Walmart recalls shrimp after FDA warns of radioactive isotopes
"The health and safety of our customers is always a top priority," a Walmart spokesperson told the BBC. "We have issued a sales restriction and removed this product from our impacted stores. We are working with the supplier to investigate."The spokesperson added that consumers who bought the recalled products can visit any Walmart location for a full refund. The recalled shrimp was sold at Walmart locations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia, and shoppers in those states were advised to be cautious. It came from an Indonesian supplier that has since had multiple shipping containers denied entry to the US, the FDA said. One shipment tested positive for Cesium-137, the radioactive form of the chemical element Cesium. The amount contained in the tested shipment held by the FDA was not enough to pose acute harm to consumers, but exposure over time could pose an elevated risk of cancer by damaging living cells in the body, said FDA officials.
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Mutant deer with horrifying flesh bubbles spotted in US as fears of an outbreak grip the nation
Deer across the US have been spotted with tumor-like growths hanging off their bodies, joining rabbits and squirrels as animals showing signs of widespread disease. From the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest, pictures on social media continue to document cases of strange bubbles growing all over local deer, from their faces to their legs. Over the last two months, people have photographed deformed deer in New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Wildlife officials have already identified the condition as deer cutaneous fibroma, better known as deer warts. The condition is due to a virus transmitted between deer in all parts of the US, and experts have warned that it's spreading this summer. The virus mainly spreads through disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes and ticks, which pass on the blood of infected deer to healthy animals nearby. Since these potentially deadly pests breed and multiply in warmer weather, Americans should expect to see more cases of the condition wherever deer may live. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said: 'Papillomas are most frequently seen during the late summer and into the fall, probably due to increased biting insect activity during this time of year.' This year, Americans have also been encountering mutated rabbits and squirrels which have been spreading their own species-specific viruses throughout the US. These animals have dealt with similar sores and growths on their bodies as well. The condition spreading through deer this summer is part of the same broad family of viruses that can affect humans, known as papillomaviruses, which target the skin and mucous membranes. In humans, papillomaviruses cause conditions like common warts, plantar warts, and genital warts, and some strains are linked to cancers such as cervical or throat cancer. While both deer and human papillomaviruses lead to growths by infecting skin cells, the deer version is species-specific, meaning it's adapted only to infect deer and cannot jump to humans or other animals due to differences in how the virus attaches itself and enters cells in different species. Deer warts can be small, like a pea, or grow as big as a football, appearing gray, black, or fleshy and often hairless. While disease-transmitting insects are believed to be the main culprit spreading the virus, direct contact with the warts may also infect deer. Dr Kristin Mansfield, a wildlife veterinarian in Washington state, told FOX13 that deer can spread the virus if they share the same feeding areas, sleeping spot, or rubbing posts - usually a tree males use to mark their territory during mating season. Deer warts are found across the entire range of white-tailed deer in North America, so they're common throughout the US, with no specific state being much more affected than others. However, the condition is rarely fatal. The deer's immune system fights off the virus, and the warts shrink and disappear on their own after a few months. In rare cases, if the warts grow too large or become infected with bacteria, they can cause problems like blocking a deer's vision or ability to eat. One medical expert told the Daily Mail that Americans should expect diseases like this to continue spreading as temperatures get warmer throughout more of the year. Dr Omer Awan of the University of Maryland School of Medicine explained that climate change has allowed mosquitoes and ticks to live longer and also spread to areas they don't normally inhabit. While deer can't spread deer warts to people, they can bring illnesses such as Lyme disease to populated areas, which is passed on to humans through the ticks they carry. 'These temperature changes are resulting in diseases that were never endemic in certain areas to become endemic,' Dr Awan said. 'If you take a look at Lyme disease, for example, we're starting to see it in areas that we never saw it before... places like southern Canada, northern states on the East Coast, like Maine,' he added. Deer warts are not a new condition afflicting wildlife. Scientists believe it has been around for centuries, and studies on papillomaviruses affecting wildlife in the US go back to the 1950s. While climate changes in recent years are helping the virus to spread, Dr Awan noted that there's one other factor contributing to the increase in deer wart sightings: social media. 'People are starting to talk about it more, they're starting to document it more on social media, and hence, there's been a lot more discussion about this,' the doctor explained.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Report: White House meltdown over return of RFK Jr. aide
A staffer for HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr - who drew the ire of President Donald Trump's MAGA base and was fired - returned to his job last week after Chief of Staff Susie Wiles stepped in. Dr Vinay Prasad's unexpected return to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) marks one of the more dramatic personnel reversals of the Trump administration. And some of Trump's MAGA allies, both in Washington and across the country, still have concerns about him and doubts about his loyalty. 'It seems to be amateur hour at the FDA, and Prasad is an unnecessary distraction,' a Trump official told the Daily Mail. A hematologist-oncologist and outspoken critic of FDA bureaucracy, Prasad has long argued that the agency is too slow to adapt to scientific innovation. In July, Makary told Politico that Prasad doesn't have a 'political bone to his body.' According to senior administration officials who spoke with Politico, Wiles worked closely with Kennedy and Makary to convince the president that Prasad was not anti-Trump and should be reinstated. 'I think it really is something good about the president that he's willing to change his mind when persuaded,' one of the senior administration officials told Politico. Still, Prasad's rehiring not only signals Trump's willingness to overlook past criticisms but also represents a quiet victory for Kennedy, who now has one of his most trusted allies back inside the agency. It also underscores the limits of Loomer's influence in shaping personnel decisions despite her past successes. She has reportedly been behind nearly a dozen ousts of so-called 'deep state' officials she says have been harmful to the administration. Trump reportedly fired multiple officials on the White House National Security Council after an April meeting with Loomer. But after Prasad's rehiring was announced, Loomer called the move 'demoralizing' and an 'open disrespect of the MAGA base.' Prasad's reinstatement places him at the center of one of the administration's most ambitious policy fights: reshaping how the US regulates vaccines and biotechnology. But in a column for Newsmax, Texas-based conservative strategist Charlie Kolean warned that Prasad's regulatory approach could slow the pace of medical innovation and delay life-saving treatments. He argued that Prasad's emphasis on excessive caution would create bottlenecks for biotech development, giving foreign competitors an advantage. And he told the Daily Mail that the FDA's direction on drug approvals and biotech regulation could shift under Prasad's leadership. During his initial stint at the FDA, Prasad blocked the approval of a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, citing concerns over the strength of the clinical evidence. The move sparked backlash from patient advocacy groups and families affected by the disease, who argued that the therapy represented a rare and urgent lifeline.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
More than 2.8m people in US identify as trans, including 724,000 youth, data shows
More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Williams Institute used federal surveys and data from state health agencies to identify the size and demographics of the trans population in each state. The analysis, shared with the Guardian and released on Wednesday, documented thousands of trans youth living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings counter Donald Trump's aggressive efforts to deny the existence of trans minors, as his administration removes references to trans people across federal agencies and widely erodes protections and programs for LGBTQ+ communities. The report builds on federal data collection efforts that the White House is now eliminating. The authors warn their study could be the last comprehensive portrait of the nation's trans population for a decade or more as trans people are erased from vital US surveys, including health reports and crime data analyses. The Williams Institute primarily relied on 2021 to 2023 data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys and records disclosed by state health agencies. Some of the key findings include: 1% of the total US population aged 13 and older identifies as trans, including 0.8% of adults (more than 2.1 million people) and 3.3% of youth ages 13 to 17 (roughly 724,000 people). Young adults ages 18 to 24 are significantly more likely to identify as trans (2.72%) than those 35 to 64 (0.42%) and those aged 65 and older (0.26%). Of the 2.1 million trans adults, 32.7% (698,500) are trans women, 34.2% (730,500) are trans men and 33.1% (707,100) are trans non-binary people. The trans populations are fairly consistent across regions, with 0.9% of adults in the west, midwest and north-east identifying as trans, compared with 0.7% of adults in the south. Minnesota had the highest rate of adults who identify as trans (1.2%), and Hawaii had the highest rate of trans youth (3.6%), though the ranges were similar across states. 'Trans people live everywhere and are represented in every state,' said Dr Jody Herman, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and co-author of the report, noting the total US trans population was larger than the individual size of more than a dozen states. 'This is a substantial population that has unique concerns and barriers to getting their needs met, and lawmakers need to keep that in mind.' The Williams Institute, a leading LGBTQ+ policy research center, has published national trans population counts since its 2011 report, which was the first of its kind as state-level data on gender identity became available. The estimates are considered the best available data and were cited by the US supreme court in its recent majority opinion upholding Tennessee's ban on trans youth healthcare. The quality and sources of the researchers' data have improved from one report to the next, the researchers said, making it difficult to assess changes over time. But the researchers noted that its overall estimates of trans adults have remained relatively steady, while the latest data shows how younger people are now significantly more likely to identify as trans than older groups. There are many factors contributing to youth identifying as trans at higher rates, including that younger people are more likely to answer these kinds of survey questions, said Dr Andrew Flores, Williams Institute distinguished visiting scholar and associate professor of government at American University. 'Younger people are growing up among other younger people who already hold more accepting attitudes toward LGBT and transgender people more broadly,' said Flores, a report co-author, citing increasingly visible signs of support, such as student walkouts in Florida in protest of anti-trans policies. 'In this generation, they might be more willing and safe to identify that they are transgender, because they don't see as much of a harm or threat as older generations.' While some conservatives and anti-trans advocates have presented a reported rise in trans youth as a 'social contagion', suggesting youth are copying their peers, 'The growth comes as people are now in an environment that allows them to fully express who they are,' Flores said. Shifting language also affected generational differences, he said, noting how older groups were more likely to identify as lesbian or gay while younger people are more likely to identify as bisexual or pansexual. And while older trans people are more likely to identify as men or women, younger trans people more frequently identify as non-binary. The report also found that the race and ethnicity of trans people was largely similar to broader US demographics, with Indigenous, Latino and multiracial adults slightly more likely to identify as trans than other groups. The Trump administration, which has widely attacked data collection efforts across government, has moved to remove trans identity questions from two critical CDC behavioral health surveys and from Department of Justice surveys on crime victimization and sexual violence. The US Census Bureau has also taken steps to exclude gender identity from multiple surveys, according to the former director who resigned in February. Those efforts followed Trump's day-one executive order 'restoring biological truth' to the government, which suggested that trans identity was 'false' and directed the state department to deny trans people accurate passports. The data loss will make it impossible for the Williams Institute to continue its analyses in their current form, and even if the next administration restored the surveys, the public would still be losing up to 10 years of data, which would be a devastating erosion of knowledge, the researchers said. 'We didn't really have decent national data until around 10 years ago, so we just very recently got a grasp on how many people identify as trans in the US and what their characteristics are,' said Herman. 'For these data sources to just suddenly disappear, it is a major setback. The population is not going to go away, we're just not going to know more about them than what we have from our current sources.' The data has frequently been cited by journalists, school boards, public health experts, civil rights lawyers, advocates fighting discriminatory legislation and lawmakers expanding trans rights. The researchers had hoped federal data could help illuminate how trans people were moving within the US as some have fled red states due to anti-trans laws, but that will be hard to track without national surveys, they said. 'In some policy circles, they say if you can't be counted, you don't count,' Flores added. 'And for members of the LGBTQ+ community, to be able to see numbers that reflect their lived experiences is quite important.' Imara Jones, founder of news organization TransLash Media, said there was no easy fix for the loss of national data backed by federal resources. 'It is meant to erase, and that erasure is meant to have real-world impacts, making it harder for people to be who they are.' Flores said the institute and others were discussing ways to fill the gaps and continue data collection without the federal government: 'We're not just going to close up shop. We're going to try to find a way to keep telling these stories and be persistent.'
