📌 Big Pharma, Haitian Kids Victims, More

The US pharmaceutical industry is pushing to revamp the law allowing Medicare to negotiate for its costliest prescription drugs.

Seven lobbyists and executives who work with top pharmaceutical and biotech companies say they are pushing to delay the timeline under which medications become eligible for price negotiations by four years for small molecule drugs, which are primarily pills and account for most medicines.

Two sources said the industry is already speaking directly with members of the Trump transition team. Medicare covers 66 million Americans, mostly aged 65 and older.

The Inflation Reduction Act gave Medicare the ability to negotiate prices directly on selected medicines for the first time, and it is considered one of the key achievements of the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden.

When drugs have no competition, the law allows the government to negotiate prices for complex biologic, or biotech, medications after 13 years on the market, but after 9 years for drugs taken as pills and capsules.

S. Sean Tu, a law professor at West Virginia University, called 13 years of market exclusivity for all drugs "a terrible idea," adding that drugmakers would have enough financial incentive to innovate with just five years on the market.

The United Nations children’s agency said children make up half of Haiti’s armed gang members and called for enhanced protection.

“The total number of children recruited by armed groups has jumped by 70% over the past year,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told a UN meeting. “They are being used as informants, cooks and sex slaves, and they are being forced to perpetrate violence themselves.”

She said that gangs regularly kill and maim children and that reported incidents of sexual violence against minors have skyrocketed this year by 1,000%.

Haiti has been rocked by instability since 2021 when President Jovenel Moise was assassinated. Armed gangs have sought to fill the vacuum, seizing up to 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and expanding their violent grip to some areas beyond.

The violence has caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, displacing over 700,000 people — of whom the UN says about half are children. A record 5.4 million Haitians are facing acute hunger.

“Why is it easier for a young person to get a gun than it is to get food? That is the defining question of the moment," said Inga King, ambassador of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, speaking on behalf of Caricom, the bloc of Caribbean countries.

The US has devised rules against exporting semiconductor technology to China to hamper advanced weapon production.

The measures, announced Monday by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, include the prohibition to China of 24 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and three related software tools. New controls also affect high-band memory exports.

Another 140 Chinese companies have been added to the department's Entity List and are now subject to export license requirements.

The department said the newly added Chinese tool manufacturers, semiconductor fabs and investment companies are involved in advancing Beijing's military modernization.

The Biden administration has prioritized domestic production and national security in controlling semiconductor technology, whose supplies were hampered by Covid. Amid the shortage, Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law to fortify US supply chains against future issues and spur domestic manufacturing.

President Joe Biden has broken his word by pardoning his son and may have tainted the Democratic Party for years to come.

Biden and his aides repeatedly stated that he would not pardon Hunter Biden, even getting testy with reporters who asked about it, before issuing a sweeping pardon once the 2024 presidential election was over.

Democrats fear it will damage not only Biden’s legacy but their credibility going forward. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation,” Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) posted on X.

“Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging no one is above the law, not a president and not a president’s son.”

While Polis didn’t say which later presidents he was referring to, Democrats are worried the pardon will undercut complaints about actions President-elect Donald Trump takes once he enters the White House early next year.

Biden has habitually used the phrase “my word as a Biden” to tout his integrity, but with that word now broken, partisans on his side of the aisle worry it will give cover to Trump. “My guess is that Trump will probably pardon some of, maybe all of the Jan. 6 terrorists,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said.

A two-year investigation into the Covid-19 outbreak that killed 1.1 million Americans says the virus likely leaked from a Chinese lab.

A 520-page report from the Republican-controlled House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic looked at the federal and state-level response, the pandemic's origins and vaccination efforts.

US federal agencies, the World Health Organization and scientists worldwide have arrived at different conclusions about the most likely origin of Covid, and a consensus has yet to emerge.

Most believe it to have spread from animals in China. Still, a US intelligence analysis said last year that the virus may have been genetically engineered and escaped from a virology lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where human cases first emerged.

The congressional panel was persuaded by the lab leak theory after meeting 25 times, conducting more than 30 transcribed interviews and reviewing more than one million pages of documents.

The probe found that lockdowns "did more harm than good" and that mask mandates were "ineffective at controlling the spread of Covid," contradicting other research showing that masking in public does reduce transmission rates.

A court in Vietnam has upheld a death sentence for a real estate tycoon after rejecting her appeal for embezzlement and bribery.

Truong My Lan, chairwoman of developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was sentenced in April for her role in fraud worth more than $12bn. This equates to nearly 3% of Vietnam's GDP (gross domestic product) and represents the country's biggest fraud case.

The 67-year-old was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules following a month-long trial. “The consequences Lan caused are unprecedented in the history of litigation, and the money embezzled is unprecedentedly large and unrecoverable," the prosecution said.

Lan and her accomplices were charged with illegally controlling the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB) between 2012 and 2022, siphoning funds through thousands of ghost companies, and bribing government officials.

Investigators said that from early 2018 to October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits, Lan appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies.

Vietnamese news outlet VnExpress reported the sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment if Lan can return three-quarters of the money embezzled.

Many of us have felt it, and now it's official: "Brain rot" is the Oxford Dictionary word of the year.

Oxford University Press said Monday that it “gained new prominence in 2024,” with its frequency of use increasing 230% from the year before. The word of the year is intended to be “a word or expression that reflects a defining theme from the past 12 months.”

Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered trivial or unchallenging.”

"Brain rot" was chosen by public vote and language analysis by Oxford lexicographers. It beat five other finalists: demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romantasy and lore.

The first recorded use of “brain rot” was by Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 ode to the natural world, “Walden.” Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl said in its modern sense, "'brain rot' speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life and how we are using our free time.”

Last year's Oxford word of the year was "rizz," a riff on charisma, used to describe someone's ability to attract or seduce another person.