Health

JOE Biden is facing fresh scrutiny over his health while in office amid his “aggressive” prostate cancer diagnosis.

The former president, 82, claimed to have had cancer in a speech he gave three years ago – which sparked fears for his health at the time.

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Biden’s comments came during a speech about “cancer-causing” emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Delaware.

He said: “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

Biden’s use of the present tense led to speculations that the president was suffering from cancer.

But these were dismissed after it was suggested that the comments were a reference to “non-melanoma skin cancers”.

Before assuming the presidency, Biden had a number of “localized, non-melanoma skin cancers” removed by surgery.

In November 2021, Biden had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.

And in February 2023, he had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer.

Non-melanoma skin cancer typically develops in the areas of the body most exposed to the sun such as the face, ears, hands, shoulders, upper chest, and back.

But Biden is now facing fresh scrutiny over his cancer comments following the announcement of his cancer diagnosis on Sunday.

This comes as Donald Trump took a swipe at his predecessor and said he was “surprised” the public wasn’t told long ago about Biden’s cancer.

The US President cast doubt on the timeline of Biden’s diagnosis on Monday as he said it usually takes a “long time” to reach such an aggressive stage of cancer.

Trump was backed up by a leading oncologist who claimed that the former president likely had cancer when he took office in 2021.

Dr Zeke Emanuel said: “He had it while he was President.

“He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021.”

Biden announced his cancer diagnosis in an official statement from his personal office on Sunday.

The statement said that he was seen by doctors last week after suffering urinary symptoms, with a prostate nodule then being found.

He was then diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.

The statement read: “Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms.

“On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.

“The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

A Gleason score of 9 means the cancerous cells “look very abnormal” and that the disease is “likely to grow quickly”, according to Cancer Research UK.

Biden served as US president from 2021 to 2025, with his term ending on January 20 when Donald Trump took office.

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Doctors discovered the cancer in Joe Biden last week after urinary symptoms and the detection of a prostate nodule.

Former United States President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with “aggressive” prostate cancer, his office has said in a statement.

Biden was seen last week by doctors after urinary symptoms developed and a prostate nodule was found. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone, the statement released on Sunday said.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management,” his office said.

“The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians”, it added.

The health of the 82-year-old Biden was a key concern among US voters during his time as president and became more so during the 2024 campaign.

After a calamitous debate performance in June 2024, Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee and lost to Donald Trump, who returned to the White House after a four-year hiatus.

Trump, a longtime political opponent, who has lambasted Biden and continues to blame him for wars and economic ills, posted on social media that he was saddened by the news and “we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery”.

Pete Buttigieg, who was Biden’s transportation secretary, called the former president “a man of deep faith and extraordinary resilience”.

Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist, was heavily criticised in some quarters at home and overseas for his unconditional support for Israel in its punishing Gaza war after the Hamas-led October 7 attack, and for not using Washington’s leverage to rein in US ally Israel, as death and devastation wracked Palestinians in Gaza.

In recent days, Biden rejected concerns about his age despite reporting in the new book Original Sin that aides had shielded the public from the extent of his cognitive decline while he served as president.

Some prominent Democratic politicians have recently acknowledged that it was a mistake to advance Biden as the nominee, one that likely cost them the White House, given the growing concerns among voters about his age, even though Trump was in his late 70s.

A Reuters/Ipsos polls, some time before the debate, showed a majority of Americans, including most Democrats, believed Biden was too old to serve a second term.

“It was a mistake for Democrats to not listen to the voters earlier,” Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, before Biden’s diagnosis was announced.

Prostate cancers are given a ranking called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s score of 9 suggests his cancer is among the most aggressive.

When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasised cancer is much harder to treat than localised cancer because it can be hard for drugs to reach all the tumours and completely root out the disease.

Biden lost a son, Beau Biden, in 2015, to brain cancer.

Video shows aftermath of an explosion outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California that killed one person. The FBI says the blast, which damaged several buildings, was an ‘intentional act of terrorism’.

WE all know keeping hydrated is even more important when the sun is shining.

Getting enough liquid in your body means fewer headaches, more energy, lubricated joints, organ function and much, much more.

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To get your two litres of water a day you just need to turn on the tap.

But there are now waters with health benefits.

Today I’ve put some to the test to see if they are worth the cost . . .

Alkaline water

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ACTIPH Water from Shropshire undergoes a unique process of purification before having electrolytes magnesium sulphate, sodium bicarbonate and potassium bicarbonate added to it.

You are left with an alkaline water with a PH of 9+ compared to your average water, which is about 7.

Some studies suggest higher PH might help with hydration, acid reflux and bone health.

This water has a smooth, clean taste.

My favourite of the three.

I loved the 600ml bottle size, which is great to carry about.

£1.40 for 600ml, Tesco.

Protein water

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IN each 500ml bottle of Warrior Protein Water there is 10g of protein as well as essential vitamins, with zero sugar and only 48 calories.

It comes in two flavours, tropical and berry, and is a clever way to boost your protein intake if you don’t want to eat any actual food – plus you are obviously hydrating at the same time.

But this stuff is sweet. I tried the tropical flavour, which reminded me of Lilt.

Although it doesn’t contain sugar, it does contain plenty of sweetener.

So unless you’ve got a sweet tooth, this is not for you.

I thought the lid was great, unlike some other bottles where they can flick open.

I had this one in my sports bag and it didn’t spill.

From £1.67 for a 500ml bottle, Spar stores or teamwarrior.com.

Collagen water

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TIDE has just launched a sparkling raspberry collagen water that can help support glowing skin, strong hair and healthier nails.

It is a premium collagen formula with 3.5g of high-quality, hydrolysed collagen peptides sourced from wild-caught North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean fish.

When you drink marine collagen, studies have shown it can hydrate and firm skin, reduce wrinkles, improve skin elasticity and enhance the overall structure and appearance of skin.

There are zero artificial sweeteners or additives but this one is very sweet thanks to the addition of fructose, a natural sugar that is found in fruit, vegetables and honey.

It comes in at just 27 calories per 250ml can.

If you’re drinking it for the collagen benefits I would recommend having two.

A clever idea for skin, but only if you have a sweet tooth.

From £27 for 12 cans or £2.25 each, wearetide.com.

Palm Springs Police Chief Andy Mills said the blast ‘appears to be an intentional act of violence’.

At least one person has been killed after an explosion near a reproductive health facility in Palm Springs, California, the city’s mayor said.

Palm Springs Police Chief Andy Mills said the blast on Friday “appears to be an intentional act of violence” and that several buildings were damaged, some severely.

“There has been one fatality, the person’s identity is not known,” Mills’ statement said.

The city’s mayor, Ron deHarte, said a bomb was either in or near a car parked outside of the clinic when it exploded, the Reuters news agency reported.

Palm Springs Fire Chief Paul Alvarado said no suspect had been identified.

Authorities said the blast occurred on Saturday around 11am local time (18:00 GMT) near North Indian Canyon Drive and East Tachevah Drive. Police urged residents to avoid the area as fire crews and investigators secured the scene.

Federal agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were dispatched to support the local investigation, which remains in its early stages.

The blast damaged the American Reproductive Centers facility, a fertility clinic run by Dr Maher Abdallah. He told The Associated Press that, while his office space suffered damage, the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) lab and its stored embryos were untouched.

“I really have no clue what happened,” Abdallah said. “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”

He added that all his staff were safe and accounted for.

Nearby resident Nima Tabrizi, 37, from Santa Monica, said he was inside a cannabis dispensary when he felt the building shake.

“The building just shook, and we go outside and there’s a massive cloud smoke,” Tabrizi said. “Crazy explosion. It felt like a bomb went off … We went up to the scene, and we saw human remains.”

Palm Springs, a wealthy desert city known for its luxury resorts and celebrity history, is located about 100 miles (161km) east of Los Angeles.

United States House Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill”, a wide-ranging tax and spending legislation, is at a crucial moment.

The nearly 400-page legislation proposes sweeping changes which include extending the 2017 tax cuts, slashing taxes for businesses and individuals, and enacting deep cuts to social programmes like Medicaid and SNAP.

While Republicans tout the bill as a boon for economic growth and middle-class relief, nonpartisan analysts warn it could add trillions to the national debt and strip millions of Americans of medical and food assistance.

The bill will be voted on by the House Budget Committee today and, if passed, will be voted on the floor next week.

The most substantive part of the bill is an extension of the 2017 tax cuts. The tax bill would add at least an additional $2.5 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years and decrease federal tax revenue by roughly $4 trillion by 2034.

Passing the legislation will also raise the debt ceiling, which sets the amount of money the government can borrow to pay for existing expenditures, by $4 trillion, a sticking point for hardline Republicans who want deeper cuts.

Here are some of the key measures in the proposed bill in its current form.

Changes for households

The bill increases standard deductions for all Americans. Individual deductions will increase by $1,000, $1,500 for heads of households, and $2,000 for married couples.

The bill extends the child tax credit of $2,000, which would otherwise have ended with the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts at year’s end.

It bumps up the child tax credit by $500 per child for this tax year and runs through the end of 2028. It also includes a $1,000 savings account for children born between December 31, 2024 and January 1, 2029. The legislation would also allow families to annually contribute $5,000 tax-free.

There is a new tax deduction for Americans 65 and older. The new bill would give a $4,000 annual deduction starting this year for people making a gross income of $75,000 for a single person and $150,000 for a married couple. If passed, the rule would take effect for the current tax year and run until the end of 2028.

“It will just make tax paying more complicated and more uncertain when a lot of these things ultimately expire,” Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the right-leaning Cato Institute, told Al Jazeera.

Another provision in the bill modifies state and local tax (SALT) deductions. It allows filers to be able to write off some of what they paid in local and state taxes from their federal filings.

Under the 2017 tax act, that was capped at $10,000, but the new legislation would raise that to $30,000. Some Republicans, particularly those in states with higher taxes like New York and California, have been pushing to raise the cap or abolish it altogether. However, they have faced fiscal hawks and those who see the increases as relief for those already wealthy.

The bill includes an increased benefit for small businesses that allows them to deduct 23 percent of their qualified business income from their taxes, up from the current 20 percent.

There is also a call for no taxes on overtime pay for select individuals. It would not apply to people who are non-citizens, those who are considered “highly compensated employees,” and those who earn a tipped wage.

The bill, however, also eliminates taxes on tips, a critical campaign promise by both Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris. The bill would allow people who work in sectors like food service, as well as hair care, nail care, aesthetics, and body and spa treatments, to specifically deduct the amount of tipped income they receive.

At the federal level, employers will still not be required to pay tipped workers more than the subminimum wage of $2.13 hourly. The intention is that workers will be able to make up the difference in tipping the receipt from customers.

Cuts to the social safety net

The legislation calls to make $880bn in cuts to key government programmes with a focus mostly on Medicaid and food stamps.

The CBO found that more than 10 million people could lose Medicaid access and 7.6 million could lose access to health insurance completely by 2034 under the current plan.

Even far-right Republicans have called out the Medicaid cuts. In an op-ed in The New York Times this week, Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said the cuts are “morally wrong and politically suicidal”.

According to a new report from One Fair Wage shared with Al Jazeera, tipped workers could be hit especially hard, as 1.2 million restaurant and tipped workers could lose access to Medicaid.

“A no tax on tips proposal, which is like a minuscule percentage of their income and doesn’t affect two-thirds of tips workers because they don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax, is just nowhere near enough to compensate for the fact that we’re going to have millions of these workers lose the ability to take care of themselves, in some cases go into medical debt, in many cases just not take care of themselves,” Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, an advocacy group for restaurant workers, told Al Jazeera.

The bill also introduces work requirements to receive benefits, saying that recipients must prove they work, volunteer or are enrolled in school for at least 80 hours each month.

At the same time, the bill also shortens the open enrolment period by a month for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. This means people who have employer-funded healthcare and lose their job might lose eligibility to buy a private plan on the healthcare exchange.

“It’s taking folks like 11 to 12 weeks to find a new job. The worse the labour market gets, that number will tick up. If you’re unemployed for three months, you get kicked off Medicaid,” Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collective, told Al Jazeera.

“Then, if you try to go buy a plan on the ACA marketplace, you are no longer eligible for subsidies … which I think is really cruel.”

Other major proposed cuts will hit programmes like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme or SNAP, which helps 42 million low-income individuals afford groceries and comes at a time when food costs are still 2 percent higher than a year ago. The CBO found that 3 million people could lose SNAP access under the new plan.

The bill would also force states to take up more responsibility in funding the programmes. States would be required to cover 75 percent of the administrative costs, and all states would have to pay at least 5 percent of the benefits — 28 states would need to pay 25 percent.

“States are now going to be on the hook for billions of dollars in funding for these two vital programmes. They have a tough choice. One is, do they cut funding from others like K-12 education, roads, veteran services, etc, to cover this gap, or do they raise taxes so that they can raise more revenue to cover this gap,” Pancotti added.

Under the current law, the federal government is solely responsible for shouldering the cost of benefits. The proposed cuts would save $300bn for the federal government but hit state budgets hard.

Bill fuels Trump administration priorities

The bill would also cut the $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicle purchases and $4,000 for a used EV, a move which could hurt several major US automakers that are already reeling from the administration’s tariffs on automobiles.

General Motors pumped billions into domestic EV production in the last year, which has included a $900m investment to retrofit an existing plant to build electric vehicles in Michigan and alongside Samsung, the carmaker invested $3.5bn in EV battery manufacturing in the US.

In February, Ford CEO Jim Farley said that revoking the EV tax credit could put factory jobs on the chopping block. The carmaker invested in three EV battery plants in Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. The federal government under the administration of former President Joe Biden paid out more than $2bn in EV tax credits in 2024.

The proposed legislation would also give the Trump administration authority to revoke the tax exempt status of nonprofit organisations that it deems as a “terrorist supporting organisation”. It would give the secretary of the treasury the ability to accuse any nonprofit of supporting “terrorism”, revoke their tax exempt status without allowing them due process to prove otherwise, which has raised serious concerns amongst critics.

“This measure’s real intent lurks behind its hyperbolic and unsubstantiated anti-terrorist rhetoric: It would allow the Treasury Department to explicitly target, harass and investigate thousands of U.S. organizations that make up civil society, including nonprofit newsrooms,” Jenna Ruddock, advocacy director of Free Press Action, said in a statement.

“The bill’s language lacks any meaningful safeguards against abuse. Instead it puts the burden of proof on organizations rather than on the government. It’s not hard to imagine how the Trump administration would use it to exact revenge on groups that have raised questions about or simply angered the president and other officials in his orbit.”

The bill would introduce new taxes on colleges, including a varying tax rate based on the size of a university’s endowment per student with the highest at 14 percent for universities with a per student endowment of more than $1.25m but less than $2m and 21 percent for those of $2m or more.

This comes amid the Trump administration’s increased tensions with higher education. In the last week, the Trump administration pulled $450m in grants to Harvard on top of the $2.2bn it pulled in April — a move which will hinder research into cancer and heart disease, among other areas. Harvard has an endowment of $53.2bn, making it one of the richest schools in the country.

The legislation would also increase funding for a border wall between the US and Mexico, which the administration has argued will help curb undocumented immigration. However, there is no evidence that such a wall has deterred border crossings.

A 2018 analysis from Stanford University found that a border wall would only curb migration by 0.6 percent, yet the bill would give more than $50bn to finish the border wall and maritime crossings. The bill would also provide $45bn for building and maintaining detention facilities and another $14bn for transport.

Puchong, Malaysia – On a recent Sunday morning, about a dozen men with fishing nets skirted the rubbish-strewn banks of the Klang River just outside the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Surveying the river, the men cast their nets into the polluted water. The nets billowed open and sunk quickly under the weight of metal chains.

From where they stood on the riverbank, they started to pull in their nets, already filled with dozens of squirming black-bodied catfish.

“You don’t see any other fish. Only these,” said Mohamad Haziq A Rahman, the leader of Malaysia’s “foreign fish hunter squad”, as they emptied their catch of wriggling suckermouth catfish into piles, away from the river.

None of the fish caught that morning were sold at nearby markets or food stalls. The sole purpose of the expedition was to cull suckermouth catfish, one among a growing number of invasive species that have in recent decades dominated freshwater habitats across Southeast Asia.

Once brought in for commercial or hobbyist reasons, invasive fish are not only threatening to edge native species out of the food chain in Malaysia and elsewhere, but they also spread diseases and cause great damage to local environments.

Invasive fish are a problem the world over, but experts say the issue is keenly felt in mega-biodiverse Malaysia.

“More than 80 percent of rivers in the Klang Valley have been invaded by foreign fish species, which can cause the extinction of the rivers’ indigenous aquatic life,” said Dr Kalithasan Kailasam, a river expert with the Malaysia-based Global Environment Centre.

“It’s growing in almost all other main rivers in Malaysia,” said Kailasam, explaining how species such as the suckermouth have the potential to quickly reproduce and survive in dirty water, leaving local fish on the losing side.

Aside from the suckermouth, Malaysia’s waterways are now threatened by species such as the aggressive peacock bass, Javanese carp and redtail catfish, he said.

While the full extent of the problem is not yet known, Malaysia’s fisheries department, after a four-year study until 2024, found invasive species in 39 areas across nearly every state in peninsular Malaysia and on the island of Labuan, including in dams, lakes and major rivers.

Alarmed by the threat, a small group of citizens banded together to fight the aquatic invaders.

Led by Haziq, they are working to reclaim Malaysia’s rivers one fin at a time.

Invasive fish invasion

The citizen fish hunters’ quest to fight invasive species started during the country’s COVID-19 lockdowns, when Haziq, a former healthcare consultant, turned to fishing as a pastime in a river near his house in central Selangor state. He found every fish he caught was of the suckermouth variety, also known as the “pleco” or “ikan bandaraya” – which translates as the “janitor fish” in Malay and is favoured by hobbyists to keep aquariums clean, as the suckermouth feeds on algae, leftover food and dead fish.

Native to South America, varieties of the suckermouth have also been introduced into waterways in the United States, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, often when owners dump them into rivers, canals, dams or free them after they grow too large for their aquarium tanks.

Because of their thick, scaly skin, suckermouths are usually avoided by even larger predators in Malaysia, and can grow to about half a metre (1.6ft) in length.

As bottom feeders, the catfish have been known to eat the eggs of other species and destroy their nesting sites. Catfish also burrow into riverbanks to nest, causing them to erode and collapse, which is a serious environmental issue in flood-prone Malaysia where year-end monsoon winds bring heavy rain.

Malaysia’s central bank said in 2024 that floods are the cause of 85 percent of the country’s natural disasters, with their frequency increasing since 2020.­

Though far from his favourite fish to catch, Haziq discovered that suckerfish roe could be used as bait for other bigger fish, and he earned some money selling their eggs to other fishing enthusiasts. He also gained a following by putting his exploits on social media. Further research then led him to learn about the threats posed by invasive species.

Harziq started to attract like-minded anglers, and, in 2022, they decided to form a group for hunting suckermouth, meeting nearly every week in a river to carry out a cull.

Their public profile and popularity are growing. The group’s membership has now grown to more than 1,000, and it has a strong fan following on social media.

“People kept asking how to join our group, because we were looking at the ecosystem,” Haziq said.

Focusing first on Malaysia’s Selangor state and rivers in the capital Kuala Lumpur, the fish hunter squad netted nearly 31 tonnes of suckermouths alone in 2024. They have also visited rivers in other states in Malaysia as their campaign expands.

Dispose, use for research, or cook and eat?

During a hunt in the Klang River earlier this year, Haziq and his comrades deployed to the river’s banks on a mission to see how many suckermouth they could catch during a single outing.

But hunting for invasive fish can be tricky. Without boats, the hunters have to wade into the fast-moving polluted waters from muddy banks, while navigating underwater debris such as rubbish on the riverbed.

Almost all the fish they caught were of the invasive kind, but once in a while, they do net a local.

“Haruan (snakehead)!” shouted ex-navy diver Syuhaily Hasibullah, 46, as he showed off a small fish half the size of his arm, taken from a net containing several suckermouths.

“This one is rare! There used to be a lot of them in the river,” he told Al Jazeera.

Haziq said if the hunters found many invasive species in their nets, they would organise another outing to the same location, bringing along more people to take part.

The day they set out to calculate how many invasive fish they could catch in a single outing turned out to yield half a tonne of suckermouth in just three hours – so many they had to stuff them into sacks.

Previously, the hunters buried their hauls in deep holes away from the river. Now, they have found more creative ways to dispose of what is, generally, an unwanted fish.

At the event earlier this year, sacks of suckermouths were handed over to a local entrepreneur looking to experiment with turning the fish into a form of charcoal known as biochar.

Some local universities have also started researching the possible use of the suckermouth. One university research article explored the potential of suckermouth collagen for pharmaceutical use, while another considered its use as fertiliser or even as a type of leather.

On some occasions, the hunters even eat the fish they catch, though that depends on which river they have been taken from.

While redtail or African catfish are considered delicacies by some, the suckermouth, also known in India as “devil fish”, is a less attractive snacking option – but not out of the question when it comes to a quick riverside grill.

“If the fish is from the Klang River, we don’t eat it,” Mohd Zulkifli Mokhtar told Al Jazeera, before dozens of hunters broke their fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

“But if it’s from the Langat River, it’s still OK,” Zulkifli said, as dozens of suckermouth caught in the less polluted Langat River, located in Bangi some 25km (16 miles) south of Kuala Lumpur, were gutted, marinated in satay and grilled on skewers.

Studies from Bangladesh and Indonesia have found varieties of catfish with high levels of heavy metals and contaminants. A 2024 article by Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi Mara cited a study that showed the level of contaminants in the suckermouth was “heavily influenced by the level of pollution in the river”.

‘If we don’t act now, it would be worse’

While Malaysia’s fisheries department said there were no records of local species becoming endangered because of invasive ones, native fish nevertheless face threats.

Local fish either faced becoming prey or have had to fight to survive, with the department finding in a survey that 90 percent of the fish in six rivers in the Selangor and Kuala Lumpur region were now foreign arrivals.

The department’s Director-General Adnan Hussain said various measures had been put in place, including the release of some 33.6 million native fish and prawns into rivers nationwide from 2021 to 2025 to “balance the impact” of invasive fish.

Late last year, the state government of Selangor also came up with a scheme to pay anglers one Malaysian ringgit ($0.23) for every kilogramme (2.2lb) of the suckermouth fish removed from two rivers. The captured fish were to be turned into animal feed and organic fertiliser, an official said.

Restrictions on the import of certain foreign aquatic species – including entire species and groups – into Malaysia were also imposed last year, and he added that programmes and collaboration with the fish hunters had also helped to deal with the problem.

In one river in Selangor state, Adnan said the amount of invasive fish caught following one eradication programme had dropped from 600kg (1,300lb) in a May 2024 event to just more than 150kg (330lb) four or five months later.

However, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu fish researcher Professor Amirrudin Ahmad said it was “almost impossible” to fully exterminate the country’s invasive fish.

“So many species live in (native water bodies) and getting rid of invasive species by the means of poisoning the water is not feasible at all,” he said, adding there were close to 80 recorded fish species introduced in Malaysia so far.

He further warned that rising temperatures caused by climate change may even allow species like the predatory Mekong redtail catfish to proliferate in cooler upstream waters in Malaysia.

“They are here to stay,” Amirrudin said.

“It is simply,” he said, “that the environment is mostly similar to their native country, or these species are highly adaptable.”

That this is an ecological war that can never truly be won is a point that Haziq and his fellow fish hunters are fully aware of. Nearly every river they visited in recent times had almost nothing but invasive fish, he said.

But their mission will carry on, he added, along with the hunting and public awareness that has spurred thousands to follow his social media videos on the subject.

“Yes, this fish won’t be completely gone from our rivers,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But if we don’t act now, it would be worse,” he said.

“It’s better to take action than to just leave it alone,” he added.

“At least we can reduce the population, than allow it to completely take over our local fish.”

Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox is gearing up to be part of the cast of a TV show for the first time since 2020, after his health condition deteriorated

Michael J. Fox has announced his exciting return to television as he prepares for a guest role in the popular Apple+ comedy show Shrinking. The series revolves around the lives of three psychiatrists, played by Harrison Ford, Jason Segel, and Jessica Williams.

The main characters, Dr Paul, Jimmy, and Gaby, all support each other through their own personal struggles as they work to help their patients in sometimes unconventional ways. Fox’s role in the third season of the series has not been revealed yet, but there is a possibility that it will be linked to Dr Paul’s ongoing Parkinson’s storyline.

Fox himself stepped away from acting as his Parkinson’s symptoms worsened in 2020, and he started to experience issues with his speech. He was diagnosed with the neurological disease three decades ago, and fans have theorised that his character will address what it is like to live with Parkinson’s on-screen, given Dr Paul’s season two character arc focused on his health struggles and fears that he would have to walk away from psychiatry.

This stint on Shrinking will also mean the Hollywood A-lister gets to collaborate with the show’s co-creator Bill Lawrence again, after they previously both worked on Spin City.

Lawrence previously admitted that Fox influenced his portrayal of Dr Paul’s battle with Parkinson’s on Shrinking, saying: “It’s cool to get to write about things you care about now. And Michael J Fox is my first mentor. So we wanted to represent it in hopefully an inspiring and not sad or tragic way.

“I found the first mentor in my life and career, Michael J Fox, to be so inspiring. The way he took it in stride and continues to work harder than anybody I know. And we want to kind of carry that spirit if we can into the show.”

The last TV show Fox starred in was American legal drama The Good Fight, which is about a lawyer who loses her life savings after being scammed and is forced to start again.

His last big film role was in the 2019 sci-fi blockbuster See You Yesterday as Mr Lockhart, the science teacher of the two teen leads who attempt to crack time travel.

The Back to the Future star has reportedly been managing his Parkinson’s symptoms with the drug carbidopa/levodopa, and he is also said to have had a thalamotomy in 1998.

He previously spoke about how “tough” it is to live with the disease, telling The Guardian : “It didn’t defeat me. I wish it was a heroic thing. I’m not saying: ‘Yeah! Bring it, bring it!’

“I hate it. It sucks. It’s a piece of s**t. It’s tough to get up in the morning and keep going. But I have a beautiful family and this office with trophies.”

He also shared that being unable to act was “a struggle”, adding: “It’s very difficult. I get sick of talking about me. I know me too well.”

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Days earlier, Novo Nordisk cut its sales and profit forecast for first time since the launch of Wegovy four years ago.

Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk has pushed out CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen over concerns the company is losing its first-mover advantage in the highly competitive obesity drug market.

Novo Nordisk announced the decision on Friday.

Days earlier, Novo Nordisk cut its sales and profit forecast for the first time since the launch of Wegovy four years ago, though Jorgensen had predicted a return to growth in its biggest market in the second half of this year.

Novo’s chairman, Helge Lund, tried to reassure analysts and investors on a call that the company’s strategy was intact and the plan for executing it had not changed.

He told the Reuters news agency that discussions to replace Jorgensen had occurred over the past few weeks. Novo said earlier that Jorgensen will remain in his role until a successor is found.

Under Jorgensen’s leadership, Novo Nordisk became a world leader in the weight-loss drug market, with skyrocketing sales of its Wegovy and Ozempic treatments.

Analysts and investors were unconvinced of the need to replace him.

“He was leading the company for eight years and was, in my opinion, extremely successful,” Lukas Leu, a portfolio manager at Bellevue Asset Management, told Reuters.

Danske Bank analyst Carsten Lonborg Madsen was similarly caught off guard.

“The way we know Novo Nordisk is that normally you have patience when you’re on the right track, and then you let things move in the right direction once you have the strategy right,” he said.

“It just feels like there’s something that has gone pretty wrong here,” he said on the call.

Novo’s shares have plunged since hitting a record high in June last year as competition, particularly from US rival Eli Lilly, makes inroads into its market share and as its pipeline of new drugs has failed to impress investors.

“The changes are made in light of the recent market challenges Novo Nordisk has been facing, and the development of the company’s share price since mid-2024,” Novo said in its statement.

Shares down

Jorgensen, at 58, has been CEO since 2017. He said in an interview with Danish broadcaster TV2 that he did not see the decision coming, and was only informed very recently.

Booming sales of Wegovy helped make Novo the most valuable listed company in Europe, worth $615bn at its peak in June last year, but its market value has halved to about $310bn.

Novo Nordisk’s share price fell on the news, trading 0.8 percent lower by 14:01 GMT after being 4 percent higher earlier in the day.

The shares are down 32 percent year-to-date and 59 percent from their all-time high.

Eli Lilly has seen US prescriptions for its Zepbound obesity shot surpass Wegovy since mid-March in its biggest market. Eli Lilly shares were up 2.6 percent after the news.

Camilla Sylvest, Novo’s head of commercial strategy and corporate affairs and a consistent presence alongside CEO Jorgensen, stepped down last month without citing a reason.

Former CEO of Novo Nordisk for 16 years and current chair of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Lars Rebien Sorensen, will join the board as an observer with immediate effect with the aim of taking a seat at the next annual general meeting, Novo said.

The company is controlled by the Novo Nordisk Foundation through its investment arm, which owns 77 percent of the voting shares.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is carrying out a criminal investigation into UnitedHealth Group for possible Medicare fraud.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) first broke the story on Wednesday.

UnitedHealth said it had not been notified by the DOJ about the “supposed criminal investigation reported”, and the company stood by “the integrity of our Medicare Advantage program”.

The DOJ’s healthcare-fraud unit is overseeing the criminal investigation, which focuses on the company’s Medicare Advantage business practices, WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

While the exact nature of the potential criminal allegations against UnitedHealth is unclear, it has been an active probe since at least last summer, the newspaper said.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment to the WSJ about the fresh criminal probe. The department did not immediately respond to requests for comments from the Reuters news agency.

Last week, UnitedHealth said in a regular filing that it had been “involved or is currently involved in various governmental investigations, audits and reviews”, without disclosing further details.

The new investigation follows broader scrutiny into the Medicare Advantage programme, in which Medicare-approved plans from a private company supplement regular Medicare for Americans age 65 and older by covering more services that the government-only plans do not, such as dental and vision services.

In February, the WSJ reported a civil fraud investigation into UnitedHealth’s Medicare practices. The company had then said that it was unaware of any new probe.

In the same month, US Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa launched an inquiry into UnitedHealth’s Medicare billing practices, requesting detailed records of the company’s compliance programme and other related documents.

The DOJ earlier this month filed a lawsuit accusing three of the largest US health insurers of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to brokers in exchange for steering patients into the insurers’ Medicare Advantage plans.

Nearly half of the 65 million people covered by Medicare, the US programme for people aged 65 and older or with disabilities, are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans run by private insurers.

The insurers are paid a set rate for each patient, but can be paid more if patients have multiple health conditions. Standard Medicare coverage is managed by the government.

Brewing turmoil

The health insurer has been under pressure for months. On Tuesday, UnitedHealth Group’s CEO, Andrew Witty, stepped down unexpectedly, and the company simultaneously suspended its 2025 financial forecast due to rising medical costs, triggering an 18 percent drop in shares to a four-year low.

Stephen Hemsley, who led the company for more than a decade until 2017, is taking back the reins following setbacks including the December murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of its insurance unit, which catapulted UnitedHealth into the public consciousness.

On Thursday, after the news of the probe broke, UnitedHealth Group shares plunged 18 percent to hit a five-year low.

“The stock is already in the doghouse with investors, and additional uncertainty will only pile on,” James Harlow, senior vice president at Novare Capital Management, which owns shares in UnitedHealth, told the news agency Reuters.

If losses hold, UnitedHealth will be the worst-performing stock on the S&P 500 index in two of the last three days.

The past month’s selloff has wiped out nearly $300bn from UnitedHealth’s market capitalization, or more than half of its value since its shares hit a record high in November.

I created my first Instagram account in March 2015 when I was 13 years old. Back then, social media was just a space for me to share photos of my cats and keep an eye on whatever One Direction was up to. Fast forward 10 years, and social media is now a tool I use to keep in touch with family and follow along with politics – while still, of course, sharing photos of my cat.

I’ve always had quite a toxic relationship with social media. I’ve gone back and forth on the idea of deleting all of my accounts and never touching an app again, but I could never bring myself to do it. As someone who has moved cross country multiple times, I don’t want to lose contact with almost everyone I grew up with, and social media is an amazing tool to discover and connect with LGBTQIA+ communities that I wouldn’t have otherwise found. The truth is, I’d feel extremely lonely if it wasn’t for social media.

Though it’s important to me to keep up with current events, the whiplash of scrolling from a cute guinea pig video to a violent debate over basic human rights was starting to have a serious effect on my mental health. I was doom scrolling more than ever, to the point where I needed to put a one hour screen time limit on certain apps for my own sanity.

So, I decided to create myself a digital safe space, a place where I could access the positive, uplifting side of social media, while avoiding the content that was impacting my mental health.

I recently created a brand new account to share my artwork, but I made an effort to only follow other artists and regularly search for arty advice, tips and tricks. The algorithm must have caught on pretty quickly, because suddenly my explore page was entirely made up of artists and small business owners who were sharing their incredible artwork and uplifting each other. All of a sudden I was in a space that was wholeheartedly positive, creative and inspiring.

This wasn’t at all what I was used to on my personal account, which was rampant with politics and people arguing with each other. Of course, the concept of having a second Instagram account wasn’t something that was new to me – I’ve had an account specifically for sharing sunset photography, one for special effects makeup and various “aesthetic accounts” – but this was the first time I intentionally curated an algorithm. It just so happened to be an overwhelmingly positive community I chose to seek out.

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans alike raised concerns on Wednesday about deep staffing cuts, funding freezes and far-reaching policy changes overseen by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned Kennedy’s approach to the job, some saying that he has jeopardized vaccine uptake, cancer research and dental health in just a few short months.

In combative and at times highly personal rejoinders, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s dramatic effort to reshape the sprawling, $1.7-trillion-a-year agency, saying it would deliver a more efficient department focused on promoting healthier lifestyles among Americans.

“There’s so much chaos and disorganization in this department,” Kennedy said on Wednesday during the Senate hearing. “What we’re saying is let’s organize in a way that we can quickly adopt and deploy all these opportunities we have to really deliver high-quality healthcare to the American people.”

During tense exchanges, lawmakers — in back-to-back House and Senate hearings — sometimes questioned whether Kennedy was aware of his actions and the structure of his own department after he struggled to provide more details about staffing cuts.

“I have noted you’ve been unable, in most instances, to answer any specific questions related to your agency,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat.

The secretary, in turn, pushed back — saying he had not had time to answer specific questions — and at points questioning lawmakers’ own grasp of health policy.

Kennedy testified to explain his downsizing of the department — from 82,000 to 62,000 staffers — and argue on behalf of the White House’s requested budget, which includes a $500-million boost for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative to promote nutrition and healthier lifestyles while making deep cuts to infectious disease prevention, medical research and maternal health programs.

He revealed that he persuaded the White House to back down from one major cut: Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for low-income families across the country.

But lawmakers described how thousands of job losses at the health department and funding freezes have impacted their districts.

One Washington state mother, Natalie, has faced delays in treatment for Stage 4 cancer at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. The clinical center is the research-only hospital commonly known as the “House of Hope,” but when Murray asked Kennedy to explain how many jobs have been lost there, he could not answer. The president’s budget proposes a nearly $20-billion slash from the NIH.

“You are here to defend cutting the NIH by half,” Murray said. “Do you genuinely believe that won’t result in more stories like Natalie’s?” Kennedy disputed Murray’s account.

Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman of New Jersey asked “why, why, why?” Kennedy would lay off nearly all the staff who oversee the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4.1 billion in heating assistance to needy families. The program is slated to be eliminated from the agency’s budget.

Kennedy said that advocates warned him those cuts “will end up killing people,” but that President Trump believes his energy policy will lower costs. If that doesn’t work, Kennedy said, he would restore funding for the program.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska, said those savings would be realized too late for people in her state.

“Right now, folks in Alaska still need those ugly generators to keep warm,” she said.

Murkowski was one of several Republicans who expressed concerns about Kennedy’s approach to the job throughout the hearings.

Like several Republicans, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee praised Kennedy for his work promoting healthy foods. But he raised concerns about whether the secretary has provided adequate evidence that artificial food dyes are bad for diets. Removing those food dyes would hurt the “many snack manufacturers” in his district, including the makers of M&M’s candy, he said.

Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist from Idaho, said Kennedy’s plan to remove fluoride recommendations for drinking water alarms him. The department’s news release on Tuesday, which announced the Food and Drug Administration plans to remove fluoride supplements for children from the market, wrongly claimed that fluoride “kills bacteria from the teeth,” Simpson noted. He explained to Kennedy that fluoride doesn’t kill bacteria in the mouth but instead makes tooth enamel more resistant to decay.

“I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride … we better put a lot more money into dental education because we’re going to need a lot more dentists,” Simpson added.

Kennedy was pressed repeatedly on the mixed message he’s delivered on vaccines, which public health experts have said are hampering efforts to contain a growing measles outbreak now in at least 11 states.

Responding to Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, Kennedy refused to recommend that parents follow the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule, which includes shots for measles, polio and whooping cough. He, instead, wrongly claimed that the vaccines have not been safety tested against a placebo.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the health committee, had extracted a number of guarantees from Kennedy that he would not alter existing vaccine guidance and work at the nation’s health department. Cassidy, correcting Kennedy, pointed out that rotavirus, measles and HPV vaccines recommended for children have all been tested in a placebo study.

As health secretary, Kennedy has called the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — a shot given to children to provide immunity from all three diseases — “leaky,” although it offers lifetime protection from the measles for most people. He’s also said they cause deaths, although none has been documented among healthy people.

“You have undermined the vital role vaccines play in preventing disease during the single, largest measles outbreak in 25 years,” independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said.

Seitz writes for the Associated Press.

May 14 (UPI) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. defended proposed 2026 budget reductions during separate House and Senate committee budget hearings on Wednesday.

Kennedy started the morning by fielding questions from members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies.

Chairman Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., opened the hearing by acknowledging President Donald Trump‘s efforts to enforce the border and its effect on community health and safety.

“The president’s success in securing our border directly benefits public health by reducing the incoming flow of illicit drugs, like fentanyl, which has fallen by 54% since this time last year,” Aderholt said. “That’s no small thing.”

He also commended the Trump administration for reducing the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border and said he wants to hear Kennedy’s ideas for reforming the Department of Health and Human Services and its sub-agencies.

‘Disastrous’ program funding reductions

Ranking Member Rep. Rose DeLauro, D-Conn., was less conciliatory and referred to the Trump administration’s budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services as “disastrous.”

DeLauro said the proposed budget would reduce funding for health programs by $33 billion.

The proposed HHS budget for the 2026 fiscal year is $93.8 billion, which is a 26.2% reduction from the current budget and includes funding reductions across most programs.

“I view it as a disgrace,” DeLauro said. “Under your budget proposal, Americans would die needless and preventable deaths.”

DeLauro cited funding cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and accused Kennedy and the Department of Government Efficiency Director Elon Musk of “eliminating entire divisions without consideration for what is being lost.”

The cuts “affect families and communities” and “are dangerous,” DeLauro said.

Kennedy said his goal is to make America healthy again by focusing on the “chronic disease epidemic.”

HHS also seeks to deliver more effective and efficient services for Americans who rely on Medicaid, Medicare and other programs while reducing costs for taxpayers, Kennedy said.

During the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee budget hearing Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy said states and localities can do a better job of responding to disasters at the state and local levels than the federal government.

He cited Florida’s success in handling hurricanes Helene and Milton last year, with no lives lost there, as an example and said the federal government should focus on national disasters.

Drug prices and healthcare as a human right

Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., asked Kennedy if he is willing to work to make drug prices in the United States the lowest in the world, to which Kennedy said he is.

Sanders then asked Kennedy if healthcare is a “human right.”

Kennedy said healthcare is not part of the rights enumerated in the Constitution and called it more of a philosophical matter.

Sanders responded by saying “every other country guarantees healthcare” as a right and said Americans don’t want the choice to be uninsured or not have the ability to see a doctor.

Kennedy said “Obamacare” is not working and he and President Trump want to enable everyone to be insured and have access to quality healthcare.

Sanders then cited proposed cuts to programs that serve middle-class and poor Americans and claimed they would end healthcare coverage for 13 million Americans.

Kennedy said the cuts only are for waste and denied they would affect coverage for Americans.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., followed Sanders and cited examples of wasteful programs that the proposed budget would eliminate.

They include a recent study on the effects of cocaine on lab rats and another study that showed about half of biological males who medically transition to female believe they can get pregnant, the senator said.

Gain-of-function research and COVID-19

Paul also said bipartisan support exists for better controlling gain-of-function research on Ebola, avian flu and other infectious diseases and the potential dangers they pose to Americans.

The senator cited a research study that would put Ebola in an aerosol as a potential biological weapon, which he said could be potentially very dangerous to the general public.

Paul asked Kennedy if HHS would be transparent in gain-of-function research regulations and protect Americans from potentially deadly outbreaks.

Kennedy said HHS would be “absolutely transparent” in regulating gain-of-function research and “bring the public in on the debate.”

He also said National Institutes of Health research “almost certainly” caused the COVID-19 pandemic through gain-of-function research.

Lack of access to critical care

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said she opposes staffing reductions at the NIH and cited a constituent with stage-four cancer who recently was told her treatment would be delayed by four weeks due to staffing shortages.

Kennedy offered to intervene on that person’s behalf and ensure she receives needed care right away.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., accused Kennedy of “hiding information” from the American people and asked if he believes lead poisoning is a problem.

Kennedy said he thinks it’s a very serious problem, but Baldwin said “the entire lead-poisoning program staff has been fired.”

She asked if Kennedy intends to eliminate the program that helps communities address lead poisoning, which he said will not happen.

She also said HHS has provided about $1 billion less in Head Start program funding and asked why there are funding delays.

“There should not be any delays,” Kennedy said. “The funding is there.”

He suggested staffers who want to make the Trump administration look bad are slowing down disbursements for Head Start and similar programs.

The House and Senate hearings were held before a vote on a proposed 2026 federal government budget measure that Trump has referred to as “one big, beautiful bill.”

Protesters arrested for disrupting hearing

While the Senate hearing was underway, Ben & Jerry’s co-owner and co-founder Ben Cohen and six others were arrested for disrupting the hearing, Axios reported.

Cohen and the others were protesting the United States’ support of Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza.

The protesters yelled, “RFK kills people with hate!” before Capitol Police escorted them from the room.

They were arrested and charged with crowding, obstructing proceedings or incommoding.

Some protesters also were charged with assaulting a police officer or resisting arrest, but Cohen was not among those so charged.

Fault Lines and Mother Jones magazine investigate how a private equity firm gutted a major United States hospital chain in pursuit of profit, leaving patients without critical care and families shattered.

The film follows Nabil Haque, whose wife died after childbirth at a Boston hospital that lacked essential equipment. It also tells the story of Lisa Malick, whose newborn daughter died after delays at a Florida facility that lacked a functioning neonatal intensive care unit. Together, their stories reveal the devastating consequences of turning healthcare into a business.

The investigation uncovers how Steward Health Care executives drained hospitals of resources, saddled them with crushing debt and triggered one of the largest hospital bankruptcies in US history – while walking away with millions.

That “little bit” of progress was the start of a long journey.

Suppiah, with help from the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), a team of experts and his girlfriend and her family, realised something had to change.

“You do know that you have to eat and you have to get better, otherwise your organs will fail you,” said Suppiah, who was born in Malaysia and came to England to further his cricket and attend Millfield School.

Slow and steady was the key. He would eat eight small meals a day with the aim of returning to a healthy weight, but the journey to recovery was not a straight line.

“In the first instance I was recovering for the wrong reasons,” he said. “I was recovering because I didn’t want to let anyone down or I was doing it because I had no choice.

“My recovery was very up and down. I would sometimes put on weight, then I’d lose weight and vice-versa.

“Then I realised that actually, I’m just kidding myself and what I had to find out was the recovery was for my own good and for my own purpose. That’s when I started to believe in and trust the process.”

For Suppiah, that process included reading online case studies, discovering real-life stories and attending local support groups in the community. “I needed to connect with somebody else who was going through the same,” he said.

President makes push to bring down drug prices that have long been a source of financial strain for US patients.

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that he says will bring down the price of prescription drugs in the US by as much as 90 percent.

In an announcement on Monday, Trump said drug companies who have been “profiteering” will have to bring prices down but laid the blame for high prices primarily on foreign countries.

“We’re going to equalise,” Trump said during a news conference. “We’re all going to pay the same. We’re going to pay what Europe pays.”

People in the US have long been an outlier when it comes to the prices they pay for numerous types of life-saving medication, often paying several times more than their peers in other rich countries for nearly identical drugs.

That phenomenon is often attributed to the substantial economic and political influence that the pharmaceutical industry wields in the US.

The high cost of medical drugs has been a source of popular discontent in the US for years, and Trump accused the pharmaceutical industry of “getting away with murder” in 2017.

But in his remarks on Monday, the US leader also seemed to say that US pharmaceutical companies were not ultimately to blame for the difference in prices. Trump instead framed those high prices in the familiar terms of a trade imbalance with partners such as the European Union and said the US has been “subsidising” lower drug prices in other nations.

That perspective seems to align with the framing of the pharmaceutical industry itself. The industry’s most powerful lobbying arm stated the cause of high prices for US consumers is “foreign countries not paying their fair share”.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a left-wing politician who has railed against the high prices paid by US patients for years, said Trump’s order wrongly blames foreign countries rather than US companies for those prices.

“I agree with President Trump: it is an outrage that the American people pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.

“But let’s be clear: the problem is not that the price of prescription drugs is too low in Europe and Canada. The problem is that the extraordinarily greedy pharmaceutical industry made over $100bn in profits last year by ripping off the American people.”

A fact sheet shared by the White House said the administration will “communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal”.

The stock prices of US drugmakers ticked upwards after the announcement. Experts have cast doubt on Trump’s optimistic assertion that drug prices would drop quickly and substantially.

“It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point which is not known,” Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, told The Associated Press news agency.

“If they do not lower their prices to the desired point, HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] shall take other actions with a very long timeline, some of which could potentially, years in the future, lower drug prices.”

The advice comes from a Financial Crime Manager, who explained how scammers are targeting holidaymakers

An expert is urging Brits to research deals before booking vacations after over £11 million was lost to holiday fraud in 2024. Siobhan Blagbrough, Financial Crime Manager at Ocean Finance, explained: “Everyone’s looking for a bargain break, and that makes us more likely to rush into things without checking the details properly.

“Fraudsters take advantage of the seasonal demand by posting fake listings, posing as landlords or travel agents, and demanding upfront payments for holidays that don’t exist.” She also warned against a Global Health Insurance Card scam, adding: “We’re also seeing people being tricked into paying for Global Health Insurance Cards (GHICs), which are free through the NHS.”

As per the NHS website, “The UK Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) lets you get necessary state healthcare in the European Economic Area (EEA), and some other countries, on the same basis as a resident of that country (…) A UK GHIC is free and lasts for up to 5 years. Apply for your new card through the NHS website. Avoid unofficial websites – they may charge you a fee to apply.”

Unfortunately, it’s not the only scam aimed at UK holidaymakers. Siobhan said: “The most common trick is to pile on the pressure, scammers love using urgency to force quick decisions. If a deal seems too good to be true, take a step back and research before you book.”

Below, the expert shared five of the biggest holiday scams to watch out for.

Fake accommodation listings

Siobhan warned: “Fraudsters will post holiday homes that don’t exist or aren’t available for rent, taking payments upfront before disappearing. These listings often appear on social media or lesser-known websites. Always double-check the listing by running a reverse image search and booking through trusted platforms.”

Clone comparison sites

“Some scammers go to great lengths to build fake versions of well-known holiday comparison or airline sites. They look almost identical but are set up purely to steal your payment details. Double-check the web URL and look out for subtle misspellings or unusual domain names,” the expert warned.

Bogus travel agents

“You might get a message from a ‘travel expert’ offering a last-minute deal that feels too good to ignore. They may even send what looks like a real booking confirmation,” the pro explained. “But behind the scenes, there’s no flight or hotel reservation. If they insist on a bank transfer or pressure you to book fast, walk away.”

Social media bargains

Siobhan said: “Many scammers use Facebook or Instagram to post holiday deals, but clicking through often leads to fake booking pages or demands for advance payments. They might say ‘only two spots left’ or ‘another family is interested’, but this urgency is all part of the scam.”

Fake GHIC websites

“Applying for a Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) through the NHS website is free, but scam websites sometimes charge a £30 – £40 fee to ‘process’ your application. These fake sites look professional and often rank high on search results, so it’s easy to be fooled,” the expert said.

How to protect your money

Siobhan suggested sticking to trusted sites and companies, paying by credit card for extra protection, and not ignoring warning signs. “If a deal looks unusually cheap for the time of year or destination, slow down and look a bit closer. Check whether the company is part of a recognised travel association like ABTA or ATOL. Even searching the company name with the word ‘scam’ can bring up useful results,” she said.

The expert added: “If you think you’ve been scammed, act fast. Contact your bank straight away – if the payment hasn’t gone through yet, they might be able to stop it. If it has, they can talk you through what to do next. It’s also important to report the scam to Action Fraud and Citizens Advice, and if the scam came via email, forward it to [email protected].”