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Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the members of the CDC’s esteemed vaccine advisory panel, medical organizations and experts are looking for alternatives.

In the wake of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to shake up a key federal vaccine advisory committee, outside medical organizations and independent experts are looking for alternate sources of unbiased information and even considering forming a group of their own.

A leading contender is a new group led by Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm is launching the Vaccine Integrity Project at CIDRAP as a potential alternative to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

“We’ve always just taken for granted that routine child immunizations and other vaccines would be readily available and that they would be supported by the public health system,” Osterholm said. “Now that’s in question.”

Trump's base was vocally divided over the prospects of direct U.S. attacks up until the moment they happened.

The MAGA movement's top influencers were divided over bombing Iran until Donald Trump did just that Saturday night.

Now, at least for the time being, the lay leaders in Trump's base appear to be rallying around a position that spares Trump criticism: Direct attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are justified, as long as American troops aren't sent into a third full war halfway around the world in the last quarter of a century.

Taiwan is "of course" a country and China lacks both the historical evidence and legal proof to back up its sovereignty claims, President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday in a strong rebuke to Beijing and its stepped up political and military pressure.

China says democratically-governed Taiwan is "sacred" Chinese territory that has belonged to the country since ancient times, and that the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.

Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times but have been rejected. China calls Lai a "separatist".

Giving the first of 10 speeches in a series called "uniting the country", Lai drew on Taiwan's history, including the millennia-long connection of its indigenous people to other Austronesians, like native Hawaiians, to show what he said was Taiwan's separate and distinct development from China.

Around 10,000 Russian soldiers are fighting in Russia's Kursk region, about 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of which is controlled by Ukraine, Ukraine's top military commander said.

"We control about 90 square kilometers of territory in the Hlushkov district of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, and these are our preemptive actions in response to a possible enemy attack," Oleksandr Syrskyi said without elaborating, in remarks released by his office for publication on Sunday.

The Ukrainian military said the activity in this area prevented Russia from sending a significant number of its forces to Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk, where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in the more than three-year-old full-scale invasion.

Linguists analyzed websites and blogs to determine where vulgarity was most common. They found Americans swear more on the internet than other English-speaking groups.

Almost two billion words — just under 600 of them swear words — were carefully assessed, and the United States then handed the dubious honor of being the most cursing country in the English-speaking world, at least online.

For the Australian duo behind the research, it came as a surprise that the inhabitants of their own country did not lead the way, such is the stereotype that Aussies are easy-going and relaxed, in actions and words.

But Australians were only the third-most likely citizens to drop a swear word in conversation online.

The reason that America — viewed by some to be a more conservative and polite culture among English-speakers — is the most profane community online may be the anonymity of the screen, according to the study's co-author Martin Schweinberger, a linguist at the University of Queensland, Australia.

A jury has awarded a Georgia couple $2.25 million in their lawsuit accusing a pathologist of posting graphic videos of an autopsy of their decapitated baby.

A Fulton County jury returned the verdict against Dr. Jackson Gates on Wednesday. The couple, Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr., hired Gates to perform an autopsy on their son, Treveon Taylor Jr., who was decapitated during delivery in July 2023.

They have separately sued the doctor who delivered the baby and the hospital where the delivery occurred. That case is pending.

In a lawsuit filed in September 2023, the couple said Gates posted several videos of the autopsy on Instagram without their permission. Gates initially removed the videos after receiving a letter from the couple’s attorneys, but then reposted them, according to the couple’s attorneys.

Texas will require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a new law that will make the state the nation's largest to attempt to impose such a mandate.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Saturday that he signed the bill, which is expected to draw a legal challenge from critics who consider it an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.

A similar law in Louisiana was blocked when a federal appeals court ruled Friday that it was unconstitutional. Arkansas also has a similar law that has been challenged in federal court.

Vance Boelter texted family that they needed to flee their house before ‘people with guns’ showed up, filings allege

The man charged in connection with the recent shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses was a doomsday “prepper” who instructed his family to “prepare for war” as he tried to evade capture, according to new court filings.

Vance Boelter, 57, faces multiple federal and state murder charges after allegedly shooting dead the Democratic Minnesota state house speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in the early hours of 14 June. Boelter is also accused of shooting and seriously wounding the Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, about 90 minutes earlier.

In a newly unsealed affidavit first reported by the local news station WCCO and seen by the Guardian, law enforcement pulled over Boelter’s wife and four children hours after the shootings near Lake Mille Lacs, about 75 miles (120km) north of the Twin Cities, apparently en route to Wisconsin.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, ripped Donald Trump for his military attack against Iran on Saturday, saying the move is "absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment."

Ocasio-Cortez ripped the president's action on X, formerly Twitter, and wrote, "The President's disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment."

On the other hand, Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, came to Trump's side and wrote on X, "As I've long maintained, this was the correct move by @POTUS. Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism and cannot have nuclear capabilities. I'm grateful for and salute the finest military in the world."

Prime minister says Iran’s nuclear programme is a ‘grave threat to international security’

Keir Starmer has backed the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and called on Iran to return to negotiations, saying the country’s nuclear programme was a “grave threat to international security”.

Donald Trump announced overnight that the US had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, joining Israel’s attack on the Tehran regime.

There was no UK involvement in the action. Starmer and the foreign secretary, David Lammy, had pushed for a diplomatic solution amid fears a wider action could further destabilise the region.

People were starting to laud the US president for his resistance to the Israeli PM’s pull, but what now?

When he was elected, Donald Trump suggested he could hammer out a new relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who was used to getting his way with the White House. But after just over 150 days in office, it appears Trump has fallen into the same trap as his predecessors – and launched the most consequential strike on Iran in generations.

From early suggestions that the Trump administration would rein in Netanyahu’s military ambitions, it now appears that the Israeli PM has manoeuvred the US into striking Iranian uranium enrichment sites directly after a series of military attacks that Washington was unable to deter the Israeli PM from. And the US is now bracing for a retaliation that could easily bring it into a full-scale war.

French scientists have discovered a new blood type in a woman from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, France's blood supply agency announced Friday.

The woman is the only known carrier of a new blood type, dubbed "Gwada negative," the French Blood Establishment (EFS) said. The discovery was made 15 years after researchers received a blood sample from a patient who was undergoing routine tests ahead of a surgery.

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This woman "is undoubtedly the only known case in the world," he said, adding: "She is the only person in the world who is compatible with herself."