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Violet Affleck gives speech at U.N. on long Covid

admin - Latest News - September 24, 2025
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Violet Affleck gives speech at U.N. on long Covid



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Sept. 24, 2025, 6:20 PM EDTBy Dalila MuataThis week, dozens of Christian creators on TikTok prepared for what they thought would be a biblical Rapture. In Australia, Tilahun Desalegn said he sold his car. Thousands of miles away in Colorado, Melissa Johnston created flowcharts and care packages for those who would be left behind.In Chicago, De’Mico Harden began documenting the signs — pointing out anytime the clock struck 9:23, a date that was among the three-day window when the Rapture was supposed to take place.But by Wednesday afternoon, no such end had come — instead, confusion and disappointment had set in for some believers. Many had been posting videos to TikTok about what people should expect when the Rapture occurs, namely that Jesus will take true believers to heaven as Earth enters an apocalypse.“OK, um, Rapture update, Wednesday, 9/24, sorry to report, I don’t think it actually happened,” TikTok creator AveragePickleballGuy said. “Everybody I know is still here. … A lot of people on my comments have told me that I was duped and didn’t know what I was talking about. I just kind of fell into this, I didn’t have all the facts, so I wanted to issue a public apology to anybody who took me seriously.”The prediction that the Rapture would begin on Sept. 23, during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, appeared to originate with a South African pastor named Joshua Mhlakela, who had shared his theory in an interview with religious YouTube channel Centtwinz TV in June.Pastor Joshua Mhlakela’s Rapture prediction went viral in June.Got Reality? via YouTubeMhlakela doubled down on the theory in a later appearance on the podcast, saying that when the Rapture happens, people will disappear in the blink of an eye and “God’s judgment will leave the world unrecognizable.”As the date neared, his apocalyptic prophecy, which he projected with “100% confidence,” went viral.“For believers, the Rapture represents the ultimate validation,” Landon Schnabel, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University, said. “Rapture beliefs create powerful in-group/out-group dynamics. Believers develop a sense of special knowledge and moral superiority, while simultaneously feeling persecuted by a world that doesn’t understand them.” The Rapture now joins the ongoing list of doomsday theories that have captivated the masses, such as the 2000 Y2K bug or when the ancient Mayan calendar predicted the apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012.But according to Schnabel, what sets this Armageddon apart from the rest is the explosive reaction from the public. Interest in the word “rapture” increased by 1,000% in the last three days, with a search volume of over 1 million, according to Google Trends. Peak interest in “rapture” in the U.S. hit around midnight on Tuesday, the day Mhlakela had said it would happen. On TikTok, more than 290,000 posts use the #rapture hashtag.The meme-ification of the Rapture across social media also helped thrust the prediction into the mainstream. Many of the videos posted to TikTok are sketches or jokes surrounding the theory. Even Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” poked fun at the theory.“Previous predictions spread through niche religious networks or required mainstream media coverage to go viral,” Schnabel said. “TikTok’s algorithm can take a South African preacher’s prediction and put it in front of millions of young people in hours.” In the last 24 hours, some who gave up after waiting for the Rapture to arrive have called on Mhlakela to apologize for his “fake Rapture prophesy.”Mhlakela could not be reached by NBC News. He is expected to appear on Centtwinz again on Friday for an exclusive interview, the YouTubers said in their Instagram story on Wednesday.Others online wanted TikTokers who pushed Mhlakela’s theory to admit they were wrong.But some believers continue to hold out hope, which Schnabel said is unsurprising. “The public mockery actually strengthens believers’ commitment by confirming their persecution narrative,” he said. “The social bonds created around shared belief are often stronger than the belief itself.”Or, as TikToker Desalegn put it in a video to his followers Wednesday: “At this point, I’ve got nothing to lose but to continue to believe.”Dalila MuataDalila Muata is the newsroom coordinator for NBC News Digital. 
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October 1, 2025
Sept. 30, 2025, 10:07 AM EDT / Updated Sept. 30, 2025, 8:50 PM EDTBy Scott Wong, Frank Thorp V and Kyle StewartWASHINGTON — The federal government is barreling toward a shutdown Tuesday night, with President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders engaged in a fierce blame game and trading insults about each other.Hours before the midnight deadline, the Senate on Tuesday gaveled out for the evening with plans to return on Wednesday. A shutdown is all but assured to begin after midnight.It’s unclear where the parties go from here. The Senate Tuesday evening voted down competing Republican and Democratic plans to stave off a shutdown.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he hoped the defeat of the GOP bill — for a second time this month — “will open lines of communications” with Republicans. That has not yet happened.“Leader Schumer and I have made clear we are ready, willing and able to sit down and with anyone, anytime, any place to fund the government and to address the Republican health care crisis,” Jeffries said shortly before the Senate votes.Senate fails to pass funding bill, shutdown imminent00:36Bipartisan talks have been at a standstill in the 24 hours since the Big Four congressional leaders met with Trump at the White House Monday.The impacts of a shutdown would be felt by many. None of the millions of federal workers would be paid, and hundreds of thousands of them would be furloughed. In recent days, White House officials had tried to allow military personnel to continue receiving pay during a shutdown, according to a source familiar with the discussions, but those efforts were unsuccessful. So service members wouldn’t be paid during a shutdown, either.And the White House has threatened to fire federal workers in a shutdown as well. Asked Tuesday morning how many government employees his administration would lay off, Trump responded: “Well, we may do a lot, and that’s only because of the Democrats.”The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday that a government shutdown would lead to the furlough of about 750,000 federal employees.Responding to Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who asked for the assessment, the CBO said of the furloughed workers: The “total daily cost of their compensation would be roughly $400 million. The number of furloughed employees could vary by the day because some agencies might furlough more employees the longer a shutdown persists and others might recall some initially furloughed employees.”Federal agencies, including the Defense and State departments, have already posted their plans for how they will operate.In the final hours before a shutdown, the two parties traded insults rather than serious proposals.Trump shared a crude post on Truth Social Monday night that showed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., with fake AI-generated audio, saying Democrats “have no voters anymore, because of our woke, trans bulls—” and that if they give undocumented immigrants health care, they would vote for his party.The post depicted Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a mustache as he stood silently by Schumer’s side. Mariachi music played in the background.The video referenced a Trump talking point that Democrats are demanding health care for undocumented immigrants in exchange for their votes to keep the government open. Democrats have called that a lie. They have pushed to extend expiring Obamacare subsidies and to undo Trump’s Medicaid cuts, not to pay for health care for people who are in the country illegally.Schumer responded to the video on X, writing: “If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.”Jeffries had tough words for Trump during a news conference on the steps of the Capitol on Tuesday morning. “Mr. President, next time you have something to say about me, don’t cop out through a racist and fake AI video,” Jeffries said, surrounded by dozens of rank-and-file Democrats. “When I’m back in the Oval Office, say it to my face.”The House leader also shared a photo on X of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. “This is real,” Jeffries wrote above the photo, which was taken at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 1997. (Trump has said he and Epstein had a falling out, and he was unaware of the financier’s crimes.)The personal insults indicated that the two sides were nowhere close to an agreement to keep the government’s lights on past Tuesday’s deadline.“It looks to me like we’re headed for a shutdown,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., earlier Tuesday. “And you know me, I’m the most optimistic person you know.”High-stakes White House meeting as government shutdown deadline looms02:18Political theater dominated on Tuesday. Democrats filed onto the House floor during a pro forma session as the party’s top appropriator, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, attempted to offer her party’s plan to keep the government open. But Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., who was presiding, did not acknowledge her and quickly adjourned. “Shame on you!” some Democrats jeered at Griffith. Democrats on the floor had a poster with Speaker Mike Johnson’s face on it and the words: “Missing Person.” Johnson, R-La., was in the Capitol on Tuesday and attended the Trump meeting a day earlier. But the House left town Sept. 19 after passing a seven-week funding bill and is not set to return until Oct. 7. By Tuesday evening, the GOP-controlled Senate made a last-gasp attempt to avert a shutdown but came up short. The upper chamber voted down competing Democratic and Republican funding plans, a repeat of earlier this month when the same bills failed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to pass.The GOP bill had cleared the House on a party-line 217-212 vote on Sept. 19, but it was rejected Tuesday in the Senate 55-45, shy of the 60 votes needed to break a Democratic filibuster. Three members of the Democratic Caucus — Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Angus King, I-Maine — joined Republicans in voting yes; just one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted no with Democrats.The rival Democratic bill to fund the government was also rejected, on a party-line 47-53 vote.If a shutdown occurs, “that’s a sad day for the country, it truly is. We have to find a better solution,” said Fetterman, who voted for both bills. “As a senator, I think that’s one of our core responsibilities, keep the government open … and then debate and figure out some kind of compromise.”Republicans have argued that Democrats could avert a shutdown by simply voting for the House-passed continuing resolution, or CR, which would fund the government at current levels through Nov. 21.But Democrats said they are trying to stave off a looming “health care crisis.” Specifically, Democrats want any CR to include an extension of Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. They have also pushed for rolling back some of the cuts and changes to Medicaid that were enacted in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” earlier this year.Speaking to reporters in the Capitol after Monday’s meeting with Trump, Schumer said Trump appeared to be “not aware” of the impacts of expiring Obamacare subsidies on everyday Americans. And he urged Trump to try to convince GOP leaders on Capitol Hill to back a deal to extend those subsidies.”It’s now in the president’s hands,” Schumer said, with Jeffries at his side. “He can avoid a shutdown if he gets the Republican leaders to go along with what we want.”Scott WongScott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News. Frank Thorp VFrank Thorp V is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the Senate.Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.Brennan Leach, Gabrielle Khoriaty and Sahil Kapur contributed.
October 1, 2025
Oct. 1, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Abigail Brooks and Zinhle EssamuahWESTWEGO, Louisiana — Robin Phillip’s fresh haircut is dyed her favorite color — green. But beneath the dye job is a scar that runs along the side of her head, the result of two craniotomies. For years, Phillip, 45, suffered from what she thought were migraines. It wasn’t until early 2018, when she had to leave her warehouse shift to drive to the hospital, that she learned her headaches were a symptom of something more serious. She said she nearly crashed on the drive to the emergency room, blinded by pain. “The nurse said, ‘OK, what’s your pain from 1 to 10?’ I said 11, 12,” said Phillip. “They put me in the chair, and I don’t remember nothing after that.”Phillip awoke later to shocking news: She had an intracranial meningioma — a tumor of the lining of the brain. She needed emergency surgery.After the procedure, Phillip lost vision in her left eye and had to re-learn how to walk. Unable to work, she lost her apartment and moved in with her mother until she could get back on her feet. Robin Phillip during a radiation session in 2024. A mask holds her head in place for the treatment.Courtesy Robin Phillip“I was feeling lost, because where would I have possibly gotten a tumor from? I had a regular life. I did regular things,” she said. “What could have possibly caused this to happen to me?”Today, Phillip believes her birth control is to blame. For nearly 30 years, stopping only when she had her two children, she used Depo-Provera — a progestin shot given three times a year. She’s one of more than 1,000 women suing Pfizer, which makes the drug, alleging the company knew more about the risks and failed to warn users. Pfizer has moved to have the suit dismissed, arguing the case is pre-empted by a Food and Drug Administration decision, and says it stands behind the safety and efficacy of Depo-Provera.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 sexually active women in the United States have used Depo-Provera. Black women use it at nearly double the national rate. Meningiomas are usually not cancerous — meaning they don’t spread to other parts of the body — but they can be harmful depending on their size and where they grow. Phillip’s tumor was pressing on her optic nerve, causing vision problems.Recent researchIn recent years, several studies have shown a possible link between Depo-Provera use and an increased risk of developing meningioma. One of them, published earlier this month in JAMA Neurology, linked medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), the drug in Depo-Provera, with a twofold increase in risk for meningioma. The risk was greatest in women who used the contraceptive for more than four years or started after age 31.Another one, a 2024 study published in the The BMJ based on French data, found a fivefold increase in risk for meningioma for long-term Depo-Provera users. Doctors caution that the studies are observational, meaning they cannot prove the medication caused the tumors. Dr. David Raleigh, a radiation oncologist who specializes in brain tumors and who is the chair of meningioma research at the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Radiation Oncology, said that female sex hormones — progesterone in particular — are linked to meningioma. (Progestin, the hormone in Depo-Provera, is a synthetic version of progesterone.) Meningiomas are the only brain tumors that are more common in women than in men, he added.Still, Raleigh said this doesn’t necessarily mean that progesterone is causing a meningioma to form. “All the available data suggest that progesterone is fuel on the fire,” he said. “Progesterone didn’t necessarily start the fire, but the available data suggest that it’s like dumping gas on it.” He said that the recent studies linking Depo-Provera to meningioma give him pause.“Those of us in the business often recommend that patients with meningioma avoid hormone replacement therapy, use nonhormone based means of contraception, if possible, and to be cautious with pregnancy and fertility planning because of these very well documented associations,” he said. “These new studies only amplify those concerns and considerations.”The overall risk of developing meningioma remains small: About 39,000 meningiomas are diagnosed each year in the U.S.“Overall, meningioma is not common. This is not a type of tumor that we see very often,” said Dr. Colleen Denny, an OB-GYN at NYU Langone Health. “The likelihood of having a meningioma as a Depo user is incredibly low. It’s just that it’s incredibly, incredibly low for people who don’t use Depo.”The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published a response to The BMJ study urging caution, saying that, “according to the study, five out of 10,000 women using medroxyprogesterone acetate may possibly develop meningioma compared to one out of 10,000 women not using the medication.”“The risk that they’re finding is incredibly small,” said Dr. Nisha Verma, senior adviser for reproductive health policy for advocacy at ACOG. “I think it is a consideration we can talk to patients about, among all of the considerations that patients go through.”“Uterine cancer is a lot more common than meningioma, and Depo reduces your risk of uterine cancer. So how do you balance that?” Denny said. “It’s complex, and it often depends on the individual patients.”Phillip says even that small risk would have been too much for her.“If I would have [known] from the get-go, I would have never took that shot,” she said. The lawsuitPhillip is now one of more than 1,000 women suing Pfizer, the maker of Depo-Provera, alleging that the company failed to warn them about the risk. “These women all have meningiomas. Many have surgery, some have radiation, and they’ve all had their lives greatly impacted,” said Ellen Relkin, a lawyer representing Phillip and some of the other plaintiffs. Phillip’s lawsuit points to several studies dating as far back as 1983 showing a link between progesterone and meningioma. The lawsuit says those studies created an “unassignable duty to investigate,” and that Pfizer should have studied the risks associated with Depo-Provera sooner. Phillip needed two surgeries to remove a meningioma. A scar from the operations runs down the side of her head.NBC News“Defendants willfully, wantonly, and intentionally conspired, and acted in concert, to ignore relevant safety concerns and to deliberately not study the long-term safety and efficacy of Depo-Provera, particularly in chronic long-term users of Depo-Provera,” the complaint says. Verma, of ACOG, said that hormonal birth control is well-studied before it hits the market.“Birth control methods that are commercially available have been studied extensively before becoming available to the public, and so we’ve studied every type of birth control. We’ve looked at safety measures,” she said. “We have guidelines that do intensive reviews of all of the data and help us support patients in what methods may be safer for them.”In a statement to NBC News, Pfizer said it stands behind the “safety and efficacy of Depo-Provera.” In a court filing earlier this month, the company asked a judge to dismiss the case, saying that it became aware of the risks of meningioma associated with Depo-Provera in 2023, and submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration to add a warning to the drug’s label. The application also requested adding warnings to two pills containing much lower doses of MPA. The FDA denied that request, according to the filing.The FDA declined NBC News’ request for comment, but in its denial letter to Pfizer, which is included in company’s filing, it said: “The findings of the available observational studies alone do not support the addition of a warning on Meningioma risk to medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA)-containing products.”A spokesperson for Pfizer told NBC News that because of the FDA’s denial, federal law pre-empts the company from changing the warning label on Depo-Provera.In an interview with NBC News, Phillips’ lawyer Relkin said Pfizer had enough information to study the possible risks associated with Depo-Provera on its own before 2023 and accused the company of making an “overbroad and half-baked” effort to warn patients by submitting an application to add a warning label to every medication containing MPA.“Depo-Provera is 150 milligrams. Three, four times a year, a very high dose,” Relkin said. “There are low-dose, 2.5 and 5 mg pills, where there’s no data showing that they cause a problem.”“The dose makes the poison,” she added. “By asking to change the label for all, they were inviting a rejection.”Pfizer denied that accusation in its court filing. “If FDA truly thought a meningioma warning was necessary for some products (and not others) … FDA could have ‘promptly’ communicated to Pfizer,” it wrote.Changes abroad Outside of the U.S., however, changes have been made to Pfizer’s label.The European Medicines Agency added meningioma as a “possible side effect” of drugs with high doses of medroxyprogesterone acetate in 2024, and Pfizer went on to communicate that risk to doctors in the European Union. Canada’s label for the drug, updated in 2024, includes meningioma in its “warnings and precautions” section, stating that “meningiomas have been reported following long-term administration of progestins, including medroxyprogesterone acetate.”In January, South Africa’s drug regulatory agency also recommended updating the drug label for MPA to include meningioma risk. Phillip’s lawsuit alleges that Pfizer knew of the potential risk years before those changes overseas were made, however, citing a 2006 Canadian drug label which lists meningioma as one of the “Post-Market Adverse Drug Reactions” — adverse events that are reported after a drug has already been approved. The 2006 label notes that “the nature of post-marketing surveillance makes it difficult to determine if a reported event was actually caused by DEPO-PROVERA.”“Just because something happened associated in time with something, it doesn’t mean that one thing caused the other,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, a former FDA principal deputy commissioner. “It’s in a company’s best interest to put everything on there, because then if they’re sued, they’d say, ‘Well, it was in the fine print.’”Woodcock, who is not involved with the lawsuit, noted the FDA typically has the final word on drug labels.According to Pfizer’s court filings, the company resubmitted its application to the FDA in June 2025. Phillip, right, rings the bell on her last day of radiation treatment on March 25, 2024.Courtesy Robin Phillip“FDA has still not approved any meningioma warning, and Pfizer’s renewed request remains pending,” the filing said.Relkin said an earlier warning would have changed everything for Phillip and her other clients.After her surgery in 2018, Phillip continued to take Depo-Provera. Her doctors were unable to remove the entire tumor in 2018 and she needed a second surgery in 2022, followed by radiation treatment from 2022 to 2024.Even still, doctors weren’t able to remove the entire tumor because of how close it is to her optic nerve.Phillip says she continued taking Depo-Provera until she saw posts on social media in 2024 about the studies linking the drug to meningioma. Earlier this month, she had her first set of brain scans since going off the drug. She said her radiologist told her that the meningioma is shrinking. “My body is telling me, my head is telling me I don’t have that much pain like I used to have,” she said. Abigail BrooksAbigail Brooks is a producer for NBC News.Zinhle EssamuahZinhle Essamuah is a correspondent and anchor for NBC News.
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