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Euractiv
3 hours ago
- Health
- Euractiv
USAID condoms and contraceptives worth $10 million at risk in Belgian warehouse
Ten million dollars (€8.6 million) worth of unused condoms and other contraceptives from the US development agency USAID are sitting in a warehouse in Belgium, facing possible destruction as the agency winds down. The stockpile in Geel, Belgium, includes 26 million condoms, millions of contraceptive pills, thousands of implants, two million injectable doses, and 50,000 bottles of HIV prevention medication, according to The Washington Post , which first reported the story. NGOs have attempted to negotiate with the Trump administration to prevent the destruction of the supplies, a process that would cost Washington around €145,000. Yet several sources told the WSJ that the talks have so far failed to produce results. 'If that doesn't work, it just becomes waste,' commented a source close to the talks, quoted by AFP. USAID, once the largest single funder of global humanitarian aid, had an annual budget nearing €40 billion. On January 20, 2025, President Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on foreign aid. Two weeks later, Elon Musk, one of his top advisers at the time, announced the shutdown of the agency's global health programmes. By March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that 83% of USAID programmes would be terminated. On 1 July, the agency's remaining operations were folded into the State Department. As a result, the US is no longer the world's top humanitarian donor. That role has shifted to the European Union, which has ramped up aid efforts to fill the gap left by the United States. In 2023, 67% of USAID's contraceptives were sent to African countries, where pregnancy and HIV remain major causes of death among women and girls. The Guttmacher Institute has warned that the USAID cuts could result in 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and over 8,000 maternal deaths in 2025. (bms, de)
Washington Post
4 hours ago
- General
- Washington Post
New and improved political canvassing databases
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New York Post
4 hours ago
- Climate
- New York Post
Treacherous flood threats linger over Gulf Coast with potential tropical storm brewing over region
The risk of dangerous flooding continues along the Gulf Coast from a no-name storm system that could lead to days of an enhanced flood risk along and north of the Interstate 10 corridor. The system, identified as Invest 93L, originally developed east of Florida before traversing the entire state and ending up over Louisiana and Mississippi. Advertisement Due to its proximity to land and hostile upper-level winds over the Gulf, the disturbance never reached tropical depression or tropical storm status, despite producing conditions similar to a tropical cyclone – impacts that are expected to continue through the early weekend. Forecast models show communities between New Orleans and the Texas-Louisiana border could see an additional 2–4 inches of rainfall, with locally heavier amounts. In the stronger cells, an isolated waterspout or tornado is not out of the question, but the threat will remain concentrated over the southern parishes in Louisiana. Due to the rainfall threat, Flood Watches remain in effect along the I-10 corridor, as some rainfall rates could approach 1–2 inches per hour, which is enough to overwhelm drainage systems. Advertisement 3 Forecast models show communities between New Orleans and the Texas-Louisiana border could see an additional 2–4 inches of rainfall due to the storm system Invest 93L. FOX Weather Forecasters remind residents that just 6 inches of moving water can knock an adult off their feet, while a foot of floodwater can cause a vehicle to stall and float away. Flood Watches have also been issued for parts of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys, where some of the moisture could stream northward towards, but the predominant feature responsible for that precipitation is a stalled frontal boundary. 3 A rain squall passes over the wetlands in southern Louisiana on August 30, 2021, in Houma, Louisiana. The Washington Post via Getty Images Advertisement 3 Rain batters in New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 29, 2021, after Hurricane Ida made landfall. AFP via Getty Images Could 93L develop into a tropical threat? Just because what has been known as 93L has moved inland, its future remains murky and may, in fact, find itself over open waters in roughly a week. Forecast models show the moisture and circulation within the disturbance meandering over the Southeast because of a building ridge over the northern U.S., essentially blocking its exit. This could send the disturbance back over the southwest Atlantic and northern Gulf – the same waters where it originated for a second chance of organization. Advertisement The National Hurricane Center has not highlighted the region yet for development, and the chances remain low that a cyclone will form either in the medium or long-term future, but it is a possibility that the FOX Forecast Center will be monitoring. A classic example of a circulation leaving the Gulf only to return as a cyclone is Hurricane Ivan back in 2004, but that system was a powerful hurricane – not a weak disturbance that struggled to even reach tropical depression status. A return to the Gulf would likely only result in heavy rainfall and rough surf – similar to the first go-around, but the forecast will continue to be fine-tuned during the upcoming days.
Toronto Sun
4 hours ago
- Health
- Toronto Sun
What is chronic venous insufficiency, the condition Trump was diagnosed with?
Published Jul 18, 2025 • 4 minute read President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency. Photo by Eric Lee / For The Washington Post Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency – a condition that develops when valves in the leg veins malfunction, leading to blood collecting in the legs. It is a common condition, but severe cases can lead to complications, doctors said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account In some cases, chronic venous insufficiency can be a sign of a more serious condition such as problems with the heart, liver or kidneys, said Alisha Oropallo, a vascular surgeon at Northwell Health and a professor of surgery at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University who wrote a 2022 review on managing the condition. Chronic venous insufficiency 'is not dangerous per se, but it can lead to long-term complications if left untreated, namely ulcerations, severe leg swelling that can be pretty debilitating for some people,' said Thomas Maldonado, medical director of the Venous Thromboembolic Center at NYU Langone Health. Anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of Americans will have 'some form' of chronic venous insufficiency over the course of their life, he said. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. We asked physicians about symptoms, including swelling, risk factors and treatment for chronic venous insufficiency. What is chronic venous insufficiency? Chronic venous insufficiency occurs when there is high pressure in the veins, which are the blood vessels that recirculate blood from the body back to the heart. Veins have one-way valves that prevent blood from flowing backward, but the pressure can cause the valves to weaken and become 'leaky,' Maldonado said, leading to blood pooling in the legs. 'They're delicate little valves, almost like little tissue paper, one-way valves, that catch the blood as it tries to reflux back down to the ankles,' he said. Chronic venous insufficiency is 'a dysfunction in the valves of your veins,' Oropallo said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Symptoms of chronic venous insufficiency include aching, throbbing or a feeling of fatigue in the legs, said Chelsea Dorsey, the director of the Vein Clinic at UChicago Medicine. Swelling, skin discoloration and varicose veins are other signs, experts said. 'The valves become incompetent, and then over time the red blood cells leak from the veins into the skin and they turn from the oxidation of the air, they turn from a red colour to a brownish hue in the skin … tattooing the skin dark' and becoming permanent, Oropallo said. Is chronic venous insufficiency dangerous? Chronic venous insufficiency is not dangerous for most people, Dorsey said, but 'in some patients with more advanced stages of the condition, they can be more prone to skin infections or may develop difficult to heal ulcers.' The condition also puts some people at 'increased risk for developing blood clots,' she said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Chronic venous insufficiency could also be an indication of problems in the heart, kidneys or liver in some people, Olopallo said. 'The veins bring the blood back into the heart, and any kind of obstruction or pressure to the area could cause or create a backflow problem,' Oropallo said. When blood cannot get back up to the heart, it can 'cause pressure on the healthy veins and cause them to become diseased,' she said. What are the risk factors for chronic venous insufficiency? 'There's a big genetic component to this,' Maldonado said. Some people are at a higher risk of developing it, and varicose veins, because of family history, he said. And the condition is more prevalent as people age. 'It's really one of these insidious diseases that can creep up as we age,' Maldonado said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Pregnant people and individuals who are overweight are also at increased risk of the condition. Other risk factors include a history of blood clots and spending long periods of time on one's feet, the experts said. People who stand a lot for work, such as nurses, physicians and teachers, or those who do prolonged sitting, such as bus drivers, are 'more likely to get venous insufficiency,' Oropallo said. 'And this can also cause, with the lack of movement, blood clots.' A history of blood clots can damage those valves and then later on lead to this chronic venous insufficiency, she said. 'Most people experience these changes over decades. It doesn't just happen in one day,' Oropallo said. What is the treatment for chronic venous insufficiency? Regular use of compression stockings, leg elevation, exercise and weight loss can help with the condition, the experts said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'In circumstances where someone's symptoms are impacting their quality of life, some minimally invasive procedures may be effective to close the veins in the legs that are not functioning well in an effort to 'reroute' the blood flow to a more efficient path,' Dorsey said in an email. Early screening is important, Oropallo said. If someone has symptoms such as pain, numbness, tingling, heaviness or fatigue in the legs, they can 'ask if the compression stockings are right for them or if they need a subsequent ultrasound,' she said. The condition can be detected with an ultrasound, called a venous reflux study, which assesses 'the incompetence of the veins,' Oropallo said. 'Lifestyle plays a significant role, not just genetics, but a healthy lifestyle like regular exercise, maintaining healthy weight, and avoiding that prolonged immobility can help and prevent or manage the chronic venous insufficiency as well,' she said. For more health news and content around diseases, conditions, wellness, healthy living, drugs, treatments and more, head to – a member of the Postmedia Network. Sunshine Girls MMA Tennis Toronto & GTA Toronto & GTA
Atlantic
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
A Nasty, Cynical, and Eerily Accurate Look at All-Too-Recent History
After the COVID-19 outbreak began, the internet seemed to offer the thinnest of silver linings. Zoom kept kids in class, sort of. Celebrations—birthday parties, anniversaries—involved 'socializing' in multiplayer games. Tech companies built applications for contact tracing to help forecast the pandemic's spread. The industry eagerly welcomed its novel reputation as a portal to normalcy, for those who could access these opportunities. 'The world has faced pandemics before,' Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a column for The Washington Post in April 2020, 'but this time we have a new superpower: the ability to gather and share data for good.' The film Eddington, now in theaters, gleefully rebukes Zuckerberg's assertion. Written and directed by Ari Aster—the filmmaker behind Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau Is Afraid —the neo-Western thriller is set during the early days of COVID's spread in the United States. But rather than explore the impact of the coronavirus, the movie studies the misinformation, paranoia, and outrage that grew amid the internet's dominance during social isolation. The small town of Eddington, New Mexico, becomes a literal battleground for its locals; they are overcome with the fear fomented by what they've seen on their screens. The movie is nasty and cynical—and also eerily accurate in its rendering of the digital reality of pandemic life. Eddington captures what happens when a community can't log off: people becoming stupefied by the illusion of connection, and muting logic in the process. Eddington isn't the first film to take advantage of virtual world-building by incorporating social-media feeds and messaging apps into its visuals. But it does so in a way that makes the online world feel like it's bleeding into the characters' daily lives. Joe (played by Joaquin Phoenix), the town's sheriff, is introduced via a video he's watching on his phone; the YouTube page fills the frame until the camera zooms out to reveal him as the viewer. His conspiracy-theorist mother-in-law prints out 'news' articles that she believes prove her points, reads them out loud, and chatters away about what she's convinced Joe and his wife, Louise (Emma Stone), refuse to see. While running for mayor against the incumbent, Ted (Pedro Pascal), Joe blares his speeches over his police vehicle's loudspeaker, creating a chaotic soundscape evoking a crisis-driven news feed. Among all this incessant noise are people whose digital personas dramatically contrast with who they are offline: Ted and his teenage son can barely stand each other, but in a campaign ad, they embrace warmly. Joe is celebrated on Facebook after defending a man who refused to wear a mask in a grocery store, but a rally attracts just a handful of supporters. Louise becomes obsessed with Vernon (Austin Butler), an influencer with a cult-like following, and disappears for long stretches of time, but Joe doesn't register her fixation until he spots a comment she left under one of Vernon's videos. Dread permeates Eddington: When Joe and his deputies watch a clip of an attack on a police precinct instigated by militant protesters, they never check the provenance of the footage; they just begin to arm themselves. Research has shown that spending time on social media isn't necessarily bad; users can generate a sense of kinship by actively participating in discussions and offering feedback and support. But that finding seemed to hold more weight prior to 2020, when the internet existed in tandem with people's fuller lives. For the characters in Eddington, as it was for many of us living in America that year, there is nowhere to turn to but the conspiratorial thinking, heated debates, and endless updates online. At one point, Joe barrels through a crowd of people chanting social-justice slogans while brandishing a ring light like it's a weapon—an absurd image that conveys the disconnect between his actual and digital lives. Joe is a meek man: He struggles to express himself to his wife, who prefers not to be touched by him; he's desperately outmatched in the mayoral race by the popular Ted; and only his two deputies seem to respect his authority as sheriff. For him, the emergency becomes an opportunity to project a more confident version of himself online. Yet in his quest to become Eddington's most admired townsperson, Joe ends up trapped in a nightmare of his own making. 'Is this what I'm supposed to do?' he cries when violence breaks out. Nobody answers, because nobody knows; his reality has become a void. Joe's despair reminded me of a conversation my colleague Charlie Warzel had with the writer and technology theorist L. M. Sacasas in 2022. They'd discussed why being on the internet can make people feel stuck in a loop of doom and confusion. Sacasas explained that the present is never the point of social-media engagement—that posting requires being reactive, thereby turning social-media users into the perfect vessels for propagating conflict. 'What we're focused on is not the particular event or movement before us, but the one right behind us,' Sacasas said then. 'As we layer on these events, it becomes difficult for anything to break through.' Information, as a result, becomes abstracted into tangents. 'We're caking layers of commentary over the event itself,' Sacasas added, 'and the event fades.' In Eddington, COVID becomes a mere footnote to the events unfolding throughout the town—Joe doesn't even check his test results when he starts exhibiting symptoms. What he continually responds to instead is the stress built up as a result of the pandemic; he's left playing catchup to scuffles happening around Eddington, unraveling emotionally as the days pass. The film never interrogates why the early pandemic led to so many ideological conflicts, but it suggests that the prognosis is bleak for those who continue to venture too far into the internet's noxious rabbit holes. Being too online, in other words, can be its own kind of sickness.
