Health & Wellness: Here are five exercises to start your day

 

Here are five exercises to start your day

You just woke up, and you can’t be bothered to train hard today? Don’t worry, it happens to everyone. Here are five things you can do instead of a full workout

By Walla!              SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/exercise/five-exercises-to-start-your-day-680098

   Man exercises (illustrative) (photo credit: INGIMAGE)

In our dreams, we wake up early, jump out of bed straight into our sneakers and sports shirt and begin a serious workout, starting our day on the right foot - all before our first coffee. 

Our reality... well, it’s definitely less than picture-perfect. We can’t get up every morning with the motivation or strength to move rigorously,  many can’t exercise in the morning and sometimes we’re just too tired.

On days like these, when you get up without energy, you really can’t think about working out. So, don’t push yourself. There are alternatives that won’t take away your limited strength, and they’ll help you feel ready to start the day. In fact, although morning workouts have a lot of health benefits, if you’re very tired and unfocused, you won’t benefit that much from exercising. So, what are some choices?

1. Stretching

Light stretches gently stimulate the body and brain to gradually awaken. Stretch your arms over your head and look up, then bend down slowly, vertebra after vertebra, until your fingers touch the floor or your toes. Let the head and neck be relaxed downwards. Gently bend one knee and straighten the other, then switch between them. Repeat this several times for a deeper stretch of the back thigh muscles.

2. Warm-ups

Okay, we understand that full training is too much this morning. So, it’s possible to make do with warm-ups. Do a few minutes of resistance exercising with your body weight, at a moderate intensity and at a leisurely pace - squats, for example.

If you do them at a moderate pace, you’ll work out the thigh, buttocks and core muscles. If after you finish them you feel that you can do more, perform exercises that will help warm up your nervous system, which is responsible for the synchronization between the brain and body. Quickly run or jump in place for a few minutes. 

3. Movement

Another good way to start the day is with movement exercises - rotating your hips, pelvic thrusts, or squats. Also, perform movements that expand the range of motion, such as gradual hand rotations in wrists, forearms, and shoulders. Afterward, your body will feel less “creaky” when you get out of bed, and in addition, improving your range of motion will also enhance your performance in future training and reduce the risk of injuries.

  Credit: Ingimage

4. Yoga

Yoga is a light and friendly workout which can be adapted to different levels of intensity and skill. It works on the whole body and includes breathing and concentration exercises. Yoga is liked by many fitness trainers who consider it a perfect morning workout. It stretches the muscles, works on the body’s range of motion and also on the connection between the brain and body - so it checks all the crucial areas when your day starts. On a morning devoid of energy or time, you can totally settle for a few repetitions of downward dog or sun salutation.

5. Walking

Grab a bottle of water and headphones and go for a short walk around the neighborhood. Even if you don’t burn a lot of calories, you’re still moving your body, helping to start your blood pumping into your veins and stretching bones and muscles.

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US House Passes Legislation Funding Israeli Iron Dome Defense System

1 hour ago (Updated: 50 minutes ago)

© AFP 2021 / JACK GUEZ

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation that appropriates around $1 billion in funding for the replenishment of Israel's Iron Dome air defense system.

The legislation, which was made separate from the larger defense budget measure simultaneously making its way through Congress, surpassed the 260 minimum easily. The tally was 290 to 8 with votes still being counted.

A debate leading up to the vote included accusations of anti-Semitism by Republican lawmakers against their Democrats and retorts that the Republicans previously voted against aid for Israel.

It allocates $1billion to replenish the Iron Dome air defense system, which is used to shoot down incoming rockets and artillery fire.

The system was depleted in May during the outbreak of aggression between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza which saw the system shoot down a majority of the reportedly 4,000 rockets fired at Israel.

https://sputniknews.com/20210923/us-house-passes-legislation-funding-israeli-iron-dome-defense-system-1089347407.html

The United Nations held a major meeting on race. Why the US and UK skipped

The United Nations held a major meeting on race. Why the US and UK skipped it

By Caitlin Hu, CNN

Updated 1151 GMT (1951 HKT) September 23, 2021

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers a prerecorded address on the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action on September 22, 2021 in New York.

United Nations Headquarters, New York (CNN)After more than a year of racial reckoning that saw historic monuments to enslavers and colonists torn down on both sides of the Atlantic, the United Nations convened a major day-long event on racism and reparations on Wednesday. But representatives from some of the West's biggest powers never showed.

On its face, the day's news made a jarring split-screen: Several countries that once grew fantastically rich from colonialism and slavery, including the US, Canada and the UK, attended an optimistic summit focused on extending Covid-19 vaccine supplies to the rest of the world, convened by US President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, ambassadors from once-exploited regions in Africa, South America and Asia undertook most of the discussion of structural inequality and racism at a separate conference, themed "Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who attended both events, opened the racial justice conference with an argument for why just such an event mattered, pointing to a new spread of "xenophobia, misogyny, hateful conspiracies, white supremacy and Neo-Nazi ideologies."

"Racism and racial discrimination still permeate institutions, social structures, and everyday life in every society. Structural racism and systematic injustice still deny people their fundamental human rights," he said, pointing to the unequal toll of Covid-19 on minority groups.

The solution is not just to reject hate, but to right historical wrongs, Guterres added. "We must reverse the consequences of generations of exclusion and discrimination -- including their obvious social and economic dimensions."

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However, some of the countries that skipped the event cited its controversial origins.

The meeting had been called to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, a framework for fighting racial intolerance that was originally conceived at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.

That 2001 event started with lofty aims but ended in an ugly uproar in the wake of negotiations on how and whether to include Israel-Palestinian issues under the rubric of discrimination. The US and Israel ultimately walked out in protest of one draft of the conference's final declaration that denounced "racial discrimination against the Palestinians" and others by Israel and equated Zionism with racism.

"The original Durban Conference in 2001 was intended to fight racism but in reality it did the exact opposite, encouraging hate and antisemitism," Israel's Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations Gilad Erdan said in a statement to CNN Wednesday.

He lauded the US' and dozens of others' decision not to participate.

"This proves that there is a growing recognition of the fact that the Durban Conference was plagued with bigotry and that the Durban Declaration does nothing to promote the fight against racism ... I hope this will be the last UN event commemorating that shameful conference."

The US issued a similarly forceful statement about boycotting Wednesday's conference, with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, saying it "remains opposed to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic underpinnings of the Durban process, and has longstanding freedom of expression concerns with the DDPA."

Both countries said that fighting racism and discrimination was still a "top priority," if not in Wednesday's forum.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/23/americas/durban-unga-us-uk-intl-latam/index.html

 

Two Afghans Brought to U.S. Charged with Child Sex Crimes, Strangling Wife While Living on WI Military Base

JOHN BINDER

22 Sep 2021

1:58

Two Afghan men, brought to the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s massive resettlement operation out of Afghanistan, have been charged with child sex crimes and domestic abuse while temporarily living at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced federal charges against Afghans Bahrullah Noori, 20-years-old, and Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32-years-old.

According to prosecutors, Noori is accused of trying to forcefully engage in sexual acts with a minor while temporarily living at Fort McCoy since being brought to the U.S. with tens of thousands of other Afghans. Noori has also been charged with three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor and one count alleging the use of force.

An indictment against Noori states that his victims were under the age of 16 and were at least four years younger than him.

In a separate incident, Imaad is accused by prosecutors of strangling and suffocating his wife while temporarily living at Fort McCoy after arriving in the U.S. from Afghanistan. The alleged assault apparently took place on September 7.

Both Noori and Imaad appeared in court in Madison, Wisconsin, on September 16 to face the charges against them and are currently being detained at the Dane County Jail. Their immigration statuses, whether they arrived as refugees, Special Immigrant Visa-holders (SIVs), P-2 visa-holders, or parolees remains unclear.

Noori is facing a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison. Imaad is facing a maximum of 10 years in prison.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/22/two-afghans-brought-to-u-s-charged-with-child-sex-crimes-strangling-wife-while-living-on-wi-military-base/

Political cartoon of the day: Bridge over Biden's disaster

 

Bridge over Biden's disaster

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cartoons-slideshow

 

South Africa: Farm attack, woman (70) assaulted, tied up, attacker arrested, Kareedouw

South African Police Service

September 23, 2021

Farm attack, woman (70) assaulted, tied up, attacker arrested, Kareedouw

Positive leads and thorough investigative work led to the arrest of an alleged farm attack, house robbery suspect and the recovery of stolen items within hours after a 70-year-old woman was attacked at her farm on 22 September 2021, in Kareedouw, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

At about 08:30, the complainant was busy in the garden area on her farm located approximately 20 kilometers outside Kareedouw when an unknown man accosted her.

The victim was tied up with a rope and taken into the house.

A laptop, cellphone, a tablet, cash and jewelry was taken before he fled the scene.

The victim, who was alone at the time of the incident, managed to free herself and sought help from a neighbouring farm.

The 72-hour activation plan was immediately implemented and in less than two hours, the suspect was behind bars. Many of the stolen items were recovered.

A 48-year-old man is due to appear in the Kareedouw Magistrate’s Court on Monday, 27 September 2021 on charges of house robbery.

Read about more farm attacks here

SAPS Newsroom

https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/eastern-cape/farm-attack-woman-70-assaulted-tied-up-attacker-arrested-kareedouw/

 

As America Has Become More Secular, It Has Become Less Free

Why freedom in America is threatened as never before.

Thu Sep 23, 2021 

Dennis Prager

 

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Here is something any honest person must acknowledge: As America has become more secular, it has become less free.

Individuals can differ as to whether these two facts are correlated, but no honest person can deny they are facts.

It seems to me indisputable that they are correlated. To deny this, one would have to argue that it is merely coincidental that free speech, the greatest of all freedoms, is more seriously threatened than at any time in American history while a smaller-than-ever percentage of Americans believe in God or regularly attend church.

The United States became the freest country in the world, the sweet land of liberty, the recipient of the Statue of Liberty, the country whose flag freedom fighters around the world have often waved. This freedom was rooted in the deeply religious nature of its founding ideals. America was founded by God-centered individuals to be a God-centered country. The claims that America's founders were mostly deists and that America was founded to be a godless secular society are not true.

Some of the Founders were not orthodox Christians, i.e., they did not believe in the Christian Trinity or in the divinity of Christ. But none of them were deists (with the possible exception of Jefferson). Deists believed in a creator God who was not only uninvolved with his creations, but he also did not even know them, let alone care about them. After creating the world, the deists' God abandoned it. The deists' God was Aristotle's "unmoved mover."

Every major Founder (again, with the possible exception of Jefferson) believed in the God of the Bible who heard prayer, acted in history, judged people in the hereafter, demanded ethical behavior, and without Whom morality did not objectively exist. Most importantly, they all believed that in order for a functioning democratic republic not to descend into tyranny, it was necessary to link freedom with God.

Whatever Jefferson's view of God was, he was as influenced by the Bible as every other Founder. He and Benjamin Franklin proposed that the great seal of the United States depict Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt: Moses raising his rod to divide the sea; Pharaoh, in his chariot, overwhelmed by the waters; and the divine pillar of fire that led the Israelites by night. The seal's proposed motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Jefferson and Franklin believed that freedom and obedience to God were synonymous. No God, no freedom.

The Founders linked freedom inextricably to God. That is why the inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Bible: "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof." The verse comes from Leviticus, the third book of the Bible. The Founders knew their Bible. The present adult generation of Americans is more ignorant of the Bible than any in American history. And most young people know even less. I suspect that most students at Harvard could not identify Leviticus, let alone cite any of its verses.

The bell was named "the Liberty Bell" by the abolitionists. Their opposition to slavery was based entirely on the Bible. Their motivating principle, "All men are created equal," came from the Bible. They did not get it from the ancient Greeks, who would have scoffed at such a notion.

Freedom permeates the Old Testament: The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, a story about man's assertion of his God-given freedom ... freedom even to disobey God. The primary story of the Old Testament is the Exodus, a story about God liberating slaves.

For the Founders, the most obvious reason freedom was dependent on faith in God was that only if God is regarded as the source of freedom could men not rightfully take it away. If men are the source of the freedom, men can rightfully retract it. This is precisely what is happening today. Freedom is being destroyed primarily by those who scorn the idea that freedom comes from God.

The rule that the end of religion means the end of freedom does not mean that secularism would not be a welcome replacement for totalitarian theocracies such as Iran. But eventually that, too — a secular Iran — would lead to tyranny. Wherever God is delinked from freedom, freedom ultimately withers. When Christianity died in Europe, it was replaced by fascism, Nazism and communism.

Freedom is central to the Bible. This is especially apparent in America, which until now has linked its unparalleled commitment to freedom to God and the Bible. But freedom is peripheral to leftism. That is why freedom in America is threatened as never before: The foundations upon which freedom rests — God, the Bible, Judeo-Christian values — are threatened as never before.

Every American coin bears two inscriptions: "In God We Trust" and "Liberty." Every generation of Americans prior to the 1960s understood why. Most Americans today, including secular conservatives, do not.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/america-has-become-more-secular-it-has-become-less-dennis-prager/