Corrections: June 28, 2025
An article on Friday about the impact that Republican efforts to reduce federal funding flowing to schools has had on Johns Hopkins University misstated the source of a Trump administration plan to cut about 40 percent of the budget for the National Institutes of Health. It is contained in a budget proposal, not in the Trump policy bill under consideration in Congress.
An article on Thursday about U.S. rivals celebrating the Trump administration's decision to cut its support for Voice of America and Radio Free stations referred incompletely to the number of followers on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Instagram accounts. It has 44,500 followers on its English-language account and a total of 17.4 million followers across the network's various language services. It does not have a total of 44,500 followers.
An article this weekend on Page 12 about the Brazilian artist Luana Vitra includes outdated information. Hélio Menezes is no longer the director of the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo.
Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.
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Fast Company
40 minutes ago
- Fast Company
WhatsApp just got banned on Capitol Hill. Here's how you can make the Meta messaging platform more secure
The U.S. House of Representatives' Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Catherine Szpindor, informed congressional staffers this week that WhatsApp is now banned from government phones. The move came after the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity deemed the Meta-owned app to be 'high-risk to users'—a claim that WhatsApp quickly rebutted. But the CAO is correct. While WhatsApp is one of the more secure messaging apps out there, it does have some privacy and security risks. Users can mitigate some of these risks, but others are beyond their control. Here's why WhatsApp is now banned in the U.S. House of Representatives and how you can make the app more secure on your phone. What the Office of Cybersecurity said, exactly The news that the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity had announced a ban on WhatsApp this week came from Axios. On Tuesday, the publication published parts of an internal CAO memo it received, which was sent to congressional staffers on Monday, announcing that WhatsApp was now verboten on government phones. The memo stipulated that 'House staff are NOT allowed to download or keep the WhatsApp application on any House device, including any mobile, desktop, or web browser versions of its products.' It went on to add: 'If you have a WhatsApp application on your House-managed device, you will be contacted to remove it.' The reason? According to the memo, 'The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.' The CAO didn't provide further details in the memo regarding the above risks. Still, it's easy to interpret some of the things that may have made the CAO leery about the continued use of WhatsApp by Congressional staffers. WhatsApp's transparency issue WhatsApp, like competing secure messaging apps including Apple's iMessages and Signal, is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that no parties other than the ones in the chat, even including Meta, can read the chat messages. But WhatsApp collects a lot more metadata from each chat than other secure messaging apps do, and it sends this info to Meta A chat's metadata includes information such as the identities of the chat participants, IP addresses, phone numbers, and the timestamps of messages. No one knows exactly what Meta does with this metadata. Still, it is shared with Meta's other platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. It is likely used to help the company build social graphs of users, leveraged for advertising purposes, and analyzed by the company to understand who is using their apps, and when and where. This opaqueness is likely some of the 'lack of transparency' risk that the CAO was referring to. As for the 'absence of stored data encryption,' the CAO may have been referring to the default method by which WhatsApp backs up a user's chats. While WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted, if a user backs up those chats to the cloud, the backup itself is not end-to-end encrypted by default. This means that if a bad actor gains access to a WhatsApp user's cloud backup, they could read all of that user's messages. It's no wonder the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity finds this worrying. WhatsApp also doesn't have other privacy and security features on by default, including the ability to lock the app behind biometrics and requiring two-step verification when a WhatsApp account is installed on another phone. If you don't work in the House of Representatives, you can still keep WhatsApp on your phone. But you might want to mitigate its privacy and security risks. Here's how. How to make WhatsApp more secure on your phone Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about WhatsApp's metadata problem. Meta designs WhatsApp so that the metadata of your chats is sent directly to the company. There's no way you can turn this data collection off. But you can make the app more secure on your phone by following some simple steps, including: End-to-end encrypt your WhatsApp backups: In WhatsApp, go to Settings>Chats>Chat Backup>End-to-End Encrypted Backup and turn this option on. Now your chat backups saved in the cloud will be end-to-end encrypted. Lock WhatsApp: You can set WhatsApp to refuse to open without further authentication by locking the app. This means that even if someone has access to your unlocked phone, they won't be able to open WhatsApp unless they know your phone's PIN, or have your face or fingerprint. To lock WhatsApp, go to WhatsApp's Settings>Privacy>App Lock and toggle the feature on. Enable two-step verification: If someone logs into your WhatsApp account on their phone, they'll be able to see your messages. That's why you should set up two-step verification for your account. This will require a PIN that you set to be entered whenever an attempt is made to log into your WhatsApp account on a new device. If the PIN isn't entered correctly, the new device won't have access to your account. To enable two-step verification, go to WhatsApp's Settings>Account>Two-Step Verification and toggle the feature on. Apps the CAO suggests using instead When reached for comment on the CAO's decision to ban WhatsApp, the organization's chief administrative officer, Catherine Szpindor, told Fast Company, 'Protecting the People's House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff. We routinely review the list of House-authorized apps and will amend the list as deemed appropriate.' In the past, the CAO has banned or imposed partial bans on various foreign apps, including those from ByteDance, such as TikTok. But the CAO has also previously announced bans or restrictions on apps made by American companies, including Microsoft Copilot and the free versions of ChatGPT. As for Meta, a company spokesperson told Fast Company that it disagrees with the CAO's characterization of WhatsApp 'in the strongest possible terms.' The spokesperson also asserted that, when it comes to end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp offers 'a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO's approved list that do not offer that protection.' In the Office of Cybersecurity's memo, the agency provided guidance on alternative secure messaging apps that House staffers could use now that WhatsApp had been banned. According to Axios, those apps include Apple's iMessage and FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, Wickr, and Signal.
Fox News
42 minutes ago
- Fox News
Body fat predicts major health risk that BMI misses, researchers say
Body mass index (BMI) may not be the most accurate predictor of death risk. A new study from the University of Florida found that BMI — a measurement that is commonly used to determine whether a person's weight is in a healthy range for their height — is "deeply flawed" in terms of predicting mortality. Instead, one's level of body fat is "far more accurate," concluded the study, which was published this week in the Annals of Family Medicine. To measure participants' body fat, the researchers used a method called bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), which uses a device to measure the resistance of body tissue to a small electrical current. Over a 15-year period, those who had high body fat were found to be 78% more likely to die than those who had healthy body fat levels, researchers found. They were also more than three times as likely to die of heart disease, the study noted. BMI — which is calculated by dividing weight by height, squared — was described as "entirely unreliable" in predicting the risk of death over a 15-year period from any cause. The study included 4,252 people in the U.S. and pulled data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. BMI should not be relied upon as a "vital sign" of health, according to senior author Frank Orlando, M.D., medical director of UF Health Family Medicine in Springhill. "I'm a family physician, and on a regular basis, we're faced with patients who have diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other conditions that are related to obesity," Orlando said in a press release for the study. "One of the routine measures we take alongside traditional vital signs is BMI. We use BMI to screen for a person having an issue with their body composition, but it's not as accurate for everyone as vital signs are," he added. BMI has been the international standard for measuring obesity since the 1980s, according to many sources, though some experts have questioned its validity. "I think the study shows it's time to go to an alternative that is now proven to be far better at the job." An individual is considered obese if their BMI is 30 or above, overweight if it is between 25 and 29.9, of "normal" weight in the range of 18.5 to 24.9, or underweight if lower than 18.5. While BMI is easy to calculate, one of its main limitations is that it cannot distinguish between muscle and fat mass, the researchers noted. "For example, people who are bodybuilders can really elevate their body mass index," Orlando said. "But they're healthy even with a BMI indicating that they're obese." "BMI is just so ingrained in how we think about body fat," Mainous added. "I think the study shows it's time to go to an alternative that is now proven to be far better at the job." Other methods, such as a DEXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) scan, may be even more accurate than BIA, but are much more expensive and not as accessible, the researchers noted. "If you talk to obesity researchers, they're going to say you have to use the DEXA scan because it's the most accurate," Mainous said in the release. "And that's probably true. But it's never going to be viable in a doctor's office or family practice." Dr. Stephen Vogel — a family medicine physician with PlushCare, a virtual health platform with primary care, therapy and weight management options — echoed the limitations of BMI. "It has been an easy measurement tool that helps us understand at-risk groups across various populations and demographics, but it doesn't provide accurate data from patient to patient," the North Carolina-based doctor, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. "These findings don't challenge the assumptions about BMI — they strengthen the message that new standards, delivered in a consistent and low-cost way, would provide better nuance for the individual when it comes to their overall physical health." "The main strengths of this study are a better correlation to an individual's risk of morbidity and mortality — however, the limitations lie in the fact that we don't have enough data to determine the right cutoff for these numbers, or to identify the right tools that will be both accurate and precise across the population," Vogel said. The researchers also acknowledged that body fat percentage thresholds haven't yet been as standardized as BMI and waist circumference. Also, the age range of the participants in the study was limited by the data source. "Future studies should extend this comparison of body fat to BMI in older adults," the researchers wrote. The study was also limited by focusing only on mortality as an outcome, they noted, without taking into account any developing diseases — such as heart failure or cancer — that could deepen the understanding of body fat as a risk factor. The goal, according to Vogel, is to have a cost-effective, consistent method that can be used across the population with reliable accuracy. "These data will drive better discussions in the doctor's office, as well as public health initiatives with the goal of improving the health of all." "Benefits would come in the form of a more detailed list of information that helps providers and patients make informed decisions about the patient's health, which is ideal," Vogel noted. "I'm hopeful there's enough buzz around these measures that steps will continue to be taken toward regular implementation." For more Health articles, visit The researchers are hopeful that once standards are validated, measuring body fat percentage with bioelectrical impedance analysis could become standard of care. They added, "These data will drive better discussions in the doctor's office, as well as public health initiatives with the goal of improving the health of all."
New York Times
42 minutes ago
- New York Times
With Supreme Court Ruling, Another Check on Trump's Power Fades
The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power. The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6 to 3, will allow Mr. Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to undocumented immigrants or foreign visitors without green cards can be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers. But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies. The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that already took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the 'imperial presidency.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
