More illicit cannabis shops sprout up in NYC’s Kew Gardens

 Kew Gardens is turning into Weed Gardens —  with another unlicensed cannabis shop brazenly opening up in the tidy Queens neighborhood.

The illicit marijuana store, called “Pre-Roll World,” launched its grand opening on Metropolitan Avenue two days ago with lots of, um, buzz.

“I don’t understand it. They’re not licensed. The city is not doing anything about it,” said Kew Gardens community activist Sylvia Hack, a member of Community Board 9.

Hack said Community Board 9 will discuss the proliferation of such illicit cannabis shops, which have been sprouting up along local commercial strips without fear of consequences.

Dominick Pistone, president to the Kew Gardens Civic Association, added, “At best they’re jumping the gun. At worst, they’re illegal.

“How are they being allowed to operate? Why are they being allowed to operate?”

He said he will discuss the black market with the NYPD’s 102nd Precinct.

A Post reporter walked into the shop Sunday and bought a package of STIIIZY Edible “Cannabis-Infused Gummies” for $30. The store only accepted cash.

Marijuana edibles for sale at the newly opened Queens store.

The shop —  adorned outside with hordes of colorful balloons and gold blown-up letters saying, “GRAND OPENING” — offered a cornucopia of cannabis pleasures. There were pre-rolled joints, a plethora of various levels of flowered marijuana, vapes, oils and numerous edibles.

Nearly all the products had a California label, claiming they were grown or manufactured in the Golden State.

Under New York’s “seed to sale” law, cannabis products sold here must be farmed and manufactured in the Empire State.

Pre-rolled marijuana joints for sale at Pre-Roll World.

Almost all of the products at the Kew Gardens store were grown or manufactured in California.

Employees claimed Pre-Roll World applied for a New York state license.

Workers at the store claimed that the firm that owns Pre-Roll World had applied for a state license.

The state recently awarded the first 36 licenses in New York to sell cannabis: 28 to retailers and 8 to not-for-profit groups. None have yet opened, and their locations have not even been identified.

The Post previously recently purchased products at two other unlicensed local cannabis shops in Kew Gardens: Triangle Dreams at 82-64 Austin St. and Lefferts Exotics at 81-27 Lefferts Blvd.

Critics say the roll-out of New York’s cannabis program is turning into a bad trip.

One study released last week claimed there are “likely tens of thousands of illicit cannabis businesses” currently operating out of bodegas, smoke shops and other storefronts in New York City — with some pop-up shops selling bad or dangerously tainted weed, a new study reveals.

Meanwhile, the Cannabis Social Equity Coalition said the first legal sellers are not adequately trained for the market and will face a mountain of debt.

In another bizarre turn in New York’s legalized-pot saga, The Post on Sunday reported that three of the nonprofits awarded state licenses to legally sell weed ironically offer substance abuse services — or mandate sobriety for participants.

New York regulators have also come under fire after revelations surfaced that former NBA star Chris Webber, selected by the state to help raise $200 million in a public-private partnership for the emerging legal weed industry, has failed to raise any cash.

The Office of Cannabis Management has defended its rollout of the program.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/04/weed-gardens-more-illicit-cannabis-shops-sprout-up-in-kew-gardens/

Conditions for China to downgrade its management of COVID-19 maturing - state media

 Conditions for China to downgrade its management of COVID-19 as a serious contagious disease improving as the coronavirus weakens, state media outlet Yicai reported, among the first to float the idea.

Since January 2020, China has classified COVID-19 as a Category B infectious disease but has managed it under Category A protocols, which give local authorities the power to put patients and their close contacts into quarantine and lock down affected regions.

Category A diseases in China include bubonic plague and cholera, while SARS, AIDS and anthrax fall under Category B. Category C diseases include influenza, leprosy and mumps.

Infectious diseases such as COVID-19 that have strong pathogenicity, a high fatality rate and strong infectivity are classified as Class A or Class B but managed as Class A.

But more than 95% of the cases in China are asymptomatic and mild, and the fatality rate is very low. Under such circumstances, adhering to Class A management is not in line with science, Yicai reported late on Sunday, citing an unnamed infectious disease expert.

COVID-19 could be downgraded to Category B management or even Category C, the expert told Yicai.

Any adjustment to the management of infectious diseases by the National Health Commission, China's top health authority, requires the approval of the State Council, or cabinet.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan last week that China is facing "a new situation" as the pathogenicity of the Omicron virus weakens, becoming the first high-ranking government official to publicly acknowledge that the new coronavirus's ability to cause disease has diminished.

Since her pronouncement, many major cities have started to lift large-scale lockdowns, reduced regular PCR testing and end checks for negative PCR results at public spaces such as subway stations and outdoor parks.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/conditions-china-downgrade-management-covid-013207888.html

Bankman-Fried says he will testify before U.S. House committee

 FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted on Sunday that he would testify before the House Financial Services Committee after he finished "learning and reviewing" the events that led to the spectacular collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee plans to hold a hearing in December to investigate the collapse of FTX and expects to hear from the companies and individuals involved, including founder and CEO Bankman-Fried.

Committee Chair Maxine Waters last week invited Bankman-Fried to participate in the panel's hearing on Dec. 13.

"Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain," the founder and former FTX CEO wrote in a reply to Waters.

Bankman-Fried added that he was unsure if that would happen before Dec. 13.

He rejected suggestions of fraud in a range of interviews last week after his company's collapse stunned investors and left creditors facing losses totaling billions of dollars.

FTX filed for bankruptcy in November after a week in which a possible merger with rival crypto exchange Binance failed, Bankman-Fried was accused funneling customer deposits to FTX's affiliated trading firm Alameda Research, and the exchange experienced withdrawals of about $6 billion in just 72 hours.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bankman-fried-says-testify-u-002519447.html

Former Global Head Of Trust And Safety At Twitter Reveals Widespead Scientific Censorship

 After Elon Musk's buyout and the ongoing release of the the "Twitter files", the cat is out of the bag, as it were, when it comes to Twitter's extreme leftist political agenda and their collusion with the federal government and the DNC.  And, it appears that some of the people deeply involved in the platform's censorship model are willing to discuss their tactics and motives.  One might expect them to take a more apologetic position in light of their exposed lies and trespasses against their customers and site users, but this is definitely not the case.

Former Twitter employees, most especially former moderators and Trust and Safety employees, are unrepentant for their censorship efforts tainted with political bias and seem to loath Elon Musk for opening the door to fair debate on the social media site.

One Twitter executive, Yoel Roth, was recently in the headlines for admitting that Twitter's aggressive censorship of the Hunter Biden Laptop story was a "mistake."  Roth is the former Global Head of Trust And Safety and played a direct role (along with other executives) in the suppression of the news, leading to the banning of the New York Post account merely for relaying accurate reporting.

Presenting the event as a "mistake" rooted in the company's concerns about "misinformation", however, seems disingenuous.  As we now know, Twitter and the DNC were in regular contact with each other and requests were made by DNC officials to block any mention of such damaging stories.  There was round-table debate at Twitter, but it was not about whether it was morally right to censor the information.  Rather, Twitter execs debated whether or not they could get away with it.

The trust and safety elites within Big Tech companies have no doubts about the validity and righteousness of their cause, and that's the biggest problem.  The monstrous nature of the ideology of scientifically precise censorship is on full display in the following interview with Roth at the Knight Foundation.  Roth has no qualms about the notion of crushing free speech.

Roth equates banned information to "malicious campaigns," painting a picture of some nebulous organization of "trolls" with ill intent working from the shadows to spread mean words and falsehoods.  This is projection.  The only organized and shadowy efforts were performed by Twitter's leadership and were designed to silence dissent, in some cases in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 election for their friends in the Democratic Party. 

This is even hinted at by Roth, who explains the widespread decision within Big Tech companies after the 2016 election to focus heavily on campaign and election influence.  Roth cites the long debunked theory that Russia manipulated the 2016 election as the reason for this agenda to control election information.

A clear case of collusion can be presented between the Democrats and Twitter to do the exact thing Roth warns about, which is the subversion of election outcomes.  But the psychology of people like Yoel Roth is disturbing beyond the issue of potential political manipulation.  For example, Roth goes on to claim that the satire inherent in organizations like Libs of Tikok and the Babylon Bee is "dangerous" and specifically suggests they threaten the lives of people within the trans community.

Keep in mind that satire and humor are usually the first targets of any authoritarian regime clamoring for power because the greatest comedy strikes at the heart of lies and speaks truths that many people are otherwise afraid to discuss.  If a joke is based on falsehoods it's usually not very funny.  As far as Libs of TikTok is concerned, all they do is re-post videos of leftists' own arguments and confessions, and for that they are labeled "dangerous." 

The former trust and safety exec goes on to admonish the removal of covid censorship, calling it "bad and damaging" without explaining how.  One can only suggest that the leftists at Twitter were also in collusion with government officials to silence any and all facts and evidence that ran contrary to the mainstream pandemic narrative.  Much of this information, like the Biden Laptop, was labeled "conspiracy theory" and banned, only to later be revealed as absolutely true.  

The deeper poison of Trust and Safety cultism is two-fold:  First, it is being done scientifically and with increasing precision.  It is not only based simply on community flagging; these people are exploiting algorithms and computer modeling in the hopes that they can develop predictive suppression.  They think they can "measure hate events" as if they are hurricanes and batten down the hatches before the waves hit.  The thing is, much of the "hate" they fear is all in their minds.  The hate and "malicious campaigns" they see are often merely people disagreeing with them on the basis of facts and principles. 

You cannot accurately measure "hate", for one, and when that hate is perceived through a lens of delusion built on bias and zealotry, we run into a threat much bigger than hate - The threat of despotism wrapped in technocracy.  They aren't blocking hate, they are blocking free debate.      

The real discussion should be on whether or not Trust and Safety metrics should even exist.  Why do we need them?  Roth never questions the validity of his former job and the motivations behind it.  The bottom line is this: Big Tech censorship is founded on the argument that people cannot be trusted to make up their own minds on the information they see.  Social media leaders think that THEY should be the arbiters of information in order to protect people from themselves. 

What qualifies them to hold this kind of power?  Nothing.  No one is qualified enough, intelligent enough or objective enough to mediate the speech of millions of people, and since Big Tech holds a veritable monopoly on modern communications, their policies become a kind of law that affects the whole of society.  Twitter by itself is only a small part of the overall picture, but the cold and calculating censorship promoted by Roth is something that is being executed by the majority of Big Tech companies right now.  We have to ask ourselves as Americans (and western culture in general needs to ask) if this kind of ideological monopoly can be allowed to persist, because it means the eventual destruction of free speech as we know it.      

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/former-global-head-trust-and-safety-twitter-reveals-monstrous-scientific-censorship

Alameda's Caroline Ellison Spotted In NY Amid Talk She Is To Roll On SBF After Hiring Iconic Clinton Lawyer

 As Sam Bankman-Fried enters day six of his whirlwind media tour in which he makes one or more daily appearances - against the advice of his lawyers - in hopes of convincing someone that he was too dumb to be a criminal mastermind with billions in crypto in cold storage and in bank accounts in Dubai and Singapore (luckily all his wire transfers can be traced), also known as the Simple Jack defense...

... the weakest link in SBF's defense was just spotted in a New York coffee shop, amid speculation she is preparing to blow up SBF's entire defense strategy.

According to Autism Capital, the former CEO of Alameda Capital (which as a reminder was ground zero of the FTX implosion after it blew up $8 billion in FTX client funds on trades gone horribly wrong), Caroline Ellison, was spotted at 8:15am this morning at the Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan. This, as AC notes, "would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody."

A statement from a barista at the coffee shop confirmed that it was in fact Caroline.

Why does this matter? Because while the prominent Democrat donor, who reportedly is "responsible for Biden being in office" and who - at least according to Musk - donated over $1 billion to democrats...

... continues his deluded daily media appearances while casually throwing his former alleged lover, co-worker and penthouse-mate, Caroline - and pretty much all other co-workers - under the bus by claiming he has no idea how $8 billion in FTX client funds just vaporized in SBF's personal hedge fund, Alameda (implying that only Alameda's CEO, Ellison, was responsible for the theft and fraud) Caroline is two-steps ahead of SBF and is already cooperating with members of the DOJ, and specifically the SDNY, which we previously reported is probing the collapse of FTX.

Subsequent reports have only reinforced this rumor, and the latest is that Ellison is being represented by DC law firm, WilmerHale...

... best known for its Government Affairs Department Chair, Jamie Gorelick, who was the former No. 2 ranking member in the Clinton Justice Department, and in a recent interview, she referred to Garland as her "wingman."

If indeed Ellison is working the Feds while currying favor with SBF's former closest friends, the days of Bankman-Fried - who may or may not soon commit Epsteincide - outside of a prison cell are numbered.

As for SBF, who is still wasting his time "uhhhm"-ing and "well"-ing across various interviews hoping to demonstrate to the world - and his future jurors - just how bloody stupid he really was...

... and blaming it all on messy accounting, poor risk management, and of course, Caroline Ellison - not his premeditated fraud of course - even the CEO of Coinbase is no longer buying his relentless bullshit, saying earlier that no matter how "messy you accounting is (or how rich you are) - you're definitely going to notice if you find an extra $8B to spend" adding that "even the most gullible person should not believe Sam's claim that this was an accounting error" (here he is referring to Bill Ackman, of course), and correctly concluded that "it's stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple."

All that's missing is the definitive proof, and if the above rumors are correct, Caroline Ellison is in the process of, or already has provided it to the Feds. Which incidentally, may explain why SBF's "I am Simple Ja-ja-ja-jack, i'm so-so-so-sorry" tour just came to a crashing halt, when late on Sunday, the commingling masterming told Maxine Waters he won't be voluntarily appearing before Congress - where any lie is a perjury - on the 13th (or ever for that matter).

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/alamedas-caroline-ellison-spotted-ny-amid-speculation-she-about-roll-sbf-after-hiring

Watch Leveraged Loans as Canary in Credit Coal Mine: Traders

 Watch leveraged loans for the first signs that aggressive central-bank rate hikes are starting to hit companies hard.

A majority of 291 respondents to the latest MLIV Pulse survey said leveraged loans would be the canary in the coal mine to indicate that corporate credit quality is getting worse.

Any trouble for leveraged loans would represent a key shift in this credit cycle. For most of this year, buying loans seemed like a smart bet, because they carry floating interest rates and pay higher yields as central banks tighten the money supply. Even if loan prices fell a bit, the rising yields were enough to leave investors down just 0.9% for a year where most other markets are down double digits. And corporate balance sheets were still relatively strong, even for junk-rated companies.

But now companies seem more likely to default, and some investors would rather cut back on credit risk. About 28% of survey respondents expect defaults to jump significantly if US rates peak at or below 5%, which is about where the market bets the Federal Reserve will stop hiking, based on Fed funds futures. Another 63% see defaults surging if rates peak above 5%.

“While loans have performed well in an extremely challenging year, the path going forward is more problematic,” said Christian Hoffmann, a portfolio manager for Thornburg Investment Management. “As we get closer to short-term rates falling and defaults rising, the market could lose interest in the asset class.”

Part of the problem is the same feature that made loans attractive to investors: floating rates, which are now forcing highly indebted companies to make higher interest payments. And most investors expect a stagflation or deflationary recession next year, weighing on company revenues. Many money managers would rather bet on interest rates falling by buying longer-term investment-grade company bonds.

The US leveraged loan market is only a few decades old, so there isn’t robust data about how it performs during recessions. The debt fell precipitately in the Global Financial Crisis and again during the pandemic. In the 2001 recession, returns for the Morningstar LSTA US Leveraged Loan index, including interest payments and price movements, were more or less zero.

But tighter credit conditions will hurt a wide array of highly indebted companies. Default rates for US leveraged loans could rise to 9% next year if the Fed stays on its aggressive monetary-policy path, according to UBS strategist Matt Mish.

Even if many investors have bought loans this year, the debt has still faced some pressure. Prices began to dip after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, introducing fresh concerns about energy prices and global economic growth. US leveraged loans were trading at 99 cents on the dollar in January and have since dropped to about 93 cents.

The epic collapse of the FTX crypto empire has shone a light on aggressive risk-taking and slack due diligence in the venture-capital industry. Some 94% of MLIV Pulse respondents think that further blowups will follow the bankruptcy of FTX as years of easy credit give way to a tougher business and market environment.

A more vulnerable credit market means that loan investors have to be particularly assiduous about doing their homework, said Frank Ossino, bank loan sector head at Newfleet Asset Management.

“Credit selection is going to be critical,” Ossino said. “As we enter a downward cycle, risk assets will be impacted and loans - as a credit risk asset class - will naturally be a participant.”

As leveraged loans are becoming less interesting to some investors, investment-grade bonds are poised to gain ground. More than half of respondents said they expected investment-grade credit to outperform next year, while about a fifth said they expected junk bonds to do better. Longer-term high-grade bonds generated returns of more than 9% in November, their best month since 2008.

Wall Street banks have also been talking lately about potentially high returns for investment-grade credit in 2023. Bank of America sees the debt generating total gains of close to 13% next year in the US, based on its index.

UBS said that credit can offer once-in-a-decade returns, recommending macro trades including going long blue-chip company debt compared with leveraged loans. But timing the trades is critical, strategists led by Mish said, as recession looms and won’t reach every economy at the same time.

Investor optimism about high-grade credit has been increasingly reflected in risk premiums. Spreads for US investment-grade debt have narrowed about 35 basis points since mid-October, according to Bloomberg index data.

Investment-grade credit is typically far more sensitive than junk bonds to changes in benchmark yields, because high-grade debt tends to take longer to mature and pays less interest. That makes investment-grade debt a better bet when yields are falling, as they have been in recent weeks.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/watch-leveraged-loans-canary-credit-010014057.html

Bispecific cancer drugs and gene therapy advances: What to watch at upcoming ASH meeting

 Next week, blood disease specialists and doctors will travel to New Orleans for the 64th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, a high-profile stage for some of their field’s most consequential research.

They, along with the many investors and analysts who track emerging treatments for blood diseases, got a peek at what’s to come with the release of hundreds of study abstracts Thursday. These study summaries contain important clues to what will draw the most attention at the Dec. 10-13 meeting.

Notably, there will be updates on an emerging class of protein-based cancer drugs that can simultaneously latch onto targets on cancer and immune cells. There’s significant competition between drugmakers like Roche, Regeneron, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and AbbVie, which are developing rival treatments for lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

While ASH is often a forum for the latest in blood cancer research, it’s also historically been an important conference for gene therapy in blood diseases like beta thalassemia, sickle cell and hemophilia. This year is no different and will be buoyed by the recent approval of a Bluebird bio treatment.

Read on for three notable areas of focus at next week’s meeting.

Competitors crowd behind Roche’s new lymphoma drug …

Earlier this year, European regulators cleared a first-of-its-kind drug from Roche for a type of lymphoma. Sold as Lunsumio, the drug is a two-pronged antibody that latches onto CD20, a target on the B cells that proliferate in lymphoma, and CD3, a protein on tumor-fighting T cells. Its approval was the latest step forward for antibody drugs known as bispecifics, which have become a target for drugmakers and have produced multiple marketed treatments for cancers, eye diseases and hemophilia. U.S. regulators are set to make a decision on Lunsumio by late December.

Yet Lunsumio likely won’t be alone on the market for long. AbbVie and Genmab recently completed approval applications in the U.S. and Europe for a rival drug. And ASH abstracts posted Thursday show the range of competitors following behind them.

Regeneron revealed results from a Phase 2 study of its drug odronextamab in two different types of lymphoma that analysts at the investment firm SVB Securities called “competitive” in both disease settings. Those results included a 53% response rate in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and an 81% response rate in follicular lymphoma. Remission rates were 37% and 75%, respectively, after a median of roughly 17 months of follow-up. However, two patients with follicular lymphoma died from treatment-related adverse events.

In a small Phase 1 study of heavily pretreated patients, Johnson & Johnson’s plamotamab, licensed from the biotechnology company Xencor, led to a 47% response rate and 26% remission rate in DLBCL. All follicular lymphoma patients responded, and half were in remission as of data cutoff.

Multiple developers, including AbbVie and Roche, revealed data showing use of these drugs in combinations. Some regimens have advanced into Phase 3 testing. They’re also being evaluated in rarer lymphoma types, like mantle cell, which “demonstrates the breadth of potential” for the drug class, SVB analysts wrote.

…and J&J’s first-of-its-kind multiple myeloma drug

The competition is equally strong among developers of dual-targeting antibodies for multiple myeloma.

A week ago, the Food and Drug Administration made J&J’s Tecvayli the first such treatment to be commercially available. But J&J’s drug has behind it a growing pipeline of treatments, including experimental medicines from Pfizer, Regeneron, AbbVie, Roche and Bristol Myers Squibb. They all aim to surpass Tecvayli, as well as provide a more convenient alternative to the personalized CAR-T therapies now available for very sick multiple myeloma patients.

Most of these drugs target a protein called BCMA that’s found on malignant cells on multiple myeloma. And most showed “generally favorable efficacy and tolerability characteristics,” SVB analysts wrote. But newer approaches are emerging too, some of which will be featured at ASH.

Pfizer and Regeneron are among those presenting updated study results. Pfizer’s drug elranatamab had a 61% response rate in a Phase 2 study and no instances of a common immune-related side effect that were graded as severe. Analysts at Evercore ISI flagged a severe side effect related to low potassium levels, however.

The response rates of patients who received higher doses of Regeneron’s linvoseltamab in a Phase 1/2 trial were higher than 75%, but treatment came with a variety of blood-related side effects. Regeneron is moving forward with a lower dose.

J&J and Roche will each present results from drugs directed at newer targets. Both have medicines aimed at a protein called GPRC5D that’s overexpressed in the bone marrow of myeloma patients. Both led to similar response rates of over 70%.

Roche has results from two studies of a second medicine targeting FcRH5, which is expressed on B cells and plasma cells.

AbbVie will present data from a myeloma drug it licensed from Harpoon Therapeutics in 2019. That drug is one of two antibodies for multiple myeloma the company will be highlighting at ASH. AbbVie acquired the other when it bought TeneoOne last year.

An approved gene therapy and an advancing pipeline

Each year for much of the past decade, ASH attendees have heard regular updates on Bluebird’s progress developing a gene therapy for beta thalassemia.

This year, the latest data on the treatment will carry new significance, as in August the FDA granted the therapy a landmark approval for patients with severe forms of the blood disorder.

Abstracts released Thursday show that research on the long-term outcomes of patients given the therapy in clinical testing will be presented, as will data on changes in treated individuals’ quality of life. The results confirm the treatment’s dramatic impact, with nearly all patients still free from the blood transfusions they previously needed on a regular basis. Patients surveyed post-treatment also reported improvements in their well-being.

Such research is likely to remain a staple of ASH conferences to come, as more gene therapies advance through testing and, possibly, reach the market. Also being presented are multi-year follow-up on hemophilia patients treated with a gene therapy being developed by Roche and its subsidiary Spark Therapeutics. There have been few updates on that treatment since Roche’s buyout of Spark in 2019, so that presentation could attract interest.

Researchers associated with a half dozen medical institutions and Novartis’ research labs, meanwhile, will present new data on a gene-edited stem cell-based treatment for severe sickle cell disease.

https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/ash-2022-bispecific-gene-therapy-preview/635829/