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International Condom Day 2025 Date & Significance: Know the Importance of Promoting Safe Sex and Preventing STIs and Unplanned Pregnancies

International Condom Day, observed annually on February 13, is a vital observance that brings attention to the importance of safe sexual practices and the use of condoms as a powerful, affordable, and highly effective tool in preventing the transmission of HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and unplanned pregnancies. This global day of awareness encourages communities, organisations, and individuals to promote condom use, educates the public about its benefits, and reduces the stigma surrounding sexual health. Condom Day Date and Significance: Why Condoms Are Important? Everything You Need To Know About Promoting Safe & Responsible Sexual Health Practices.

International Condom Day 2025 Date

International Condom Day 2025 falls on Thursday, February 13.

What is International Condom Day?

International Condom Day is a worldwide event organised by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with various community organisations and health advocates. It aims to emphasise the importance of condoms as a simple yet effective means of protecting sexual health. The day is not only about promoting condom use but also about fostering awareness and breaking down barriers to sexual health education.

By spotlighting the role of condoms in preventing HIV transmission, STIs, and unintended pregnancies, International Condom Day serves as a reminder that sexual health is an essential part of overall well-being and that condoms should be normalised as a critical tool in protecting that health.

Significance of International Condom Day

International Condom Day holds great significance for many reasons, starting with the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Condoms are one of the most effective methods for reducing the risk of transmitting HIV during sexual activity, particularly in regions where HIV is prevalent. Condoms also provide protection against various STIs, including syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to serious health complications if left untreated.

Moreover, International Condom Day plays a key role in reducing unplanned pregnancies, empowering individuals with the tools to make informed decisions about their sexual health. Contraception and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are essential components of reproductive health, and condoms offer a low-cost solution that anyone can use.

The World Health Organization (WHO) actively participates in this observance, highlighting innovative methods of promoting condom use, including creative campaigns and artistic expressions. These efforts are designed to engage the public, especially young people, and make the conversation about condoms more relatable, approachable, and engaging. February Is National Condom Month 2025! Know About the Observance That Raises Awareness About Safe Sex and the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Why is International Condom Day Important?

International Condom Day serves a dual purpose: it is both a celebration of sexual health and a call to action. It encourages the normalisation of condom use as part of everyday life and ensures that individuals have access to the resources and education needed to protect themselves and their partners. The day helps raise awareness that condoms are a simple yet highly effective means of prevention—affordable, easy to use, and available to everyone. By making condoms more accessible and reducing stigma, International Condom Day works to create a world where individuals can engage in safer sexual practices without fear of judgment or discrimination. International Condom Day Date, History, Significance: All You Need To Know About This Important Sexual Health and Wellness Day.

As communities and health organisations come together to observe this day on February 13, it is essential to continue advocating for sexual health education, access to condoms, and the normalisation of condom use worldwide. Whether through artistic expression, outreach campaigns, or education initiatives, International Condom Day empowers individuals to make informed decisions about their sexual health and encourages societies to recognise the vital role of condoms in promoting a healthier, more informed world.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 12, 2025 06:18 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).

February 12, 2025
‘This has to stop’: House Dem faces backlash for ‘promoting physical violence’ at DOGE protest

A Democratic congressman is facing heat from conservatives on social media after promoting the idea of a “street fight” at a protest pushing back against Elon Musk’s recent efforts to slash government waste through the newly created DOGE office.

“This will be a congressional fight, a constitutional fight, a legal fight, and on days like this a street fight, yes we will stand,” Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who has represented Maryland’s 7th Congressional District since 2020, said at a rally in Baltimore on Monday outside the Social Security Office.

Mfume, who was elected to fill the seat of the late Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, added that DOGE stands for “the department of government evil.”

Conservatives on social media were quick to criticize Mfume. They accused him of inciting violence and wondered aloud why more media outlets weren’t picking up the comments.

‘DOGE BOYS’: DEMS FUME OVER SPENDING CUT SPREE AT RALLY OUTSIDE TRUMP’S NEXT POTENTIAL TARGET

Rep. Mfume called for a “street fight” at an anti-DOGE rally on Monday. (Getty)

“A ‘street fight’ to stop cuts to wasteful spending?” GOP Sen. Mike Lee posted on X. “Those are fighting words. And they’re not honorable words.”

“Remember when Trump pumped his fist and said fight after someone almost blew his brains out and the press claimed it was a call to violence?” Red State writer Bonchie posted on X. “Meanwhile…”

“You can almost hear the Democrat party’s 31% approval rating slide further down a hill with clips like this,” Republican communicator Matt Whitlock posted on X. “Not only are Democrats openly promoting political violence, they’re promoting political violence over funding trans surgeries in South America.”

MEET THE YOUNG TEAM OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERS SLASHING GOVERNMENT WASTE AT DOGE: REPORT

Rep. Kweisi Mfume at a hearing on Capitol Hill, March 8, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“WATCH: @RepKweisiMfume (D-MD) riles his supporters up for a ‘street fight’ against President Trump’s agenda on rooting out government waste and corruption,” the Trump White House’s rapid response team posted on X.

“So @realDonaldTrump, what’s the plan for dealing with Congressional members who are inciting violence?” Women For America First Executive Director Kylie Jane Kremer posted on X. ” This has to stop & there should be consequences for any MOC who continues to do this.”

“Dems calling for a ‘street fight,” the American Firearms Association posted on X. “Never give up your firearms because we all know these Communist Dems are thirsty for blood!”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a Mfume spokesperson said, “Congressman Mfume was talking about going neighbor to neighbor and person to person to fight to win the hearts, minds, and souls of disaffected voters who didn’t participate in the last election or who are turned off by the current process.”

“He believes everybody needs to be engaged and you have to be able to fight where people are to talk with them and to get them engaged and bring them back to the fold.”

The spokesperson added that Mfume is “not opposed to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“He is the Ranking Member of the United States House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations and that has been a focus of his bipartisan work alongside Subcommittee Chair Pete Sessions for the last two years. Congressman Mfume supports many things to make government run better, including ending cost overruns at the Department of Defense, tackling the underworld of fraud and improper payments associated with government spending, and establishing a scorecard within agencies which measures their ability to curb waste – he has worked with at least a dozen inspector generals on these issues.”

The Trump administration appears primed to target the Social Security Administration as part of its DOGE efforts, Fox News Digital previously reported, prompting strong pushback from Democrats who have largely opposed DOGE, arguing it represents a constitutional crisis and a threat to democracy.

“We have one simple message, which is: Elon Musk, keep your hands off our Social Security,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told the crowd in Baltimore.

MAXINE WATERS, HOUSE DEMS RIPPED FOR ‘UNHINGED’ CLASH WITH SECURITY GUARD AT EDUCATION DEPT

Elon Musk is leading the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“Over the last 21 days, we have seen Elon Musk conducting illegal raids on federal agencies with his DOGE crew,” the senator said. “This is a recipe for corruption by the DOGE boys.”

Musk and other Republicans have argued that a significant amount of waste exists in the federal entitlement system and pushed back on the accusation that legitimate benefits will be taken away.

“At this point, I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR,” Musk recently posted on X. “It’s not even close.”

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“On no planet does @DOGE want to take away anyone’s Social Security check,” Sen. Lee posted on X. “And on no planet is violence warranted by what @DOGE is actually trying to do—stop waste, fraud, and abuse in government.”

Musk responded to Lee’s post by saying, “Yeah, I can’t emphasize this enough! The goal of auditing the Social Security Administration is to stop the extreme levels of fraud taking place, so that it remains solvent and protects the social security checks of honest Americans!”

Fox News Digital previously reported that, according to Just Facts, a nonprofit research institute, SSA disbursed roughly $2 billion in fraudulent or improper payments in 2022, which it calculated was enough “to pay 89,947 retired workers the average annual old-age benefit of $21,924 for 2023.”

Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this report

Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to [email protected].

February 11, 2025
‘Disturbing’: Whistleblower fumes at Biden-era agency promoting DEI program as department’s ‘mission’

The now-archived website for the virtually shut down United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a page devoted to pushing DEI which a former employee whistleblower told Fox News Digital was part of a larger Biden administration effort.

“Each of us has a responsibility to address bigotry, gender discrimination, and structural racism and uphold individual dignity… This isn’t just one of our values; it’s our mission—one hand extended out to another to meet people where they are and treat others as equals,” former USAID administrator Samantha Power, who previously served multiple roles in the Obama administration, is quoted as saying on the archived websites DEI page.

The website explains that the USAID was “committed to a diverse, equitable, inclusive workplace where everyone has an opportunity to thrive” and that it has implemented a DEI strategy that “commits USAID to improving and enhancing diversity throughout the Agency, enhancing inclusion and equity for everyone in the workplace, and strengthening accountability for promoting and sustaining a diverse workforce and an inclusive Agency culture.”

Mark Moyar, a USAID whistleblower who worked in the department from 2018 to 2019, spoke to Fox News Digital about how Power and others in the department made DEI a top priority.

AFTER DOGE CRACKDOWN ON USAID, TRUMP’S HOUSE ALLIES WANT THIS CABINET AGENCY ON CHOPPING BLOCK

USAID found itself on the chopping block in recent weeks due to the DOGE effort to cut government waste (Getty Images)

“Samantha Power’s emphasis on DEI was part of a larger Biden administration effort to infuse DEI into every federal agency and we saw this with very negative effects all over the place and you have people taking time off from their jobs to attend these indoctrination sessions and clearly pushing the message that people are divided into oppressor groups and victim groups and that there’s this white rage and white extremism running all over the place, which is basically not non existent,” Moyar explained.

Moyar told Fox News Digital that “far left theories” were given “legitimacy” in the wake of the George Floyd movement in 2020 and that when DEI became a “central” focus at USAID it resulted in other countries taking the United States less seriously.

USAID STAFFERS STUNNED, ANGERED BY TRUMP ADMIN’S DOGE SHUTDOWN OF $40B AGENCY

Samantha Power, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, delivers a speech during a visit to El Salvador at the Central American University in San Salvador, El Salvador June 14, 2021. (REUTERS/Jose Cabezas)

“It’s particularly disturbing that not only were they pushing within the organization, they were actually funding DEI events all over the world, you know, DEI comic books or DEI workshops and so I think this can only undermine our image abroad because most people outside of this country recognized DEI for the silliness that it is and the divisiveness that it causes,” Moyar, author of the book “Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Presidency”, said.

“We also saw this as well with women’s empowerment that everything for Samantha Power had to be viewed through a gendered lens. So you had all these gender consultants as well as DEI consultants taking huge amounts of taxpayer money to do this sort of analysis. And I don’t think they really have anything to show for it and I think you’ll find what we found in other places where this has been pushed, that DEI only makes things worse. It divides people and group tensions between groups are worse than they were before.”

President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing in women’s or girls’ sporting events, in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

USAID found itself on the chopping block in recent weeks as part of President Trump’s plan to rid the federal government of waste along with his campaign pledges to rid DEI from the federal bureaucracy.

“For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” the White House said Monday.

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Musk has meanwhile slammed the agency as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” and reported in an audio-only message on X on Sunday that “we’re in the process” of “shutting down USAID” and that Trump reportedly agreed to shutter the agency.

Democrats have slammed the Trump administration’s efforts on USAID. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., accused Trump of starting a dictatorship while she protested outside USAID headquarters on Monday.

“It is a really, really sad day in America. We are witnessing a constitutional crisis,” Omar said. “We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one. And here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like when you gut the Constitution, and you install yourself as the sole power. That is how dictators are made.”

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report

Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to [email protected].

February 7, 2025
Energy Sec. Wright outlines Day 1 priorities: Refilling SPR, promoting ‘energy addition, not subtraction’

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has outlined eight “Day 1 Priorities” he aims to accomplish, several of which he laid out in his inaugural address at the Energy Department headquarters Wednesday.

Wright, the CEO of Colorado oilfield services company Liberty Energy, said he will prioritize refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile, streamlining federal permitting for energy development, and abiding by the mantra: “Advance energy addition, not subtraction.”

In his remarks at the department’s building near Pierre L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C., Wright spoke about his childhood love of science and how that focus led him to pursue work in the field.

Wright said he met President Donald Trump about a year ago, and the two businessmen connected over their support for unleashing American energy prowess and highlighting how U.S. energy dominance positively affects many other aspects of life.

CHRIS WRIGHT CONFIRMED SECRETARY OF ENERGY

President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright (AP/Getty)

Wright said Trump had a “simple vision” that “energy is good and that we need more” of it, particularly domestically-sourced.

“So we just connected. And he asked me, ‘Would you be secretary of energy?’ And I said, ‘Boy, if I’m asked to serve my country, I don’t have to think about that one.’”

He called the Energy Department the gem of the American government and said he has long been entranced by contemporary advancements in the field, from German chemist Otto Hahn splitting the atom in 1938 to Adm. Hyman Rickover creating the first nuclear-powered machines in submarines.

“I want to better energize our country, strengthen our country, advance science… and get the politics out of all of this.”

“Energy is not political: it is the basic infrastructure that allows us to live great lives, to allow whatever our dream is, whatever our vision is,” he said.

TOP SENATE REPUBLICAN HITS BACK AS DEM CALLS FOUL ON TRUMP CONFIRMATION HEARINGS

Wright added that there is no such thing as clean or dirty energy, and that in reality, there is “no free lunch” when it comes to the byproducts of the production process: “It’s about tradeoffs.”

Other “day one” priorities Wright has outlined include a return to “regular order” on liquefied natural gas exports.

Wright has been a longtime advocate of hydraulic fracturing – famously going as far as drinking fracking fluid to prove environmentalist critics wrong about its effect on nature.

Pennsylvania and North Dakota are epicenters of fracking, while New York retains the subterranean resources to do so but is under a statewide ban.

Wright has also pledged to strengthen the power grid’s reliability and security.

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There have been blackouts occasionally in recent years from overtaxed grid areas, notably in California around 2001.

There have also been security threats to energy transmission, including from a Catonsville, Maryland, woman who conspired to destroy the region’s power grid.

Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said Sarah Beth Clendaniel “plotted to disable the power grid around the entire Baltimore region” in 2018, after becoming acquainted with a Florida man who espoused White supremacist “accelerationist” ideologies.

Under Wright’s tenure, the Energy Department also plans to promote home appliance affordability and choice – a break from the Biden administration’s efforts to restrict usage of gas stoves.

Former President Joe Biden also spent part of the nation’s SPR in what critics called a bid to assuage energy price spikes for political purposes. Wright said he would promote the refilling of the SPR, as well as modernize the U.S. nuclear stockpile, Fox News has learned.

Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.

He joined Fox News in 2013 as a writer and production assistant.

Charles covers media, politics and culture for Fox News Digital.

Charles is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. Story tips can be sent to [email protected].

February 5, 2025