The Food and Drug Administration on May 1 said it will grant some patients early access to Revolution Medicines' experimental pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib.

Daraxonrasib has not yet been approved by the FDA, but the company released promising late-stage clinical trial results in April for patients with pancreatic cancer that had spread to other parts of the body.

The FDA told the Redwood City, California-based company that it can begin an "expanded access treatment protocol" for some patients who had previously been treated for pancreatic cancer.

Health officials in Trump administration were accused of fueling ‘crisis of public trust’ over autism and vaccines

Misinformation from top health officials in the Trump administration has created a “crisis of public trust” – and Congress should conduct oversight hearings and possibly impeach officials such as Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to a recently released report.

Experts say that officials in the past year have focused intently on both vaccines and autism, including efforts to connect autism to the use of acetaminophen (frequently sold as Tylenol) during pregnancy, despite growing evidence of no link, and replacing all members of the federal autism committee with advisers who have anti-vaccine and pseudoscientific histories.

Database could be used to regulate opponents, from ‘shutting off bank accounts’ to healthcare, official warns

Donald Trump is attempting to select his own citizenry and control who can vote by gathering the personal details of all Americans, Arizona’s top election official has warned.

Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcibly extract voter files from 30 states including Fontes’s own are part of a bigger plan to gather vital information on all US citizens into a centralised database. “Trump is trying to amass a master list that will allow him to declare someone an enemy of the state,” he said.

In his 19th-floor office in Phoenix, Fontes said that in his view Trump wants to create the equivalent of “apartheid in the United States” and likened his actions to those of his counterpart in North Korea. With personal information on all Americans at his disposal, the president could regulate key aspects of the lives of his opponents, including “shutting off their bank accounts, or keeping them from getting healthcare”.

“This is Donald Trump trying to pick his own voters,” he said.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday it had issued an injunction to block U.S. ​sanctions imposed on five Chinese refiners accused ‌of buying Iranian oil, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The ministry named the five as Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery, and ​so called 'teapot' refineries Shandong Jincheng Petrochemical Group, Hebei ​Xinhai Chemical Group, Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical and Shandong ⁠Shengxing Chemical.

In April, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions ​on Hengli Petrochemical, accusing it of buying billions ​of dollars in Iranian oil, in an escalation of Washington's long-running effort to curb Tehran's oil revenue.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking the mailing of mifepristone prescriptions.

Friday’s unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in person and at clinics, overruling regulations set by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The ruling, which is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, is the biggest jolt to abortion policy in the U.S. since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans.

NATO is seeking to “understand the details” of a US decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, a redeployment ordered by Donald Trump amid a feud with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz.

The German government sought to play down the severity of Trump’s move, describing it as “anticipated”, and a reminder of Europe’s need to invest in its own defence. The US withdrawal, which the Pentagon said would take place over the next six to 12 months, comes after criticism from Merz over Trump’s war with Iran and his handling of subsequent talks with Tehran.

The chancellor said on Monday the US was being “humiliated” by Iran’s leaders. Trump quickly responded, saying Merz “doesn’t know what he’s talking about”, and soon after raised the possibility of troop withdrawals.

‘The Democratic establishment is completely disconnected from where Democratic voters are,’ one strategist told Eric Garcia, after the rebuke to the seemingly out-of-touch 75-year-old Senate minority leader

Democrats are pressing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, 75, to stay out of future primaries after his 78-year-old pick for Maine’s Senate race dropped out this week, Politico reported.

On Thursday, Gov. Janet Mills announced that she would drop out of the Democratic primary, essentially clearing the field for insurgent progressive candidate Graham Platner to become the party’s nominee to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Schumer had backed Mills, the two-term governor of Maine, for the marquee race involving the only Republican representing a state with a majority that voted for Kamala Harris.

But Mills consistently polled behind Platner despite a litany of controversies around the oysterman regarding his use of a slur for people with disabilities, and his comments on Reddit from more than a decade ago about Black people not tipping at restaurants and about sexual assault.

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Joe Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in Donald Trump’s second term.

The US has warned shipping companies they could face sanctions if they pay Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

An alert on Friday by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) warned US persons and companies were generally banned from paying Iranian government entities, and non-US persons may risk exposure to sanctions if they pay.

"Maritime industry participants involved with vessels calling at Iranian ports face significant sanctions risk under multiple sanctions authorities targeting Iran's shipping sector and ports", OFAC said.

Iran has severely limited traffic through the strait since the war began in February. The US has also enforced a naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Michelle and Lavinia Osbourne discovered they were half-siblings owing to a rare event when two eggs released in the same cycle are fertilised by different men

The finding means the sisters are not biological twins but half-siblings, the result of a phenomenon known as heteropaternal superfecundation, in which two eggs released during the same ovulation cycle are fertilised by sperm from different men.

Although documented only about 20 times worldwide, specialists believe such cases may go undetected unless there is a reason to question paternity.

Allan Pacey, professor of andrology at the University of Manchester, said he had never encountered a similar case in more than three decades working in reproductive health.

An attorney representing the Trump administration informed a U.S. District Court Friday evening that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has begun offering new appointments to disaster workers whose contracts the agency did not renew in January, reversing a controversial decision that prompted a coalition of labor unions, scientific groups and local governments to sue the administration.

Electricity has become one of the most important commodities in the region thanks to demand from datacenters, Iran war and rising utility charges

For decades, the only regular visitors to the Twin Lake Reservoir in Lima, Ohio, were fishers passing hot summer evenings trying to snag a largemouth bass.

But today, it’s a hive of activity.

A team of 12 engineers and construction workers are busily connecting more than 3,400 solar arrays to small, floating docks and distributing them across four acres of the reservoir’s surface water.

The electricity generated by the floating photovoltaics will be used to power a nearby water treatment plant, where electricity-powered pumps run 24 hours a day, year-round.