U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency's online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the fatalities, three sources familiar with the situation said. Kennedy's request came after CDC staffers had already accepted the state's characterization of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official said. Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed with Kennedy's directive and implemented it without objection, said the three sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick apologized Thursday for saying on television that no Americans had died in the war with Iran, saying he was thinking about Venezuela. "I misspoke. 18 members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss. I was thinking about the Venezuelan military operation where no service members died," Lutnick said in a post on the social platform X. Lutnick made the comments on CNBC on Wednesday while attending the Group of 20 finance summit in North Carolina. "The way the president is playing Iran " there haven't been American deaths, it's really just an economic choke-out," he said when talking about bond markets.
The FBI previously refused to hire job applicants if they admitted to hiring sex workers or stealing from an employer -- or engaging in acts of bestiality. read more
President Donald Trump's administration has been accused of a war crime after a missile strike hit a wedding and, according to an Iranian humanitarian group, killed a child and three others, reports show. The Iranian Red Crescent Society said four people were killed and more than 50 injured after shrapnel from a U.S. missile struck a home in Sirik, on Iran's Strait of Hormuz coastline, where a wedding was underway, according to the report, reported the BBC. Iran has launched missile and drone strikes against U.S. targets across the Persian Gulf region after American forces resumed attacks on Iran this week, escalating a conflict that reignited after the strike that hit a wedding ceremony, according to the report.
Republicans have been facing a problem with voters over high gasoline prices for months " but the economic pain from near-record diesel fuel prices looks set to hit at the worst possible time for them. The war in Iran, disruptions in Russian production and refining bottlenecks have sent the price of diesel fuel rising faster than that of gasoline or crude oil, and it's now grinding toward an all-time record just two months ahead of the midterms. That matters for Republicans in particular because diesel prices hit first " and hardest " in rural areas and affect blue-collar businesses like farming and trucking before spreading to suburban dinner tables and the rest of the economy.
Five year olds make perfect targets for MAGAts armed with AR-15s.