Thursday, May 7, 2026
Wynn Considers Delay for UAE Casino Opening Due to Iran War
Wynn Resorts is evaluating whether to push back the launch of its large-scale casino resort in the United Arab Emirates, according to sources cited by Bloomberg, as regional instability linked to the conflict involving Iran continues to affect construction and tourism activity. The project, valued at $5.1 billion, had been expected to open in early 2027, though earlier timelines also pointed to a spring debut next year.
The Las Vegas-based operator has not publicly confirmed any delay but acknowledged it is closely watching developments in the region. Construction work on the site, located on Al Marjan Island in Ras Al Khaimah, faced temporary interruptions after hostilities intensified, although activity resumed in March. Ongoing concerns, including drone and missile activity, have continued to disrupt progress and reduce visitor numbers.
Regional Tensions Disrupt Construction Plans
The possibility of postponement follows increasing security challenges tied to Iranian military actions. Reports indicate that infrastructure across the UAE, including commercial and transport hubs, has been targeted, creating complications for large development projects.
Recent incidents have included strikes damaging luxury resorts in Dubai, roughly an hour from Wynn’s development site. At the same time, the UAE’s defense authorities have reported intercepting drone and missile attacks, underscoring the ongoing risks in the region.
Wynn stated earlier that it remains in communication with both US and UAE officials as it monitors the situation. “The Company continues to be in regular communication with the governments of the United States and Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, so that we can make informed decisions,” the company said. “The Company believes the broad defense posture of the UAE has worked extremely well, and we have confidence in the UAE’s ability to keep its population safe.”
The resort, once completed, will be the first casino property of its kind in the Middle East. Plans for the complex include 22 restaurants, an events venue, private prayer facilities, and a large ballroom overlooking the marina.
Tourism Slowdown Adds Pressure
In addition to construction challenges, the regional tourism sector has experienced a significant downturn since the conflict escalated. Industry figures suggest visitor activity has fallen sharply, affecting occupancy rates and broader economic expectations for hospitality projects.
MGM Resorts International, which is also developing a hospitality project in Dubai, has acknowledged similar trends but maintains its timeline. CEO Bill Hornbuckle commented on the situation during a recent earnings call, saying: “The tourism business in that particular neck of the world is down to like 15%, give or take.” He added, “I’d say different occupancies are down to that level. So it will take some recovery time no matter what happens here over the next couple of months. But long-term, we remain very excited.”
Despite these short-term pressures, major operators continue to view the UAE as a promising location for future growth in gaming and hospitality.
Strategic Importance of the UAE Market
The UAE has drawn attention from casino operators due to its potential as a new market for gaming. Analysts estimate that, if additional venues are introduced, the country could generate between $3 billion and $5 billion in gross gaming revenue annually. Such figures would place it among the leading global markets in the sector.
Wynn’s Al Marjan Island resort is expected to play a central role in shaping that market. The development forms part of a broader push by the UAE to expand its entertainment and tourism offerings, including large-scale resorts and attractions.
Financial markets have reacted to the geopolitical situation as well. Wynn’s share price declined in the early stages of the conflict but has since recovered, showing gains over the past month.
Fast-talking Rahm Emanuel tries to hide who the real crony capitalists are
by Andrea Widburg
I learned a new term today: “Gish gallop,” which refers to a rhetorical device by which the speaker “attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, without regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available.” (Jeremy Boering explains it here, using Candace Owens as an example.)
That term applies to Rahm Emanuel’s technique in a short video clip of a discussion with former Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin. Using a rapid-fire sea of words, Emanuel claims Trump and his children got rich off the government, while conveniently overlooking the fact that he, like other prominent Democrats, went into government service poor and came out very, very rich, often in ways that seemed tied to access.
Here’s the video:
Admittedly, it’s a clip, so we don’t know what triggered his argument. What we know is Emanuel’s Gish gallop deflects attention from the truth: He became enormously wealthy after leaving government, and much of it was clearly related to his political connections.
Without taking a breath, Emanuel alleges that Trump is selling off the White House, that crony capitalism is in charge, that the Democrats are all about supporting the middle class, that the ballroom is somehow a product of corruption, that Trump’s and Howard Lutnick’s kids are enriching themselves from the government, that someone left office four billion dollars richer, and that Democrats who have won recent elections are moderates. Later, he states as fact that redistricting started in Texas.
There are a lot of things wrong with all of that.
Youngkin counters Emanuel’s claim about supposed Democrat moderates. He points out that these “moderates,” once in office, immediately enacted hard-left policies, with Virginia’s Governor Spanberger as Exhibit A. Rhetorically, this is smart. Given that Youngkin can’t counter everything Emanuel spouted, by addressing one obvious thing, he should be causing the audience to doubt Emanuel’s veracity.
Other things that would have been easy lines for attack are the claim that the Trump and Lutnick kids got rich off the government. They were already rich, and none of them have taken any government funds, directly or indirectly. They have pursued the same interests they always did, and done very well, too. Yes, having powerful fathers undoubtedly made them more attractive to investors of all stripes, but there’s no evidence that their fathers steered business their way. Meanwhile, standing in the middle of this argument is the entire Biden family.
As for leaving office $4 billion richer, if Emanuel is referring to Trump, it’s generally believed that, when Trump left the White House in January 2021, he was $1-$2 billion poorer than when he entered office. Fortunately, Trump made that money back (and more) through smart business decisions, not cronyism, during his four years in the wilderness, despite sustained political and criminal-justice attacks.
The statement about redistricting is a half-truth. The current round of redistricting started in Texas. However, as the recent Callais decision revealed, Democrat states have been doing purely racial redistricting since 1992. Moreover, blue states currently have limited redistricting opportunities because they have already shut out Republican representation in their states (which is legal, and some red states have done the same).
But the real issue isn’t what Emanuel said; it’s what he didn’t say, and it’s important because of his overarching contention that the MAGA movement has used the government to enrich its top people at the expense of taxpayers.
It used to be that people left government and kind of vanished. However, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating through today, people leaving high government positions achieve vast wealth—especially Democrats.
Book deals and speaking fees (and, for the Obamas, production fees) turned career politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Al Gore, and Kamala Harris, none of whom were wealthy when they worked in government, into millionaires or even multimillionaires once in the private sector. Importantly, they didn’t create anything; their power cachet and the promise of access created this wealth.
Once, politicians this prominent—three presidents, one Secretary of State, and two vice presidents (three if you count Joe Biden for this role too)—retired after their service. They may not have sat on the front porch in a rocking chair as Truman did, but they were far enough away from politics that one didn’t get the sense that their vast post-politics wealth was a continued pay-off for political access.
Rahm Emanuel followed this same Democrat trajectory. He went from college to community organizing and then got involved in political work. In other words, he never worked in a real business.
Nevertheless, when he left the White House in 1998 and joined an investment banking firm, despite having no banking or investment experience, he made $16.2 million in just two years. Then, he rolled back into politics: Freddie Mac, Congress, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Mayor of Chicago, and (under Biden) Ambassador to Japan. After his mayoral stint, he picked up another $13 million for consulting and media work.
Rahm Emanuel is living in a well-populated glass house, one made up of an entire class of Democrat politicians who spent years transferring money from taxpayers to cronies and then, once in the private sector, miraculously become staggeringly wealthy—and the only way, it seems, that he can cover that up is to talk really, really fast.
Tuberculosis makes a comeback in San Francisco
by Andrea Widburg
The headline on a San Francisco news website is stunning: “‘This is a big outbreak’: Nearly 1 in 5 affected by TB at SF school.” Certainly, when I was growing up and living in San Francisco, such a headline would have been unimaginable, but now tuberculosis is a growing problem in California, a state with the single largest illegal immigrant population in America.
According to SFGATE:
New data shows 18%, or nearly 1 in 5, of tested students and staff at Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco were diagnosed with either latent or active tuberculosis during an outbreak that started in November.
New testing is scheduled to start today.
In total, 96% of the school community was tested, seven people were diagnosed with active cases during the course of the outbreak and 241 latent cases were reported, according to data released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health on April 27 to the school community. (Emphasis mine.)
[snip]
Tuberculosis remains a problem for California, where cases hit a 12-year high in 2025 with 2,150 reported. The state also had a “substantially higher” rate of disease in 2025 than the U.S. overall, the department said, with 5.4 infections per 100,000 people compared with about 3 per 100,000 nationwide.
The news about Riordan follows reports from last week that two California high schools—one in San Diego, in the southernmost part of the state, and one in Fresno, in Central California—had experienced TB outbreaks. TB’s surge in both those regions made sense, given
that they are where most of California’s enormous illegal alien population clusters. And yes, the fact that they’re illegal matters, because it means that they come from impoverished countries rife with disease, enter the U.S. without any medical barriers, and live in densely populated communities. All lawful applicants to America are screened for TB.
But San Francisco? That’s quite far from the Southern border. However, it turns out that San Francisco, which has long been a sanctuary city, is estimated to be home to around 43,000 illegal aliens, out of a population of only 800,000-850,000 people. That’s a lot of illegal aliens in a small, densely populated city.
That Riordan would be hit isn’t a surprise. It’s located near one of the largest Hispanic communities in San Francisco. Ocean Avenue, two blocks from the school, is both a major transportation artery in that part of the city and a dividing line between those communities and Riordan.
What this means is that kids riding the buses along Ocean Avenue are almost certainly routinely exposed to immigrants, many of whom may have arrived unchecked through our southern border. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was a primary vector. I wonder how many of the students’ parents contemplated this possibility.
Since time immemorial, one of the reasons nations have policed their borders has been to keep out diseases. Thanks to the Democrats’ open-door policy for illegal aliens, America has seen a resurgence of third-world diseases that had once become alien to America, things such as measles, TB, whooping cough, and even polio and dengue fever.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/05/tuberculosis_makes_a_comeback_in_san_francisco.html
Angelini seeks US beachhead with $4.1bn Catalyst buy
Italy's Angelini Pharma has agreed to buy Catalyst Pharma of the US for up to $4.1 billion, saying the deal is a "pivotal moment" in its 100-year-plus history.
Privately held Angelini will pay $31.50 per share for Nasdaq-listed Catalyst, a 28% premium to its average trading price over the last four weeks. If the transaction is completed, it will mark the Italian company's entry into the US market.
Buying Catalyst will give Angelini ownership of three FDA-approved products for neuromuscular diseases and epilepsy that generated $589 million in sales last year and have been forecast to reach up to $645 million in 2026.
Catalyst's top-selling product is Firdapse (amifampridine) for the neuromuscular disorder Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) – which accounted for $358 million of its 2025 revenues – and it is likely no coincidence that the agreement with Angelini has been announced on the same day that the company settled a patent dispute over the product with India's Hetero Labs.
That settlement has averted the risk of Hetero launching a generic version of Firdapse, prior to the lapse of the product's US patent protection, which Catalyst said will expire in January 2035. Catalyst has previously settled patent litigation with three other generic drugmakers, Lupin, Teva, and Inventia, and no other lawsuits are pending.
Along with Firdapse, Catalyst also sells Agamree (vamorolone) for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which grew 154% to $117 million last year, and epilepsy therapy Fycompa (perampanel), which is now exposed to generic competition in the US and shrank 17% to $113 million.
For Angelini, which specialises in central nervous system diseases, rare diseases, and speciality and consumer medicines, this is the first M&A deal since 2021, when it bought Swiss epilepsy and CNS specialist Arvelle Therapeutics for up to $960 million in 2021. Adding Catalyst will result in a jump in Angelini's revenues, which were around $1.9 billion in 2024.
The chief executive of the family-owned business, Sergio Marullo di Condojanni, said that buying Catalyst is another significant step forward in a five-year-old project to turn Angelini into a company that is "capable of competing at the highest global level."
A focus on CNS disorders is one of the pillars of that strategy, he added, which has also been built through other deals, such as an alliance with GRIN Therapeutics on the development of radiprodil for epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disorders, and the licensing of another epilepsy candidate from Sovargen, both signed last year.
"The acquisition of Catalyst Pharmaceuticals […] will establish Angelini Pharma as a relevant global player in neurological rare diseases," said Marullo di Condojanni.
"Entering the US market will allow us to acquire the scale and capabilities needed to continue this journey."
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/angelini-seeks-us-beachhead-41bn-catalyst-buy
Internet shutdown pushes Iranians onto distrusted domestic apps
Many Iranians have been forced onto distrusted domestic apps after authorities cut global internet access, disrupting education and business while exposing users to slow speeds, censorship and surveillance fears.
Most affected are businesses reliant on Instagram and other global services, but even users pushed onto domestic platforms described repeated outages, poor functionality and heavy censorship on apps such as Rubika, Bale and Shad.
One citizen said Rubika often fails to send photos and videos for much of the day and alleged the platform checks users’ phone galleries. Another said uploading a single image on Rubika can take an hour.
Citizens also raised concerns that domestic applications could expose their data and devices to state monitoring.
Internet monitoring group NetBlocks said Thursday that 69 days of widespread international internet disruption in Iran had fueled unemployment among workers and redistributed wealth in favor of groups aligned with the government.
Education disrupted
Dozens of students, parents and several teachers said Shad, Iran’s state-run online education platform, does not allow users to properly download photos and videos and does not provide a suitable environment for teaching.
“The children’s classes are online, but the application is designed so only the teacher can speak,” the mother of one student said.
“If a student has a question or does not understand something, they have to wait until five in the afternoon, when student access is reopened. In reality, students are present in the online class, but even if they are absent the teacher does not notice. The entire education process depends solely on parental supervision.”
Some teachers continue to expect students to produce clips and upload them despite low internet speeds, users said.
The problem of accessing information through domestic networks has also affected university students.
A computer student in Tehran said: “Neither the online classes have quality nor can you find anything worth learning in the ‘dictatorship information network.’”
Students said online learning and access to professors’ teaching materials have effectively come to a halt.
Costly barriers
With Instagram blocked by the state, many Iranians have lost a free channel to market goods and services, while domestic apps such as Rubika and Bale charge high advertising fees and impose lengthy, censorship-driven approval processes, citizens said.
Several citizens said Rubika charges business owners about 63 million tomans, roughly $359 at the current open-market exchange rate, for 15 minutes of advertising.
She pointed to what she described as the government’s contradictory treatment of insiders and outsiders in recent months, saying the Islamic Republic used women without compulsory hijab or women with looser dress to promote pro-government nighttime gatherings during and after the war, while rejecting a short advertisement because an elbow was visible for a few seconds.
One female business owner said she was forced to advertise on a domestic app after two months without work so she could sell goods left in her inventory.
“Before approving my channel they took my money, but then rejected my ad with the excuse that my activity on the app was low and my elbow was visible in the video,” she said.
The female business owner added that when she called to ask for the advertising fee back, she was told the money would remain in her wallet until she “fixed the video and channel.”
“So I have to work on an empty channel for several months, bring in goods and invest, just for an empty channel, so maybe they will approve my ad?” she said.
“I spent eight years on Instagram and put time into building my page, but with the internet cutoff I effectively came to a halt. How am I supposed to start again?”
Another user referred to the “thousands of rules and clauses domestic apps have imposed for advertising” and said the platform took “a huge amount of money” before saying it would not advertise an “underwear channel.”
“What am I supposed to do with all this merchandise?” the user said. “Set myself on fire or burn the goods? My business was on Instagram. Restore the internet so I can go back to work.”
A user on X had earlier written that searching for “women’s underwear” on Zarebin, a search engine promoted as Iran’s domestic version of Google, leads to a “no results found” page, while searching for “men’s underwear” produces meaningful results.
“With the national internet, you cannot even buy women’s underwear. It is both ridiculous and tragic,” the user wrote.
Other users said people had turned “out of necessity” and because of the two-month internet cutoff to the Islamic Republic’s “fake” networks such as Bale and Rubika, but said it remained unclear how much access the government could gain through the platforms to citizens’ phones and whether it could monitor or surveil their devices.
Efforts to bypass censorship
Despite the imposed restrictions, users said they continue to find ways to bypass content censorship.
Several citizens said that after access to Telegram was blocked, several channels appeared on local apps such as Soroush Plus, Rubika and Bale offering free or low-cost configurations to bypass filtering.
“They nationalized the internet to gather supporters for the government, but exactly the opposite is happening,” one user said.
Users said this contrasted with content circulated by government-linked figures and channels, which they described as including false claims about the Islamic Republic winning the war with the United States and Israel, false reports of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s death and inaccurate accounts of negotiations.
One user said government-linked content on Rubika portrays the Islamic Republic as defined by “peace, friendship and human rights.”
Despite the government’s efforts to keep the platforms tightly controlled, accounts using the Lion and Sun as profile pictures have appeared. The historic Iranian national emblem is associated by many with the pre-1979 monarchy.
Other accounts have used portraits of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, as profile pictures.
Citizens said such accounts, as well as channels reposting news from the outside world, are blocked and banned after some time.
Still, they said daily resistance continues, with new and larger channels replacing those that are shut down.