Alvin Hellerstein, the 92-year-old US judge handling the case against deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, has presided over a number of notable trials during his decades on the bench.Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, made their first appearance in Hellerstein’s Manhattan courtroom on Monday, pleading not guilty to narco-terrorism and other charges.Maduro was indicted in 2020 in a sprawling drug trafficking case that has been before Hellerstein for nearly 15 years and has already seen the conviction of Venezuela’s former intelligence chief, Hugo Armando Carvajal.A graduate of Columbia University law school, Hellerstein served as a lawyer in the US Army from 1957 to 1960 before entering private practice.He was nominated by former president Bill Clinton in 1998 to be a district court judge for the Southern District of New York.During his lengthy career, Hellerstein has presided over several civil cases stemming from the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.He has also tangled at times with Donald Trump, rejecting a request by the president to have his New York hush money case moved to federal court.Hellerstein also blocked the Trump administration last year from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without a court hearing.In September, he sentenced tech start-up highflier Charlie Javice to more than seven years in prison after she was convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase on a $175 million deal.In another high-profile fraud case, Hellerstein sentenced Bill Hwang, the founder of US investment firm Archegos Capital Management, to 18 years in prison.He also presided over the trial last year in which a jury found French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan had helped prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, awarding $20.75 million in damages to three plaintiffs from Sudan.In a noteworthy 2015 ruling, Hellerstein ordered the US government to release a trove of photos depicting abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Trump administration on Monday overhauled the United States’ pediatric vaccine schedule, upending years of scientifically backed recommendations that reduced disease with routine shots.The dramatic shift — announced by the US health department, which is led by long-time vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — means the country will no longer recommend that every child receive immunizations against several diseases including rotavirus and influenza.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instead will recommend that shots preventing those illnesses as well as hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal disease be administered for select groups of high-risk individuals or when parents and a child’s doctor deem them warranted, rather than as standard practice.The agency had already shifted to this recommendation model for Covid-19 shots in 2025.At the end of 2024, the CDC was recommending 17 pediatric immunizations for all individuals, the agency said. Now that number is 11.President Donald Trump praised the changes, noting that the “MAHA Moms” — a base of online influencers who ardently support Kennedy’s agenda — “have been praying for these common sense reforms for many years.”Trump’s message heralding the schedule overhaul followed a TruthSocial post rife with false statements about vaccine safety and recommendations that contradict scientific consensus.The decision follows Trump’s directive last month that health officials compare the US vaccine schedule to peer countries abroad.They were notably focused on Denmark. The new US recommendations now more closely resemble that country’s schedule.”After an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the US childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent. This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health,” Kennedy said in a statement.But medical and public health experts slammed the overhaul.Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, said “the US child vaccine schedule is one of the most thoroughly researched tools we have to protect children from serious, sometimes deadly diseases.””It’s so important that any decision about the US childhood vaccination schedule should be grounded in evidence, transparency and established scientific processes, not comparisons that overlook critical differences between countries or health systems,” he told journalists.Experts at the Vaccine Integrity Project, an initiative out of the University of Minnesota, recently noted that the US had already been in line with global consensus.Denmark, project researchers said, represents more of an outlier among “peer countries” than a standard.”Denmark’s schedule reflects a set of choices made in a small, highly homogeneous country with a centralized health care system that guarantees universal access to care, low baseline disease prevalence, and strong social infrastructure,” the group wrote.”Those conditions do not apply to the United States, not even close.”- ‘More confusing for parents’ -Senator Bill Cassidy, whose deciding vote confirmed Kennedy’s controversial appointment as health chief last year, said that “changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors.”The Republican, himself a doctor, said doing so would “make America sicker.”States have the authority to mandate vaccinations, but generally CDC recommendations wield significant influence over state policies.US officials have said that access as well as insurance coverage of vaccines should remain in place, even for shots not broadly recommended by the federal government.”All vaccines currently recommended by CDC will remain covered by insurance without cost sharing,” said Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the federal health insurance programs. “No family will lose access. This framework empowers parents and physicians to make individualized decisions based on risk, while maintaining strong protection against serious disease.”But public health authorities warned that the changes would only sow doubt and confusion, especially as vaccine skepticism has mushroomed in the wake of the pandemic.O’Leary said the shift “just makes things more confusing for parents and clinicians.””Tragically, our federal government can no longer be trusted” to provide vaccine recommendations, he added.