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HEALTH CARE
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The world's only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV could stop transmission — if people can get it
A vial of lenacapavir, an injectable HIV prevention drug, at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation's Masiphumelele Research Site, in Cape Town, South Africa, which was one of the sites for Gilead's lenacapavir drug trial.
Nardus Engelbrecht/Associated Press
The United States has approved the world's only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV, the first step in an anticipated global rollout that could protect millions — although it's unclear how many in the United States and abroad will get access to the powerful new option. While a vaccine to prevent HIV still is needed, some experts say the shot made by Gilead Sciences — a drug called lenacapavir — could be the next best thing. It nearly eliminated new infections in two groundbreaking studies of people at high risk, better than daily preventive pills they can forget to take. Condoms help guard against HIV infection if used properly but what's called PrEP — regularly using preventive medicines such as the daily pills or a different shot given every two months — is increasingly important. Lenacapavir's six-month protection makes it the longest-lasting type, an option that could attract people wary of more frequent doctor visits or stigma from daily pills. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
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DEALS
Nippon Steel completes its acquisition of US Steel
A view of the United States Steel Mon Valley Works Clairton Plant, in Clairton, Pa.
Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press
Nippon Steel has completed its acquisition of US Steel, the companies said Wednesday, more than a year after it was first announced. Soon after Nippon announced its plans to acquire US Steel in December 2023, the company, based in Pennsylvania, a swing state in the presidential election, became part of a game of political football. The powerful United Steelworkers union pushed back against the deal, and President Biden blocked it over national security concerns. Last month, President Donald Trump, who had opposed the deal while he was on the campaign trail, said he had approved a transaction that granted the White House a golden share in the company, giving it extraordinary control over the new company as part of a national security agreement. Trump and the companies have frequently referred to the deal as a partnership over the past several weeks, fueling mystery on Wall Street and in Washington over its nature. — NEW YORK TIMES
SOCIAL MEDIA
Trump will sign an order extending deadline for TikTok's Chinese owner to sell app
The TikTok app page on a smartphone in New York on Jan. 15.
Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
President Trump will sign an executive order this week to extend a deadline for TikTok's Chinese owner to divest the popular video sharing app, the White House announced Tuesday. Trump had signed an order in early April to keep TikTok running for an additional 75 days after a potential deal to sell the app to American owners was put on ice. 'As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. 'This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.' It will be the third time Trump has extended the deadline. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
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LEGAL
Purdue Pharma's $7 billion opioid settlement could advance soon after states back it
OxyContin pills arranged for a photo at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt.
Toby Talbot/Associated Press
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma's latest plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids could soon move forward after every US state involved agreed to it. A judge on Wednesday said he planned to issue a ruling on Friday on a plan for local governments and individual victims to vote on it. Government entities, emergency room doctors, insurers, families of children born into withdrawal from the powerful prescription painkiller, individual victims and their families, and others would have until Sept. 30 to vote on whether to accept the deal, which calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years. The settlement is a way to avoid trials with claims from states alone that total more than $2 trillion in damages. Thousands of local governments and other groups have also sued Purdue. If approved, the settlement would be among the largest in a wave of lawsuits over the past decade as governments and others sought to hold drugmakers, wholesalers, and pharmacies accountable for the opioid epidemic that started rising in the years after OxyContin hit the market in 1996. The other settlements together are worth about $50 billion, and most of the money is to be used to combat the crisis. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
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TECH
WhatsApp denies Iran's claim that it is spying for Israel
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone.
Martin Meissner/Associated Press
Iran's state broadcaster Tuesday urged people to remove WhatsApp from their phones, claiming that the messaging app was collecting user information and sending it to Israel as the two countries trade military strikes. 'WhatsApp and Instagram are collecting information about individuals and are providing the Zionist enemy with their last known location and communications, tagged with the names of individuals,' the Iranian state television network said, referring to Israel. It did not provide evidence for its claims. WhatsApp, in a statement Tuesday, said the allegations were false. 'We're concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most,' the statement said. 'All of the messages you send to family and friends on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one except the sender and recipient has access to those messages, not even WhatsApp.' — NEW YORK TIMES
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Amazon CEO Jassy says AI will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years
Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., at an event in New York on Feb. 26.
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy anticipates generative artificial intelligence will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years as the online giant begins to increase its usage of the technology. 'We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,' Jassy said in a message to employees. 'It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' — ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUTOMOTIVE
Honda recalls more than 259,000 cars across the US due to brake pedal issue
The Honda logo.
Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
Honda is recalling more than 259,000 of its cars across the United States due to a problem that can cause the brake pedal to shift out of position, potentially interfering with a driver's ability to stop or slow down. According to documents published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the recall covers certain Honda Pilots between model years 2023 and 2025 — as well cars under the automaker's luxury Acura brand: 2021-2025 Acura TLX and 2023-2025 Acura MDX vehicles. As a remedy, Honda says authorized dealers will inspect the vehicles covered by this recall and replace the brake pedal assembly if necessary, free of charge. Per the NHTSA's report, the company estimates 1 percent of these vehicles have this issue. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
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AVIATION
Families of 737 crash victims urge rejection of Boeing deal
Family members of victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash held a sign as President and CEO of Boeing Kelly Ortberg testified before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on April 2 in Washington, D.C.
Win McNamee/Getty
Family members of people killed in two fatal crashes of Boeing Co.'s 737 Max jets urged a federal judge to reject a proposed deal the company reached with US prosecutors that would allow the planemaker to avoid a criminal charge. Lawyers for 15 families argued Boeing should stand trial for criminal conspiracy as the government had originally planned, to hold the company more accountable for the deaths of 346 people, according to a court filing Wednesday. The US Justice Department in May asked US District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth to dismiss the case as part of a proposed settlement reached with Boeing. Under the deal, the planemaker agreed to pay more than $1.1 billion in fees and fines, while taking steps to strengthen internal quality and safety measures. In return, the company will avoid criminal prosecution. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
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The Hill
30 minutes ago
- The Hill
CDC funding changes inject ‘chaos' into local health programs
The Trump administration has delayed or blocked millions of dollars in federal grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leaving state and local health departments in the dark, uncertain when or even if they will get money that's already been appropriated by Congress for key public health initiatives. With little communication from the White House, CDC staff are trying to expedite getting grants out the door, and public health officials are scrambling to spend the money they have before it expires Sept. 30. The CDC typically doles out the money it receives from Congress to state and local health departments, which in turn fund local contracts. But with the start of the new administration, the White House began to apportion money to CDC on a month-by-month basis, citing the need for external reviews. That practice stopped when the agency received a two-month apportionment through the end of the fiscal year, according to CDC employees, but some grants were delivered late while others are still being blocked. 'Everything is weeks, if not months behind schedule,' a CDC employee with knowledge of the funding situation said. Another employee noted the extra layers involved in getting funding out the door, including new external reviews being conducted by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 'With every single award requiring DOGE review, there is fear the award may not be made before the end of the fiscal year and lapse of funds,' the employee said. Raynard Washington, director of the Mecklenburg County Public Health Department in North Carolina, said his agency laid off six workers — including half its disease investigators — after grants for HIV prevention and surveillance programs expired at the end of May with no information about future funding. The grants were eventually restored about a month later, but to date the department has only been able to bring back half of the people it laid off. 'So now we're behind, and cases are still being reported every day that have to be investigated,' Washington said. 'The more time that people may have been exposed to HIV and don't know it, or syphilis and don't know it and are getting tested and treated, those delays actually translate to potential illness.' Meanwhile, the Trump administration is preventing CDC from funding tens of millions of dollars in other awards, including for public health emergency preparedness, chronic disease prevention and education, academic prevention research centers, gun violence, and tobacco use. That means activities like training hospital staff and other health workers alongside first responders to prepare for a natural disaster are on hold. Washington said North Carolina had to lay off its team working on tobacco prevention efforts because the funding had dried up. 'These are not delays that we expect, given that Congress has appropriated funding for these initiatives,' Washington said. 'And these are things that — despite the political swings in Washington — have largely received bipartisan support, and so you don't expect that there was going to be gaps.' Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services in Texas, said he was waiting for nearly 30 percent of the promised award for public health emergency preparedness. The state doesn't know if that money is ever coming, Huang said. 'So, it makes it very difficult for us to plan. And many health departments don't have much buffer. If you plan and keep everything fully operational with all your staff now, and then you don't get the [remaining funding], then you're not going to be able to last through the year,' Huang said. CDC centers are currently not allowed to move funding into the blocked programs, according to employees. If that money is not apportioned by Sept. 30, it could be returned to the Treasury, a maneuver known as a 'pocket rescission' that has drawn criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Congress in July approved the White House's official rescissions proposal to claw back $9 billion of funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting. The White House would have to send another official rescission message to Congress, which Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought claims would effectively freeze the funding and cause it lapse. 'Effectively, what they're doing is keeping that money in house. We can't pull it down,' said Scott Harris, chief of the Alabama Department of Public Health and president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. 'We have grants that we thought we had access to, we suddenly have different rules about how we're allowed to spend.' Asked about the status of CDC grants, the Department of Health and Human Services referred The Hill to OMB, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Harris said the uncertainty is 'chaos' for health departments and makes it almost impossible to predict or plan for the future. 'We never really know month to month if a program's still going to be here anymore,' Harris said. 'We have serious concerns about whether all of the money that has been awarded will be spent before the end of the fiscal year. New instructions on which types of expenditures are allowable will prevent us from supporting much of the programmatic work that the grants are designed to fund.'
The Hill
30 minutes ago
- The Hill
Pesticides test MAHA-MAGA alliance
The 'Make America Healthy Again' (MAHA) movement could be on a collision course with its Republican allies over pesticides and toxic chemicals. MAHA is strongly aligned with the Trump administration, having cheered its anti-vaccine actions and food safety reforms. In general, the movement has been deeply skeptical of Big Pharma, Big Agriculture and Big Chemical. And cracks are beginning to form. MAHA-aligned groups and influencers are particularly raising alarms about provisions in a House appropriations bill that they say will shield pesticide and chemical manufacturers from accountability — and ultimately make Americans less healthy. Meanwhile, a draft of the administration's 'MAHA report' reportedly omits any calls to prevent pesticide exposure, also disappointing advocates. 'It's obvious that there are tensions within this newfound coalition between MAHA and MAGA, and there are some big issues there,' said Mary Holland, CEO of Children's Health Defense, a group that was founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., considered the MAHA flagbearer. Conservatives have traditionally sided with big business, supporting fewer regulations on potentially toxic substances. Kennedy and his disciples, meanwhile, espouse stricter environmental protections, while also bucking mainstream science on vaccine safety. The disparities on chemicals and pesticides within their coalition put Republicans in the middle: Do they side with big business or health concerns? On many issues, business interests appear to be winning. The New York Times reported last week, based on a draft that it obtained, that a forthcoming iteration of the Trump administration's MAHA positions does not call for new restrictions on pesticides and describes existing procedures as 'robust.' MAHA-aligned activists recoiled. 'The MAHA draft report stating that the EPA's [Environmental Protection Agency] pesticide review process is 'robust' is the biggest joke in American history. And it's not funny. It's deadly,' wrote Zen Honeycutt, founder of the activist group Moms Across America, in a post on X. Meanwhile, a Republican-authored House Appropriations bill seeks to block pesticide labels that go beyond what the EPA uses based on its current human health risk assessment. During a markup last month, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the Interior-Environment Appropriations subcommittee, said that the measure says that 'states cannot require a pesticide label that is different from the EPA label.' 'The language ensures that we do not have a patchwork of state labeling requirements. It ensures that one state is not establishing the label for the rest of the states,' Simpson said, adding that his comments were meant to be clarifying for all the 'MAHA moms that are out there that are concerned about this that have been calling.' But critics say such a move could prevent the use of updated science on pesticide labels. 'This section, section 453, would basically handcuff EPA, companies and states as well as advocates to … research that could be outdated by over 15 years,' said Geoff Horsfield, policy director at the Environmental Working Group. 'The language in here … says that EPA should only update labels according to the human health risk assessment. EPA, by law, is required to do those human health risk assessments every 15 years, but they often don't complete those in time,' Horsfield said. 'The way the law works currently is states have the power to do additional addendums, and that's where you see, say, a state requires an additional setback so that you can't spray within 250 feet of a school, or you're required to wear additional types of [personal protective equipment],' he continued. 'Those types of restrictions are usually included in a label addendum, and those types of changes and those types of tweaks would be essentially prohibited by this language.' MAHA opponents have particularly expressed concerns over the implications that barring such labeling could have on the ability to sue pesticide companies over inadequate labels. 'Having no access to courts is absolutely devastating and, in my view, unconstitutional,' said Holland, with Children's Health Defense. 'I'm very distressed by this idea that this administration might, for 2026, establish liability protection.' Democrats likewise pushed back on the provision. 'This rider would effectively gag our public health agencies, preventing them from updating labels or rules to reflect new evidence of cancer risks from pesticides,' Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said during the markup. 'This bill is a big middle finger to cancer patients.' Also causing controversy is another provision related to 'forever chemicals,' toxic substances that have been linked to illnesses including cancer and have become widespread in the environment. The measure seeks to bar the EPA from enforcing a draft report that found that food from farms contaminated with these chemicals may pose cancer risks. Lexi Hamel, a spokesperson for Simpson, said in an email that the bill 'prohibits funding from implementing, administering, or enforcing the current draft risk assessment due to the major technical flaws in the assessment.' But she said it does not block the EPA from 'continuing to work on identifying ways to clean up PFAS and keep communities safe' and that an amendment changed the bill so that it no longer blocks the agency from finalizing its findings. In a follow-up statement shared through a spokesperson, Horsfield said the provision is still a problem. 'The risk assessment will still have to be implemented and enforced,' he said. 'The draft risk assessment will need teeth … Allowing EPA to finalize the draft risk assessment, but preventing them from implementing it is an exercise in futility.' MAHA activists have slammed both provisions, saying in a letter to President Trump that GOP support for the measures is 'unconscionable.' However, Tony Lyons, president of the MAHA Action PAC, said he does not blame Republicans for pesticides in the environment. 'I don't think that this is something that comes from the GOP side. I think that this is a case of the Democratic Party looking to blame Republicans for it,' Lyons said. While the pesticide issues have generated some sparks between MAHA and MAGA, the administration has taken a number of other actions to also reduce restrictions on the chemical industry more broadly. Trump himself exempted from environmental standards more than 100 polluters, including chemical manufacturers, oil refineries, coal plants and medical device sterilizers. The EPA, meanwhile, has put chemical industry alumni in leading roles and has said it wants to loosen restrictions on emissions of various cancer-linked chemicals. Asked about Trump's move to exempt polluters from Clean Air Act rules, Holland said 'there's clearly tensions' within the GOP coalition. 'Those factions, if you will, more protective of corporate and more challenging to corporate, are both striving to get the president's ear, and I don't think they've come to a complete, sort of settlement agreement,' she said.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Eli Lilly (LLY) Partners with Superluminal for AI Drug Discovery
Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is one of the 9 Best NYSE Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds. On August 14, Reuters reported that Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) has entered into a deal worth $1.3 billion with Superluminal Medicines, a privately held company. The aim of this deal is to use AI to discover and develop small-molecule drugs for obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases. As per the report by Reuters, Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is already leading the obesity treatment market, which is expected to be worth $150 billion by the next decade. The company is looking to solidify its foothold in this area by developing next-generation drugs, making acquisitions, and entering into partnerships. The deal allows Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) to have exclusive rights to develop and commercialize drug candidates discovered with the help of Superluminal's proprietary AI-driven platform targeting G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR). These proteins can influence physiological processes including metabolism, cell growth, and immune responses. Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is an American multinational pharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing, and delivering innovative medicines. While we acknowledge the potential of LLY as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 11 Best Revenue Growth Stocks to Buy Now and 14 Best Aggressive Growth Stocks to Buy According to Analysts. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
