内容摘要：Nuns walk along St. Peter’s Square during the fourth day of mourning for late Pope Francis at the Vatican, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

Nuns walk along St. Peter’s Square during the fourth day of mourning for late Pope Francis at the Vatican, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

Supporters of states’ efforts to ban fluoride said they did not dispute that it could have some benefits but thought people should not be given it by the government without their informed consent.AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on Utah’s ban on fluoride in public drinking water.

“It really shouldn’t be forced on people,” DeSantis said.U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has applauded Utah for being the first state to enact a ban and said he plans to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toA majority of Utah water systems already did not add fluoride. The state ranked 44th in the nation for the percentage of residents receiving fluoridated water, with about 2 in 5 receiving it in 2022, according to CDC data. The law will impact about 1.6 million people in Salt Lake City and elsewhere in northern Utah who are losing fluoridation, state officials say.

Dentists in Salt Lake City over the past week said many patients were unaware of the upcoming ban, and most did not realize the city had been adding fluoride to their drinking water for nearly two decades.“I did not know about a ban,” said Noe Figueroa, a patient at Salt Lake Donated Dental Services, a clinic that provides free or heavily discounted dental treatment to low-income residents. “Well, that’s not good. I don’t think that’s good at all.”

At Donated Dental, providers expect their monthslong waitlist for children’s procedures to grow significantly and their need for volunteer dentists to skyrocket. The effects of the ban in children’s teeth will likely be visible within the next year, said Sasha Harvey, the clinic’s executive director.

“Fluoridated water is the great equalizer,” Harvey said. “It really benefits everybody, regardless of your age, gender, your ethnicity, your education level, your income level — it helps everyone.”Their lawyer, Halima Nyakinyua Magairo, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that her clients did not know what they were doing was illegal. She said she hoped the Belgian embassy in Kenya could “support them more in this judicial process.”

In a separate but related case, Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen were charged after they were found in possession of 400 ants in their apartment in the capital, Nairobi.KWS had said all four suspects were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.

The ants are bought by people who keep them as pets and observe them in their colonies. Several websites in Europe have listed different species of ants for sale at varied prices.The 5,400 ants found with the four men are valued at 1.2 million Kenyan shillings ($9,200), according to KWS.