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Stock market today: Wall Street slips, and its best week since March comes to a quiet close

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street closed out its best week since March with a quiet finish on Friday, and stocks drifted to modest losses.The S&P 500 fell 16.25 points, or 0.4%, to 4,409.59 after wobbling through the day. It still closed out a fifth straight winning week for its longest such streak since November 2021, and it remains close to its highest level since April 2022.The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 108.94, or 0.3%, to 34,299.12, and the Nasdaq composite fell 93.25, or 0.7%, to 13,689.57.Humana dropped 3.9% for one of the S&P 500’s sharpest losses after becoming the latest health insurer to warn about rising costs because of pent-up demand for medical services. Health insurance giant UnitedHealth issued a similar warning earlier in the week.Treasury yields rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.76% from 3.72% late Thursday. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which moves more on expectations for the Federal Reserve, rose to 4.72% from 4.65%....

Biden urges tougher gun restrictions, one year after Uvalde, Texas, school massacre

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

FILE - President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School to pay their respects to the victims of the mass shooting, May 29, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. Biden will speak at a summit in Connecticut on Friday, June 16, 2023, to mark the first anniversary of a gun safety law signed after the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)(AP/Evan Vucci) FILE - President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School to pay their respects to the victims of the mass shooting, May 29, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. Biden will speak at a summit in Connecticut on Friday, June 16, 2023, to mark the first anniversary of a gun safety law signed after the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)...

WTOP’s Beer of the Week: Fidens The Color of the Night Oatmeal Stout

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

(new Image()).src = "https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=9be9c680-c459-4acb-af21-654a2ccca384&cid=c2ffed0c-3624-46c0-b10f-97c976d290a3";cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "9be9c680-c459-4acb-af21-654a2ccca384",mediaId: "1eaf4b32-0735-4b58-963e-ac6d268b397e"}).render("79477c2442114070a7e1d079e7f89bc9"); });A stout… that won’t put you out!WTOP’s Brennan Haselton is joined by Neighborhood Restaurant Group Beer Director and Food and Wine Sommelier of the Year Greg Engert to talk about Fidens The Color of the Night Oatmeal Stout for the latest edition of WTOP’s Beer of the Week.Brewery: Fidens Brewing — Albany, New YorkDescription: an Oatmeal stout featuring a complex grain bill of English and German Malts with notes of chocolate, coffee and sweet breadABV: 5.2%Pairing suggestions: Oysters, seared scallops and fried shrimp, chargrilled steak and veggies and desserts, like apple pie al la modeSource

Body Mass Index doesn’t give full health picture, AMA says

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

The American Medical Association is now advising doctors to focus less on Body Mass Index when it comes to overall health. Doctors have traditionally used BMI as an important metric — if it was too high or too low a patient was considered unhealthy.“Under the newly adopted policy, the AMA recognizes issues with using BMI as a measurement due to its historical harm, its use for racist exclusion and because BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations,” the organization said in a statement on Wednesday.Thomas Sherman, professor of Pharmacology & Physiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, told WTOP there are more accurate ways of measuring the risk between body weight and health, including waist-to-hip ratio and waist circumference, which are more predictive of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk.Still, he said, weight matters.“The concept that there is a healthy obese, or a healthy overweig...

Greek coast guard defends actions as more than 500 migrants heading for Europe feared dead in wreck

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The Greek coast guard on Friday defended its response to a ship that went down off the country’s south coast and left more than 500 migrants presumed drowned. Criticism mounted over Europe’s yearslong failure to prevent such tragedies.Patrol boats and a helicopter spent a third day scouring the area of the Mediterranean Sea where the packed fishing vessel capsized early Wednesday, in what the U.N. migration agency said could be the second deadliest migrant shipwreck recorded. The deadliest occurred when a vessel capsized off the coast of Libya en route to Italy in April 2015, killing an estimated 1,100 people. Greek coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou said that both coast guard and private ships repeatedly offered by radio and loudspeaker to help the vessel Wednesday while it was in international waters, also heading from Libya to Italy, but they were rejected.Alexiou argued that any effort to tow the overcrowded trawler or move hundreds of unwillin...

Blinken stresses need for better US-Chinese communications as he heads to Beijing

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Shortly before setting out for Beijing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday emphasized the importance of the U.S. and China establishing better lines of communication. He will be the highest-ranking member of the Biden administration to visit China. The U.S. wants to make sure “that the competition we have with China doesn’t veer into conflict” due to avoidable misunderstandings, Blinken told reporters in Washington.Blinken, speaking alongside Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, said his China trip is the outgrowth of a meeting in Bali last year between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden. The two agreed that China and the United States, the world’s biggest two economies and increasingly top rivals for global influence, must maintain contacts and and take steps to avoid unintended conflicts. Blinken’s trip came within a day of happening in February but was delayed by the diplomatic and political tumult brought on by the discove...

Theft of heads, brains, skin and other body parts from Harvard morgue spurs lawsuit

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

BOSTON (AP) — The son of a woman whose body was donated to Harvard Medical School for research purposes filed a class-action lawsuit on Friday on behalf of all families who believe their loved ones’ body parts were mishandled by the school’s former morgue manager.The lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston said the class could include the families of up to 400 donated cadavers. It alleges negligence, breach of duty and infliction of emotional distress.Before Adele Mazzone died in February 2019, she arranged to donate her body to the medical school for research, according to the lawsuit. Her ashes were returned to her family in April 2021, but her son, John Bozek, of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, thinks that his mother’s body was one of those desecrated at the morgue.“Plaintiff brings this class action on behalf of himself and all other similarly situated individuals whose family members donated and entrusted their deceased bodies into Harvard’s custody ...

Like Daniel Ellsberg, others who leaked US government secrets have been seen as traitors and heroes

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to leak a secret Defense Department study of the U.S. war in Vietnam — the Pentagon Papers — made him a traitor in the eyes of the White House and its supporters and an instant hero to opponents of the war. That’s been true of others who released top-secret information that they felt was evidence of official wrongdoing. While Ellsberg, who died Friday, will be remembered in a largely positive light, the reputations of more recent figures are still contested. Here are some other examples of people who exposed government secrets:W. MARK FELTAn associate director at the FBI, Felt was “Deep Throat,” the source who gave information about the Watergate break-in to The Washington Post in the 1970s.Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers indirectly led to Watergate. Infuriated at the exposure of the study, Nixon ordered an effort to dig up dirt on Ellsberg. Operatives linked to the White House broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psy...

Adobe, Virgin Galactic rise; Humana, Cabot fall, Friday, 6/16/2023

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks that traded heavily or had substantial price changes on Friday:Adobe Inc., up $4.27 to $495.18.The software maker raised its profit forecast for the year.Humana Inc., down $18.20 to $445.65.The insurer said it expects pent-up demand for medical services to drive costs in 2023.Cabot Corp., down $6.07 to $68.55.The chemical company said soft demand in China and globally will hurt its profits in fiscal 2023.IRobot Corp., up $8.92 to $51.British antitrust regulators have cleared Amazon’s purchase of the robot vacuum maker.Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., up 67 cents to $4.73.The spaceflight services company said it will start commercial launches at the end of June. Squarespace Inc., up $1.37 to $32.76.The software company said it is buying the assets of Google Domains.Steel Dynamics Inc., down $3.43 to $102.53.The steel producer and metals recycler gave investors a disappointing earnings forecast.Walt Disney Co., down $1.62 to $91.32.The entertainment and theme park...

Who gives a hoot: Why series of Fairfax Co. owl sightings are worth noting

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:01:07 GMT

One of the barred owls spotted in Fairfax Co. (Courtesy Lori Moran) One of the barred owls spotted in Fairfax Co. (Courtesy Lori Moran) Here’s a story you can give a hoot about. Some people in Fairfax County, Virginia, are spotting more and more owls, right in their backyards.“Be happy you got the chance to see an owl, you don’t get to see them everyday,” Fairfax County Ecologist David Lawlor said.Owls aren’t spotted in the daytime all that often.“They mainly hunt at night,” Lawlor said.One man, Barry Shapiro, recently walked out of his home to see a large barred owl perched on the back window of his red Prius in the Fair Ridge area. He posted a photo on social media.Some of his neighbors chimed in on ...