Latest news with #BobbyKennedy
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Riders share style and stories, Coolest Bike in Town show
DES MOINES, Iowa — The annual Coolest Bike in Town was held at Captain Roy's on Sunday, and crowds gathered to share and compare their prized bikes with each other. Ichi Bike and the Street Collective put on the event and say it's a great way to bring the community together and to follow along with the journey that bikes go through. 'I love it because this is not a physically competitive event, this is just all about bikes and creativity, and you know, whoever, it's about like weird touches that people put on their bikes, it's about the personalized thing you do when you ride something you love. So we get lots of really cool, creative bikes here that you'd never see anywhere else,' said Bobby Kennedy, Director of Bike Shop Operations at Street Collective. Northern lights, infrastructure impacts possible due to 'severe' geomagnetic storm: What to know The event also serves as inspiration for bike shops and passionate riders. Daniel Koenig is the owner of Ichi Bike and says there's always something that gets the creative juices flowing. 'I'm excited to see some things that maybe I haven't seen before, but it hasn't kind of really revealed itself to me yet, so I'm still waiting to see the bike that's going to make me go whoo, you know, there's always one, or two, or three,' said Koenig. Koenig has been coming to the event since 2011 and say's each year is entirely different. 'The different styles of bikes have come and gone just a little bit like you know at one point there was a huge amount of people who were super into fixed gear bikes, you know this kind of bike and that kind of bike. As time goes on, things wax and wane and kind of develop,' Koenig. Wade Thompson, Owner Captain Roy's, says while he doesn't have a specific bike that caught his eye, he's always looking out for special builds. 'I like the old clunkers, you know, especially when they build up an older frame or something like that and put dirt on it and stuff like that. They're cool bikes and you can ride them on the dirt trails, which is something I enjoy doing,' said Thompson. However, for Kennedy, it's a piece with a transformation history and a special touch that catches his attention this year. 'There is a trike nearby that's all chrome with a handmade wool panel basket, that like, was sourced from the guy's brother's farm,' said Kennedy. 'It started out life as a wholly other bike, and then it became a trike, and then an e-bike, it's really cool. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bill OBoyle: A trip back to a time before everything changed
Apr. 20—WILKES-BARRE — This week, I hopped in the Way Back Machine and traveled back to 1968 and it made me realize what a significant year that was in American and world history. In 1968, the country and the world were undergoing historic changes. —The Vietnam War was at its peak. —Two great leaders — Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. — were assassinated. —Student protests on college campuses were violent. —President Lyndon Johnson said he had enough and declined to run for re-election. And here in Luzerne County, a new school district was forming on the west side of the Susquehanna River — Wyoming Valley West began in 1966-67 with the merger of many schools into a single district whose students initially attended three high schools — Kingston Area, Forty Fort Area and Plymouth Area — but they graduated from WVW. In 1967-68, the district sent all students to a single high school in Kingston — there were 692 students in the senior class — I was one of them. All these years later and still many of us from the WVW Class of '68 have never met — having passed through the high school building's crowded halls as strangers. We really don't know much about each other. As adults, we are surprised sometimes to learn we attended high school with someone we know well today, but didn't know back then. That first year was an adjustment, to say the least. In a move known as "jointure," officials lumped into one place students from many municipalities: Kingston, Plymouth, Forty Fort, Swoyersville, Larksville, Courtdale, Pringle, Edwardsville and Luzerne. Rather than walk to school — and home for lunch — we rode school buses. We had classes with high school teachers we had never seen before. We lost coveted spots on athletic teams — thereby losing our status as "big men" and "big women" on campus. Scholarships are never offered to intramural stars. School spirit — ever-present in high schools of the '60s — was minimal at Valley West in that first year especially. The burgundy-and-gold uniforms just didn't look right. We could no longer yell, "Shawnee Against the World," or "Go, Huskies," or "Sailors," or "Flyers." or "Green Wave" — school spirit ebbed to the sea of jointure. But hey, we were just kids. Before Valley West was established, we all looked forward to school each September, to renewing friendships that were interrupted by summer vacation. But even while we were out of school, we were in the same town. We still saw each other, hung out and sometimes played on the same summer sports teams. In 1967-68, it all changed for us. It's not that the jointure was bad — it probably had to be done. But building the district's current, enormous white school in the late 1970s right in the middle of my hometown, Plymouth — on the site where we all had played Little League games — maybe wasn't the best decision. Growing up in the 1960s was difficult enough. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, Vietnam War protesters clashed with Chicago police. Two months later, Republican Richard Nixon was elected president. Then the major changes came. The music changed, the fashion changed, morals were being challenged, as were authority and family values. The nuclear family was beginning to disappear. Moms were joining dads in the workplace. Two cars were parked out front, and dinner at 5 p.m. with the family was being substituted for take-out and fast-food mania. All of this and a new school system to cope with — how could we survive? Well, we did. High school antics and friendships last only a brief time, but their memories endure. The WVW Class of 1968 was a diverse group that came together forcibly, but is connected forever. Even though we might not have gotten to know each other as well as we would have liked, we share a common thread. Many of us have achieved varying degrees of success. I guess, in a way, the jointure did work. It was good to travel back in time to recall how it was before everything changed. It's always good to go home again. Reach Bill O'Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.
New York Times
18-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Kennedy's Vaccine Hypocrisy Is Unsustainable
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might have preferred to spend his early months as secretary of Health and Human Services on issues for which he has broad support, such as his battle against ultraprocessed food. But the country's devastating eruption of measles has proved to be a make-or-break event for him, and his constant equivocation on this issue has been disastrous. Any hopes that Mr. Kennedy's noxious views on vaccines would moderate with responsibility were always wishful thinking. It may be impossible to change his course, but that doesn't mean those in positions of leadership shouldn't try. As health secretary, Mr. Kennedy has failed to help control the measles outbreak in and around Texas, which has ballooned to more than 500 cases and now includes the deaths of two children. This lamentable outcome is unsurprising, given that he is a longtime critic of the measles shot and in 2021 dismissed measles outbreaks as 'fabricated to create fear.' For these reasons, many doctors, including me, were opposed to his nomination as leader of our health care system. Mr. Kennedy's best chance at stopping the deadly measles outbreak and preventing other ones is by improving vaccination rates. Yet doing so would alienate him from the anti-vaccine community. He recently attended the funeral of one of the children who died, an 8-year-old girl in Texas, and reportedly questioned the safety of vaccines to her family members. But in his public comments about the visit, he wrote that 'the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.' That tepid statement made headlines and drew praise from Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican and a physician who reluctantly provided a key vote for Mr. Kennedy's confirmation. Mr. Kennedy's supporters, however, saw the public comment as a betrayal. 'What on earth is going on with Bobby Kennedy,' wrote Liz Wheeler, a conservative media personality, adding that the Make America Healthy Again community 'fought for Bobby Kennedy because he was unafraid to name the dangers of the MMR vaccine.' Del Bigtree, one of Mr. Kennedy's collaborators in the anti-vaccine movement, struggled to explain his apparent turnaround. 'I have worked with Bobby for many years and I can confidently say that he has a heart that is incapable of compromise,' Mr. Bigtree wrote on X. 'I also recognize that he is at a poker table with the slyest serpents in the world and the stakes are nothing less than the lives of our children and the future of our species.' Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr's long, complicated history with the measles vaccines
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week made his strongest endorsement yet of the measles vaccine amid an ongoing outbreak that has killed three and infected more than 600 people across the US. But his recent push for people to get vaccinated for measles stands in stark contrast to Kennedy's years of work against measles vaccines, including suing the state of New York for its vaccine mandates, and making numerous claims that the shot is dangerous and unnecessary. Kennedy's comments on X last Sunday that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, 'is the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles' set off vaccine critics who saw the statement as a betrayal of the health secretary's longtime views on vaccine safety. 'Bobby Kennedy was our founder, but Bobby Kennedy is now the Secretary of HHS,' Mary Holland, CEO of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, said in a video statement. 'He certainly left off that in my personal experience, and in the personal experience of many people at CHD, the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine was extremely injurious.' Holland went on to repeat disproven claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism. The health secretary followed up this Thursday with a Fox News interview, where he told host Martha MacCallum that it is 'very hard to tell' whether measles deaths this year could have been averted with vaccinations. 'We need to do better at treating kids who have this disease, and not just saying the only answer is vaccination.' He also discussed the health agency's 'massive research and testing' plan to find the causes of autism by this September, a project he said will probe vaccinations along with environmental exposures, food and societal factors. While Kennedy has been most critical of Covid-19 vaccines in recent years, MMR immunizations have been one of his earliest and most consistent targets for misinformation and alarm over the last two decades. CNN reached out to HHS for comment regarding Kennedy's past and recent remarks on MMR vaccines. As Kennedy wrote in his 2023 book with Brian Hooker, Vax-Unvax, 'The MMR vaccine is the tip of the spear regarding the modern debate around vaccine safety.' Here are three ways Kennedy questioned the vaccine's safety and the severity of measles infections themselves. The theory that MMR vaccines led to autism first took hold with a since-retracted 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield. As the disbarred British physician rose to prominence in the anti-vaccine world, so did Kennedy — who repeatedly defended his debunked research. 'Wakefield [and his co-researchers] did not state that MMR causes autism,' Kennedy and Hooker wrote in their 2023 book. 'They merely pointed out the timing of the vaccine before the onset of symptoms.' Ten of the 12 co-authors on the study issued a retraction in 2004, saying it established no causal link between the MMR shot and autism. Infants with autism typically start showing signs between 12-24 months of age; the first dose of the MMR vaccine is usually given when a child is 12 months old. Kennedy, like Wakefield, has asserted over the years that MMR vaccines lead to myriad adverse events besides autism. MMR vaccines have an 'unconscionably high injury rate' Kennedy wrote on CHD's website in 2019, citing gastrointestinal and respiratory complications from a mid-1970s study. Those are symptoms 'that might persuade rational consumers to choose the infections over the vaccine,' he added. This March, speaking to Fox News' Sean Hannity, Kennedy repeated the claim that the vaccines themselves are as risky at the virus. '[The MMR vaccine] causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes,' and leads to 'deaths every year,' he said. There are no reported deaths from the vaccine among healthy people, according to the Infectious Disease Society of America. Kennedy has repeatedly said that measles outbreaks are not unusual, infection is not severe in healthy people, and deaths with measles are due to other causes. 'If you look at the kids in Africa who die from measles, or these other infectious diseases, they're all malnourished,' he said on Joe Rogan's podcast in June 2023. 'It's hard for a disease to kill a healthy person; it's hard for an infectious disease to kill a healthy person with a rugged immune system.' State health departments reported no underlying health conditions reported in the three US deaths this year, the first measles deaths in the country in a decade. All three, two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico, were unvaccinated. In the Fox interview Thursday, Kennedy suggested at least one of the children had prior medical complications. Kennedy also this year dismissed the notion that many died from measles in a 2019 Samoan outbreak that killed 83 and infected more than 5,000 people. Details of Kennedy's visit to Samoa months before the 2019 outbreak resurfaced during his Senate confirmation hearings. He went to the country following an invitation from an anti-vaccine advocate, but denies he campaigned against vaccination while he was there. He also denied to senators that dozens of people died from the virus. 'Most of the people did not have measles,' when tissue samples were tested, he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) 'We don't know what was killing them.' That claim is a 'total fabrication,' Samoa Director-General of Health Dr. Alec Ekeroma told The Associated Press. Ekeroma also said Kennedy met with anti-vaccine advocates while there. Kennedy, along with former federal prosecutor Michael Sussman, sued the state of New York in 2019 to oppose vaccine requirement for school-age children. The state's legislature passed the law, which removed religious exemptions, amid a measles outbreak that year among Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community that infected nearly 800 people. A state Supreme Court justice rejected the suit days later. The Kennedy-chaired Children's Health Defense vowed to keep fighting. That same year, Kennedy rallied with Washington state residents against a MMR vaccine mandate for children attending school. At the time, there were roughly 50 reported measles cases in the state. It spread to 71 people, most of them unvaccinated children, during the monthslong outbreak. As health secretary, Kennedy has maintained that position that vaccination should be a choice despite the spread of measles across 23 states. 'The federal government's position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine, but the government should not be mandating those,' Kennedy told CBS News April 8. 'I always said during my campaign — and every part, every public statement I've made — I'm not gonna take people's vaccines away from them. What I'm gonna do is make sure that we have good science so that people can make an informed choice.'
CNN
12-04-2025
- Health
- CNN
RFK Jr's long, complicated history with the measles vaccines
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week made his strongest endorsement yet of the measles vaccine amid an ongoing outbreak that has killed three and infected more than 600 people across the US. But his recent push for people to get vaccinated for measles stands in stark contrast to Kennedy's years of work against measles vaccines, including suing the state of New York for its vaccine mandates, and making numerous claims that the shot is dangerous and unnecessary. Kennedy's comments on X last Sunday that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, 'is the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles' set off vaccine critics who saw the statement as a betrayal of the health secretary's longtime views on vaccine safety. 'Bobby Kennedy was our founder, but Bobby Kennedy is now the Secretary of HHS,' Mary Holland, CEO of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, said in a video statement. 'He certainly left off that in my personal experience, and in the personal experience of many people at CHD, the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine was extremely injurious.' Holland went on to repeat disproven claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism. The health secretary followed up this Thursday with a Fox News interview, where he told host Martha MacCallum that it is 'very hard to tell' whether measles deaths this year could have been averted with vaccinations. 'We need to do better at treating kids who have this disease, and not just saying the only answer is vaccination.' He also discussed the health agency's 'massive research and testing' plan to find the causes of autism by this September, a project he said will probe vaccinations along with environmental exposures, food and societal factors. While Kennedy has been most critical of Covid-19 vaccines in recent years, MMR immunizations have been one of his earliest and most consistent targets for misinformation and alarm over the last two decades. CNN reached out to HHS for comment regarding Kennedy's past and recent remarks on MMR vaccines. As Kennedy wrote in his 2023 book with Brian Hooker, Vax-Unvax, 'The MMR vaccine is the tip of the spear regarding the modern debate around vaccine safety.' Here are three ways Kennedy questioned the vaccine's safety and the severity of measles infections themselves. The theory that MMR vaccines led to autism first took hold with a since-retracted 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield. As the disbarred British physician rose to prominence in the anti-vaccine world, so did Kennedy — who repeatedly defended his debunked research. 'Wakefield [and his co-researchers] did not state that MMR causes autism,' Kennedy and Hooker wrote in their 2023 book. 'They merely pointed out the timing of the vaccine before the onset of symptoms.' Ten of the 12 co-authors on the study issued a retraction in 2004, saying it established no causal link between the MMR shot and autism. Infants with autism typically start showing signs between 12-24 months of age; the first dose of the MMR vaccine is usually given when a child is 12 months old. Kennedy, like Wakefield, has asserted over the years that MMR vaccines lead to myriad adverse events besides autism. MMR vaccines have an 'unconscionably high injury rate' Kennedy wrote on CHD's website in 2019, citing gastrointestinal and respiratory complications from a mid-1970s study. Those are symptoms 'that might persuade rational consumers to choose the infections over the vaccine,' he added. This March, speaking to Fox News' Sean Hannity, Kennedy repeated the claim that the vaccines themselves are as risky at the virus. '[The MMR vaccine] causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes,' and leads to 'deaths every year,' he said. There are no reported deaths from the vaccine among healthy people, according to the Infectious Disease Society of America. Kennedy has repeatedly said that measles outbreaks are not unusual, infection is not severe in healthy people, and deaths with measles are due to other causes. 'If you look at the kids in Africa who die from measles, or these other infectious diseases, they're all malnourished,' he said on Joe Rogan's podcast in June 2023. 'It's hard for a disease to kill a healthy person; it's hard for an infectious disease to kill a healthy person with a rugged immune system.' State health departments reported no underlying health conditions reported in the three US deaths this year, the first measles deaths in the country in a decade. All three, two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico, were unvaccinated. In the Fox interview Thursday, Kennedy suggested at least one of the children had prior medical complications. Kennedy also this year dismissed the notion that many died from measles in a 2019 Samoan outbreak that killed 83 and infected more than 5,000 people. Details of Kennedy's visit to Samoa months before the 2019 outbreak resurfaced during his Senate confirmation hearings. He went to the country following an invitation from an anti-vaccine advocate, but denies he campaigned against vaccination while he was there. He also denied to senators that dozens of people died from the virus. 'Most of the people did not have measles,' when tissue samples were tested, he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) 'We don't know what was killing them.' That claim is a 'total fabrication,' Samoa Director-General of Health Dr. Alec Ekeroma told The Associated Press. Ekeroma also said Kennedy met with anti-vaccine advocates while there. Kennedy, along with former federal prosecutor Michael Sussman, sued the state of New York in 2019 to oppose vaccine requirement for school-age children. The state's legislature passed the law, which removed religious exemptions, amid a measles outbreak that year among Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community that infected nearly 800 people. A state Supreme Court justice rejected the suit days later. The Kennedy-chaired Children's Health Defense vowed to keep fighting. That same year, Kennedy rallied with Washington state residents against a MMR vaccine mandate for children attending school. At the time, there were roughly 50 reported measles cases in the state. It spread to 71 people, most of them unvaccinated children, during the monthslong outbreak. As health secretary, Kennedy has maintained that position that vaccination should be a choice despite the spread of measles across 23 states. 'The federal government's position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine, but the government should not be mandating those,' Kennedy told CBS News April 8. 'I always said during my campaign — and every part, every public statement I've made — I'm not gonna take people's vaccines away from them. What I'm gonna do is make sure that we have good science so that people can make an informed choice.'
