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Probe into harassment claims about Netanyahu's wife
(BPT) - Tech gifts are consistently some of the most popular presents to give and receive during the holidays. In fact, according to the annual Consumer Technology Holiday Purchase Patterns report , a record 233 million U.S. adults (89%) will buy tech products during the 2024 holiday season. But with so many devices out there, it can be hard to decide on the perfect option for the loved one on your list. A tablet like the new Fire HD 8 from Amazon offers the versatility of an all-in-one device, with access to streaming, gaming, video chatting, reading or writing all at your fingertips. Fire HD 8 also features a vibrant 8-inch HD display and lightweight, portable design, for high-quality entertainment on the go. Plus, Fire HD 8 comes with three new AI features that can help you get the most out of your tablet experience. Check them out below and learn how they can help you with daily tasks this holiday season and beyond. 1. Meet your personal writing assistant Do you struggle with writing a heartfelt message or finessing a tricky email? Fear not! Writing Assist is here to help. Writing Assist works as part of your Fire tablet's device keyboard and compatible apps, including email, Word documents and social media. In just a few taps, you can transform your writing from good to great. Try Writing Assist's pre-set styles to turn a simple email into a professionally written note. Or, you can ask Writing Assist for grammar suggestions to make your writing more concise, or elaborate on your ideas. You can even "emojify" your writing to add more fun and personality. 2. Learn more in less time Say goodbye to scrolling through pages of information. The new Webpage Summaries feature allows you to learn pertinent information as quickly as possible. Available on the Silk browser on Fire tablets, Webpage Summaries provides quick insights on web articles. In a matter of seconds, this feature will distill the key points in an article or on a webpage into a clear, concise summary of what you need to know. 3. Get creative with your device wallpaper With Wallpaper Creator, you can easily add a touch of creative flair and customization to your tablet's home screen. You can choose from one of the curated prompts to get started on creating a unique background. Or, if you're ready to let your imagination run wild, type a description of what you'd like to see. For example, you can ask for an image of a tiger swimming underwater or a watercolor-style image of a desert landscape in space. Wallpaper Creator will then turn your vision into a reality, delivering a high-resolution image that you can use as your tablet's wallpaper. Celebrate an AI-powered holiday season Writing Assist, Webpage Summaries, and Wallpaper Creator are now available on Amazon's new Fire HD 8 and other compatible Fire tablet devices, including the latest Fire HD 10 and Fire Max 11 tablets. To learn more, or to order a new Fire tablet this gift-giving season, visit Amazon.com .Eagles look to clinch NFC East title while Cowboys hope to play spoiler
CLEVELAND — Darius Garland scored 24 points and Jarrett Allen had 21 points and 11 rebounds as the NBA-leading Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Washington 115-105 on Friday night, sending the Wizards to their 18th loss in 19 games. Donovan Mitchell scored 20 points and Garland added eight assists for Cleveland, which is 22-4 and holds a 1 1/2-game lead over Boston for the top record in the league. The Cavaliers, who lead the NBA in field-goal percentage, shot a season-low 39.6%. Caris LeVert had 14 points and six assists and Isaac Okoro scored 13 points. Cleveland went 15 of 51 on 3-pointers. Bilal Coulibaly tied his career high with 27 points and Jordan Poole scored 17 for the Wizards. Justin Champagnie had 16 points and eight rebounds as Washington fell to a league-worst 3-20. Takeaways Wizards: Alex Sarr, the No. 2 overall draft pick, returned after missing two games with a sore lower back and made his first five shots, including a 3-pointer. The 7-footer from France finished with 14 points and seven rebounds in 27 minutes. Cavaliers: Power forward Evan Mobley, who is averaging 18.3 points and 9.1 rebounds, sprained his left ankle in the previous game at Miami and did not play. Coach Kenny Atkinson said he isn’t concerned the injury will be “a long-term thing.” Key moment LeVert scored four points and absorbed a flagrant foul from Poole during a 7-0 Cavaliers run that bridged the third and fourth quarters, finally giving them breathing room with an 89-80 lead. Cleveland Cavaliers forward Isaac Okoro (35) goes to the basket between Washington Wizards guard Bilal Coulibaly (0) and guard Jordan Poole (13) in the first half of an NBA basketball game, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024, in Cleveland. Credit: AP/Sue Ogrocki Key stats Cleveland improved to 14-1 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse this season, the second-best home mark in the NBA behind unbeaten Orlando. The Cavaliers also beat Washington for the 11th straight time, their longest streak in the 55-year series. Up Next Wizards host Boston on Sunday, and Cavaliers visit Brooklyn on Monday.Jeeno Thitikul makes late charge to catch Angel Yin in the LPGA finale
On December 12 the 2024 Game Awards were held , and over the span of about four hours, the yearly event handed out a ton of awards while also premiering a bunch of cool-looking trailers for upcoming games. And like every year before, the show ended with the reveal of 2024's Game of the Year. Maybe after watching all that ( or reading our wonderful summary of the event ) you wondered: “Hey, who won in 2016?” Well, I’m here to help! I’ve put together a list that looks back at the last 10 years of The Game Awards to see which games have won the top honor over the last decade. A decade ago, BioWare’s open-world fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition was the first game to win Game of the Year at the inaugural Game Awards in 2014. It might have been cool in a poetic kind of way to see 2024's Dragon Age: The Veilguard win again a decade later, but alas, the universe doesn’t work like that. In 2015, CD Projekt Red’s RPG The Witcher 3 was the big winner of the show. The game not only walked away with the top award of the night, but it was also the most nominated game at the awards, being in the running in six categories and winning three of them. And nine years later, CDPR officially unveiled The Witcher 4 at the 2024 Game Awards. In 2016, Blizzard’s super-popular multiplayer hero shooter Overwatch made history and became the first non-RPG and the first multiplayer game to win GOTY at The Game Awards. Spoilers, but another mulitplayer-only game wouldn’t win Game of the Year again until 2021. In 2017, another open-world, third-person RPG won the top award of the night. This time the beloved Zelda: Breath of the Wild took the top honors at The Game Awards. This was also the first and, as of 2024, the only Nintendo-published game to walk away with the GOTY trophy. It also means that a Wii U game has won Game of the Year. Weird! In 2018, Sony’s big-budget open-world reboot of God of War won Game of the Year at The Game Awards. This will not be the last time a PlayStation-published title ends the night with the biggest award of the event. I remember some controversy over God of War beating out Red Dead Redemption II that year, but hey, both games received 8 nominations, so that’s something. Oh look, another third-person pseudo-open-world action game wins the top prize at The Game Awards. This time it’s the Activision-published FromSoftware samurai action game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice . Meanwhile, Death Stranding set a record for most nominations in Game Award history, with Hideo Kojima’s walking simulator earning ten. I wonder how long that record will last... Oh, that record didn’t last last long! In 2020, the very next year, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II received an incredible (and still unbeaten) 11 nominations and won seven of them, including Game of the Year. It was also PlayStation’s second GOTY win at the event. For only the second time in Game Awards history, a multilplayer-only game won the top award in 2021. However, it wasn’t a big online shooter or MMO, but instead EA and Hazelight’s It Takes Two , a split-screen co-op action-puzzle game. And this year, the studio behind It Takes Two announced its next co-op game, Split Fiction , which looks great and is out in early 2025. In 2022, FromSoftware became the first (and so far only) development studio to win Game of the Year at the Game Awards twice. This time the studio won for Elden Ring, a game which took over 2022. The big fight in 2022 was between God of War Ragnarök and Elden Ring . And while the God of War sequel tied The Last of Us Part 2 for most nominations with 11 and picked up six wins, Elden Ring ultimately earned the GOTY honors. Last year, Baldur’s Gate III from Larian Studios was the Elden Ring of the year, taking over my social media feeds for months and quickly becoming many people’s anticipated GOTY winner at the 2023 Game Awards. However, 2023 was an incredible year for games and the Game of the Year noms at the Game Awards proved that, with releases such as Alan Wake 2, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Spider-Man 2 all competing in a stacked line-up. Yet Baldur’s Gate III beat them all, and won five other awards that night, too. And that brings us to 2024. The 10th Game Awards was probably the best show Geoff Keighley has ever hosted, and the nominees for the top spot were a diverse bunch. There was Balatro , a card game made by one guy, DLC for Elden Ring , and a turn-based RPG, Metaphor Refantazio . But the winner of the night was the delightfully fun Astro Bot, which also picked up three other awards and received seven noms . This was also the third PlayStation-published game to win GOTY at The Game Awards. Will Microsoft’s Avowed be able to win next year in 2025, giving Xbox its first GOTY win? I don’t know, but we’ll find out in December 2025.
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ST. PAUL — Kris Bolle is living the “van life” these days with Annie, his mini Australian shepherd. Bolle, 46, bought a 2020 Dodge Ram ProMaster cargo van this past fall. The Hayfield resident planned, essentially, a studio apartment inside. The van with a high roof has room for a full bed, a small kitchen area and a writing desk. ADVERTISEMENT He saves money by forgoing rent, but there is a cost — isolation. It’s a lifestyle he’s grown accustomed to since he had to hide his sexuality over the years, including in the Navy under the now-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which allowed gay and lesbian service members to stay in the military as long as they weren’t out, he said. “I had to be very, very tight-lipped about me ... so I’m used to it,” Bolle said. “But yes, it wears on you. It wears you down, and you feel isolated and you feel left out.” About 48% of Minnesotans feel left out some of the time or often, according to the “Minds of Minnesotans” survey conducted by APM Research Lab. The poll also finds that about half of Minnesotans feel lonely, at least some of the time. More specifically, 13% say they “often” lack companionship and another 35% lack companionship “some of the time.” Results were similar when Minnesotans were asked how often they feel left out and isolated from others. Bolle was one of 3,399 participants surveyed by the firm Lumaris. He said he often feels a lack of companionship as well. He hasn’t been in a relationship since 2009. He often feels left out and sometimes feels isolated. “I’m isolated in the sense where I really can’t find a suitable partner,” he said. His social connections are at his nursing assistant job, which he looks forward to, Bolle said. He’s never thoroughly enjoyed a job as much as his role at a skilled nursing facility, he said. ADVERTISEMENT “Work is great. I get to see people, I get to interact with people. I get to chat and talk and all the things that you know, that people do,” Bolle said. “That’s really hard to find.” The APM Research Lab included these questions in the survey, conducted this year between July 20 and Nov. 22, to better understand what the U.S. Surgeon General has called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” The three questions used in the APM Research Lab survey were replicated from the widely used UCLA Loneliness Scale to help assess Minnesotans’ state of mind in the post-pandemic era, and possibly to help identify groups of Minnesotans that are faring better or worse with feelings of loneliness and isolation. In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a report calling loneliness an epidemic, posing significant health risks akin to tobacco usage, obesity and addiction. Loneliness intersects with various aspects of people’s lives, said Carrie Henning-Smith, an associate professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “Social isolation and loneliness have profound impacts on health, on mortality risks, on all of the ways that our lives play out within health, within that sphere, but in so many other ways, too,” said Henning-Smith, who conducts research on rural populations as the co-director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center and the Rural Health Program. According to the U.S. Surgeon General report, “the physical health consequences of poor or insufficient connection include a 29 percent increased risk of heart disease, a 32 percent increased risk of stroke, and a 50 percent increased risk of developing dementia for older adults.” ADVERTISEMENT A lack of social connections increases the risk of premature death by more than 60%, the report added. Mary Jo Kreitzer, the founder and director of the Earl Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, said the report is significant. “Just by him [Murthy] touching that subject, everybody remembers that he did,” she said. “People remembered that. Because I’m sure that everybody has somebody like that in their life, or they themselves are feeling lonely.” There’s also a stigma surrounding the idea of loneliness. “People are reluctant to admit that they feel lonely. It somehow means like that you’re unlikable or unlovable or there’s something wrong with you,” Henning-Smith said. “It’s important to have these conversations, because the truth is, just about everyone will feel lonely at some point in their life.” she added. “It's a universal part of being human.” Kreitzer said the data reported by APM Lab is comparable to other global and U.S. data on the subject. ADVERTISEMENT “Other studies, like this one found that loneliness peaks in younger age groups,” she said, calling it “a very interesting finding.” The survey found that the Gen Z cohort of 18 to 27, were the most lonely. “That surprises a lot of people, but I think it’s consistent with other data,” Kreitzer said. She said people assume that older people suffer from loneliness because they lack the social connections they once had earlier in their lives. The survey data, instead, showed that baby boomers, currently aged 60-78, are the least lonely of adult-age generations in Minnesota: 63% score as “rarely lonely” and only 7% indicated frequent loneliness. “Sometimes, like in the boomer generation, when people have retired, they actually have more time to build and strengthen connections,” Kreitzer said. “Boomers can be great at joining groups, pursuing interests, be that hobbies or fitness activities or book clubs or volunteering, and all of those are ways that can really help us build social connections.” She said her local YMCA in Grand Rapids is a hub of activity with engaged older folks. She sees them playing cards, working out, swimming and more. Gen Zers, however, are experiencing numerous life transitions. “During that age, they’re expected to separate from their family, to find a partner, to launch a career,” Kreitzer said. “So there’s been a lot of disruption in social connections that they probably have had in their life for a long, long time.” ADVERTISEMENT Henning-Smith called the loneliness rates among young adults “concerning.” Social media and technology may explain part of the higher rates. “People who live their lives online, people who are digital natives and were born into a world where they’re living their lives online, have fundamentally different ways of connecting with other people,” Henning-Smith said. “I worry that some of those skills and some of the infrastructure for connecting with people in meaningful ways and in-person connections might be lacking for some folks in younger generations.” Kreitzer suggests to those who may have frequent bouts of loneliness to acknowledge the feelings. Don’t ignore them. She advises them to reach out to family and friends to try to build or rebuild social connections. She also encourages people to join groups based on their interests. Kreitzer highly recommends volunteering because of the health benefits associated with it. “There’s actually research on that that, like, volunteering helps improve our own well-being,” she said. “It can actually improve our overall positive outlook, our mental health and well-being.” ADVERTISEMENT Back in Hayfield, Bolle said he tries to find community to fend off his loneliness. His location is a challenge because he finds groups in the Twin Cities some 90 miles away. He belongs to a spiritual group that meets once a week in Rochester, but that’s a 52-mile round trip, so he only goes from time to time. Bolle also prepares himself to encounter situations that bring on feelings of loneliness when he goes to Rochester on his weekends to run errands. “When I see families out having fun together, or groups of people, groups of young people, you know, out together and having fun, that can trigger pangs of loneliness,” he said. “I just feel like I’m missing out on human connection.” He said when he was younger, he bought into society’s emphasis on rugged individualism. “But it just doesn’t work, because you will almost ultimately, always end up feeling lonely,” he said. When he traveled the world with the Navy, Bolle said he saw community and family as top priorities in other countries as well as in the Mexican and Latino communities of Southern California where he grew up. “You really do need that connection with other people,” he said. “It’s almost as important as food and shelter, you know?” The data and the heart appear to agree. This story was originally published on MPRNews.org ______________________________________________________ This story was written by one of our partner news agencies. Forum Communications Company uses content from agencies such as Reuters, Kaiser Health News, Tribune News Service and others to provide a wider range of news to our readers. Learn more about the news services FCC uses here .
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