Metabolic disease biotech BioAge Labs files for a $100 million IPO

 BioAge Labs, a Phase 2 biotech developing small molecule therapies for metabolic diseases, filed on Tuesday with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering.

The company's leading candidate, azelaprag, is an orally available small molecule that has shown encouraging results in preclinical and early clinical trials, particularly in enhancing weight loss when combined with GLP-1R agonists. Beyond weight loss, azelaprag may also improve body composition and muscle function by leveraging a unique technology platform and proprietary human datasets to identify promising targets linked to molecular changes associated with aging. BioAge Labs is currently conducting Phase 2 clinical trials to evaluate azelaprag's potential when combined with existing obesity treatments, aiming to develop an all-oral combination therapy for obesity. Topline data from the first of these trials is expected in the 3Q25. It is also advancing brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitors for neuroinflammation-driven diseases, with plans to submit an IND in the 2H25.

The Richmond, CA-based company was founded in 2015 and plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol BIOA. BioAge Labs filed confidentially on May 31, 2024. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, and Citi are the joint bookrunners on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.

Relevant Profile: BIOA

https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/106460/Metabolic-disease-biotech-BioAge-Labs-files-for-a-$100-million-IPO

The Big Lie Of "Skilled" Migrant Workers Saving Western Economies

 There are a great many tall tales circulating these days in association with illegal immigration.  Possibly one of the most prevalent claims from the political left is that western economies "need illegals" in order to support the dragging economy and fill a hungry labor market. An extension of this idea is that many of these migrants are "skilled workers" that the west desperately needs for vital roles. 

But how much do the US and Europe really need illegal immigrants in order to keep western economies going?  And how many of them actually bring important skills to western labor markets?  Would they be sunk without these people?  Or, would they be much better off?

First and foremost it should be noted that in the US there is ample evidence to show that the Biden Administration has been engaging in statistical manipulation for the last four years, and this includes labor statistics.  While there was indeed a clear shortage of workers in the service sector during covid lockdowns (and the helicopter money supplied by covid stimulus and PPP loans), recent revisions to BLS numbers have cut at least 819,000 jobs from the books that Biden originally took credit for.  In other words, those jobs never existed.

It was these same jobs numbers that were used by the Democrats to argue in favor of open borders; asserting that without illegals this explosion in labor demand would turn into a worker shortage crisis.  While specific job sector stats (job categories) don't usually distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, there is little evidence to indicate they fill an important role in our society.

In America, migrants flood into the low-skill service sector and health services sector.  In many cases this involves entry level nursing home care and similar employment.  The other category in which they usually work is construction.  They offer cheap labor for home building, but this has certainly not translated to lower housing costs. 

In the meantime, tens-of-millions illegal migrants drive up housing demand, in turn driving up prices on new homes and rentals.  Migrants are given access to government subsidies as long as they are under review for asylum or refugee status, in many cases they are offered more access to government aid than natural born citizens.  Both California and Oregon are currently instituting housing loan programs available to immigrants only.  

Census SIPP data from 2022 indicates that around 59% of non-citizen households in the US use one or more welfare programs, compared to 39% of US-born households.  The establishment media and Democrats will often try to dilute welfare stats by citing legal migrant numbers instead of illegal migrant numbers.

Around 47% of illegal migrants to the US never completed high school (as opposed to 8% of US-born citizens).

It is estimated that illegals cost US taxpayers at least $150 billion in public services (officially) each year while paying only $25 billion in taxes.  While some economists cite a potential $324 billion in GDP gain from migrant workers, this almost all comes from wages which illegals send to their families outside the US.  

In the UK, migrant data is rarely tracked by the government, ostensibly because they want to keep the indigenous public in the dark as much as possible.  However it is clear that, just like in the US, migrants (specifically from third-world nations) do not bring skilled labor to the table.  UK migrants overwhelmingly work in the service and health sectors, once again in low-level nursing jobs, elderly facilities, some work in tech and the rest do not work at all.  

The UK estimates that at least 1.7 million migrants are unemployed while on the dole, and they are costing taxpayers upwards of £8.5 Billion ($11 billion) annually.

In Germany, welfare costs skyrocketed in 2024 and reports show 47% of recipients for government handouts are migrants.  The total cost of $49 billion is 14.8 percent higher than in 2023, 18.4 percent higher compared to 2020, and 23 percent higher compared to 2015.   In the EU migrants from Africa and Asia are once again greatly overrepresented in health services. 

The point is, the notion of "skilled migrant workers" saving western economies with their vital labors is a complete fabrication.  Illegal migrants in particular are a net negative and a dangerous strain on the welfare system.  They also drive up housing costs by creating mass demand with not enough supply, and this same demand drives up inflation in almost every other area of the economy.  The roles they do fill can be easily adapted without them by offering minor subsidies or tax benefits for American citizens.   

Like most countries in the world today, the US and European nations should be vetting migrants and only accepting those that bring value to the table along with a willingness to assimilate.  Otherwise, they serve no useful purpose.       

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/big-lie-skilled-migrant-workers-saving-western-economies

More Woody Allen cinema verite as Venezuela's dictator Maduro proclaims Oct. 1 the new Christmas

 By Monica Showalter

Woody Allen, call your office.

In a scene straight out of Woody Allen's Bananas, Nicolás Maduro has decided that Christmas now will be celebrated on Oct. 1 in Venezuela, instead Dec. 25.

According to El País in English, a major news outlet from Spain:

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced Monday that this year’s Christmas holidays will begin in October. Hours after the Attorney General’s Office ordered the arrest of opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia on terrorism-related charges and in the middle of a profound political crisis, the Chavista leader took advantage of his television program to announce a change in the festive calendar. “It is September and it already smells like Christmas. And that is why this year, in homage to you, in gratitude to you, I am going to decree the advancement of Christmas to October 1,” Maduro said.

The Venezuelan president addressed his supporters while recalling the massive blackout last Friday, which affected around 80% of the country. Authorities attributed the failure of the power grid to sabotage by his adversaries, orchestrated from abroad. “The criminal electrical attack stopped the economy. People continued working, laboring, and with the support of the working class, in perfect civic-military-police union, we guaranteed absolute peace and the recovery, in record time, from one of the deadliest blows ever attempted against the electrical generation system,” he said.

Juan Forero at the Wall Street Journal, a longtime Latin America correspondent, had the best observation:

 It could compare to the scene in the Woody Allen movie where the dictator ordered the locals to wear their underwear outside their pants among other idiocies.

It also could be compared to any of the lunacies in the Borat movie, 'The Dictator.'

Because crazy and irrational as it seems, it's obviously a distraction. And it's obviously how dictators work.

Maduro believes he can distract Venezuelans with Christmas, as if they had any money to spend on it anyway, to get their minds off the monstrous electoral fraud he pulled off in July where it's been verified that some 70% to 80% of the voters voted for his opposition, Edmundo Gonzalez.

Borat's movies liked to juxtapose the nutty commands of dictators over trivial things, with the underlying viciousness of the dictatorship itself, killing its opponents at the drop of a hat.

That's what we really see here in this Christmas pen-and-phone lunacy -- a crazy distraction to divert attention from the fact that Maduro has just ordered the arrest of the opponent he stole the election from on invented and ridiculous charges.

According to the Washington Post:

A Venezuelan judge has ordered the arrest of opposition candidate Edmundo González, who the United States and other countries say clearly beat the country’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in the July 28 presidential election.

The country’s attorney general filed an arrest warrant Monday against González, a 75-year-old former diplomat, as part of an investigation into the opposition’s publication of vote tally sheets showing their candidate won more than twice as many votes as Maduro. The opposition published the receipts from more than 23,000 voting machines days after Venezuela’s electoral council claimed a victory by Maduro. Several independent reviews of the data, including by The Washington Post, suggest Maduro likely lost the election by a landslide.

 

 

He's also imprisoning protestors, including at least hundreds of children, into his dungeons without trial.

 

 

He's launched raids on supermarkets and demanded everyone's cell phones, in order to inspect for any selfies of attending protests.

 

 

I've seen subsequent reports confirming this.

And by the way, the supermarket store shelves are bare.

 

 

This, despite (actually because) of government measures to punish "price-gouging," along with rationing.

He's gotten meaner, more vicious, and more repressive than ever now that he's stolen his election in front of everyone's faces.

That's the ugly reality of a clown dictator, mincing forward and saying Christmas will be celebrated in October.

It's not about the date. It's about power. The thug is determined to exercise his, and it spins toward ever more irrational demands.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/woody_allen_s_bananas_comes_to_life_venezuela_s_dictator_maduro_declares_oct_1_the_new_christmas.html

Officials Can't Reject Mail-In Ballots With Incorrect Dates: Pa. Court

 A Pennsylvania court has ruled that election officials cannot reject mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates as long as they were submitted before the filing deadline.

A panel of the Commonwealth State Appeals Court ruled on Aug. 30 that the state's legal requirement for mail-in ballot envelopes to have dates written violates the state constitution.

"Simply put, the refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely received mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote recognized in and guaranteed by the free and equal elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution," wrote Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler for the 4-1 majority.

The ruling applies to both Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, and strikes down a 2019 law - Act 77 - which included a provision requiring voters to date the envelope in which the mail-in ballots are enclosed.

As the Epoch Times notes further, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged that and other provisions, arguing that they are unconstitutional as they sued Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, and the Allegheny County Board of Elections.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Republican National Committee intervened in the case and said the provisions do not violate the state Constitution.

The majority declined to rule against other provisions but said the date requirement is unconstitutional.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a social media statement that the court “got it right: an eligible voter’s minor error of forgetting to date or misdating a ballot envelope cannot be cause for disenfranchisement.”

The appeals court said in the ruling that officials still have the authority to make sure mail-in ballots comply with other requirements, including deadlines for submission.

Pennsylvania’s Department of State said that “multiple court cases have now confirmed that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope, when election officials can already confirm it was sent and received within the legal voting window, provides no purpose to election administration.”

The office has not said how the decision might alter its guidance to counties that run elections. In July, the Department of State told counties that return envelopes should be printed to include the full year, “2024,” leaving voters to add the accurate month and day.

Mike Lee, executive director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said the ruling “preserves the votes of thousands of voters who make this mistake in every election, without undemocratic, punitive enforcement by the counties.”

According to data presented to the court, more than 10,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the 2022 midterm election and 4,000 were rejected in the primary elections earlier this year because the ballots did not comply with the ballot date requirement.

Tom King, who represents the state and national Republican Party groups in the case, said he was disappointed in the decision and “absolutely will appeal.”

Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough said in a dissent that the date requirement was “perhaps the least burdensome of all ballot-casting requirements” and that the groups that challenged the provision had not met the burden of showing that the requirement was so difficult as to deny voters their right to vote.

“It seems to me that the majority was swayed by the raw numbers and avoided applying the true test for evaluating a Free and Equal Elections Clause claim,” she wrote.

“Today the majority says that requiring the date on the voter declaration on a mail-in or absentee ballot envelope is subject to strict judicial scrutiny and cannot be enforced because doing so unconstitutionally denies the voting franchise altogether. I must wonder whether walking into a polling place, signing your name, licking an envelope, or going to the mailbox can now withstand the majority’s newly minted standard.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/officials-cant-reject-mail-ballots-incorrect-dates-pennsylvania-court

FDA Authorizes New COVID-19 Vaccine Without Clinical Data

 by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized a new COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax, giving Americans an alternative to shots from Moderna and Pfizer.

Novavax’s protein-based vaccine will be available soon after regulators granted emergency authorization to the Maryland-based company for the product.

FDA officials said that animal testing data supported the decision.

“Today’s authorization provides an additional COVID-19 vaccine option that meets the FDA’s standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization,” Dr. Peter Marks, who directs the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an Aug. 30 statement.

The FDA cleared vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer that are built on messenger ribonucleic acid technology (mRNA) earlier in the month.

Critics say that the agency should not be making an assertion about safety and effectiveness in the absence of clinical trial data.

“The assertion rings hollow when FDA has not required manufacturers of the mRNA biological [products] to provide scientific evidence to the public that safety and effectiveness has been demonstrated,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times previously via email.

Novavax President and CEO John C. Jacobs said in a statement that the company’s vaccine showed “robust cross-reactivity against JN.1 lineage viruses” in animals.

JN.1 was displaced in the spring by KP.3 and other variants, according to sequencing performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC estimates that KP.3 and the closely related KP.3.1.1 caused about four in 10 cases in the two weeks ending Aug. 3. The agency estimated that KP.3.1.1 became the dominant strain by the end of August.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines target KP.3.

FDA officials initially advised manufacturers to target JN.1 but later recommended they target KP.3.

Because Novavax’s vaccine is built on different technology, it takes longer to manufacture than the mRNA shots. Company officials told FDA advisers over the summer that they were planning to continue manufacturing a JN.1-based vaccine and believed it would perform well against KP.3 and other strains from the JN.1 lineage.

The authorization is for people aged 12 and older. People who have never received a vaccine can get two doses of Novavax’s vaccine about three weeks apart. People who have received a vaccine before can get a single dose.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are available for individuals who are at least 6 months old.

The CDC is recommending vaccination for all people aged 6 months and older.

The United States ended the COVID-19 public health emergency in 2023 but extended the emergency declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act until the end of 2024. The FDA issued the emergency authorization under that authority.

COVID-19 levels have plummeted since early 2022, although data from wastewater and other sources have indicated a recent uptick.

Twenty-eight states are reporting high levels of COVID-19 and two states are reporting very high levels, based on wastewater, according to the CDC. Hospitalizations and deaths attributed to COVID-19 have also been climbing, although the numbers are far lower than the highs recorded in 2021 and 2022.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fda-authorizes-new-covid-19-vaccine-without-clinical-data

Turley: Robert Reich's Call To Arrest Musk Is "Siren's Call Of Every Authoritarian"

 by Jonathan Turley,

We have previously discussed the anti-free speech views of Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who has tried to sell citizens on the perfectly Orwellian view that more freedom means tyranny when it comes to the freedom of expression. He also demanded that former president Donald Trump be banned from ballots as a “traitor” — all in the name of protecting democracy from itself. Last week, Reich wrote a column declaring Elon Musk “out of control” in his refusal to censor citizens and appeared to call for his arrest.

Reich has long been a prominent voice in the anti-free speech movement discussed in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Indeed, he has given a voice to the rage in calling for others to be silenced or arrested.

Elon Musk has long been the primary target of Reich and his allies after dismantling the censorship system at Twitter, now X. Reich called Musk’s purchase of Twitter with a pledge to reduce censorship to be “dangerous nonsense.”

Notably, Reich’s friend, Hillary Clinton, was one of the first to call for a crackdown on Musk after his purchase of Twitter.  Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.

Reich has always shown a chilling fluidity in how free speech is protected and argued that public interest should be able to trump the right of any citizens in espousing views that he believes are dangerous.

In denouncing Musk, Reich encouraged a campaign to counter his efforts to resist censorship. He wrote that Musk “may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him.”

Like Hillary Clinton, Reich is calling on foreign governments and censors to silence American citizens including Musk: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”

He even appears willing to undermine national security programs to stop unfettered free speech. He called for the U.S. government to cut off contracts with his companies despite their critical role in various national security efforts, including the possible rescue of the stranded two astronauts currently in space.

None of that matters to Reich who appears to view free speech as a greater threat to our nation: “Why is the US government allowing Musk’s satellites and rocket launchers to become crucial to the nation’s security when he’s shown utter disregard for the public interest? Why give Musk more economic power when he repeatedly abuses it and demonstrates contempt for the public good?”

Reich’s call to regulate speech in the public interest is the Siren’s Call of every authoritarian regime in history. He will presumably tell us what speech is no longer tolerable for public policy reasons.

Our “Indispensable Right” will, according to Reich, be safely in the hands of the European censors who can protect us from errant and dangerous thoughts.

As he explained earlier, “the kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.” In this way, speech regulations can keep us “moving towards how we recommend content and … how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

The “healthy public conversation” with Robert Reich increasingly appears to be his talking and the rest of us listening.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/robert-reich-calls-arrest-elon-musk-resisting-censorship

Starlink backtracks, complies with order blocking X in Brazil, says regulator

 Elon Musk's satellite broadband firm, Starlink, on Tuesday said that it is complying with Brazil's top court order to block access to social media platform X in the country, a day after informing the country's regulator it would not obey the order.

Starlink had emerged as a fresh battleground between Musk and Brazil, as top court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered the freeze of the company's accounts for possible use to pay fines owed by X, which is also owned by Musk.

"Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil," Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in the Latin American nation, said in a post on X.

On Monday, Brazil's telecom regulator Anatel said it had been informed by Starlink that the Musk-backed company would not obey Moraes' order for all internet providers to block domestic access to X.

An Anatel representative told Reuters, however, that Starlink had backtracked and informed the regulator on Tuesday it would conclude the blocking within hours.

Anatel verified Starlink has already started to cut access to X in Brazil.

X has been blocked in Brazil since last week after Moraes ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down the social media platform for lacking a legal representative in the country, a decision later upheld by a panel of Supreme Court justices.

In its post, Starlink said it had initiated legal proceedings in the Brazilian Supreme Court explaining the "gross illegality" of Moraes' order, that froze Starlink's finances and prevents it from conducting financial transactions in Brazil.

It added that it continues to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that the judge's "recent orders violate the Brazilian constitution."

Starlink lost the deadline to present a new appeal against the decision to freeze its accounts, a court document showed on Tuesday, and it was not immediately clear what legal instrument the firm would use to request the overturn of the freezing.

The dispute over X has its roots in a Moraes order from earlier this year that required the platform to block accounts implicated in probes of alleged spreading of distorted news and hate messages.

Musk denounced the order as censorship. He responded by closing the company's offices in Brazil in mid-August, but the platform continued to be available in the country until Moraes shut it down.

Some Brazilians can still access the service by VPN and other ways.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/starlink-says-complying-order-block-200812077.html