👋 Hello Reader, I hope you had a great week. Below are the items that stood out to me in the news. This week you’ll find several updates on the Middle East and lots on the economy.
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A lock icon (🔒) indicates articles behind a paywall, and a chart icon (📊) indicates an informative chart/graphic in “Slow Brew.”
A federal judge Monday ordered Border Patrol agents not to interfere with razor wire that Texas installed at a busy crossing for migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border, ruling that the barrier can only be cut to provide aid during medical emergencies. The temporary restraining order signed by U.S. District Judge Alia Moses allows federal agents to cut the wire in order to “provide emergency medical aid” to migrants, some of whom were gashed or snagged by the wire after crossing the Rio Grande seeking to enter Texas. But Moses otherwise ruled that the barriers should remain intact for now as a court case over the barrier moves forward. The state last week sued the Biden administration over the destruction of razor wire in Eagle Pass, where thousands crossed in late September outpacing federal processing resources and humanitarian aid.
New research suggests more newcomers to Canada have chosen to leave in recent years, a threat to a country that relies on immigration to drive population and economic growth. The rate of immigrants leaving the country, or onward migration, has been steadily increasing since the 1980s and is rising among recent cohorts, suggesting newcomers “may not be seeing the benefits of moving to Canada,” according to a study on immigrant retention by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday he is sending the armed forces to boost security at some of the country’s most important airports, ports and international borders as part of a renewed effort to tackle organized crime in Latin America’s largest nation. The decision comes days after members of a criminal gang set fire to dozens of buses in Rio de Janeiro, apparently in retaliation for the police slaying their leader’s nephew.
Foreign nationals and wounded Palestinians crossed into Egypt from Gaza on Wednesday, Egyptian and U.S. officials said, with more than 400 people—including some Americans—allowed to leave in a major diplomatic breakthrough. President Biden said he expected that more American citizens would be allowed to leave the embattled enclave over the coming days. The State Department said U.S. officials were in contact with about 400 Americans who want to leave. Egyptian officials said later Wednesday there were about 45 injured among those who crossed via Rafah.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that 74 U.S. citizens with dual citizenship have left the Gaza Strip, announcing the development as he dispatched his top diplomat to the Middle East for consultation with Israeli and Jordanian leaders concerning the Israel-Hamas war.
Israel said Tuesday it hit a Hamas command and tunnel network in northern Gaza, causing widespread casualties and damage in a crowded Palestinian refugee camp. Israel said it killed dozens of militants, including a commander who it said led the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Hamas said hundreds were dead or wounded but didn’t say how many were militants, while hospital officials in Gaza reported receiving scores of bodies. The Israeli strike flattened entire apartment blocks, leaving deep craters. Video footage aired by Palestinian television networks and Al Jazeera showed hundreds of people digging through the rubble with their hands to extract bodies and survivors, many of them children.
Hezbollah’s leader warned that a regional war with Israel was a realistic possibility, as fears grew that the conflict in Gaza could spill into a second battlefront with the Lebanese militant group. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, spoke on Friday for the first time since a series of attacks by Hamas killed 1,400 people in southern Israel and sparked a devastating bombing campaign and ground invasion. He said Hezbollah would step up military pressure on Israel, with which it has been engaging in tit-for-tat exchanges of fire, but said the time isn’t right for all-out war. Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, faces growing pressure from its own ranks and Palestinian groups inside Lebanon to respond more forcefully to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which has devastated large parts of the enclave of two million people. Nasrallah said Hezbollah has lost 57 fighters to attacks from Israel. Some Hamas leaders have called for more involvement from Hezbollah, which has received criticism on social media from parts of the Sunni Arab world. Western and Arab diplomats have frantically ferried messages in Beirut among Israel, Hezbollah and the U.S. in an attempt to de-escalate tensions.
Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary organization, plans to provide an air-defense system to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, U.S. officials say, citing intelligence. The Russian SA-22 system they plan to send uses antiaircraft missiles and air-defense guns to intercept aircraft.
Arab nations that have normalized or are considering improving relations with Israel are coming under growing public pressure to cut those ties because of Israel’s war with Hamas. The U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, aimed at winning broader recognition of Israel in the Arab world, paved the way for trade deals and military cooperation with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates starting in 2020. Their autocratic rulers — as well as American and Israeli officials — continue to frame the deals as a step toward a “ new Middle East ” in which closer ties could foster peace and prosperity. The accords marked a major diplomatic victory for Morocco because they led the U.S. — and eventually Israel — to recognize its autonomy over the disputed Western Sahara. Morocco’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to questions about the agreement or protests. The accords also led Washington to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, presenting a lifeline for the ruling military junta fighting a pro-democracy movement and spiraling inflation. Large protests against the Israel-Hamas war have not erupted in Sudan or the United Arab Emirates. A highly sought-after agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia has become less likely due to the war and regionwide protests, Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told The Associated Press in October.
ANOTHER DEADLY war between Israel and Hamas is a tragedy for Israelis and Palestinians. It also risks crises beyond the Holy Land. So far the war remains mostly confined to Gaza’s borders (though there are risks of a second front opening with Lebanon). But secondary effects, in the form of mass protests, are a mounting concern for “the Arab world”, a collection of 450m people spread across nearly two dozen countries. The region is sympathetic to the Palestinians: their dispossession is apt to stir up anger and protest like little else. Risk modelling by EIU, our sister company, shows which countries are particularly vulnerable to social unrest.
At our request dmr, an ai-technology firm, collected 1m posts from Instagram, Twitter and YouTube from October 7th to 23rd. All contained hashtags from a list with similar numbers of pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian terms in English, or replied to such posts. dmr then built a machine-learning model to classify posts as backing one side, the other or neither. It was trained on content in English, but also processed posts in any language that included English hashtags. dmr found a sharp shift against Israel over time. On October 7th the two sides had roughly equal shares of support. By October 19th pro-Palestinian posts were 3.9 times more common than pro-Israeli ones. Israel has fared far worse online than in surveys of overall public opinion. A poll of Americans by YouGov found three backers of Israel for every Palestinian supporter on October 20th—a day with twice as many pro-Palestinian posts on American social media as pro-Israeli ones. In Britain, another YouGov survey found equal support for each side that day, when the Palestinians won the British social-media battle by a six-to-one margin. One cause of this gap is age. Social-media users skew young, and such people are unusually pro-Palestinian in their views. Moreover, DMR’s sample did not include Facebook, which may be the most pro-Israel platform owing to its older users. In polls of people in Denmark, France, Spain and Sweden, Israel drew more total sympathy, but young participants’ opinions matched social-media ratios. Yet in America and Britain, social-media views are even more pro-Palestinian than those of young poll respondents. Israel’s backers show rather less zeal for online combat.
When Hamas militants raided Israel in early October, killing and abducting more than 1,000 people, videos, images and text flooded social media. Rumors and shoddy information proliferated, blurring the line between fact and fiction. Artificial intelligence and data analysis firm Primer monitored the situation from afar using its Command software. It demonstrated its AI-enabled parsing capabilities at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention in Washington days later, promising to identify kernels of truth among the chaos in the Middle East. “Just aggregating lots of data, particularly if it’s a really noisy environment and the facts have yet to be established, can be really problematic because you’re just making a big pile for the user to go through,” Primer CEO Sean Moriarty told C4ISRNET on the show floor. “As you might imagine, data is all over the place. There’s all sorts of open-source intelligence data. The question is: What can a professional do with it, using their knowledge and experience? And that comes down to speed, power and accuracy.”
American commandos on the ground in Israel are helping locate the more than 200 hostages seized during Hamas’s surprise cross-border attacks on Oct. 7, the Pentagon’s top special operations policy official said on Tuesday. “We’re actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things,” Christopher P. Maier, an assistant secretary of defense, told a special operations conference in Washington. He said that a main task was to help Israel “identify hostages, including American hostages. It’s really our responsibility to do so.”
With the Israel-Hamas war escalating, the United States risks becoming involved in a larger conflict that could entangle some of the more than 40,000 U.S. military personnel based across the region. The attacks, as well as a wider war, could reverse efforts in recent years to reduce the U.S. presence in the Middle East as part of a strategic pivot to toward the Pacific.
Jordan has asked the United States to deploy Patriot air defense systems on its soil, according to Jordanian Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hiyari. Jordan does not host American bases, Hiyari said, but the U.S. does have a presence in the country to train Jordanian forces and provide upgrades and maintenance to equipment. In January 2021, the countries signed a defense cooperation agreement, which gives the U.S. “unimpeded access” to certain Jordanian facilities.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that he intends to end the participation of Gabon, Niger, Uganda and the Central African Republic in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade program. Biden said he was taking the step because of "gross violations" of internationally recognized human rights by the Central African Republic and Uganda. He also cited Niger and Gabon's failure to establish or make continual progress toward the protection of political pluralism and the rule of law.
Before United Nations peacekeepers hurriedly abandoned their base in Kidal in northern Mali on Tuesday, they made a costly call: with insurgents stationed nearby, they destroyed sensitive equipment to avoid it falling into the wrong hands, the U.N. said. Shortly after the last U.N. convoy rolled out, the ethnic Tuareg rebels announced they had taken over the base. Photos posted on social media on Wednesday appeared to show locals loading trucks with looted goods, including tyres, cables and chairs. Mali's ruling military junta in June ordered the decade-old UN mission, known as MINUSMA, to leave as its relations soured with former international allies. MINUSMA has accelerated its departure in recent weeks as northern Mali has been engulfed in fighting between the rebels and government forces vying for control over areas it vacates. Chaos has ensued.
China's manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted in October, underlining the daunting task facing policymakers as they try to revitalise economic growth heading into the end of the year and 2024 amid multiple challenges at home and abroad. Recent indicators pointed to encouraging signs of stabilising in the world's second-largest economy, supported by a flurry of policy support measures, although a protracted property crisis and soft global demand remain major headwinds.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to agree to upgrade the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership during talks with Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported. Thuong is scheduled to visit Japan early next month, according to the newspaper, citing Japanese government sources. Hanoi has not announced Thuong's visit to Japan. This year marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Japan.
Hong Kong’s government is grappling with an exodus of citizens and a plummeting birthrate. Its solution: Subsidize baby-making. The city has lost its appeal to some residents over the last four years, hurt by strict rules during the Covid-19 pandemic, anxieties about the growing political influence of Beijing, and competition from Singapore and elsewhere. Those who choose to remain in the city are increasingly opting out of having children: Hong Kong’s fertility rate is the lowest in the world. The city’s government hopes to address this problem by paying a cash bonus to couples who have children. They will receive the equivalent of around $2,550, as well as other perks such as priority when renting or buying government-subsidized housing and increased access to in vitro fertilization. There are just 0.8 children born per woman in Hong Kong, according to a United Nations Population Fund report this year that compared a mix of countries and other territories. This puts it even below the 0.9 child average in South Korea, which also offers cash bonuses to new parents.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed off on a law revoking Russia's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a move he says is designed to bring Moscow into line with the United States. Russia says that it will not resume testing unless Washington does and that its de-ratification does not change its nuclear posture or the way it shares information about its nuclear activities. Washington had signed but never ratified the 1996 treaty and Putin had said he wanted Russia, which had signed and ratified the pact, to adopt the same stance on the treaty as the United States. Some Western arms control experts are concerned that Russia may be inching towards a test to intimidate and evoke fear amid the Ukraine war, an idea Russian officials have played down.
Thousands of people swamped Pakistan's main northwestern border crossing seeking to cross into Afghanistan on Thursday, a day after the government's deadline expired for undocumented foreigners to leave or face expulsion. Pakistani authorities began rounding up undocumented foreigners, most of them Afghans, hours before Wednesday's deadline. More than a million Afghans could have to leave or face arrest and forcible expulsion as a result of the ultimatum delivered by the Pakistan government a month ago.
Huge ash columns erupted from Eurasia’s tallest active volcano Wednesday, forcing authorities to close schools in two towns on Russia’s sparsely populated Kamchatka Peninsula. The eruptions from the Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano sent ash as high as 13 kilometers (8 miles) above sea level, officials said.
he Department of the Air Force expects to add about 50 more recruits per year after lifting its maximum age limit for initial accession from 39 years old to 42 on Oct. 24, the latest in a long series of efforts to expand the talent pool in the midst of an ongoing recruiting shortage. The change applies to both officers and enlisted in both the Air Force and Space Force. “This opens the aperture to allow more Americans the opportunity to serve,” Leslie Brown, chief of public affairs for the Air Force Recruiting Service, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The accession age of 42 allows an Airman or Guardian to serve a full 20 years, since the retirement age is 62.”
The Senate easily confirmed President Joe Biden’s picks to be the top officers in the Navy and Air Force on Thursday as frustration with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of senior military promotions mounts. The votes were 95-1 to approve both Adm. Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations and Gen. David Allvin as Air Force chief of staff. Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas was the lone senator to oppose both confirmations. Franchetti’s confirmation makes her the first female member of the Joint Chiefs. In a third vote, senators approved Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney to be the second ranking officer in the Marine Corps, 86-0. The leadership situation atop the Marine Corps took on new urgency on Sunday, when Commandant Gen. Eric Smith was hospitalized with a medical emergency, leaving a three-star general in charge of the service.
Hiring slowed sharply in October, a sign the economy is cooling this fall following a hot stretch over the summer. U.S. employers added 150,000 jobs in October, down from the previous month’s revised gain of 297,000, the Labor Department said Friday. That was the smallest gain since June, with automakers having around 33,000 fewer workers on payroll because of the United Auto Workers strike. The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% from 3.8% the prior month. The figures could bring the Federal Reserve’s historic interest-rate increases to an end by providing stronger evidence that higher borrowing costs have slowed the economy.
The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday as policymakers struggled to determine whether financial conditions may be tight enough already to control inflation, or whether an economy that continues to outperform expectations may need still more restraint. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the situation remained something of a riddle, with U.S. central bank officials willing to raise rates again if progress on inflation stalls, wary that a rise in market-based interest rates may begin to weigh on the economy in a significant way, and trying not to disrupt, any more than necessary, an ongoing dynamic of steady job and wage growth.
If markets are right, a new era is beginning and the consequences will be far reaching. Households and companies will have to pay much more to borrow. The financial system will have to adjust to a painful new reality. And governments will find they have to divert more tax revenue to pay the interest on their accumulated debt. The higher-for-longer scenario that many investors are now predicting is a potentially toxic mix.
There’s a good reason why investors are amazed that something hasn’t broken in the economy yet: The last time US government bond yields climbed so far, so fast, the nation plunged into back-to-back recessions. The 10-year Treasury yield — a key baseline for the cost of money across the financial system — has jumped more than four full percentage points over the past three years, briefly pushing it this week over 5% for the first time since 2007. It’s the biggest increase since the run up in the early 1980s, when Paul Volcker’s efforts to slay inflation pushed the 10-year yield to nearly 16%.
I’m afraid the “good times” are coming to an end. We’re about to pay for years of artificially low interest rates. And, unfortunately, further government stimulus would only add to the problem, as would increasing wages.
Americans are increasingly getting paid for not doing work. Growth in paid-time off—including family leave, sick leave and vacation—is widening the gap between the number of hours for which workers get paid and the number of hours they are actually on the job. Employers have expanded paid benefits to retain and attract workers in a hot job market. Employees, meanwhile, are using the new benefits as they juggle work, family and health.
This made me wonder what the impact is to GDP (per capita) in these countries…apparently, it has not made a negative impact—as seen in charts below.
A flow of recent data from the U.S. government has made one thing strikingly clear: A surge in consumer spending is fueling strong growth, demonstrating a resilience that has confounded economists, Federal Reserve officials and even the sour sentiments that Americans themselves have expressed in opinion polls. Spending by consumers rose by a brisk 0.4% in September the government said Friday — even after adjusting for inflation and even as Americans face ever-higher borrowing costs.
Uber and Lyft have agreed to pay New York drivers a more than $300 million settlement and increase drivers’ benefits after an investigation into the ride-sharing apps found they withheld wages and benefits from drivers, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office said Thursday. Under the agreement, drivers will now be able to see compensation breakdowns for each of their rides that detail how much a rider paid for each ride, as well as earning statements that will detail their compensation for each pay period, James’ office said.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who once ran one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, has been found guilty of fraud and money laundering at the end of a month-long trial in New York. The jury delivered its verdict after less than five hours of deliberations. It concludes a stunning fall from grace for the 31-year-old former billionaire, once known as the "King of Crypto", who now faces decades in jail. Bankman-Fried was arrested last year after his firm, FTX, went bankrupt. His sentencing has been set for 28 March next year.
The United Auto Workers has reached a tentative contract agreement with General Motors, meaning all three of the Detroit automakers have now clinched an agreement with the union more than six weeks since the start of an unprecedented strike. "The UAW reached a historic tentative agreement with General Motors that paves the way for a just transition and wins record economic gains for autoworkers," the union said in a statement. The tentative deals with GM, Stellantis and Ford still need to be individually ratified by the union's membership at those companies, and workers have the ability to send their representatives back to the bargaining table. The GM deal resembles the tentative agreements with Ford and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, which were clinched over the past week. Those deals called for a pay increase of at least 25% for all workers, cost of living increases on top of that, and increases to retirement contributions.
A federal jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and large residential brokerages liable for about $1.8 billion in damages after determining they conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high. The verdict could lead to industrywide upheaval by changing decades-old rules that have helped lock in commission rates even as home prices have skyrocketed—which has allowed real-estate agents to collect ever-larger sums. It comes in the first of two antitrust lawsuits arguing that unlawful industry practices have left consumers unable to lower their costs even though internet-era innovations have allowed many buyers to find homes themselves online.
It’s not clear to me what the impact of this will be. It was always an option to change the commission of the realtor (at least in Texas). The average happened to be 6% (3% to buyer and 3% to seller agent); it made sense for the seller to pay this fee because they are presumably making money off the sale of the home. The new model would require the buyer to pay their own agent, which you won’t be able to roll into a loan (because there’s no tangible collateral in that service). Thus, the buyers will need to pay out-of-pocket for their buyer’s agent...which will likely lead to buyers not wanting to get an agent (because they’d have to pay for them).
Strip malls—rows of small shops built close to the road that are also known as convenience properties—have flown under the radar in recent years as investors gobbled up shopping centers anchored by grocery stores. Now, increasing foot traffic and declining vacancy rates show these properties don’t need large anchors to draw in customers and tenants. “The consumer has changed because of the post-Covid world,” said Josh Suffin, president of real estate services for RetailStat. “Beyond the work-from-home, the whole world is changing in how quickly things move.” These changing habits are boosting strip malls as tenants compete for space. Average-asking rents at U.S. convenience-store centers reached a record-high $20.37 a square foot in the third quarter, a 17.3% increase compared with the same period in 2019, according to CoStar Group, which tracks data dating back to 2006. The rate of available space in strip malls fell to 5.3%, representing the tightest level of supply on record.
LinkedIn, the work-oriented social network, now has more than one billion members, the site said Wednesday, as it announced new artificial intelligence features it plans to make available for paying subscribers.
Leading UK broadband providers have told the BBC they have blocked access to a website promoting suicide. Sky Broadband, which has 5.7 million users, says the forum will automatically be barred if home users are using its standard filters. Virgin Media said it would be automatically barred on its mobile and broadband services, while TalkTalk and BT said it could also now be blocked. It follows a BBC investigation linking the forum to more than 50 UK deaths.
In May, Florida passed a law requiring public school districts to impose rules barring student cellphone use during class time. This fall, Orange County Public Schools — which includes Timber Creek High — went even further, barring students from using cellphones during the entire school day.
YouTube announced Thursday it’s limiting how often videos related to topics such as body weight and social aggression are recommended to teen users in the U.S. amid a growing number of lawsuits against social media platforms, including the Google-owned platform, alleging they’re contributing to the teen mental health crisis. YouTube and its Youth and Families Advisory Committee identified categories of videos that “could be problematic for some teens if viewed in repetition,” it said in a blog post. The content includes videos that compare and idealize certain physical features and body weights, or shows social aggression which it defines as non-contact fights and intimidation, the blog post said.
President Joe Biden on Monday signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence that seeks to balance the needs of cutting-edge technology companies with national security and consumer rights, creating an early set of guardrails that could be fortified by legislation and global agreements. Before signing the order, Biden said AI is driving change at “warp speed” and carries tremendous potential as well as perils. “AI is all around us,” Biden said. “To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology.” The order is an initial step that is meant to ensure that AI is trustworthy and helpful, rather than deceptive and destructive. The order — which will likely need to be augmented by congressional action — seeks to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft have spent the past year investing billions of dollars in artificial-intelligence startups—while also charging those fledgling companies a similar amount to use their cloud platforms. The deals are making the big tech firms both the largest backers and most direct beneficiaries of these startups, reflecting how some of the AI boom’s biggest rewards keep going to the most powerful players. The value of the tech giants’ stakes could shoot up if the startups take off. And if not, they still will have turned chunks of cash into revenue. For the startups, the deals give them the cash they need to train advanced AI models as well as access to the scarce computing power essential for developing and deploying products such as ChatGPT.
The rate of babies dying in the U.S. increased significantly for the first time in two decades, raising new alarms about maternal-infant health in America. The nation’s infant-mortality rate rose 3% from 2021 to 2022, reversing a decadeslong overall decline, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The rate increased from 5.44 infant deaths for every 1,000 births to 5.6 in 2022, a statistically significant uptick. The death rate increased significantly for babies born to American Indian and Alaska Native women, babies born to white women, babies born to women ages 25 to 29 years, male babies and preterm babies.
Home schooling has become — by a wide margin — America’s fastest-growing form of education, as families from Upper Manhattan to Eastern Kentucky embrace a largely unregulated practice once confined to the ideological fringe, a Washington Post analysis shows. The analysis — based on data The Post collected for thousands of school districts across the country — reveals that a dramatic rise in home schooling at the onset of the pandemic has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year, defying predictions that most families would return to schools that have dispensed with mask mandates and other covid-19 restrictions. The growth demonstrates home schooling’s arrival as a mainstay of the American educational system, with its impact — on society, on public schools and, above all, on hundreds of thousands of children now learning outside a conventional academic setting — only beginning to be felt.
It’s a well-trodden path for children of wealthy Indians to study in the UK. Now, some of the schools are coming to them, with elite establishments starting to open franchises in India. Last month Wellington College, a nearly 170-year-old private school based in the English county of Berkshire, debuted a campus in Pune, near Mumbai. Harrow School — which traces its history back to a 1572 charter from Queen Elizabeth I and outfits its students in distinctive straw hats — established its Bangalore affiliate in August. aBoth are part of an ongoing push by top British schools to expand a lucrative model where they lend their brands, and often expertise, to an overseas education provider for a fee. The profit is then repatriated back home and frequently used to subsidize awards to students who need financial assistance. Over the past five years, the number of such outposts across the globe has increased from 51 to 122, according to a March report by the think tank Private Education Policy Forum.
Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk reported the most robust quarterly profits and sales in its history Thursday, as Europe’s largest public company rides the surge in popularity of its weight loss and diabetes drugs to blockbuster results. Novo Nordisk primarily produces diabetes medications, including the injectable GLP-1 semaglutide drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, which have become particularly popular in the U.S. recently for their efficacy in promoting weight loss. Ozempic and Wegovy brought in $4.8 billion of sales during the third quarter, and the drugs account for 52% of Novo Nordisk’s $23.6 billion of total revenue through 2023’s first nine months, up from a 36% share during the same period last year. Overall, Novo Nordisk reported $8.4 billion of total revenue and $3.2 billion of net income during the third quarter, topping respective analyst estimates of $8.2 billion and $3.1 billion, according to FactSet. It’s easily the drugmaker’s strongest headline quarter ever, topping the prior $3.1 billion profit and $7.9 billion sales records set earlier this year. 58%--That’s how much Ozempic sales are up on an annual basis so far in 2023, using constant currency rates.
The Food and Drug Administration has issued warnings for 26 over-the-counter eye care products because of the potential for infection that could lead to vision loss or even blindness. The products carry the CVS Health, Rite Aid, Leader (Cardinal Health), Rugby (Cardinal Health) and Target Up&Up labels — as well as Velocity Pharma, which retailers have identified as the eye drops’ supplier. The FDA provided a list of the products on its website, and encouraged health-care professionals and consumers to report negative effects or quality problems. The agency has not received any reports about eye infections. The FDA has advised the manufacturer to recall the eyedrops after its inspectors discovered “insanitary conditions in the manufacturing facility,” according to a news release Friday. There were also “positive bacterial test results from environmental sampling of critical drug production areas in the facility,” the FDA added.
After a week of build-up, The Beatles have released what's been billed as their "final song". Called Now And Then, it's been 45 years in the making - with the first bars written by John Lennon in 1978 and the song finally completed last year. All four Beatles feature on the track, which will be the last credited to Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr.
“Friends” star Matthew Perry, the Emmy-nominated actor whose sarcastic, but lovable Chandler Bing was among television’s most famous and most quotable characters, has died at 54.
Here are some of Chandler's best jokes / sarcastic moments
Corey Seager took a mighty swing and barely connected, sending a squibber through an open area on the left side of the infield for his team’s first hit in the seventh inning. The Texas Rangers shortstop and World Series MVP provided plenty of power throughout a stellar October run. But it was a little good fortune that finally sparked the offense Wednesday night and sent the Rangers to their first title. Considering the heartache this club endured 12 years ago in one of the all-time Fall Classic gut punches, Texas was certainly due. It’s the first title for the Rangers, whose history dates back to 1961 when they were the expansion Washington Senators. They moved to Texas for the 1972 season.
Bob Knight, whose Hall of Fame career was highlighted by three national titles at Indiana -- one capping an undefeated season not since matched -- and countless on-court outbursts, has died. He was 83.
For Fun
For those of you who missed Nate Bargatze’s performance(s) on SNL, here you go:
Caveat: Even these resources/charts are biased. Who says that the system they use to describe news sources is accurate? Still, hopefully you find them useful as a basic guide or for comparison.
