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Connecticut Judge Upholds School Vaccine Requirements, Dismissal of Challenge to Religious Exemption Ban
A Connecticut judge has upheld the state’s ban on religious exemptions for school vaccinations, dismissing a legal challenge brought by several parents. The lawsuit argued that Connecticut’s policy violated the state’s 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. However, lawmakers amended the law in May to specifically state that it does not apply to school vaccine requirements. The change was made retroactive to pending lawsuits.
The judge dismissed the remaining claims in the case after constitutional challenges had already been rejected. Connecticut law now requires students to be vaccinated against certain diseases before enrolling in school. Prior to 2021, families could seek either medical or religious exemptions. That changed when Connecticut became the sixth state to eliminate religious exemptions for new applicants after Gov. Ned Lamont signed the legislation. The law took effect in September 2022.
Attorney General William Tong welcomed the ruling, saying, “Vaccines save lives. Today’s decision affirms what we have said since day one, Connecticut’s commonsense school vaccine requirements are lifesaving and lawful.”
New Report Finds Industrially Produced Meat and Cheese Dominate America’s School Lunch Entrées, Raising Concerns for Children’s Health
Friends of the Earth reported:
A new report by Friends of the Earth and Chef Ann Foundation finds school lunch entrées are dominated by processed, meat- and cheese-laden foods sourced from large-scale industrial supply chains, increasing children’s exposure to known carcinogens and ingredients of concern, and potentially to undisclosed contaminants including veterinary drug, dioxin, and pesticide residues.
Beyond the Nugget: The Hidden Health Risks of Industrially Produced Animal Proteins—and the Path Toward Better School Lunches analyzed more than 10,000 lunch entrées from 45 public school districts nationwide and assessed representative products from 10 of the most commonly offered entrée categories offered by USDA-approved processors.
The findings reveal how federal policy has driven a school food system heavily reliant on industrially produced, often-processed meat and cheese entreés that are associated with chronic disease risks.
Meta AI Builds Detailed Profiles of Children From Years of Family Posts
If you’re still OK with posting pictures of your kids on social media, take a minute to hear from mother of two Kalie Robins. At the start of September, she did something that hundreds of thousands of parents do every day. She posted a video of her young daughter on Facebook.
Under the video of Robins and her daughter singing in a car, Facebook’s Meta AI system displayed a suggested question: “Who is the child passenger?” Robins was shocked that Facebook would ask this question about a minor, so curiosity prompted her to click it. That’s when a flood of automated stalker-type behavior began.
In Instagram post, an enraged Robins described what happened: “It starts pulling completely separate information for each of my kids.” That included names, birth dates, and videos of them. The site also pulled up a picture of her newborn daughter that Robins’ mother had posted on Facebook years ago, along with a long-deleted picture that Robins said had once been in her own account.
Abbott Agrees to Settlement Over Closure of Largest Baby Formula Plant in the US
Abbott Laboratories will pay $385 million to resolve claims tied to an investigation of contamination at a baby formula factory in Sturgis, Michigan, the largest in the country, which led to the supply shortages in 2022. Problems at the facility prompted a lawsuit by the Justice Department and recall of powdered infant formula at the facility. The recall covered several infant formula brands, including Similac, and squeezed inventory that had already been strained by supply chain disruptions and stockpiling during COVID-19 shutdowns.
The settlement, which Abbott says does not represent any finding of fault or liability, also pertains to lawsuits filed by certain relators and the Attorneys General of several states. Abbott said on Monday that tests by government regulators of unopened product from the homes of the infants under investigation at the time of the 2022 recall were negative for Cronobacter sakazakii, a bacterium that can cause illness in infants.
The company also said that no unopened, distributed Abbott infant formulas have ever tested positive for Cronobacter sakazakii. The Justice Department under President Donald Trump closed its criminal investigation into the matter.
ADHD Could Raise Odds For Gut Problems
U.S. News & World Report reported:
ADHD is linked to a nearly 50% increase in GI problems, a new evidence review says.
The association was even stronger for specific GI problems, including an almost doubled risk of constipation, a 58% increase in irritable bowel syndrome and more than four times higher odds of losing bowel control, researchers reported Sept. 10 in the Journal of Attention Disorders.
“Almost every gut symptom we looked at: constipation, IBS, even indigestion, appeared to be associated with ADHD,” said lead researcher Sarah Blake, a medical student at the University of Warwick Medical School in the U.K. “These symptoms can have a real impact on daily life, but they could easily be overlooked if the focus is on ADHD itself,” she added in a news release.
There are several potential explanations for these links, including ADHD-related eating patterns, side effects from medication and even ties between ADHD and gut bacteria, researchers said.
‘Cognitive Stunting’ and the Potential Threat Generative AI Poses for Children’s Brains
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Los Angeles Unified School District recently announced it will bar student use of generative artificial intelligence on school devices for the 2026-27 academic year, joining New York City Public Schools in limiting children’s access to a technology no one yet knows how to safely manage.
The nation’s two largest school districts made the move at a pivotal moment in the technology’s evolution. Last week, a former engineer for OpenAI and Anthropic warned that AI’s chief architects “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
