Health secretary, longtime vaccination skeptic, spent years boosting misinformation about vaccines including MMR

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, on Sunday told American parents that they should get their children vaccinated against measles, as the surge in infections has reached numbers not seen in the past 35 years.

Kennedy, a leading vaccination skeptic who has spent years amplifying misinformation about vaccines, including the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), made his call in the course of a contentious interview with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.

The former Black Panther’s lawyers ask a UN panel to review his detention after US legal avenues were exhausted

As he approaches the 45th anniversary of his incarceration in December, the Black radical writer and prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is taking his claim that he has been subjected to arbitrary imprisonment for a crime that he did not commit to a new tribunal: the United Nations in Geneva.

On Tuesday Abu-Jamal, 72, lodged a petition with the UN’s working group on arbitrary detention, a body within the Human Rights Council. It marks the latest attempt by the internationally renowned prisoner and prolific author of 15 books to seek relief, having exhausted all domestic channels through state and federal courts.

Rights groups condemn secrecy surrounding killings and say hurry to execute raises chance of ‘torturous’ deaths

Florida is preparing on Tuesday to carry out the state’s first double execution within a single day since the start of the modern era of the US death penalty in 1976.

Barring last-minute legal intervention, James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon on Tuesday at Florida state prison near Starke. Six hours later, Dominick Occhicone, 80, faces the same fate.