Apple is preparing to turn its AirPods Pro 2 into easy-to-use aids for people with mild to moderate hearing loss.In your pocket or purse, you may be toting around small devices that, with the help of new software authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, could soon become inexpensive hearing aids. Millions of people already own them.They’re Apple’s AirPods Pro 2, those white plastic knobs protruding from so many ears in malls and workplaces, on buses and sidewalks. The users may not be among the 30 million American adults reporting some degree of hearing loss; they’re probably just listening to music or podcasts, or talking on their phones.Within weeks, however, consumers will be able to use those AirPods Pro 2 earbuds to bolster their hearing. Last month, Apple software called Hearing Aid and Hearing Test received a green light from the F.D.A., a first for the regulatory agency.With the upcoming software and a compatible iPhone or iPad, users will be able test their hearing. For those with mild-to-moderate hearing loss, the AirPods Pro 2 will adjust sounds in their environments and on their devices.Users will be able to customize their AirPods for volume, tone and balance. All that should allow them to hear better — at least for the devices’ roughly five to six hours of battery life.Apple plans to release the free software later this fall for iPhones running iOS 18 or later and iPads running iPadOS 18 or later, a spokesperson said. A set of AirPods Pro 2 costs $249 from Apple, and less at big box stores or through online retailers.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.

“So what have you learned about love?” people often ask when they find out I’m an editor of Modern Love.“Oh, you know,” I say, “a lot.” Or, “Most clichés are accurate.” Or I delay, promising, “I’ll tell you later.”In case we don’t meet again, I’ll tell you now: After 10 years of participating in this unique and precious work alongside my thoughtful boss, Daniel Jones, I’ve learned that love is like a form of energy — sustenance as integral to our existence as food, sunshine and the air we breathe.And I believe love, like energy, is indestructible, constantly transferred between people, passed down from one generation to the next, durable through time and even death.Joan Didion was correct when she wrote: “Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” Spend two minutes in the Modern Love submission inbox, and you will appreciate life’s fragility. Loved ones suddenly dying or becoming sick; deciding post-affair that they’re done with a two-decade marriage and don’t want custody of the kids; or revealing a family secret that upends everything.Just as common, however, are happy happenstances. Falling in love with a man who grew up on the same block as you and worked in the same building, but whom you didn’t meet until a chance midlife encounter. Talking to a stranger on the train who provides sage, unsolicited advice. Or witnessing a hawk — the likes of which you’ve never seen in your neighborhood — swoop down the day you and your wife visit the man who received your late daughter’s organs.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.

BBCWhen teacher Elaine Fraser collapsed at home after drinking a ginger beer, she had no idea she had an allergy.

Sally Magnusson There can’t be many people who spend years raging and grieving over the decline of a parent from dementia without wondering if it awaits them too.

The Daytona Beach plant that makes nearly a quarter of the IV fluids used in the United States is intact in the wake of Hurricane Milton’s tear across Florida, according to a company spokeswoman.The site, operated by B Braun Medical, gained prominence this week as a backup source for IV solutions because Hurricane Helene had flooded a major producer of the fluids in North Carolina and left hospitals from California to Virginia with diminishing supplies.Company workers and officials from the federal Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response took pre-emptive measures before Milton arrived, loading trucks full of finished IV medical products to ship them out of the storm’s reach through the night Tuesday. Allison Longenhagen, a company spokeswoman, said on Thursday that the manufacturing and distribution site at Daytona Beach was intact, and would reopen on Friday. She said a more complete update would be issued later Thursday.The threat to B Braun’s Florida plant worried officials, hospitals and people who rely on the fluids for nutrition, at-home dialysis and surgery because of the damage Hurricane Helene had done to a plant in Marion, N.C., run by Baxter, the nation’s leading maker of the products.Baxter ordinarily produces about 60 percent of the U.S. supply of IV products, or an estimated 1.5 million of the bags that are used each day, according to the American Hospital Association. Hospitals have begun canceling surgical procedures and rationing bags of the fluids while Baxter works to clean and restore its plant in Marion, which was extensively flooded.Early this week, Baxter provided hospital customers with just 40 percent of their usual deliveries of saline, dextrose and sterile water supplies. Baxter said Wednesday that it would increase deliveries to 60 percent.Other emergency measures were being taken to shore up gaps in the supply chain.On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized temporary imports of Baxter fluids from Canada, Ireland, Britain and two plants in China. The company has not yet said when the imports would arrive, but said Thursday that trucks were shipping undamaged inventory from the North Carolina site.The patients most on edge about shortages are those who rely on a highly concentrated dextrose solution for nutrition. . Hospitals are conserving the fluids by giving some patients Pedialyte or Gatorade to drink, but those who rely on tube feeding for survival are less able to cut back.Beth Gore, chief executive of the Oley Foundation, which advocates for patients on long-term IV nutrition, said she had been hearing from dozens of families across the country who said they were told the supply for their children would be reduced or cut off.”We are all extremely concerned about the disproportionate harm that’s going to potentially happen to the home-care patients,” she said.

Getty ImagesAt least one NHS trust put in place a blanket “do-not-resuscitate” order for sick patients in the pandemic, the Covid inquiry has heard.

Getty ImagesThe government has been warned it must come up with a plan to fix the NHS, amid mounting concern about the lack of progress in cutting long waits.

Family HandoutDetectives investigating hundreds of deaths at a hospital have identified 24 suspects.

UK pharmaceutical giant GSK says it will pay as much as $2.2bn (£1.68bn) to settle thousands of cases in US courts over claims that a discontinued version of its heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer.

Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty ImagesLawyers representing children who developed long-term pain and injury after operations at Great Ormond Street Hospital have criticised a heavily redacted report carried out for the trust.