Pimco Made $2 Billion Bet on Colombia Ahead of First Round Vote

 

Funds managed by Pacific Investment Management Co. made a $2 billion bet on Colombia’s local government debt last month, ahead of the first round of a presidential election that is likely to reshape the nation’s economic model.

Pimco funds purchased a net 6.7 trillion pesos of domestic bonds in May, according to data from Colombia’s Comptroller General analyzed by Bloomberg. The asset manager has been the largest buyer of Colombian local debt in recent months and now holds roughly 30% of the $43 billion held by foreign investors.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-18/pimco-made-2-billion-bet-on-colombia-ahead-of-first-round-vote

Centrus Jumps On Deal To Supply Oklo With Domestically-Produced Uranium

 Centrus Energy continues to solidify its role as a cornerstone of America's emerging advanced nuclear sector, today announcing a letter of intent with Oklo to provide domestically produced high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for the company's next generation of nuclear reactors, according to a release from the company's website.

Shares the domestic enricher jumped more than 6% this morning. 

Under the proposed multi-year agreement, Centrus will begin supplying HALEU in 2029 to support up to five Oklo Aurora powerhouses, including reactors planned for Oklo's 1.2-gigawatt clean energy campus in Ohio. The fuel is expected to be produced at Centrus' enrichment facility in Pike County, Ohio, highlighting the growing importance of domestic nuclear fuel infrastructure.

The agreement represents a meaningful milestone for the broader advanced reactor industry. One of the largest challenges facing nuclear developers has been securing reliable access to HALEU, a specialized fuel required by many next-generation reactor designs. With global commercial HALEU production historically concentrated in Russia and China, the development of a U.S.-based supply chain has become a national priority.

Centrus has emerged as the top solution to this challenge. By establishing itself as a domestic source of HALEU, the company is helping address a critical bottleneck that has limited deployment of advanced nuclear technologies across the United States.

The deal is a confirmation of what we said a year ago: in a country starved for domestically-produced HALEU, Centrus will outperform, even though sometimes the market is somewhat obtuse and slow in figuring even the most obvious stuff.

A year later, market starting to get it https://t.co/91bUOLoS1m pic.twitter.com/TvZGJCf0PR

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 18, 2026

The proposed agreement also reinforces growing confidence in Centrus' production capabilities and strengthens its visibility as advanced reactor developers move closer to commercialization. As demand for clean, reliable baseload power continues to accelerate, Centrus appears increasingly well-positioned to benefit from the expansion of the U.S. nuclear energy ecosystem.

With advanced reactor companies such as Oklo advancing toward deployment and domestic fuel supply becoming an essential national objective, Centrus' role as a leading HALEU supplier could become a significant driver of long-term growth and strategic relevance within the nuclear energy industry.

Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler commented: “Today’s announcement is an important step toward ensuring reliable HALEU supply for next generation reactors and represents a crucial milestone as we work to restore America’s ability to enrich uranium at scale. By connecting advanced nuclear power generation and customer demand with domestic HALEU production in southern Ohio, this agreement helps establish a foundation for a new U.S. advanced nuclear energy hub.”

Other nuclear stocks are also on the rise, with Energy Fuels up almost 17% and reactor manufacturers NuScale Power and NANO Nuclear Energy up about 3% and 5%, respectively.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/centrus-supply-oklo-domestically-produced-haleu-under-multi-year-agreement

UK will be first market for Sanofi's subcutaneous Sarclisa

 Sanofi's subcutaneous formulation of multiple myeloma drug Sarclisa has been approved in the UK, which will be the first market for the on-body injector (OBI) version of the drug.

The company is hoping that the new Sarclisa (isatuximab) product, which uses the CirCLIQ OBI device, could go some way toward narrowing the massive market share gap between the anti-CD38 antibody and its main rival, Johnson & Johnson and Genmab's Darzalex (daratumumab), which made $14.35 billion in sales last year to Sarclisa's $690 million.

Both Sarclisa and Darzalex are available in intravenous versions, and CirCLIQ OBI is Sanofi's response to subcutaneous Darzalex Faspro, which was approved in 2020. It was also approved in the EU earlier this month, but a decision in the US has been delayed until next month.

The new product is the first anticancer treatment administered via an OBI to be approved for marketing, according to Sanofi, which said it "offers a treatment experience designed around the needs of patients and HCPs and enables flexible administration in either home or outpatient settings."

The OBI device can deliver high volumes of subcutaneous therapies using a hidden, retractable needle, and draws on the enFuse technology developed by Enable Injections, a company first set up in 2022 that is backed financially by private equity group Blackstone Life Sciences. It can deliver doses both manually and at automated intervals.

"Multiple myeloma is a complex disease that often requires repeated and prolonged clinic visits, placing a considerable burden on patients and those who support them," said senior haematologist Karthik Ramasamy of Oxford University Hospital NHS Trust and the Oxford Translational Myeloma Centre.

"There has been a need for innovative approaches to ease this aspect of the treatment journey," he added. "The ability to administer a therapy through an on-body injector, particularly an anticancer drug, either in the clinic or eventually at a patient’s home, represents a meaningful step forward."

Data presented at last year's ASCO cancer congress showed that Sarclisa OBI was as effective as the current IV formulation when used as a second-line therapy for multiple myeloma, with a reduced treatment time and equivalent safety.

Ramasamy also said that subcutaneous Sarclisa provides "an opportunity to reduce pressure on the NHS while placing greater flexibility and convenience at the heart of patient-centred care," noting that it aligns with the NHS 10-Year Plan and National Cancer Plan objectives to transform the healthcare system through technology.

"An automated 13-minute median duration injection that can be administered at home or in the clinic, with favourable patient comfort and satisfaction. This is what patient-centred innovation looks like in practice," said John Forni, medical lead for Sanofi UK and Ireland.

"We are proud that the UK is the first country in the world to launch the CirCLIQ OBI."

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/uk-will-be-first-market-sanofis-subcutaneous-sarclisa

'AI agents can beat doctors in clinical decision-making'

 Two AI large language models (LLMs) have shown they can match and even surpass doctors in virtual testing, although their developers say it is too early for them to be used in real-world settings.

The agents – one called MIRA, which was developed by academic researchers in Germany and Google's AMIE agent – are described in two papers published in the journal Nature.

The studies provide evidence that LLMs have potential as broad toolkits, coming up with diagnoses, handling patient management, and conceiving care plans, for example, that extend beyond the typically narrow tasks they are currently used for in medicine, such as diagnostic support.

Drawing on data from patient histories and laboratory, imaging, and microbiology tests, MIRA (Medical Intelligence for Reasoning and Action) was found to have a diagnostic accuracy across eight test conditions that was similar to that of two groups of mixed-experience and board-certified physicians, and was better on some; notably, pancreatitis.

MIRA also proved to be better at some other tasks, like correctly ordering surgical procedures, managing intravenous fluid, and painkiller use, while 99.8% of its medicine recommendations were deemed to be correct and therapeutic decisions were more closely aligned with clinical guidelines.

AMIE (Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer), meanwhile, was compared to primary care physicians and was found to generate higher-rated and more precise treatment and investigation plans, which met the criteria for non-inferiority, but were numerically superior across multiple measures.

Both research teams concluded that, while promising, the LLMs will need to be validated in prospective studies before their potential can be realised in real-world clinical practice, particularly as there were cases of divergence from recommended practice.

One commentator on the studies, health informatics and data science specialist Prof Julie Jacko of the University of Edinburgh in the UK, said both were rigorously conducted, but are demonstrating performance in a simulated environment that cannot fully capture "the complexity of real clinical decision-making."

That sentiment was echoed by Oxford sociologist, Prof Catherine Pope, who said the studies are "some remove from the messy, complex, human world of everyday healthcare" where doctors must often contend with incomplete and sometimes conflicting data.

She added: "Use in the real world will need to be in partnership with clinicians: these technologies are unlikely to replace doctors, and many will contend that they crucially do not and cannot substitute for the essential human aspects of care."

Giving a clinician's perspective, cardiologist and scientist Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said in a blog post that a crucial consideration is that both MIRA and AMIE are text-only AIs, "meaning all the other things that are part of medicine, from the patient's non-verbal communication and tone of voice to the review of actual medical images, were not included."

He added: "The [...] LLMs will keep getting better. In fact, the ones used in these [two] reports are already obsolete. You can think of MIRA and AIME as a major step forward within the constraints of a simulation, not real medicine. But the improvements in AI's capabilities are coming fast, and it would not be surprising to see some of the benefits here extended to the actual practice of medicine."

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/ai-agents-can-beat-doctors-clinical-decision-making

Heart drug biotech Kardigan raises $400m in upscaled IPO

 Cardiovascular drug developer Kardigan has completed its IPO, and in common with the prevailing trend in Nasdaq listings this year, has raised substantially more than it originally anticipated.

The gross proceeds have come in at around $400 million, with 25 million shares sold for $16 apiece, which compares to Kardigan's earlier objective of selling 23.3 million at a range of $14 to $16. The final tally could be increased by another $60 million or so if underwriters take up an option to buy another 3.75 million shares at the final price.

The proceeds – which top up cash reserves of around $287 million held by Kardigan at the end of March – will go towards the company's three clinical-stage drug candidates, which are all in late-stage development, along with R&D and general corporate purposes.

Between $80 million and $90 million is earmarked for danicamtiv, an oral cardiac myosin activator for dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) driven by MYH7 and TTN gene variants in genes coding for the sarcomere, the functional unit of muscle tissue. That should allow Kardigan to complete an ongoing phase 2b trial and the start of phase 3 development, according to its IPO prospectus.

The company has allocated the same amount to ataciguat, a once-daily, oral soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) activator for calcific aortic valve stenosis (CAVS), and $40 million to $50 million for tonlamarsen, an angiotensinogen-targeted subcutaneous antisense oligonucleotide for blood pressure management in acute severe hypertension (ASH).

Once again, that should fund the completion of ongoing phase 2b studies of the two drugs and the start of phase 3, with another $50 million to $60 million pledged to other R&D activities. That includes the further development of its Prolaio platform for applying AI to cardiovascular drug development, which it acquired for up to $200 million.

Phase 2b data from the KINSHIP-DCM trial of danicamtiv is due in the first half of 2027, with a series of readouts from the KATALYST-AV study of ataciguat and the KARDINAL study of tonlamarsen also expected next year.

Founded by former executives from MyoKardia – which was bought by Bristol Myers Squibb for $13.1 billion in 2020 – Kardigan is based in Princeton, New Jersey, with a second site in South San Francisco.

Kardigan's stock is due to start trading on the Nasdaq tomorrow under the KARD ticker symbol.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/heart-drug-biotech-kardigan-raises-400m-upscaled-ipo

Both Parents Work Full-Time In Majority Of Families, Census Data Show

 by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Both parents work full-time in more than half of couples with children under 18, according to newly analyzed data.

Fifty-two percent of couples comprised of a mother and father work full-time jobs as of 2025, according to the Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau released on June 16.

That percentage is an increase from 46 percent in 2015 and 31 percent in 1975.

Black mothers are still the most likely to be in a couple where both she and the father work, according to an analysis broken down by race. Sixty percent of black mothers are in such a partnership, down slightly from 64 percent in 2000.

Majorities of white, 54 percent, and Asian, 52 percent, women with children are for the first time in couples comprised of two working parents. Hispanic women are still more likely to be in a couple with only one working parent.

Mothers with lower levels of education are the most likely to be in a couple in which the dad works full-time, and the mom is not employed, according to the analysis.

That figure was 30 percent for mothers with, at most, some college education, compared to 21 percent for mothers with bachelor’s degrees and 11 percent for mothers with postgraduate degrees.

Across all couples with minor children, the percentage in which the father works full-time and the mother is not employed declined from 42 percent in 1975 to 23 percent in 2025.

In another 15 percent of couples, the father works full-time and the mother works part-time. In five percent, the father works part-time or is not employed, and the mother has a full-time job. And in the remaining five percent, there is some other arrangement.

Many parents view their family’s financial situation as positive, according to a Pew survey conducted in March, provided the mother works at least part-time. For parents in couples where the dad works full time, and the mother does not have a job, only 19 percent said their financial situation is positive, and 41 percent said it is negative.

Adults in those couples were the most likely to say that the work arrangement was positive for their children’s well-being. Eighty-five percent did. Just 49 percent of parents in couples where both mothers and fathers work full-time answered the same.

Some 52 percent of the respondents also said their job makes it harder to be a good parent, and 45 percent said that being a parent has made it difficult to advance at work.

Additionally, 62 percent of mothers who work full-time expressed frustration with balancing work and family responsibilities, compared with 47 percent of fathers who work full-time.

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/both-parents-work-full-time-majority-families-census-data-show

The Treaty Of Versailles

 By Michael Every of Rabobank

Yesterday, President Trump signed the US-Iran MoU in Versailles. It’s not a treaty, but the parallel with the one signed by Germany there on June 28, 1919, is notable: post-WW1, French Marshal Foch is widely credited with saying, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years,” because he saw it as too lenient on the loser of that war.

This MoU is also lenient on Iran, who thinks it won, and again doesn’t look like peace, just an armistice for 20 weeks – which ends two days after the US midterm elections. Indeed, even as Trump was touting the importance of the deal to avoid “economic catastrophe,” he underlined he’ll bomb Iran again if they don’t honor it.

Yet what they honor depends on whose MoU version you read. The 14-point text the US released to CNN differs in important regards from what Bloomberg was running with and the Iranian version:

• Point 1: There is a link to Lebanon but not necessarily one that forces an Israeli withdrawal. The text calls for the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts”, and “ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon”, which technically a temporary Israeli security presence does not prevent any more than heavily armed Hezbollah --counter to UN resolutions and the government’s proclamations-- does. Regardless, the IDF is so far saying it won’t withdraw.
• Point 5: The US says Iran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.” Iran says it will charge on day 61, but can that also be read that the passage is for 60 days, which would then need to be extended? The placing of a comma there could be the literal meme ‘NO MORE WAR’ > ‘NO, MORE WAR.’ The text also says Iran “will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.” Iran is taking that to mean that it can charge ‘service fees’; yet international law and GCC states may think otherwise when this is discussed.
• Point 8: The two sides “have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in paragraph seven, with the minimum methodology to be down blended on site under the supervision of the IAEA.” That additional clause is key, and while a step back vs. earlier US uranium demands is a clear deliverable else this all falls apart. Is Iran going to blink here?

Trump also thanked China and Russia for remaining “neutral” in the war, adding “it’s OK” for Iran to have some ballistic missiles, as the Wall Street Journal estimates Iran could earn up $60bn from oil revenues ahead. What that’s spent on (reconstruction, Chinese or Russian arms, or shaheed drone factories to use locally and send to Russia, etc.) is also critical.

Understandably, Iran hawks are lamenting this all as a “disaster” or “catastrophe.” Even Bloomberg underlines what was flagged here months ago: if this MoU is a TACO not a can-kicking exercise until November, it will “unravel geopolitics”, the US creating a power vacuum others will try to fill.

That’s as South Korea’s President Lee just asked Trump to solve the North Korea issue… but they already have a nuke, so what do they get given – access to Anthropic AI?

As all is in flux, the US is also working with Europe to again back Ukraine, whose drone tech now means they hold some good cards, even as the EU reopens official communication channels with the Kremlin. It seems likely that US sanctions could soon go back on Russian oil, which would see the energy complex reshuffled again.

In market terms, the IEA is now seeing a gradual Hormuz recovery tipping into a significant 2027 oil surplus, flipping the narrative entirely – unless war restarts in 20 weeks. Most things remain a passenger to that dynamic.

Ironically, but as expected, the market is trading that possible Mou TACO as dollar positive even as it actually undermines the global architecture that holds the dollar up: but since when did FX look at the long term?

In other geoeconomics, as Europe seems set for a sustained trade war vs. China ahead, the G7 agreed to set up a critical minerals alliance platform to cut their reliance on China – which, as explained here before, logically implies trade decoupling downstream too and the emergence of geopolitical trade blocs.

Meanwhile, in a changing world, the Fed under Chair Warsh is ripping treaties up, not signing them. As our US strategist notes, the FOMC left rates unchanged as expected, with an easing bias dropped, but with an unusually short statement. Indeed, Warsh just terminated forward guidance – which is arguably not such a bad idea given what happens in the Middle East is pivotal to what happens to inflation, and central banks have no idea at all about what will transpire there(?)

In cyclical terms, the June Summary of Economic Projections had already revealed that half of the FOMC participants (who submitted a forecast) expected to hike before the end of the year. Warsh did not submit his.

More importantly, in structural terms, Warsh announced the establishment of five task forces on: Fed communications (is so much needed?); the balance sheet (is so much needed?); improving data (more, better is needed, and Warsh prefers real-time numbers over backwards looking surveys); productivity and jobs (will AI allow for rate cuts?); and inflation frameworks (where things will get even more interesting).

Just as many suspect there is more drama ahead in Hormuz, and that it will never go back to being what it was until recently, the same may be true for the Fed.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/treaty-versailles