Pfizer is spending $6.7 billion to buy a Utah drugmaker with no products on the market and a focus on developing treatments for inflammatory conditions like Crohn’s disease, the pharmaceutical giant said Monday. (Mark Lennihan, Associated Press)
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PARK CITY — Pfizer announced on Monday that it plans to acquire Utah-based Arena Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion.
Arena, based in Park City, is a clinical stage company that develops immunotherapies to treat inflammatory diseases.
Mike Gladstone, global president and general manager of Pfizer Inflammation and Immunology, said that the acquisition will complement the capabilities and expertise of both companies.
“Utilizing Pfizer’s leading research and global development capabilities, we plan to accelerate the clinical development of etrasimod for patients with immuno-inflammatory diseases,” he said.
A press release issued by both companies states that the $6.7 billion includes paying $100 for each of Arena’s outstanding shares, as well as plans to pay for the acquisition in cash.
Arena’s share price increased 80% between Friday, when it was $49.94, and Monday morning, when it was over $91. Through Tuesday, the price has remained between $89 and $92.
The Silicon Slopes Newsroom said that there are potentially 3.75 million potential patents for Pfizer/Arena if the potential therapies get clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, leading to a large financial benefit to Pfizer’s Inflammation and Immunology practice.
The companies’ statement said that Arena has “diverse and promising development-stage therapeutic candidates in gastroenterology, dermatology, and cardiology.”
They have two phase 3 studies for ulcerative colitis, a phase 2 trial of three programs for Crohn’s disease and other things, and three other studies that will take over 10 years, but are over halfway through their development.
“Pfizer’s capabilities will accelerate our mission to deliver our important medicines to patients. We believe this transaction represents the best next step for both patients and shareholders,” Arena President and CEO Amit D. Munshi said.
The acquisition is expected to close during the first half of 2022.
A 22-year-old died of COVID-19 complications just weeks after delivering her daughter via emergency C-section — and she never got a chance to hold her baby girl.
Aimee ‘Jaqueline’ Ayala from El Paso, Texas was eight months pregnant when she tested positive for COVID-19 on November 7, and within days had to be hospitalized due to the virus.
Though she was able to safely give birth on November 13, Jaqueline’s condition continued to decline, and on November 30 she passed away.
A 22-year-old died of COVID-19 complications just weeks after delivering her daughter via emergency C-section
Aimee ‘Jaqueline’ Ayala from El Paso, Texas was eight months pregnant when she tested positive for COVID-19 on November 7
After several days in the hospital, doctors performed a C-section on November 13 and she gave birth to her daughter, Addison Mariand Morale
Jaqueline had been in the hospital for several days suffering from COVID-19 complications when doctors performed a C-section on November 13 and she gave birth to her daughter, Addison Mariand Morales.
But due to her condition, she wasn’t able to see the little girl after a brief look immediately after she was born.
Well enough to post on Facebook at the time, she wrote of her ‘depression and despair’ of being kept from her baby as a first time mother.
Her health worsened, though, and on November 28 she was intubated.
Due to her condition, she wasn’t able to see the little girl after a brief look immediately after she was born
Well enough to post on Facebook at the time, she wrote of her ‘depression and despair’ of being kept from her baby as a first time mother
Jaqueline died on November 30. It is unclear whether or not she had been vaccinated against COVID-19
Covid booster jabs ARE likely to protect against Omicron, scientists say
Covid booster vaccines are likely to offer good protection against the Omicron variant, experts behind a major new study say — in the first glimmer of hope since the emergence of the super-strain last week.
The body’s T-cell immune response after a third dose suggests they will continue to protect against hospitalisation and death from the new strain, according to the Government-funded trial.
It also supports the UK’s decision to use Pfizer or Moderna as boosters, with mRNA jabs turbocharging antibody and T-cell responses the most.
T-cells are thought to provide longer lasting and broader protection than antibodies which deliver an initial higher boost of protection but also see that defence fade faster over time.
Images show the drastic increase in spike protein mutations in the Omciron COVID-19 variant when compared to the Delta variant
Covid booster vaccines are likely to offer good protection against the Omicron variant, experts behind a major new study say — in the first glimmer of hope since the emergence of the super-strain last week. More than 70 per cent of the US has been vaccinated
Several states have reported having Omicron cases, leaving businesses figuring out new ways to keep its employees safe. Many businesses, including Morgan Stanley, are pushing back their return-to-the-office dates
Professor Saul Faust, trial lead and director of the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘Even though we don’t properly understand its relation to long-term immunity, the T cell data is showing us that it does seem to be broader against all the variant strains, which gives us hope that a variant strain of the virus might be able to be handled, certainly for hospitalisation and death if not prevention of infection, by the current vaccines,’ Professor Faust said.
He said T cell response was not just focused on the spike protein but ‘are recognising a much broader range of antigens that might… be common to all of the variants.’
Asked specifically about Omicron, he said: ‘Our hope as scientists is that protection against hospitalisation and death will remain intact.’
Samples from the study have now been passed to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to look at how well the Omicron variant can be neutralized by vaccines.
‘As weeks went by she just got worse and then she went into cardiac respiratory arrest. She could breathe her heart stopped,’ her sister, Kimberly Ayala, told KTSM.
At one point, she died for 15 minutes. Though she was resuscitated, she was pronounced brain dead and officially died on November 30.
It is unclear whether or not Jaqueline had been vaccinated against COVID-19.
‘Knowing she never got to hold her, that was the worst part. She loved her so much we know she did because she gave her life for her,’ said Kimberly.
On a GoFundMe page, Kimberly praised her sister’s selflessness, writing that she gave her life for her baby.
She leaves behind her daughter and her husband, Juan Pablo Morales Orozco, who has taken baby home
‘I’ve been able to take her home, hold her and sleep with her. She has been a strength… she’s the one carrying me instead of me carrying her,’ he said
‘She was such a beautiful person inside and out,’ her sister wrote on a GoFundMe page
‘She was such a beautiful person inside and out,’ she wrote in Spanish, adding that her sister ‘fought for the lives of babies outside the abortion clinic.’
‘Although she could not hold her baby in her arms, she shows us the love of a mother for her baby. She gave everything for the life of her baby,’ she continued in Spanish.
She leaves behind her daughter and her husband, Juan Pablo Morales Orozco, who has taken baby home.
‘I’ve been able to take her home, hold her and sleep with her. She has been a strength… she’s the one carrying me instead of me carrying her,’ he said.
It is not clear if Ayala caught the new omicron variant which is rapidly spreading across the US and the world.
The WHO warned it could take weeks to determine how infectious the variant is, but it appears to cause less severe illnesses than other variants like Delta.
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Militants fired on a police bus in the Indian region of Kashmir on Monday, killing at least two officers and wounding more than a dozen, the police said, just three days after a similar attack left two policemen dead.
Kashmir, disputed between India and Pakistan, has long endured clashes between separatist insurgents and government forces, and the violence has escalated recently as strict security protocols imposed in 2019 and pandemic restrictions have been lifted. Pakistan, which contains a part of Kashmir, also claims the Indian portion, and there have been repeated conflicts along the boundary separating them.
The attack on Monday, on the outskirts of the largest Kashmiri city, Srinagar, took place in a highly guarded area home to major Indian security establishments operating in the region. In the attack three days earlier, gunmen fired on a squad of officers patrolling streets in northern Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir was India’s only Muslim-majority state, with a degree of autonomy, until August 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government drastically changed the region’s political status. It stripped the region of its autonomy and its status as a state, and placed it under the direct control of New Delhi.
Mr. Modi’s government sent in thousands of troops, detained many people without charges, cut off Kashmir’s internet and phone access to the outside and imposed a kind of lockdown. The moves were meant to smother militancy in Kashmir, but critics feared it would only heighten the region’s troubles.
“I think the question has been since August 2019 when things would go bad again,” said Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the United States Institute of Peace, a group funded by the U.S. Congress.
“There has been an assumption that the Indian government would have a perpetual capacity to maintain a security crackdown such that you wouldn’t see this kind of violence happen again, but that is a challenging and very costly thing to do,” he added. “You let up a little bit, that creates openings. That’s why critics thought it was ill-advised to begin with.”
Rather than a changed political landscape in Kashmir, Monday’s attack highlighted old, lingering tensions, experts said.
Police officials at the scene said the assailants tried to board the bus carrying about two dozen policemen returning to their base Monday evening. Unable to get on the bus, the attackers sprayed it with gunfire and fled.
Mr. Modi was seeking more information and had expressed condolences to the officers’ families, the prime minister’s office said on Twitter.
Protests and bouts of violence have erupted across Kashmir in recent months. The Indian government’s move in 2019 split the region into two federally controlled territories. One of those territories, Ladakh, perched high in the Himalayas on the Chinese border, observed a complete shutdown on Monday, demanding full statehood.
India has deployed additional paramilitary soldiers to try to tamp down the violence. Observers say the fresh attack is likely to increase tensions between the residents and the police, hundreds of whom have lost their lives fighting the insurgency since it erupted in the late 1980s.
Mehbooba Mufti, a former top elected official who governed the region in a coalition with Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — a partnership that ended abruptly in 2018 — said on Twitter that the attack on Monday belied the government’s claims of having restored control and calm.
“Terribly sad to hear about the Srinagar attack in which two policemen were killed,” Ms. Mufti wrote. The “false narrative of normalcy in Kashmir stands exposed yet there has been no course correction,” she added.
Government forces reported killing two insurgents earlier on Monday, and there was speculation that the attack on the police bus could have been in retaliation.
Officials said they had received a tip about militants moving around Srinagar. They set up checkpoints to frisk travelers.
“Two suspected persons on noticing the police party fired indiscriminately upon them. In the ensuing encounter, two terrorists were neutralized on spot,” the police said in a statement.
Minutes after that shootout, protests and clashes broke out in the area and angry residents, including women, threw rocks at the police vehicles and chanted anti-India slogans. Security forces dispersed the crowds with tear gas.
As the clashes continued, a resident, Arshid Malik, splashed the blood of the killed militants with water.
“They are killing people on the streets here everyday,” he said. “And the world is watching.”
Tuesday night, or in the coming days, Stephen Curry will drain yet another 3-point shot in a career defined by them. This one — No. 2,974 — will make him statistically what he already is in fact: The greatest shooter in the game’s history.
There will be stories, highlights, praise, applause and the appropriate focus on this monumental accomplishment, and on Curry’s stunning, still-running career.
But in front of Steph and still within his grasp — stretching before him this season and likely in the seasons to come, past this singular achievement — is a chance to do more than passing Ray Allen for the NBA’s 3-point record. This opportunity is nothing less than a shot at solidifying himself as one of the five greatest players of all time.
Curry does not fit the mold of an all-timer, and that has always been both part of his appeal with fans and part of the at-times (if now mostly expired) soft criticism from his contemporaries. Five years ago, in the midst of his run of back-to-back MVPs, more than a few handlers of NBA stars would happily order another drink if you’d humor them on the supposed overrated-reality of Curry.
He’s smaller and less-explosive looking than Jordan, Kareem, Shaq, Kobe, LeBron, etc. But greatness isn’t measured in the skills that could make something so, or in pure athletic superiority.
Greatness is measured in what is so, and done, and won — and Curry, after this 3-point record falls, will lead the NBA’s best team. That rejuvenated Golden State Warriors squad, spurred on again by their star, could very well position Curry to tack on a third Most Valuable Player award and, more important in terms of legacy, a fourth NBA title.
Which, not for nothing, would give him just as many championships as LeBron James.
Sometimes one star’s greatness can be unfairly dimmed in the light of another all-time great. Think Tim Duncan aside Kobe Bryant for most of their careers. Think Isiah Thomas sandwiched between Larry Bird-Magic Johnson on one side and Michael Jordan on the other.
Steph is in a similar boat. He does not match LeBron James for sheer physicality, or a host of other on-court measurements of greatness. LeBron is, put simply, shockingly talented and accomplished in almost every way a basketball player can be. He could end his career as the NBA’s all-time scoring leader and as the game’s third- or fourth-best ever on the all-time assist list, to name a few.
But Steph has his own unique Mount Rushmore resume, one currently incomplete for a top five all-time player but certainly within reach. He’s the greatest shooter of all time, a fact soon to be burnished by the record he will almost certainly set Tuesday against the New York Knicks at the Garden. He, like Jordan, has defined a generation of the sport and called forth a next generation crafted in his image — imitators of not his skill but of how he’s changed the game. Steph’s greatness, while not as overpowering as LeBron’s or deep in its breadth, nonetheless synthesizes rare talent into championships while defining a long span of the game.
Steph, unlike LeBron, never left to find rings. There is no Miami Heat stop to learn to be a champion. There is no Los Angeles Lakers defection. There is just the Warriors. Even his recruitment of a star — Kevin Durant — was more about Steph’s ability to attract greatness and enhance it than, say, bolt for greener pastures or pull strings behind the scenes to bring in a player still under contract elsewhere.
That’s not a knock at LeBron. But it is a notch for Steph.
The Lakers seem much less likely this year, and in the years ahead, to win titles than the Warriors. The idea of Steph claiming a fourth title, and LeBron not winning another one, is certainly plausible.
And there’s this: How many players, exactly, has LeBron James turned into a Hall of Famer? Steph’s done it for two.
I’m not arguing Steph can pass LeBron on the all-time list. LeBron’s going to end his career no lower than No. 2, and much more likely as the sole GOAT. But it is to say Steph can cut down the distance between them in a way not enough see, nor acknowledge.
Today’s a pretty good day to take notice.
LeBron’s been on a quest for No. 1 all-time status since he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated as “The Chosen One.” Steph’s own pursuit — as a possible top five all-time player — has not gotten the same attention, respect or acknowledgment.
All-time greats at the close of their careers can burnish — or make — their legacies. John Elway won two Super Bowls in his last two NFL seasons, saving the Broncos legend from being a lesser version of Dan Marino.
Peyton Manning’s second and final ring also came with the Broncos, a last run to glory more about defense than Manning’s actual play that year — but no less impactful for his all-time status.
Duncan’s 2015 title tied him with Kobe with five, linking them, for me, in a way we can’t yet rule out for Steph and LeBron. Phil Mickelson won the PGA at age 50 last year. Tiger Woods took the Masters in 2019 after more than a decade-long drought. Clayton Kershaw’s win with the Dodgers in last year’s World Series is similarly legacy changing, and comes nearer the end of his career than the beginning.
Point is: The measurements of greatness and the impact of a career can’t be properly understood until that career is truly over. Steph’s isn’t. LeBron was just named Western Conference Player Of The Week, but it’s his quiet rival who has the larger chance at more titles and MVPs.
And to do it post-Durant, in his 30s, after so many dismissed the once-dominant Warriors as a thing of the past? That’s its own incredible accomplishment, if Steph can indeed carry his team to that place again.
“We’re all witnesses to what Steph Curry has done in his career and the way that he’s changed the game,” LeBron told reporters last week. “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime basketball player.”
Yes, he is. And in the end, Curry’s career, while not exceeding the King’s, may come closer than few thought possible.
Magic-Bird.
Kobe-Duncan.
And maybe, when we look back years later, we’ll assign this time its own unexpected name: The LeBron-Curry era.
Republican lawmakers are demanding answers after the State Department removed Nigeria from a watch list for countries that raised “particular concern” about religious freedom.
In a Monday letter to Secretary Antony Blinken, seven GOP senators requested the department place Nigeria back on the list, which includes countries like North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
The African nation has been rocked by attacks from groups like Boko Haram and punishes individuals who violate its blasphemy laws. Last year, the Trump administration placed Nigeria on that list but the Biden administration released an updated list In November that omitted Nigeria ahead of Blinken’s visit to the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gives a speech on U.S. Africa Policy at the Economic Community of West African States in Abuja, Nigeria, on Nov. 19, 2021. (ANDREW HARNIK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Parents of abducted schoolboys wait outside a camp to receive their children upon their release in Katsina, Nigeria, on Dec. 18, 2020. (KOLA SULAIMON/AFP via Getty Images)
“We find this development alarming given Nigeria’s appalling record,” wrote Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., James Lankford, R-Okla., Kevin Kramer, R-N.D., Mike Braun, R-Ind., James Inhofe, R-Okla., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ADVOCATES ASK BIDEN TO PUT NIGERIA BACK ON WATCHLIST FOR ANTI-CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE
“While much of the violence in Nigeria overlaps with ethnic conflicts, hostility between ethnic groups is not solely to blame. Religious intolerance and persecution is a primary factor, and it is important that the State Department acknowledge that. It is clear to us that religious freedom conditions in Nigeria have not seen consummate improvement to warrant this abrupt change in designation after such a brief period. Therefore, we urge the Department to immediately reconsider its decision and redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern.”
Their letter also asked for the department’s specific reasoning for removing Nigeria, the criteria used for that decision, and whether the “substance and/or timing of the Department’s announcement [was] made with regard to any official state travel by you or any other official in the Biden Administration.”
Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama (R) speaks during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 18, 2021. – Blinken is on a five day trip to Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW HARNIK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) (ANDREW HARNIK/POOL/AFP)
Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa – both of which have perpetrated attacks in Nigeria – were included in the department’s list for “Entities of Particular Concern.”
On Tuesday, a State Department official told Fox News: “After careful review, the Secretary has assessed that Nigeria does not meet the legal threshold for continued designation under the International Religious Freedom Act.”
When asked, the department declined to specify how Nigeria didn’t meet that threshold.
The official added that the department remained concerned about religious freedom in the country.
“Key religious freedom concerns include the arrest and detention of individuals for blasphemy or similar charges, creeping implementation of Sharia in the country’s northern states, abuses and discrimination against Shia, and failures by the government to address societal violence, including attacks on clergy and places of worship,” the official said.
“Nigeria’s insecurity is complex and based on many factors. The Department has developed a comprehensive approach not only to counter violent extremism, but to address the root causes of Nigeria’s instability, including rights abuses by authorities. [Blinken’s] visit also focused on development and transparency, without which the government of Nigeria cannot deliver on public expectations for a better future.”
FEDERAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM PANEL ‘APPALLED’ AT BIDEN ADMIN FOR REMOVING NIGERIA FROM WATCHLIST
Removing Nigeria prompted a wave of backlash from groups like the Family Research Council, which organized a coalition letter that was sent last week. The letter cites a Catholic News Agency report from July, noting that an estimated 3,462 Christians had been killed in Nigeria in the first 200 days of 2021, which equates to 17 Christians murdered every day in Africa’s most populous country.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is a federal entity that provides policy recommendations to U.S. politicians, similarly said it was “appalled” by the administration’s decision.
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“USCIRF is especially displeased with the removal of Nigeria from its CPC designation, where it was rightfully placed last year, as well as the omission of India, Syria, and Vietnam,” said USCIRF Chair Nadine Maenza. “We urge the State Department to reconsider its designations based on facts presented in its own reporting.”
Maenza linked to the administration’s 2020 report on international religious freedom, which was released in May of this year.
Fox News’ Tyler O’Neil contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — A divided Senate on Tuesday approved legislation that would raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, a move to stave off the threat of a first-ever federal default until at least early 2023.
All Democrats supported the measure, which passed the Senate 50 to 49 along party lines, sending it to the House for final passage and then to President Biden for his signature. One Republican, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, was absent, and the rest of the Republican conference opposed the measure.
The swift action came a week after party leaders announced a deal to establish a one-time fast-track process to increase the debt ceiling on a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes needed to move most legislation through the Senate.
The vote occurred with little time to spare before a potential default, which would be catastrophic for the national economy and jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States. The Treasury Department had warned that it would be unable to pay the nation’s bills soon after Wednesday, and the agency is currently using so-called “extraordinary measures,” a series of fiscal tools to delay the threat of a default.
In a statement backing the measure, the White House praised Senate leaders for “fulfilling this fundamental legislative and constitutional responsibility.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on Tuesday that the $2.5 trillion figure would be enough to punt the threat of a default past the midterm elections next year, an assessment shared by the Treasury Department, according to a person familiar with its internal estimates. The debt limit, which covers debt incurred by administrations from both parties, is currently set at $28.9 trillion.
“The American people can breathe easy and rest assured there will not be a default,” Mr. Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday. He thanked Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, for their help in setting up the process and resolving a must-pass piece of fiscal legislation before the end of the year.
A handful of Republicans, while opposed to the debt limit increase, ended their party’s monthslong blockade of debt-limit legislation by voting last week to create the expedited process. Republicans had spent months refusing to allow Democrats to take action on long-term legislation raising the debt ceiling, using the filibuster to stall any action.
Some Democrats argued that the contortions were evidence that Congress should dispose of the process altogether, rather than periodically running up against potentially catastrophic fiscal cliffs, only to set up new ones in the future.
“I think it’s very clear that this debt ceiling process has got to go,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the Finance Committee. “It is now a tool for politicians for political purposes, and it just defies common sense.”
Other Democrats suggested that the convoluted workaround was further evidence that the filibuster itself should be scrapped, or that similar exceptions should be made for other Democratic priorities.
“We have decided that we must do it for the economy, but not for the democracy,” Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, said in a speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Warnock argued that a similar special process should be created for passing voting rights legislation that has been filibustered by Republicans.
But creating such a process would take the support of at least 10 Republicans, and only one has been willing to join Democrats in support of taking up a voting rights measure. By contrast, 14 Republicans joined Democrats last week in voting to allow the Senate to take up a bill permitting the debt limit to be raised with a simple majority vote.
On Tuesday, Republicans were eager to have Democrats go on the record in support of the increase. Republicans could cite those votes in the future as they seek to criticize Democrats for excessive spending and adding to the national debt.
In a floor speech on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell made no mention of the deal he struck with Mr. Schumer to allow the increase to occur, but he noted that the debt ceiling would be raised solely with Democratic votes. He also denounced Mr. Biden’s $2.2 trillion social safety net, climate, and tax package that is making its way through Congress, warning that it would exacerbate inflation and lead to the accumulation of more debt.
Understand the U.S. Debt Ceiling
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What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling, also called the debt limit, is a cap on the total amount of money that the federal government is authorized to borrow via U.S. Treasury bills and savings bonds to fulfill its financial obligations. Because the U.S. runs budget deficits, it must borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills.
Why does the U.S. limit its borrowing? According to the Constitution, Congress must authorize borrowing. The debt limit was instituted in the early 20th century so the Treasury did not need to ask for permission each time it needed to issue bonds to pay bills.
What would happen if the debt limit was hit? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that inaction on raising the debt limit could lead to a self-inflicted economic recession and a financial crisis. She also said that failing to raise the debt ceiling could affect programs that help millions of Americans, including delays to Social Security payments.
Do other countries do it this way? Denmark also has a debt limit, but it is set so high that raising it is generally not an issue. Most other countries do not. In Poland, public debt cannot exceed 60 percent of gross domestic product.
What are the alternatives to the debt ceiling? The lack of a replacement is one of the main reasons the debt ceiling has persisted. Ms. Yellen said that she would support legislation to abolish the debt limit, which she described as “destructive.” It would take an act of Congress to do away with the debt limit.
“If they jam through another reckless taxing and spending spree, this massive debt increase will just be the beginning,” Mr. McConnell said. “More printing and borrowing to set up more reckless spending to cause more inflation, to hurt working families even more. The American people need a break.”
But Mr. McConnell has also fielded criticism from his right flank for allowing Democrats to steer the country away from a fiscal catastrophe.
“I’m sure this vicious tactic, the one used here, has not seen its last use — far from it,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. “With a blank check and a new special procedure, Democrats are able to raise the debt ceiling by whatever amount they deem necessary to accommodate their destroy America bill.”
Former President Donald J. Trump railed against Mr. McConnell in a series of statements over the weekend, charging that the senator “didn’t have the guts to play the debt ceiling card, which would have given the Republicans a complete victory on virtually everything.”
The former president continued to urge Republicans to remove Mr. McConnell from his leadership role.
On Monday, Kelly Tshibaka, a hard-line conservative challenging Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, pledged that she would not support Mr. McConnell if elected in 2022, citing his role in the debt ceiling process.
Ms. Murkowski voted to set up the fast-track maneuver, and she appeared unbothered by the prospect of having it used against her.
“I’ve just got to do the best thing that I can for the country,” she told reporters. “And this is the best thing for the country — to avoid a default.”
The world’s biggest carmaker announced Tuesday that it would invest 4 trillion yen ($35.2 billion) in developing battery-powered electric vehicles between 2022 and 2030 in a bid to mount a more serious challenge to rivals such as Tesla(TSLA), GM(GM) and Volkswagen(VLKAF).
A large chunk of that money will go toward the batteries themselves, with the Japanese company committing another half trillion yen ($4.4 billion) to the technology on top of 1.5 trillion yen ($13.2 billion) previously announced.
The automaker currently sells just a few thousand battery electric vehicles each year. But it now plans to roll out as many as 30 new models by 2030, with the aim of selling 3.5 million such vehicles per year by 2030, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said at a press briefing in Tokyo.
That would be over a third of the company’s sales last fiscal year, which totaled roughly 9 million vehicles worldwide.
The Lexus luxury brand is a huge part of the new plan, with Toyota projecting 1 million global EV sales by 2030. Toyota wants all Lexus sales in Europe, North America and China to be battery-powered electric vehicles by the end of this decade, and globally by 2035.
Catching up
While Toyota has been a pioneer in hybrid and even hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles, it has been much slower than some other major automakers to expand into the fully-electric vehicle market.
Electric vehicles, including hybrid and fuel cell cars, accounted for nearly 28% of the company’s sales in the six months ended September. But battery-powered electric cars were a tiny component of that, making up just 0.1% of total sales.
In the early 2000s, one of Toyota’s most recognizable hybrids, the Prius, was received with the sort of excitement and wait lists now seen for Tesla models. Other automakers were criticized for not making similar models at the time.
Almost 20 years after the sensation, however, it is Toyota that is playing catchup in fully-electric cars and SUVs.
Standing in front of more than a dozen electric vehicles on Tuesday, Toyoda called the new lineup “our showroom of the future” and said the manufacturer would also seek to make its factories carbon neutral by 2035.
That moves up a previous pledge from the company to become carbon neutral by 2050, which means its cars and production processes will not add carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere. Other industry players, such as GM(GM) and Mercedes(DDAIF), have made similar pledges.
“The future that we showed you today is by no means far away,” Toyoda told reporters, adding that most of the models shown Tuesday would be released over the next few years.
But competition is intensifying. Just last week, Volkswagen announced that it would raise its budget for electric vehicles, to $100 billion. The German behemoth, which has long been virtually neck and neck with Toyota in global sales, also said it hoped that 25% of its vehicle sales worldwide would be electric by the end of 2026.
Red-hot demand
EV batteries are also becoming a hot topic among investors elsewhere in Asia.
This month, LG Energy Solution, a battery supplier for the likes of Hyundai(HYMTF) and Siemens(SIEGY), announced it would go public in South Korea, with the goal of raising up to 12.75 trillion won ($10.8 billion).
The market debut, which is expected to take place in January, would be the country’s biggest initial public offering on record, according to Dealogic.
In a statement, LG Energy Solution CEO Young Soo Kwon said that the company’s IPO was about “preemptively responding to the demand for the lithium-ion battery industry, expected to see rapid growth.”
The first large real-world study of how vaccines hold up against Omicron found that two shots of
Pfizer Inc.
and
BioNTech SE’s
Covid-19 vaccine lowered the risk of hospital admission by 70% for patients infected with the highly mutated variant.
The study, by South Africa’s largest private health insurer Discovery Ltd., found that while Omicron reduced vaccine effectiveness against infection to 33% from 80% for Delta, its effect on protection against hospitalization was less marked, falling to 70% from 93%.
While the study provides important clues about how vaccines hold up against Omicron, it is difficult to draw wide-ranging conclusions from South Africa, which has a much younger population than Europe and the U.S. and also has a different mix of immunity, with high levels of prior infection but a relatively low vaccination rate. For conclusions that may be more relevant for the U.S., health authorities will look closely at the U.K., whose demographic profile and vaccination rates are more like the U.S. and where the variant is already well established.
It comes as many governments rush to roll out booster shots more widely in the hope that—as early studies have suggested—a further shot will shore up protection against Omicron.
A growing number of studies indicate Omicron is more resistant to current vaccines than previous Covid variants, though boosters seem to help. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez gets an exclusive look inside a lab testing how antibodies interact with Omicron. Photo illustration: Tom Grillo
“It’s very heartening to see this result and that we still have vaccine effectiveness [against hospital admission] that is still greater than 50%,” said Glenda Gray, president and chief executive officer of the South African Medical Research Council, which collaborated with Discovery.
The study examined 211,610 Covid-19 test results in adults reported since the beginning of September. It used that data to compare vaccine effectiveness during September and October, when Delta was dominant, with the three-week period between Nov. 15 and Dec. 7, when Omicron took hold. Discovery Health insures around 3.7 million people in South Africa.
The study—the largest to provide clues about how the vaccines hold up against Omicron in the real world—suggests that although the new strain can easily infect people who have been fully vaccinated, it is still much less likely to cause serious illness when it does. The research hasn’t yet been published or peer-reviewed in a scientific journal and scientists not involved in the research said the conclusions could change as more data emerges.
The Omicron variant was first identified by scientists in South Africa around three weeks ago and has driven a sharp rise in cases there. It has now been detected in 77 countries across the world, according to the World Health Organization. On Friday, scientists estimated Omicron’s R number in South Africa—a measure of how many people the average infected person goes on to infect—stood at 2.5, higher than any earlier variant.
New daily cases averaged 20,488 for the week ending Dec. 13, nearly double the week before. On Monday, in an indication that a large number of infections are being missed, health authorities said 31% of tests had registered a positive result.
The findings build on earlier, laboratory-based research from various groups around the world examining how well the blood of vaccinated people neutralizes the Omicron variant. Those studies found that antibodies in the blood of people who had received two doses of vaccine were much weaker against Omicron than earlier strains.
Last week, Pfizer executives predicted that the vaccines would hold up better against severe disease because the immune cells that fight the virus once it takes hold could still recognize most parts of Omicron’s spike protein, which the virus uses to enter cells.
Neutralizing antibodies act as the body’s first line of defense, aiming to prevent infection by stopping the virus from entering cells. Other parts of the immune system, such as T-cells, come into play to prevent serious illness once infection takes hold.
The Discovery study also found that protection against infection from Omicron appeared to wane over time in vaccinated people. People who had received their second dose in the two to four weeks before the Omicron period were 56% protected against infection with the new strain. That protection fell to 25% for people who had received their second dose three to four months earlier. In the study, infection referred to a positive PCR test result, so is likely to reflect symptomatic disease, the researchers said.
Protection against severe disease appeared to decline with age, but the researchers cautioned that the data was uncertain and could be complicated by a larger waning effect in older groups, who would have received their shots earlier. The researchers also found that Omicron eroded the protective effect of prior infection.
The study couldn’t examine the real-world effect of a third shot because South Africa only recently approved boosters, and hasn’t yet started rolling them out. But the researchers said it was likely that a booster would strengthen protection against infection. Pfizer and BioNTech last week said a third dose restored antibodies to a level where they could block the Omicron variant in lab tests.
“The vaccines were designed to protect against hospitalization and death,” said Shirley Collie, chief health analytics actuary at Discovery Health. “These breakthrough infections we do expect to see. This is something a boosting strategy would mitigate.”
Separately, the study found that, adjusting for various factors, including age, adults infected with the Omicron variant were 29% less likely to need hospitalization than during the country’s first wave, which was dominated by a strain known as D614G. It also found that, among those who were admitted to hospital, the disease appeared to be less serious, with 5% of hospitalized patients needing intensive care, versus 22% during the Delta wave.
The researchers said they couldn’t determine whether Omicron is inherently less virulent than earlier strains, or whether the lower rate of hospitalization resulted from a high level of immunity in the population from either prior infection or vaccination.
Officials from the World Health Organization on Tuesday also cautioned against premature conclusions that Omicron causes milder disease. And even if it does prove to be a milder variant, the sheer number of cases could lead to a surge in hospitalizations and overwhelm health systems.
“A more transmissible virus can do just as much damage or even more than one that is more severe but less transmissible,” said Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to WHO Director General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We need to see this over time.”
The South African study also found that children have a 20% higher risk of being admitted to hospital with the virus compared with the first wave, but researchers said the figure may just reflect a higher infection rate among children being admitted for non-Covid care, because hospitals routinely test all admissions.
—Alexandra Wexler Snow and Aaisha Dadi Patel contributed to this article.
Write to Denise Roland at Denise.Roland@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications The Discovery study examined 211,610 Covid-19 test results in adults reported since the beginning of September. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the study examined 211,610 positive Covid-19 test results. (Corrected on Dec. 14)
Former reality television star Jana Duggar is breaking her silence after she was charged in Arkansas with a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child.
Duggar said the charge stems from an incident “a few months ago” when one of the children she was babysitting wandered outside alone.
Jana Duggar sits for an interview on “Good Morning America” in 2016.Ida Mae Astute / ABC
“A passerby who saw the child called the police. This resulted in a written citation, as well as a follow-up with child welfare who concluded that it was an accident and the child was unharmed,” she posted in an Instagram Story on Tuesday.
Duggar said the child was safe and child welfare recognized that “it was a case of a child slipping out of the house when you turn your back for a moment.”
“It all happened so quickly and was scary,” Duggar posted. “I am grateful for law enforcement and those who protect and serve our community. I was certainly never arrested like some may have implied. In the end I was just upset at myself that it happened at all, but so thankful it all ended safely and that’s truly what mattered the most to me.”
Her sister, Jessa Seewald, also came to her defense, calling it an “innocent mistake.”
“She was babysitting and one of the kids slipped out the door unnoticed, but it ended safely. Could’ve happened to anyone,” Seewald posted in her own Instagram Story.
Seewald said she thinks the story gained attention because of “other current family circumstances,” referring to their brother Josh Duggar’s conviction in a separate, unrelated case.
On Thursday, Josh Duggar was found guilty of downloading and possessing child sex abuse images on his work computer in May 2019.
Seewald went on to say that her sister is “without question one of the most amazing women I know and I’d trust her with my kids any day of the week.”
She continued: “Do me a favor — give the girl a break, and all you perfect humans go back to living your lives.”
Jana Duggar, 31, pleaded not guilty through an attorney on Sept. 23, the court docket shows. The alleged incident happened Sept. 9, it states.
A trial by judge is scheduled for Jan. 10.
Jana Duggar appeared with her family on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” which ran from 2008 and 2015. The show chronicled the lives of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children.
Minyvonne Burke is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.
In September, Alexis Ohanian sent out a trial balloon, disguised as a tweet. “We quietly backed a team (from Apple, Beats, Uber) reviving a forgotten corner of consumer tech,” the 776 founder wrote. “The beta arrived today and the quality is mind blowing. Webcams, welcome to 2021.”
The message was accompanied by an open box, with a few identifying details — including the company’s name — pixelated out. That information, ultimately, wasn’t too difficult to come by, with the company and product’s name — Opal C1 — printed in white on the border just above the lens.
Reaction was swift. The “shut up and take my money Gifs flowed.” It was, after all, a handsome device, backed by at least one known quantity. And more pressingly, it arrived at the height of a technological pain point that’s been virtually universally acknowledged. Webcams, in a word, suck.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
That’s not any kind of revelation. It’s not like they just started sucking. It’s just that, until recently, it’s just been a thing that we’ve been able to live with. But by the fiftieth time you’ve peered into some CNN correspondent’s apartment at 480p through a coat of Crisco, you begin questioning the nature of the world.
Of course, you don’t have to appear on cable news every night to want an upgrade. Maybe you bought a Logitech — or perhaps your work splurged to jury rig a DSLR. Both cases expose what’s ultimately a huge, under-addressed market. And while at the beginning of the pandemic it may have seemed like a momentary blip, even if/when this whole thing ends, it’s clear that there won’t really be a normal to go back to.
As much as corporate offices have dragged their heels, we appear to have turned a corner on the question of remote work. It’s quickly become more rule than exception, leaving many asking the same question: Where’s the iPhone of webcams? It seems simple enough. Take all the learnings from smartphone imaging and apply them to a stagnant market.
L-R: 2020 iMac Webcam, Opal C1. Image Credits: Brian Heater
It doesn’t appear to be coming from Apple. Not in the near-term, at least. To the company’s credit, they’ve made some strides, first through digital image processing on its M1 chips and then by actually upgrading the built-in sensors. But for many, better’s not good enough. That was more or less the thinking that sent Opal’s founders down their path.
By the time Ohanian’s tweet arrived, Opal had been working on the C1 for seven months. That’s basically overnight in hardware startupland, but at the very least, they had a good-looking piece of hardware couched in nice packaging, with an air of VC mystery sprinkled in. The company says it’s now managing a 16,000-person waitlist.
“[The response] was overwhelming,” says co-founder and president Stefan Sohlstrom. “It was really gratifying for us to see. We’re the most two bullish people on what we’re building. We obviously felt like not only is the market big, that’s obvious, but the need was very deep. It wasn’t just that, sure, millions of people would buy this. It was for the people that are doing this for their job, this is an important thing for them. This is how they communicate with the world.”
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Opal’s journey officially began in November of 2020, with a simple question.
“If we were to build a webcam today, what are the technologies that are available to us that make an iPhone as close to a DSLR as possible?” says co-founder and CEO Veeraj Chugh. “We did a lot of research talking to folks in the industry, talking to users and talking to people who worked at competitors previously. The overwhelming response, ‘this should exist and the technology needs to look very, very different than every webcam that came before.’”
By December, the team raised an undisclosed seed round, and a month later, it began building a team of designers and engineers who had previously worked for companies like Apple, Google and Magic Leap.
The result is a lovinglycrafted $300 piece of hardware with a 7.8mm, 4K Sony sensor and a built-in beamforming mic mesh array. It’s unquestionably the best-looking webcam I’ve tested. I recognize that — in and of itself — isn’t saying much, but I do spend a lot of hours every day staring into one, so it might as well be nice to look at.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
It also may end up being the most capable. But here is where I hedge my bets and tell you that my hands-on time with the product has effectively entered me into beta testing. Opal is aiming for an out-of-the-box, plug and play experience — and for a company that only recently celebrated its first anniversary, it’s well on its way.
As we push closer to a kind of general availability, I’ll feel more comfortable reviewing the product. For now, I’m content to give the C1 a longer leash than I do review products. It’s an exciting new device from an exciting new company. It has problems and unfulfilled promises — more or less what you’d expect from a limited beta from a brand new company.
The device sitting above the screen of my M1 iMac is final hardware. The software, on the other hand, is still very much in beta. What I received is beginning to roll out to select customers, starting today. Per Opal:
Units start shipping to the public on December 14th. Customers on the waitlist can purchase the camera with an invite. We’re slowly rolling out to ensure the customer experience exceeds expectations – once we cross a positive threshold there, we will roll out in quantities in the tens of thousands.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
4K isn’t up and running yet. “We’ve temporarily disabled 4K video, as it is not compatible with most video conferencing apps, and it was giving users a hard time,” the company notes. “We are relaunching shortly with a stronger warning, and will be available for applications that do support, for recording videos and the like.”
Opening the beta control software on my desktop, the Audio tab is grayed out. Using the mic array up front and ambient mics on the rear, the company has some big things planned down the road:
We’re focusing on building the markets leading Noise Cancellation, and using the same learnings to build something we call Studio Sound. Studio sound allows you to sound like you’re on a professional podcast, without the $500 boom mic. Using MicMesh inputs piped through a neural net, we’ll be able to make your sound professional quality.
The sound, as it stands, is good. And by “good,” I mean work-meeting good, not going on CNN or recording my podcast good. If you do either of those things, you’re going to want to stick to that devoted mic. In the future, who knows? “Studio Sound” could be standard or maybe something for professionals to unlock as part of a monthly service pack. There are still a lot of questions to be answered during these heady beta days.
Another question the company needs to answer is how much control to give the user upfront. I realize this seems like a no-brainer, but in the world of imaging, too much control can get average users quickly in over their heads. The ideal compromise for a majority of users is good quality out of the box, with additional manual user adjustments if you dig in. Auto white balance and skin tones are both challenges ahead for the company.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
But on the whole, I’m satisfied with the image I got out of the box. I’ve done some tweaking, here and there. Having a ring light and natural lighting from windows helps, though I still find myself messing around with settings to get things where I want them.
The camera employs an artificial bokeh effect, similar to the portrait mode you find on most modern smartphones (though the company says it developed its own, in-house). I’ve only got the slider about an eighth of the way at the moment, however. When it’s too intense, it tends to blur out my ears and the sides of my face, owing to the fact that there’s no depth cameras on-board. Opal says it experimented with a stereo camera for depth, but opted not to go with it for the sake of getting the device out in a timely manner.
“I think at the end of the day, when you talk to users, they’re like, ‘just give me anything. I can’t deal with these Logitechs anymore,’” says Chugh. “So for us, speed was of the utmost importance, because we felt like we can ship something really good. We just need to be a little bit ruthless about prioritization.”
For the C1, that also means no optical zoom. It seems like an odd complaint, perhaps, for a webcam, but it’s something I’ve grown fond of, while using a DSLR desktop setup. Being able to tightly crop a shot without degrading the image quality is huge.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
“For the first camera, the more mechanical components you add, the more risk you have in the supply chain side and the manufacturing side,” says Sohlstrom. “It’s basically more to break. Canon has had maybe 50 years to get their lenses right. It’s definitely something that in the future we could do.”
For now, the system is able to do 2x zoom in 1080p without degrading the image, courtesy of the 4K sensor. The company says it could theoretically do something like 20-30x, but picture quality is going to suffer accordingly. I used my call with the founders to, in part, give a little constructive feedback. For one thing, I’d love a straight-up zoom setting. For now, the closest thing is Facelock. It’s a feature similar to something like Apple’s Center Stage and similar features on smart displays from companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
It’s honestly way too sensitive, however, and could leave you a bit seasick. Hopefully in future editions, the company will let users adjust the sensitivity or just simply zoom in. These are both pretty easy fixes. There are so bigger issues. I found with apps like Google Hangouts and Zoom and I had to turn the camera off and on a few times and/or relaunch the software. The camera also gets really hot, even when it’s not active. The company blames this on both the system’s on-board processing and downscaling the 4K image. It’s working on fixes to the above.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
For a product a brand new company started building less than a year ago, these feel like relatively minor complaints. I’m going to caution away from telling people to jump ship from their DSLRs — particularly if video quality is important to their jobs. But there’s so much promise here. The C1 is an extremely thoughtful product, from touches like a magnetic lens cap with a microfiber cloth and a coiled USB-C cable to more complex processing.
This sure feels like the future of webcams, even if it’s still got a ways to get there.
