By DEVNA BOSE, Associated Press

Whooping cough cases are rising, and doctors are bracing for yet another tough year.

There have been 8,485 cases reported in 2025, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s twice as many cases as this time last year, based on the CDC’s final tally.

Rates of whooping cough, or pertussis, soared last year, which experts said wasn’t unexpected. The number of cases fell during COVID-19 because of masking and social distancing. Plus, experts said, the illness peaks every two to five years.

But experts say the outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses, like measles and whooping cough, could be indicative of changing attitudes toward vaccines. U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates fell last year, and the number of children with vaccine exemptions hit an all-time high.

“There’s unfortunately been increasing anti-vaccine sentiment in the United States,” said Dr. Ericka Hayes at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Our recovery is not nearly as quick as we expected it to be and we needed it to be. And again, when you fall below 95% for vaccinations, you lose that herd immunity protection.”

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Whooping cough tends to peak around this time of year and in the fall. It’s usually spread through respiratory droplets in the air, when people with pertussis cough, sneeze or breathe close to others. The symptoms are similar to a cold but the cough becomes increasingly severe with a distinctive sound — a “whoop” as the person tries to take in air. It is treated with antibiotics.

In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana and a 5-year-old in Washington state have died from whooping cough.

The pertussis vaccine, which also protects against diphtheria and tetanus, is given at two months, four months and six months. The CDC recommends adults get follow-up doses every 10 years.

The illness is most dangerous for infants, especially before they receive their first round of vaccinations. That’s why the vaccine is also recommended for expecting mothers — it can protect newborns. But not enough people are getting the vaccine during pregnancy, said Hayes, who is the hospital’s senior medical director of infection prevention and control.

“The uptake of the vaccine for pregnant mothers is not where we need to be at all,” she said.

Pennsylvania, one of the states hit hardest by the illness last year, has recorded 207 whooping cough cases in 2025.

Neil Ruhland, a state health department spokesman, said the biggest increases are in populated areas like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in middle and high schools and colleges. He said 94.6% of the state’s kindergarteners are vaccinated.

Michigan is on track for a similar pertussis season to last year’s, said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the state’s chief medical executive. The state has recorded 516 cases thus far, mostly among children aged 5 to 17, and saw a total of 2,081 cases in 2024.

Bagdasarian said vaccination rates vary from county to county. Some schools have rates as low as 30%, creating pockets of vulnerable communities to vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis and measles, she said.

“We’re watching pertussis numbers very carefully, but a lot of our resources are going into contact tracing our measles cases right now,” she said. “And public health is doing much more with fewer resources in 2025 than we’ve had to do before.”

AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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

“The absence of federal oversight doesn’t mean the city is powerless; rather, it should be a turning point. With the cost of living continuing to rise, New York needs a homegrown partner whose model is rooted in their success, not in taking advantage.”

(NYC Council/William Alatriste)

With New York City’s affordability crisis growing more dire by the day, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been a lifeline most took for granted, shielding consumers and businesses from fraud, abuse, and any unfair banking practices in a city where few have a cent left to spare.

Now with the agency on the line, consumers and businesses alike face heightened financial vulnerability when they need protection the most, raising the critical question of who will step in to fill the federal watchdog’s shoes and safeguard everyday Americans and their bank accounts from exploitation? 

The impact may not be immediate—in fact, most people might not fully understand the role of the CFPB. However, predatory practices often slip under the radar, building up over time, whether through misleading charges or hidden interest rates, leading to irreparable damage before anyone realizes it.

Just earlier this year, New York Attorney General Letitia James secured a $1.065 billion judgment against capital lenders found to have been misleading small businesses about the nature of their cash advances for years, charging interest rates as high as 820 percent. And in 2025, the Federal Trade Commission reported a nearly 25 percent increase in fraud complaints since the prior year, with losses surpassing $12.5 billion, largely driven by a rise in digital scams, phishing attacks, and unregulated digital lending and fintech. The staggering figure underscores the critical need for safeguards as new threats continue to emerge.

In New York in particular, where countless individuals live paycheck to paycheck, the stakes are sky-high. With consumer debt trending upwards due to credit and auto loans, especially among younger borrowers, New Yorkers can’t afford to be complacent about their finances. Finding trusted institutions that have their best interests at heart, such as their local nonprofit credit union or a reliable personal advisor, can offer reassurance.

These partners are driven by their customers’ long-term success and financial education, not just quarterly profits. In 2024, Municipal Credit Union hosted a financial literacy workshop series that reached over 5,000 New Yorkers. It was our way of building on the work we do with our members, because like many other credit unions, we see our members as co-owners in our organization, and their success mirrors our own.

The alternative doesn’t bode well—not just for individual consumers, but for New York’s economy as a whole. With credit card debt and home interest rates soaring, leaving both consumers and businesses with little to no financial cushion, the entire city is at risk of a significant downturn.

The situation eerily mirrors 2008, before the CFPB opened its doors, when the country entered a great recession due to predatory lending practices that left millions in foreclosure. If New Yorkers don’t leave their finances in the right hands, we could find ourselves on the brink of a similar economic collapse, stalling the region’s growth and stability for years to come.

The landscape is evolving, but so are New Yorkers. The absence of federal oversight doesn’t mean the city is powerless; rather, it should be a turning point. With the cost of living continuing to rise, New York needs a homegrown partner whose model is rooted in their success, not in taking advantage.

Traditional banks aren’t going anywhere, but New Yorkers can still take charge of their financial futures by choosing institutions that truly have their best interests at heart—and always have their backs.

Kyle Markland is the CEO of Municipal Credit Union in New York City.

The post Opinion: With Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Limbo, New Yorkers Need a New Financial Partner appeared first on City Limits.

The National Weather Service will resume translating its products for non-English speakers.

The weather service paused the translations this month because its contract with the provider had lapsed. Experts said the change could put non-English speakers at risk of missing potentially life-saving warnings about extreme weather.

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The weather service said Thursday the contract has been reinstated, and the translations will resume by the end of the day Monday.

Lilt, an artificial intelligence company, began providing translations in late 2023. That replaced manual translations that the weather service had said were labor-intensive and not sustainable. It eventually provided them in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Samoan.

Nearly 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home, including 42 million Spanish speakers, according to 2019 Census data.

The translations are important during extreme weather events, but general weather forecasts are also essential for people who work in tourism, transportation and energy, experts say.

The weather service’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is among the federal agencies targeted by the Trump administration for aggressive staff and budget cuts.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By TRAVIS LOLLER, Associated Press

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a personal story of his own heroin addiction, spiritual awakening and recovery at a conference on drug addiction Thursday and emphasized that young people need a sense of purpose in their lives to prevent them from turning to drugs.

Kennedy called addiction “a source of misery, but also a symptom of misery.” In a speech that mentioned God more than 20 times, he pointed to his own experience feeling as though he had been born with a hole inside of himself that he needed to fill.

“Every addict feels that way in one way or another — that they have to fix what’s wrong with them, and the only thing that works are drugs. And so threats that you might die, that you’re going to ruin your life are completely meaningless,” he said.

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Speaking to about 3,000 people at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, Kennedy did not address recent budget and personnel cuts or agency reorganizations that many experts believe could jeopardize public health, including recent progress on overdose deaths.

Kennedy drew cheers when he said that we need to do “practical things” to help people with addictions, like providing them with Suboxone and methadone. He also said there should be rehabilitation facilities available for anyone who is ready to seek help. But he focused on the idea of prevention, signaling his view of addiction as a problem fueled by deteriorating family, community and spiritual life.

“We have this whole generation of kids who’ve lost hope in their future,” he said. “They’ve lost their ties to the community.”

Kennedy said policy changes could help reestablish both of those things. Though Kennedy offered few concrete ideas, he recommended educating parents on the value of having meals without cellphones and providing opportunities for service for their children.

The best way to overcome depression and hopelessness, he said, is to wake up each morning and pray “please make me useful to another human being today. ”

He suggested that cellphones are a pernicious influence on young people and that banning them in schools could help decrease drug addiction. He cited a recent visit to a Virginia school that had banned cellphones, saying that grades were up, violence was down and kids were talking to one another in the cafeteria.

Kennedy told attendees that he was addicted to heroin for 14 years, beginning when he was a teenager. During those years, he was constantly making promises to quit, both to himself and to his family.

“I didn’t want to be someone who woke up every morning thinking about drugs,” he said, noting that one of the worst parts of addiction was his total “incapacity to keep contracts with myself.”

Kennedy said he eventually stumbled upon a book by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that claimed people who believed in God got better faster and had more enduring recoveries, so he worked to rekindle his faith and started attending 12-step meetings.

Kennedy was interrupted several times by hecklers shouting things like, “Believe science!” He has been heavily criticized by scientists and public health experts for pushing fringe theories about diet, vaccines, measles and autism, among other things.

One heckler was escorted out of the ballroom with a raised middle finger. Without responding directly to the hecklers, Kennedy said that he tries to learn from every interaction, even with people who give him the finger because they don’t like his driving.

“God talks to me most through those people,” he told the group.

University of Washington researcher Caleb Banta-Green was among those escorted out after he stood up and shouted, “Believe science! Respect spirituality! Respect choice! Respect government workers!”

“Spirituality is an essential part of recovery for some people; 12 step works great for the people it works for, however, it should never be mandated,” Banta-Green said in an email after the program.

He added, “We have decades of science-based interventions that are proven effective for supporting recovery and reducing death from substance use disorder. The problem we have is massive underfunding.”

AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson in Washington state contributed.

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