US president credits himself with lowest drug prices in 60 years, when article says drop is more likely due to Biden

The White House flooded social media on Saturday with an image of Donald Trump showing off the recent Washington Post headline “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”, but failed to mention that experts cited in the article actually attributed the price drop to Joe Biden, not Trump.

On its official accounts, the White House triumphantly captioned the photograph of Trump: “POV: you bring the receipts.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, also shared it.

Plea comes weeks before separate case is scheduled to start in New York, and could throw proceedings into disarray

Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty on Friday in a federal case in relation to the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson in 2024.

Mangione confessed that he shot and killed Thompson outside a New York City hotel on 4 December 2024. In his federal case, he faced stalking charges, after other charges, including murder, were dropped.

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Pete Hegseth’s appointments to a key Pentagon advisory body include two men with ties to the venture capital fund where Donald Trump Jr is a partner, which has lucrative investments in military and space technology.

Defense Policy Board appointee Marc Andreessen’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firms and known by the name “a16z”, co-invests alongside the Trump partnership 1789 Capital in three defense contractors. Fellow DPB appointee Blake Masters also sits on the boards of three ventures tied to 1789 Capital.

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President and RFK Jr, the health secretary, repeatedly referred to autism during signing, though studies show no link between it and vaccines

Donald Trump has signed an executive order with plans for sweeping changes to the childhood vaccination schedule that attempts to override the authority of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It is an attempt to undergird the changes made earlier this year to CDC vaccination recommendations, which were halted by a federal judge. The CDC is the federal agency tasked with recommending vaccines, not the White House.

AI’s danger isn’t just in experts losing the ability to reason. It’s that trainees may never learn how to do so in the first place

In healthcare, there’s growing concern over doctors becoming less clinically adept as they increasingly rely on AI tools. But what about the trainees – medical students, residents and fellows – who are using these tools before they’ve built their own clinical judgment? The idea of deskilling implies that someone possessed an ability and then lost it. Here, the danger is not just deskilling but never-skilling. Although a doctor who has forgotten how to reason is recoverable, one who never learned how may not be.

OpenEvidence, essentially an AI chatbot for clinicians, has given this concern its most concrete form. About two-thirds of US doctors actively use OpenEvidence, asking about puzzling symptoms, drug interactions, and clinical guidelines, getting responses within seconds, anchored in the latest research. Trainees, unsurprisingly, have also begun to use this AI tool in many of the same ways – but at a far more formative stage.

The predictions market is planning to allow betting on clinical trial results and regulatory decisions as our family fights for his survival

My son is 12 years old. No matter how many Legos we get him, he will only build robotic mechs. He draws haunting pictures in pen and ink but refuses to take an art class. He was devastated to learn that Chuck E Cheese is phasing out its animatronics. His guidance counselor says he’s so kind, he’s really hard to say no to. He sneezes when he steps out into the sunlight. And he also has a very aggressive tumor growing inches below his heart.

Further, if Kalshi has its way, you could soon be able to bet on health treatments that could be essential to his survival.

Joshua Pederson is professor of humanities at Boston University and the author of Sin Sick: Moral Injury in War and Literature

Health secretary, longtime vaccination skeptic, spent years boosting misinformation about vaccines including MMR

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, on Sunday told American parents that they should get their children vaccinated against measles, as the surge in infections has reached numbers not seen in the past 35 years.

Kennedy, a leading vaccination skeptic who has spent years amplifying misinformation about vaccines, including the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), made his call in the course of a contentious interview with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.

Americans are dying younger than Europeans, despite being the wealthiest people on the planet. Wellness fads won’t change that

I’m just back from my home country, the United States. I always enjoy visiting, but every time I go between the US and my adopted home of Europe, I’m keenly aware of disparity in health: Americans live much shorter lives and spend more of their lifetime in poor health. This is despite Americans earning some of the highest salaries per capita in the world and spending twice as much as comparable countries on healthcare.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine of 74,000 adults found that even the wealthiest Americans had higher mortality rates than the wealthiest Europeans – and that the richest Americans had mortality rates comparable to the poorest residents of northern and western Europe. Across every wealth category, Americans were more likely to die younger than Europeans, suggesting that even wealth doesn’t insulate from larger factors that impact life expectancy.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Adviser to Trump and Biden for pandemic says Republican senator has ‘unhinged obsession’ with him

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Dr Anthony Fauci refused to answer questions at a high-profile Senate committee hearing on the origins of Covid-19 and accused the Republican senator leading questioning of having an “unhinged obsession” with him.

Fauci, the veteran former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), served as a key adviser to Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the Covid-19 pandemic. The hearing was called by Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who has investigated Fauci for years.

Both restaurant work and medicine involve abusive training and relentless devotion to minutiae – and the joy of offering comfort

I pass a mother heaving in grief while her son’s heart monitors flatline. It is the last time she will ever hold his hand. For me, this is another day on call in the intensive care unit as a pediatric physician. For her, this is the day her life shatters.

Later that night, a striking, charismatic surgeon from work treats me to an exquisite meal. Served outside a trailer, humidity barreling through our scrubs, the food is neither extravagant nor decadent. It is, however, the most succulent Texas barbecue brisket I will ever taste. This is the night I rest my head on his shoulder and he doesn’t flinch. This is the night an “us” was born.

The latest milestone, a recorded 2,318 infections, makes 2026 the worst year for measles in the US since 1991

The US has officially surpassed last year’s record number of measles infections, marking the highest case count since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000.

New figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Friday show the country has recorded 2,318 measles cases in 2026, overtaking the 2,289 cases reported during all of 2025 – with five months still remaining in the year. The country crossed the 2,000-case threshold last month before climbing even higher in July.

Researchers tracked mother-child pairs for up to 11 years, finding Pfas mixtures may affect developing guts

Prenatal and early life exposure to Pfas mixtures is probably linked to higher levels of intestinal inflammation in children, new first-of-its-kind research shows. Intestinal inflammation can cause irritable bowel diseases, like ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and colorectal cancer.

While Pfas has been linked to irritable bowel disease and intestinal inflammation in adults, the new peer-reviewed Mt Sinai study is the first to look at how the chemicals impact children during a critical developmental phase.

Vote from advisory group – whose members include people linked to peptides industry – likely to embolden RFK Jr

A panel of federal health advisers on Thursday narrowly recommended easing access to several peptides popular with wellness influencers and celebrities, despite warnings from government scientists that the chemicals have not been shown to be safe or effective.

In a series of votes, outside experts to the Food and Drug Administration advised the agency to drop current restrictions barring pharmacies from producing injectable peptides with names like BPC-157, TB-500 and KPV.

US health officials say source of Upper East Side cluster has likely been eliminated after 76 people fell ill

An outbreak of legionnaires’ disease in New York City has claimed a fourth life, officials have said, as they again expressed confidence the source of the exposure had been eliminated.

A statement from the city’s health department on Monday said the outbreak, which was traced to cooling towers in buildings in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, had sickened 76 people – with 53 discharged after hospital treatment, and 12 others managing their recovery at home.

Authorities said inquiry into cyclosporiasis outbreak was continuing but early results pointed to salad greens and lettuce

• What is cyclosporiasis, the parasitic illness causing ‘explosive’ diarrhea?

State health officials in Michigan said on Monday they have identified lettuces and salad greens as a “potential source” of the thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis – a parasitic infection that causes “watery diarrhea”, loss of appetite and weight loss.

In a statement, the Michigan department of health and human services said the investigation is still continuing, but early results “point to lettuce or salad greens as a potential source for this outbreak”, though officials also cautioned it is too early to rule out other food sources.

Officials say climate crisis ‘worsening our exposure’ to bacteria as at least 28 people sickened in Manhattan

A New York outbreak of legionnaires’ disease, a rare but severe form of pneumonia, highlights the microbe’s growing and disproportionate impacts in a warming climate.

At least 28 people have been sickened in an outbreak on the Upper East Side, a wealthy neighborhood between Central Park and the East River in Manhattan. Health department officials, seeking to stop the outbreak, have sampled water from nearly 160 building cooling towers to test for the bacteria.

The congressman spent four months mysteriously away from work, but he doesn’t seem to think his constituents should get mandated sick days

The mystery of the missing congressman has finally been solved. Almost four months ago Tom Kean Jr, a Republican, vanished from public view. He missed more than 100 votes, all while continuing to collect his full taxpayer-funded salary of $174,000 along with excellent benefits. The only explanation given for his absence was a cryptic statement from his office in late April saying he was dealing with a “personal health matter”. Kean’s father, former New Jersey governor Tom Kean Sr, further told CNN in May that his son was battling a temporary illness and would be back to work soon.

This week, Kean finally resurfaced and explained that he’d been absent due to inpatient treatment for depression. Why hadn’t he said anything about this earlier? Kean said he was “private person by nature”. Which is great, but maybe don’t choose a job in public service in that case.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Parasite cyclospora spreads through produce and water contaminated with feces and causes the intestinal illness cyclosporiasis

The US Centers for Disease Prevention has been working to find the source of a parasitic illness that causes “explosive”, watery diarrhea, with more than 400 cases of the sickness reported across 18 states.

The parasite, cyclospora, spreads through raw produce and water contaminated with human feces – and it causes the intestinal illness cyclosporiasis, whose symptoms include cramps, nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, low-grade fever and vomiting. The most commonly reported symptom is “watery diarrhea with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements”, according to the CDC.

For decades Vieques was a bombing range, leaving a legacy of cancer clusters and unexploded munitions. Now residents fear the US military wants to reopen its bases

When the ferry docks in Vieques, a small island about 6 miles (10km) off Puerto Rico, the first person many tourists see is José Belardo, known as “Gato”, a retired police chief who now drives a taxi.

Driving to Esperanza, a town on Vieques’s southern coast, he points to Sun Bay, a popular beach, and to large cleanup tents behind a barbed-wire fence. Gato notes the wildlife preserve, riddled with unexploded munitions, and the health centre, recently built but without doctors. He mentions a woman walking by, whose husband recently died of cancer.

Across the US, thousands of people are injecting themselves with unregulated peptides in pursuit of weight loss, muscle growth and younger-looking skin. Despite being labelled 'not for human consumption', the substances are readily available online and have surged in popularity among people disillusioned by traditional healthcare. To find out why so many Americans are willing to risk unknown side-effects for the promise of a quick fix, Adam Gabbatt meets the users and influencers driving the peptide boom, and investigates what's really inside some of these so-called 'miracle' drugs