A Trump-backed health panel questioned Friday the efficacy and safety of Covid-19 vaccines — and declined  explicitly to recommend them — in an argument some experts said center on “myths” and “anecdotes.”The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — a panel stacked with members handpicked by controversial US health secretary and anti-vaccination advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr — said obtaining a Covid-19 shot should be based on individual choice in consultation with a medical professional.The panel also approved language recommending that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urge health care providers to more strongly warn about alleged risks from vaccinations.Many medical and scientific organizations have cited evidence of the Covid shot’s safety and its record of providing strong protection against severe illness or death.Calling the committee’s actions “extraordinarily vague,” Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics said “this was like nothing I’ve ever seen.””What it looked like to me was a lot of clear efforts to sow distrust in vaccines, to instill fear,” he told AFP.”The focus of a lot of the discussion that we saw today around Covid vaccines was around myths, anecdotes, case series, case reports,” O’Leary said. “They were not focused at all on the actual science.”Those comments mirrored criticisms leveled by non-voting observers who attended the meeting.”It’s troubling to see the erosion of the committee’s integrity,” said Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association. President Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration has already narrowed approval for Covid shots — which all Americans could once get with relative ease — to the elderly and people with underlying conditions.That followed Kennedy’s spring announcement that the United States would no longer recommend the shots for children and healthy pregnant women.Public health experts have warned these shifts could muddle access for people seeking boosters both in terms of cost and availability, amid a resurgence in cases and hospitalizations. The ACIP committee considered whether to require that any person seeking a Covid vaccine first obtain a prescription — but that measure narrowly failed by a tiebreak vote.”The segment of the population that is under-insured, has lack of access to health care — they’re going to be unable to get a prescription. And those are the people that are at highest risk,” said ACIP member and epidemiologist Catherine Stein in her dissent.- Confusion -The ACIP meeting’s first day ended in confusion and contradiction. The committee recommended no child under four should receive the combination MMRV shot, which covers measles, mumps, rubella and varicella. But they also declared that a federal children’s vaccine program should still pay for it — and in a chaotic twist, they reversed that decision in a second vote Friday morning.Parents will still be offered separate MMR and chicken pox injections for their children younger than four. The combination shot has a small risk of causing temporary, non-life-threatening febrile seizures.Members also were meant to decide whether to recommend against the longstanding practice of immunizing newborns against Hepatitis B within the first 24 hours of life.Public health experts have met the prospect of that move with widespread alarm.Swift vaccination has proven the best way to prevent any maternal transmission of the incurable, highly contagious disease that can cause severe liver damage and cancer later in life, said Adam Langer, a CDC scientist who presented to the voting members.Ultimately the committee decided more debate was needed.Many respected members of medical institutions have criticized the redesigned ACIP panel.”What we’re seeing is what happens when individuals who have don’t have a basic understanding about how vaccines are delivered are making these crucial policy decisions for the American public,” O’Leary said.

Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron will offer “scientific” evidence and photos proving that France’s first lady is a woman, the lawyer representing them in a US lawsuit said Friday. Attorney Tom Clare said the Macrons planned to testify in their case against conservative American commentator Candace Owens, whom the plaintiffs accuse of helping fan online rumors about whether the French president’s wife is a transgender woman.”There will be expert testimony that will come out, that will be scientific in nature, that will also demonstrate the falsity of the statements,” Clare said in an interview on the BBC.  Clare’s comments on “Fame Under Fire,” a BBC podcast, were confirmed to AFP by spokespersons for his law firm.Speculation around Brigitte Macron’s gender has swirled in France for years. The lawsuit against Owens is unfolding as President Macron contends with a low popularity rating in opinion polls and government instability.  Clare said he couldn’t reveal details about his team’s strategy regarding the expert testimony but it was prepared to demonstrate fully that Owens, an influencer with a huge following on social media platforms, had spread falsehoods about the French first lady.The lawyer for the Macrons said that the burden of proof in this defamation case is on the plaintiffs.The plaintiffs, who filed their lawsuit against Owens in a court in the state of Delaware in July, also intend to present photographs showing Brigitte Macron with her children or photos of her when she was pregnant, Clare said. “These falsehoods are like a cancer,” he said. “They metastasize into the mainstream media.”And because Owens has a sizable audience, he added, “people listen to her.”  On Thursday, Owens posted a message on her X channel dismissing the Macrons’ allegations against her as “verifiably false.”    “She [Brigitte Macron] isn’t suing me for saying she’s a man. She has never sued anyone ever for saying she’s a dude. Because she is one,” Owens wrote.Brigitte Macron, 72, has also taken to the courts in France to combat claims she was born a man.Two women were convicted in September 2024 of spreading false claims after they posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging that Brigitte Macron had once been a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux — who is actually her brother.The ruling against Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy was overturned by a Paris appeals court and Macron appealed to the highest appeals court, the Court de Cassation, earlier in July.

Stock markets steadied and the dollar mostly rose Friday at the end of a week marked by central bank decisions, as attention turned to a call between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.Wall Street’s three main indices finished the week at records for the second day in a row, extending a rally after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday for the first time in 2025.”Traders are satisfied” with the Fed’s decision, said FHN Financial’s Chris Low.The Fed on Wednesday lowered interest rates by 25 basis points and signaled it could cut two more times in 2025. The central bank explained its move as a response to weaker job data, adding that future decisions would depend on how the economy evolves.But Jack Ablin of Cresset Capital Management noted that the rise in US Treasury yields represents a source of concern.”I’m going to celebrate the equity records but the market is expensive and the 10-year yields is moving higher,” Ablin said. “That’s something we need to pay attention to.”Earlier, Europe’s main indices ended the day little changed or slightly lower.Markets greeted a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping that included discussion on selling blockbuster app TikTok.Shortly before European markets closed, Trump said he made progress in his call on  a deal for the social networking platform TikTok, though he stopped short of announcing a deal.”We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.He has repeatedly put off a ban under a law designed to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its US operations for national security reasons.The call came after high-level discussions between Washington and Beijing officials in Madrid, where they addressed trade ahead of a November tariff deadline.Trump said Friday that he would meet Xi at an Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea in just over a month, and visit China himself next year.Meanwhile, the British pound retreated after official data showed that UK government borrowing had reached its highest level since the Covid pandemic. In Asia, Tokyo led losses among major indices on expectations that Japan’s central bank would hike interest rates this year after leaving borrowing costs unchanged Friday.Before the announcement, official data showed that inflation in Japan, the world’s fourth-largest economy, slowed in August, with rice price increases easing following a spike that had rattled the country’s government.Among individual companies, Apple jumped 3.2 percent as the tech giant’s launch of new iPhones was greeted with long lines at retail outlets, suggesting strong demand for the devices.- Key figures at around 2030 GMT -New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 46,315.27 (close)New York – S&P 500: UP 0.5 percent at 6,664.36 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.7 percent at 22,631.48 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.1 percent at 9,216.67 (close)Paris – CAC 40: FLAT at 7,853.59 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.2 percent at 23,639.41 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.6 percent at 45,045.81 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: FLAT at 26,545.10 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.3 percent at 3,820.09 (close)Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1745 from $1.1788 on ThursdayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3472 from $1.3555Dollar/yen: DOWN at 147.90 yen from 148.00 yenEuro/pound: UP at 87.18 pence from 86.96 penceBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 1.1 percent at $66.68 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: DOWN 1.4 percent at $62.68 per barrelburs-jmb/des

A federal judge, in a scathing ruling on Friday, tossed out US President Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.District Judge Steven Merryday said Trump’s complaint, as submitted, was “improper and impermissible” and he gave his lawyers 28 days to refile it “in a professional and dignified manner.”Merryday, an appointee of Republican president George HW Bush, did not rule on the merits of the complaint against the newspaper but took exception to its florid writing, repetitive and laudatory praise of Trump and its excessive 85-page length.”A complaint is a short, plain, direct statement of allegations of fact sufficient to create a facially plausible claim for relief,” Merryday said.”Although lawyers receive a modicum of expressive latitude in pleading the claim of a client, the complaint in this action extends far beyond the outer bound of that latitude,” he said.”A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” the judge said, and “not a protected platform to rage against an adversary.”In a statement on X, a Times spokesperson said the newspaper welcomes “the judge’s quick ruling, which recognized that the complaint was a political document rather than a serious legal filing.”Trump filed the lawsuit against the Times on Monday, adding to his growing list of legal attacks on news organizations he accuses of bias against him.Trump, 79, has intensified his long-established hostility toward the media since his return to the White House, repeatedly badmouthing journalists critical of his administration, restricting access and bringing lawsuits demanding huge amounts of compensation.- ‘Lie, smear and defame’ -In his suit filed in federal court in Florida, Trump accused the Times of a “decades-long pattern” of smears driven by feelings of “actual malice.””The Times has become a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump on the legacy media landscape,” it said.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the Republican president said “The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!”The lawsuit also named four Times reporters and the publisher Penguin Random House as defendants.Trump’s lawsuit alleged that the Times deviated from industry best practices when covering him, writing articles “in the most antagonistic and negative way” and not giving him sufficient time to respond before publishing.”Put bluntly, Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way,” the complaint said.The court was asked to grant compensatory damages of not less than $15 billion and additional punitive damages “in an amount to be determined upon trial.”While broad constitutional protections exist for US media, Trump has found success in similar lawsuits brought against other news organizations, winning multi-million dollar settlements from ABC and Paramount-owned CBS.The settlements in those cases — which are to be paid to Trump’s future presidential library — were seen as being motivated by the desire of the news organizations’ parent companies to stay in Trump’s good graces.Trump has also sued media magnate Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for at least $10 billion after it reported in July on the existence of a birthday letter he allegedly sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Meanwhile talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was indefinitely suspended by Disney-owned ABC this week after the head of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to cancel broadcasting licenses over comments the comedian made about the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.