9 minutes agoSex MattersA Fife nurse who was suspended after complaining about sharing a changing room with a transgender colleague has begun giving evidence at an employment tribunal.

Documents purged from government websites include guidelines for safe contraception and information on racial inequities in health care.A yellow banner appeared on Saturday atop every page of the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “C.D.C.’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”The announcement was a reference to the purge on Friday of thousands of pages from the site that included terms such as “transgender,” “L.G.B.T.” and “pregnant person.” The executive order required C.D.C. scientists to remove any material that promoted “gender ideology.”But many C.D.C. pages that were taken down made no mention of “gender ideology” terms. And their absence was already endangering the health of some of the most vulnerable Americans, many experts said.Among the missing pages are vaccine information statements, which must be given to patients before they can be immunized; guidelines for contraception; and several pages on how race and racism affect health outcomes.Also removed: the portal to a database containing 20 years of H.I.V. data that doctors rely on to determine whether a pregnant woman lives in an area of high H.I.V. prevalence and should be tested for the virus in her third trimester.(Some of this information is still accessible online, but the usual entry points remain broken).“I am very fearful and I am very angry about what is happening right now,” said Dr. Ina Park, an expert in H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections at the University of California, San Francisco.The shake-up accompanied two other directives also aimed at expunging information on certain topics. C.D.C. scientists were ordered late on Friday to withdraw any pending publications, at any scientific journal, that mention the forbidden terms, according to an email viewed by The New York Times.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 vaping clinic aimed at children as young as 11 has begun seeing patients with an aim to get them “nicotine free”.

Scientists were slow to recognize that Covid spreads through the air. Some are now trying to get ahead of the bird flu.In early February 2020, China locked down more than 50 million people, hoping to hinder the spread of a new coronavirus. No one knew at the time exactly how it was spreading, but Lidia Morawska, an expert on air quality at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, did not like the clues she managed to find.It looked to her as if the coronavirus was spreading through the air, ferried by wafting droplets exhaled by the infected. If that were true, then standard measures such as disinfecting surfaces and staying a few feet away from people with symptoms would not be enough to avoid infection.Dr. Morawska and her colleague, Junji Cao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, drafted a dire warning. Ignoring the airborne spread of the virus, they wrote, would lead to many more infections. But when the scientists sent their commentary to medical journals, they were rejected over and over again.“No one would listen,” Dr. Morawska said.It took more than two years for the World Health Organization to officially acknowledge that Covid spread through the air. Now, five years after Dr. Morawska started sounding the alarm, scientists are paying more attention to how other diseases may also spread through the air. At the top of their list is the bird flu.Last year, the Centers for Disease Control recorded 66 people in the United States who were infected by a strain of avian influenza called H5N1. Some of them most likely got sick by handling virus-laden birds. In March, the Department of Agriculture discovered cows that were also infected with H5N1, and that the animals could pass the virus to people — possibly through droplets splashed from milking machinery.If the bird flu gains the ability to spread from person to person, it could produce the next pandemic. So some flu experts are anxiously tracking changes that could make the virus airborne, drifting in tiny droplets through hospitals, restaurants and other shared spaces, where its next victims could inhale it.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.

When Jeanne began to seriously consider taking Zepbound, one of the new-generation weight-loss drugs, she had the briefest of conversations with her husband, Javier. They were in their bedroom at the time, hastily dressing and brushing teeth during that compressed morning interval before their 12-year-old son left for school and Jeanne’s workday began. The exchange was not so much a discussion as the routine conveyance of domestic data, along with the Costco shopping list.Listen to this article, read by Kirsten Potter“I’d like to try this,” Jeanne said to Javier.“OK,” Javier said.For both Jeanne and Javier, the decision was easy. Jeanne, who is 53, has struggled with her weight since fifth grade, and blood work from a recent physical exam indicated the worsening of fatty-liver disease. “That was the catalyst,” Javier told me, standing in the large kitchen of their comfortable house in New England, where through a picture window an empty hammock swung wildly in the freezing January wind. From her study nearby, Jeanne was audible on a conference call. At the time of their decision, in late 2023, the effects of the drug were still conceptual, and Javier’s perspective was uncomplicated. He was “all in,” he said. Javier, who is also 53, regards himself as a “glass half full” kind of person, with a deep drive to be helpful to others and a steady support to his wife. “It never occurred to me to ask, Well, what does this mean for us?”Jeanne took her first dose of Zepbound on March 7, 2024. Since then, she has lost 60 pounds; a recent liver scan showed no signs of disease. Jeanne now uses words like “life-changing” and “miraculous” to describe the results. But neither Jeanne nor Javier (who asked to use their middle names to protect their privacy) could have anticipated the upheaval her use of the medication would create in their 15-year marriage — a disruption that has not just radically changed her weight and her appetites but has also seemingly forced a total renegotiation of their marital terms. They are grappling, minute by minute, with a reconsideration of what they love about each other, how they feel when they look in the mirror, what turns them on. They haven’t had sex since she started Zepbound.Javier comes across as bewildered by the changes in his wife. He is grieving, he says, the loss of the woman he married, starting with her physical self. “I used to love feeling her body, her big body, next to me in bed, the softness of it. The extra tummy and extra booty was comforting and reassuring,” he says. “I miss that. The voluptuousness, being able to lean up next to her and feel her, for lack of a better word, draping over me or onto me. That’s no longer an option.”Before prescribing these drugs, responsible clinicians will advise patients of the well-known side effects — diarrhea, constipation, nausea, vomiting, headache — as well as the need for modifications in diet and exercise. They will explain the dosage schedule and may discuss cost. That, more or less, is where the professional guidance ends. But the effects of extreme weight loss on love relationships can be profound. The first and most substantive research related to the subject goes back to 2018, when a team of Swedish epidemiologists published a study of the impact of bariatric surgery on marriage. After surgery, they found, married couples were more likely than those in a control group to divorce or separate, whereas single people were more likely to marry. In couples, “there’s such a drive to keep things the same,” says Robyn Pashby, a clinical psychologist who specializes in issues related to weight loss or gain. “When one person changes, it changes the system. It does break that unspoken contract.”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.

15 minutes agoGrace DeanBBC News

President Trump on Saturday ordered 25 percent tariffs on all Mexican exports to the United States and a similar levy on all Canadian goods, except for a 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy. His move sent shock waves through both nations, whose leaders have warned that the tariffs will harm all three countries and disrupt their deeply interwoven economies.On his first day in office, Mr. Trump had vowed to impose punitive tariffs on Mexican and Canadian exports on Feb. 1, to force the two countries to better secure their borders against the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs.The tariffs target the United States’ closest neighbors and key trading partners. Mexico became the United States’ largest trading partner last year, exporting a variety of goods, including automobiles and avocados, while Canada is the largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the United States.Mexican officials have criticized the tariffs, arguing that they will not only harm Mexico’s economy, but will also hurt U.S. companies that have production plants in Mexico, including General Motors and Ford. American consumers are also likely to see higher prices for fruits, vegetables and other products.President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said on Friday that the country was “prepared for any scenario.” She has suggested that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own.Here is what to know about the tariffs:President Trump promised to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China beginning on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhy is Trump imposing tariffs on Mexico?Mr. Trump placed Mexico and the U.S. southern border at the center of his presidential campaign, railing against record levels of undocumented immigrants entering the United States, as well as the movement of fentanyl into the country. (Border crossings are currently at significantly lower than the record levels in 2023.)Mr. Trump accused Mexico of allowing a “mass migration invasion” into the United States, claiming that this had brought “crime, and drugs,” crushed wages and overwhelmed school systems.It is not the first time Mr. Trump has used tariffs as a strategy to achieve policy objectives involving immigration.During his first term, he threatened to impose taxes on Mexican products to pressure the country’s president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, into cracking down on migration.As a result, Mexico deployed National Guard officers across the country to take on illegal immigration and agreed to the expansion of a program that allowed migrants seeking asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceeded.Men passing through a hole in the border wall in Sunland Park, N.M., trying to enter the United States undetected. Paul Ratje for The New York TimesWhat has Mexico done to counter the flow of immigrants over the U.S. border?Mexico has significantly increased immigration enforcement in recent years, particularly during the Biden administration. It has added hundreds of immigration checkpoints across the country, including along once-deserted sections of the border, conducted inspections on commercial bus routes and drastically increased detentions.To deter people from reaching border cities like Tijuana, a top migrant entry point near San Diego, Mexican authorities raided hotels and safe houses, increased security at official crossings and installed new border checkpoints where migrants were passing through a gap in a wall.Mexico also moved migrants away from the border, using chartered flights and buses to drop large numbers of people in southern cities like Villahermosa. The strategy contributed to a plunge in apprehensions of people trying to cross along the southern border at the start of last year.The government also introduced bureaucratic obstacles for migrants trying to make it to the United States. At one point, it stopped issuing documents that allowed migrants and refugees to stay in Mexico.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, alluded to these actions this past week when she said the Trump administration had seen “a historic level of cooperation from Mexico” on border security.A Sinaloa cartel cook working on an order of fentanyl in Culiacán, Mexico. White powder, purportedly finished fentanyl, sits on a table at left.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesWhat has Mexico done to control the trafficking of fentanyl?Ms. Sheinbaum has taken a far tougher line than her predecessor in cracking down on the criminal groups involved in the fentanyl trade.Mr. López Obrador prioritized tackling the social and economic root causes of drug crime over enforcement actions. But during Ms. Sheinbaum’s first four months in office, Mexican security forces have conducted major seizures of fentanyl and stepped up operations to locate and destroy clandestine fentanyl laboratories. Security forces have also targeted key members of the Sinaloa cartel, the powerful criminal organization largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring over the southern border.In December, Mexican security forces seized more than a ton of fentanyl, the equivalent of more than 20 million doses of fentanyl pills, in what Ms. Sheinbaum described as “the largest mass seizure of fentanyl pills ever made.”Mexico’s security minister, Omar García Harfuch, announced this past week that since Ms. Sheinbaum took office on Oct. 1, more than 10,000 people had been arrested on serious criminal charges, including homicide. Mexican authorities also have seized 90 tons of drugs, including more than 1.3 tons of fentanyl, and destroyed more than 139 laboratories, Mr. Garcia Harfuch said.Some of the most decisive efforts to curb rampant violence have focused on the state of Sinaloa, where rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel have turned the state into a war zone after Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, a top leader of the cartel, was lured onto a plane under false pretenses and sent to the United States, where he is under indictment.Though there is no evidence that these enforcement actions have made a significant dent in the Sinaloa cartel’s production abilities, analysts say that it has sent a clear message about Mexico’s commitment to make good on Mr. Trump’s demands.“There are thousands of clandestine fentanyl kitchens in Sinaloa alone, and the drug is so immensely profitable the cartel is not just going to hand it over to the authorities,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexican security analyst.“But the important thing was to show that Mexico is working harder and faster and making good in this promise to produce results,” he added.Mexico has also recently passed a constitutional reform to prohibit the production, distribution and sale of chemical precursors needed to manufacture fentanyl. It has also increased laws around offenses related to fentanyl.A General Motors plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, that exports vehicles to Canada and the United States.Daniel Becerril/ReutersWhat has Mexico told Mr. Trump about its efforts?After Mr. Trump’s victory, Ms. Sheinbaum said he should consider what Mexico has done to curb the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigration.In a letter to Mr. Trump, Ms. Sheinbaum said a “comprehensive” migration policy to care for migrants arriving in Mexico from different countries and seeking to reach the United States had led to a 75 percent drop in encounters along the United States-Mexico border from December 2023 to November 2024.Half of the migrants who arrived in the United States entered with a legal appointment to claim asylum since the United States introduced an app that allowed migrants to make those appointments, she added. (The Trump administration has shut down the app-based entry program.)“For these reasons, migrant caravans no longer arrive at the border,” she said.Ms. Sheinbaum, in the same letter, reiterated Mexico’s “willingness to prevent the fentanyl epidemic” from continuing to take a toll in the United States, and highlighted enforcement actions that resulted in the seizure of tons of synthetic drugs.

The agency warned that the products, made by Cal Yee Farm, could have potentially serious or even deadly consequences because the packages were mislabeled. No illnesses have been reported.The Food and Drug Administration has upgraded its December recall of some chocolate- and yogurt-covered products made by Cal Yee Farm to its highest level of severity.The agency warned this week of potentially serious, or even deadly, consequences from eating the products for those who have an allergy or sensitivity to almonds, milk, sesame, soy, wheat and the synthetic dye FD&C No. 6.Cal Yee Farm of Suisun Valley, Calif., began voluntarily recalling some of its products on Dec. 12 because they were mislabeled, and contained ingredients that were not listed on their packages.No illnesses have been reported. The recall began after an F.D.A. inspection of Cal Yee Farm’s manufacturing plant.The products subject to the highest-level recall include: certain packages of dark chocolate almonds, dark chocolate apricots, dark chocolate raisins and dark chocolate walnuts. Some packages of New Orleans hot mix, Cajun sesame hot sticks, tropical trail mix and yogurt-coated almonds were also affected.Products were sold under the Cal Yee’s or Cal Yee Farm brands.The recalled products were made by Cal Yee Farm in Suisun Valley, Calif.GoogleCal Yee Farm said that the affected products were sold at two retail stores, in Suisun Valley, Calif., and Placerville, Calif.; and through online and phone orders to Arizona, California, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.The company said that customers with those allergies and sensitivities who bought the affected products should not eat them. It recommended throwing them away, or returning them to Cal Yee Farm for a full refund. It said the labeling problem has since been fixed.The F.D.A. has three classifications for recalls, and this week’s reclassification, or update, is a standard part of the process, according to the agency.Class I, the most severe notice that was assigned to Cal Yee, is “a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death,” the agency said.The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004 identifies milk as one of eight major food allergens. The others are crustacean shellfish, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, tree nuts and wheat.

Lifesaving treatment and prevention programs for tuberculosis, malaria, H.I.V. and other diseases cannot access funds to continue work.Lifesaving health initiatives and medical research projects have shut down around the world in response to the Trump administration’s 90-day pause on foreign aid and stop-work orders.In Uganda, the National Malaria Control Program has suspended spraying insecticide into village homes and ceased shipments of bed nets for distribution to pregnant women and young children, said Dr. Jimmy Opigo, the program’s director.Medical supplies, including drugs to stop hemorrhages in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, cannot reach villages in Zambia because the trucking companies transporting them were paid through a suspended supply project of the United States Agency for International Development, U.S.A.I.D.Dozens of clinical trials in South Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. Thousands of people enrolled in the studies have drugs, vaccines and medical devices in their bodies but no longer have access to continuing treatment or to the researchers who were supervising their care.In interviews, more than 20 researchers and program managers described the upheaval in health systems in countries across the developing world. Most agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their names not be published, fearing that speaking to a reporter would jeopardize any possibility that their projects might be able to reopen.Many of those interviewed broke down in tears as they described the rapid destruction of decades of work.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.

Fake nurseries and town squares seem to comfort patients. But some experts wonder whether they are patronizing, even infantilizing.The nursery at RiverSpring Residences in the Bronx is a sunny, inviting space outfitted with a bassinet, a crib with a musical mobile, a few toys, bottles, picture books for bedtime reading and a rack of clothing in tiny sizes.The other morning, Wilma Rosa was there trying to soothe one of its cranky, small charges. “What’s the matter, baby?” she crooned, patting the complainer’s back. “You OK? I want you to go to sleep for a little while.”Ms. Rosa, 76, a memory care resident in assisted living, visits the nursery daily. She has had plenty of experience with babies.She was the oldest girl of eight children, so she handled lots of family responsibilities, she told Catherine Dolan, the facility’s director of life enrichment, who was asking questions to help the memories flow. Later in life, Ms. Rosa worked in a bank and a store; the stories emerged as she cuddled the doll.No actual babies live in this immersive environment, where the fragrance blend includes a talcum scent. Just as no actual sales were taking place at the store down the corridor, another new RiverSpring undertaking.Amid its wooden shelves of clothing, accessories and tchotchkes, the sales clerks were, like Ms. Dolan, staff members trained to interact effectively with residents with dementia.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.