NEW YORK (AP) — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday announced that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women.

In a 58-second video posted on the social media site X, Kennedy said he removed COVID-19 shots from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for those groups. No one from the CDC was in the video, and CDC officials referred questions about the announcement to Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S. health officials, following recommendations by infectious disease experts, have been urging annual COVID-19 boosters for all Americans ages 6 months and older.

A CDC advisory panel is set to meets in June to make recommendations about the fall shots. Among its options are suggesting shots for high-risk groups but still giving lower-risk people the choice to get vaccinated.

But Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine advocate before becoming health secretary, decided not to wait. He said that annual COVID-19 booster shots have been recommended for kids “despite the lack of any clinical data” to support that decision.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Jay Battacharya, head of the National Institutes of Health, appeared in the video with Kennedy.

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Kennedy and other Trump administration appointees have been moving to narrow COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and added restrictions to a recent vaccine approval. Last week, the FDA announced routine COVID-19 vaccine approvals will be limited to seniors and younger people with underlying medical risks, pending new research for healthy adults and children.

HHS officials did not immediately respond to questions about why Kennedy decided to take the step now or release additional information about what went into the decision.

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 board, which votes each year on rent changes for New York City’s nearly 1 million regulated apartments, is now considering an increase between 3.75 (down from 4.75) to 7.75 percent on two-year leases starting Oct. 1. It’s still far from the rent freeze housing advocates want.

Scenes from the Rent Guidelines Board meeting vote in 2023. A final vote on this year’s changes will take place in June. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board held a revote Tuesday morning, opting to consider a slightly lower range of rent hikes for stabilized apartments with two-year leases—though still far from the rent freeze housing advocates want.

The board, which votes annually on rent changes for the roughly 1 million regulated units across the city, is now considering an increase between 3.75 (down from 4.75) to 7.75 percent on two-year leases starting Oct. 1. The range proposed for one-year leases remains the same as what the board landed on with its first preliminary vote in April: an increase between 1.75 to 4.75 percent.

A final vote will be held in June.

Board Chair Doug Apple said they decided to lower the threshold under consideration for two-year leases after hearing public testimony “on the impact of potential rent increases on tenants whose incomes are not keeping pace with the rising cost of living.”

When making its determination each year, RGB considers the economic conditions both tenants and building owners are facing. Residents in rent-stabilized apartments earned a 2023 median annual income of $60,000, according to the board’s data. Meanwhile, average inflation-adjusted wages were down 0.4 percent at the end of that year and through most of 2024.

In calling for a rent freeze, tenant advocates point to RGB data which found the owners of buildings containing rent stabilized units saw a more than 12 percent increase in their Net Operating Income (NOI)—earnings left over after operating costs are paid—in 2022 and 2023.

“The Board’s own data makes clear that landlords continue to see strong returns, yet rather than providing relief to the households most in need, this vote paves the way for an increase in evictions and displacement, pushing vulnerable New Yorkers into poverty and homelessness,” the Legal Aid Society said in a statement Tuesday morning.

“These harms will only be compounded by looming cuts to federal housing programs and the likely passage of a regressive budget from Washington that will further erode the critical safety net protections the New Yorkers we serve rely on,” the organization added.

Landlord groups, however, say the NOI increases cited by the board are driven largely by properties in the core of Manhattan, pointing to buildings in several outer borough neighborhoods where owners are seeing revenues decline in the face of rising property taxes, insurance, utility and maintenance costs.

These include aging, 100-percent rent regulated buildings they argue will further deteriorate without more substantial rent increases. “Failing to address such costs will result in more vacant units and more buildings in greater financial and operational distress; a lose-lose-lose proposition for tenants, owners and the City,” James Whalen, head of the Real Estate Board of New York, testified last month.

Housing advocates, however, point to other potential interventions for those distressed properties, like greater city investment in preservation initiatives like the Neighborhood Pillars program. They say the city’s affordable housing crisis is already squeezing tenants, fueling displacement and rising homelessness.

RGB members are appointed by the mayor. The board has voted to increase rents to some degree every year under Mayor Eric Adams, who took office in 2021 and is currently running for re-election amidst a crowded field of competitors, several of whom have vowed to freeze regulated rents if elected.

“Tenants are the majority in New York City,” Cea Weaver, director of the NYS Tenant Bloc, said in a statement Tuesday. “If Adams won’t freeze the rent, we have the power to elect a mayor who will.”

The reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post After Revote, Rent Guidelines Board Considers Lower Range of Rent Hikes on 2-Year Leases appeared first on City Limits.

By HANNA ARHIROVA, VASILISA STEPANENKO and ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — “Everything will be all right.”

Ukrainian soldier Serhii Hryhoriev said this so often during brief phone calls from the front that his wife and two daughters took it to heart. His younger daughter, Oksana, tattooed the phrase on her wrist as a talisman.

Even after Hryhoriev was captured by the Russian army in 2022, his anxious family clung to the belief that he would ultimately be OK. After all, Russia is bound by international law to protect prisoners of war.

When Hryhoriev finally came home, though, it was in a body bag.

A Russian death certificate said the 59-year-old died of a stroke. But a Ukrainian autopsy and a former POW who was detained with him tell a different story about how he died – one of violence and medical neglect at the hands of his captors.

Hryhoriev is one of more than 200 Ukrainian POWs who have died while imprisoned since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago. Abuse inside Russian prisons was likely a contributing factor in many of these deaths, according to officials from human rights groups, the U.N., the Ukrainian government and a Ukrainian medical examiner who has performed dozens of POW autopsies.

The officials say the prison death toll adds to evidence that Russia is systematically brutalizing captured soldiers. They say forensic discrepancies like Hryhoriev’s, and the repatriation of bodies that are mutilated and decomposed, point to an effort to cover up alleged torture, starvation and poor health care at dozens of prisons and detention centers across Russia and occupied Ukraine.

Russian authorities did not respond to requests for comment. They have previously accused Ukraine of mistreating Russian POWs — allegations the U.N. has partially backed up, though it says Ukraine’s violations are far less common and severe than what Russia is accused of.

‘Alive and well’

Hryhoriev joined the Ukrainian army in 2019 after he lost his job as an office worker at a high school. When the war began three years later, he was stationed with other soldiers in Mariupol, an industrial port city that was the site of a fierce battle — and far from his home in the central Poltava region.

On April 10, 2022, Hryhoriev called his family to reassure them that “everything will be all right.” That was the last time they ever spoke to him.

Two days later, a relative of a soldier in Hryhoriev’s unit called to say the men had been captured. After Mariupol fell to Russia, more than 2,000 soldiers defending the city became Russian prisoners.

Soon his family got a call from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which confirmed he was alive and officially registered as a POW, guaranteeing his protection under the Geneva Conventions. “We were told: ‘that means everything is fine … Russia has to return him,’” Hryhoriev’s wife, Halyna, recalled.

In August 2022, she received a letter from him, that addressed her by a nickname. “My dear Halochka,” he wrote. “I am alive and well. Everything will be all right.”

Desperate for more information, his daughter Oksana, 31, scoured Russian social media accounts, where videos of Ukrainian POWs regularly appeared. Eventually, she saw him in one — looking gaunt and missing teeth. His gray hair was cropped very short, framing gentle features now partially covered by a beard.

In the video, likely shot under duress, Hryhoriev said to the camera: “I’m alive and well.”

“But if you looked at him, you could see that wasn’t true,” Oksana said.

The truth was dismal, said Oleksii Honcharov, a 48-year-old Ukrainian POW who was detained with him.

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Honcharov lived in the same prison barracks as Hryhoriev starting in the fall of 2022. Over a period of months, he witnessed Hryhoriev absorb the same severe punishment as every other POW at the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky Correctional Colony in southwest Russia.

“Everyone got hit — no exceptions,” said Honcharov, who was repatriated to Ukraine in February as part of a prisoner swap. “Some more, some less, but we all took it.”

Honcharov endured months of chest pain while in captivity. Even then, the beatings never stopped, he said, and sometimes they began after his pleas for medical care, which were ignored.

“Toward the end, I could barely walk,” said Honcharov, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis once back in Ukraine – an increasingly common ailment among returning POWs.

A 2024 U.N. report found that 95% of released Ukrainian POWs had endured “systematic” torture. Prisoners described beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, sexual violence, prolonged stress positions, mock executions, and sleep deprivation.

“This conduct could not be more unlawful,” said Danielle Bell, the U.N.’s top human rights monitor in Ukraine.

The report also said some Russian POWs were mistreated by Ukrainian forces during their initial capture — including beatings, threats and electric shocks. But the abuse stopped once Russian POWs were moved to official Ukrainian detention centers, the report said.

Hryhoriev was physically strong and often outlasted younger prisoners during forced exercises, Honcharov recalled. But over time, he began showing signs of physical decline: dizziness, fatigue and, eventually, an inability to walk without help.

Yet despite his worsening condition, prison officials provided only minimal health care, Honcharov said.

Piecing together how POWs died

In a bright, sterile room with the sour-sweet smell of human decomposition, Inna Padei performs autopsies on Ukrainian soldiers repatriated by Russia, as well as civilians exhumed from mass graves. Hundreds of bodies zipped up in black plastic bags have been delivered in refrigerated trucks to the morgue where she works in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Those who died in battle are still wearing military fatigues and often have obvious external wounds. The bodies of former POWs are dressed in prison uniforms and are often mutilated and decomposed.

It is the job of Padei and other forensic experts to piece together how soldiers like Hryhoriev died. These reports are often the only reliable information the soldiers’ families get — and they will be used by Ukraine, along with testimony from former POWs, to bring war crimes charges against Russia at the International Criminal Court.

The body of a former POW recently examined by Padei had an almond-sized fracture on the right side of its skull. That suggested the soldier was struck by a blunt object – a blow potentially strong enough to have killed him instantly, or shortly after, she said.

“These injuries may not always be the direct cause of death,” Padei said, “but they clearly indicate the use of force and torture against the servicemen.”

Earlier this year, Amnesty International documented widespread torture of Ukrainian POWs in Russia. Its report was especially critical of Russia’s secrecy regarding the whereabouts and condition of POWs, saying it refused to grant rights groups or health workers access to its prisons, leaving families in the dark for months or years about their loved ones.

Of the more than 5,000 POWs Russia has repatriated to Ukraine, at least 206 died in captivity, including more than 50 when an explosion ripped through a Russian-controlled prison barracks, according to the Ukrainian government. An additional 245 Ukrainian POWs were killed by Russian soldiers on the battlefield, according to Ukrainian prosecutors.

The toll of dead POWs is expected to rise as more bodies are returned and identified, but forensic experts face significant challenges in determining causes of death.

In some cases, internal organs are missing. Other times, it appears as if bruises or injuries have been hidden or removed.

Ukrainian officials believe the mutilation of bodies is an effort by Russia to conceal the true causes of death. Extreme decomposition is another obstacle, officials say.

“They hold the bodies until they reach a state where nothing can be determined,” said Petro Yatsenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian government agency in charge of POW affairs.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the prompt exchange of POWs must be part of any ceasefire agreement, along with the return of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including children forcibly deported to Russia. A major prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine took place over the weekend.

The Associated Press interviewed relatives of 21 Ukrainian POWs who died in captivity. Autopsies performed in Ukraine found that five of these POWs died of heart failure, including soldiers who were 22, 39 and 43. Four others died from tuberculosis or pneumonia, and three others perished, respectively, from an infection, asphyxia and a blunt force head wound.

Padei said cases like these — and others she has seen — are red flags, suggesting that physical abuse and untreated injuries and illness likely contributed to many soldiers’ deaths.

“Under normal or humane conditions, these would not have been fatal,” Padei said.

In one autopsy report, coroners said an individual had been electrocuted and beaten just days before dying of heart failure and extreme emaciation. Other autopsies noted that bodies showed signs of gangrene or untreated infections.

“Everything the returned prisoners describe … we see the same on the bodies,” Padei said.

‘Angel in the sky’

Months into Hryhoriev’s detention at the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky prison – and after his daughter saw him in the Russian army’s social media video — his health deteriorated significantly, according to Honcharov.

But instead of being sent to a hospital, Hryhoriev was moved to a tiny cell that was isolated from other prisoners. Another Ukrainian captive, a paramedic, was assigned to stay with him.

“It was damp, cold, with no lighting at all,” recalled Honcharov.

He died in that cell about a month later, Honcharov said. It was May 20, 2023, according to his Russian death certificate.

The Hryhoriev family didn’t learn he had died until more than six months later, when a former POW reached out. Then, in March 2024, police in central Ukraine called: A body had arrived with a Russian death certificate bearing Hryhoriev’s name. A DNA test confirmed it was him.

An autopsy performed in Ukraine disputed Russia’s claim that Hryhoriev died of a stroke. It said he bled to death after blunt trauma to his abdomen that also damaged his spleen.

Hryhoriev’s body was handed over to the family last June, and soon after he was buried in his hometown of Pyriatyn.

To honor him, Hryhoriev’s wife and older daughter, Yana, followed Oksana’s lead and tattooed their wrists with the optimistic expression he had drilled into them.

“Now we have an angel in the sky watching over us,” Halyna said. “We believe everything will be all right.”

Associated Press reporters Yehor Konovalov, Alex Babenko and Anton Shtuka in Kyiv, and Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

By SAM MEDNICK

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A U.S.-backed group approved by Israel to take over aid distribution in Gaza says it has started operations, despite opposition from the U.N. and most humanitarian groups and the unexpected resignation of its executive director.

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The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the linchpin of a new aid system that would wrest distribution away from aid groups led by the U.N., which have carried out a massive operation moving food, medicine, fuel, tents and other supplies across Gaza since the war began in October 2023.

The new mechanism limits food distribution to a small number of hubs under guard of armed contractors, where people must go to pick it up. Currently four hubs are being set up, all close to Israeli military positions. Three are in the far south where few Palestinians are located.

GHF said it moved trucks of food to its hubs on Monday and began distribution, without giving details on how much aid was distributed. It said the flow of supplies would be “increasing each day.” It has said it plans to reach more than 1 million Palestinians by the end of the week. Gaza has a population of around 2.3 million.

Jake Wood, the American heading the effort, said Sunday night he was resigning because it was clear the organization would not be allowed to operate independently.

Israel has demanded an alternative plan because it accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid. The United Nations and aid groups deny there is significant diversion. They reject the new mechanism, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon, violates humanitarian principles and won’t be effective. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israel blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for nearly three months, pushing the territory toward famine. Last week, it allowed in a trickle of supplies, saying it would let the U.N. distribute it only until GHF was running.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry on Monday warned Palestinians in Gaza against dealing with GHF.

How will this plan work, who’s behind it and why are aid groups pushing back?

Who’s behind GHF?

GHF publicly launched early this year and is run by a group of American security contractors, ex-military officers and humanitarian aid officials. It has the support of Israel and the United States.

Until resigning, Jake Wood was the face of the foundation. Wood is a U.S. military veteran and co-founder of a disaster relief group called Team Rubicon.

It’s unclear who will now run GHF.

A proposal circulated by the group earlier this month and obtained by the AP included several names, including the former director of the U.N. World Food Program, David Beasley. Neither Beasley nor GHF have confirmed his involvement.

It’s also unclear who is funding GHF. It claims to have more than $100 million in commitments from a European Union government but has not named the donor. The U.S. and Israel have said they are not funding it.

What’s their plan?

The GHF’s plan to centralize distribution through hubs is similar to ones designed by Israel.

It says each of its initial four hubs would serve meals for roughly 300,000 people. It has said it will eventually be able to meet the needs of 2 million people. It said it will create more hubs within 30 days, including in the north, but did not specify their exact locations.

Aid will be delivered with the help of private subcontractors transporting supplies in armored vehicles from the Gaza border to the hubs, where they will also provide security. It said the aim is to deter criminal gangs or militants from redirecting aid.

Satellite photos from May 10 obtained by The Associated Press show what appear to be construction of the hubs. The photos show one in central Gaza, close to the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land held by Israeli troops. Three others are in the area of Rafah, south of the Morag Corridor, another military-held strip.

Almost the entire population is currently in northern Gaza — where no hub is currently located — or in central Gaza. They would have to cross through Israeli military lines to reach the hubs near Rafah.

Just before his resignation, Wood spoke of some adjustments, but it is not clear if Israel agreed to them.

In a letter to Israeli officials obtained by the AP, Wood said that until at least eight hubs are operating, the existing U.N.-led system will continue providing food in parallel to GHF. He also said the U.N.-led system would continue in the future to distribute all non-food humanitarian aid — everything from medical supplies to hygiene items and shelter materials. GHF was not capable of handling those supplies, Wood acknowledged.

In the letter, sent to Israel’s military body in charge of aid coordination in Gaza, COGAT, Wood said GHF and Israel had agreed on those terms. There was no confirmation from COGAT, however.

Why aren’t aid groups on board?

The U.N. and aid groups say that the plan would “weaponize aid” for Israel’s military and political purposes.

They say Israel would have power to determine who receives aid and to force the population to move to where it is being distributed, emptying large parts of the territory. That would potentially violate international laws against forced displacement.

“We cannot take part in a system that violates humanitarian principles and risks implicating us in serious breaches of international law,” said Shaina Low, communication adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading aid group operating in Gaza.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that under the aid mechanism, Gaza’s population would eventually be moved to a “sterile zone” in Gaza’s far south. He said it was for their protection while Israeli forces fight Hamas elsewhere. He also said once the Palestinians enter the area, “they don’t necessarily go back.”

Palestinians struggle to receive cooked food distributed at a community kitchen in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israel also says that after Hamas is defeated, it will implement a plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump to relocate the territory’s population outside Gaza, though it portrays migration as “voluntary.” The Palestinians, along with nearly all of the international community, have rejected the idea.

GHF said in a statement it is independent and apolitical and will not be part of any mass displacement. It said its system is fully consistent with humanitarian principles including impartiality and independence.

Israel had previously told aid groups it intends to vet aid recipients and use facial recognition technology. GHF has said food will be given according to need, without eligibility requirements. However, aid groups say recipients will have to pass close to or through Israeli military positions to reach the hubs, exposing them to vetting.

The U.N and aid groups also say the GHF plan cannot possibly meet the needs of Gaza’s large and desperate population.

Plans for distributing non-food aid remain uncertain. Also, GHF has said each meal it distributes would have 1,750 calories. That is below the 2,100-calorie per day standard for meals in emergency situations used by the U.N.’s World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Food Program.

Aid workers say the change is simply not necessary.

The U.N. and other aid groups “have shown absolutely that they can meet the needs of that population, when allowed to,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said. “We need to just keep reverting back to what works.”

Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.