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Thursday, February 23, 2023
Blueprint Medicines to Regain Global Rights to GAVRETO® (pralsetinib) from Roche
Blueprint Medicines Corporation (NASDAQ: BPMC) today announced it will regain global commercialization and development rights to GAVRETO® (pralsetinib), excluding Greater China, following a decision by Roche to discontinue the collaboration agreement between the companies for GAVRETO for strategic reasons.
Under the terms of the agreement, the termination will be effective 12 months from the notification date of February 22, 2023. During the transition period, Blueprint Medicines and Roche are mutually committed to ensuring a smooth transition process with no anticipated interruptions or changes to patient access. In addition, the company will explore options to advance and simplify the continued global commercialization and development of GAVRETO.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blueprint-medicines-regain-global-rights-130000072.html
Are Reparations Part of the American Rescue Plan? Cities Say Yes
There is an interesting fight brewing in Congress after various cities indicated that they may not only pay reparations but use federal pandemic funds for such payments. There has been a long call for federal reparations with various Democratic bills introduced in Congress. BET founder Robert Johnson has called for $14 trillion in federal reparations. However, cities like Providence, Rhode Island are not waiting. They insist that federal reparations funds are already effectively approved as part of their pandemic relief.
We have been discussing how California’s Reparations Task Force has presented a bill for $569 billion for reparations while cities like San Francisco have a reparation board demanding $5 million per eligible black resident.
Other cities are saying that the federal government can foot the bill. They are relying on massive payments of federal money under the American Rescue Plan (ARP). They insist that Congress put so few conditions on the money that they can use it for reparations.
The $1.9 billion dollars in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed on a loose mandate to encourage economic stimulus and deal with the economic and health effects of the pandemic and ongoing recession. Advocates are arguing that the pandemic exacerbated the lingering effects of slavery for the Black community. Every Republican (and one Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine) voted against the Act.
FOX Business reported that Providence, Rhode Island has already dedicated $10 million in pandemic relief toward creating the Providence Municipal Reparations Commission to address “racial equity.” Likewise, officials in Shelby County, Tennessee (where Memphis is located) voted to spend $5 million to study the possibility of a long-term reparations program. The county said it may use pandemic funds for the effort.
Other cities are moving forward with reparation task forces, including most recently Boston. As in cities like San Francisco, the Boston reparations will cover not just slavery but more “recent” housing and economic inequities. Mayor Michelle Wu declared “For four hundred years, the brutal practice of enslavement and recent policies like redlining, the busing crisis, and exclusion from City contracting have denied Black Americans pathways to build generational wealth, secure stable housing, and live freely.”
Likewise, this week, Washtenaw County in Ann Arbor, Michigan approved its own commission based on reparations approved by cities like Evanston, Illinois. It was described as “An evolution of an exploratory committee led by the Racial Equity Office, the Advisory Council on Reparations will be a perpetual body of Commissioner appointed subject matter experts representing relevant sectors.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) introduced a new federal reparations bill that would create a new federal commission similar to those of states like California. It is supported by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ed Markey (D-MA), Bob Casey (D-PA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Patty Murray (D-WA).
Some 190 organizations now support federal reparations including the ACLU and Amnesty International.
Yes, Americans Are Paying for Pensions in Ukraine
Remarks made by President Joe Biden in April 2022 are making the rounds on social media as the United States continues to fund Ukraine with billions of taxpayer dollars and after Biden made a surprise trip to the country on Monday.
"This so-called supplemental funding addresses the needs of the Ukrainian military during the crucial weeks and months ahead. And it begins — it begins to transition to longer-term security assistance that’s going to help Ukraine deter and continue to defend against Russian aggression," Biden said at the White House. "It’s going to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance as well as food, water, medicines, shelter, and other aid to Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s war, and provide aid to those seeking refuge in other countries from Ukraine."
"It’s also going to help schools and hospitals open. It’s going to allow pensions and social support to be paid to the Ukrainian people so they have something — something in their pocket," he continued.
American taxpayers have been funding pensions in Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt country, for more than a year. Today in Kyiv, Biden pledged an additional $500 million.
Meanwhile, Social Security in the United States is on the road to ruin.
"In 2034, Social Security revenues are projected to equal 77 percent of the program’s scheduled outlays, resulting in a 23 percent shortfall. Thus, CBO estimates that Social Security benefits would need to be reduced by 23 percent in 2034. The gap between scheduled and payable benefits would widen to 35 percent by 2096 and would remain stable thereafter," a report from the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The U.S. is $32 trillion in debt and inflation, which is crushing American families, continues to rage.
Elite Athletics Comes At A Cost Later In Life
Elite performance takes natural ability coupled with elite levels of training. That last part has an effect later in life, according to a new analysis. It found that one in four retired Olympians have some level of osteoarthritis, which causes changes in the joint and can lead to discomfort, pain and disability.
Researchers quizzed 3,357 retired Olympians aged around 45 on injuries and the health of their bones, joints, muscles and spine. They were also asked if they were currently experiencing joint pain, and if they had an osteoarthritis diagnosis. For comparison, 1,735 people aged around 41 from the general population completed the same survey. Researchers used statistical models to compare the prevalence of spine, upper limb and lower limb osteoarthritis and pain in retired Olympians with the general population.
The team considered factors that could influence the risk of pain and osteoarthritis such as injury, recurrent injury, age, sex and obesity. They found that the knee, lumbar spine and shoulder were the most injury prone areas for Olympians. These were also among the most common locations for osteoarthritis and pain. After a joint injury the Olympians were more likely to develop osteoarthritis than someone sustaining a similar injury in the general population, the research found. The sportspeople also had an increased risk of shoulder, knee, hip and ankle and upper and lower spine pain after injury, although this did not differ with the general population.
The athletes, who had competed at an Olympic level in 57 sports, also had an increased risk of lower back pain overall, and shoulder osteoarthritis after a shoulder injury.
Researchers say the study may help people make decisions about recovery and rehabilitation from injuries in order to prevent recurrences, and to inform prevention strategies to reduce the risk and progression of pain and OA in retirement.
Progressives propose bill to slash defense budget by $100 billion
A pair of progressive lawmakers on Wednesday proposed a bill to slash the Defense Department’s budget by $100 billion and reallocate the dollars elsewhere.
Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chairs of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, reintroduced their “People Over Pentagon Act.” If passed, the legislation would rein in defense spending and refocus funds on priorities like infrastructure, health care and education.
“Year after year, this country pours billions into our already-astronomical defense budget without stopping to question whether the additional funding is actually making us safer,” Lee said in a release.
“Cutting just $100 billion could do so much good: it could power every household in the US with solar energy; hire one million elementary school teachers amid a worsening teacher shortage; provide free tuition for 2 out of 3 public college students; or cover medical care for 7 million veterans,” the congresswoman added.
The lawmakers argued that the current defense budget props up the military industrial complex at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Biden signed a massive $858 billion defense authorization bill for fiscal 2023, allocating $817 billion to the Department of Defense. The high increase from last year’s DOD budget — which was $768 billion — has prompted some Democrats to sound alarms about excessive spending.
“More defense spending does not guarantee safety, but it does guarantee that the military-industrial complex will continue to get richer,” Pocan said. “We can no longer afford to put these corporate interests over the needs of the American people.”
How the Russia-Ukraine war has changed cyberspace
The Russia-Ukraine war has shattered the digital wall that often separated the government’s cyber experts from the private sector, forcing a new level of transparency on potential threats and engagement on geopolitical crises.
“I think the war in Ukraine has acted as a forcing function for governments, particularly the U.S., to reconsider how they communicate and declassify cyber threat information with the private sector,” said Jason Blessing, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
It’s no secret that government agencies tend to move slower than private actors when it comes to communicating and sharing threat information, so it makes sense to join forces, he added.
“I think you’re seeing the needle move in the right direction in terms of information sharing,” he added.
Nathaniel Fick, the head of the cyber bureau at the State Department, recently said that the war has made concrete changes to how the U.S. government and the private sector work together to counter cyberattacks.
“When I was a cybersecurity CEO, public-private partnership was a feel-good buzz term,” Fick said. “It generally meant I shared my data with the government, the government classified it, and I got nothing back.”
“That is emphatically no longer the case,” he added.
Experts said the U.S. government is now more willing to declassify certain information and share it with the private sector as they come to realize the benefits of early engagement.
And the war has also pushed the U.S. military to rethink how they can better integrate cyber into conventional military operations, while public-private collaboration has also helped Ukraine counter Russian cyberattacks.
“In Ukraine … Microsoft and others were able to push updates at scale in near real time based on collaboration with the U.S. intelligence community that allowed them to blunt these attacks,” Fick said.
Last year, Microsoft said it had thwarted Russian cyberattacks targeting Ukraine and organizations in the U.S. and the European Union. The tech company said the attacks were launched by a Russian hacking group tied to Russia’s military intelligence service.
Josephine Wolff, an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Tufts University Fletcher School, said since the war started, she has seen a much more urgent approach to publicly sharing information on emerging threats, how to confront them, and what disruptive steps the government and the private sector are taking.
Leading up to and following the invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials sent out several alerts warning companies, especially those in critical sectors, to prepare for potential Russian cyberattacks by strengthening their cyber defenses.
“I think that’s where we’ve seen kind of the most progress and the most change,” Wolff said.
On the private sector side, experts say that companies large and small are more aware of the cyber risks stemming from the war and are proactively taking steps to fix their vulnerabilities and secure their networks.
Companies also recognize that they can also be targets of state-sponsored cyberattacks stemming from geopolitical disputes, and can no longer sit on the sidelines.
“I think you’re seeing more and more that firms cannot take a backseat to what’s happening politically,” Blessing said.
In fact, executives and board members of various companies are now asking how the war could impact their business operations in cyberspace, said James Turgal, vice president of cyber consultancy Optiv.
“The questions I’m getting are ‘what are the geopolitical impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war, specifically, the cyber aspects?,’” Turgal said.
“‘How should we, as board of directors, now think about that?,’” he said, adding that these are conversations he’s never had with board members prior to the war.
“[The war] truly has changed how boards are thinking about cyber,” he continued.
Cyber war crimes?
The war has also sparked a global debate on whether certain Russian cyberattacks could consitute war crimes.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian officials requested that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague investigate whether destructive Russian cyberattacks could fall under war crimes.
In January, Ukraine’s chief digital transformation officer, Victor Zhora, told Politico that his country is gathering evidence of cyberattacks tied to military operations and are sharing information with the ICC in the hopes of potentially charging Russia for those crimes.
Zhora argued that since Russia used cyberattacks to support its kinetic military operations that targeted Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and civilians, the digital attacks should also be considered as war crimes against Ukrainian citizens.
Those efforts could be a game-changer in this space as cyberattacks are currently not listed as a form of war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
Declining Russia; rising China
Moving forward, experts said to expect the U.S. to shift its focus on China, as it seems that Russia’s cyber capabilities have not kept up with the West.
At the onset of the war, many experts in the industry, including lawmakers and intelligence officials, predicted that Russian forces would launch destructive cyberattacks, but that didn’t materialize as many expected.
“What I would say is if Russia’s cyber capabilities cannot overcome the combined defensive efforts of the United States and Ukraine, then their capabilities have gone down,” Wolff said.
While China is emerging as the main adversary in cyberspace, it is also watching Russia’s efforts around Ukraine and applying it to its own situation with Taiwan, said Turgal.
“The Chinese are watching how the Russians are actually utilizing the different types of [cyber] techniques,” Turgal said.
Last year, Taiwan’s presidential office and defense ministry were hit with cyberattacks amidst then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit to the island, adding to the rising tensions over the island.
Although it is still unclear who launched the cyberattacks against Taiwan, many have speculated that China was probably behind it as retaliation for Pelosi’s visit.
“I think the conversation does not just remain about Russia-Ukraine, I think the conversation evolves into China-Taiwan,” Turgal said.
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/3870138-how-the-russia-ukraine-war-has-changed-cyberspace/
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