
~4.2 mins read
Body dysmorphic disorder in boys and young men focuses on bulging muscles.
A shadowy, heavily-muscled superhero in a red cape strikes an action pose against a red and orange background; concept is body dysmorphic disorder
By the time boys are 8 or 10, they're steeped in Marvel action heroes with bulging, oversized muscles and rock-hard abs. By adolescence, they're deluged with social media streams of bulked-up male bodies.
The underlying messages about power and worth prompt many boys to worry and wonder about how to measure up. Sometimes, negative thoughts and concerns even interfere with daily life, a mental health issue known body dysmorphic disorder, or body dysmorphia. The most common form of this in boys is muscle dysmorphia.

What is muscle dysmorphia?

Muscle dysmorphia is marked by preoccupation with a muscular and lean physique. While the more extreme behaviors that define this disorder appear only in a small percentage of boys and young men, it may color the mindset of many more.
Nearly a quarter of boys and young men engage in some type of muscle-building behaviors. "About 60% of young boys in the United States mention changing their diet to become more muscular," says Dr. Gabriela Vargas, director of the Young Men's Health website at Boston Children's Hospital. "While that may not meet the diagnostic criteria of muscle dysmorphia disorder, it's impacting a lot of young men."
"There's a social norm that equates muscularity with masculinity," Dr. Vargas adds. "Even Halloween costumes for 4- and 5-year-old boys now have padding for six-pack abs. There's constant messaging that this is what their bodies should look like."

Does body dysmorphic disorder differ in boys and girls?

Long believed to be the domain of girls, body dysmorphia can take the form of eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. Technically, muscle dysmorphia is not an eating disorder. But it is far more pervasive in males — and insidious.
"The common notion is that body dysmorphia just affects girls and isn't a male issue," Dr. Vargas says. "Because of that, these unhealthy behaviors in boys often go overlooked."

What are the signs of body dysmorphia in boys?

Parents may have a tough time discerning whether their son is merely being a teen or veering into dangerous territory. Dr. Vargas advises parents to look for these red flags:
  • Marked change in physical routines, such as going from working out once a day to spending hours working out every day.
  • Following regimented workouts or meals, including limiting the foods they're eating or concentrating heavily on high-protein options.
  • Disrupting normal activities, such as spending time with friends, to work out instead.
  • Obsessively taking photos of their muscles or abdomen to track "improvement."
  • Weighing himself multiple times a day.
  • Dressing to highlight a more muscular physique, or wearing baggier clothes to hide their physique because they don't think it's good enough.
  • "Nearly everyone has been on a diet," Dr. Vargas says. "The difference with this is persistence — they don't just try it for a week and then decide it's not for them. These boys are doing this for weeks to months, and they're not flexible in changing their behaviors."

    What are the health dangers of muscle dysmorphia in boys?

    Extreme behaviors can pose physical and mental health risks.
    For example, unregulated protein powders and supplements boys turn to in hopes of quickly bulking up muscles may be adulterated with stimulants or even anabolic steroids. "With that comes an increased risk of stroke, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, and liver injury," notes Dr. Vargas.
    Some boys also attempt to gain muscle through a "bulk and cut" regimen, with periods of rapid weight gain followed by periods of extreme calorie limitation. This can affect long-term muscle and bone development and lead to irregular heartbeat and lower testosterone levels.
    "Even in a best-case scenario, eating too much protein can lead to a lot of intestinal distress, such as diarrhea, or to kidney injury, since our kidneys are not meant to filter out excessive amounts of protein," Dr. Vargas says.
    The psychological fallout can also be dramatic. Depression and suicidal thoughts are more common in people who are malnourished, which may occur when boys drastically cut calories or neglect entire food groups. Additionally, as they try to achieve unrealistic ideals, they may constantly feel like they're not good enough.

    How can parents encourage a healthy body image in boys?

    These tips can help:
  • Gather for family meals. Schedules can be tricky. Yet considerable research shows physical and mental health benefits flow from sitting down together for meals, including a greater likelihood of children being an appropriate weight for their body type.
  • Don't comment on body shape or size. "It's a lot easier said than done, but this means your own body, your child's, or others in the community," says Dr. Vargas.
  • Frame nutrition and exercise as meaningful for health. When you talk with your son about what you eat or your exercise routine, don't tie hoped-for results to body shape or size.
  • Communicate openly. "If your son says he wants to exercise more or increase his protein intake, ask why — for his overall health, or a specific body ideal?"
  • Don't buy protein supplements. It's harder for boys to obtain them when parents won't allow them in the house. "One alternative is to talk with your son's primary care doctor or a dietitian, who can be a great resource on how to get protein through regular foods," Dr. Vargas says.

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    Worldnews
    'We Want To Know Where They Are'
    ~6.5 mins read
    How the discovery of a mass grave sparked uproar over the missing in Mexico Mexico City, Mexico – When they got to the deserted ranch, the volunteer searchers found watches and dirty football jerseys, an applied psychology book and a copy of the Bible. There was even a heart-shaped keychain containing a cut-out photo of a young woman. But one set of artefacts was particularly chilling: the sight of hundreds of dust-caked shoes, thought to be discarded by victims who were murdered and incinerated in nearby ovens. The volunteers had uncovered what appeared to be a mass killing site, with suspected ties to the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), a fearsome criminal organisation in Mexico. It was located in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, less than an hour outside the urban centre of Guadalajara — and at a site previously inspected by local authorities. The discovery on March 5 has sent public anger rippling across Mexico, as the country grapples with a crisis of mass disappearances at the hands of criminal groups and government officials. On a Saturday afternoon this month, indignant protesters placed 400 pairs of shoes in Mexico City’s Zócalo plaza, right in front of the National Palace. One of the demonstrators — who shared only his first name, Juan Carlos — told Al Jazeera that the sheer size of the mass grave is part of the outrage. For him, it represents years of negligence. "It’s not good that this violence we’re living through is normalised," Juan Carlos said. "The government has colluded with criminal organisations." Solemn, their faces swollen with tears, some of the protesters had come to the Zócalo because they too had lost loved ones to forced disappearances. In the mass grave at Teuchitlán, they saw an echo of their own suffering. They called on the government to act decisively and root out the corruption that has allowed so many deaths to unfold for so long. "We’re going through the same problems," another protester, Gustavo Sánchez, told Al Jazeera. "There haven’t been advances on anything." Sánchez's son, Abraham Zeidy Hernández, disappeared in the state of Nuevo León in May 2024. He gave a tearful speech at the rally accusing President Claudia Sheinbaum of failing to address the crisis. "We want to know where they are," Sánchez said of the disappeared. According to the Mexican government’s statistics, at least 125,204 people have been declared missing, most of them after 2006, when the country joined the US-sponsored "war on drugs". That ushered in an unprecedented period of militarisation that saw hundreds of thousands of soldiers deployed to the street. The "war on drugs" accelerated the transformation of criminal groups into paramilitary forces that operated in clear view of government officials, even collaborating with them. And it ignited an explosion of human rights abuses linked to state forces and criminals — particularly disappearances. Many experts believe the official number of missing people to be an undercount, with many cases going unreported for fear of retribution. Some even consider the disappearances the largest case of mass abduction in Latin America since the Cold War. "This is all because of the mal gobierno [bad government]," Monica Livier, a member of a citizen advocacy organisation called Va por Todos Mexico, told Al Jazeera. She accused the government of failing to take action to stop the killings in Teuchitlán. "The government already knew about it, but they didn’t do anything about it." The mass grave in Teuchitlán was discovered by a volunteer "search collective" called the Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco — the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco. The group is dedicated to finding missing people in the state of Jalisco, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. At the start of the month, an anonymous tip arrived through social media, pointing the volunteers to an abandoned ranch: Rancho Izaguirre. The ranch had been reputed to be a training centre for cartel members, and government officials had previously swept the ranch. As recently as September, members of the Mexican military and National Guard raided the area, arresting 10 suspects and releasing two people imprisoned at the site. A human body was found as well, alongside weapons and ammunition. But the authorities reported no mass graves nor makeshift crematoriums. Six months later, in early March, the volunteers from the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco arrived with only rudimentary tools: pickaxes and shovels. They said there was no crime scene tape, nor police to guard the site. So they set up makeshift tents and started digging. Relatively quickly, they found charred bone fragments. Teeth. A metal plate used in surgeries to fix fractured femurs. And three ovens that appeared to be used to dispose of corpses. "We want to make it clear that these are not ordinary ovens, but crematoriums used to incinerate human bodies," the collective wrote on social media. "This is not a setup, it is not an invention. This is the harsh reality we have found in Teuchitlán. We want the truth to be known and justice to be done for the victims." Targeting impoverished youth Since the March 5 revelation, Mexican media have published a wave of testimonies from those who claim to have survived or escaped Rancho Izaguirre. Many of those who came forward chose to remain anonymous. They identified as impoverished youths from Guadalajara and explained they were lured to the ranch by false promises of work in online advertisements — or simply kidnapped. One young man said the ranch was described as "hitman school". Those who complained, questioned the cartel leader’s orders or failed to pass the brutal tests were executed. Indira Navarro, the head of the Warrior Searchers of Jalisco, said in a radio interview that one survivor dubbed it "a little school of terror". Other documents have emerged suggesting that local authorities may have known about the site but failed to act. On March 12, the advocacy group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity published a report showing that National Guard members discovered burned bodies in the same area in August 2019. It also found that a local police commissioner sent the National Guard a message in March 2020, disclosing an act of attempted bribery. According to the internal document, an anonymous female caller said that National Guard personnel "would be given a sum of money" in exchange "for reducing the intensity of the operations" in the area. Jalisco has the highest official rate of forced disappearances in Mexico. Since the government began collecting statistics on disappearances in the 1950s, more than 15,000 people have been reported missing in the state alone. In the wake of the recent uproar, the state attorney general, Salvador Gonzalez de los Santos, said heavy machinery had been deployed to the Teuchitlán site but that the area was too big to search in its entirety. That has led the federal government to point the finger at local authorities for not investigating thoroughly enough. "They failed to track down the evidence or identify anything found abandoned at that location," Mexico Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero said at a March 19 news conference. "A full examination of the site was not conducted, nor were fingerprints taken." A day later, on March 20, federal and state authorities organised a tour of the site for journalists, officials and members of the search brigades. More than 12 buses arrived, some carrying social media influencers. But the visit was widely criticised, not least for letting the public access an ongoing crime scene. Family members of the disappeared also questioned why the influencers were reportedly allowed to access the ranch before they were. Some of the influencers later published accounts online denying the existence of crematoriums on the site. President Sheinbaum, meanwhile, has assigned federal prosecutors — led by Gertz Manero — to take up the case. "The first thing we need to do is investigate, because the images are painful, and the first thing we need to know is what happened there, before anything else," she said. Some critics, however, fear the federal authorities cannot be trusted to helm the investigation. The National Guard, after all, was created in 2019 under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s mentor. Still, on Monday, federal authorities announced progress in their investigation. They confirmed that they had detained a recruiter for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación in a low-income neighbourhood in Mexico City, where he allegedly sought out youths to be brought to the "extermination site". Two former police officers from a village near Teuchitlán were also arrested in relation to the ranch. But academics and investigative journalists have suggested that the ranch in Teuchitlán is part of a vast archipelago of training centres in the hills to the west of Guadalajara. Nor is the problem limited to one state: On March 12, a separate search brigade said it had discovered another "extermination site", this time in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. At the recent protest at the Zócalo, tensions started to boil over as evening fell. Some demonstrators broke through barricades and brawled with the police holding riot shields in front of the National Palace. "Mercenaries! Killers!" they shouted towards the palace, the official residence of Mexico’s president. Sebastián Arenas, a journalism student from the National Autonomous University of México, explained that many of his fellow protesters saw Teuchitlán as indicative of a federal security strategy that has allowed mass murder. "In the press, it’s said that things have changed in Mexico, that there aren’t disappearances, or that they’re going down, that the judicial reform is going to bring justice," he told Al Jazeera. "But here are the results: a clandestine grave, an extermination camp that looks like Auschwitz." Follow Al Jazeera English:...
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    Futbol
    ~6.0 mins read
    If the past decade of English football has one unifying theme it is tactical renewal. Since the mid-2010s - and since Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp - the Premier League has attracted Europe's best coaches, putting a once sleepy and unsophisticated division at the vanguard of tactical innovation. But we are in a moment of flux. New ideas still flood into the league but nothing, yet, has emerged as the next great theory. As Guardiola treads water at Manchester City we are waiting to find out where the sport goes next. Here are some ideas - some quirkier than others - for the future of football. Let's start with one of the weirder ones… but also one that feeds most directly into where the game seems to be heading. A couple of years ago the way Roberto de Zerbi stretched the pitch from goal-kicks was all the rage. He kept five players next to his goalkeeper and stuck five players on the halfway line, emptying central midfield and splitting a confused opposition in two. Brighton would then kick it long, bypassing half the team. This kind of thing might come back again, and certainly long balls are boomeranging back into fashion as the natural antidote to high pressing, short goal-kicks and high defensive lines. A decade of sucking everyone into tight spaces was bound to trigger a counter-reaction of stretching things back out. So, here's a thought for all those high-risk De Zerbi types. When defending a corner, instead of packing the box with bodies, why not begin a game of chicken and leave four or five on the halfway line? This would create exciting five-on-two long-ball counter-attacking scenarios, or, more likely, force the attacking team to leave five or six players back. Just like that you've decluttered the penalty area and, at the elite level, clearing a path for the goalkeeper and creating simpler one-on-one marking could reduce the chances of conceding. Corners are in vogue at the moment and the set-piece coach is the new must-have accessory. But maybe we're looking too closely at 'love trains' and marking systems in a messy penalty box. It's within a team's power to free up space and lean into ultra-stretched football. Just don't be chicken. There isn't enough deception in football tactics. There are the 'dark arts' of defending, the dummy and the no-look pass. But where are the Trojan horses, the tactical decoys? Players are getting more versatile all the time and (most) managers are too, regularly changing formation between matches and within them. In fact, a lot of managers these days would reject the idea of the formation. But there are still basic differences between, say, the 4-3-3 and the 3-4-2-1, and although a lot of coaches are comfortable switching it up based on the game state - moving to a back three to see out the final few minutes of a 1-0 lead, for example - nobody changes formation early in a game. And nobody is doing it to fool the other manager. Imagine two teams lining up in similar 4-3-3s, with touchline-hugging wingers and two number eights in front of a defensive midfielder. For the first 10 minutes they feel each other out, getting used to their opponents' patterns. Then all of a sudden one team swaps to a 3-4-2-1. The wingers disappear, the three-player triangle in midfield becomes a box-shape four, and the other side has to scramble to keep up. Five minutes later, they change back again. Or switch to a third system entirely. It would be chaotic, but the team who planned the switches in training would have a huge advantage in those frantic few minutes of adaptation. And it could have a huge impact on the game because, at the risk of getting highfalutin, it would require a new way of thinking about time. Currently football people only think about time in quite a limited way: how long we have to hold on to the lead, when the first substitution should be made, when to throw the kitchen sink. Time is an attritional dance with the other team, something we react to, the variable that slips through our fingers. Decoy formations would require breaking up the game into chunks of time and planning each segment. Once we start thinking this way, the 90 minutes could feel longer and richer - something to seize and control. There are about 30 throw-ins per match yet nobody has thought to seek innovation around the most common set-piece in the game - and one with an (inexplicable) detail ready to exploit: no offsides. Except, of course, one man did innovate some 17 years ago. It's just that nobody has thought to copy him. A Rory Delap throw arrowing through the sky is one of the Premier League's most iconic images. His throw-ins led to 25 Stoke City goals in his first four seasons at the club, terrifying defences to the extent that on one infamous occasion Hull City goalkeeper Boaz Myhill chose not to clear for touch but boot the ball straight out for a corner. And yet the technique of Delap's throw-in retired with him. Presumably there is nothing unique about Delap's musculature that prevents it from being taught to others, so why has it never been repeated? Why hasn't Mikel Arteta - who says he takes comparisons with Tony Pulis' Stoke as "a compliment" - brought Delap on to his coaching staff? The most likely explanation is the "Rick Barry" phenomenon. Barry retired from the NBA in 1980 as the all-time leader in free-throw shooting percentage, having exclusively used under-arm "granny throws", yet nobody has copied his technique. It is seen as childish, uncool, un... basketball. Shaquille O'Neal, when advised by Barry to "granny throw" in response to his poor 52% record, summed up the problem: "I'd shoot 0% before I'd shoot underhanded." Maybe a similar phenomenon means Delap's throws are seen as too ugly and too direct - too far outside the elegant philosophies of the elite managers - to be repeated. If so, they ought to loosen up. If someone breaks down that barrier it could lead to a flurry of copycats, permanently turning the throw-in into a corner-like chance and permanently changing how football is played. It would be an exaggeration to say centre-backs have gone unchanged over the past couple of decades. Chris Wilder's overlapping centre-backs at Sheffield United have led to a pared-back version become commonplace for managers who deploy a back three. England manager Thomas Tuchel, for example, may instruct his outside centre-backs to linger towards the corner of the penalty box. But by and large the position is untouched. And after years of full-backs being redeployed, culminating in Ange Postecoglou using his full-backs as number eights, maybe it's time we give the centre-back new responsibilities. There's nothing new about the marauding centre-back, you might say. Franco Baresi used to break lines some 40 years ago, while in England Rio Ferdinand became renowned for this feature of his game in the 2000s. But we could take this one further. Centre-backs, unmarked and untracked, could start to make off-the-ball runs through the lines, slipping unnoticed right up into the forward line and beyond like Destiny Udogie at Tottenham Hotspur. If a full-back shuttled across to cover then there's no reason why powerful centre-backs - better on the ball than ever - can't be freed to become the spare player; the disruptive force that sneaks through the system. OK, wait. Hear us out. Liverpool are 1-0 down against League One opposition in the EFL Cup. There are five minutes left on the clock and all 11 opponents are camped in their third. Goalkeeper Alisson is now in a quarterback role, sat on the halfway line spraying passes left and right. So, Arne Slot withdraws Alisson to bring on an extra forward and, with an ironic flourish, gives he-needs-to-get-serious-about-his-defending's Trent Alexander-Arnold the goalie gloves. Trent stayed behind in training the previous week for a few extra sessions to learn the basics of goalkeeping, even though he's unlikely to do any during his five minutes on the pitch. And if he is called upon then a) Alexander-Arnold in goal might encourage a wild shot from distance that's easier to gather, or b) would face a four-on-two break that goalkeepers rarely keep out anyway. It sounds mad at first, but the more you think about it... why not? Liverpool lose little while gaining a better quarterback distributor and an extra forward. Real tactical innovation requires maverick thinking. Yes, the role of a keeper has already evolved over the past decade, but let's see what Alexander-Arnold can do in goal.
    All thanks to BBC Sport
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