U.S. imposes security zone in search for Chinese balloon remnants

 The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday imposed a temporary security zone in waters off South Carolina during the military's search and recovery of debris from a suspected Chinese spy balloon that a U.S. fighter jet shot down.

The White House said the balloon's flight over the United States had done nothing to improve already tense relations with China and its national security spokesperson dismissed Beijing's contention that the balloon was for meteorological purposes as straining credulity.

Beijing condemned the shooting down of the balloon and urged Washington to show restraint over the episode. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters: "Nobody wants to see conflict here."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a planned Feb.5-6 visit to China because of the balloon's flight into U.S. airspace last week. It was shot down off the Atlantic Coast on Saturday.

Kirby said Blinken would seek to reschedule the trip when the time is right.

The trip to Beijing would have been the first by a U.S. secretary of state since 2018 as the United States and China have sought to mend ties that have been under severe strain over a range of disagreements, including U.S. attempts to block Chinese access to some cutting-edge technologies.

INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

The United States was able to study the balloon while it was aloft and officials hope to glean valuable intelligence on its operations by retrieving as many components as possible, Kirby said.

China called the shooting down of the balloon an "obvious overreaction".

"China firmly opposes and strongly protests against this," Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng said in remarks to the U.S. embassy in Beijing posted on the ministry's website.

U.S. officials have played down the balloon's impact on national security, although a successful recovery could potentially give the United States insight into China's spying capabilities.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/u-imposes-security-zone-search-204230085.html

Nearly 60 hair relaxer lawsuits against L'Oreal, others consolidated in Illinois federal court

 Nearly 60 lawsuits claiming hair relaxer products sold by L'Oreal USA Inc and other companies cause cancer and other health problems will be consolidated in Chicago federal court, according to a Monday order from the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

At least 57 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the country over the products, which use chemicals to permanently straighten textured hair, court records show. The lawsuits allege the companies knew their products contained dangerous chemicals but marketed and sold them anyway.

The actions will be centralized into a multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland, which will streamline discovery efforts and other pretrial issues for the cases, according to the order.

The cases name the U.S. subsidiary of L'Oreal SA and subsidiaries of India-based companies Godrej SON Holdings Inc and Dabur International Ltd. Representatives for the companies, which opposed centralization of the cases, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement posted online after the first lawsuits were filed, L'Oreal said it is "confident in the safety of our products and believe the recent lawsuits filed against us have no legal merit."

The lawsuits follow the October publication of a National Institutes of Health study that found women who used the products multiple times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer.

Diandra Debrosse Zimmermann of DiCello Levitt, who filed the first case after the study was published, urged the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation at a hearing last month to send the cases to Rowland.

Debrosse Zimmermann said the panel's decision "recognized the clear benefits of centralizing the hair relaxer litigation,” adding that she expects many more firms to file their cases in the coming weeks.

She estimates that thousands of women could end up suing over the products, which are typically marketed to women of color.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-60-hair-relaxer-lawsuits-212108673.html

Ohio to carry out controlled release of chemicals at train derailment site

 Ohio officials on Monday said they would carry out a controlled release of hazardous chemicals after ordering evacuations near the site of a train derailment in the northeastern part of the state that led to a chemical fire.

The release from the derailed cars was set for Monday afternoon, three days after the train derailed near the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania on Friday night, causing a massive fire.

"We have put together a plan to manually vent the cars. The contents will be drained in a controlled fashion," railroad operator Norfolk Southern Corp said in a statement on Monday.

Images posted on social media from East Palestine, a town northwest of Pittsburgh, showed several train cars on fire.

Officials on Sunday ordered residents living within 1 to 2 miles (1.6 to 3.2 km) of the derailment to leave their homes as a precaution. The Columbiana County Sheriff warned that those who ignored the evacuation order may be subject to arrest.

"You need to leave. You just need to leave. We are ordering you to leave," Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said on Monday. "This is a matter of life and death."

The manual release of the pressure will result from a controlled breach of several rail cars, conducted under the supervision of experts and first responders, Norfolk Southern said.

"This will be loud and visible. Some of the material will burn off as it drains for a short number of hours," the railroad operator added. 

https://www.yahoo.com/now/ohio-carry-controlled-release-chemicals-204227103.html

Biden says U.S.-China relations not weakened by balloon incident

 President Joe Biden said on Monday that relations between Washington and Beijing were not weakened by the United States' downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the weekend.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Biden said it was always his view that the balloon needed to be shot down "as soon as it was appropriate."

Asked if the balloon incident weakens U.S.-China relations, Biden said: "No. We made it clear to China what we're going to do. They understand our position. We're not going to back off."

Biden continued: "We did the right thing and it's not a question of weakening or strengthening - it's reality."

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-says-u-china-relations-221241512.html

Lantheus to Acquire Cerveau Technologies, Expanding Imaging Pipeline into Alzheimer’s

 Lantheus Holdings, Inc. (“Lantheus”) (NASDAQ: LNTH), a company committed to improving patient outcomes through diagnostics, radiotherapeutics and artificial intelligence solutions that enable clinicians to Find, Fight and Follow disease, today announced it has acquired Knoxville-based Cerveau Technologies, Inc. (“Cerveau”). Cerveau’s asset is MK-6240, a second-generation F 18-labeled positron emission tomography (“PET”) imaging agent that targets Tau tangles in Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative neurological disorder that causes an inexorable decline in cognition and function. In the U.S., there are an estimated 6.5 million people living with Alzheimer’s disease. As the population ages, it is likely that the prevalence of this disease will continue to rise and, by 2050, the number of people 65 and older with Alzheimer’s disease may grow to 12.7 million.i

MK-6240 is a clinical stage PET development candidate designed to detect Tau protein in the form of neurofibrillary tangles in the brains of patients with known or suspected Alzheimer’s disease. MK-6240 has the potential to aid in diagnosing, staging, and informing treatment selection and response to therapy for Alzheimer’s disease. Although in clinical development, MK-6240 is currently being used in more than 60 academic and industry clinical trials around the world for several late-stage Alzheimer’s disease therapeutic candidates being developed by more than 16 pharmaceutical companies.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lantheus-announces-acquisition-cerveau-technologies-210300158.html

Google launches ChatGPT rival called Bard

 Google is launching an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered chatbot called Bard to rival ChatGPT.

Bard will be used by a group of testers before being rolled out to the public in the coming weeks, the firm said.

Bard is built on Google's existing large language model Lamda, which one engineer described as being so human-like in its responses that he believed it was sentient.

The tech giant also announced new AI tools for its current search engine.

AI chatbots are designed to answer questions and find information. ChatGPT is the best-known example. They use what's on the internet as an enormous database of knowledge although there are concerns that this can also include offensive material and disinformation.

"Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models," wrote Google boss Sundar Pichai in a blog.

Mr Pichai stressed that he wanted Google's AI services to be "bold and responsible" but did not elaborate on how Bard would be prevented from sharing harmful or abusive content.

The platform will initially operate on a "lightweight" version of Lamda, requiring less power so that more people can use it at once, he said.

Google's announcement follows wide speculation that Microsoft is about to bring the AI chatbot ChatGPT to its search engine Bing, following a multi-billion dollar investment in the firm behind it, OpenAI.

ChatGPT can answer questions and carry out requests in text form, based on information from the internet as it was in 2021. It can generate speeches, songs, marketing copy, news articles and student essays.

It is currently free for people to use, although it costs the firm a few pennies each time somebody does. OpenAI recently announced a subscription tier to complement free access.

But the ultimate aim of chatbots lies in internet search, experts believe - replacing pages of web links with one definitive answer.

Sundar Pichai said that people are using Google search to ask more nuanced questions than previously.

Whereas, for example, a common question about the piano in the past may have been how many keys it has, now it is more likely to be whether it is more difficult to learn than the guitar - which does not have an immediate factual answer.

"AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there's no one right answer," he wrote.

"Soon, you'll see AI-powered features in Search that distil complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web."

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64546299

J&J Drug Acquired Via Momenta Deal Shows Encouraging Data In Fetal Disorder

 

• Janssen, a unit of Johnson & Johnson 
  JNJ-0.77%+ Free Alerts
  , announced topline results from the proof-of-concept Phase 2 open-label UNITY trial for pregnant adults at high risk for severe hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn.
• In 2020, Johnson & Johnson shelled out $6.5 billion to acquire Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc, gaining access to its lead product, nipocalimab.
• HDFN is a rare condition that can cause life-threatening anemia in the fetus. 
• It occurs when the blood types of a pregnant individual and their fetus are incompatible.
• Most of the 14 pregnant patients who received once-weekly intravenous infusions of nipocalimab achieved a live birth at or after 32 weeks of gestation without requiring an intrauterine transfusion throughout their pregnancy. 
• During the treatment period of approximately 20 weeks, nipocalimab demonstrated a safety profile that supports further development of the treatment in HDFN.
• Over the roughly 20-week treatment period, nipocalimab’s safety profile supported further drug development in this fetal indication, J&J said. 
• Katie Abouzahr, M.D., autoantibody portfolio development leader at Janssen Research & Development, said more data would be released at an upcoming scientific medical meeting while the company plans for a pivotal phase 3 study. 

https://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/23/02/30735767/johnson-johnsons-drug-acquired-via-momenta-deal-shows-encouraging-data-in-fetal-disorder