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The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an at-home cervical cancer screening tool as an alternative to Pap smears by a gynecologist, the company behind the device said Friday.The “Teal Wand” — a self-collection vaginal swab shaped like a tampon and developed by Teal Health — will be available online for individuals aged 25 to 65 who are at average risk for cervical cancer.Users request a kit online, have a brief visit with a telehealth provider to gauge eligibility and then the kit is prescribed. They then collect the sample and ship it to a lab for analysis. Cervical cancer, which affects the lower part of the uterus, is diagnosed in about 0.6 percent of women. Although HPV vaccination and regular screening are highly effective at preventing the disease, more than one in four women fall behind on routine appointments.”When we make care easier to get, we help women stay healthy, for themselves and for the people who rely on them every day,” Teal Health CEO Kara Egan said in a statement.The Teal Wand tests for high-risk strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), the primary cause of cervical cancer. A large clinical trial found its accuracy comparable to a traditional Pap smear, which requires a speculum and is often cited as a barrier to screening due to discomfort.Most sexually active people will contract HPV at some point, though only a small fraction develop cancer.Teal Health did not disclose pricing but said it is in talks with insurers to ensure affordability. The product will launch first in California in June.

US authorities said the overstretched airport of Newark, one of three serving the New York metropolitan area, suffered a new 90-second outage early on Friday.Delays and flight cancellations had already followed an April 28 incident at Newark Liberty International Airport, in which traffic controllers stationed in nearby Philadelphia were unable to communicate with planes.In the latest incident, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there “was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display” at the same Philadelphia traffic control station that guides aircraft in and out of Newark’s airspace.The outage occurred around 3:55 am (07:55 GMT) on Friday and “lasted approximately 90 seconds,” a short statement said.Following the first incident, the FAA said Wednesday it was slowing arrivals and departures at Newark, which is one of the United States’ busiest airports. In Wednesday’s statement, the FAA said it was adding new telecommunications capacity, replacing copper connections with updated materials and deploying backup equipment.It also cited runway construction as a cause for the slowdown.The troubles at Newark follow a January 29 mid-air collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport involving a passenger jet and a military helicopter, the first major US commercial crash since 2009.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Friday’s incident as a “glitch” “caused by the same telecoms and software issues that were raised last week,” adding that FAA and Department of Transportation staff were installing new telecommunications connections. “The goal is to have the totality of this work done by the end of the summer,” she said.Leavitt praised Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system.”These are much needed changes. This is a very bold plan by the Department of Transportation,” Leavitt said. “I think it’s unfortunate that the previous administration sat on their hands and did nothing,” Leavitt said, referring to the Biden administration.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the legislative chamber, called the problem at Newark an “air travel safety emergency that requires immediate and decisive action, not a promise of a big, beautiful unfunded overhaul that will take years to begin to implement,” according to a statement. “The back up system that is not working must be fixed. Now,” said Schumer.Schumer has questioned the impact of FAA job cuts on Newark’s operations, made during Elon Musk tenure as the unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency. In a statement earlier this week Schumer said that the incidents are evidence the Trump administration is not “up to the task of keeping people safe.”

US President Donald Trump signaled on Friday that he could lower sky-high tariffs on Chinese imports, as the rival superpowers prepare for trade talks in Switzerland over the weekend.”80% Tariff on China seems right!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Levies on the Asian manufacturing giant are currently 145 percent, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.In retaliation to the steep tariffs from Washington, China has slapped 125 percent levies on US goods.Trump added that it was “Up to Scott B.” — US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — who will confer with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend in Geneva to try to cool the conflict roiling international markets.US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will also attend the talks.”The President still remains with his position that he is not going to unilaterally bring down tariffs on China. We need to see concessions from them as well,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters later Friday.”As for the 80 percent number, that was a number the president threw out there. And we’ll see what happens this weekend,” she added. The cripplingly high duties amount to an effective trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies, with private shipping data already pointing to a sharp slowdown in goods flowing from China to the United States. – ‘A good sign’ -“The relationship is not good,” said Bill Reinsch, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to current ties between Washington and Beijing. “We have trade-prohibitive tariffs going in both directions. Relations are deteriorating,” said Reinsch, a longtime former member of the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “But the meeting is a good sign.””I think this is basically to show that both sides are talking and that itself is very important,” Xu Bin, professor of economics and finance at the China Europe International Business School, told AFP. “Because China is the only country that has tit-for-tat tariffs against Trump’s tariffs.” Beijing has insisted the United States must lift tariffs first and vowed to defend its interests.Bessent has said the meetings in Switzerland would focus on “de-escalation” and not a “big trade deal.”The head of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday welcomed the talks, calling them a “positive and constructive step toward de-escalation.””Sustained dialogue between the world’s two largest economies is critical to easing trade tensions, preventing fragmentation along geopolitical lines and safeguarding global growth,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, according to a spokesperson.Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter also sounded an upbeat note.”Yesterday the Holy Spirit was in Rome,” she said Friday, referring to the election of Pope Leo XIV. “We must hope that he will now go down to Geneva for the weekend.” – 10 percent baseline – Bessent and He will meet two days after Trump unveiled what he called a historic trade agreement with Britain, the first deal with any country since he unleashed a blitz of sweeping global tariffs last month.The five-page, non-legally binding document confirmed to nervous investors that the United States is willing to negotiate sector-specific relief from recent duties — in this case on British cars, steel and aluminum. In return, Britain agreed to open up its markets to US beef and other farm products.But a 10 percent baseline levy on most British goods remained intact, and Trump remains “committed” to keeping it in place for other countries in talks with the United States, Leavitt told reporters. Reinsch from CSIS said one of the practical problems going into the Geneva negotiations is the two countries’ starkly different negotiating strategies.”Trump’s approach is generally top-down,” he said. “He wants to meet with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, and thinks that if the two of them can get together, they can make a big deal and then have the subordinates go work out the details.””The Chinese are the reverse,” he said. “They want to have all the issues settled and everything agreed to at lower levels before there’s any leaders meeting.”burs-da/acb

US President Donald Trump has fired the country’s top librarian, his spokeswoman confirmed Friday, cutting short the term of the only woman and first African American to take on the role.The White House accused librarian of Congress Carla Hayden of introducing “concerning” initiatives to bolster diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “putting inappropriate books in the library for children.””(We) don’t believe that she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well, so she has been removed from her position and the president is well within his rights to do that,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.But the move sparked a furious backlash from Democrats, who accused Trump of trying to silence opposing views.Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democrats in the House of Representatives, called Hayden’s dismissal “a disgrace and the latest in (Trump’s) ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock.””The Library of Congress is the People’s Library. There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later,” he said in a statement.New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich praised Hayden for running a library that was “accessible to all Americans, in person and online.” “While President Trump wants to ban books and tell Americans what to read — or not to read at all — Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone,” he said.Hayden was nominated to manage the world’s largest library in 2016 but has been criticized by conservatives, including members of the American Accountability Foundation lobby group, which has accused her of seeking to “indoctrinate America’s children with radical sexual ideologies.””Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” the group posted on social media hours ahead of the librarian’s firing. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”Hayden’s 10-year term was set to expire next year. The Library of Congress provides research and information for the legislative process as well as managing a vast collection of books, films, audio recordings and other materials.The librarian of Congress is responsible for setting policy and managing staff, while also overseeing the US Copyright Office and appointing the poet laureate.The library did not respond to a request for comment.

The United States and Iran will hold a new round of nuclear talks Sunday in Oman, officials said, just ahead of a visit to the region by President Donald Trump.Trump, who will visit three other Gulf Arab monarchies next week, has voiced hope for reaching a deal with Tehran to avert an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear program that could ignite a wider war.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Oman, which has been mediating, had proposed Sunday as the date and both sides had accepted.”Negotiations are moving ahead and naturally, the more we advance, the more consultations we have, and the more time the delegations need to examine the issues,” he said in a video carried by Iranian media.”But what’s important is that we are moving forward so that we gradually get into the details,” Araghchi said.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend who has served as his globe-trotting negotiator, will take part in the talks, the fourth since Trump returned to the White House, according to a source familiar with arrangements.”As in the past, we expect both direct and indirect discussions,” the person said on condition of anonymity.Iranian and US representatives voiced optimism after the previous talks that took place in Oman and Rome, saying there was a friendly atmosphere despite the two countries’ four decades of enmity.But the two sides are not believed to have gone into technical detail, and basic questions remain.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that Iran give up all uranium enrichment, even for civilian purposes. He has instead raised the possibility of Iran importing enriched uranium for any civilian energy.Witkoff initially voiced more flexibility before backtracking.- ‘Blow ’em up nicely’ -Trump himself has acknowledged tensions in his policy on Iran, saying at the start of his second term that hawkish advisors were pushing him to step up pressure reluctantly.In an interview Thursday, Trump said he wanted “total verification” that Iran’s contested nuclear work is shut down but through diplomacy.”I’d much rather make a deal” than see military action, Trump told the conservative radio Hugh Hewitt.”There are only two alternatives — blow ’em up nicely or blow ’em up viciously,” Trump said.Trump in his first term withdrew from a nuclear agreement with Tehran negotiated by former president Barack Obama that allowed Iran to enrich uranium at low levels that could be used only for civilian purposes.Many Iran watchers doubted that Iran would ever voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear program and give up all enrichment.But Iran has found itself in a weaker place over the past year. Israel has decimated Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia backed by Iran that could launch a counter-attack in any war, and Iran’s main ally in the Arab world, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, was toppled in December.Israel also struck Iranian air defenses as the two countries came openly to blows in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, which is also supported by Iran’s clerical state.The Trump administration has kept piling on sanctions despite the talks, angering Iran. On Thursday, the United States imposed sanctions on another refinery in China, the main market for Iranian oil.Since Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era deal, the United States has used its power to try to stop all other countries from buying Iranian oil.

The United States’ measles outbreak has surpassed 1,000 confirmed cases with three deaths so far, state and local data showed Friday, marking a stark resurgence of a vaccine-preventable disease that the nation once declared eliminated.The surge comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to undermine confidence in the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine — a highly effective shot he has falsely claimed is dangerous and contains fetal debris.An AFP tally showed there have been at least 1,012 cases since the start of the year, with Texas accounting for more than 70 percent.A vaccine-skeptical Mennonite Christian community straddling the Texas–New Mexico border has been hit particularly hard.A federal database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has lagged behind state and county reporting, as the globally renowned health agency faces deep workforce and budget cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration.North Dakota is the latest state to report an outbreak, with nine cases so far. Around 180 school students have been forced to quarantine at home, according to the North Dakota Monitor.”This is a virus that’s the most contagious infectious disease of mankind and it’s now spreading like wildfire,” Paul Offit a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia told AFP.He warned the true case count could be far higher, as people shy away from seeking medical attention. “Those three deaths equal the total number of deaths from measles in the last 25 years in this country.”The fatalities so far include two young girls in Texas and an adult in New Mexico, all unvaccinated — making it the deadliest US measles outbreak in decades.It is also the highest number of cases since 2019, when outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey resulted in 1,274 infections but no deaths.- Vaccine misinformation -Nationwide immunization rates have been dropping in the United States, fueled by misinformation about vaccines, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The CDC recommends a 95 percent vaccination rate to maintain herd immunity.However, measles vaccine coverage among kindergartners has dropped from 95.2 percent in the 2019–2020 school year to 92.7 percent in 2023–2024.Measles is a highly contagious respiratory virus spread through droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or simply breathes.Known for its characteristic rash, it poses a serious risk to unvaccinated individuals, including infants under 12 months who are not ordinarily eligible for vaccination, and those with weakened immune systems.Before the measles vaccine’s introduction in 1963, it is thought that millions of Americans contracted the disease annually, and several hundred died. While measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, outbreaks persist each year.Susan McLellan, an infectious disease professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, pushed back against messaging that promotes remedies like Vitamin A — which has valid but limited uses — over vaccines.Kennedy has led that messaging in frequent appearances on Fox News.”Saying we’re going to devote resources to studying therapies instead of enhancing uptake of the vaccine is a profoundly inefficient way of addressing a vaccine-preventable disease,” she told AFP.McLellan added that the crisis reflects broader erosion in public trust in health authorities.She said it is hard for an individual untrained in statistics to understand measles is a problem if they don’t personally see deaths around them. “Believing population-based statistics takes a leap, and that’s public health.”

San Francisco’s main public transport system abruptly shut down Friday morning, stopping all trains in the Bay Area and throwing the morning commute into chaos.”Due to a computer networking problem BART service is suspended system wide until further notice,” said a message on the Bay Area Rapid Transit website.”Seek alternate means of transport.”The shutdown left tens of thousands of commuters scrambling to find other ways to work.Pictures showed crowds of people pressing aboard buses, while reports said both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge — key routes into and out of the city — were clogged.Unlike many major US cities, San Francisco has a well developed public transport network that includes an underground train network, buses, trams and ferries that traverse the bay between San Francisco and other cities in the region.The closure of the BART train system, whose 131 miles (210 kilometres) of track carry more than 174,000 passengers every day, appeared to be related to how the system had powered up after overnight maintenance, communications officer Alicia Trost told ABC7.There was no immediate indication that the problems had been the result of a cyberattack, she said.The halt caused misery for those trying to get to work.David Meland told the San Francisco Chronicle he had waited in vain outside his local station for an hour to see if the service would resume.”It’s happened a lot. BART’s just too inconsistent,” he said. “This is pretty bad.”Patrick Dunn, who had driven to an exurban station to ride into the city said he was going to have to switch transport.”Now I have to take the bus, and I never take the bus,” he told the Chronicle.”I already have a long commute and now I have to wait for the (bus). I’ll be late by an half hour or so.”The shutdown came on the day that the overstretched airport in Newark, one of three serving greater New York, also suffered an outage — the second in the last few weeks.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said there “was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display” at the same Philadelphia traffic control station that guides aircraft in and out of Newark’s airspace.The outage occurred around 03:55 (07:55 GMT) on Friday and “lasted approximately 90 seconds,” a short statement said.

NATO chief Mark Rutte wants member countries to agree at a summit in June to reach five percent of GDP on defence-related spending by 2032, Dutch premier Dick Schoof said Friday.US President Donald Trump has demanded that NATO allies ramp up their military spending to five percent of GDP, a level that not even the United States currently hits.Schoof said Rutte had written to NATO’s 32 member countries calling for them to reach 3.5 percent of GDP on “hard military spending” and 1.5 percent of GDP on “related spending such as infrastructure, cybersecurity and other things” over the next seven years.Trump is piling the pressure on Europe and Canada to ratchet up NATO’s spending target at a summit in The Hague next month. Foreign ministers from alliance countries are expected to tackle the matter at an informal gathering in Antalya, Turkey, next week.Rutte on Friday refused to confirm the figures being debated but said “internal discussions” were taking place within NATO.Diplomats within NATO, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the proposal circulated last week envisioned increasing direct military spending by 0.2 percent each year to 2032.They said the discussions were at an early stage and there were no clear signs yet that there would be consensus for the figures.The parameters of what could be included in the 1.5 percent of loosely related defence spending were still to be defined, they said.”It makes no sense to argue about abstract GDP percentages now. What is crucial is that we continuously expand our efforts over the next few years,” Germany’s new chancellor Friedrich Merz said during a visit to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels on Friday. Merz said that for Germany, every increase of one percent of GDP represented 45 billion euros ($50 billion).  – Trump threatens -Trump has long accused Washington’s allies of underspending on their defence and taking advantage of US largesse.He has also threatened not to protect countries that do not spend enough on their military in his eyes.European countries have ramped up their defence spending since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but Rutte says they must go considerably higher to ward off Moscow.Last year 22 of NATO’s 32 allies hit its current spending target of two percent of GDP on their militaries. A string of countries such as Italy, Spain, Canada and Belgium that still lag below that level have pledged to reach it in 2025. The United States last year spent 3.19 percent of its GDP on defence, behind eastern flank countries Poland, Estonia and Lithuania close to Russia. But Washington remains by far the biggest military spender in NATO in absolute terms, accounting for 64 percent of all defence expenditure last year.In a bid to help European countries bolster their spending, the EU has proposed loosening budget rules and establishing a 150-billion-euro defence fund. 

Leo XIV urged the Catholic Church to work urgently to restore the faith of millions in his first homily as pope Friday, a day after the little-known cardinal become the first head of the 2,000-year institution from the United States.Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost became the 267th pope, spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics and successor to Argentina’s Pope Francis on Thursday, after a secret vote by fellow cardinals in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.In today’s world, Leo warned in his homily to assembled cardinals, there are places or situations where “it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied”.”Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed,” said the new pope, 69, standing at the Sistine Chapel altar with Michelangelo’s famed fresco of “The Last Judgment” behind him.The former missionary deplored “settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent”. And in an echo of his predecessor Francis, he said people were turning to “technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.”-‘Walk with me’ -“A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society,” said Leo in Italian, wearing a white papal robe trimmed in gold as he addressed the seated white-robed cardinals. In an apparent message to evangelical Christians, Pope Leo also warned that Jesus cannot be “reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman”.”This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptised Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism,” he said.In an unscripted introduction to his homily in English, he also evoked a need to overcome divisions within the Church, telling his fellow cardinals: “I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me”.Many around the world were still digesting the choice of the man sometimes referred to in Rome as the “Latin Yankee” for his decades-long missions in Peru.”A pope from the United States is almost more surprising than an Argentine and Jesuit pope,” such as Francis, wrote the Corriere della Sera daily. Francis was the first pope ever named from the Americas.- Missionary in Peru -The Vatican released video images of the moments after Leo’s secret election Thursday, showing him praying at a chapel altar and shaking hands and receiving congratulations in a sea of scarlet-robed cardinals.The American, a member of the Augustinian order who spent two decades in Peru and was only made a cardinal in 2023. But he had been on many Vatican watchers’ lists of potential popes, although he is far from being a globally recognised figure.Over the coming days, including during Sunday’s midday Regina Coeli prayer and a meeting with journalists at the Vatican on Monday, his actions and words will be closely scrutinised.He will meet with diplomats on May 16 and on Sunday May 18 will hold an inauguration mass at St Peter’s Square, which is expected to draw world leaders and thousands of pilgrims.Waiting outside St Peter’s Friday, Argentine tourist Rocio Arguello said “there were so many people from all over the world” who were riveted by Leo’s first appearance the day before, including throngs from Spanish-speaking countries.”It was very moving when he also spoke in Spanish,” said the 39-year-old woman. “When he came out and spoke both languages, it was lovely.”Back in Peru, well-wishers including the bishop of El Callao outside Lima, Luis Alberto Barrera, saluted the Augustinian’s engagement in the Andean country.”He showed his closeness and simplicity with the people,” Barrera told AFP, calling the new pope a “good missionary”.In Chicago, locals celebrated his love of baseball, deep-dish pizza and his working-class South Side neighbourhood in the United States’ third-largest city.The Chicago Tribune called him “the pride and joy of every priest and nun” at his local parish, where he went to school and served as an altar boy, while a debate erupted over which of the city’s rival baseball teams Leo supported: the White Sox, his brother ultimately confirmed.- Build bridges -In his address to the crowds Thursday, Leo echoed his predecessor Francis with a call for peace and urging a “missionary Church”.”Help us, and each other, to build bridges through dialogue, through encounter, to come together as one people, always in peace,” he said, as world leaders sent pledges to work with him on global issues at a time of great geopolitical uncertainty. Leo faces a momentous task. As well as asserting his moral voice on a conflict-torn world stage, he must try to unite a divided Church and tackle burning issues such as the continuing fallout from the clerical sexual abuse scandal.As Cardinal Prevost, the new pope defended workers and the poor and reposted articles online critical of US President Donald Trump’s anti-migrant policies.But Trump nevertheless welcomed his election, calling it a “great honor” to have a pope from the United States.With the choice of Prevost, experts said, the cardinals had opted for continuity with the late Francis, a progressive who shook up the Church in his 12-year papacy.”We’re looking for someone following the pathway of Francis, but… I believe Pope Leo will not be a photocopy of Pope Francis,” said US Cardinal Robert W. McElroy.Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi told the Corriere della Sera that Leo was “a very simple person, intensely kind. He is in the vein of Francis, but less spiky”.

Mexico has sued Google for changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name to “Gulf of America” for Google Maps users in the United States, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday.”The lawsuit has already been filed,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference, without saying where and when it was submitted.On Thursday, US lawmakers voted in favor of the name change, turning into federal law an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in his first week in office in January. Sheinbaum had warned Google, which is part of tech giant Alphabet, in February that she was considering legal action unless the company reversed its decision.Her government argues that Trump’s executive order on the subject only applies to the part of the continental shelf belonging to the United States”All we want is for the decree issued by the US government to be complied with,” Sheinbaum said.”The US government only calls the portion of the US continental shelf the Gulf of America, not the entire gulf, because it wouldn’t have the authority to name the entire gulf,” she added.In response to Trump, Sheinbaum has cheekily suggested calling the United States “Mexican America,” pointing to a map dating back to before 1848, when one-third of her country was seized by the United States.The neighboring countries are in talks to defuse tensions over Trump’s global trade war, which has included a series of tariff announcements targeting Mexico.