Doctors often start exams with the so-called “eyeball test” — a snap judgment about whether the patient appears older or younger than their age, which can influence key medical decisions. That intuitive assessment may soon get an AI upgrade.FaceAge, a deep learning algorithm described Thursday in The  Lancet Digital Health, converts a simple headshot into a number that more accurately reflects a person’s biological age rather than the birthday on their chart.Trained on tens of thousands of photographs, it pegged cancer patients on average as biologically five years older than healthy peers. The study’s authors say it could help doctors decide who can safely tolerate punishing treatments, and who might fare better with a gentler approach.”We hypothesize that FaceAge could be used as a biomarker in cancer care to quantify a patient’s biological age and help a doctor make these tough decisions,” said co-senior author Raymond Mak, an oncologist at Mass Brigham Health, a Harvard-affiliated health system in Boston.Consider two hypothetical patients: a spry 75‑year‑old whose biological age clocks in at 65, and a frail 60‑year‑old whose biology reads 70. Aggressive radiation might be appropriate for the former but risky for the latter. The same logic could help guide decisions about heart surgery, hip replacements or end-of-life care.  – Sharper lens on frailty -Growing evidence shows humans age at different rates, shaped by genes, stress, exercise, and habits like smoking or drinking. While pricey genetic tests can reveal how DNA wears over time, FaceAge promises insight using only a selfie.The model was trained on 58,851 portraits of presumed-healthy adults over 60, culled from public datasets. It was then tested on 6,196 cancer patients treated in the United States and the Netherlands, using photos snapped just before radiotherapy. Patients with malignancies looked on average 4.79 years older biologically than their chronological age.Among cancer patients, a higher FaceAge score strongly predicted worse survival — even after accounting for actual age, sex, and tumor type — and the hazard rose steeply for anyone whose biological reading tipped past 85.Intriguingly, FaceAge appears to weigh the signs of aging differently than humans do. For example, being gray-haired or balding matters less than subtle changes in facial muscle tone. FaceAge boosted doctors’ accuracy, too. Eight physicians were asked to examine headshots of terminal cancer patients and guess who would die within six months. Their success rate barely beat chance; with FaceAge data in hand, predictions improved sharply.The model even affirmed a favorite internet meme, estimating actor Paul Rudd’s biological age as 43 in a photo taken when he was 50.- Bias and ethics guardrails -AI tools have faced scrutiny for under‑serving non-white people. Mak said preliminary checks revealed no significant racial bias in FaceAge’s predictions, but the group is training a second‑generation model on 20,000 patients.They’re also probing how factors like makeup, cosmetic surgery or room lighting variations could fool the system.Ethics debates loom large. An AI that can read biological age from a selfie could prove a boon for clinicians, but also tempting for life insurers or employers seeking to gauge risk. “It is for sure something that needs attention, to assure that these technologies are used only in the benefit for the patient,” said Hugo Aerts, the study’s co-lead who directs MGB’s AI in medicine program. Another dilemma: What happens when the mirror talks back? Learning that your body is biologically older than you thought may spur healthy changes — or sow anxiety.The researchers are planning to open a public-facing FaceAge portal where people can upload their own pictures to enroll in a research study to further validate the algorithm. Commercial versions aimed at clinicians may follow, but only after more validation.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.Solicitor General John Sauer asked for the lifting of a lower court order barring the administration from ending humanitarian protections for migrants from the four nations.In March, the administration moved to revoke the legal status of some 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the United States under a “parole” program launched by former president Joe Biden.The parole program allowed entry into the United States for two years for up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries, which have grim human rights records.District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, blocked the administration last month from revoking the legal status of the migrants.In her order, Talwani said the administration had acted on a flawed interpretation of immigration law, with expedited removal applicable to non-citizens entering the United States illegally, but not those authorized to be in the country, such as through the parole program.Under Trump’s revocation, the immigrants would have lost their legal protection effective April 24, just 30 days after the Department of Homeland Security published its order in the Federal Register.The Trump administration asked the conservative-majority Supreme Court last week to back its bid to end temporary protected status (TPS) shielding more than 350,000 Venezuelans from deportation.Biden extended TPS for another 18 months just days before Trump returned to the White House in January.The United States grants TPS to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.A federal judge in California put a temporary stay in March on plans by Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem to end deportation protections for the Venezuelan nationals.Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants.Among other measures, he invoked an obscure wartime law to fly hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.

Robert Francis Prevost, the first pope from the United States, has a history of missionary work in Peru but his powerful role within the Roman Curia has also given him a keen grasp of the inner workings of the Church.The new Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago, was entrusted by his predecessor Francis to head the Dicastery for Bishops, a key Vatican department that advises the pontiff on appointments.That role allowed the mild-mannered Prevost, 69, to become known by cardinals within the Curia, the Holy See’s government, despite his decades spent outside of Rome and his native United States. “Leo XIV is a pastoral pope in his approach, attentive to the peripheries. He’s a natural candidate for the pragmatic reformist bloc,” said Francois Mabille, a researcher at the Paris-based think tank IRIS and author of a book on Vatican strategy.He called Prevost a “moderate consensus candidate” with experience in the Global South who lacks a “clear-cut ideological profile,” making him more acceptable to the Church’s conservative bloc. Francis’s confidence in Prevost to head one of the Vatican’s most important departments spoke to the younger man’s commitment to the “peripheries” — overlooked areas on the fringes of the Catholic world — together with his reputation as a bridge-builder and moderate. After Prevost was named the dicastery’s prefect, Francis elevated the Archbishop-Bishop Emeritus of Chiclayo, Peru — who has dual US and Peruvian citizenship — to cardinal.On Thursday, the current bishop of that diocese on Peru’s Pacific coast, Edinson Farfan, called the new pope “a brother who has passed through these lands”. “From the beginning when he finished his studies he came to Peru, to the mission in the north of Peru in Chulucanas, with a clear option for the poor. And from the moment he arrived in Peru he fell in love with Peru,” Farfan told a press conference. “He has given his whole life to the mission in Peru,” he said, adding that Leo XIV was “sensitive to the issue of poverty”.Prevost also becomes the first Augustinian pope. His work over two consecutive terms as the head of the mendicant order keenly focused on missionary work and charity also took him around the globe. Vatican watchers had given Prevost the highest chances among the group of US cardinals of being pope, given his pastoral bent, global view and ability to navigate the central bureaucracy.Italian newspaper La Repubblica called him “the least American of the Americans” for his soft-spoken touch. His strong grounding in canon law has also been seen as reassuring to more conservative cardinals seeking a greater focus on theology.- ‘Can’t turn back’ –  Following Francis’s death, Prevost said there was “still so much to do” in the work of the Church. “We can’t stop, we can’t turn back. We have to see how the Holy Spirit wants the Church to be today and tomorrow, because today’s world, in which the Church lives, is not the same as the world of ten or 20 years ago,” he told Vatican News last month. “The message is always the same: proclaim Jesus Christ, proclaim the Gospel, but the way to reach today’s people, young people, the poor, politicians, is different,” he said. Born on September 14, 1955 in Chicago to parents of French, Italian and Spanish descent, Prevost attended a minor seminary of the Order of St Augustine in St Louis as a novice. He graduated from Philadelphia’s Villanova University, an Augustinian institution, with a degree in mathematics. After receiving a masters degree in divinity from Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union in 1982, and a doctorate in canon law in Rome, the polyglot joined the Augustinians in Peru in 1985 for the first of his two decade-long missions in that country.Returning to Chicago in 1999, he was made provincial prior of the Augustinians in the US Midwest and later the prior general of the order throughout the world.He returned to Peru in 2014 when Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Chiclayo diocese.Prevost also serves as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Pope Leo XIV shared articles criticizing US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on social media months before his election as America’s first pontiff, particularly on issues of migration.In February, the then-Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost reposted on X a headline and a link to an essay saying Vance was “wrong” to quote Catholic doctrine to support Washington’s cancellation of foreign aid.The Vatican confirmed Thursday the account was genuine and belonged to the Chicago-born Prevost.The article took issue with Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and argued that Christians should love their family first before prioritizing the rest of the world.”JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” said the headline reposted on Prevost’s account, along with a link to the story by the National Catholic Reporter.After becoming vice president, Vance justified the cancellation of nearly all US foreign assistance by quoting 12th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas’s concept of “ordo amoris,” or “order of love.”The late pope Francis, in a letter soon afterward to US bishops, said that “true ordo amoris” involved building “a fraternity open to all, without exception.”A few days later Prevost posted the headline and link of another article about Vance’s doctrinal arguments, which referred to Francis’s criticisms of Trump’s mass deportations of migrants.The future pope’s last activity on X before his election on Thursday was to repost a comment by another user criticizing the Trump administration’s mistaken deportation of a migrant to El Salvador.The post talked about “suffering” and asked, “Is your conscience not disturbed?”The US president and vice president made no reference to the new pope’s prior comments as they congratulated him on his election.Vance, who met Francis briefly on Easter Sunday hours before the pontiff died, said: “May God bless him!””I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church,” he said on X.Trump, who had posted an AI-generated image of himself in papal clothes a few days earlier, said the election of the first pope from the United States was a “great honor for our country.”