Upending decades-old guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisory committee voted to no longer issue a blanket recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Throughout the meeting, many panelists made misleading claims about the vaccine. Here, we address claims about the vaccine's effectiveness and safety, and other countries' vaccination policies. The hepatitis B vaccine, which is typically given in a three-dose series, is highly effective in preventing disease and has a strong safety record. As the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia explains, there are no known serious side effects other than anaphylaxis, or a life-threatening allergic reaction, which is very rare and can be treated.

Republicans want to put the economy at the center of their midterm message as they seek to protect their majorities in Congress. But as cost-of-living concerns mount across the political spectrum, the GOP is struggling to act decisively to address them. Already top Republicans acknowledge they haven't done enough to sell the "one big, beautiful bill," the party-line centerpiece of their economic agenda they enacted over the summer. Now internal divisions and the need for bipartisan support in the Senate are threatening any attempt to follow up on it.

President Trump may be the alleged drug boat destroyer, but he has a long way to go before he tops the drone warrior. Mr. Trump's campaign against those he says are drug couriers is garnering headlines, but it's also sparking comparisons to President Obama's drone mission to kill people he identified as terrorist targets, including an American citizen overseas. Mr. Obama's death toll, figured to be in the high hundreds or even low thousands, is well above the 83 presumed kills from strikes on suspected drug boats, though Mr. Trump is quickly adding to his numbers. Untroubled by the deaths, Mr. Trump said he is certain that those on the boats deserved to be killed. "We know everything about them," he said.

US President Donald Trump has flagged potential concerns over Netflix's planned $72bn (£54bn) deal to buy Warner Brothers Discovery's movie studio and popular HBO streaming networks. At an event in Washington DC on Sunday, he said Netflix has a "big market share" and the firms' combined size "could be a problem". On Friday, the two companies said they had reached an agreement to bring Warner Brothers' franchises like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to Netflix, creating a new media giant. The planned deal, which has raised concerns among some in the industry, is yet to be approved by competition authorities. The BBC has contacted Warner Bros, Netflix and the White House for comment.

CLAIM: FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi spent nearly $1 million in overtime pay for personnel to redact the files related to the case of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. RATING: True. The FBI released files to Bloomberg investigative Reporter Jason Leopold following a civil lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. These files indicated that the agency had spent at least $851,344 the week of March 17, 2025, in overtime pay for 934 agents mobilized to process and redact the Epstein files as part of a project called Epstein Transparency Project 2025. Snopes verified the records were authentic using public documents the FBI filed in response to the lawsuit. The available documents neither confirmed nor disproved the related claims that the overtime pay was specifically for removing Trump's name from the files or that all of the money went to "redaction training."

President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Though the United States maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity on how it would respond to an invasion, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have said that America would defend the island nation. The Pentagon has produced a classified, multiyear assessment that shows how such a conflict would play out: the Overmatch brief. The report is a comprehensive review of U.S. military power prepared by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment and delivered most recently to top White House officials in the last year. It catalogs China's ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships and satellites, and identifies the U.S. military's supply chain choke points. Its details have not been previously reported.

The Transportation Security Administration is tightening the rules around traveler identification, and it's about to cost people who show up unprepared. Beginning in February, TSA will start charging passengers $45 if they arrive at an airport checkpoint without an acceptable form of ID, such as a Real ID-compliant driver's license or a U.S. passport. Instead of turning travelers away, TSA will verify their identity through a backup system called Confirm.ID, but that secondary screening now comes with a price tag.

Many states in the South and Southwest recorded some of the nation's highest poverty rates in 2024. The national rate was roughly 12%, but several states in these regions exceeded that. For example, New Mexico's rate was 16.5%, Oklahoma's was about 15%, and Texas' rate was over 13%.AllSides highlights content from Gigafact, a network of newsrooms that respond to online claims. View the full fact brief on Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

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