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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.”

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.

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.

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.

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."

A panel of three federal appellate judges has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in each of the state's public school classrooms is unconstitutional.

The ruling Friday marked a major win for civil liberties groups who say the mandate violates the separation of church and state, and that the poster-sized displays would isolate students — especially those who are not Christian.

The mandate has been touted by Republicans, including Donald Trump, and marks one of the latest pushes by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms. Backers of the law argue the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because they are historical and part of the foundation of U.S. law.

People locators, 3D weapon blueprints, tactical planning – all accessible on the web for potential attackers or terrorists

A rash of recent assassinations have brought on congressional scrutiny and concern among law enforcement agencies who are wary of an age of political polarization turning deadly.

But experts say the violence is as much a byproduct of the times as it is the easy accessibility to DIY murder tradecraft, evident in some high-profile slayings of late.

So while the willingness to commit these acts has certainly increased, the tradecraft to pull them off has never been more obtainable.

Across the US, the Active Club network uses combat sports to lure boys and young men into white nationalist circles

A neo-Nazi fight club that secretly infiltrated a Tennessee martial arts school where young children train has been banned from the facility, after an inquiry by the Guardian.

Last month, the South Central Tennessee Active Club published video footage on the messaging app Telegram showing its members participating in combat training at Shelbyville BJJ Academy, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school in Shelbyville, Tennessee, that offers classes to students as young as three years old.

The group is part of the wider Active Club network, which consists of dozens of decentralized cells across the US and abroad that use combat sports to lure people into white nationalist and neo-Nazi causes.

Officials in US health agencies fear ‘people will get sick’ as programmes are slashed and scientists are fired under the constant surveillance of DOGE

Zoom meetings are avoided out of fear they are being secretly recorded. Conversations about budgets and policies are held in soundproof offices, as if they were matters of national security. Many employees carry small notebooks with them, jotting down notes instead of logging them on a computer. The desks of several sacked colleagues are empty — save for the few who have left family photos and possessions behind in case a judge rules they can return.

“There is a constant sense that we’re being watched and monitored,” the source said. “DOGE leadership are located several floors above but they have this omnipotent presence … We’re counted when we swipe our badges into the building.”