MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont has become the first U.S. state to ban paraquat, one of the most commonly used herbicides, with lawmakers citing a possible link between the weed killer and Parkinson’s disease. The ban has been widely celebrated by advocates who hope Vermont’s move will prompt similar action in other states to prevent the neurologic disease that robs people of control over their movements and affects about 1 million Americans. “Vermont took the step to be the leader in this, and that’s significant because it shifts the conversation,” said Dan Feehan, with The Michael J. Fox Foundation, the world’s largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research. “Now, ‘will your state be the last to ban it?’ becomes the question.” However, for some farmers, the ban could potentially threaten their already slim profit margins. Attempts to prohibit paraquat’s use in other states where the chemical is more heavily used have repeatedly stalled. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently reviewing the safety of paraquat after saying there’s no clear link between the herbicide and Parkinson’s. Syngenta, a Swiss chemicals company that has made paraquat for years, announced earlier this year that it would stop global manufacturing or selling of the chemical, but also defended the herbicide’s safety. Other companies continue to sell it. “Despite decades of investigation and more than 1,200 epidemiological and laboratory studies of paraquat, no scientist or doctor has ever concluded in a peer-reviewed scientific analysis that paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease,” the company said. First introduced in the U.S. in 1964, paraquat became a popular weed killer for farmers. It’s known as an extremely toxic chemical that is fatal if ingested and can cause chronic health problems on contact. Farmworkers are at particular risk, which has led the EPA to require special training for certified applicators of paraquat. The roughly hourlong training requires applicators to pass a 15-question quiz, and must be completed every three years. It’s commonly used for protecting soybean, cotton and corn crops, but also for apples and grapes, according to the United States Geological Survey. As of 2018, the USGS reported more than 10 million pounds (4.5 million kilograms) of paraquat was used in the U.S., largely concentrated in the South, Midwest and California. Despite its popularity, dozens of countries have banned the substance. The European Union and the UK banned paraquat in 2007. China banned domestic use of paraquat in 2017, along with Vietnam and Malaysia. Thailand issued a similar ban in 2019. Defenders of using paraquat say the chemical is quickly absorbed by weeds, meaning that if rain falls — even after 30 minutes of application — it won’t wash off into the soil. Companies like Syngenta say paraquat becomes immobilized once it touches soil. Yet there’s disagreement over its harmful effects, with the Parkinson’s community warning that people living near where paraquat is applied have increased risk of getting the disease. Whether it causes Parkinson’s disease has been heavily debated and studied for years. Dr. Philip Landrigan, an epidemiologist who directs a global health program at Boston College and has campaigned against human exposure to toxic chemicals, said multiple studies have shown that environmental factors, including exposure to pesticides like paraquat, can increase the risk for Parkinson’s disease. The Parkinson’s community considers the Vermont ban a significant victory. “No matter how you slice and dice it, there’s no safe way to use paraquat,” said Ron McConnell, a Vermonter who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s after getting exposed to a different toxic substance at his work in 2017. “This law that Vermont just passed really is protecting the farmers that use it and the farmworkers that use it.” The ban goes into effect Nov. 1, but the statute gives farmers using paraquat on fruit-producing orchards, berries and small fruit crops until 2030 to transition away from using the herbicide. Greg Burtt, owner of a family apple orchard and Republican Vermont lawmaker, considers paraquat a “critical tool” in his operation. He says he believes the ban will place farmers like him at a competitive disadvantage to growers in other states who can continue using the more budget-friendly paraquat. There are alternative herbicides, but some farmers warn that those could involve chemicals that risk killing the plant if not applied carefully. Mechanical tilling, crop rotation and hand weeding are also options, but come with separate downsides, notably increased labor costs. “There’s a reason why it’s an industry standard,” said Burtt, who’s used paraquat for 20 years. He’s not worried about getting Parkinson’s because he interpreted the research on the herbicide to be inconclusive. “I wanna be the first person to make sure that it’s safe because I don’t wanna die young over farming,” Burtt said. “And so if anybody’s had to wrestle with these questions, it’s me.” ___ Kruesi reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man convicted of fatally stabbing his wife decades ago is set to be executed Thursday evening. Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke for the 1992 stabbing death of his wife Karen. If carried out, this would be Florida’s ninth execution to date this year following a record 19 executions in 2025. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions. Court records show Spencer was arrested after choking and threatening to kill Karen Spencer in December 1991. While in jail, Dusty Ray Spencer called his wife and warned her that when he got out, he was going to finish what he started. On Jan. 18, 1992, Spencer beat his wife’s teenage son with a clothes iron when the boy tried to stop Spencer from attacking his mother, officials said. Then about a week later, the son responded to a commotion outside their home and found Spencer hitting his mother in the head with a brick, according to officials. Court records show the teen tried to shoot Spencer with a rifle, but the gun misfired. Spencer threatened the teen with a knife, and the boy ran away to get help. When police arrived, they found Karen Spencer dead with several stab wounds to the chest. Spencer was initially sentenced to death in 1992 after being convicted of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated battery. In 1994, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing after finding that the trial court had mishandled evaluating aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Spencer was resentenced to death the next year, and subsequent appeals have been denied. Last week, the state Supreme Court rejected Spencer’s appeals. His attorneys had argued that he has health issues such as liver disease that pose a heightened risk of pain and suffering and argued that executing him at his advanced age would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. A final appeal was still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each. Another execution is scheduled in Florida for July 14. Dennis Sochor, 74, was convicted of killing a woman just hours into 1982 after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party. All Florida executions are carried out by lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than 40 years, sketches by American illustrator Norman Rockwell of scenes from the White House visitor’s lobby graced the walls of the West Wing, where every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump had seen them. Now, they’re going on public display for the first time after a nonprofit organization paid a whopping sum of more than $7 million for the sketches after they ended up on an auction block following a family dispute over their ownership. The four 1940s-era sketches titled “So You Want to See the President!” show people from all walks of life waiting to see President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. They depict U.S. senators, members of the military, the press and even a Miss America biding their time in the West Wing reception area, as they wait to be shown to the Oval Office. The White House Historical Association spared no expense for the sketches to prevent them from being “lost forever,” such as to a private art collection, its president Stuart McLaurin told The Associated Press. The public will be able to see them through June 2027 at the historical association’s “The People’s House” education center near the White House, he said. “And since they had been seen by the eyes of so many presidents and first ladies and senior White House staff and important visitors from around the world, we wanted the American people to see them. So we acquired them,” McLaurin said. The sketches had been put up for sale by a grandson of the White House official who received them as a gift from Rockwell. Rockwell, who became famous for his illustrations of everyday American life that graced covers of the Saturday Evening Post, spent hours at the White House people-watching from a chair in the West Wing lobby, McLaurin said. But after his sketches were consumed by a fire that destroyed Rockwell’s art studio in Vermont, he went back to the White House to collect more material. “So it’s really a combination of his memories from that first visit, the memories of the second visit,” McLaurin said. “And it is an array of these people representing the military and White House staff and members of Congress and the press corps and all kinds of people that literally, to this day, go through that space in the West Wing.” The first of Rockwell’s colorful sketches opens with scenes of the entrance gate, photographers waiting outside the White House entrance on West Executive Avenue and Stephen Early, a former AP journalist who became the third White House press secretary under Roosevelt, in a huddle with a group of journalists. Seated on red leather chairs and reading papers are members of the press and Rockwell, with a pipe in his mouth and legs outstretched. The next scene shows Miss America — identified as Rosemary LaPlanche, the 1941 titleholder — in a yellow dress and her sash, sitting on a red sofa alongside her publicity man. A kilt-wearing Scottish officer also sits nearby as a Secret Service agent hovers. U.S. Sens. Tom Connally, D-Texas, and Warren Austin, R-Vt., face each other in conversation as they sit on a red couch in the third sketch while a U.S. Navy “WAVES” officer looks on from a nearby chair. Gens. Joseph W. “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell and Edwin M. “Pa” Watson shake hands while being photographed, and an aide pushing Roosevelt’s lunch cart is chased by Fala, the president’s dog. The final sketch shows more uniformed U.S military members huddled in conversation and, finally, an aide opening the door to the Oval Office, where the president is glimpsed. “It’s such a little aquarium of these people and we’re like a fly on the wall as to what it was like at that particular period of time,” McLaurin said of the sketches. Rockwell made the sketches for Early and gave them to him after they appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1943, during World War II, McLaurin said. Early, who died in 1951, had displayed them on the wall in his West Wing office and then kept them for many years after. In 1978, a family member turned the sketches over to the White House, where they were on display throughout the West Wing for more than four decades, sometimes in a hallway between the press offices that are mere steps from the Oval Office. The family’s ownership dispute began in 2017 when Thomas Early, one of the press secretary’s sons, saw them on a wall in the White House while watching a television interview with President Donald Trump, according to court records. William Elam III, a grandson of Stephen Early, said his mother received the drawings as a gift from her father, the press secretary, before he died, and that ownership had later passed to him. The illustrations had gone to the White House in 1978 under an agreement that required they be returned to Elam upon request. The White House gave back the drawings in 2022. A federal appeals court settled the dispute in May 2025, upholding a lower-court ruling in favor of Elam, according to court records. Elam put them up for sale. Historians at the association have researched the people in the drawings to learn their stories, McLaurin said, and the exhibit will include a digital component that uses modern technology to bring the characters in the sketches to life. The association is still figuring out what happens to the sketches after the exhibit ends in June 2027. They may be shown in other venues, and may eventually end up back in the White House, McLaurin said. When the association learned the sketches were for sale, “our board affirmed that this is an acquisition that we should make,” he said. McLaurin said the privately funded association, which was founded in 1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and receives no taxpayer dollars, had feared the sketches would sell for even more than the $7.25 million it paid for them. That is the most the association has ever paid for a work of art for the vast collection it holds as part of its mission to help the White House collect and display artifacts that represent American history and culture. “In our view, these are priceless works,” McLaurin said. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Andrew Goudsward WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) – The U.S. security apparatus is keeping watch at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, whose blue color has been fouled by green algae after being newly renovated at President Donald Trump’s request. National Guard troops patrol the area around the roughly 2,000-foot-long basin on Washington’s National Mall in groups of threes and fours. Solar-powered light towers illuminate the area at night and roughly a half-dozen mobile security stations outfitted with surveillance cameras ring the perimeter. The stepped-up security measures follow a $14.7 million refurbishment of the Reflecting Pool. Trump has blamed dark-of-night saboteurs for the issues with the project, but has presented no evidence to support his claims. Green algae has been a persistent problem in the pool. The security presence unnerved Mary Jane Willard, a tourist from Seattle, Washington. “It’s very sad to come here and see all the fences, to see all the National Guard here, to see all the cameras,” Willard said on Wednesday. “It just shouldn’t be here.” Three weeks ago, the Trump administration declared victory in completing work to repaint the landmark pool, which stretches from the Lincoln Memorial nearly to the Washington Monument. The color was “American flag blue” for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence on July 4.  In the days since, the pool has been beset by problems including blooms of algae, a long-running scourge that has tinted the water a vibrant green, and chips of blue paint peeling off the bottom. Days before the National Mall will host U.S. 250th anniversary celebrations, the Reflecting Pool has become the latest symbol of Trump’s Washington: a test of his attempts to bend reality in his favor and command law enforcement to his personal whims. FEW DETAILS ON VANDALISM ARRESTS Trump has shown a personal interest in the Reflecting Pool project, one of a series of ways he has sought to put his stamp on Washington’s monumental core. Trump has alleged, without providing evidence, that vandals cut a 250-foot or perhaps a 350-foot gash in the pool, causing the chipped paint, and poured chemicals into the water to generate algae growth. Trump, pressed on the lack of evidence to support the allegations, told reporters on Monday, “at the right time, you’ll see it. You’ll see it in court.” The Department of the Interior said in a social media post on Tuesday that six people have been arrested for alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool and seven more were issued federal citations. The department said it is also investigating the “gash” that Trump spoke about though no evidence has emerged to support those claims. Neither the Department of the Interior nor the U.S. Park Police has disclosed the names of those charged or the offenses they are facing. Neither agency responded to a request for comment on Wednesday. Local and federal court records show no cases in recent days involving vandalism at the Reflecting Pool. Those arrested may not show up in local Washington, D.C. court records unless the U.S. Attorney’s Office decides to bring a case. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a Trump ally, told Fox News in an interview broadcast on Sunday that those charged “will face the criminal justice system.” OLYMPIC CYCLIST HANDCUFFED One of those arrested was former U.S. Olympian David Hearn. Video posted on social media by conservative journalist Emily Miller showed Hearn, who was cycling near the pool, being approached by National Guard troops and later handcuffed by police. Hearn, in an interview with The Washington Post, denied destroying or removing any property but said he reached into the pool and grabbed a partially detached piece of the peeling pool liner. “Treating ordinary conduct as criminal diverts attention from the real questions of how this project was managed,” Norm Eisen, a lawyer representing Hearn who has been involved in a series of lawsuits against the Trump administration, said in a statement. “Using the criminal justice system to target innocent people as a form of distraction is textbook authoritarian behavior.” Hearn is due to appear in local Washington, D.C. court on July 9. Despite the stepped-up surveillance, the atmosphere near the Reflecting Pool was mostly relaxed on Wednesday as tourists enjoyed a sun-soaked early summer morning in Washington. “I came down to check it out for myself, but I actually think I was expecting something a little different. It looks pretty good to me,” said Joanna Walling, who was visiting from Merritt Island, Florida. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s out here vandalizing today.” (Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; additional reporting by Brad Heath, Editing by Michael Learmonth and David Gregorio) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Deena Beasley June 25 (Reuters) – Launch prices for prescription medicines approved by U.S. regulators in 2025 fell from the previous year, but remained high at a median of $216,000 due to expensive drugs for rare diseases, a new analysis shows. In 2024, the median annual list price of a new drug was over $370,000, up from $300,000 in 2023 and $222,000 in 2022. Drug pricing experts attributed the dip to the mix of types of drugs approved rather than a significant shift in pricing strategy or government policies aimed at lowering prescription drug prices. The Food and Drug Administration last year approved five cell and gene therapies versus seven in both 2024 and 2023. Gene therapies, which are given once, can have prices in the millions of dollars. Many new medicines target serious, complex diseases with few or no treatment options, and it is “misleading” to compare those prices to other drug types, trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said in an email. More than 67% of FDA approvals in 2025 were for small- molecule drugs, such as pills, which are made from chemicals, rather than costly, complex biologics derived from living cells. That number was up from 2024, when small molecules accounted for 62% of approvals, and 2023, when it was 57%. New biologics are often first-in-class and do not have competitors, allowing drugmakers to charge high prices, said Richard Frank, director at the Brookings Institution’s Center on Health Policy. The average launch price for a drug approved in 2025 was $416,000, as lower-cost products like $1,050 for LENZ Therapeutics’ Vizz eye drops for blurry vision and $5,400 cholesterol drug Lerochol from LIB Therapeutics offset expensive treatments for rare genetic disorders like Mighty Therapeutics’ Forzinity for Barth syndrome, priced at nearly $800,000 a year. POLITICS PLAYS A ROLE “It is hard to make a lot of assessments about trends based on a single year,” said Dr. Benjamin Rome, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who researches drug prices, adding that “2025 was an odd year.” He said the FDA was buffeted by Trump administration reorganization efforts, including staff cuts and leadership changes. The agency rejected several gene therapies, leading to a backlash from patient advocates and political controversy. Earlier this year, the FDA said it would take a more flexible approach. Drugmakers came under pressure from President Donald Trump, who has sought to claim victory in tackling high U.S. pharmaceutical prices with the TrumpRx platform for direct-to-consumer sales, and deals with large companies to bring U.S. prices in line with those in other developed nations. Those agreements are unlikely to last beyond the current administration, said Brookings’ Frank. Rome also said that without legislation, the agreements will not significantly impact pricing decisions. “There’s been this broad trend to say look what I’m doing to lower drug prices,” but a lot of it is “performative,” said Geoffrey Joyce, director at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. NEW DRUGS FOR CANCER, RARE DISEASES The FDA approved 51 new drugs last year, 46 at its main division and the five cell and gene therapies. The agency approved 57 new drugs in 2024 and 55 in 2023. Those tallies do not include imaging agents, blood testing reagents or vaccines. The analysis of 42 drug prices compiled by 3 Axis Advisors also excluded drugs used intermittently like antibiotics and products that have not yet launched commercially. Cancer drugs remained the most represented therapeutic area, accounting for about a third of 2025 FDA approvals. As in recent years, more than half of the approvals were “orphan” drugs, meaning they treat conditions affecting fewer than 200,000 Americans. Drugmakers are given incentives to invest in research for rare diseases, including longer market exclusivity, and often charge premium prices for the niche products. While calling that “wise public policy,” USC’s Joyce noted that drugmakers have “gamed” those incentives. They can develop a drug that’s effective for a wide range of conditions but seek approval for “a low-prevalence disease… and get all the benefits and all the tax write-offs,” he said. “The logic is to launch (at a price) as high as you think you can get away with.” Drug companies emphasize that new medicines can offer cost-saving value, including potentially fewer emergency room visits and hospital stays. The analysis looked only at list prices and did not include the undisclosed discounts and rebates that insurers can receive from manufacturers. “You’re still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for most new drugs… irrespective of whether they offer a huge benefit over existing drugs or are sort of novel products that don’t offer much benefit,” Harvard’s Rome said. (Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com