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Nov. 20, 2025, 5:16 PM ESTBy Marina Kopf and Maggie VespaIn 2024, Kara Goodwin started feeling a pain in her arm and shoulder that wouldn’t go away. She was diagnosed with bicep tendinitis and frozen shoulder. Doctors thought the resident of Brooklyn, New York, who has run multiple marathons, had an overuse injury from her active lifestyle. Two months later, when the pain hadn’t gone away, Goodwin got an MRI. “They could visibly see the giant tumor that was shattering my humerus bone from the inside out,” she said.Goodwin, now 39, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that had spread to her bones. It was “quite shocking as a marathon runner,” she said. “I have no family history of cancer,” she added.Goodwin’s cancer, while treatable, can’t be cured. The treatments will keep the cancer at bay but eventually, she said, they’ll most likely stop working. Lung cancer is more curable when it’s found at an earlier stage, according to the American Lung Association. Kara Goodwin was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer after several months of arm pain. Evelyn Freja for NBC NewsFor Goodwin, it’s unlikely that would’ve happened: Lung cancer screening isn’t recommended for people her age, nor is it recommended for people who were never smokers. The current guidelines, from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, say that people ages 50 to 80 who smoked a pack a day for 20 years and still smoke or have quit in the past 15 years should get a yearly scan to screen for lung cancer. But up to 20% of lung cancer cases are diagnosed in people who never smoked or used any other form of tobacco, according to the American Cancer Society.A new study, published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, suggests that the guidelines are missing the majority of lung cancer cases.People still think of lung cancer as a disease that only affects older men and lifetime smokers, even though it’s becoming more common in younger women and people who never smoked, said lead study author Dr. Ankit Bharat, executive director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute in Chicago. “Every day, we are seeing patients who’ve never smoked, who may have had passive smoking exposure, they’re coming with advanced lung cancer, and then it’s not curable.”

- Latest News - November 21, 2025

In 2024, Kara Goodwin started feeling a pain in her arm and shoulder that wouldn’t go away.

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Nov. 20, 2025, 6:29 PM ESTBy Daniel ArkinLarry Summers’ ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were long public knowledge. But the recent publication of emails between the two men show they were closer than had been publicly known, creating a dilemma — and a reputational headache — for Harvard University, the Ivy League institution where Summers is on the faculty and once served as president. In interviews this week, a group of Harvard faculty members and students decried Summers’ email correspondence with Epstein, which continued more than a decade after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The two men chatted about politics and current affairs, and Summers looked to Epstein for advice on his relationship with a woman.Lola J. DeAscentiis, 21, an undergraduate student who is taking one of Summers’ classes, said she believes his decision to step back from teaching at the university was “the very least that can happen.” DeAscentiis is one of the organizers of a petition — “Tell Harvard: Shut Out Summers!” — demanding that Harvard revoke Summers’ tenure.“I think there’s hope that Harvard and people outside Harvard will recognize this is such a widespread issue on our campus,” DeAscentiis said. “Epstein is no longer alive, but his legacy is alive and well, and his friends are still in high places.”Summers, 70, announced earlier this week he would withdraw from “public commitments,” including his role on the board of directors at OpenAI. Harvard, for its part, said it would investigate links between faculty members and Epstein. Summers then announced late Wednesday that he would go on leave from his teaching duties while that investigation unfolds.Larry Summers at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9. David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images file“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers said in a statement earlier this week.Harvard’s media office did not immediately respond to an emailed list of questions. Summers’ spokesperson declined to comment.“The cozy friendship between Epstein and Summers on display in the emails is disgusting and disgraceful,” Joseph Blitzstein, a statistics professor, said in a statement to The Crimson, Harvard’s student-run newspaper. (Blitzstein did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment, one of dozens sent to Harvard faculty members this week.)Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has effectively called for Summers’ ouster, saying in a statement that “Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions — or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”It would not be easy for Harvard to cut ties with Summers, a former treasury secretary and White House adviser. He has a tenured position, a form of permanent employment in academia. Harvard’s provost office says on its webpage that professors can be removed “only for grave misconduct or neglect of duty” by the Harvard Corporation, the school’s highest governing body.Summers has not been accused of taking part in Epstein’s criminal enterprise.In an interview, one professor said the recent scrutiny on Summers has reopened old wounds from his sometimes rocky time both as university president and instructor.“He’s known to be a bully,” said Alison Frank Johnson, a history professor and the chair of the department of Germanic languages and literature. Johnson used a moniker that has trailed Summers throughout his academic career. The New York Times, summing up his term as president, once wrote he “alienated professors with a personal style that many saw as bullying and arrogant.”Johnson said many on Harvard’s campus have long been skeptical of Summers in part because of “disgraceful” remarks he delivered at a closed-door economic conference in 2005. In a speech that year before the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers said women might lack an “intrinsic aptitude” for science and engineering.Summers apologized and insisted his comments had been “misconstrued.” The Faculty of Arts and Sciences lodged a vote of no confidence in his leadership. The furor, combined with other campus controversies, including a public clash with the public intellectual Cornel West, proved too intense to surmount. Summers resigned from the presidency in February 2006.Four months later, Harvard announced Summers had been named a “University Professor” — the highest faculty rank, and an honor extended to only a handful of academic luminaries. He has held the distinction ever since.Summers waves during Harvard commencement exercises in Cambridge, Mass., on May 24, 2018.Michael Dwyer / AP fileSummers has more recently drawn criticism from some on campus over his public stances on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Summers, who has said he was “sickened” by what he viewed as the university’s silence after Oct. 7 and a rise in antisemitism, publicly castigated “Israel demonizing faculty” — namely, Walter Johnson, a fellow University Professor.Johnson, a history professor and former adviser to the campus’ Palestine Solidarity Committee, lambasted Summers in an email, calling him a “prejudiced and unprincipled bully” and assailing him for his criticism of pro-Palestinian activists at Harvard.“I wouldn’t miss him,” Johnson said in part, adding that he did not have a clear-cut take on Summers’ future at Harvard: “Whether it is appropriate for the University to discipline someone for things — no matter how tawdry and small-minded — revealed in a state-sponsored dump of their private email seems to me to be an open question.”The emails released by House lawmakers show that Summers and Epstein communicated as recently as 2019, more than a decade after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida state court to soliciting prostitution from a minor. They continued to correspond until July 5, 2019, a day before Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking of minors.The length of Summers’ relationship with Epstein represents not “just one lapse” but a “character flaw,” Rachel McCleary, an economics department lecturer, told The Crimson.In one set of emails, Summers, who is married to the academic Elisa New, sought Epstein’s advice on his romantic pursuit of an unnamed woman he described as a mentee. Epstein described himself as a “pretty good wing man” for Summers. Summers lamented that the woman seemed interested in someone else: “I dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”Epstein replied: “shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.” (NBC News is quoting from the messages verbatim, typos included.)In another set of emails, Summers decried that men who “hit on” women may face repercussions in the workplace. In an email dated Oct. 27, 2017, Summers revisited the subject of intellectual differences between men and women, telling Epstein: “I observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”The cache of emails has been the subject of extensive reporting from The Crimson, which broke the news on Wednesday night that Summers would not finish his remaining three class sessions this semester and planned to go on leave as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.Epstein’s ties to Harvard have been extensively documented. Harvard carried out what it characterized as a “full review” of the financier’s connections to the university, releasing a 27-page report in May 2020 that confirmed the school received $9.1 million in gifts from him between 1998 and 2008.Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, Mass., on Sept. 8, 2004.Rick Friedman / Corbis via Getty Images fileThe report said “no gifts were received from Epstein following his conviction in 2008.” (Epstein served a year in Florida jail as part of a secret agreement with federal prosecutors that later led to an internal Justice Department investigation. Epstein’s death in custody in 2019 while awaiting federal prosecution was ruled a suicide.)Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor, said in an email to NBC News that the recent revelations about Summers’ relationship with Epstein raise questions about the 2020 report.“I think the important thing is that Harvard is revisiting the report they wrote in 2020,” Lessig wrote. “But the important output from that effort should not just be what we all know — that Larry was integral to Epstein’s relationship to the University — but the part we don’t know: Why did Harvard hide this connection in 2020? Their report was Hamlet without the prince. Why?”Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lessig’s email. The day before Summers announced he would step back from teaching, he returned to a Harvard lecture hall and directly addressed the Epstein scandal, according to a video posted on TikTok that was verified by NBC News.“I think it’s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations,” he told his students, “and so, with your permission, we’re going to go forward and talk about the material in the class.”Summers changed his public position by the following night, and his future at Harvard remains unclear.“Mr. Summers has decided it’s in the best interest of the Center for him to go on leave from his role as Director as Harvard undertakes its review,” Summers’ spokesman, Steven Goldberg, said in a statement Wednesday.“He is not scheduled to teach next semester,” Goldberg added.Daniel ArkinDaniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.

- Latest News - November 21, 2025

Larry Summers’ ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were long public knowledge.

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Nov. 20, 2025, 6:36 PM ESTBy Michael KosnarIn just 24 hours, the Justice Department has done a complete reversal on its position about whether the full grand jury in the James Comey criminal case reviewed the indictment before it was handed up to a federal judge in September.Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, presented the case by herself to the grand jury on Sept. 25. She testified Wednesday that when jurors voted to indict Comey on two of the three counts submitted in the original indictment, the full grand jury hadn’t reviewed a final revised document showing the two counts the former FBI director was charged with. Instead, its viewing was limited to the jury foreperson and an additional grand juror.Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons, who is leading the prosecution of Comey, also said the full grand jury hadn’t reviewed the final indictment.Justice Department admits not all grand jury members saw final Comey indictment02:49But in a court filing Thursday titled “Government’s Notice Correcting the Record,” federal prosecutors said the full grand jury did review the final indictment. In doing so, the Justice Department disputed the argument by Comey’s defense team that the indictment was invalid because of the missteps acknowledged in court Wednesday.“The official transcript of the September 25, 2025, proceedings before Magistrate Judge Vaala conclusively refutes that claim,” prosecutors said in Thursday’s filing. Judge Lindsey Vaala presided over the filing of Comey’s indictment.The defense team argued at Wednesday’s hearing that the confusion over the grand jury issue required the judge to throw out the case.Comey was indicted in September on charges of lying to Congress relating to Senate testimony he gave in 2020. He has pleaded not guilty.Lindsey Halligan, then an attorney for President Donald Trump, in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31.Al Drago / Getty Images fileThe hearing Wednesday focused on the defense’s motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that it is a vindictive and selective prosecution.Halligan, Trump’s former personal attorney, who has no experience in criminal matters, lashed out at U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, who is overseeing the case, after he questioned whether the defense’s position was that Halligan was serving as a “puppet” or a “stalking horse” for Trump and his demands for retribution against perceived enemies like Comey.In a highly unusual move, Halligan released a statement Thursday criticizing the judge.“Personal attacks — like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’ — don’t change the facts or the law,” she said. “The Judicial Canons require judges to be ‘patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity’ … and to ‘act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’ My focus remains on the record and the law, and I will continue to fulfill my responsibilities with professionalism.”Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin also attacked Nachmanoff.“A federal judge should be neutral and impartial. Instead, this judge launched an outrageous and unprofessional personal attack yesterday in open court against US Attorney Lindsey Halligan,” Gilmartin said on X. “DOJ will continue to follow the facts and the law.” Michael KosnarMichael Kosnar is the Justice Department Producer for NBC News.

- Latest News - November 21, 2025

The reversal comes after acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan said not all grand jury members saw the final version of the indictment against the former FBI director.

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Former 'Real Housewives of Potomac' star arrested

- Latest News - November 21, 2025

Former “Real Housewives of Potomac” star Mia Thornton was arrested on Wednesday after allegedly stealing thousands in furniture from a rental property, according to authorities. NBC News’ Yasmin Vossoughian reports.

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