The inconsistent interpretations of the deal could possibly be owing to the fact that it was hastily pulled together over the course of an hour and 10 minutes between Trump and Akazawa on Tuesday, according to the FT, which cited “officials familiar with the U.S.-Japan talks.”

And, moreover, “Japanese officials said there was no written agreement with Washington—and no legally binding one would be drawn up.”

Some are thus beginning to wonder whether Trump’s avowed “largest deal in history” even technically counts as a deal at all. Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on X: “If something like this is not ‘papered’ it isn’t really a deal.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker hosted Texas state legislators on Friday, offering up a strong signal that state Democrats are ready to fight Republican redistricting efforts in the U.S. House.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force plays an important role in protecting access to low-cost or free cancer screenings and tests for chronic diseases.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering removing all 16 members of a highly influential advisory committee that offers guidance about preventive health services, such as cancer screenings, HIV prevention medications or tests for osteoporosis, according to two people familiar with the plan.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force is a group of independent doctors, nurses and public health experts who volunteer to regularly review volumes of the latest scientific research about diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease and mental health, as well as mammograms for breast cancer.

Wage growth for a large swath of Americans is being outpaced by the rate of inflation, according to data from Indeed, which reported people with low- and middle-paying jobs are likely feeling the most pressure.

High temperatures and humidity across north-eastern coast increase risk of heat exhaustion, illnesses and death

More than a 100 million people in the US will face dangerous conditions over the weekend as a heat dome that has scorched much of the center of the country nudges eastward.

Heat advisories were in place on Friday all across the north-eastern coast from Portland, Maine, to Wilmington, North Carolina, with the daytime heat index temperatures 10 to 15F above average in some places.

Overnight temperatures will also be very warm and oppressively muggy, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

A pediatric patient in a South Carolina hospital has died from a rare brain-eating amoeba.

The Prisma Health Children's Hospital patient recently died after contracting Naegleria fowleri, which infects the brain and destroys tissue, Pediatric Infectious Disease Physician Anna Kathryn Burch said Tuesday.

The hospital declined to share more details about the patient, and officials have not said where the infection occurred. State authorities say there is no broader risk to the public.

A case of Naegleria fowleri was confirmed in South Carolina during the week of July 7, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. There have been only 167 reported cases of the infection in the US between 1962 and 2024, the CDC reports. However, just four people have survived the infection.

For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

For nearly two decades, no one had spotted the world’s smallest-known snake.

Some scientists worried that maybe the Barbados threadsnake had become extinct, but one sunny morning, Connor Blades lifted a rock in a tiny forest in the eastern Caribbean island and held his breath.

“After a year of searching, you begin to get a little pessimistic,” said Blades, project officer with the Ministry of Environment in Barbados.

The snake can fit comfortably on a coin, so it was able to elude scientists for almost 20 years. Too tiny to identify with the naked eye, Blades placed it in a small glass jar and added soil, substrate and leaf litter.

Elon Musk rejected a peace offering from Donald Trump after the president revealed he was not planning to “destroy” the Tesla CEO’s empire.

In the midst of an on-again, off-again, explosive public feud that culminated in Musk dropping the bomb that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” the president threw out a surprise olive branch.

Musk, who stepped down from a role in Trump’s administration overseeing DOGE, wasn’t buying it. He responded to Trump’s post by taking it apart bit by bit.

Researchers believe humans’ closest relatives may have stored meat from their kills for months before eating it

For hungry Neanderthals, there was more on the menu than wild mammals, roasted pigeon, seafood and plants. Chemical signatures in the ancient bones point to a nutritious and somewhat inevitable side dish: handfuls of fresh maggots.

The theory from US researchers undermines previous thinking that Neanderthals were “hypercarnivores” who stood at the top of the food chain with cave lions, sabre-toothed tigers and other beasts that consumed impressive quantities of meat.

Rather than feasting on endless mammoth steaks, they stored their kills for months, the scientists believe, favouring the fatty parts over lean meat, and the maggots that riddled the putrefying carcasses.

Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets