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For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has assigned a dollar value to the lives saved and the health problems avoided through many of its environmental regulations.

Now, that has changed. The EPA will no longer consider the economic cost of harm to human health from fine particles and ozone, two air pollutants that are known to affect human health. The change was written into a new rule recently published by the agency. It weakened air pollution rules on power plant turbines that burn fossil fuels, which are sources of air pollution of many types, including from fine particles, sometimes called soot.

The EPA writes in its regulatory impact analysis for the new rule that, for now, the agency will not consider the dollar value of health benefits from its regulations on fine particles and ozone because there is too much uncertainty in estimates of those economic impacts.

EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch clarified that the agency is still considering health benefits. But it will not assign a dollar amount to those benefits until further notice, as it reconsiders the way it assesses those numbers.

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Several faculty groups have denounced the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain information about Jewish professors, staff and students at the University of Pennsylvania – including personal emails, phone numbers and home addresses – as government abuse with “ominous historical overtones”.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding the university turn over names and personal information about Jewish members of the Penn community as part of the administration’s stated goal to combat antisemitism on campuses. But some Jewish faculty and staff have condemned the government’s demand as “a visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history”, according to a press release put out by the groups’ lawyers.

The EEOC sued Penn in November over the university’s refusal to fully comply with its demands. On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors’ national and Penn chapters, the university’s Jewish Law Students Association and its Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty, and the American Academy of Jewish Research filed a motion in federal court to intervene in the case.

“These requests would require Penn to create and turn over a centralized registry of Jewish students, faculty, and staff – a profoundly invasive and dangerous demand that intrudes deeply into the freedoms of association, religion, speech, and privacy enshrined in the First Amendment,” the groups argued.

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A federal judge late Sunday ordered the Trump administration to restore nearly $12 million in grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), after the organization’s funding was abruptly cut last month. 

Judgeof  the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction that will restore the grants and block the cuts from taking effect while the case proceeds.

Howell concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services had a likely “retaliatory motive” for the terminations, due to the AAP’s outspoken opposition to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“This is not a case about whether AAP or HHS is right or even has the better position on vaccinations and gender-affirming care for children, or any other public health policy,” Howell wrote. “This is a case about whether the federal government has exercised power in a manner designed to chill public health policy debate by retaliating against a leading and generally trusted pediatrician member professional organization focused on improving the health of children.”

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Ukraine was a priority, not the priority, as Germany’s foreign minister Johann Wadephul touched down in Washington early this week.

Russia’s war is entering a more fragile phase, European anxiety is rising, and Berlin wanted to hear directly how firmly the US still sees itself anchored to Kyiv’s defense.

The visit came just days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Europe to “raise the price of the war in Ukraine” to force Russia into accepting a ceasefire – a signal that patience in Berlin is wearing thin.

Wadephul’s meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio opened with Ukraine, according to officials familiar with the talks, reflecting Germany’s concern that the conflict might slip amid a crowded global agenda.

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As a neurologist, I care for some of society’s most vulnerable individuals — children with severe disabilities who are often mocked, dismissed or misunderstood. My career is rooted in supporting people with physical and cognitive differences, educating about empathy and respect for human diversity, and applying the principles of science and medicine to improve the lives of those facing challenges of one kind or another.

From that perspective, President Donald Trump’s public admonition of a female reporter in November — “Quiet, piggy” — was gut-wrenching and continues to resonate weeks later. To some, it was an offhand, albeit misogynistic, fat-shaming insult. To me, the remark instantly evoked Piggy, the vulnerable and marginalized character in William Golding’s novel “Lord of the Flies” and revealed something far more troubling: a display of dominance, denigration and the subjugation of those deemed less worthy.

The rapid spread of the phrase across media platforms underscored a deeper danger — one that has only grown more unsettling as public displays of intimidation and condemnation increase. It is not just the cruelty of the words but the authority of the speaker, and the delight of many in his audience, that makes them so corrosive.

“Quiet, piggy” is not a joke. It is an illustration of how normalized bullying has become, and an affront to the people I care for and the values that guide my work.

Others have drawn parallels between “Lord of the Flies” and our political moment. In 2020, The New York Times published Jennifer Finney Boylan’s essay “President of the Flies,” in which she described feeling cast onto “some cruel and hostile strand ... where people with disabilities were mocked, immigrants ... were reviled, and grabbing women by their private parts was ... A-OK.”

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The largest nurses strike in New York City history hasbegun after negotiators for five major hospitals and the state nurses union failed to agree to a new contract by Monday's deadline. 

The New York State Nurses Association said nearly 15,000 nurses are now walking off their jobs at five privately-run hospitals, including Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West and NewYork-Presbyterian in Manhattan, and Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx.

Montefiore Senior Vice President Joe Solmonese said, "NYSNA's leaders continue to double down on their $3.6 billion in reckless demands, including nearly 40% wage increases, and their troubling proposals like demanding that a nurse not be terminated if found to be compromised by drugs or alcohol while on the job. We remain resolute in our commitment to providing safe and seamless care, regardless of how long the strike may last."

A Mount Sinai spokesperson said, "Unfortunately, NYSNA decided to move forward with its strike while refusing to move on from its extreme economic demands, which we cannot agree to, but we are ready with 1,400 qualified and specialized nurses – and prepared to continue to provide safe patient care for as long as this strike lasts."

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The Department of Homeland Security blocked federal lawmakers from visiting an immigration detention facility in Minneapolis this weekend under a new visitation policy from the head of the department.

Under federal law, members of Congress have the right to make unannounced visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. A D.C. federal court ruling affirmed this last month, saying it applies to facilities that are funded by regular congressional appropriations.

But in a Jan. 8 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem obtained by NPR, Noem instructs her staff that visits should be requested at least seven days in advance. She said the detention facilities are run with money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a different bucket of federal funds, and therefore the policy on unannounced visits doesn't apply to them.

The new policy seemed to have been cited on Saturday to block the visit of three Minnesota congresswomen to an ICE detention facility in Minneapolis.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reconciliation measure that Congress passed last summer with only Republican support, allocated some $45 billion for immigration detention centers as many were operating over their capacity. It also provided about $30 billion to hire more ICE personnel, for transportation costs, and to maintain ICE facilities, among other spending.

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At least four tankers, most of them loaded, that had departed from Venezuela in early January in "dark mode" — or with their transponders off amid a strict U.S. blockade — are now back in the South American country’s waters, according to state company PDVSA and monitoring service TankerTrackers.com.

A flotilla of about a dozen loaded vessels and at least three other empty ships left Venezuelan waters last month in apparent defiance of an embargo imposed by President Donald Trump since mid-December, which has dragged down the country’s oil exports to minimum.

One of the ships, the Panama-flagged supertanker M Sophia, was intercepted and seized by the U.S. this week when returning to the country; while another, the Aframax tanker Olina with a flag from Sao Tome And Principe, was intercepted but released to Venezuela on Friday, state company PDVSA said.

Three more of the vessels that had departed in that flotilla, Panama-flagged Merope, Cook Islands-flagged Min Hang and Panama-flagged Thalia III, were spotted by Tankertrackers.com in Venezuelan waters late on Friday through satellite images.

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