Cell, Gene Therapy Show Early Promise Against Alzheimer’s—But Challenges Remain

 

Longeveron and Lexeo Therapeutics are working on CGT therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s not clear whether they have a better chance of success than traditional approaches.

Alzheimer’s is a difficult neurological disease to manage and treat. Despite its prevalence—nearly 7 million people in the United States are affected—and several approaches ranging from small molecules to behavioral therapies to immunotherapies, a vast majority of clinical trials have failed in this disease state.

With Alzheimer’s disease trial failure rates ranging from 98% to 99.6% depending on context, a few companies are aiming to upend traditional approaches with investigational cell and gene therapies. Of these, Longeveron and Lexeo Therapeutics have the most advanced pipelines.

Longeveron is developing Lomecel-B for Alzheimer’s, as well as for aging-related frailty and hypoplastic left heart syndrome. In Alzheimer’s, Lomecel-B completed Phase IIa trials in Q4 2023 and received Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy designation from the FDA in July 2024.

Consisting of allogeneic medicinal signaling cells extracted from the fresh bone marrow tissue of younger adult donors and cultured, Lomecel-B is pro-vascular, pro-regenerative and anti-inflammatory. Longeveron’s approach is novel because the MSCs can cross the blood-brain barrier to provide therapeutic effect within the brain and reduce inflammation. By contrast, the blood-brain barrier can present an additional challenge to small molecule drug development, as small molecules do not easily cross it unless they meet specific criteria.

In the Phase IIa CLEAR MIND trial, patients were split into four cohorts with three cohorts receiving different dosing regimens and one cohort receiving only placebo. All cohorts were given a total of four infusions spaced four weeks apart.

The trial’s primary and secondary endpoints were reached, Longeveron stated in an October 2023 press release. Despite the occurrence of one serious adverse event in one of the experimental treatment arms and none in the placebo group, Lomecel-B was determined to be safe. In terms of efficacy, the therapy slowed down progression and prevented disease worsening in multiple assessments such as the Composite Alzheimer’s Disease Score, the company said. Full Phase IIa results were presented at the 2024 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in July.

Meanwhile, Lexeo Therapeutics is taking a different tack, working on three different investigational gene therapies for Alzheimer’s. All of them use AAV-based vectors to target products of the APOE gene, which has three alleles associated with varying levels of risk for Alzheimer’s. While LX1001 works by expressing the protective APOE2 protein in the central nervous system of patients who are homozygous for the higher-risk APOE4 allele, LX1021 expresses the protective Christchurch form of the APOE2 protein in the CNS of APOE4-homozygous patients and LX1020 both expresses the APOE2 protein in the CNS of APOE4-homozygous patients and suppresses APOE4 protein with miRNA.

While LX1001 is currently in Phase I/II trials with results expected in November 2024, LX1021 is in preclinical studies and LX1020 is in the discovery phase.

Since Lexeo is only targeting APOE4-associated Alzheimer’s disease, its products are aimed at a patient subpopulation that comprises 40% to 50% of the total Alzheimer’s population. By contrast, Longeveron’s approach with its flagship product is broader and does not necessarily take genetic mutations into account.

The CGT-for-Alzheimer’s Space

In addition to Longeveron and Lexeo, some earlier-stage companies are cropping up in the CGT-for-Alzheimer’s space. Regeneration Biomedical, for example, presented results on July 28 for the first two patients in a Phase I trial of its stem cell therapy. The company claims its therapy induces notable improvements in the cognitive scores of patients with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease. This will be a significant development if borne out by large-scale trials, as most therapies that have shown efficacy have done so only for patients with mild cognitive impairment.

If proven to be efficacious in trials, CGT for Alzheimer’s disease could provide a new treatment option in a disease state where even currently approved Alzheimer’s treatments may have significant shortcomings. For instance, even though Biogen’s anti-amyloid drug Aduhelm (aducanumab) was greenlit in 2021, its approval was controversial and the manufacturer discontinued development and commercialization in January 2024 to focus on Leqembi (lecanemab), which, like Aduhelm, is associated with adverse events such as amyloid-related imaging abnormalities and infusion reactions. By contrast, Lomecel-B showed no incidence of hypersensitivity, infusion-related reactions or amyloid-related imaging abnormalities in its safety profile. If CGT can continue to avoid or even lessen the occurrence and/or severity of adverse events, it would gain a notable advantage in the field.

Nonetheless, given the relatively high historical failure rate of Alzheimer’s trials, one complication for this space is scalability toward larger patient cohorts in Phase III trials stemming in part from stringent inclusion criteria. In addition, Alzheimer’s disease clinical trial complications such as high screening failure rates compared to other disease states continue to be a challenge.

With the rise of investigational CGTs coming to the Alzheimer’s space, do keep an eye on progress on these fronts within the next two to three years.

https://www.biospace.com/drug-development/opinion-cell-and-gene-therapy-shows-early-promise-against-alzheimers-but-challenges-remain

Taliban Gets $239 Million In US Aid After State Dept. Fails To Vet Recipients

 By Judicial Watch

Less than a year after Judicial Watch reported that the Taliban has established fake nonprofits to steal millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, a new investigation reveals that the terrorist group has also received hundreds of millions in development assistance from Uncle Sam because the State Department fails to properly vet award recipients. At least $239 million have likely filled the coffers of the extremists running the Islamic republic since the 2021 U.S. military withdrawal, according to a report published this month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The money was disbursed by State Department divisions known as Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) to implement development projects intended to help achieve American foreign policy and national security goals in Afghanistan.

Investigators found that the State Department failed to comply with its own counterterrorism partner vetting requirements in Afghanistan before awarding at least 29 grants to various local entities. The agency has a system to identify whether prospective awardees have a record of ethical business practices and is supposed to conduct a risk assessment to determine if programming funds may benefit terrorists or terrorist-affiliates before distributing American taxpayer dollars. In the more than two dozen cases examined, the agency did not bother and failed to keep proper records.

“Because DRL and INL could not demonstrate their compliance with State’s partner vetting requirements, there is an increased risk that terrorist and terrorist affiliated individuals and entities may have illegally benefited from State spending in Afghanistan,” the SIGAR report says.

“As State continues to spend U.S. taxpayer funds on programs intended to benefit the Afghan people, it is critical that State knows who is actually benefiting from this assistance in order to prevent the aid from being diverted to the Taliban or other sanctioned parties, and to enable policymakers and other oversight authorities to better scrutinize the risks posed by State’s spending.”

The watchdog found issues with 29 awards distributed by DRL and INL. For instance, DRL failed to properly screen the recipients of seven awards totaling about $12 million, investigators found. INL did not provide any supporting documentation for 19 of its 22 awards totaling about $295 million so there is no way to determine if they complied with the vetting requirements. The State Department acknowledged that not all its bureaus have complied with document retention requirements, which makes it conveniently impossible to fully assess the magnitude of its transgressions. The explanation offered for INL not retaining records is “employee turnover and the dissolution of the Afghanistan-Pakistan office,” according to the report. SIGAR points out that, given the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, it is critical that U.S. government activities adhere to the laws, regulations, and policies intended to prevent certain transactions with terrorists.

Besides establishing fraudulent non-governmental organizations (NGO) to loot big chunks of the $3 billion in humanitarian aid that the U.S. has given Afghanistan since the Biden administration’s abrupt military withdraw, the Taliban has raked in millions more by charging taxes, permit fees and import duties. That money has flowed through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a famously corrupt State Department arm that got $63.1 billion for foreign assistance and diplomatic engagement this year, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government’s international broadcasting services that aims to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.

The United Nations has also received $1.6 billion in U.S. funding for Afghanistan and a large percentage of that money most likely went to the Taliban as well, according to a federal audit, because the U.S. government does not require the leftist world body to report on taxes, fees or duties incurred on American funds for activities in Afghanistan.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/taliban-gets-239-million-us-aid-after-state-dept-fails-vet-recipients

RSV Vaccine Makers Hit Hard by New CDC Guidelines

GSK, Moderna and Pfizer are all looking at potential respiratory syncytial virus vaccine sales slumps thanks to recently updated CDC guidelines regarding the use of RSV shots in seniors.

This was a decidedly bad week for vaccine makers, not just for those in the COVID-19 business but for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other vaccines as well. GSK, Moderna and Pfizer all reported disappointing second-quarter earnings this week. Moderna was by far the hardest hit, cutting its full-year 2024 revenue guidance from $4 billion to a range of $3 billion to $3.5 billion, citing lower Q2 sales in Europe for both its COVID-19 and RSV vaccines. Investors were not happy, and Moderna’s stock price dropped 20%.

The dynamic at work for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is plain to see as the market continues to transition to an endemic environment with lower than expected vaccination rates. However, the RSV vaccine market is an entirely different animal. Moderna’s mResvia, approved by the FDA in late May, is the company’s second-ever product and the third RSV vaccine to enter the market behind shots developed by GSK and Pfizer.

Jefferies analysts in a Thursday note to investors said Moderna’s management “walked back confidence” for RSV and now anticipate a “slower ramp due to competition and fewer contracts,” adding that the company expects “modest” revenues this year.

Moderna desperately needs another revenue source as COVID-19 demand continues to wane. At the same time, Pfizer’s RSV vaccine Abrysvo is moving in the wrong direction as it generated sales of $56 million in Q2, compared to $145 million in the previous quarter. GSK is the clear RSV market leader with its Arexvy shot but the company’s shingles vaccine Shingrix disappointed in Q2, posting a surprise year-over-year 5.5% decline.

Still among the big news this week: GSK was forced to lower its 2024 outlook for its vaccines business after revenue from Arexvy missed expectations, due in part to updated CDC guidelines regarding the use of RSV shots in seniors. The company now expects its vaccines revenue to grow by a low- to mid-single-digit percentage this year, down from its previous guidance of a high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage.

The problem for all three companies when it comes to RSV is that in late June, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) reviewed data on the RSV vaccines from GSK, Moderna and Pfizer, passing a unanimous motion recommending a single dose of RSV vaccine for adults aged 75 and older as well as for those who are 60 to 74 years old with an increased risk of severe RSV.

Last week, data and analytics company Airfinity slashed its sales projections by 64% for RSV vaccines for older adults in the U.S., from $4.7 billion annually to $1.7 billion by 2030. The firm blamed the drastic reduction on the ACIP’s recommendation that the vaccines be offered only as a single lifetime dose for older adults.

According to Airfinity, prior to the new ACIP recommendations, everyone aged 60 and older was offered the RSV vaccine in the U.S. However, with the guidelines narrowed to all those over 75 years of age and individuals deemed to be at high risk over 60, the firm contends the estimated eligible population has been reduced by 44%.

“The ACIP recommendations will likely stunt revenue growth in the U.S. market unless new data can support the benefit of booster shots,” Airfinity’s RSV lead Isabella Huettner said in a statement. While the global RSV rollout will offer additional revenue opportunities for GSK, Moderna and Pfizer, she noted that “the trend appears to be for a single lifetime vaccine recommendation for those over 75 year olds, as was recently confirmed by the UK.”

GSK, Moderna and Pfizer are all looking at a potential RSV vaccine sales slump, thanks to the CDC. Making matters worse, the ACIP delayed its anticipated recommendation for high risk 50- to 59-year-olds. For GSK, Airfinity estimates that the delay in the ACIP recommendation amounts to approximately $300 million in lost revenue this year.

Speaking with media on Wednesday, GSK CEO Emma Walmsley called the decision “surprising” and said the company would share additional data with U.S. agencies by the end of this year. For now, market share estimates remain up in the air.

https://www.biospace.com/business/rsv-vaccine-makers-hit-hard-by-new-cdc-guidelines

Diagnosing autism and ADHD from a smartphone

 BlinkLab Limited (ASX:BB1) Non-Executive Chairman Brian Leedman discusses transforming smartphones into diagnostic tools.

Manny Anton: Hello. I'm Manny Anton for the Finance News Network, and today I'm talking with BlinkLab (ASX:BB1). BlinkLab, trading under the ASX code "BB1", has a market capitalisation of approximately $25m. BlinkLab is a pioneering neuroscience company that turns ordinary mobile phones into devices for conducting neurobehavioral evaluations. The company's technology enables remote and rapid testing to aid research on neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, ADHD and various forms of dementia.

Joining us today is BlinkLab Chairman Brian Leedman. Brian, welcome back to the network.

Brian Leedman: Manny, thank you for having me.

Manny Anton: Excellent. Let's start with a little background. Now, the last time we spoke, the last time you were on the network, you were involved with ResApp Health. How did that go?

Brian Leedman: Well, that was just a terrific outcome. I mean, you dream of these sorts of outcomes when Big Pharma comes along and says, "We'll buy you." And we never even got to the revenue stage of the company and we were simply acquired. Of course, it's up to shareholders to decide whether the company should be acquired or not. But certainly as a director of the company and a founder, I was very proud to take that offer to the shareholders, and it was such a terrific return for the investors, including myself. It was a fantastic event.

Manny Anton: And you've moved on something new now. So, you're focused on BlinkLab. Can you tell us a little bit about BlinkLab, about the company, its business. Now, you recently listed, of course?

Brian Leedman: Yeah. Well, BlinkLab, like ResApp, is a digital healthcare company. So, we're always intrigued about what a smartphone can do in terms of a diagnostic tool. And ResApp used signatures in the sound of a cough to diagnose respiratory disease on a smartphone, and BlinkLab uses your facial reflexes that are automated. It's an automatic response to diagnose early-stage autism or ADHD or potentially a whole range of other neurological disorders. But, in our focus market, in children that are very young, certainly younger than what they're currently diagnosed, which is typically around five or six. But I would argue that these children, they're already displaying behaviours that are problematic, which the parents are concerned about. They go through a process, they get diagnosed, it costs thousands and thousands of dollars, the NDIS is spending so much money on it. But imagine if you could diagnose these kids at one and a half to two years old with an automated reflex response that's stimulated by the phone, and how you respond to that test captured by the phone on the forward facing camera can accurately diagnose whether they have autism or ADHD at an age for when they're diagnosed, can actually start treatment that will be disruptive to their lives and also for their caregivers. And we all know that the earlier you can diagnose anybody with anything, the better the clinical outcome for that patient. That's BlinkLab.

Manny Anton: How big is the market for this technology?

Brian Leedman: Well, one of the slides that I use in the presentation, and we're here for a conference at the moment, but the market size for autism in diagnosis and treatment in the US alone is about $700 billion.

Manny Anton: Wow.

Brian Leedman: So, it's a huge cost. And we also know, in NDIS, they're spending something in the order of $25 or $26 billion in NDIS. But the biggest expenditure within NDIS is in children with autism. So, our technology can allow children to be diagnosed much earlier through this biomarker, and that's the key thing here. This is an actual biomarker, just like a blood test, that is a test to show whether you've got autism. And it would be taken up by the medical fraternity. They would use it on a per-diagnosis basis, obviously following regulatory approval. And then we will find our place in that multi-billion-dollar market.

Manny Anton: And how difficult would it be to get that regulatory approval?

Brian Leedman: Well, I mean, regulatory approvals are not easy, and we've already done substantial clinical testing through our partnership with Princeton University, where the technology was developed, exclusively licensed to BlinkLab. They've already done over 8,000 patients to diagnose in terms of getting that algorithm as good as we can make it.

Now we're doing a — or we will be doing, I should say — an FDA registration study in the United States. It'll take about 12 months. We're enrolling over 500 patients. And the outcome of that study will determine whether we get FDA approval. If we get FDA approval, then we'll be able to market the product in the United States, and we can also get a reimbursement code because it'll be the parents who are effectively paying for it.

I don't know the pricing of it yet, but we'll call it a couple of hundred dollars a test, bring that cost down as a result of reimbursement, and then you're into this massive market.

And by the way, it may not just be that commercialising through revenues. That might be one model. Another model is like what happened to ResApp Health. You know, big pharma and Pfizer, digital healthcare division, their fastest-growing division within that huge company, they saw the opportunity to acquire the technology and commercialise it themselves. Could that potentially happen to BlinkLab? Absolutely. Maybe even Apple Health. They're the fastest-growing division within Apple, and this is a very cool application for diagnosing an illness using a smartphone. Lots of data in that as well. So, these are all potential commercial outcomes for our investors.

Manny Anton: Okay. You're talking very much about autism or you have up till now, so it seems that autism is clearly front and centre. The other conditions…

Brian Leedman: Well, ADHD is the other key face for us. And, of course, we know that the ADHD market is multiple sizes bigger than the autism market in terms of prevalence. So, again, the early diagnosis of autism is the same for ADHD. That blink response that we're generating using the smartphone is the same for every person, regardless of age. It's just that I believe personally that… I've got friends and friends of friends who've been diagnosed with ADHD in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Now, that might explain a lot of things in their lives. You know, why their marriage broke up or why they behave the way they do. It's sort of a gratifying thing to know what's wrong with you. But I don't think you can actually do much for them. You're not going to change their personalities or behaviours given that they're already adults, right? And the same thing can be said for little kids, that by the time they're five or six, their behaviours are largely entrenched in their little personalities. But imagine if we get them at one and a half to two, be able to diagnose them and then treat them, and then you can totally transform their lives, for their caregivers and for themselves. And the cost for the healthcare system as well. I'm not saying we're going to save the healthcare system money, but we're certainly going to make the expenditure of that money far more effective. And I think that's what we want as a society. We want to be able to treat these people and we want to be able to give them a better outlook on life through that treatment. And that can only be done through early diagnosis and early intervention.

Manny Anton: And you've talked about the FDA. Obviously the US is the elephant.

Brian Leedman: Sure.

Manny Anton: What about ex the US? Have you had much luck out there or…?

Brian Leedman: Well, remember, as you pointed out at the start, we only listed in April.

Manny Anton: Right.

Brian Leedman: So, although we've made terrific announcements, associated with major partnerships like with Columbia University and Erasmus University in Europe, and there's other… There's been great announcements of partnerships. But the key for us is going to be doing those regulatory studies. The FDA one you've just mentioned, that's forthcoming, but there will also be an Australian TGA study. And that's a key one for me, because I feel like albeit that the Australian market is not a huge market, it is a market where our investors are. And I know from my experience with ResApp Health, when we went through clinical trials in Australia, we captured the investor imagination by having those Australian trials. We generate a lot of media as well in terms of the six o'clock news. And this is a sort of story that really bides itself well for that sort of market. But I think you do need an Australian trial to achieve those aims. And, you know, we're an Australian company. We're not an American company, we're not a Dutch company. We're an Australian company. And I want to do clinical trials in Australia for that market as well.

Manny Anton: Going forward, then, what are we looking for, say for the remainder of '24 and into '25 — what are the key bits of news that we should be expecting?

Brian Leedman: Yeah, so as I mentioned, the announcements to date have been with prestigious partnerships with major universities, major hospitals. That's terrific. But what the market is really waiting for is the regulatory study. That's the one that's going to get you before the FDA, that's going to help you design your clinical trial, and they're going to advise us. You need so many hundreds of patients, you need to have a regional distribution so that you manage to get different types of creeds and cultures. And whether that makes a difference in people's autism or ADHD, whether they be Hispanic or African American or Cauca… Whatever. All those bases have to be covered. That clinical trial has to start. And it is scheduled to begin in this second half. And that will be the catalyst for, I think, the real growth in the company, because if you're not in a clinical trial, you're not in the game. And so these clinical trials are beginning very soon, certainly in this half of the year. I can't be more specific and I can't name names, but I do know that they're very close to being completed in terms of getting those trials underway. And then we become a really interesting company, and I'm really excited about being able to get out and tell the story of the company as we've progressed into regulatory studies.

Manny Anton: And is there any timing, do you think, around that? Have you got a sense for what…

Brian Leedman: I can't be pressed…

Manny Anton: No, I know you can't be…

Brian Leedman: ..into anything other than in this half of the year.

Manny Anton: Right.

Brian Leedman: And remember, we listed in April.

Manny Anton: Yep.

Brian Leedman: I know that shareholders, they get excited and it's like, "Are we there yet?" But we have a plan. My big saying in all the companies that I've been involved in is do what you say you're going to do in the timeframe you say you're going to do it in. And if you stick to that rule, you will be rewarded. And the companies that fail to achieve that are the ones that get left behind. And so I'm really focused on that. We have a great plan. I've got a great team of people around me. And I think that the opportunities are truly exciting. And I hope to replicate the success of my previous companies.

Manny Anton: Fantastic. Brian, thank you for your time today, and we hope to get you back maybe in six months' time, or when we've got a bit more news and you can give us an update then.

Brian Leedman: I'd love to share it with you.

Manny Anton: Fantastic. Until then.

Brian Leedman: Thank you.

https://www.sharecafe.com.au/2024/08/05/diagnosing-autism-and-adhd-from-a-smartphone/

British people’s pushback against unlimited immigration has begun

 Sparked by British people daring to stand up to the government’s unlimited Third World (and deeply pro-Islamic) immigration policies, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots are raging across the UK. This post will provide context for what’s happening, along with videos of the riots.

England has had a few mass immigration experiences: In the first half of the first millennium, the Romans slaughtered and subjugated the Celtic population or sent them to the Isle’s geographic fringes. The remaining Romano-British population was replaced in the second half of that millennium by waves of Nordic invaders. In 1066, the Normans overran the Anglo-Saxons, who became subordinate in their own land. Until recently, that was the last conquest of that small collection of islands in the Atlantic.

In the 16th and 18th centuries, small numbers of French refugees arrived, escaping, first, religious violence and, second, the French Revolution. During WWII, the British repelled an attempted Nazi conquest.

After WWII and the collapse of her empire, Britain began to welcome more people from the former empire. But mostly, for the more than 900 years between 1066 and Tony Blair, the UK was predominantly the ancient mix of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and the descendants of refugees from decades or centuries earlier.

Tony Blair’s government inaugurated thirty years of mass immigration, whether legal, illegal, or flowing from Angela Merkel’s welcome mat to the Muslim world in 2015. Floods of Central Europeans often changed England’s dominant Christian culture in some areas from Protestant to Catholic, and hordes of Muslims changed the most active faith from Christian to Islam.

From 2001 to 2011, 70% of Britain’s population growth was due not to Brits having babies but to immigration. In 2021, almost 15% of the UK’s population was immigrants. Then, in the single year from 2022 to 2023, England and Wales added over 600,000 people. Many of these immigrants have come from the EU, with sites such as Wikipedia implying that they’re Europeans who’ve brought Western culture with them. But, going back to Merkel’s floodgates, we know many of these EU immigrants are Muslims who had first made their way to the continent before heading for Britain.

And about those Muslims:

India and Pakistan accounted for 15% of the migrants. We can guess that all the Pakistani migrants are Muslim, although we don’t know how many of the Indian ones have been.

What we do know is that, as of 2021, Islam was the second-largest religion in the UK, at 6.5% of the total population (and note that this was before three more years of mass immigration, which included those 600,000 who came in 2022/2023). Also in 2021, Muslims were 15% of London’s population, close to 10% of the Midlands’ population, and 8% of Yorkshire’s population. Those percentages have surely grown, too. Muslims, unlike British Christians, are religiously active. They attend their mosques and block streets with their prayers.

In the most recent elections, Muslims won political offices across the UK, especially in Yorkshire. One of the first things the new Labour government did was to re-fund UNRWA, which is Hamas, and to prepare an arms embargo against Israel.

According to Peter Hammond, who studied what happened as Muslim populations growing within a country, at 2-5% they proselytize among gangs and prison populations; at around 5%, they push to change a country’s culture; and as they near 10% they rely on open lawlessness. Before today, we saw that lawlessness most recently during mass riots in and near Leeds, a formerly stalwart old British town. The non-Muslim British responded passively.

However, on July 29, a man attacked a children’s party at Southport, Merseyside, killing three little girls and injuring ten other people, mostly children. This is a region that is second only to London when it comes to Muslim population density, so people, based on past mass attacks in the UK and elsewhere, assumed the attacker was Muslim. They later learned that that police arrested Axel Rudakubana, the child of Christian Rwandan immigrants. Axel’s religious affiliation is unknown.

For many British people, this attack on children was the final straw, and that’s true even though Axel is apparently not Muslim and is British-born. They haven’t forgotten the Islamically-inspired violence that’s been practically normative in Great Britain and Ireland since 9/11. The chart below is culled from The Religion of Peace’s comprehensive list of Muslim-inspired violence and terrorism in Europe:

(See here for more data about Islamic crime in Great Britain.)

Nor have Brits failed to note that, in their urban area, immigrant populations are responsible for a great deal of the crime that occurs in what was once a remarkably crime-free Europe. They’ve also noticed, after the sex exploitation scandal in Rotherham, that Muslim and immigrant crime in Britain often goes unreported for reasons of political correctness.)

All of the above is a necessary set-up to understand what’s happening in Great Britain and Ireland, which is that ordinary people are taking to the streets to go after all foreigners, and Muslims are mobilizing to engage in full-out warfare with the English. Here’s a summary, which I’ll follow with tweets and videos to close out this post.

The riots are spreading throughout the UK, especially in the north. Antifa is siding with the Muslims and other immigrants. Newly installed Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is vowing to use all those wonderful powers the government acquired during COVID to put the UK into lockdown to stop the riots.

In the most interesting development, in Ireland, the Catholics and the Protestants, whose fierce enmity goes back hundreds of years, are uniting against immigrants, especially Muslims. Truly, as the old saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

With that, here’s visual evidence of the civil war that’s raging in the UK as those with roots in the land, those who love England as she is, and those, like the Sikhs, with a reasonable fear of Islam’s growth push back against their government’s efforts to replace them.

In this first video, note the Israeli flags amongst those pushing to save a traditional England:

It’s the “Allahu akbar” chant that’s the tip-off that they’re not engaged in peaceful pushback against yob violence. They view their role in the UK as a jihad:

Social breakdown, of course, is following the violence:

MP Starmer vows huge new police powers:

It didn’t have to come to this. This is what the British government created. It’s no surprise that, in Rotherham, a mob is doing something incredible foul, which is to try to burn down a hotel in which people are located because the government turned it into a refugee center for Muslims:

This is what happens when a government imports people who are antithetical to the citizens and, as in the case of Rotherham and the grooming and rape scandal, does nothing to stop the immigrants’ depredations against the existing population.

With luck, the newly installed Labour government will fall. Without luck, Starmer will use this unrest to consolidate his hold on power; his government will go after the pro-British protesters with the ferocity of Biden going after the J6 protesters, even while ignoring the Muslim protests; and the government will speed up replacing a non-compliant British population.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/the_british_people_s_pushback_against_unlimited_immigration_has_begun.html

Japanese Bonds, Stocks Halted After Plunging Into Bear Market

 In our preview of last week's BOJ we refrained from giving details and merely shared a candid assessment of what we thought the result would be:

And we were right, because by deciding to hike rates into an economic showdown, the BOJ - which as we noted last week "changed the rules" again - has unleashed a financial apocalypse by creating a positive feedback loop that culminates with a deflationary collapse of all assets (as the bank now goalseeks a surge in the yen and thus deflation and economic devastation) which has led to not only to the Nikkei promptly entering a bear market from its all time high hit just 3 weeks ago and wiping out all of its year to day gains, not to mention collapsing 15% since last week's BOJ meeting which we knew would be a disaster...

.. which has also just suffered its biggest two-day drop in history, surpassing Black Monday...

... but also the halt of trading of both its peer, the Topix...

• *CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIGGERED FOR TOPIX INDEX

... as it too enters a bear market...

• *JAPAN'S TOPIX INDEX FALLS 20% FROM JULY PEAK

... and the entire Japanese bond market:

• *CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIGGERED FOR JAPAN GOVT BOND FUTURES

Meanwhile, among today's freefalling stocks are such names as the iconic Nintendo...

• *NASDAQ 100 FUTURES DROP AS MUCH AS 2%

...and perhaps something more troubling, is that Japan's megabanks are in freefall, starting with Mizuho...

• *MIZUHO SHARES FALL AS MUCH AS 12%, MOST SINCE MARCH 2020

and ending with Japan's largest bank, its JPMorgan, if you will, which just plunged the most on record!

• *MUFG SHARES FALL AS MUCH AS 21%, RECORD INTRADAY DECLINE

It's not just Japan: Korea is getting swept in as well...

• *KOSPI INDEX SLUMPS, TAKING LOSSES FROM JULY PEAK TO 10%

... and of course, the US, where Nasdaq futures crashing as much as 2% and the S&P is down 1.1%

• *NASDAQ 100 FUTURES DROP AS MUCH AS 2%

And then there's bitcoin which, well, lets not even go there.

So strap in folks, the day is just getting started...

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/japanic-monday-japanese-bonds-stocks-halted-after-plunging-bear-market-everything-crashes