US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary signaled Thursday that he is open to revising strict warning labels on Hormone Replacement Therapy, following testimony from experts who said the treatment’s risks have long been exaggerated.HRT is taken to replace estrogen the body stops producing after menopause — when periods end permanently — and helps relieve symptoms such as hot flashes, vaginal discomfort, and pain during sex.But its use has plummeted in recent years amid concerns including a possible link to invasive breast cancer.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Marty Makary, who convened Thursday’s meeting of outside experts, told AFP: “We have to revisit these topics.”He argued that the framework that led to so-called “black box warnings” — the strongest warning the FDA can require for prescription drugs — “came from a different era.” “Not only is there no clinical trial showing an increase in breast cancer mortality, but there are also other tremendous long term health benefits,” Makary added.The 12 experts convened by the agency said HRT’s benefits go beyond easing menopausal symptoms. They cited evidence for reduced fracture risk, improved cardiovascular and cognitive health, and fewer urinary tract infections.”Estrogen is the only well-established intervention to reduce the frequency of osteoporotic fracture in postmenopausal women, to the tune of 30 to 50 percent,” said Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Central Florida.Roberta Diaz Brinton, director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science, said her research suggests the reason two-thirds of people globally with Alzheimer’s are women is not because they live slightly longer than men, but because the disease begins during the menopausal transition.”Depending upon when hormone therapy is introduced… there’s a significant reduction in risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” she said.The University of Arizona researcher linked menopause to a drop in the brain’s ability to metabolize glucose and a rise in protein plaque deposits.Panelists blamed the collapse in HRT use on the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a landmark clinical trial halted in 2002 after flagging a possible increased breast cancer risk — findings they say were misinterpreted.”Prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy plummeted in the United States, women flushed their pills down the toilet,” Makary said in his opening remarks, mentioning his own mother’s experience of multiple bone fractures in old age.Critics of the WHI argue it included participants well past menopause — when risks are higher and benefits lower — and used outdated formulations no longer common today.- Label changes -Still, the issue remains divisive within the medical community.HRT can be administered through various means including orally, through skin patches, or vaginally; and is given either as estrogen alone or with progesterone.The FDA’s own warning label for it cites risks including endometrial cancer, breast cancer, and life-threatening blood clots.Adriane Fugh-Berman, who directs a project that promotes rational prescribing at Georgetown University, attended as an observer and criticized the lack of dissenting voices.”This was a very one-sided panel of people who are all proponents of hormone therapy and who seem to have a very poor understanding of the evidence,” she told AFP.”While hormones can be a useful treatment for severe menopausal symptoms, they should not be used for chronic disease prevention,” she added, noting that no randomized clinical trial — the gold standard of evidence — has found HRT beneficial for cognition or dementia prevention.She also said that after the WHI findings were released, hormone use fell globally — and breast cancer rates dropped across registries tracking them.Several of the panelists had ties to companies offering menopause treatments or are affiliated with the advocacy group “Let’s Talk Menopause,” which receives pharmaceutical funding and campaigns to revise FDA warning labels.

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed three landmark cryptocurrency bills, fulfilling the Trump administration’s commitment to the once-controversial industry.Lawmakers easily approved the CLARITY Act, which aims to establish a clearer regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The bill is designed to clarify industry rules and divide regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It will now advance to the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority.House legislators also readily passed the GENIUS Act, which codifies the use of stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the US dollar or US bonds. This bill is expected to go directly to President Trump for his signature to become law. The Senate passed the GENIUS Act last month, and it sets requirements such as mandating that issuers hold reserves of assets equal in value to their outstanding cryptocurrency.”This historic legislation will bring our payment system into the 21st century. It will ensure the dominance of the US dollar. It will increase demand for US Treasuries,” said Senator Bill Hagerty, the measure’s sponsor in the Senate.This wave of legislation follows years of skepticism towards crypto, driven by the belief that the sector, born from bitcoin’s success, should be tightly controlled and kept separate from mainstream investors. However, after crypto investors contributed millions of dollars to his presidential campaign last year, Trump reversed his previous doubts about the industry. He even launched a Trump meme coin and other ventures as he prepared for his return to the White House and hosted a gala dinner for the coin’s top buyers once he was in office.And according to the Financial Times, Trump is now preparing to open the $9 trillion US retirement market to cryptocurrency investments as well as gold, and private equity.Notably, both the CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act garnered significant bipartisan support, with Democrats also having seen an increase in lobbying and contributions from the crypto industry. “It’s critically important we bring more certainty to the marketplace with clear rules of the road,” said congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat who supported the bills.Since taking office, Trump has made several moves to support the crypto sector, including appointing crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC. He also established a federal “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” to audit the government’s bitcoin holdings, primarily accumulated through law enforcement’s judicial seizures. Forbes magazine estimates that the president’s foray into the crypto business has doubled his wealth to $5.3 billion in just one year.In a largely partisan vote, the Republican-led House also passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. It aims to block the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) — a digital dollar issued by the US Federal Reserve — even if there currently are no plans for such an endeavor. Republicans argue that a CBDC could enable the federal government to monitor, track, and potentially control private citizens’ financial transactions, thereby undermining privacy and civil liberties.Passage of this measure in the Senate is far from guaranteed before it can go to the president’s desk. An earlier attempt to set aside the anti-CBDC bill caused a significant stir among a small group of Republicans and delayed passage of the other two bills until eleventh-hour lobbying by Trump helped resolve the issue.

US President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with a common, benign vein condition, the White House said Thursday, following speculation about his heavily bruised hand and swollen legs.The 79-year-old, who in January became the oldest person ever to assume the presidency, was found to have “chronic venous insufficiency,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.The widely noted discoloration on Trump’s right hand, meanwhile, was “tissue irritation from frequent handshaking” and the use of aspirin as part of a standard cardiovascular treatment, she said.Presidential physician Sean Barbabella said Trump “remains in excellent health” despite the condition, in a letter released by the White House.The Republican frequently boasts of his good health and energy levels while the administration recently even posted an image depicting him as Superman.Trump has alleged that Democrats covered up the mental and physical decline of his predecessor, Joe Biden, who was 82 when he left office in January.Now Trump, who said after undergoing a routine medical check-up that he was in “very good shape,” has been forced to answer questions about his own health.Leavitt’s revelations follow widespread online discussions about the president’s visibly swollen ankles, seen in particular at the recent FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey, and a bruised hand that often appeared to be covered with make-up.”In recent weeks, President Trump noted mild swelling in his lower legs,” Leavitt said, adding that he was examined by White House doctors “out of an abundance of caution.” Ultrasound tests “revealed chronic venous insufficiency, a benign and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70.” The condition involves damaged leg veins that fail to keep blood flowing properly.Leavitt said Trump had asked her to share the diagnosis “in the effort of transparency.”- ‘Pretty common’ -Dr. Matt Heinz, an internist and hospitalist from Tucson, Arizona, told AFP that chronic venous insufficiency is “pretty common,” especially in older adults. It results from vein valves becoming less effective.”It comes with age, gravity, and obesity doesn’t help if that’s a condition that people suffer from. I know the president’s been losing some weight, though, so I think that’s probably a little better,” he said.The White House pressed home its message that the condition did not pose a serious risk to Trump, saying that “importantly, there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease.”Trump had “normal cardiac structure and function, no signs of heart failure, renal impairment or systemic illness,” added Leavitt.Of the hand bruising issue, Leavitt said: “This is a well known and benign side effect of aspirin therapy.”For months, however, the White House had previously dismissed questions about Trump’s bruised hand, saying that it was purely down to handshaking.The health of US presidents has always been closely watched, but with the White House seeing its two oldest ever occupants since 2017 the scrutiny is now heavier than ever.Biden’s health was a key issue in the 2024 election, and the then-president was forced to drop his campaign for a second term after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.Republicans in the House of Representatives have issued subpoenas to several Biden aides, including his doctor, to get them to testify in an investigation into the Democrat’s mental fitness.Biden was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in May. As far as Trump was concerned, his condition was likely to be treated with compression socks, activity and maybe weight loss, rather than any “invasive” treatment such as prosthetic valves, Heinz said.Swelling could indicate something more serious such as heart issues “but I don’t have that information.”

The United States’ destruction of a warehouse worth of emergency food that had spoiled has drawn outrage, but lawmakers and aid workers say it is only one effect of President Donald Trump’s abrupt slashing of foreign assistance.The Senate early Thursday approved nearly $9 billion in cuts to foreign aid as well as public broadcasting, formalizing a radical overhaul of spending that Trump first imposed with strokes of his pen on taking office nearly six months ago.US officials confirmed that nearly 500 metric tons of high-nutrition biscuits, meant to keep alive malnourished children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, were incinerated after they passed their expiration date in a warehouse in Dubai. Lawmakers of the rival Democratic Party said they had warned about the expiring food since March. Senator Tim Kaine said that the inaction in feeding children “really exposes the soul” of the Trump administration. Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management, acknowledged to Kaine that blame lay with the shuttering of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was merged into the State Department after drastic cuts.”I think that this was just a casualty of the shutdown of USAID,” Rigas said Wednesday.State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce, however, took a more defiant tone Thursday, saying the biscuits represented less than one percent of US global food aid, using figures that appeared to come from before Trump’s cutbacks.”We will not be lectured about the issue of food aid or what we do for the rest of the world,” she said.The Atlantic magazine, which first reported the episode, said that the United States bought the biscuits near the end of Biden administration for around $800,000 and that the Trump administration’s burning of the food was costing taxpayers another $130,000.- ‘Yanking the rug’ -For aid workers, the biscuit debacle was just one example of how drastic and sudden cuts have aggravated the impact of the aid shutdown.Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president for global policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps, said that large infrastructure projects were shut down immediately, without regard to how to finish them.”This really was yanking the rug out, or turning the the spigot off, overnight,” she said.She pointed to the termination of a USAID-backed Mercy Corps project to improve water and sanitation in the turbulent east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Work began in 2020 and was scheduled to end in September 2027.”Infrastructure projects are not things where 75 percent is ok. It’s either done or it’s not,” she said.- Sweeping cuts -The House of Representatives is expected late Thursday to finalize the end of funding for what White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called “$9 billion worth of crap.”It includes ending all $437 million the United States would have given to several UN bodies including the children’s agency UNICEF and the UN Development Programme. It also pulls $2.5 billion from development assistance.Under pressure from moderate Republicans, the package backs off from ending PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative credited with saving 25 million lives since it was launched by former president George W. Bush more than two decades ago.Republicans and the Trump-launched Department of Government Efficiency, initially led by tycoon Elon Musk, have pointed to projects they argue do not advance US interests.”We can’t fund transgender operas in Peru with US taxpayer dollars,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters, an apparent reference to a US grant under the Biden administration for the staging of an opera in Colombia that featured a transgender protagonist.The aid cuts come a week after the State Department laid off more than 1,300 employees as Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended or merged several offices, including those on climate change, refugees and human rights.Rubio called it a “very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused.”Senate Democrats issued a scathing report that accused the Trump administration of ceding global leadership to China, which has been increasing spending on diplomacy and disseminating its worldview.The rescissions vote “will be met with cheers in Beijing, which is already celebrating America’s retreat from the world under President Trump,” said Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Netflix reported stronger than expected second-quarter results Thursday, with profit jumping 45 percent year-over-year as the streaming giant benefited from subscription price increases and a growing advertising business.Revenue climbed 16 percent to $11.1 billion in the quarter ended June 30, beating analyst estimates and the company’s own guidance, while net profit surged to $3.1 billion.The company raised its full-year revenue forecast, noting that it expects revenue to be between $44.8 billion and $45.2 billion in 2025, up from a range of $43.5 billion to $44.5 billion.Netflix highlighted strong performance from its content offers in the quarter, with major hits including the third season of “Squid Game,” which drew 122 million views.It “has already become our sixth biggest season of any series in our history, with just a few weeks of viewing so far,” the company said in a statement.Other standout titles included the third season of “Ginny & Georgia” with 53 million views and “Sirens” with 56 million views.There was also the animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” with 80 million views, which became “one of our biggest animated films ever” and generated a soundtrack that topped music charts globally.”Korean content continues to be popular with our audience,” the company said, pointing to the continued success of international programming that has become a hallmark of Netflix’s global strategy.Netflix expressed optimism about the second half of 2025, highlighting an upcoming slate that includes the highly anticipated second season of “Wednesday,” the final season of “Stranger Things” and new films from major directors including Kathryn Bigelow and Guillermo del Toro.The company has also announced plans to expand live programming with marquee boxing matches and NFL games, as it continues to diversify its content offerings beyond traditional on-demand entertainment.Netflix shares have surged more than 40 percent year-to-date as investors have responded positively to the company’s shift toward profitability, which saw it crack down on password sharing and turn to ads for more revenue.The company counted over 300 million subscribers last December, at the end of a particularly successful holiday season, when it gained almost 19 million new subscriptions. But the company no longer discloses these figures, in order to focus on audience “engagement” metrics (time spent watching content).In the quarter, Netflix continued to build out its advertising capabilities, saying that it expects to roughly double ads revenue in 2025, though it did not provide specific figures.The service is forecasting $9 billion in revenues from its ad-based subscriptions by 2030.”With another robust earnings showing in Q2, Netflix continues a winning streak going back several quarters and cements its place as the leader among streaming services,” said Emarketer analyst Paul Verna.