casino app
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — If the Giants' franchise-record 10th straight loss proved anything, it's that New York could use a young franchise quarterback. Rookie Michael Penix Jr. showed what a young QB can do on Sunday against the Giants, who need to learn from it. The No. 8 overall pick in the draft, Penix played a nearly flawless game in his first career start to help in their best performance in weeks. The Giants gambled in 2019 that Daniel Jones would be their franchise QB and it really never panned out. The one exception was the 2022 season, when the No. 6 overall pick had a career year and led New York to a 9-7-1 record and a playoff berth in the first season after Joe Schoen was hired as general manager and Brian Daboll was named coach. The Giants even won a playoff game. With the release of Jones last month, the Giants (2-13) are now a team without a quarterback who can perform at the level required of an NFL starter. Tommy DeVito and Drew Lock have split the last four starts but neither has provided much of a spark for the league's worst offense. Lock handed the Falcons the game with two interceptions that were returned for touchdowns. To turn things around next season, the Giants must find a quarterback. “I’d say it’s very important,” Daboll said Monday. New York is going to have a high pick in the draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in late April. It could even be the No. 1 overall selection. Choosing the right quarterback is going to be hard. There isn't a can't-miss choice in 2025 draft and forcing one early would be a mistake. Unless the Giants are convinced that Cam Ward, Shedeur Sanders, Jalen Milroe or someone else is the next franchise player, they have have so many needs that it would be better to wheel and deal and fill as many holes as possible. Even if the Giants take a quarterback in the second round, there's bound to be someone available who has a chance to be better than what they have now. The calendar. The season ends in less than two weeks. The franchise is in disarray, and a shakeup appears likely. Daboll's future as the coach is not bright, considering the current skid and two straight losing seasons. Schoen has to share the blame and so do co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch, who hired the GM and coach. LB Darius Muasau. The sixth-round draft pick out of UCLA has started the last three games since Bobby Okereke (back) was hurt and eventually put on injured reserve last week. Muasau had 11 tackles Sunday along with a quarterback hit and a tackle for a loss. He made the defensive calls after LB Micah McFadden left with a neck injury. Lock. In his starts, Lock has had three interceptions returned for touchdowns. He also lost a fumble on a strip-sack at Atlanta. Lock sustained a shoulder injury during the game and had an MRI on Monday. Besides Lock and McFadden, S Jason Pinnock (eye) also left the game. C John Michael Schmitz and RB Tyrone Tracy were evaluated for ankle injuries on Monday. 1 — Thanks to the Raiders' victory over the Jaguars, the Giants will have the No. 1 overall pick in the draft with two more losses. For the ninth and final time, the Giants will try to find a way to win at MetLife Stadium. New York is 0-8 heading into Sunday's game against the Indianapolis Colts. Its only other winless season at home was in 1974 when New York played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, while Giants Stadium was being built. AP NFL:
Kansas City Invention Convention expands programNew York, NY (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to remove fluoride from U.S. water, as Israel did a decade ago under the stewardship of Yael German. (RFK Jr. by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images; German via Flash 90) TEL AVIV -- Ilana Decker, who moved from Israel to New York three years ago, says she doesn't agree often with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Arguing, as he does, that the government should not make health mandates, she said, makes her "sound like an anti-vaxxer, which I'm not." But there is one issue, she said, where she and Kennedy do line up: The man whom Donald Trump has picked as the next secretary of health and human services has publicly floated ending the decades-long policy of encouraging cities to inject fluoride into the American water supply. Decker supports the change -- and she's speaking from personal experience: Her former home, Israel, stopped fluoridating its water a decade ago. "I hate to align with RFK Jr. in any way, shape, or form, but I really do agree that it should not be in the water," she said. Citing concerns about the risk to children, she even switched her 4-year-old to fluoride-free toothpaste, though she didn't rule out its use fully. "I have a deep distrust in the government taking away individual health choices "for our own good,"" Decker said. "I can use toothpaste with fluoride, but I can't decide to not drink the water coming out of my faucet." The nomination of Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and harsh critic of government health agencies, has cast a spotlight on debates over the role the government should play in public health -- and over the degree to which mounting distrust in science should guide policy-making. Fluoridation offers a case study in those debates. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fluoridation in water has been shown to reduce cavities in children and adults by about 25% over a lifetime, with the organization dubbing it "one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century." Anti-fluoride demonstrators displayed banners and handed out pamphlets outside the Department of Public Health in Sydney, Australia, in 1966. (Frank Albert Charles Burke/Fairfax Media via Getty Images) Critics of fluoridation point to studies showing that very high levels of the mineral -- beyond what is normally present in fluoridated water -- are associated with developmental problems in children; they also cite an array of conspiracy theories, including that the government is seeking to control citizens through fluoride use. Kennedy has called fluoride "an industrial waste" and "dangerous neurotoxin" and said that he would seek to end fluoridation on "day one" after taking office. (Water is managed locally, so the federal government can only advise and incentivize changes.) As with vaccines, he has said the use of fluoride should be up to individuals, not the government. "I think fluoride is on its way out," he said on NBC News shortly after Trump's election last month. "I think the faster that it goes out, the better." Those same debates lay at the root of the decision in 2013 by Israel's health minister to end water fluoridation. Now, Israel's policy change could act as a case study for how defluoridation could affect Americans. And the discourse is ongoing, with Israeli public health experts and some parents agitating for fluoride to be reinserted in the water -- citing worsening dental outcomes for children -- at the very moment when the United States may move in the opposite direction. "The success of water fluoridation serves as a beacon for public health in general, and by extension, opposition to it should serve as a warning," said Shlomo Zusman, who served as Israel's chief dental officer for over two decades and was a vocal critic of the 2014 policy change. He said modern water purification methods mean that fluoridation is far from the only way the modern water supply is altered. In addition, he noted that because 75% of Israel's potable water is desalinated, it has no natural fluoride levels at all. "The idea that water without added fluoride is "natural," as if it comes straight from a spring, is mistaken - there's no such thing, it's all manipulated," he said. Referring to a story in the Bible, he added, "The days of Rachel pumping water from the well are long gone." Israel began mandating fluoridation in nearly all municipalities decades ago, following the first local American fluoridation efforts. An Israeli Health Ministry webpage calls fluoridation "the most efficient, safest, simplest, cheapest, and most equal measure, by a significant margin, among all methods for preventing dental diseases in the general public." But in 2013, the health minister, Yael German, pledged to stop requiring fluoridation the following year, citing unnamed doctors who she said had personally told her that fluoridation presents risks to pregnant women, people with thyroid problems and the elderly. Like Kennedy and his followers, she also cited the importance of individual choice. "All things considered, and balancing all the interests, I feel that continued massive fluoridation of 100% of the water was an incorrect act," German wrote to an association of pediatricians that was one of several groups to publicly oppose her plan. "And many even believe it infringes on fundamental rights and freedom of choice." The government that succeeded German's term in office pledged to reintroduce fluoride -- prompting legal action from German -- but it has not been mandated again in Israel. Since discontinuing fluoride in tap water, Israeli dentists have observed a significant rise in children's cavities and have urged its reinstatement, even as some parents remain firmly against the idea. A study published in September found a significant increase in dental restorations and crowns among Israeli children ages 3 to 5, attributing the rise to fluoride's absence. The researchers, from the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine, concluded that the results provided "further proof of the need to restore community water fluoridation in Israel." Another study, published in January 2022, analyzed six years of data from dental clinics affiliated with a national Israeli healthcare network, showing that children ages 3 to 12 required nearly double the number of restorative treatments compared to before fluoridation ended. Researchers emphasized that even Israel's expansion of free dental care for all children failed to offset the worsening dental health. With fluoridation the subject of widespread misinformation as well as ongoing research, Israel is not the only place to adjust its approach over time. Juneau, Alaska, saw pediatric dental health worsen after eliminating fluoride in 2007, according to a study that examined the cost and frequency of dental treatment for poor children. So did the Canadian city of Calgary, which recorded higher rates of cavity-related treatments under general anesthesia among children after it stopped adding fluoride to its water in 2011. Calgary has now decided to resume fluoridation. But dozens of municipalities across the United States have moved away from fluoride use in recent years, including some whose voters made the choice on Election Day last month. Signs sprung up on roadsides urging a no vote on a referendum asking residents in seven Maine towns if they want to continue adding fluoride to drinking water in 2016. (Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images) Most of Europe, meanwhile, has either dropped fluoridation or never introduced it in drinking water. Many of those countries offer fluoridated salt and milk, mitigating the potential costs of not including the mineral in water. Not everyone in Israel is convinced that reintroducing fluoride is a good idea. In one Israeli mothers' group on Facebook, several women posited that the country's cavity epidemic has less to do with the absence of fluoride in water and more to do with poor hygiene habits and children's consumption of sweets and sugary snacks. "Kids subsisting on white bread and chocolate spread isn't helping," wrote one, naming a popular Israeli snack. Another, who identified herself as a teacher with 25 years of experience, agreed that there has been a significant decline in nutrition. "I can say with 100% certainty that children's diets have deteriorated immensely and it just so happens to coincide with the removal of fluoride," she said. Sweets for sale at Carmel Market (Shuk Ha"Carmel) in Tel Aviv, Dec. 30, 2022. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Several cited a recent study from the National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program that suggests that high levels of fluoride exposure may be linked to lower IQ in children. The report does not question the dental health benefits of fluoride. The program reviewed more than 500 studies over nearly a decade and concluded with "moderate confidence" that fluoride exposure at concentrations above 1.5 parts per million is associated with reduced cognitive development in children. But the study, which drew criticism from the American Academy of Pediatrics, also noted that that number was far above the recommended fluoride level in U.S. drinking water of 0.7 parts per million. Another study from May of this year found that prenatal exposure to fluoride was linked to behavioral problems, with children of mothers in areas with higher fluoride concentrations showing symptoms of autism, anxiety and other disorders by age 3, though the authors stopped short of establishing causation. Zusman dismissed many of the concerns about health risks as a fad. "There was a time when they claimed fluoridation caused hip fractures, then cancer, and later stunted growth in boys" caused by osteosarcoma, he said. "Now the fashion is ADHD and IQ, so they blame fluoridation on that." He said that just like parents who oppose fluoridation, the issue is personal to him, too. "Believe me, if there were serious, professional studies showing harm, I'd be the first to say, stop fluoridating the water," he said. "I have eight grandchildren to think of." Keep Jewish Stories in Focus. JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting. Support JTA This story is provided as a service of the Institute for Nonprofit News’ On the Ground news wire. The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a network of more than 475 independent, nonprofit newsrooms serving communities throughout the US, Canada, and globally. On the Ground is a service of INN, which aggregates the best of its members’ elections and political content, and provides it free for republication. Read more about INN here: https://inn.org/ . Please coordinate with dkolben@70facesmedia.org should you want to publish photos for this piece. This content cannot be modified, apart from rewriting the headline. To view the original version, visit: https://www.jta.org/2024/12/24/israel/rfk-jr-wants-fluoride-out-of-drinking-water-israel-has-a-decade-of-lessons-to-offerPublicité Humans of Rodrigues 23 décembre 2024 22:16 Commentaire(s) Par Vijay Naraidoo Partager cet article Facebook X LinkedIn WhatsApp Humans of Rodrigues Michel Samoisy, a learned teacher, a cultured man, an educated young man of 77, a leader among his equals, I vouch these are not exaggerated superlatives on top of being a guardian of his country’s culture: ancient games, accordion playing and attachment to the ancestral culture. Michel’s is a living museum. His household premises, house, stores, farm, pens and poultry, crops, are in themselves a living museum of the authentic Rodrigues lifestyle and set up. Michel has grown into a man in Rivière-Coco and even his soul will not leave this place, a kingdom for a simple human whom he serves well, and which serves him and his family abundantly. A man of wisdom, he is never in the rush although in his football team Starshine, he rushed as a shooting star in his position as centre forward. One of his TTC (Teachers Training College) mates of the 68/69 cohort, Jay Augun, said Michel made them all laugh uncontrollably with his tricks on ball control. Michel expresses his pride and gratitude to the teaching staff of his primary schools, école Ste-Thérèse de L’Enfant Jésus and La Ferme St-Esprit Roman Catholic School. He’s been a ‘komi laboutik’ for some time before he joined the SaintLouis College founded by Regis Claude Obeegadoo in Port-Mathurin. The colonial administration offered a kind of positive discrimination for young Rodriguans to follow a special pupil-teacher training course after Form 3, which Michel completed. This opened the doors of the TTC for a three-year long course from1967 to 1969. They would go back home to fill an ever-increasing vacancy in the primary teaching profession. Living with host families like all Rodriguan students was an enriching experience, what with living in a new cultural set-up, what with making friends with members of other communities, travelling long distances by bus and... going on errands for the landlady. He saved the money the landlady gave him for the bus fare. Responsibility and reality facing the facts of life has always been Michel’s motto. Cut your coat according to your cloth. Oh! How absence of contact with the family outweighed all the material pleasures of travelling, sightseeing and meeting with fellow Rodriguans on weekends. A mobile phone was out of the imagination. His parents had to be at the Telegraph Department at Mt-Venus at a fixed time to secure a call with Michel. From Port- Mathurin to Port-Louis the sea route was, to say the least, long. I was invited to attend a special meeting of the Federation of Associations of Older Persons during my visit early December. Here was Michel, the person in chair, the depository of a vast knowledge of human rights, a leader with principles tinged with democratic rules, every member speaks relevantly, information is shared and consensus is developed. This openness to ideas coming from ‘others’ comes from his social engagement at 14 in Les Cœurs Vaillants, a scout-like organization, his involvement in the Rodrigues Council of Social Service, in the Comité village where he resides, in the Elderly Watch and in his day-to-day activities. Michel is ever ready to champion Rodriguan ancient games (jeux letan lontan), play his accordion and talk to you without fatigue and without pretending to be a man above the lot. He is humility personified. When he speaks and when his eyes brighten, you can expect a cool river of knowledge unfurling. Publicité Les plus récents Publicité 24 décembre 2024 06:00 Les grands titres de l'express de ce mardi 24 décembre 2024 23 décembre 2024 22:16 Michel Samoisy, a man of his time 23 décembre 2024 22:02 Haakaa, une marque écoresponsable, qui séduit les parents mauriciens 23 décembre 2024 21:19 Toujours sans salaire, le dossier déposé en cour industrielle 23 décembre 2024 20:34 «Nous viendrons avec des règlements», annonce le Premier ministre 23 décembre 2024 19:45 Quand Anthony Blinken tente de faire fléchir Navin Ramgoolam 23 décembre 2024 18:00 Port -Louis, quel bazar ! 23 décembre 2024 17:00 Le Maulana Khodadin souhaite rencontrer le Dr Navin Ramgoolam 23 décembre 2024 16:00 Il est acquitté 11 ans après 23 décembre 2024 15:45 «I consider myself lucky to be able to express my opinions freely!» Publicité
NEW YORK (AP) — What a wonderful year 2024 has been for investors. U.S. stocks ripped higher and carried the S&P 500 to records as the economy kept growing and the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates. The year featured many familiar winners, such as Big Tech, which got even bigger as their stock prices kept growing . But it wasn't just Apple, Nvidia and the like. Bitcoin , gold and other investments also drove higher. Here's a look at some of the numbers that defined the year. All are as of Dec. 20. Remember when President Bill Clinton got impeached or when baseball's Mark McGwire hit his 70th home run against the Montreal Expos? That was the last time the U.S. stock market closed out a second straight year with a leap of at least 20%, something the S&P 500 is on track to do again this year. The index has climbed 24.3% so far this year, not including dividends, following last year's spurt of 24.2%. The number of all-time highs the S&P 500 has set so far this year. The first came early, on Jan. 19, when the index capped a two-year comeback from the swoon caused by high inflation and worries that high interest rates instituted by the Federal Reserve to combat it would create a recession. But the index was methodical through the rest of the year, setting a record in every month outside of April and August, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The latest came on Dec. 6. The number of times the Federal Reserve has cut its main interest rate this year from a two-decade high, offering some relief to the economy. Expectations for those cuts, along with hopes for more in 2025, were a big reason the U.S. stock market has been so successful this year. The 1 percentage point of cuts, though, is still short of the 1.5 percentage points that many traders were forecasting for 2024 at the start of the year. The Fed disappointed investors in December when it said it may cut rates just two more times in 2025, fewer than it had earlier expected. That’s how many points the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by the day after Election Day, as investors made bets on what Donald Trump’s return to the White House will mean for the economy and the world . The more widely followed S&P 500 soared 2.5% for its best day in nearly two years. Aside from bitcoin, stocks of banks and smaller winners were also perceived to be big winners. The bump has since diminished amid worries that Trump’s policies could also send inflation higher. The level that bitcoin topped to set a record above $108,000 this past month. It's been climbing as interest rates come down, and it got a particularly big boost following Trump's election. He's turned around and become a fan of crypto, and he's named a former regulator who’s seen as friendly to digital currencies as the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, replacing someone who critics said was overly aggressive in his oversight. Bitcoin was below $17,000 just two years ago following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. Gold's rise for the year, as it also hit records and had as strong a run as U.S. stocks. Wars around the world have helped drive demand for investments seen as safe, such as gold. It's also benefited from the Fed's cut to interest rates. When bonds are paying less in interest, they pull away fewer potential buyers from gold, which pays investors nothing. It's a favorite number of Elon Musk, and it's also a threshold that Tesla's stock price passed in December as it set a record. The number has a long history among marijuana devotees, and Musk famously said in 2018 that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share . Tesla soared this year, up from less than $250 at the start, in part because of expectations that Musk's close relationship with Trump could benefit the company. That's how much revenue Nvidia made in the nine months through Oct. 27, showing how the artificial-intelligence frenzy is creating mountains of cash. Nvidia's chips are driving much of the move into AI, and its revenue through the last nine months catapulted from less than $39 billion the year before. Such growth has boosted Nvidia's worth to more than $3 trillion in total. GameStop’s gain on May 13 after Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty,” appeared online for the first time in three years to support the video game retailer’s stock, which he helped rocket to unimaginable heights during the “ meme stock craze ” in 2021. Several other meme stocks also jumped following his post in May on the social platform X, including AMC Entertainment. Gill later disclosed a sizeable stake in the online pet products retailer Chewy, but he sold all of his holdings by late October . That's how much the U.S. economy grew, at annualized seasonally adjusted rates, in each of the three first quarters of this year. Such growth blew past what many pessimists were expecting when inflation was topping 9% in the summer of 2022. The fear was that the medicine prescribed by the Fed to beat high inflation — high interest rates — would create a recession. Households at the lower end of the income spectrum in particular are feeling pain now, as they contend with still-high prices. But the overall economy has remained remarkably resilient. This is the vacancy rate for U.S. office buildings — an all-time high — through the first three quarters of 2024, according to data from Moody's. The fact the rate held steady for most of the year was something of a win for office building owners, given that it had marched up steadily from 16.8% in the fourth quarter of 2019. Demand for office space weakened as the pandemic led to the popularization of remote work. That's the total number of previously occupied homes sold nationally through the first 11 months of 2024. Sales would have to surge 20% year-over-year in December for 2024's home sales to match the 4.09 million existing homes sold in 2023, a nearly 30-year low. The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. A shortage of homes for sale and elevated mortgage rates have discouraged many would-be homebuyers.Atlus RPG Unicorn Overlord Is Half Price for Black Friday
PM Modi, Amit Shah, Gautam Adani & others condole Manmohan Singh’s demise