Rogers Vows To Expel All Chinese Goods From Defense Supply Chains

 by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is vowing to expel all Chinese goods and materials from the United States’s defense supply chains.

Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said that he would lead the effort to expunge China-sourced goods during a Feb. 8 hearing of the committee on the subject of defense-industrial base security.

“The greatest concern I have with the defense industrial base is our continued reliance on China as the source of raw materials,” Rogers said.

“I won’t stop until we’ve completely rid the defense supply chain of Chinese goods and materials.”

Rogers said that communist China still inadvertently controlled too many parts of the supply chains required to equip the military and conduct security operations.

He singled out the United States’s continued reliance on China for rare earth minerals and non-advanced semiconductor chips and said that the regime’s grip on such supplies would need to be broken.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a tight grip on many of our material supply chains including critical minerals and semiconductors,” Rogers said.“We will never prevail in a conflict with China if they’re the source of our military supply.”

US Must Move Dependencies

Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said that the continued role of China in providing elements for the United States’s defense industrial supply chains was part of a greater legacy of irresponsible investment by U.S. corporations seeking to make an easy profit.

“Starting roughly in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, China became the global corporate easy button,” Smith said.

“That’s where you went to make stuff. Huge market, not much in the way of labor costs, certainly not environmental regulations. It was cheap, it was easy, it was the way to go.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rogers-vows-expel-all-chinese-goods-defense-supply-chains

U.S. investigating Elon Musk's Neuralink over hazardous pathogens

 The U.S. Department of Transportation said on Thursday it is investigating Elon Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink over the potentially illegal movement of hazardous pathogens.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson told Reuters about the probe after the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal-welfare advocacy group, wrote to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg earlier on Thursday to alert it of records it obtained on the matter.

PCRM said it obtained emails and other documents that suggest unsafe packaging and movement of implants removed from the brains of monkeys. These implants may have carried infectious diseases in violation of federal law, PCRM said.

The Department of Transportation spokesperson said the agency took PCRM's allegations "very seriously."

"We are conducting an investigation to ensure that Neuralink is in full compliance with federal regulations and keeping their workers and the public safe from potentially dangerous pathogens," the spokesperson said.

Representatives for Neuralink, including Musk, did not respond to comment requests.

The Department of Transportation probe adds to the scrutiny facing Neuralink, which is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments.

In December, Reuters reported that Neuralink has been under a federal investigation over potential animal welfare violations and that some of its staff made internal complaints about experiments being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths.

The letter said records that the group obtained showed instances of pathogens, such as antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus and herpes B virus, that may have been transported without proper containment measures.

The incidents that involved potential breaches of hazardous material transportation regulations happened in 2019, when Neuralink relied on University of California, Davis to help carry out its experiments on primates, according to the documents cited by PCRM.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/elon-musks-neuralink-may-illegally-110510859.html

U.S. government to start imposing inflation penalties on drugmakers in 2025

 The U.S. government will begin imposing penalties in 2025 on drug companies that charge its Medicare program prices that rise faster than inflation, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on Thursday.

The agency issued initial guidance on how it will implement a provision in President Joe Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act that penalizes drugmakers for raising prices faster than inflation.

"The Medicare Prescription Drug Inflation Rebate Program will require drug companies with excessive increases in drug prices to pay rebates to Medicare," CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement.

Companies that raise prices higher than the inflation rate will be required to pay Medicare the difference in the form of a rebate. Those that fail to pay the rebate will face a penalty equaling 125% of the rebate amount.

Medicare began examining the price increases in October 2022 for Medicare Part B drugs, often used in the hospital, that are complicated biologic drugs or drugs with only one manufacturer.

Price increases for half of all drugs covered by Medicare outpaced inflation from 2019 to 2020, which averaged 1% that year. A third of those had price jumps of over 7.5%.

CMS said it would consider comments received by March 11 for revised guidance it plans to issue later this year.

Starting April 1, consumer out-of-pocket costs will be based on the inflation adjusted drug price.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/u-govt-start-collecting-inflation-214102739.html

Biden says Chinese spy balloon not a major security breach

 President Joe Biden, under fire from some lawmakers, said on Thursday he did not view a Chinese spy balloon that transited the United States before it was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean to have been a major security breach.

Biden, who has sought to maintain communications with China and not allow tensions with Beijing to get out of control, said in a Noticias Telemundo interview that he did not regret shooting down the balloon sooner.

"It's not a major breach," Biden said. "I mean, look, it's totally … it's a violation of international law. It's our airspace. And once it comes into our space, we can do what we want with it."

He said U.S. military officials were worried that by shooting it down over land, the balloon and its parts could drop into a populated area.

"This thing was gigantic. What happened if it came down and hit a school in a rural area? What happened if it came down? So I told them as soon as they could shoot it down, shoot it down. They made a wise decision. They shot it down over water, they're recovering most of the parts, and they're good," he said.

Biden on Feb. 2 ordered the balloon shot down once it crossed into the northwestern United States, but acquiesced to the U.S. military's request to not act until it was over water.

The 200-foot-tall (61-meter) balloon, along with its undercarriage of electronic gadgetry, was shot down by a U.S. fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4. The U.S. military has been recovering as many parts as possible.

Some Republicans and Democrats have complained that Biden should have had the balloon downed sooner. The high-altitude surveillance balloon was first detected over Alaska on Jan. 28.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-says-chinese-spy-balloon-015354710.html

Hanwang, bellwether of Chinese ChatGPT frenzy, says big shareholders sold stakes

 Hanwang Technology Co Ltd, widely seen as a bellwether of Chinese interest in ChatGPT-concept stocks, on Friday said several major shareholders reduced stakes over the past few days as it flagged risks following a share price surge.

Henan Yellow River Computer System Co Ltd, a top 10 shareholder, sold 2.6 million Hanwang Technology shares between Jan. 30 and Feb. 7, the artificial intelligence (AI) developer said in an exchange filing.

Tongfang Investment sold 3.4 million shares during the period, while Juneng Capital Management offloaded 1.2 million shares, Hanwang Technology said.

Hanwang Technology's shares have surged more than 70% this month amid fever surrounding ChatGPT-related technology.

ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by U.S. firm OpenAI and backed by Microsoft Corp, gives strikingly human-like responses to user queries.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hanwang-bellwether-chinese-chatgpt-frenzy-020055794.html

In aging China, a call for 'bold' steps to cut cost of having babies

 A Chinese health official has urged local governments to take "bold" steps to lower the cost of having babies and raising children to reduce the burden on families and boost fertility, a state-backed publication reported on Friday.

China's population fell last year for the first time in six decades, data released last month showed, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline.

In addition to that is the prospect of a rapidly aging population slowing the economy as revenues drop and government debt increases because of soaring health and welfare costs. Demographers warn that China might get old before it gets rich.

Yang Wenzhuang, director of Department of Population Monitoring and Family Development under the National Health Commission (NHC), stressed the importance of family support for improving the fertility rate, the publication the Paper reported.

Yang said that worries about money and career development among women were the main factors for people opting not to have babies, adding that precise policies were needed to improve the fertility level.

"Local governments should be encouraged to actively explore and make bold innovations in reducing the cost of childbirth, childcare and education" to promote the long-term balanced development of the population, Yang said.

China had to "firmly grasp the important window period of population development" during its 14th five-year plan which runs until 2025, to accelerate "the promotion of childbearing support", he said.

Yang's comments were published in the latest issue of NHC-managed magazine, Population and Health, the Paper said.

China was for decades preoccupied with the prospect of runaway population growth and imposed a strict one-child policy from 1980 to 2015 to keep numbers in check.

But now the population has started shrinking and India is about to become the world’s most populous country.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/aging-china-call-bold-steps-040259194.html

Dads’ drinking ‘significantly’ impacts likelihood of healthy IVF pregnancy: study

 A recent study conducted at Texas A&M University found that “male alcohol use may significantly impede IVF success rates.”

The study gathered data from men who drank at the legal limit and those who drank at one and a half times the legal limit. The research revealed that even very modest levels of exposure to alcohol had an impact on conception, implantation and overall IVF pregnancy success rates. The chance of failure increased along with alcohol dosage.

In the end, the research concluded that male alcohol use directly impaired an embryo’s ability to successfully implant in the uterus and reduced IVF embryo survival rates.

Along with the health of the fetus, male alcohol consumption was found to directly increase the prospective parent’s financial burden — a single round of IVF can range from $15,000 to $30,000 — and emotional stress. Studies have even compared the stress of infertility to that of a cancer diagnosis.

Lead researcher Dr. Michael Golding said, “We say to the woman, ‘you need to be careful of what you eat. You need to stop smoking. You need to be doing all these different things to improve fertility.’ We don’t say anything to the man, and that’s a mistake, because what we’re seeing here is that the couple’s odds of success with their IVF procedure are increasing simply by addressing both parents’ health habits.”

The maternal-focused pressure of IVF is something that Dr. Asmia Ahmad, chief medical officer of Carrot Fertility, continues to see in her practice.

“It’s very common,” Ahmad confirmed to The Post. “A lot of times people are thinking about fertility and the female, but they’re not thinking about the male and how fertility is impacted by them. What they do on a regular basis, their lifestyle, their medical history, their surgical history, their family history.”

She advised everyone to be honest with their physician from the beginning to accurately address the modifications that can be made to your health and set realistic expectations.

While alcohol consumption rates have increased, Golding notes that for the most part, “alcohol use is easily changed” and suggests that it be considered “a shared action item that can empower the couple to work together toward their goal of becoming pregnant.”

Information regarding IVF and similar assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are becoming increasingly important as the popularity of these procedures increases.

One in five American females ages 15 to 49 are unable to get pregnant after one year of trying and one in four females in this group have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Couples struggling with fertility are increasingly using ART like IVF to have children. The most recent data found that 2.1% of all infants born in the US are conceived using ART.

Dr. Jaime Knopman, director of Fertility Preservation at CCRM Fertility in New York City, told The Post that while IVF treatments are hard on women mentally and physically experts hope that this study will prompt further research into how the male’s health impacts IVF and takes some of the burden off the female.

“Looking at the sperm is helpful because it takes two to tango,” Knopman said.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/09/dads-drinking-significantly-impacts-ivf-success/