Target $57
Monday, December 2, 2024
Oil Producers Block Binding UN Treaty To Curb Plastics
by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
A small group of major oil-producing countries, including the leaders of the OPEC+ alliance – Saudi Arabia and Russia – have blocked a United Nations-backed summit from agreeing on a binding treaty to put limits on the production and use of plastics.
To address plastics pollution, the UN convened a summit in Busan, South Korea, where delegates have been discussing the idea of a plastics treaty since November 25.
The UN has said that the talks would be “essential” to deal with plastics pollution, but these talks and the summit adjourned without a deal being reached.
Countries negotiating a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution concluded their fifth session in the small hours of Monday in Busan, with plans to reconvene in 2025, the UN said, adding that “Despite intense discussions, delegates recognised the need for more time to address divergent views and refine the treaty’s framework.”
Oil producers, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have balked at the idea to curb plastics.
“There should be no problem with producing plastics,” Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz, the delegate from Saudi Arabia, said during the meeting’s final plenary session.
“The problem is the pollution, not the plastics themselves,” Bloomberg quoted Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz as saying.
Russia, for its part, argued at the summit that efforts to limit plastic production were motivated by economic reasons.
Petrochemicals, from which plastics are made, are expected to drive global oil demand growth in the coming years and decades, even if demand for road transportation fuels wanes.
That’s why it is no surprise that the biggest petrostates depending on oil revenues, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, aren’t keen on agreeing on limits to plastics production.
Moreover, lobbyists from chemicals and fossil fuel companies were heavily represented at the talks in Busan, according to an analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
As many as 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists had registered to participate in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to advance a global plastics treaty. That was the largest single delegation at INC-5, outnumbering even the host Republic of Korea’s 140 representatives, CIEL said.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/oil-producers-block-binding-un-treaty-curb-plastics
US Warships "Successfully" Combat Missiles to Merchant Vessels In Critical Maritime Chokepoint
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) released a statement late Sunday night detailing how two US Navy destroyers intercepted missiles and drones targeting three US merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aden near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints.
According to CENTCOM, two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, USS Stockdale (DDG 106) and USS O'Kane (DDG 77), successfully neutralized ran-backed Houthi-launched missiles and kamikaze drones. These included three anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), three one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems (OWA UAS), and one anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM), aimed at a flotilla of three US-owned, operated, and flagged merchant vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden over the weekend.
"The destroyers were escorting three U.S.-owned, operated, flagged merchant vessels, and the reckless attacks resulted in no injuries and no damage to any vessels, civilian or US Naval," CENTCOM said.
On Sunday morning, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center (UKMTO), which monitors Middle Eastern waterways, reported an "attack" on a vessel approximately 80 nautical miles south of Aden, Yemen.
There is no word if the vessel attack UKMTO reported on Sunday morning was related to the missile and drone attack on US merchants and warships.
However, X accounts focused on open-source intelligence showed several fixed-wing US or allied military assets operating in the skies near the incident area.
The Washington Institute's Noam Raydan reported in October that Houthi rebels launched 80 attacks on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint in the southern Red Sea, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. This has since sparked a global supply chain crisis, pressuring container rates higher.
In recent days, the Syrian proxy war, which never truly ended, flared up again, as the world is on fire under a weak Biden-Harris regime.
Supreme Court Takes Up Tennessee's Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Minors
Advocates for transgender rights
are turning to a conservative-dominated Supreme Court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people.
The justices on Wednesday are taking up the issue of gender-affirming care for transgender minors, which has been banned by Tennessee and 25 other Republican-led states.
The fight over whether transgender adolescents can access puberty blockers and hormonal treatments is part of a broader effort to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.
Trump backed a national ban on such care as part of his 2024 campaign in which he demeaned and mocked transgender people.
In its waning days, the Biden administration, along with families of transgender adolescents, will appeal to the justices to strike down the Tennessee ban as unlawful sex discrimination and protect the constitutional rights of vulnerable Americans.
"The stakes are high, of course, for transgender adolescents, but also for the parents who are watching their children suffer, who are just trying to do right by their kids," Chase Strangio, who represents the families at the Supreme Court, said in an interview. Strangio, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, will be the first openly transgender person to argue before the high court.
A lawyer for Tennessee will argue that the "life-altering gender-transition procedures" are risky and unproven and that it's the state's role to protect children.
Trump nominated three justices in his first term who pushed the court in a more conservative direction that included the decision in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which had protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years.
Yet one of Trump's appointees, Justice Neil Gorsuch, also authored a ruling in 2020 that protected LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace under federal civil rights law.
The administration and transgender families both rely on that decision to bolster their arguments.
After Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025, it's possible the new administration could weigh in on the case, which is not expected to be decided until the spring.
There are about 300,000 people from ages 13 through 17 as well as 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute is a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics to inform laws and public policy decisions.
Most Republican-controlled states have adopted a ban similar to the one in Tennessee, and those laws mostly are in effect, despite legal challenges. The Tennessee case is the first time the nation's top court will consider the constitutionality of the bans.
Sivan Kotler-Berkowitz, a 20-year-old college student in Massachusetts who is transgender, said his life would have been very different if he were just a few years younger and living in one of those states.
"These bans are denying people the opportunity to live and excel," he said in an interview. "There are thousands of transgender youth across the country that are thriving just like me because we've had the love and understanding of our families and because we've had access to proper care."
The bans in Tennessee and elsewhere have put families in the position of deciding whether to travel for ongoing healthcare, go without, or wait until their children turn 18.
Erin Friday, a leader of Our Duty, an international group that supports the bans on gender-affirming care for minors, said the case is going to be as important as Roe v. Wade. She said upholding the Tennessee law would bolster the cases for the laws restricting sports participation and bathroom use.
Among the arguments advanced by defenders of the state laws is that many children who initially say they are transgender eventually change their mind. Friday said her daughter was 11 when she said she was transgender, which Friday attributed to the child having been "indoctrinated" at school. But after receiving psychiatric treatment, her daughter changed her mind, she said. If laws like Tennessee's are struck down, "more children would be irreversibly harmed and live a life of deep regret," Friday said in a Supreme Court filing.
Guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health that were revised in 2022 say evidence of regret about transitioning is scant but also that patients should be told about the possibility during psychological counseling.
Some doctors who work with transgender minors said a state should not come between doctors, their patients, and parents. "From a medical standpoint, I think it's really frightening and dangerous to think that legislators could pass a law that basically judges or controls what people could do with a medication based on a diagnosis," Susan Lacy, MD, of Memphis, Tennessee, who joined with the families in suing the state, said in an interview.
Michelle Quist Ryder, PhD, CEO of the American Psychological Foundation, said the laws, if left in place, are damaging for the physical and mental health of transgender people and their supporters. Gender dysphoria -- the unease a person may have when their assigned sex and gender identity don't match -- has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.
"The more we lessen the sense of safety in this community, trans youth will look out and say, 'Who else is going to come after me?'" she said.
There are prominent names in some of the 83 briefs, an unusually high number, filed on both sides of the case. Actors Elliot Page and Nicole Maines and Sarah McBride of Delaware, who in November became the first openly transgender person to win election to Congress, have joined more than five dozen people in urging the court to strike down the Tennessee law.
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova and Olympic swimming gold medalists Donna de Varona and Summer Sanders are among 135 athletes, coaches, officials, and parents who want the justices to uphold the ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/transgendermedicine/113169
Lilly Mirikizumab Effective in Crohn's Disease
Mirikizumab (Omvoh) improved outcomes in patients with moderately-to-severely active Crohn's disease with previous failure to standard therapy, a phase III randomized trial showed.
Among over 1,000 patients in the efficacy population, 38% of those taking mirikizumab met the composite endpoint of patient-reported outcome (PRO) clinical response at week 12 and endoscopic response at week 52 compared with 9% of those taking placebo (P<0.0001), reported Marc Ferrante, MD, of University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, and colleagues.
In addition, 45.4% of mirikizumab participants met the other primary endpoint of PRO clinical response at week 12 and Crohn's Disease Activity Index (CDAI) clinical remission at week 52 compared with 19.6% of placebo patients (P<0.0001), they noted in The Lancet
Mirikizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody specifically binding to the p19 subunit of interleukin (IL)-23 and is currently approved for the treatment of ulcerative colitis.
"These findings reinforce the importance of IL-23 in driving the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease and suggest that mirikizumab is a treatment with a favorable benefit-risk profile in patients with moderately-to-severely active Crohn's disease, regardless of previous failure to biological therapies," Ferrante and team wrote.
The authors also said that mirikizumab reached noninferiority versus ustekinumab (Stelara) for clinical remission by CDAI at week 52, but superiority over ustekinumab in endoscopic response at week 52 was not reached, with the observed endoscopic response rate for ustekinumab higher than anticipated based on previous trials. However, in patients who previously failed on biologic therapies, there was a numerical trend towards higher response rates with mirikizumab compared with ustekinumab, they added.
In an invited commentary
, Thomas P. Chapman, PhD, and Jack Satsangi, MD, PhD, both of the University of Oxford in England, noted that the treat-through study design allowed the investigators to assess induction and maintenance without re-randomizing patients, and this "might improve understanding of long-term treatment effects, including in initial non-responders," even though it differs from clinical practice, in which clinicians would not continue a drug that did not show early benefit.
"Treat-to-target strategies in Crohn's disease emphasize the importance of endoscopic healing to improve outcome, yet this remains challenging to achieve," Chapman and Satsangi wrote, noting that less than a quarter of patients (23.5%) receiving mirikizumab had endoscopic remission after 1 year.
The VIVID-1 trial followed 1,065 adults with moderate-to-severe Crohn's disease from 324 sites across 33 countries from July 2019 through August 2023. Mean age was 36, 55% were men, 71.7% were white, and 25% were Asian. All participants did not tolerate, did not respond to, or lost response to at least one approved biologic or conventional therapy.
Mean duration of Crohn's disease was 7.4 years. Nearly half (48.5%) had previous biologic therapy failure, 45.7% had previous TNF inhibitor failure, and 11.5% had previous anti-integrin failure. Just under a third (30.5%) were using corticosteroids, and 27.3% were using immunomodulators.
In a 6:3:2 ratio, 579 participants were randomized to receive mirikizumab, 287 to receive ustekinumab, and 199 to receive placebo for 12 weeks' induction. Mirikizumab was first administered intravenously at 900 mg at weeks 0, 4, and 8, and then 300 mg was administered subcutaneously every 4 weeks through week 52. Ustekinumab participants received approximately 6 mg/kg intravenously at week 0 followed by 90 mg subcutaneously every 8 weeks through week 52.
At 12 weeks, the 80 placebo participants who did not self-report clinical improvement were switched to mirikizumab but masked to the switch, and the researchers then followed all participants for 1 year. To meet each of the two primary composite endpoints, participants needed to have both self-reported clinical improvement at 12 weeks and an objectively measured improvement at 52 weeks: endoscopic response for one primary endpoint and CDAI-based clinical remission for the other primary endpoint.
Mirikizumab was also shown to be superior to placebo for 10 secondary endpoints, including patient-reported clinical response at week 12, endoscopic response at weeks 12 and 52, endoscopic remission at week 12, clinical remission by CDAI at weeks 12 and 52, clinical response by PRO at week 12 and corticosteroid-free clinical remission by CDAI at week 52, and change in Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue from baseline to week 12.
Overall adverse event and discontinuation rates were lower in the mirikizumab group compared with the placebo group. Serious adverse events were similar in the mirikizumab (10.3%) and ustekinumab (10.7%) groups, and lower than the placebo group (17.1%). Three deaths occurred, including one participant taking ustekinumab, one taking placebo, and one taking placebo who was switched to mirikizumab.
Disclosures
The study was funded by Eli Lilly.
Ferrante reported receiving research grants from AbbVie, Biogen, Janssen, Pfizer, Takeda, and Viatris; consultancy fees from AbbVie, AgomAb Therapeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, Celltrion, Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, MRM Health, MSD, Pfizer, Takeda, and Thermo Fisher; and speakers fees from AbbVie, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Falk, Ferring, Janssen-Cilag, MSD, Pfizer, Takeda, Truvion Healthcare, and Viatris.
Co-authors also reported multiple relationships with industry.
Chapman reported consultancies, or support for travel or speaker fees, from Takeda, Dr Falk Pharma, Techspert, IQVIA, Sermo, Janssen, Tillotts, and M3 Global Research.
Satsangi reported grant funding to the University of Oxford from Crohn's Colitis UK, Action Medical Research, ECCO, European Commission, and Leona & M Helmsley Trust; consultancy fees from Janssen; and patent applications to discover diagnostic biomarkers in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease and in developing non-immunogenic anti-TNF therapies. He is a director of the UK IBD Registry; co-chair of the CCFA Precision Medicine working group; advisor to NICE on precision medicine; chair of the TRIBUTE trial data & safety committee; and chair of the steering committee of the MODULATE trial.
Primary Source
The Lancet
Source Reference: Ferrante M, et al "Efficacy and safety of mirikizumab in patients with moderately-to-severely active Crohn's disease: a phase 3, multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled and active-controlled, treat-through study" Lancet 2024; DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01762-8.
Secondary Source
The Lancet
Source Reference: Chapman TP, Satsangi J "Expanding therapeutic options in Crohn's disease" Lancet 2024; DOI: 10.1016/ S0140-6736(24)01937-8.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/inflammatoryboweldisease/113125
Sullivan Touts 'Massive Surge' In Arms To Ukraine With 50 Days Left In Biden's Term
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan took to the Sunday news shows where he boasted that the White House is surging as many weapons as possible to Ukraine in the final days of the Biden administration.
He explained to ABC News that with just 50 days left in Biden's term, the White House is busy trying to "get Ukraine all the tools we possibly can to strengthen their position on the battlefield."
"President Biden directed me to oversee a massive surge in the military equipment that we are delivering to Ukraine so that we have spent every dollar that Congress has appropriated to us by the time that President Biden leaves office," he said.
Biden and his top officials have long pledged to support Ukraine with arms and funding "for as long as it takes" to defeat Russia.
But Sullivan and other defense officials have of late begun to acknowledge the inevitability of the Zelensky government having to enter negotiations with Moscow. For the time being, Sullivan said Washington aims to "give Ukraine as many tools as possible so that they could go into that negotiation and feel they could achieve the outcome that they would like to see."
Still, Sullivan sought to reiterate in the ABC appearance that the "key thing" behind potential negotiations to end the war is that Ukraine’s destiny should "not be imposed by outside powers, including the United States."
Concerning a recent NY Times report that suggested some US officials want to see nuclear weapons given to Ukraine, Sullivan dismissed this as a possibility:
Still, Sullivan debunked a report suggesting that the administration is open to returning nuclear weapons to Ukraine.
"That is not under consideration. No. What we are doing is surging various conventional capacities to Ukraine so that they can effectively defend themselves and take the fight to the Russians, not nuclear capability," he told Karl.
As for dealing with the incoming Trump administration, Sullivan confirmed there is contact on handing "off the baton" - though Trump has vowed to immediately negotiate an end to the war.
"I've encouraged the Ukrainian team to engage the incoming team as well as to engage all of our allies and partners, because, again, on Jan. 21, the war in Ukraine doesn't just go away," Sullivan said.
He added: "Obviously, the new team will have its own policy, its own approach, and I can't speak to that, but what I can do is make sure that we put Ukraine in the best possible position when we hand off the baton."
But the Biden administration's policy has really only been a recipe for uncontrollable escalation. A 'massive surge' of new military equipment assures a prolonging of the war, even as it's become clear that Ukraine's real problem is manpower, and as Russian gains are evident in the east.
Rabobank: Biden's Pardon Risks Further Erosion Of Confidence In The US Government
By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank
Pardon?
US stocks rose in shortened trading on Friday, with both the Dow and the S&P500 closing at fresh record highs. Consequently, November marked the best month of the year for the S&P500 as the index finished 5.73% higher, beating February’s 5.17% rise into the silver medal position.
European stocks also rose with the CAC40 up 0.78% and the German DAX up 1.03%. Confidence in Europe was buoyed slightly by a commitment from Marine Le Pen that she wouldn’t bring down Michel Barnier’s government before the weekend over deep disagreements on Barnier’s budget. Despite the stay of execution, the two sides appear to have irreconcilable views over social spending, and its hard to see a situation where Le Pen’s National Rally allows Barnier’s more neoliberal administration to survive into the new year.
Yields on 10-year OATs fell by ~5bps on Friday and French bonds underperformed German Bunds as November CPI data showed a quicker pace of disinflation in France. Nevertheless, the political instability has taken a toll on French borrowing costs as illustrated by outperformance of Greek 10-year bonds on the day and the parity between Greek and French yields (!). Bloomberg reports that some French corporates are now experiencing lower borrowing costs than the national government.
Meanwhile, over in Germany the far-right AfD published a draft policy platform outlining plans to campaign on policies to leave the EU, the Paris Climate Accord and the Euro if the party is successful in forming government at the early election expected in February. The draft policy platform also includes proposals to roll back economic sanctions on Russia and recommission the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, but still needs to be voted on by AfD members in mid-January. The draft platform marks a break from the manifesto published ahead of EU parliament elections in June, which did not include a firm commitment to take Germany out of the EU.
USDJPY sank below the key 150 level on Friday as Tokyo CPI came in hotter than expected on both the headline and ex-fresh food measure. Even the ex-fresh food and energy measure was up 1-tick on the October reading, prompting a slight lift in futures implied probability of a rate hike at the BOJ’s policy meeting on December 19th. The OIS strip currently has a hike of 16.5bps priced in for the December meeting.
On the geopolitics front the swift dismantling of Hezbollah by Israel, and Russia’s preoccupation with its war on Ukraine appears to have come at great cost for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Rebel forces recaptured the country’s second largest city of Aleppo as regime troops were left somewhat stranded by Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies and were consequently overwhelmed by the Turkish-backed rebels.
In a situation similar to Yemen, civil war has been raging in Syria for 13 years without attracting a great deal of mainstream interest in Western media. In the case of Yemen, that all changed once the civil war impacted upon freight transits through the Suez Canal, while in Syria the ongoing competition for spheres of influence by Great Powers (Russia, USA, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Israel etc) provides a useful microcosm of the new global paradigm, but only if one cares to look.
Speaking of new paradigms, Australia’s governing Labor Party struck a deal with the left-wing Greens last week to push through proposed reforms of the RBA. The reforms will create a dual board structure at the central bank, splitting responsibility for monetary policy decisions off from the operational and governance oversight of the bank. Australia’s centre-right opposition parties dealt themselves out of negotiations with the government over the reforms due to fears that the government would use the restructure to “sack (fire) and stack” the monetary policy board with political appointments who might be inclined to cut interest rates ahead of the Federal election due by May next year.
The Greens have been vocal critics of the RBA’s tightening of monetary policy and had previously said that they would only support the government’s RBA reforms if the Treasurer invoked never-before-used powers that allow him to override monetary policy decisions. Treasurer Jim Chalmers had planned to abolish that power and another provision that grants the RBA power to direct bank lending activities. Both of those powers might be useful in a world of increased geopolitical competition where free trade is taking a back seat to state aims and industrial policy is becoming de rigeur again.
Finally, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for federal gun and tax charges despite earlier vows not to intervene. President Biden said that it was clear that Hunter had been “treated differently” by the Justice Department. While this news itself is not immediately market sensitive, Biden’s suggestion that Justice Department prosecutions have not been blind to political considerations in the case of Hunter Biden perhaps risks legitimising President Trump’s claims of unfair prosecution directed against him, and further erosion of confidence in the USA’s institutions of government.
That could certainly have long-term implications for borrowing costs, transmission of monetary policy and a host of other variables.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)