The News

 The first look at Nicolas Cage's hero in Spider-Noir has been revealed. Sony's Spider-Man Universe continues to release new films, with Venom: The Last Dance just hitting theaters and Kraven the Hunter set to come in December. However, the studio's plans for its Marvel properties extend beyond the theatrical experience. Sony is developing a number of live-action series for Prime Video, with Nicolas Cage leading the cast of Spider-Noir, the first of those series. Previous set photos had revealed Cage's mysterious character in the show, with the first look at the actor as Spider-Man Noir now emerging.

The show will feature Cage in a traditional Spider-Man Noir suit. The character sports all of his trademark items, like the fedora, trench coat, and goggles Cage's Spider-Man Noir wore in both of the animated Spider-Man movies in the Spider-Verse franchise. The set photos and videos show the hero on top of a car during a high-speed chase, with Spider-Man Noir seemingly using his webs on buildings to stop the car.

What The Spider-Man Noir Costume Means For Sony's Show

A True Spider-Man Show Even With Core Changes

The Spider-Noir set photos and video show that Sony wants to bring a faithful version of the Marvel hero to life. Nicolas Cage's hero looks as if he stepped right out of the comics or the animated Spider-Verse films into live-action, with a costume that is a pitch-perfect adaptation. That is reassuring, as the Spider-Noir series is not going to be fully accurate to the character's Marvel history. In a move that could have been made to differentiate the show from Tom Holland's Spider-Man, Cage's Spider-Man Noir will have a different identity in the series.

Spider-Man Noir is normally an alternate universe version of Peter Parker. However, Spider-Noir will make the hero another character, which has yet to be revealed, though rumors suggest that Cage's Marvel hero could turn out to be Marvel Comics' Ben Reilly. The Prime Video series also does not use the Spider-Man name in its title, instead opting to call the show Spider-Noir. Despite these changes, the first look at Spider-Man Noir in action shows that the hero will look just like he should, and that is a great sign.

Our Take On The Spider-Man Noir Costume

I am a big fan of Nicolas Cage's Spider-Man Noir from the Spider-Verse movies, so I was already excited to see him make the jump to live-action and discover how different this new version of the hero is. However, after having seen the first look at Cage's Spider-Man Noir costume, I am looking forward to the new Spider-Noir series even more. The team behind the show did a great job, bringing exactly what I wanted to see from the hero's suit in live-action. The costume also looks great in action, as shown during the car chase, making Spider-Noir look exciting.

Spider-Noir (2025)

Adventure

Superhero

Action

An aging, grizzled private investigator in 1930s New York grapples with his dark past as the city's masked vigilante. Battling crime in a corrupt city, he faces dangerous enemies and uncovers sinister plots. His journey through shadowy alleyways and moral ambiguities is filled with action, intrigue, and noir-style narration.

Cast

Nicolas Cage , Lamorne Morris

Seasons

1

Franchise(s)

Spider-Man , Spider-Verse

 ESPN's College GameDay is on IU's campus for the first time for a Saturday showcase as the 7-0 Hoosiers face Washington (noon) today.

IU fans camped out Friday night and lined up bright and early Saturday morning as a national spotlight descends on Indiana... for football.

'Going to be special.'What IU fans can expect from ESPN College GameDay

More GameDay:Lee Corso, 1979 Holiday Bowl reunion 'means the world' to IU's first bowl winners

The top pregame show for college football features Rece Davis, Nick Saban, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee and Lee Corso. Notably, Corso coached Indiana during his career, and Cignetti worked under Saban at Alabama from 2007-10 as a wide receivers coach.

Broadcasting live from the south lawn of Memorial Stadium, Countdown to GameDay will begin at 8:30 a.m., with the full show starting 30 minutes later.

Lee Corso Day in Bloomington

Bloomington mayor Kerry Thompson announces Saturday as Lee Corso Day as members of the 1979 Holiday Bowl winning team flanked him on ESPN College GameDay's set, following a segment on the team's reunion this weekend.

U-Dub is just trash.'

Tayven Jackson will get the start for IU at quarterback with Kurtis Rourke out injured. The former Center Grove star's dad, Ray Jackson, played defensive back for Washington State (1993-94, 96-97). Tayven will face off against dad's hated rivals, the Washington Huskies.

Talking with ESPN and waving the GameDay traditional Wazzou flag, Ray didn't need any additional reason to root for the Hoosiers: "U-Dub is just trash."

 Children who have coughs that go on for weeks may have a type of walking pneumonia that’s been surging in the US this year, and they may need a different antibiotic regimen to treat it, infectious disease experts say.

“It’s very much been on our radar since early summer, when we started to see a remarkable increase in the number of kids with pneumonia who seemed to have this particular type of pneumonia,” said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Related articleWhat to know about Mycoplasma, the bacteria behind recent spikes in pneumonia cases in Ohio and overseas

Creech says that on the same day in August, four Nashville-area pediatricians reached out to him to ask why so many kids were coughing in the summertime. These doctors wanted advice, he says, because their go-to antibiotic for pneumonia – amoxicillin – didn’t seem to be working in these cases.

The pneumonia is caused by tiny Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria and cases are spiking this year, particularly among preschool-age children, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sent a bulletin alerting parents and doctors to the uptick last week.

Mycoplasma pneumonia is the latest entry on a growing list of lung infections keeping doctors on their toes this fall. Whooping cough, or pertussis, cases – which also cause a prolonged cough – are five times higher than they were at this time last year, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is also rising in parts of the US.

In the past, it’s been difficult to test for Mycoplasma. It’s not a germ that likes to grow in a Petri dish, which is the standard, if slow, way to test for bacterial infections.

Now, Creech says, better diagnostic tests are making it easier to detect these bacteria more quickly and reliably. With so many germs making kids cough this fall, it’s crucial that doctors use these new tests to get the right diagnosis, he said.

“This is the exact time where we need to be using these diagnostic tests that can guide treatment,” he said.

Related articleIt’s time to get flu and Covid-19 shots

Awareness of the Mycoplasma trend is important, the CDC says, since first-line antibiotics for kids such as amoxicillin and penicillin don’t kill this type of bacteria. The infection is usually easily treated with other antibiotics, however, such as azithromycin.

According to the CDC, which monitors discharge data from a network of hospitals as well as test results from commercial laboratories, the number of children ages 2 through 4 who were seen in the ER for pneumonia and who tested positive for Mycoplasma increased from 1% in April 2024 to 7.2% in early October, a sevenfold increase. Diagnoses in older kids doubled over the same time frame, increasing from 3.6% to 7.4%.

The CDC said Mycoplasma cases seem to have peaked in mid-August, but they remain high. Creech said he expects they will continue to be high for another month or so, then should begin to taper off later into the fall.

On an X-ray, Mycoplasma infections can give lungs a cloudy or “white lung” appearance.

Last year, China, Denmark and France all reported increases of this kind of pneumonia in kids.

The rise in cases is probably due to at least three factors, said Dr. Geoffrey Weinberg, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The first is that rates of Mycoplasma infections are returning to where they were before the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It seems very dramatic now, but it’s more because during the peak of the Covid pandemic, just about everything else went down,” Weinberg said. “But the actual countrywide rates are fairly similar to what it was before 2019.”

The second reason is that most infections cycle, so some years are worse than others. Doctors tend to see spikes of Mycoplasma pneumonia every 3 to 7 years, as people lose their immunity to the virus, Creech said.

“Sometimes you just have a bad year, combined with not noticing it for a while, now we’re getting it more,” Weinberg said. Having a lot of cases after not having many at all can make the spike feel even bigger, he added.

The third reason is that doctors have more advanced tests – called multiplex tests – that can check for multiple types of viruses and bacteria at the same time, so it could be that this infection is just getting picked up more often.

Mycoplasma pneumoniae are bacteria that travel through respiratory droplets. People catch them when they’re near another person’s coughs and sneezes, the CDC said. For that reason, this type of pneumonia easily spreads through crowded settings like schools, college residence halls and nursing homes.

These bacteria are tricky too because they hang around for a while – from one to four weeks in the body – before they make a person sick. By the time symptoms start, a person usually has little memory of what they may have been exposed to.

Mycoplasma infections start off pretty generically, with a headache, a sore throat, a low fever and chills. People often feel crummy but can still get around, hence the term “walking pneumonia.”

The cough is typically a dry cough, without phlegm. It starts gradually and slowly increases over a period of two to three weeks, becoming almost constant.

Not everyone who gets a Mycoplasma infection will need treatment. Weinberg says that as many as 75% of kids and young adults will get over it without any therapy.

Sometimes, however, the infection will exacerbate pre-existing conditions like asthma and make people seriously ill.

Rarely, these germs can travel outside the lungs. In the central nervous system, they can infect the lining of the brain and spinal cord. The bacteria can also infect the nerves of the eyes, as well as the ones that control the legs and bladder. These patients may not ever develop a cough.

 Even though the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is neck and neck, The Washington Post has decided not to make a presidential endorsement for the first time in 36 years, the publisher and CEO announced Friday.

"We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," Will Lewis wrote in an opinion piece published on the paper's website. He referenced the paper's policy in the decades prior to 1976, when, following the Watergate scandal that the Post broke, it endorsed Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. The last time the Post did not endorse a presidential candidate in the general election was 1988, according to a search of its archives.

Colleagues learned the news from the editorial page editor, David Shipley, at a tense meeting shortly before Lewis' announcement. The meeting was characterized by two people with direct knowledge of discussions on condition of anonymity to speak about internal matters.

Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision to endorse was being reviewed by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That's the owner's prerogative and is a common practice.

On Friday, Shipley said that he told other editorial board leaders on Thursday that management had decided there would be no endorsement, though Shipley had known about the decision for a while. He added that he "owns" this outcome. The reason he cited was to create "independent space" where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.

Colleagues were said to be "shocked" and uniformly negative. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who has been highly critical of Trump as autocratic, told NPR he had resigned from the editorial board as a consequence.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump's presidency, denounced the decision starkly.