By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine advisory committee meets this week, with votes expected on whether to change recommendations on shots against COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox.

The exact questions to be voted on Thursday and Friday in Atlanta are unclear. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to questions seeking details to a newly posted agenda.

But some public health experts are worried that the votes will — at a minimum — raise unwarranted new questions about vaccines in the minds of parents.

Perhaps even more consequential would be a vote that restricts a government program from paying for vaccines for low-income families.

“I’m tightening my seat belt,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccines expert.

The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how already-approved vaccines should be used. CDC directors have almost always accepted those recommendations, which are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

Kennedy, a leading antivaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, fired the entire 17-member panel earlier this year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.

Here’s a look at the three vaccines being discussed:

COVID-19

Before Kennedy was health secretary, ACIP would typically vote in June to reaffirm recommendations for shots against respiratory viruses that sicken millions of Americans each fall and winter.

This past June, Kennedy’s ACIP voted to recommend flu shots for Americans but was silent on COVID-19 shots.

Before that meeting, Kennedy announced he was removing COVID-19 shots from the CDC’s recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women. The move was heavily criticized by doctors’ groups and public health organizations, and prompted a lawsuit by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups.

Days after Kennedy’s announcement, CDC officials said families could still get the 2024-2025 version of COVID-19 shots for their kids in consultation with their doctors. That clarification meant shots would still be covered by the federal government’s Vaccines For Children program, which pays for shots for families who lack money or adequate health insurance coverage. It’s now responsible for roughly half of childhood vaccinations in the U.S. each year.

As with flu shots, however, there are new COVID-19 formulations each fall, to account for changes in which strains are circulating. The committee has not yet voted on whether to recommend this season’s COVID-19 shots or whether those shots should be covered by the VFC program.

Further complicating the picture: When the FDA last month licensed this fall’s COVID-19 shots, the agency took the unusual step of narrowing their use for healthy younger adults and children.

If the ACIP simply follows that, and if there is no additional clarifying language from the CDC, then “that would take away access for roughly half of America’s kids,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The pediatricians group urges that vaccinations continue for all children ages 6 months to 2 years.

FILE – The campus of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seen in Atlanta, on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B can cause serious liver infections. In adults, the virus is spread through sex or through sharing needles during use injection-drug use.

But the virus also can be passed to a baby from an infected mother, and as many as 90% of infected infants go on to have chronic infections.

A hepatitis B vaccine was first licensed in the U.S. in 1981. In 1991, the ACIP recommended a dose within 24 hours of birth for all medically stable infants who weigh at least 4.4 pounds.

Infant vaccinations are stressed for women who have hepatitis B or, crucially, who have not been tested for it. The infant shots are 85% to 95% effective in preventing chronic hepatitis B infections, studies have shown.

Newborn hepatitis B vaccinations are considered a success, and no recent peer-reviewed research shows any safety problem with giving kids the shots on their first day of life, Schaffner said.

But Kennedy’s ACIP members suggested in June they wanted to revisit the guidance.

Schaffner noted that health officials used to rely on screening mothers before birth but that many cases were missed.

“There were lots of failures,” he said. “And so there were continuing transmissions from mother to child.”

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MMRV

Chickenpox was once a common childhood annoyance, causing an itchy skin rash and fever.

But the highly contagious virus can also lead to complications such as skin infections, swelling of the brain and pneumonia. Severe cases are more common among teens and adults who get it for the first time. The virus — called varicella — also can reactivate later in life and cause the painful illness called shingles.

The government first recommended that all children get a chickenpox vaccine in 1995, leading to a dramatic drop in cases and deaths.

In 2006, a combination MMRV shot — measles, mumps, rubella and varicella — was licensed. The CDC initially recommended that doctors and parents use the combo shot over separate MMR and varicella injections.

But within a few years, studies showed children who got the combo shot more often developed a rash, fever and — in rare instances — seizures after vaccination compared with children who got separate shots.

In 2009, the ACIP changed its recommendation, removing the preferential language and saying either the combination shot or separate shots were acceptable for the first dose.

Today, most pediatricians suggest separate doses for the first shot, but give the combined shot for the second dose, pediatrics experts say.

Again, there’s no new evidence about harms from MMRV shots, said O’Leary, of AAP.

Why revisit it now?

“This version of the ACIP is an orchestrated effort to sow distrust in vaccines,” O’Leary said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

In September 2024, Wild owner Craig Leipold vowed that no NHL team would offer star forward Kirill Kaprizov more money or more years than Minnesota. Leipold proved to be a man of his word this month as the Wild reportedly offered the Russian scoring machine the largest contract in NHL history.

A week later, with training camp just days away, Kaprizov hasn’t taken Leipold on that eight-year, $128 million. With neither the Wild nor the player’s agent, Paul Theofanous, talking about why or what’s next, speculation is running at a fever pitch.

Minnesota Wild left wing Kirill Kaprizov (97) skates on the ice during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Calgary Flames, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

Has another team, against NHL rules, made it clear to Theofanous and Kaprizov that there’s even more money available if they hold out for unrestricted free agency next July? Does Kaprizov want out of Minnesota? Does Kaprizov want even more money?

Many Wild fans, generally speaking, are worried that after a glimpse of life with a superstar, it’s all going to end in less than a year. Among those who aren’t concerned, seemingly, are Kaprizov and his Wild teammates.

“He’s got another year, he wants to play the game, and he doesn’t get phased by that stuff,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno said Monday at the team’s charity golf outing in Lake Elmo. “It’s going to take time. There’s just little things that they need to go back and forth with. We’re positive that he’ll be around, and knowing Kirill, he’s just focused on the next game and how to win as a team this season.”

As we wait for the next phase of the “back and forth,” one retired former NHL front office executive, speaking to the Pioneer Press on background, offered a theory that makes some sense: Perhaps the Wild’s initial offer was too light on money and too heavy on years.

Kaprizov is coming off the shortest campaign of a five-year NHL career, 41 regular-season games after suffering a lower body injury that required surgery after the New Year. He still finished second on the team in goals (25), third in assists (31) and third in points (56).

The generally-accepted thinking is that a player dealing with injuries will want to get the largest number of years available in his next contract to secure his financial future, regardless of his health and durability over the next few seasons. But confident athletes in the prime of their playing years tend to bet on themselves, determined that their production will continue at the levels they, and their teams, have come to expect.

Kaprizov turned 28 in April, in the midst of the Wild’s first-round playoff series versus Vegas. Minnesota’s top-line winger put on a show, scoring five goals in the six games. If he agreed to the Wild’s first offer, and signed here for another eight years, that would make him 36 (or 37 depending on when the new contract officially began) when he was next a free agent.

A player that age can see the finish line to his playing career. So can teams that might sign him, which would be reflected in the offers he gets. By contrast, if Kaprizov’s next contract is shorter — four to six years for, say, $18 million a year — he would be around 34 when seeking what likely would be his final pro contract.

At that point, teams would expect more out of him, and pay him more as he skates into the sunset.

A shorter-term contract also would likely allay the fears of some Wild fans, who felt burned by 13-year deals that Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed in 2012. Bought out with four years remaining on their deals, both are still being paid by the Wild through next season, and the buyout terms ate up large chunks of the team’s cap space for the two seasons.

While having Kaprizov under contract for the next two election cycles sounds good to some, the mammoth Parise and Suter deals seemed like a winning play at the time, as well.

The Wild promised to make Kaprizov an offer bigger than anyone had ever seen before, and kept their word. He reportedly wants something different. While there is surely much to come in this ongoing story — training camp officially begins Thursday at TRIA Rink — tweaking the offer to include more money for fewer seasons makes sense.

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By TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — After decades of scouring the bottom of Lake Michigan, searchers have finally found the wreckage of a “ghost ship” that sank during a ferocious storm almost 140 years ago off the Wisconsin coastline.

The Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association announced Monday that a team led by researcher Brendon Baillod found the wreck of the F.J. King. Baillod said in an email to The Associated Press that the wreckage was discovered on June 28.

According to the announcement, Baillod’s team found the ship off Bailey’s Harbor, a town of about 280 people on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, an outcropping of land jutting into Lake Michigan that gives the state its distinctive mitten-thumb shape.

In this photo released by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the wheel of the F.J. King shipwreck is seen in Lake Michigan on Aug. 23, 2025. (Wisconsin Historical Society via AP)

The F. J. King was a 144-foot, three-masted cargo schooner built in 1867 in Toledo, Ohio, to transport grain and iron ore. According to the historical society and archaeology association’s announcement, the ship ran into a gale off the Door Peninsula on Sept. 15, 1886, while moving iron ore from Escanaba, Michigan, to Chicago.

Waves estimated at 8 to 10 feet ruptured her seams and after several hours of pumping Captain William Griffin ordered his men into the ship’s yawl boat. The schooner finally sank bow-first around 2 a.m., with the ship’s stern deckhouse blowing away in the storm, sending Griffin’s papers 50 feet into the air. A passing schooner picked up the crew and took them to Bailey’s Harbor.

Searchers have been trying to find the F.J. King since the 1970s but conflicting accounts of the ship’s location when it sank stymied their efforts. Griffin reported that the ship went down about 5 miles off Bailey’s Harbor but a lighthouse keeper reported seeing a schooner’s masts breaking the surface closer to shore. Commercial fishermen kept claiming to have brought up pieces of the wreckage in their nets, too. Shipwreck hunters scoured the area but came up empty. Over the years F.J. King developed a reputation among shipwreck hunters as a ghost ship.

In this photo released by the Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Historical Society diver Zach Whitrock collects images of the wreckage of the schooner F.J. King for a photo model on Aug. 23, 2025. (Wisconsin Historical Society via AP)

Baillod believed that Griffin may not have known where he was in the darkness as the ship went down. He drew a 2-square-mile grid around the location the lighthouse keeper gave and proceeded to search it. Side-scan radar uncovered an object measuring about 140 feet long less than half a mile from the lighthouse keeper’s location. It turned out to be the F.J. King.

“A few of us had to pinch each other,” Baillod said in the announcement. “After all the previous searches, we couldn’t believe we had actually found it, and so quickly.”

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He said the hull appears to be intact, surprising searchers who expected to find it in pieces due to the weight of the iron ore the schooner was carrying.

The Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association has now discovered five wrecks in the last three years. Earlier in 2025, the group found the steamer L.W. Crane in the Fox River at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as well as tugboat John Evenson and schooner Margaret A. Muir off Algoma, Wisconsin. Baillod discovered the schooner Trinidad off Algoma in 2023.

The Great Lakes are home to anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks, most of which remain undiscovered, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Water Library. Shipwreck hunters have been searching the lakes with more urgency in recent years out of concerns that invasive quagga mussels are slowly destroying wrecks. Photos of the F.J. King site show the wreckage is covered with them.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

Clinics, advocacy groups and individuals who share abortion-related content online say they are seeing informational posts being taken down even if the posts don’t clearly violate the platforms’ policies.

The groups, in Latin America and the United States, are denouncing what they see as censorship even in places where abortion is legal. Companies like Meta claim their policies have not changed, and experts attribute the takedowns to over-enforcement at a time when social media platforms are reducing spending on content moderation in favor of artificial intelligence systems that struggle with context, nuance and gray areas.

But abortion advocates say the removals have a chilling effect even if they are later reversed, and navigating platforms’ complex systems of appeals is often difficult, if not impossible.

For months, the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has been collecting examples from social media users who’ve seen their abortion-related posts taken down or accounts suspended.

“The goal of it was to better understand the breadth of the problem, who’s affected, and with what consequences. Obviously, then once we had a better understanding of the trends, we hope to call attention to the issue, demand accountability and increase transparency in the moderation practices and ultimately, help stop the platforms from censoring this essential, sometimes life-saving information,” said Jennifer Pinsof, staff attorney at EFF.

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The organization says it received close to 100 examples of content takedowns from abortion providers, advocacy groups and individuals on Meta platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, as well as TikTok and even LinkedIn.

It’s not clear if the takedowns are increasing or people are posting more about abortion, especially abortion medication such as mifepristone, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“I would say there was a wave of take-downs shortly after the election that was noticeable enough that it resulted in multiple news stories. But again, it’s not something that’s very easy to measure,” Pinsof said.

Brenna Miller, a TikTok creator who often posts about abortion and works in reproductive health care, said she made a video unboxing an abortion pill package from the nonprofit carafem — where she talked about what was in the package and discussed the process of taking the pills at home.

She posted the video in December. It was up for at least a week before TikTok removed it, saying it violated the platform’s community standards.

“TikTok does have an appeal process, which I tried to go through. And it just locked me out. It said that I didn’t have the option to appeal it,” Miller said. “So I started emailing them, trying to get in contact with a person to just even get an explanation of like, how I violated the community guidelines with an informational video. It took months for me to even get in contact with a person and I don’t even (think) it was really a person. They were sending an automated message for months straight.”

Eventually, the video was restored in May with no explanation.

“I work in public health in my 9-to-5 and we’re seeing a real suppression of public health information and dissemination of that information, particularly in the reproductive health space. And people are scared,” Miller said. “It’s really important to get people this medically accurate information so that they’re not afraid and they actually can access the health care that they need.”

TikTok does not generally prohibit sharing information about abortion or abortion medication, however it does regulate selling and marketing drugs, including abortion pills and it prohibits misinformation that could harm people.

On Facebook, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Moorhead, Minnesota, put up a post saying it offers both surgical and medicated abortion after it heard from a patient who didn’t know it offered medication abortion. The post included a photo of mifepristone. When the clinic tried to turn the post into an ad, its account was suspended. The clinic says that since it does not offer telehealth services, it was not attempting to sell the medication. The clinic appealed the decision and won a reversal, but the account was suspended again shortly after. Ultimately, the clinic was able to resolve the issue through a connection at Meta.

“We were not trying to sell drugs. We were just informing our followers about a service, a legal service that we offer. So that’s alarming that, you know, that was flagged as not fitting into their standards,” said clinic director Tammi Kromenaker. “To have a private company like Meta just go with the political winds and say, we don’t agree with this, so we’re going to flag these and we’re going to shut these down, is very alarming.”

Meta said its policies and enforcement regarding medication-related abortion content have not changed and were not impacted by the changes announced in January, which included the end of its fact-checking program.

“We allow posts and ads promoting health care services like abortion, as well as discussion and debate around them, as long as they follow our policies — and we give people the opportunity to appeal decisions if they think we’ve got it wrong,” the company said in a statement.

In late January, Emory University’s Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast, or RISE, put up an Instagram post about mifepristone that described what it is and why it matters. In March, its account was suspended. The organization then appealed the decision but the appeal was denied and its account was deleted permanently. This decision was later reversed after they were able to connect with someone at Meta. Once the account was restored, it became clear that the suspension was because it was flagged as trying to “buy, sell, promote or exchange illegal or restricted drugs.”

“Where I get concerned is (that) with the increased use of social media, we also have seen correspondingly an increased rise of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms about many health topics,” said Sara Redd, Speaker director of research translation at RISE and an assistant professor at Emory University. “One of main goals through our communications and through our social media is to promote scientifically accurate evidence-based information about reproductive health care, including abortion.”

Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University, said that at the end of the day, while people love to debate platforms’ policies and what the policies should be, what matters is people’s “experiences of sharing information and the information are able to get and they’re able to see.”

“This is just a policy that is not being implemented well. And that, in and of itself, is not all that surprising because we know that Meta has dramatically reduced spending on content moderation efforts,” Edelson said. “There are fewer people who are spending time maintaining automated models. And so content that is even vaguely close to borderline is at risk of being taken down.”