A daily pill that has been shown to double the chances of quitting smoking will launch in the UK next week, backed by £70 million ($89 million) in government funding for cessation programmes delivered through primary care.
Consilient Health’s cytisine 1.5 mg tablet product is prescription-only and is intended as a 25-day course that costs £115. It is a nicotine receptor partial agonist based on an alkaloid found in laburnum seeds that has been used for smoking cessation in Central and Eastern Europe for decades.
Cytisine reduces the craving for nicotine and could be an option for the six million people in the UK who smoke, as an alternative to nicotine replacement products like vapes, chewing gum, and patches.
It also provides an alternative to Pfizer’s Champix (varenicline) and GSK’s Zyban (bupropion), which have seen their use restricted in Europe after they were found to contain potentially toxic contaminants. Zyban has since been reintroduced by GSK, but remains in limited supply and, for now, there is no word on the reintroduction of Champix.
Cytisine’s 25-day course also compares favourably to the 12 weeks required for Champix and seven weeks or more for Champix. It was approved by the MHRA medicines regulator in 2019, but has not been available commercially until now.
Dr Richard Russell, a consultant chest physician at King’s College London, said cytisine’s arrival “provides a new hope for many who have struggled to quit smoking in the past and a clear next step for healthcare professionals helping them.”
He added: “This is a positive step towards improving the health outcomes of smokers and reducing the burden of smoking-related diseases.”
Smoking is estimated to cost the UK economy up to £17 billion a year, through smoking-related lost earnings, unemployment, early deaths, and costs to the NHS.
Smoking-related illness also accounts for one hospital admission every minute and up to 75,000 GP appointments each month. Last year, the Department of Health and Social Care said it was “working urgently” with industry to unblock supply chain problems for drug treatments for proven smoking cessation medicines.
“This launch marks a meaningful step forwards in enhancing public health,” commented Luke Crosbie, chief executive at Consilient Health.
“This medication not only offers a tried and tested solution for smoking cessation, but also signifies our dedication to providing accessible healthcare options.”
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the New Hampshire GOP filed a motion on Wednesday to intervene in the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) lawsuit over a voting law in the Granite State.
The Republican groups are asking to become parties in the case to defend New Hampshire Senate Bill 418, an election law requiring those who register to vote without photo ID on election day to send in qualifying documentation within seven days to keep their ballot from being thrown out.
The DNC sued New Hampshire officials over the law last month, arguing it will disenfranchise voters in the state — including young people, working families and other key voting groups.
The Republican groups argue in their new filing that the relief sought by the DNC would “directly harm the legal rights and interests” of the RNC and NHRSC, as well as their registered members and voters.
“It speaks volumes that as Americans struggle with an unprecedented border crisis and crushing inflation, the Biden campaign and DNC are laser-focused on gutting voter ID in New Hampshire,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement, adding Democrats are making elections “less secure.”
“The RNC and NHGOP are proud to fight in court to protect elections in the Granite State and defend voter ID, which a vast majority of Americans support,” McDaniel said.
The DNC lawsuit also has the backing of President Biden’s reelection campaign. Last month, Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez argued the New Hampshire law is an “unacceptable embrace of the election fraud hysteria championed by Donald Trump.”
Tesla is a huge beneficiary of an improper “no legal basis” Biden-sponsored subsidy. This is a massive scandal reminiscent of the diesel-emissions cheating that rocked Germany.
Carbon Tax Credits
The Biden administration and the Department of Energy colluded to rig estimated gas mileage from EVs.
For example, a Tesla that gets the equivalent of 65 MPG, receives tax credits as if the Tesla gets 430 MPG.
It’s hard to think of a worse environmental scandal in recent years than Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel-emissions cheating. The German automaker was rightly pursued by regulators, enforcement agencies and class-action lawyers.
The scandal ended up costing Volkswagen an estimated $33 billion in fines and financial settlements—and revealed that diesel-emissions cheating was endemic.
When it comes to electric cars, the government has a cheating scandal of its own. Under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.
Until recently, this subsidy was a Washington secret. Carmakers and regulators liked it that way. Regulators could announce what sounded like stringent targets, and carmakers would nod along, knowing they could comply by making electric cars with arbitrarily boosted compliance values. Consumers would unknowingly foot the bill.
The secret is out. After environmental groups pointed out the illegality of this charade, the Energy Department proposed eliminating the 6.67 multiplier for electric cars, recognizing that the number “lacks legal support” and has “no basis.” [Let’s not mince words, how about … illegal subsidy]
Carmakers have panicked and asked the Biden administration to delay any return to legal or engineering reality. That is understandable. Without the multiplier, the Transportation Department’s proposed rules are completely unattainable. But workable rules don’t require government-created cheat codes. Carmakers should confront that problem head on.
Illegal Credits
The Journal noted this scandal is buried deep in the Federal Register—on page 36,987 of volume 65.
Since the tax credits “lack legal support” and have “no basis”, all the beneficiaries should have to return their illegal gains.
How much is that?
Tesla’s Record Carbon Credit Sales Up 94% Year-Over-Year
While Tesla has missed this year’s third quarter on both earnings and revenue expectations since its Q2 2019 report, the EV leader reported record-breaking carbon credit sales, which the company referred to as regulatory credits.
For over 4 years, the EV maker has been drawing attention by reporting record-breaking income from selling carbon credits. The automaker reported a revenue of $554 million from the Q3 2023 sale of carbon credits, significantly contributing to its profits.
This record sales also represented a huge portion of Tesla’s net income in Q3 2023 ($1,878 million) – 29%. Most notably, its quarter three carbon credit revenue increased 94% year-over-year, marking the value of Tesla’s EV production.
Despite Elon Musk’s “paranoia” over the global economy’s instability due to ongoing wars, its soaring carbon credit income steadily contributes to its overall profits.
A 29% revenue-to-net income ratio is hard to ignore and speaks highly of the value of the credits for Tesla.
It’s not clear who exactly bought the credits and for how much, but most likely they’re sold to other car companies that miss out on emissions standards of the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Will Tesla Have to Return Is Unwarranted Gains?
Ha! You know the answer.
However, the carbon credits it does receive are set to drop roughly 85 percent.
Now, about those Tesla profits. …. Anyone care to crunch some numbers assuming Biden is forced to hand out credits based on reality, not fiction?
Apple Inc. has to stop selling its Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches with a blood oxygen feature in the US, suffering another legal setback in its patent dispute with Masimo Corp.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit declined Wednesday to grant Apple a longer pause on an import ban of the devices imposed by the US International Trade Commission. The ruling means the company has to stop selling the watches with the oxygen measurement feature while an appeal of the ban plays out — a period that Apple believes could last a year or more.
The decision means Apple will probably have to turn to its backup plan: selling watches without the blood oxygen tool that was found to violate Masimo patents. Apple has developed a software workaround to the ban that eliminates the function from its devices. Last week, the US Customs and Border Protection agency approved redesigned versions of the watches that didn’t have the oxygen reader.
Masimo shares jumped as much as 2.8% following the decision, touching the highest intraday level in more than five months.
The court battle has threatened one of Apple’s biggest moneymakers in its home market, an unprecedented situation for the tech giant. The watches are a central piece of the company’s wearables, home and accessories division, a business that generated more than 10% of revenue last year, or nearly $40 billion.
The ITC ruled in October that Apple’s latest watches violate patents related to blood oxygen measurement. That led Apple to pause sales of the smartwatches just ahead of Christmas, though an interim stay allowed the company to bring the products back late last month.
A Chinese researcher isolated and mapped out COVID-19 — and uploaded it to a US-run database — at least two weeks before Beijing officially identified the virus which has claimed more than 3 million lives worldwide, according to bombshell new documents.
The documents, obtained from the US Department of Health and Human Services by House Republicans and first reported by the Wall Street Journal, show virologist Dr. Lili Ren uploaded nearly the entire sequence of COVID-19’s structure to a US government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019.
The extra two weeks could have proven pivotal to the global response to the pandemic and the development of COVID-19 vaccines as scientists were racing to understand the virus in late 2019 and early 2020.
Ren, of the Institute of Pathogen Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, attempted to publish information on the virus to GenBank, operated by the US National Institutes of Health.
Her work, however, was never published on the site, but rather deleted after she failed to respond to technical issues with her submission — issues that did not pertain to the science backing her work, the documents state.
Scientists at the Institute of Pathogen Biology in the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences study the coronavirus in February 2020.REUTERS
Ren is also notably a sub-grantee of the controversial nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.
The New York-based organization was on the same National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has now been barred from receiving US funding for the next 10 years over evidence the pandemic originated at the Chinese lab.
Ren did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on her submission to GenBank.
The documents revealing the early COVID-19 sequencing were released after the House Energy and Commerce Committee threatened to subpoena the Department of Health and Human Services.
The House committee noted that Ren’s case is the earliest known instance of a Chinese researcher’s early work on COVID sequencing being deleted after having been submitted to GenBank, suggesting interference from Beijing.
Committee Chairs Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said the incident highlights the need to probe further into what Chinese and US health officials knew in the early days of the pandemic.
The complete sequence of the virus that China presented in January was identical to Dr. Lili Ren’s deleted work in December.Getty Images/iStockphoto
“This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
“The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers’ dollars are spent, how our government’s public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists,” they added.
“The documents released today are consistent with testimony uncovered by the Select Subcommittee and the published work of Dr. Jeremy Farrar,” a spokesperson for the House panel investigating the coronavirus pandemic told The Post.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told The Post that the information the House committee obtained had been in the public domain since February 2020, when the Chinese paper Caixin published an article about it, which was taken down shortly afterward.
Medical workers struggled to treat early patients at the center of the outbreak in Wuhan, China.REUTERS
Ebright previously posted on X about the details on April 2, 2020, saying the virus genome sequencing began on Dec. 24 and an analysis confirmed it was a “new coronavirus related to, but different from, SARS-CoV on December 27.”
“It is of course misfeasance — actionable misfeasance — that the NIH has withheld this information from Congress for months,” Ebright told The Post.
“Former NIH Director Collins and former Acting NIH Director Tabak need to be held accountable for their misfeasance, with, at minimum, forfeiture of federal positions and federal pensions,” he added.
The Chinese Embassy did not comment on the incident but defended China’s response to the pandemic and the information it presented to the world.
"He Was Kind Of Right" About NATO, Immigration, Economy, China
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said "all this negative talk about MAGA" is going to "hurt President Biden's re-election campaign" during an appearance Wednesday on CNBC from Davos.
"They're basically scapegoating" Trump supporters, Dimon said. "Just take a step back, and be honest. He was kind of right about NATO, he was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked, he was right about China."
"The Democrats have done a pretty good job with the 'deplorables' hugging onto their bibles and beer and guns. I mean, really? Can we just stop that stuff and grow up and treat other people with respect?"
"He wasn't wrong about these critical issues. That's why they're voting for him. People should be more respectful of our fellow citizens."
JAMIE DIMON: I wish the Democrats would think a little more carefully when they talk about MAGA, you know? And if you travel this country, you know -- and the country is unbelievable. We took a bus trip this year, Leslie Picker was on -- Spokane and Boise and Bozeman.
People are growing. They're hungry to grow. They're innovating. It's everywhere. It's not just Silicon Valley. So, we got this great hand.
But when people say MAGA, they're actually looking at people voting for Trump and they think they're voting -- and they're basically scapegoating them, that you are like him, and -- but I don't think they're voting for Trump because of his family values.
If you look at -- just take a step back, be honest. He's kind of right about NATO. Kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well.
Tax reform worked. He was right about some with China. I don't like what he did -- I don't like how he said things about Mexico, I don't like -- but he wasn't wrong about some of these critical issues. And that's why they're voting for him.
And I think people should be a little more respectful of our fellow citizens and when you guys have people up here, you should always ask the why. Not like it is a binary thing, you support Trump, you're not supporting Trump. Why you're supporting Trump?
JOE KERNEN: If you hate 75 million of your fellow Americans, it's --
DIMON: I agree. And the Democrats have done a good job with the deplorables, hugging their bibles and their beer and their guns.
I mean, really? Can we stop that stuff and actually grow up and treat other people respectfully and listen to them a little bit?
And I do think the economy will affect -- I think this negative talk about MAGA is going to hurt Biden's election campaign.
More from this interview where Dimon discusses his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, most pressing geopolitical issues, doing business in China, the state of the economy, the 2024 race, crypto, and commercial real estate.
The European Central Bank has asked some lenders to detail their exposure to Spain's Grifols and its related entities, after the drugmaker was last week accused of manipulating its financial accounts by a short-seller, sources said.
Grifols denies the accusations by Gotham City Research that it has manipulated its debt and earnings through transactions with a related entity, to the effect that its leverage ratio is nearly double what Grifols has reported.
The ECB has in recent days contacted a number of banks to get them to outline their current exposure to Grifols and a network of connected companies, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The Barcelona-based pharmaceutical company has net financial debts of 9.5 billion euros ($10.3 billion), according to company data published in September, with 1.8 billion euros of that due next year.
The lenders contacted include Spanish and other euro zone banks, one of the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Supervisors want to have a better feel for exposure, the source said.
The ECB, which supervises larger banks in the euro zone through the Single Supervisory Mechanism, declined to comment.
Grifols has not disclosed which banks it and related entities owe money, and it declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
Lenders to Grifols include Santander, BNP Paribas, Bank of America, BBVA and Caixabank, data compiled by LSEG shows.
All of the banks declined to comment.
Grifols, which makes medicines from human blood plasma, says it will partly depend on the sale of a stake in Shanghai RAAS Blood Products to repay the debts due next year, but that the deal to sell to China's Haier Group is on track.
REPUTATIONAL DAMAGE
Analysts have said concerns about the reliance on that deal and the reputational damage from the allegations have kept Grifols' shares under pressure following last week's rout.
Since Jan. 9, the stock has lost nearly 40%. Gotham's report has wiped more than 3.3 billion euros from Grifols' market value.
Central to Gotham's allegations is that while Grifols has included satellite companies' earnings in its accounts, their debts are not, and that if they were they would add to its debt burden.
Grifols says all its accounts have been audited and signed off by regulators.
The ECB is keen to understand banks' exposure to Grifols and companies partially controlled by the founding Grifols family including Scranton Enterprises, one of the sources said.
Supervisors are concerned that the tumble in Grifols' shares could require family-connected companies which have borrowed loans collateralised with Grifols shares to post more margin, the source said.
Grifols' CEO Thomas Glanzmann last week said that the family holds less than 20% of Scranton and that interactions between Grifols and Scranton have been made "at arm's length".
In its consolidated 2021 annual report, Scranton said it had outstanding loans to lenders including Caixabank, BBVA, Bank of America and BNP Paribas.
Spanish bank Santander in 2022 lent Quadriga Real Estate 250 million euros collateralised with 5.86% of the shares in Grifols, data from the Spanish official business register show. Scranton says it consolidates Quadriga's assets in its accounts as it controls 100% of the real estate vehicle.
Scranton did not respond to a request for comment. Santander declined to comment.
