babysandpiper

In a cosmic first, astronomers have spotted the earliest signs of rocky planet formation around a young star. The discovery offers a rare vision of how Earth-like worlds may begin.

Donald Trump has grown weary of defending Attorney General Pam Bondi's handling of the Justice Department's Jeffery Epstein files and wants her to take responsibility for cleaning up the mess, according to four people familiar with White House deliberations.

"One thing that's been clear is his feelings about it," one White House official told NBC News. "This now resides within the DOJ."

The administration's refusal to disclose the full contents of the government's investigation into Epstein, who killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on charges of sex-trafficking minors in 2019, has caused a deep rift between Trump and significant elements of his MAGA base.

A US tech company says its chief executive has quit after he was apparently caught on a big screen at a Coldplay concert embracing a female co-worker, in a clip that went viral.

The clip showed a man and a woman hugging on a jumbo screen at the arena in Foxborough, Massachusetts, before they abruptly ducked and hid from the camera.

The pair were identified in US media as Mr Byron, a married chief executive of Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the firm's chief people officer.

Research looks at health impacts of being exposed to multiple pesticides versus just one substance

Exposure to multiple pesticides increases the chances of pregnancy complications compared to exposure to just one pesticide, new peer-reviewed research suggests. The findings raise new questions about the safety of exposure to widely used pesticides and herbicides in food and agricultural communities.

The study, which bio-monitored pregnant women in a heavily agricultural state in Argentina, adds to recent-but-limited evidence pointing to heightened dangers in mixtures of pesticides.

The authors say research into how pesticide mixtures impact human health is important because the vast majority of studies look at exposure to a single pesticide, and regulations on the substances’ use are developed based on toxicity to just one.

Experts warn that the dangerous ideologically driven cuts at HHS will have long-term consequences for healthcare

The Trump administration’s “war on science” appears to have entered a new phase in the aftermath of a recent supreme court decision that empowered health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic, and other agency leaders, to implement mass firings – effectively greenlighting the politicization of science.

The decision comes as Kennedy abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting of a key health care advisory panel, the US Preventive Services Task Force, earlier this month. That, combined with his recent removal of a panel of more than a dozen vaccine advisers, signals that his dismantling of the science-based policymaking at HHS is likely far from over.

“The current administration is waging a war on science,” warned Celine Gounder, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert at New York University in a keynote talk in May to graduates of Harvard’s School of Public Health.

RFK Jr. is targeting a little-known program that underpins childhood immunizations in the US.

Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system.

Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic.

In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effects from shots—without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent. Congress created the program in the 1980s when lawsuits drove vaccine makers from the market. A special tax on immunizations funds the awards, and manufacturers benefit from legal protections that make it harder to win big-money verdicts against them in civil courts.

Scientists can protect children from being born with certain devastating genetic disorders by creating "three-parent" babies, according to the results of a landmark study released Wednesday.

British researchers used the experimental technique to help families have eight children who appear healthy. They now range in age from younger than 6 months to older than 2 years.

The families have been plagued for generations by rare but often fatal inherited mitochondrial disorders, according to two papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

When Julliana Samson signed up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help afford food as she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, she had to turn in extensive, detailed personal information to the state to qualify.

Now she's worried about how that information could be used.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made an unprecedented demand to states to share the personal information of tens of millions of federal food assistance recipients by July 30, as a federal lawsuit seeks to postpone the data collection.

Under the new classification, Schedule G, federal employees will be subject to hiring and firing by the president

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday creating a new classification of federal employees who would be subject to hiring and firing by the president, Schedule G, for employees working on policy, in the latest action by his administration to reshape the federal workforce.

The non-career classified employees will be expected to leave in changing presidential administrations, with the order claiming it will “improve operations, particularly in agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, by streamlining appointments for key policy roles”.

The order did not cite how many employees would fall under the new classification.

The White House is trying to drive out the Federal Reserve chair. Critics warn it would be a costly bid to pass the buck

Memo from the White House: inflation is “right on track”, it declared this week, citing the latest official data. Price growth is now “very low”, according to Donald Trump. The actual statistics paint a markedly different picture.

Just six months after he regained power, in part by promising to rapidly reduce prices, Trump has presided over the chaotic rollout of tariffs on an array of overseas products that many have argued risk having the exact opposite effect.

After a lull, the consumer price index (CPI) is back on the rise. In June, everything from fruit and washing machines to dresses and toys became more expensive.

Businesses in the US and around the world have struggled to keep up with the Trump administration’s erratic rollout of its aggressive trade strategy: the daily White House soap opera of warnings, threats, confusion, deadlines, delays and drama.

The tech CEO's Neuralink was valued by investors at $9 billion shortly after it described itself as a small business in a federal filing.

Elon Musk’s health tech company Neuralink labeled itself a “small disadvantaged business” in a federal filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration, shortly before a financing round valued the company at $9 billion.

According to the SBA’s website, a designation of SDB means a company is at least 51% owned and controlled by one or more “disadvantaged” persons who must be “socially disadvantaged and economically disadvantaged.” An SDB designation can also help a business “gain preferential access to federal procurement opportunities,” the SBA website says.

The Department of Justice has previously fined companies for making false claims about their SDB status.