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Tuesday, June 6, 2023
GSK : Berenberg gives a Buy rating
Berenberg is positive on the stock with a Buy rating. The target price is still set at GBX 1730.
Illumina appeals FTC order to divest cancer test maker Grail
Illumina on Monday filed an appeal against a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) order, demanding that it divest cancer diagnostic test maker Grail over competition concerns in the U.S. market for cancer tests.
San Diego-based Illumina is arguing that the FTC "violated due process by depriving Illumina and Grail of a fair proceeding before an impartial tribunal," according to the filing in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
An FTC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FTC in April ruled for a second time that Illumina's 2021 acquisition of its formerly part-owned subsidiary should be undone. An administrative law judge at the FTC had earlier dismissed the antitrust charges brought against Illumina but FTC staff won an appeal against that decision.
The FTC has been concerned that Illumina, the dominant provider of DNA sequencing of tumors and cancer cells that help match patients with the best treatment option, might raise prices or refuse to sell to Grail's rivals.
Grail, valued at $7.1 billion under Illumina's deal, is seeking to market a powerful test to diagnose many kinds of cancer from a single blood test, known as a liquid biopsy.
Illumina has pledged to continue selling its DNA sequencing services to other firms. It has offered to sign contracts to supply any of Grail's rivals and to not raise prices.
The deal also faces stiff headwinds in Europe.
In early December, EU antitrust regulators proposed measures for Illumina to unwind its acquisition of Grail, three months after blocking the deal.
Illumina has also appealed that decision on the grounds that it does no business in Europe and therefore the EU competition enforcer has no jurisdiction.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who owns 1.4% of the company, had also urged Illumina to unwind the Grail deal which he called a risky acquisition. Illumina CEO Francis deSouza, who was challenged by Icahn nominee Vincent Intrieri, survived the campaign.
'Gender-Affirming' Surgery Leaves People Lonelier and Depressed: Study
by Ben Johnson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The head of a facility that carries out so-called “gender-affirming care” has published a study confirming that transgender surgeries do not improve mental health and make people feel lonelier than those who avoided surgical intervention altogether.
“In our study, the level of life satisfaction in transgender people was not increased in transgender people who had undergone gender-affirming surgery as compared to those who were unoperated,” says a study published Tuesday in BMC Public Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
“[O]ur data indicate that transgender and gender-diverse people, who have undergone gender reassignment surgery feel lonelier” than transgender-identified people who have not elected to have surgery, finds a separate study by the same four researchers, originally published online May 11 in the journal Healthcare (Basel).
The researchers also reveal that people who identify as members of the opposite sex experienced greater isolation if they played sports. “[H]igher loneliness levels were significantly associated with … already having a gender-reassignment surgery [and] more than 4 [hours] a week of sports activities,” as “compared to no sports activity.”
The German experts collected the data informing both studies from those seeking transgender surgery at a Hamburg surgical center. The respondents were “104 transgender people who had joined self-help groups to get and share information about the gender-affirming surgeries performed at the Division [Department] of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.” The facility carries out such common transgender procedures as “labiaplasty” and “breast augmentation,” as well as “other surgical services.”
One of the authors of both studies, Dr. Marco Blessmann, has chaired that university’s plastic surgery department since its creation in 2014.
Both studies also list co-author Katharina Grupp’s affiliation as a member of Blessmann’s plastic surgery department. (The university website refers to her as a member of another surgical department. Blessman’s department states that it collaborates with other departments.)
The most recent study finds that people who identify as transgender have lower overall life satisfaction than the general population—and young people suffering from gender dysphoria have worse mental health than older people. Blessmann, et al., found 31 percent of transgender-identifying people felt “dissatisfied” or “extremely dissatisfied” with life, while 17 percent said they were “satisfied” and just 1 percent felt “extremely satisfied.” People who identify as transgender were 1,290 percent more likely to describe themselves as “extremely dissatisfied” than “extremely satisfied” with their lives.
Additionally, “higher levels of life satisfaction were associated with higher age. Previously, authors described that transgender youth was associated with disproportionally high rates of depression, anxiety, suicidality, and non-suicidal self-injury.”
“Such factors are known to be associated with lower life satisfaction,” the authors write.
The latest study, released two days before the beginning of LGBTQ “Pride Month,” is sure to provoke conversation as states debate SAFE Acts to protect minors from the transgender industry and as internet searches for such terms as “am I gay” and “am I trans” have increased 1,300 percent in 19 years, even in the most conservative states.
The latest conclusions come as no surprise to experts. “This finding is sadly consistent with other studies,” Mary Beth Waddell, director of federal affairs for family and religious liberty at the Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “One study showed that the suicide completion rate for those that had undergone surgery was 19 times higher than the general population.”
A study taken in transgender-friendly Sweden concluded, “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”
Despite those studies, members of the transgender surgery industry often insist children will commit suicide unless parents agree to submit their children to life-altering surgeries. “A common tactic was for doctors to tell the parent of a [girl], ‘You can either have a living son or a dead daughter,’” explained Jamie Reed, a far-left LGBT activist and whistleblower who worked for four years at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Scientists have long known mental illness and gender dysphoria are correlated. “Clinical evidence suggests that schizophrenia occurs in patients with GID [gender identity disorder] at rates higher than in the general population and that patients with GID may have schizophrenia-like personality traits,” said a 2014 study. “Toxoplasma infection, reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), early childhood adversity, and links with autism spectrum disorders, may account for some of this overlap.” A 2020 study found people who suffer from gender dysphoria are up to 636 percent more likely to have autism, as well.
“The only way individuals dealing with gender dysphoria will come to live happy, healthy, and authentic lives is by addressing the source of their dysphoria and pursuing healing,” Waddell told the Washington Stand. “Many of the individuals who identify as transgender do so because of trauma, abuse, adverse childhood experiences (which may or may not be traumatic), and other such reasons. Until these root issues are properly dealt with, these individuals will not be completely satisfied.”
Transgender-identified adolescents were more than twice as likely as to report childhood sexual abuse, 161 percent more likely to endure physical abuse, and 184 percent more likely to experience psychological abuse than their peers, according to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. “Transgender adolescents (TGAs) exhibit disproportionate levels of mental health problems compared with cisgender adolescents (CGAs),” reported their 2021 study, published in the journal Pediatrics. “[R]esearchers should examine how more frequent experiences of abuse during childhood could contribute to disproportionate mental health problems observed within this population.”
The evidence shows the best thing parents can do for children questioning their biological identity is to prevent them from having permanently disfiguring surgeries or potentially sterilizing hormone injections. “Even the American Psychiatric Association, which supports gender identity ideology, acknowledges that a high percentage of children will desist from feelings of dysphoria if allowed to go through puberty naturally. This is why we need to pass legislation like the Protecting Children from Experimentation Act of 2023 and the End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act of 2023,” Waddell said.
“Allowing children to go through the natural transitions of youth without interference allows them to come into their own and make wiser decisions about their future.”
Monday, June 5, 2023
Americans experiencing surge in spam text messages, financial loss up
The Federal Communications Commission is working through an increasing number of complaints about spam text messages.
The FCC reported that it received more than 18,000 complaints about spam texts last year – which typically come from unfamiliar contacts, including some numbers that appear to be "invalid" or "unused."
Cybersecurity experts are warning people that if they aren’t careful with those texts, their cell phones could get hacked, putting important information, or money, at risk.
"I was just going to be adamant about ‘delete and block, delete and block, delete and block,’" Jack Whipple said. "All day long."
Whipple said he has received more spam texts over the last year than ever before, and that the spam texts range from group chats to individual numbers pretending to be someone he knows.
"Those are kind of insidious because it really does sound like it’s coming from a friend of yours," he said.
Americans received more than 225 billion spam texts last year, according to Robokiller. That’s up from 88 billion during the year before.
"It’s very easy to get lists of phone numbers or even send them to every possible combination of phone numbers," said cybersecurity expert Alex Hammerstone. "It’s very cheap, the technology’s there and the payoffs can be huge."
Whipple hasn’t lost any money to fraud from the spam texts he has received, and he said he has made sure not to give out any of his financial information.
"If somebody is asking you for anything to do with your bank account or Social Security number or dollars, why would you respond in a text?" Whipple said.
Robokiller also reported that Americans lost more than $20 billion to scams sent in spam texts during 2022 – more than doubling the nearly $10 billion lost in 2021.
University Of Texas Students Behind Censorship Project Targeting Conservative News Outlets
by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Students at the University of Texas at Austin were found to be responsible for a censorship project that targeted conservative news outlets.
The Global Disinformation Index’s (GDI) report, which called for the blacklisting of conservative news organizations, was written up by students under the direction of academics working at the University of Texas at Austin’s Global Disinformation Lab (GDIL), The Federalist reported.
In the disinformation index, the group labeled several conservative media companies as the riskiest.
The academics in charge of the lab allegedly held an anti-conservative bias in readings of internal communications, along with several other accusations found in the over 1,000 pages of documents reviewed by The Federalist.
Publicly Funded Organization Involved in News Blacklist
The Washington Examiner investigative reporter, Gabe Kaminsky, published a Feb. 9 exclusive multi-part series: “Disinformation Inc.”
Kaminsky revealed that “self-styled ‘disinformation’ tracking organizations,” such as the GDI’s review of the top ten “riskiest American news organizations, were heavily biased against conservative outlets.
Conservative news outlets such as American Spectator, Newsmax, The Federalist, American Conservative, One America News, The Blaze, Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post, generally had the lowest ratings.
In contrast, left-leaning news publications like The New York Times and CNN were among the top 10 “least risky” in their rating system.
GDI sold its lists to marketing organizations, which led to companies pulling advertisements from blacklisted outlets and thus starving them of funding.
For example, Microsoft’s Xandr used GDI’s blacklist to limit advertising dollars, but has since reportedly dropped its use of the blacklist after the series was published, reported the Washington Examiner.
The government-funded National Endowment for Democracy was also caught granting GDI over $500,000 between 2020 and 2021, while the State Department’s Global Engagement Center similarly awarded the GDI $100,000 in taxpayer funds in 2021, wrote Kaminsky.
University of Texas Caught in Media Censorship Controversy
Meanwhile, GDI released a report with help from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin on Dec. 16, 2022, called “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in the United States.”
After the report admitting the targeting conservative outlets was published, The Federalist filed a public records request at UT Austin in February, demanding all communications related to GDIL’s work with the GDI on the news media review.
Despite actions by UT Austin to withhold some of the details of its methodology and research over concerns regarding “confidentiality of trade secrets” and “certain commercial or financial information,” the internal documents that were released revealed many concerning details.
The files showed that the GDI paid the university to have student researchers, with little training, apply the organization’s screening methodology to rate the various media outlets for its final report, which gave conservative news outlets low ratings.
GDI sold the university project to GDIL with the goal of influencing the 2022 midterms, The Federalist reported.
Student researchers were recruited by being informed that their work would be “immediately valuable” since GDI would release it early “to make waves ahead of the midterms” and affect reportage of the 2022 election.
After the team was finished, UT Austin retained any surplus funds that GDI received for the work, leading critics to question how a state-funded university could profit from such a politically biased program.
Biden Administration Continues to Fund Censorship Operations
Additional documents from GDIL further revealed that GDI had an even larger role in censorship activities than had been previously known, according to The Federalist.
It was revealed by these internal files that GDI and GDIL were also working with the Biden State Department and other prominent public and private organizations to censor conservatives.
A top lab manager on the project at UT Austin wrote in an internal email communication that GDI worked “with governments, policymakers, social media platforms, and adtech companies to defund disinformation.”
“They are instrumental in providing data to a bunch of people that I am not sure if I am allowed to talk about,” the lab manager continued, adding GDI had formal and informal relationships with “trust and safety teams at various big platforms, the most recently announced partnership is with Twitch.”
In addition, an email GDIL received from the Global Engagement Center’s “Academic and Think-Tank Liaison” showed that the State Department had developed a close relationship with a growing number of universities and publicly funded think tanks to promote the censorship of anti-progressive views, according to The Federalist.
The State Department was exposed for its dealings with the Centre for Information Resilience, whose vice president happens to be former Department of Homeland Security disinformation czar, Nina Jankowicz.
Jankowicz was pushed out of DHS by the Biden administration last year after a massive backlash caused the termination of the much-criticized censorship program.
The Epoch Times reached out to the University of Texas at Austin GSIL, GDI, and the State Department for comment.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/university-texas-students-behind-censorship-project-targeting-conservative-news-outlets
HSBC Plans Hong Kong Summit to Fill Gap Left by Credit Suisse
- Lender plans inaugural global investment summit in April 2024
- HSBC under pressure from politics, activist shareholders in HK
HSBC Holdings Plc plans to hold a new flagship investor conference in Hong Kong next year to replace the marquee event now being dropped by Credit Suisse Group AG.
The London-headquartered bank is planning to hold an event at the upscale Conrad Hotel from April 8 to 10 in the Central business district, historically the venue for Credit Suisse’s annual Asian Investment Conference. HSBC is expecting to host more than 2,000 clients and investors, pivoting off the bank-sponsored Hong Kong Rugby Sevens from April 5 to 7.