Jordan army says it killed drug and weapons smugglers from Syria

 The Jordanian army said Saturday that it killed five drug and weapon smugglers and arrested 15 in a day of clashes with armed groups of smugglers attempting to cross into Jordan from Syria.

The army statement said the clashes broke out before dawn between Jordanian border guards and armed organizations "that practice smuggling and rely on systematic infiltration operations.” It said the smuggling operations have recently increased in frequency.

The state-run Jordan News Agency reported that in recent days smugglers have “aimed to cross the Kingdom’s border by force by targeting border guards.”

Jordanian security forces seized Captagon amphetamine pills, hashish and weapons, the statement said.

Smugglers have used Jordan as a corridor in recent years to smuggle the highly addictive Captagon out of Syria, mainly to oil-rich Arab Gulf states. The drug is used recreationally and by people with physically demanding jobs to keep them alert.

Jordanian authorities have intercepted some smuggling attempts, including some in which smugglers used drones to fly the drugs over the border.

The United States, Britain and European Union accuse Syrian President Bashar Assad, his family and allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, of facilitating and profiting from the trade. Damascus has denied the accusations.

Over the past year, a number of airstrikes believed to be carried out by Jordan have hit drug trade facilities and figures in Syria.

In late August, an airstrike hit an alleged drug factory in southern Syria near the Jordanian border, an attack believed to have been carried out by Jordan’s air force. In May, another airstrike on a village in Sweida killed a well-known Syrian drug kingpin and his family. Activists believe that strike was conducted by the Jordanians.

Jordan did not claim responsibility for the strikes.

https://news.yahoo.com/jordanian-army-says-killed-5-190204523.html

Israel, Hezbollah trade fire across Lebanon border amid alarm over Gaza war spillover

 Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group said on Saturday it had fired rockets at Israel, and its arch-foe said it had struck a "terrorist cell" in retaliation, as top U.S. and EU diplomats visited the region to seek ways to halt spillover from the war.

Fighting also raged on inside Gaza, especially in and near the southern city of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military said it had killed three members of the militant Palestinian Hamas group that rules the densely populated coastal strip.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, were on separate trips to the region to try to quell spillover from the three-month-old Gaza war into Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Red Sea shipping lanes.

Israel and Hezbollah often trade fire across the Lebanese border, the West Bank is seething with anger and the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen seem determined to continue attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes until Israel stops bombarding Gaza.

Air raid sirens sounded across northern Israel early on Saturday when the Israeli military said it had identified some 40 "launches" from Lebanon toward the area of Meron.

There were no reports of casualties or damage.

Hezbollah said it had hit a key Israeli observation post with 62 rockets as a "preliminary response" to the killing of Hamas' deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday.

Arouri was killed by a drone in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of Hamas' Lebanese ally Hezbollah, in an attack widely attributed to Israel.

Lebanese Islamist militant group Jama'a Islamiya said it had fired two volleys of rockets at Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, the third operation it has claimed since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7.

Israel's military said it had responded to the rocket attacks with a drone strike on "the terrorist cell responsible for the launches".

It said it had also struck Hezbollah targets in the areas of Ayta ash Shab, Yaroun, and Ramyeh in southern Lebanon, hitting a launch post, military sites, and "terrorist infrastructure".

Lebanese security sources and residents said Israel had also bombarded an area known as Kawthariyet el-Siyyed.

Hezbollah said five of its fighters had been killed in Israeli strikes.

WESTERN DIPLOMACY

Israel's onslaught began after Hamas militants from Gaza attacked Israel on Oct. 7, with 1,200 people killed and 240 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

The offensive, aimed at wiping out Hamas, had killed 22,722 people by Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials, and devastated the tiny enclave of 2.3 million people. At least 122 Palestinians were killed and 256 others injured in Gaza in the space of 24 hours, they said.

Blinken was meeting the leaders of Turkey and Greece on Saturday at the start of a week-long trip that will also take him to Israel, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

In Istanbul, Blinken held talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and then with President Tayyip Erdogan, a fierce critic of Israel's military actions in Gaza. Turkey, which unlike most of its NATO allies does not class Hamas as a terrorist organisation and hosts some of its members, has offered to mediate in the Gaza conflict.

In the talks, Blinken "emphasized the need to prevent the conflict from spreading, secure the release of hostages, expand humanitarian assistance and reduce civilian casualties," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Blinken also stressed the need to work toward broader, lasting regional peace that ensures Israel's security and advances the establishment of a Palestinian state, he said.

Borrell, the EU's senior diplomat, expressed alarm in Beirut about exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the risk that Lebanon could be dragged into the Gaza conflict.

"Diplomatic channels have to stay open. War is not the only option – it's the worst option," Borrell said.

HEAVY SHELLING

The official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported that 18 Palestinians had been killed by an Israeli attack on a house east of Khan Younis.

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported heavy shelling inside Khan Younis near the Al-Amal Hospital. Shrapnel flew into the medical facility amid the sound of heavy gunfire from drones, it said in a post on social media platform X.

The Israeli military said its commandos had killed three fighters and found "many weapons, grenades, magazines and vests that were used by Hamas" in a civilian home.

The traumatised residents of Gaza, most of whom have been displaced at least once by the bombardment, are wrestling with acute shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

Standing outside a morgue in Khan Younis, 11-year-old Mahmoud Awad said his parents and siblings had been killed by Israeli airstrikes.

"We were in al-Shati refugee camp and they dropped fliers saying that Gaza is a battlefield, so we fled to Khan Younis because it was a safe place, and they still bombed us," he said.

Israel denies targeting civilians but says Hamas militants deliberately embed themselves and their infrastructure among civilian populations.

Hamas, which is backed by Iran and is sworn to Israel's destruction, denies the accusation.

https://news.yahoo.com/heavy-fire-lebanon-targets-northern-091543806.html

Automobile Sticker Shock Sinks In

 Vehicle sales started to slow at the end of last year as "sticker shock" has been taking its toll on would-be U.S. consumers, according to Bloomberg. 

Potential buyers are now "balking" at the idea of 10% interest rates on car loans, the report says. The average price of a vehicle now sits at about $48,000 and sales fell to an SAAR of 15.4 million vehicles for the last month of 2023, the report says.

This number is down from 15.5 million the previous two quarters. 

Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for researcher Cox Automotive told Bloomberg: “We’ve seen a big reduction in median- and lower-income households” buying new cars, which now “almost exclusively go to the top 20% of income households.”

He continued: “The new norm for the industry because of reduced affordability is closer to 16 million. We’ve lost about 10% of the buying pool.”

The tough end to 2023 is expected to continue into 2024, the report says. Cox predicts that auto sales would be up less than 2% in the forthcoming year, meaning that the U.S. won't top its 17 million sales figure, which it posted 5 years prior to the pandemic, anytime soon. 

And the report notes that automakers aren't in a rush to cut prices because they are happy moving less metal at higher margins:

Consumer spending on new vehicles reached a record $578 billion in 2023, its third consecutive year exceeding a half-trillion dollars, according to researcher J.D. Power. Consumers’ average monthly car payment in December was estimated to be $739, up $9 from a year earlier, J.D. Power said.

Smoke added: “Unless the industry finds a way to get back to more-affordable price points, we will see products that cater to higher income, higher credit-quality consumers. And that ultimately limits sales volumes.”

You can read Cox's full December 2023 press release and sales forecast here.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/automobile-sticker-shock-sinks

Roche antibiotic tackles serious drug-resistant pathogen

 Scientists at Roche and Harvard University have discovered an entirely new class of antibiotic that can kill a highly drug-resistant ‘superbug’ with a mortality rate that can be upwards of 50% when the infection has spread into the blood.

The drug – called zosurabalpin – has been shown to be effective against carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii or CRAB in animal models of serious infections and has now advanced into human testing, with first results due later this year.

CRAB ranks alongside antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) forms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae on the World Health Organization’s list of the three pathogens that are most threatening to public health. All three are Gram-negative bacteria, which have an outer membrane containing lipopolysaccharide (LPS) molecules that can help protect them against antibiotics by blocking their uptake into cells.

If it proves effective in clinical trials, zosurabalpin could become the first new class of drug to treat Gram-negative bacterial infections in around 50 years. The macrocyclic peptide directly targets LPS, preventing the substance from being transported into the outer membrane of the bacterium, according to a pair of papers published in the journal Nature.

They describe how the drug – which inhibits a bacterial protein complex called LptB2FGC – was able to reduce levels of the pathogen in animals with CRAB-induced pneumonia and also reduce the death rate in animals with CRAB sepsis. Its discovery was remarkable, as thousands of other macrocyclic peptides showed little activity against the microbe.

If shown to be effective, the new drug could be a genuine lifeline for patients who currently have no treatment options, including carbapenems, which are often a last resort for AMR infections. CRAB kills hundreds of people in the US alone every year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures, although its incidence has been falling thanks to preventive measures.

Roche has completed phase 1 safety studies for zosurabalpin and will now move on to see if it can be effective against CRAB infections.

The emergence of a new antibiotic class is a major event in the fight against AMR, but even if it makes it through development and regulatory approval securing access by patients could be a challenge.

The main problem is that investment in developing new antimicrobials isn’t attractive, because when new drugs are developed they are used sparingly, reserved for patients with multidrug-resistant infections, so developers can’t get a return on their investment in R&D.

Some governments have implemented incentives to try to adjust the health economics challenges. Notably, the UK has introduced a new subscription model that provides annual payments regardless of the amount of drug used, a bit like a Netflix or Amazon Prime account. The US and EU have been considering similar moves, but so far progress has been limited.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/roche-antibiotic-tackles-serious-drug-resistant-pathogen

Click bags FDA breakthrough tag for schizophrenia DTx

 Digital health company Click Therapeutics has won an FDA breakthrough device designation for CT-155, a digital therapeutic (DTx) for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, like social withdrawal and apathy, that tend not to respond well to antipsychotic drugs.

The therapy is being co-developed with Boehringer Ingelheim as a smart device-based app and is intended to be used alongside drug treatment for schizophrenia, and is one of several DTx apps the two companies are working on under a partnership formed in 2020.

Schizophrenia is one of the 15 leading causes of disability worldwide and, while drug treatment can help alleviate positive symptoms like hallucinations, disorganised speech, and agitation, negative symptoms have proved much harder to crack.

One approach that has been shown to work is psychosocial intervention therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), but access to these tends to be scant and fragmented even in countries with developed healthcare systems. Digital health approaches offer a way to overcome those limitations if they can be shown to work in clinical testing.

Boehringer and Click expanded their original $500 million alliance on CT-155 in 2022 to include a second app for schizophrenia, adding another $460 million in potential payments.

A pivotal clinical trial of the two DTx – including CT-155 – started in May 2023 to gauge their effects on negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients aged 18 and over when used as an adjunct to pharmacological therapies.

Called CONVOKE, the 16-week study is enrolling a target of 432 patients, with results due in the middle of 2024. The main efficacy endpoint of the study is the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms, Motivation and Pleasure (CAINS-MAP) scale.

“We are thrilled to receive this breakthrough device designation for CT-155, as it brings us one step closer to being able to provide additional treatment options to those living with schizophrenia, where there remains a significant unmet need due to a lack of access to psychosocial intervention therapies,” said Shaheen Lakhan, Click’s chief medical officer.

“Our unique therapeutic approach is on track to be the industry’s first-in-class treatment for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia,” he added.

Click also has a collaboration underway with Otsuka, worth $300 million, focusing on the development of a DTx for major depressive disorder (MDD), and in September teamed up with Indivior on DTx for substance use disorders. Its in-house pipeline is led by a DTx candidate for migraine.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/click-bags-fda-breakthrough-tag-schizophrenia-dtx

8 ways to take penalty-free withdrawals from your IRA or 401(k)

 When unexpected expenses pile up and the emergency fund has been drained, where can you turn for money during tough times? For many people, their biggest stash of savings is hidden away in tax-advantaged retirement plans, such as an IRA or 401(k).

Unfortunately, the U.S. government imposes a 10 percent penalty on any withdrawals before age 59 1/2. However, some early distributions qualify for a waiver of that penalty — for instance, certain types of hardships, higher education expenses and buying a first home.

Though the IRS does not recognize being flat broke as a hardship, there are situations when investors can tap their retirement plan before age 59 1/2 without paying the 10 percent penalty.

What is a 401(k) and IRA withdrawal penalty?

Generally, if you withdraw money from a 401(k) before the plan’s normal retirement age or from an IRA before turning 59 ½, you’ll pay an additional 10 percent in income tax as a penalty. But there are some exceptions that allow for penalty-free withdrawals.

Penalty-free does not mean tax-free

If you do need to take a withdrawal, some hardship situations qualify for a penalty exemption from an IRA or a 401(k) plan, but note that penalty-free does not mean tax-free:

• Withdrawals from traditional IRA and 401(k) plans made with pre-tax contributions are taxed at ordinary income rates.
• Withdrawals of nondeductible contributions (i.e., those made after-tax) to traditional IRA and 401(k) plans are not subject to the same taxes as deductible contributions, though workers will still incur taxes on any earnings that have been withdrawn from the accounts.
• Contributions to a Roth IRA can be taken out at any time, and after the account holder turns age 59 ½ the earnings may be withdrawn penalty-free and tax-free as long as the account has been open for at least five years. The same rules apply to a Roth 401(k), but only if the employer’s plan permits.

In certain situations, a traditional IRA offers penalty-free withdrawals even when an employer-sponsored plan does not. We explain those situations below. Also, be aware that employer plans don’t have to provide for hardship withdrawals at all. Many do, but they may permit hardship withdrawals only in certain situations — for instance, for medical or funeral expenses, but not for housing or education purposes.

Here are the ways to take penalty-free withdrawals from your IRA or 401(k)

1. Unreimbursed medical bills

The government will allow investors to withdraw money from their qualified retirement plan to pay for unreimbursed deductible medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of adjusted gross income.

The withdrawal must be made in the same year that the medical bills were incurred, says Alan Rothstein, a CPA at Rothstein & Co., in Avon, Connecticut.

You do not have to itemize deductions to take advantage of this exception to the 10 percent tax penalty, according to IRS Publication 590.

2. Disability

The IRS dictates that investors must be totally and permanently disabled before they can dip into their retirement plans without paying a 10 percent penalty.

Rothstein says the easiest way to prove disability to the IRS is by collecting disability payments from an insurance company or from Social Security.

3. Health insurance premiums

Penalty-free withdrawals can be taken from an IRA if you’re unemployed and the money is used to pay health insurance premiums. The caveat is that you must be unemployed for 12 weeks.

To leave a clean trail just in case of an audit, Rothstein suggests opening a separate bank account to receive transfers from the IRA and then using it to pay the premiums only.

“Or the best way is to have the money sent to the insurance carrier directly,” he says.

4. Death

When an IRA account holder dies, the beneficiaries can take withdrawals from the account without paying the 10 percent penalty. However, the IRS imposes restrictions on spouses who inherit an IRA and elect to treat it as their own. They may be subject to the penalty if they take a distribution before age 59 1/2.

5. If you owe the IRS

If Uncle Sam comes after your IRA for unpaid taxes, or in other words, places a levy against the account, you can take a penalty-free withdrawal, says CFP professional Joe Gordon, co-founder of Gordon Asset Management in Durham, North Carolina.

6. First-time homebuyers

Though you may take money out of your 401(k) to use as a down payment, expect to pay a 10 percent penalty.

However, take the money from your IRA, and it’s penalty-free. The penalty-free withdrawal is not limited to first-timers either. Homebuyers must not have owned a home in the previous two years, though. Further, you can take more than one penalty-free withdrawal to buy a home, but there is a $10,000 limit.

For example, says Rothstein, “You can do two $5,000 withdrawals, but $10,000 is the lifetime limit.”

Taking money out of a 401(k) for a down payment can be trickier.

“When the 401(k) has both a loan provision and hardship withdrawal provision, the participant must first use the loan provision before going to hardship,” Gordon says.

7. Higher education expenses

Similarly, withdrawals can generally be made from a 401(k) to cover higher education expenses if the plan allows hardship withdrawals, but they will be subject to the 10 percent penalty.

However, IRA withdrawals are penalty-free if used to pay for qualified expenses.

“It can be for yourself, your spouse, children, grandchildren, or immediate family members. Typically, it will cover books, tuition, supplies, room and board and for postsecondary education,” says Bonnie Kirchner, author of “Who Can You Trust With Your Money?”

8. For income purposes

Section 72(t) of the tax code allows investors to take money out of their retirement plan for income, but there are restrictions.

“You’ll have to take substantially equal periodic payments” over time, Kirchner says.

The shortest amount of time that payments must be made is five years. One option is taking a distribution annually for five years or until age 59 1/2, whichever is longer.

For example, early retirees may want to tap their retirement accounts before Social Security kicks in.

“The gist is that you take the payments and you pay the taxes, but you pay no penalty even if you’re 52 or 53 years old,” Gordon says.

There are other options for the distributions that allow an investor to take payments “over their life expectancy or do a reverse-mortgage-type amortization,” Gordon says.

These periodic payments can also be spread over the course of your life and that of your designated beneficiary.

https://www.bankrate.com/retirement/ways-to-take-penalty-free-withdrawals-from-ira-or-401k/

3 Factors Driving Gold Bulls Into 2024

 by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals,

There are three factors driving gold bulls as we move into the new year – the demand factor, the Fed factor, and the January factor.

Gold just wrapped up its best year since 2020 with a 13 percent gain, and the yellow metal has new records in its crosshairs as we move into 2024.

Gold faced significant headwinds throughout most of 2023 with dollar strength and a higher interest rate environment. But as the markets began to anticipate an end to the Federal Reserve’s inflation fight, gold rallied during the fourth quarter. 

Gold surged to a new record high in early December topping out at just over $2,125 an ounce. It couldn’t sustain those highs, but it has since built strong support at $2,000 an ounce, creating a foundation for gold to test new highs in the coming year.

THE DEMAND FACTOR

 Saxo Bank's Ole Hansen told Reuters he sees three significant demand factors boosting gold as we move into the new year.

Following on from a surprisingly robust performance in 2023 we see further price gains in 2024, driven by a trifecta of momentum-chasing hedge funds, central banks continuing to buy physical gold at a firm pace, and not least renewed demand from ETF investors.

Looking a little deeper at Hansen's trifecta, we can start with central banks. 

Globally, central banks gobbled up gold last year and there is no reason to think their appetite will decrease.

Through the first three quarters of 2023, central banks bought a net of 800 tons of gold. That was 14 percent more than through the same period in 2022, which was a record year dating back to 1950.

There’s no sign that central bank gold buying will abate in the coming year. According to the 2023 Central Bank Gold Reserve Survey released by the World Gold Council last spring, 24 percent of central banks indicated that they planned to add more gold to their reserves in the next 12 months. Seventy-one percent of central banks surveyed believe the overall level of global reserves would increase in the next 12 months. That was a 10-point increase over 2022. 

While central bank gold buying was robust, ETF investing was tepid, with metal flowing out of gold-backed ETFs through most of 2023. But outflows slowed significantly in November with North American ETFs charting gold inflows for the first time in five months. 

With the price of gold rallying, we will likely see more gold flowing into ETFs in the coming months, boosting overall global gold demand.

As Hansen alluded to, the price rally coupled with the anticipation of a lower interest rate environment could also pull some of the institutional investors back into gold.

Overall, the demand dynamics for gold seem to be on the plus side.

THE FED FACTOR

By far the biggest factor driving the precious metals market is Federal Reserve Monetary policy.

The rally in gold started when the markets began to anticipate the central bank would end its rate hiking and pivot toward rate cuts.

The Fed gave markets exactly what they were looking for at the December FOMC meeting.

The central bank didn’t make any policy moves, but it released its dot plots indicating three rate cuts for 2024 with another four cuts in 2025. That would lower rates to between 2 and 2.5 percent. 

The mainstream interprets this as victory over inflation, but it would be more accurate to call it a surrender. By every metric, inflation remains far above the Fed’s 2 percent target. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted price inflation isn’t dead.

Inflation has eased from its highs, and this has come without a significant increase in unemployment. That’s very good news. But inflation is still too high. Ongoing progress in bringing it down is not assured and the path forward is uncertain.

Nevertheless, FOMC members must know that an economy built on borrowing and levered to the hilt can’t survive in a higher interest rate environment. The central bank is easing out of the fight now with its fingers crossed, hoping it has done enough to tame price inflation without crashing the economy.

I call this wishful thinking.

Ironically, financial conditions aren’t all tight, despite the Fed raising rates from zero to 5.5 percent and Powell’s claims that rates are now “well into” restrictive territory.

They aren’t.

The Chicago Fed’s own Financial Conditions Index confirms this. As of the week ending December 22, the index stood at -0.54. A negative number indicates loose financial conditions.

So, while the Fed has tightened conditions enough to break a financial system buried in debt, it is far from tight enough to truly rein in inflation.

Regardless, the bigger problem is that by declaring victory and pivoting to rate cuts, the Fed is returning to the very policies that caused price inflation to begin with.

In other words, a “win” over inflation means more inflation.

But for now, perception is reality, and the perception is everything is fine. The Fed won the inflation fight with no collateral damage to the economy. Now we can go back to the easy money drug the markets crave. There will be no recession. Good times are here again.

I agree that rate cuts are coming. And I think the Fed will have to go back to quantitative easing. But not because it beat inflation. In all likelihood, it will be desperately trying to prop up a crashing economy as the high interest rates finally pop the debt bubbles.

But whether the Fed cuts rates because it thinks it beat inflation or because it is fighting a deep recession, it is equally bullish for gold.

Consider this: gold has fared pretty well this year despite the headwinds, despite the strong dollar, and despite the perception that higher for longer interest rates were bad for gold. If gold did as well as it did in an environment of raising rates and negative perception, imagine how much better it is going to do when rates are falling – especially if they’re falling even as inflation is heating up again.

THE JANUARY FACTOR

Gold already has plenty of momentum moving into the new year and January is historically a good month for gold.

According to data crunching by the World Gold Council, since 1971, gold has had an average return of 1.79 percent in January. That’s nearly three times the long-term monthly average.

Over that same period, gold has charted positive returns in January almost 60 percent of the time. Going back to 2000, gold has gained during 70 percent of Januaries.

The World Gold Council points to three factors that may boost gold’s January performance.

• Beginning of the year portfolio rebalancing
• Season weakness in real yields
• Gold restocking in East Asia ahead of the Lunar New Year

Past performance does not guarantee future results, and there are exceptions to this general trend. We saw negative returns in January 2021 and 2022.

But as we move into 2024, there appears to be a good setup for gold to have another strong January.

As I’ve already pointed out, Federal Reserve rate hikes are on hold, and most people expect the central bank to start cutting rates this year. This should put a damper on dollar strength. In fact, we could see significant dollar weakness as we move into 2024. This would eliminate a major headwind for gold that persisted through most of 2023. 

We also saw renewed strength in the Chinese gold market through the last half of 2023. This could mean an increase in demand as we move into the Chinese New Year.

Taken together, the demand factor, the Fed factor, and the January factor provide three good reasons to be bullish on gold going into the new year.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/three-factors-driving-gold-bulls-2024