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Who is Claudia Sheinbaum, elected as Mexico’s first woman president?

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Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico’s first woman leader in the nation’s more than 200 years of independence, captured the presidency by promising continuity.

The 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor and lifelong leftist ran a disciplined campaign capitalizing on her predecessor’s popularity before emerging victorious in Sunday’s vote, according to an official quick count. But with her victory now in hand, Mexicans will look to see how Sheinbaum, a very different personality from mentor and current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will assert herself.

While she hewed close to López Obrador politically and shares many of his ideas about the government’s role in addressing inequality, she is viewed as less combative and more data driven.

Sheinbaum’s background is in science. She has a Ph.D. in energy engineering. Her brother is a physicist. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Sheinbaum said, “I believe in science.”

Observers say that grounding showed itself in Sheinbaum’s actions as mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic, when her city of some 9 million people took a different approach from what López Obrador espoused at the national level.

While the federal government was downplaying the importance of coronavirus testing, Mexico City expanded its testing regimen. Sheinbaum set limits on businesses’ hours and capacity when the virus was rapidly spreading, even though López Obrador wanted to avoid any measures that would hurt the economy. And she publicly wore protective masks and urged social distancing while the president was still lunging into crowds.

Mexico’s persistently high levels of violence will be one of her most immediate challenges after she takes office Oct. 1. The country has seen a 150% uptick in violence, with 37 candidates assassinated during this election cycle, according to a report by the Mexico City-based consultancy Integralia. As CBS News’ Enrique Acevedo reports, the murders were linked to cartels who control much of the drug trade in the United States.

On the campaign trail she said little more than that she would expand the quasi-military National Guard created by López Obrador and continue his strategy of targeting social ills that make so many young Mexicans easy targets for cartel recruitment.

“Let it be clear, it doesn’t mean an iron fist, wars or authoritarianism,” Sheinbaum said of her approach to tackling criminal gangs, during her final campaign event. “We will promote a strategy of addressing the causes and continue moving toward zero impunity.”

Sheinbaum has praised López Obrador profusely and said little that the president hasn’t said himself. She blamed neoliberal economic policies for condemning millions to poverty, promised a strong welfare state and praised Mexico’s large state-owned oil company, Pemex, while also promising to emphasize clean energy.

“For me, being from the left has to do with that, with guaranteeing the minimum rights to all residents,” Sheinbaum told the AP last year.

In contrast to López Obrador, who seemed to relish his highly public battles with other branches of the government and also the news media, Sheinbaum is expected by many observers to be less combative or at least more selective in picking her fights.

“It appears she’s going to go in a different direction,” said Ivonne Acuña Murillo, a political scientist at Iberoamerican University. “I don’t know how much.”

As one of the U.S.’ most crucial economic partners, leaders in Washington will be watching closely to see which direction Mexico takes — “particularly in terms of Mexican stability and Mexican reliability for the U.S.,” said political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor. 

Sheinbaum will also be the first person from a Jewish background to lead the overwhelmingly Catholic country.



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As sunscreen misinformation spreads online, dermatologists face real-life impact of online trends

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With the holiday weekend in full swing, the anti-sunscreen movement’s recent spike is worrying dermatologists.

“It was not like this before,” Dr. Jeanine Downie, a board-certified dermatologist with her own practice in New Jersey told CBS News Confirmed. “I see easily six patients per week that are anti-sunscreen, where it used to be maybe one every other week or one a month. And now it’s just gotten crazy.”

Downie says in the last two weeks she’s diagnosed three squamous cell and two malignant melanomas, both of which can turn cancerous if not caught early. “And that’s me, just one little dermatologist,” she said.

This movement picked up steam in June, with creators on TikTok telling followers in no uncertain terms “stop wearing sunscreen.” At first, the posts received tens of thousands of views and likes. Dermatologists on the platform then began sharing their own reactions, with those videos gaining even more views. And more recently, influencer Nara Smith went viral sharing an at-home sunscreen recipe to her 8 million followers that dermatologists say does little to protect wearers from sun damage.

Dr. Shereene Idriss, a New York dermatologist who has amassed more than a million followers on her social media channels, is trying to leverage that influence to educate users about sunscreen and sun protection.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult, I think, as a consumer, to try to weed through the noise,” Idriss told CBS News Confirmed. 

This misinformation reflects the surprising reality of how some young Americans view sun safety. A study by the Orlando Health Cancer Institute in March found that 1 in 7 adults under the age of 35 say daily sunscreen use is more harmful than direct sun exposure. “I tell my patients, if you want your face to look like a leather bag later, then that’s up to you,” Downie said. About 6.1 million adults are treated each year for basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas according to the CDC. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the country.

“They only want the natural things,” said Downie. “But I tell them all the time, sitting in traffic here in the tri-state area, the level of pollutants in the air on a daily, weekly and monthly basis is significantly more toxic than any chemical they’re going to rub into their skin with sunblock.”

While there’s no evidence that sunscreens are unsafe, the FDA is currently investigating potential concerns. It’s called for more data on 12 ingredients often found in U.S. sunscreen. After conducting its own study into how certain ingredients are absorbed into the bloodstream, the FDA has called for more research into potential health effects on the body.

However, beachgoers on the Jersey Shore this week told CBS News that sun safety is top of mind this summer. CBS News Confirmed looked at Google Search trends and saw terms like “sunscreen” and “what does skin cancer look like” are at an all-time high since tracking began in 2004.

“You know what gets them to start wearing sunblock?” said Downie. “Young kids and young adults, Gen Z, Gen X, they hate pores. And once they hear that they’re going to have big pores that look like potholes, they put that sunblock on.”

The dermatologists CBS Newsspoke with say there is no such thing as a healthy tan. To best protect yourself this summer, they say to use sunscreen and reapply often; wear UPF clothing or UV visors; and avoid being outside during peak UV index between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.



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Moderate Masoud Pezeshkian wins Iran’s presidential runoff election

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Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s runoff presidential election Saturday, besting hard-liner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the West and ease enforcement on the country’s mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic.

Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran’s Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country. But even Pezeshkian’s modest aims will be challenged by an Iranian government still largely held by hard-liners, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and Western fears over Tehran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.

A vote count offered by authorities put Pezeshkian as the winner with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million in Friday’s election.

Iran's presidential election goes to run-off
Iranian reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian speaks at his rally for the presidential elections in Tehran, Iran, on July 3, 2024.

Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images


Supporters of Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, entered the streets of Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate as his lead grew over Jalili, a hard-line former nuclear negotiator.

But Pezeshkian’s win still sees Iran at a delicate moment, with tensions high in the Mideast over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Iran’s advancing nuclear program, and a looming U.S. election that could put any chance of a detente between Tehran and Washington at risk.

The first round of voting June 28 saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian officials have long pointed to turnout as a sign of support for the country’s Shiite theocracy, which has been under strain after years of sanctions crushing Iran’s economy, mass demonstrations and intense crackdowns on all dissent.

Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.

However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.

The election came amid heightened regional tensions. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.

Iran is also enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.

The campaign also repeatedly touched on what would happen if former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, won the November election. Iran has held indirect talks with President Joe Biden’s administration, though there’s been no clear movement back toward constraining Tehran’s nuclear program for the lifting of economic sanctions.

More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 and 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.

The late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.

Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.



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