'Election Variant' Prompts NYC Mask Advisory

 New York health authorities are asking residents to mask up during Labor Day weekend amid the latest wave of Covid-19 cases, and a broader resurgence of hysteria over the disease which generally laughs at face masks & kills less than 0.01% of those who contract it - with newer strains generally weaker than their predecessors, as tends to happen.

And according to the CDC, the latest variant of the virus - BA.2.86, "may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines," but notes "At this point, there is no evidence that this variant is causing more severe illness."

NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan and NY Gov. Kathy Hochul have teamed up to urge extra precautions this weekend, including "proven prevention tools" such as masks.

According to the latest data from the New York City Health Department, there have been 825 daily cases of COVID-19 on average over the past week. While this is several times higher than the seven-day average of 230 cases reported on July 4, it is far lower than the 2,000-plus cases around this time in 2022.

Even though overall COVID-19 indicators are much lower than a year ago, some institutions have started to adopt mask mandates, sparking pushback in some circles and a "we will not comply" trend on social media. -Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump has openly called fear-monger over new COVID-19 variants nothing more than a ploy to force vote-by-mail in order to rig another election.

"We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social.

Read the NYC advisory below (via The Conservative Treehouse),

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/election-variant-prompts-nyc-mask-advisory

Robinhood to buy back Bankman-Fried's stake from US govt for $605.7 million

 Robinhood said on Friday it had entered into a share repurchase agreement with the United States Marshal Service (USMS) for $605.7 million to buy back stock from Sam Bankman-Fried's Emergent Fidelity Technologies.

The shares of Robinhood were seized and subsequently transferred to the custody of the U.S. government after Bankman-Fried's FTX and Emergent filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to criminal fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from FTX's November 2022 collapse.

Robinhood shares climbed more than 3% in premarket trading on the news.

The online brokerage said the 55.3 million shares would be sold at $10.96 apiece.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan approved the deal, court records showed. Kaplan, who is overseeing Bankman-Fried's criminal case, called Robinhood's proposed share purchase agreement "appropriate" and "in the best interest of the relevant stakeholders" in an Aug. 28 order unsealed Friday.

Robinhood first disclosed its intention to buy back the stake in February and said the company's board had authorized it to pursue purchasing most or all of the stock.

Just six months before his company filed for bankruptcy last November, Bankman-Fried revealed a 7.6% stake in Robinhood but said he did not have any intention of taking control of the retail trading platform. He told Reuters at the time that FTX was "excited about Robinhood's business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them."

Bankman-Fried rode a boom in the value of bitcoin and other digital assets to build a net worth of an estimated $26 billion and become an influential political donor in the United States, but FTX's collapse wiped out his fortune.

Kaplan earlier this month ordered Bankman-Fried be jailed ahead of his October trial, finding that the former billionaire likely tampered with witnesses while confined to his parents' Palo Alto, California, home on $250 million bail.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-usms-sign-share-repurchase-122852013.html

This hadn't happened on the U.S. Treasury market in 250 years. Now it has.

 The 10-year Treasury bond is on track for a third year of losses in 2023, something that hasn't happened in 250 years of U.S. history.

In short, it has never happened, say strategists at Bank of America.

The return for investors putting money in that bond BX:TMUBMUSD10Y stands at negative 0.3% so far in 2023, after a 17% slump in 2022 and a 3.9% drop in 2021, the bank's strategists, led by Michael Hartnett, pointed out in a note on Friday.

That reflects a "staggering 40% jump in U.S. nominal GDP growth" -- factoring in growth and inflation -- "since the COVID lows of 2020," they said, providing this chart:

Bond returns have suffered this year as the Federal Reserve has continued its interest-rate-hiking campaign aimed at getting inflation under control. The "big picture in the 2020s vs. the 2010s is lower stock and bond returns, which we would expect to continue given political, geopolitical, social [and] economic trends," said Hartnett and the team.

This year has been better for stocks DJIA SPX, but the bounce since COVID pandemic restrictions began to be lifted has been very concentrated in U.S. stocks, especially the technology sector, with breadth in global markets "breathtakingly bad," the analysts said. Breadth refers to the number of stocks actively participating in a rally.

Breadth is the worst since 2003 for the MSCI ACWI, which captures large- and midcap-stock representation across 23 developed markets and 24 emerging ones.

As for the latest weekly flows into funds, Bank of America reported that $10.3 billion went to stocks, $6.5 billion to cash and $1.7 billion to bonds, with $300 million draining from gold .

The yield on the 10-year Treasury was holding steady on Friday at 4.102% after data showed the U.S. economy generated 187,000 jobs in August, but the unemployment rate rose to 3.8% from 3.5%, and job gains were revised lower for July and June.

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230901493/this-hadnt-happened-on-the-us-treasury-market-in-250-years-now-it-has

Key Milestones for Apogee Therapeutics

 Lead program, APG777, a novel subcutaneous half-life extended anti-IL-13 antibody, discovered by Paragon, enters first-in-human clinical trial

Apogee Therapeutics' recently announced upsized IPO further demonstrates the value of best-in-class antibodies for immunological and inflammatory disorders

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/paragon-therapeutics-recognizes-key-milestones-120000233.html

Turnstone Business Update

 

• Successfully closed upsized IPO, raising $88 million in gross proceeds to continue advancing pipeline of Selected TIL Therapy programs

• Cash position expected to fund operations into second quarter of 2025

• Two Phase 1 clinical trials of lead program, TIDAL-01, in several solid tumor Indications ongoing

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/turnstone-biologics-corp-reports-second-215700208.html

Actinium: Abstracts Accepted for Poster Presentation at SOHO Annual Meeting

First ever data demonstrating anti-leukemic effect of Actimab-A in FLT3 Mutant AML models

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/actinium-pharma-highlights-three-abstracts-110000869.html

Aspira: Sample Procurement Agreement with University of Oxford

 Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (“Aspira” or “the Company”) (Nasdaq: AWH), a bio-analytical based diagnostic company focused on gynecologic health, today announced a material transfer agreement with The University of Oxford for the procurement of serum samples to be used to verify and validate the Company’s endometriosis blood test algorithms. Aspira expects to use the samples to support the launch of EndoCheckSM, its first-generation blood test to aid in the diagnosis of endometriosis, by the end of 2023.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/aspira-women-health-signs-exclusive-120000211.html