Emergency doctors in the UK have issued a safety warning over water beads, which could be given to children as gifts over Christmas.

Shuttered drugstores pose a particular threat to older adults, who take more medications than younger people and often rely on pharmacies for advice.In July, a notice appeared on the front door of The Drug Store, the only pharmacy in rural Kernville, Calif. After 45 years, the proprietor wrote regretfully, it would be closing in four days and transferring customers’ prescriptions to a Rite Aid about 12 miles away.As the news spread, “there was a real sense of loss, a sense of mourning,” said Roberta Piazza Gordon, who owns Piazza’s Pine Cone Inn in Kernville. The pharmacy had served as a community crossroads where people chatted with neighbors and with the friendly staff.Its closing also created practical concerns. “We are an aging population,” Ms. Gordon, 69, said of the townspeople.She relied on The Drug Store for her blood pressure and cholesterol medications and for anti-inflammatories after injuring her shoulder. Her husband, who is 70, also regularly filled prescriptions there.At The Drug Store, “you got your flu shot, your Covid shot, your pneumonia shot,” she said.Now those services require a 20- to 30-minute drive to the Rite Aid, which is in Lake Isabella and which Ms. Gordon described as understaffed for its growing number of customers.“On any given day, there’s a line of 10 to 15 people waiting at the pickup window,” she said. Unlike The Drug Store, the Rite Aid doesn’t deliver.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.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.

A federal government shutdown probably wouldn’t be enough to derail the solid U.S. economy. But it could inject more uncertainty into an already murky economic outlook.Funding for the federal government will lapse at the end of Friday if Congress doesn’t reach a deal to extend it. It is still possible that legislators will act in time to prevent a shutdown, or will restore funding quickly enough to avoid significant disruptions and minimize any economic impact.But if the standoff lasts beyond the weekend, most federal offices will not open Monday, and hundreds of thousands of government employees will be told not to work. Others will be required to work without pay until the government reopens.For those workers and their families, the consequences could be serious, especially if the impasse drags on. Federal law guarantees that government workers will eventually receive back pay, but that may not come in time for those living paycheck to paycheck. And the back-pay provisions don’t apply to consultants or contractors. During the last government shutdown — a partial lapse in funding in late 2018 and early 2019 — federal workers lined up at food pantries after going weeks without pay.For the economy as a whole, the effects of a shutdown are likely to be more modest. Many of the most important government programs, like Social Security and Medicare, would not be affected, and government services that are deemed “essential,” such as air traffic control and aviation security, can continue at least temporarily. Federal workers who put off purchases are likely to make them once their paychecks restart.Forecasters at Goldman Sachs estimate that a shutdown would exert a small but measurable drag on the economy, reducing quarterly economic growth by about 0.15 percentage points for every week the lapse in funding continues. Most of that toll, though not all, would reverse in the next quarter. Other forecasters have released similar estimates.The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2019 that the last shutdown, which ended after 35 days, had only a modest and short-lived impact on economic output. That was only a partial shutdown, however — large parts of the government, including the Departments of Defense, Labor, and Health and Human Services, remained open.A funding lapse now would affect a much larger part of the government, and therefore could cause more severe damage if it lasted a while. But that makes a long shutdown less likely, said Bobby Kogan, a former budget official in the Biden administration who now works at the Center for American Progress. He noted that the last shutdown had ended when it appeared that Transportation Security Administration screeners were about to stop showing up for work.“Part of the reason these things don’t end up being catastrophic is because we stop it before it gets catastrophic,” Mr. Kogan said.But economists warn that even if the direct effects of a shutdown are limited, the dysfunction it represents could have consequences in the long run. Government contractors may be more reluctant to hire workers and make investments if they think they can’t count on the federal government to be a reliable customer. Bond investors may demand a higher return to buy Treasury securities, in the form of higher interest rates, if they worry that political turmoil has made the U.S. government more of a credit risk.“The natural concern is that this is just a prelude of what we’re going to get over the next four years,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist for Nationwide, the insurance company. “It’s just another layer of uncertainty and maybe caution that can work against the economy.”The economy is relatively healthy by most measures, with unemployment low, consumer spending strong and inflation much cooler than it was two years ago. That momentum means the economy can probably withstand the modest drag of a shutdown without running much risk of a recession.But recent economic data have sent conflicting signals, with some measures suggesting that inflation could be picking back up and others that the labor market could be starting to crack.Uncertainty about what policies the incoming administration will pursue has further clouded the economic outlook. On Wednesday, policymakers at the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point, but signaled that cuts next year were likely to be fewer and were not guaranteed.A government shutdown would complicate the picture for the Fed, and not only by adding more uncertainty to the economic outlook. It could also imperil the data that policymakers rely on to make their decisions. Past shutdowns forced the government to delay or even cancel reports on jobs, inflation and other measures.“If we do have a big delay in the economic data, I think it’s going to be really hard for the Fed to provide a whole lot of guidance,” said Michael Pugliese, senior economist at Wells Fargo.The impact of such uncertainty is hard to measure, Mr. Pugliese said, but it is real.“I don’t think that’s completely costless even if you don’t see it in the next G.D.P. report,” he said.

Before the answers to life’s questions fit in our pocket, you used to have to turn a dial. If you […]

Before the answers to life’s questions fit in our pocket, you used to have to turn a dial. If you […]

Patients most “in need” should be able to see the same doctor at every appointment in their local GP surgery, the government says.

Getty ImagesThis is the third feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration released final rules on labeling foods as “healthy,” tightening limits for sugar, sodium and saturated fat.The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday updated the definitions of the term “healthy” for labeling on foods, a move that reflected changes in nutrition and that tightened limits on saturated fat, sugar and salt in food that could be sold under that claim.The effort, while seemingly an inconsequential update to a 30-year-old term, set off a veritable food fight of lobbying over which foods made the cut and whether the F.D.A. would violate First Amendment protections in trying to define “healthy.”The F.D.A. said Thursday that its policy, outlined in a final rule, was meant to “empower consumers” by helping them quickly spot nutritious food at the grocery store. The text of the rule said it was part of the agency’s work “to help reduce the burden of diet-related chronic diseases.”“It’s critical for the future of our country that food be a vehicle for wellness,” Dr. Robert Califf, the F.D.A. commissioner, said in a statement. “Improving access to nutrition information is an important public health effort the F.D.A. can undertake to help people build healthy eating patterns.”The 318-page rule sets forth highly specific guidelines around what food manufacturers can label “healthy” or other terms, like “healthful” or “healthiest.” For instance, a 50-gram serving of a dairy product must contain no more than 5 percent of a person’s daily sugar level and 10 percent of a person’s daily salt and saturated fat limit. Similar standards would apply to fruits, grains, vegetables, meat and other foods. The new definition would include some processed and packaged food and several items previously excluded from the definition of “healthy,” like nuts, seeds, salmon, some oils and water.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is meeting with lawmakers this week to shore up support for his upcoming confirmation hearings to become secretary of the nation’s top health agency, campaigned for President-elect Donald J. Trump on a message of making the nation healthier through more nutritious food. He criticized the food industry, saying it was poisoning children with artificial additives and ultra-processed foods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.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.

The U.S. provides nearly half of the aid for global health, including childhood vaccination, H.I.V. treatment and disease surveillance.The election of Donald J. Trump, with his mistrust of international institutions and his history of proposing deep cuts to foreign aid, has complicated a perilous landscape for global health organizations that were already in a frantic competition for sharply reduced funds.Organizations that support the cornerstone health programs to vaccinate children, treat people with H.I.V. and stop the next pandemic through disease surveillance, among other goals, are seeking billions of dollars from high-income countries.Their demands for support reflect mounting health challenges: Rates of infection with dengue fever are exploding in Latin America. The mutated mpox virus is increasingly transmissible between people, and there are fears that H5N1, avian influenza, is also evolving to spread between humans. Deaths from cholera, an ancient scourge, and measles are rising. The parasite that causes malaria is increasingly resistant to the drugs to treat it, and an invasive malarial mosquito is threatening African cities.The organizations seeking financial commitments and the countries that fund them have helped save millions of lives in developing countries. The global rate of child mortality has dropped by more than half in the two decades since 2000. Malaria infections plummeted as bed nets and better drugs were distributed. H.I.V. went from being the top global killer to, in many places, a well-managed chronic illness.The reality that these organizations are unlikely to get anywhere near the amount of money they are seeking is driving debate about whether — and how — the current global health system should be restructured.Global health priorities are now competing with climate change and wars for funding, and aid budgets have already been cut in major donor countries, including Britain, Germany and Japan. Health organizations are bracing for the likelihood that the second Trump administration will sharply reduce contributions from the United States, as well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.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.