Video and audio evidence from the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband was released Friday, showing for the first time the sequence of events that ended with 82 year-old
Paul Pelosi
being knocked unconscious with a hammer as police officers tackled his assailant.
Some of the evidence was previously shown in court proceedings in the case against David DePape, who is being held without bond on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse in the Oct. 28 attack on Mr. Pelosi. Mr. DePape has pleaded not guilty.
The evidence released Friday, which includes police body-camera footage, is the first opportunity for the public to see and hear in detail the events leading up to and including a predawn assault, which focused attention on violence aimed at politicians in the U.S.
Its release came after a coalition of news organizations filed a motion earlier this month requesting to see the evidence, which prosecutors had previously withheld. Judge Stephen Murphy of San Francisco Superior Court granted the motion Wednesday.
Adam Lipson, a San Francisco deputy public defender representing Mr. DePape, said it was, “a terrible mistake to release this evidence, and in particular the video. Releasing this footage is disrespectful to Mr. Pelosi, and serves no purpose except to feed the public desire for spectacle and violence.”
He also said the release would make it hard for his client to get a fair trial.
Mrs. Pelosi, who was speaker of the House of Representatives until earlier this month, said Friday that she had no intention of watching the newly released evidence and thanked people for their prayers.
The video begins with footage from a Capitol Police camera trained on the Pelosi home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood; it shows Mr. DePape—wearing shorts and a jacket—walking up to a rear entrance at 3:04 a.m., taking out a claw hammer from a bag and putting on gloves.
After looking around several times, he initially pushed the head of the hammer against the glass in a set of french doors. When it wouldn’t open, he swung with full force 16 times until the glass shattered and then pushed his way through, shoulder first.
The next evidence released is audio of Mr. Pelosi’s call to 911 a few minutes later, in which he tried to convey to a dispatcher that he needed help.
Mr. Pelosi told Mr. DePape he had to use the bathroom and called 911 from a phone charging there, a person with knowledge of the incident previously said.
“I guess I called by mistake,” Mr. Pelosi said at first to the operator. After she asked if he needed help, he told her, “There’s a gentleman here just waiting for my wife to come back,
Nancy Pelosi.
She’s not going to be here for days, so I guess we’ll have to wait.”
When asked by the 911 operator if he knew the man, Mr. Pelosi said he didn’t. Mr. DePape can then be heard saying, “My name is David. I’m a friend of theirs.”
Mr. Pelosi then hung up after saying, “He wants me to get the hell off the phone.”
Body camera footage of two San Francisco police officers dispatched to the home subsequently show them knocking on the front door. Mr. Pelosi opened the door, looking disheveled and not wearing pants, with his hand on a hammer that Mr. DePape is holding. After an officer asks, “What’s going on, man?”, Mr. DePape answered “Everything’s good.”
An officer then ordered him to “drop the hammer,” after which the suspect answered “Um, nope” and began struggling with the smaller Mr. Pelosi for control. He quickly pinned the older man’s right arm to free the hammer and then raised it over his head to strike Mr. Pelosi.
A door obscures Mr. Pelosi at this point, but the footage then shows the officers tackling Mr. DePape and handcuffing him as he lies on the floor, partially atop Mr. Pelosi, who appears to be unconscious.
Mr. Pelosi was treated at a local trauma center and later released home, where his wife said he faced a long recovery. Mrs. Pelosi said Friday that her husband is making progress on his recovery, but it will take more time.
Parents and doctors are looking for new strategies to help adolescents with obesity. One controversial approach drawing the interest of some families is intermittent fasting, which limits people to eating for just a part of the day or week.
Intermittent fasting has gained traction among adults who use it to try to manage weight and improve health. Doctors have largely avoided trying it with adolescents out of concern that introducing a fasting period to their schedules might result in nutritional gaps or trigger eating disorders when teens are rapidly growing and developing.
Now, a small number of doctors and researchers are evaluating types of intermittent fasting in adolescents, searching for solutions as rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes rise. One pediatric endocrinologist in Los Angeles is launching a clinical trial looking at eating within a set time window in adolescents with obesity. Researchers in Australia are completing a separate trial, the results of which they expect to publish later this year.
Roughly one-fifth of children in the U.S. are considered obese, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pediatricians are so concerned that the American Academy of Pediatrics for the first timethis month recommended physicians offer weight-loss drugs for children with obesity.
Any approach that limits when and how an adolescent eats must be handled cautiously, doctors say.
Families and doctors need to be very careful with any form of intermittent fasting in youth as it can be a slippery slope with a potential risk of eating disorders, says
Jason Nagata,
a pediatrician and eating-disorder specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Doctors have also raised questions about the potential long-term effects of intermittent fasting on developing bodies.
Courtney Peterson,
an associate professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies intermittent fasting in adults, says she would be worried about adolescents’ getting enough nutrients. “I think it’s worth testing but testing with caution,” she says.
Her research has found that adults with obesity who ate between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. lost on average an extra 5 pounds more than a control group eating over 12 hours or more, and adults with prediabetes who ate over a six-hour period starting early in the day showed improvements in blood-sugar levels.
Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term for eating strategies that involve fasting. One such strategy, time-restricted eating, or TRE, limits eating to a set number of hours a day—often eight—with no limitations on what or how much you eat. In the remaining hours, you refrain from eating or drinking except for water.
Alaina Vidmar,
a pediatric endocrinologist and obesity-medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, is starting a clinical trial to evaluate whether an eight-hour window of eating, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., results in changes in insulin and glucose response for teens with obesity.
The researchers are also looking at weight loss and body-fat mass, as well as blood pressure and cholesterol.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Is intermittent fasting a good strategy to combat childhood obesity? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.
The research stems from conversations Dr. Vidmar had with families of patients with obesity in recent years. Some had asked her about time-restricted eating, or had tried it and said they liked it. She tested the concept in teenagers with obesity to see if setting an eight-hour window of eating was feasible in a pilot study published in the journal Nutrients in 2021.
“They enjoyed doing it, they felt like their whole family could do it, and over time they were losing weight,” Dr. Vidmar says of the teens.
Now, her lab is enrolling 100 youth between 12 and 21 years old with Type 2 diabetes and obesity in a 12-week trial. Participants are screened and monitored for any negative eating behaviors, she says. So far, she hasn’t found that time-limited eating “impacts eating behaviors or worsens disordered eating in any way,” she says.
In Australia, researchers are studying how teens with obesity respond to a different form of fasting called intermittent energy restriction.
In this approach, for three days a week you eat roughly one-quarter of the calories you normally do, says
Natalie Lister,
a researcher and dietitian at the University of Sydney. On the other four days, you have no calorie limits.
Dr. Lister says she and colleagues started looking into intermittent fasting in adolescents with obesity a few years ago when patients started asking about it. They conducted a pilot trial with 30 adolescents, published in 2019. Now, the researchers are completing a trial whose results they expect to publish later this year.
The health team monitors for eating disorders and depression, and the study doesn’t enroll anyone with a high risk of disordered eating, says Dr. Lister. Dietitians provide guidelines to help ensure participants are meeting nutritional requirements.
In adults with obesity, the data on TRE is mixed when it comes to weight loss, but two systematic reviews of the existing research both found a modest weight-loss benefit overall, says Dr. Peterson. Studies have also found that adults experience improvements in measures such as insulin resistance, reducing blood-glucose levels, particularly when their eating window starts early in the day.
Matthew Muros, a 15-year-old in Carson, Calif., struggles with his weight and prediabetes. Matthew participated in Dr. Vidmar’s pilot studies last year. The first two weeks were challenging, he notes.
“I did feel really hungry. I just kept on drinking water,” he says.
He says it got easier, and when the study was over he decided to stick with the schedule. He has lost about 30 pounds, and his blood-glucose levels have improved.
He has also changed his diet, having less soda, fast food and carbohydrates. “I’m trying to eat a little bit more healthy,” he says.
For the first time ever, experts with the American Academy of Pediatrics are recommending proactive medical intervention against childhood obesity. The organization’s new guidelines will no longer ask doctors to simply observe or delay treatment in children with obesity, defined as a body mass index over 30. They instead now emphasize a range of options, such as dietary and lifestyle counseling for younger children as well as medications and/or surgery for children 12 and over.
Past standards for treating childhood obesity have called for “watchful waiting,” the hope being that a child’s BMI (a measure of both weight and height) would naturally lower over time as they grew. In 2007, the AAP’s previous recommendations promoted a step-based approach, where doctors might slowly escalate from observation to treatment. But these new recommendations—released Monday—are the first clinical practice guidelines to put obesity treatments front and center.
“There is no evidence that ‘watchful waiting’ or delayed treatment is appropriate for children with obesity,” said Sandra Hassink, one of the authors behind the guidelines and vice chair of the AAP Clinical Practice Guideline Subcommittee on Obesity, in a statement released by the organization. “The goal is to help patients make changes in lifestyle, behaviors or environment in a way that is sustainable and involves families in decision-making at every step of the way.”
The lengthy guidelines outline a multitude of available treatments, depending on a child’s age and other circumstances (children under 2 are not considered eligible for obesity treatment).
For younger children, these options can include intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment, which can involve regular counseling sessions with the child and family over a 3- to 12-month period. For children 12 and over, doctors are now advised to consider medications as a front-line option. And teens 13 and over can also be evaluated for bariatric surgery as a potential treatment.
In crafting its recommendations, the AAP cites many studies suggesting that the benefits of these treatments outweigh any potential risks they can carry. Patients who have undergone bariatric surgery seem to have a lower risk of developing obesity-related complications such as type 2 diabetes and have a longer life expectancy when compared to non-surgical patients matched in age and baseline BMI, for instance. Long-term health benefits have been seen in teen bariatric patients specifically, too.
A new class of medication, called incretins, has also greatly changed the landscape of obesity treatment in recent years. These drugs, combined with diet and exercise, have led to far larger weight loss on average than most other treatments and are approaching the typical results seen with bariatric surgery.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration extended the approval of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, the first drug of this new generation, to children over 12, following clinical trial data showing that teens saw a similar improvement in BMI as adults. The shortages that have plagued Wegovy’s rollout since its approval in June 2021 may finally be over as well, with the company recently announcing that its supply should now be stable. Without insurance coverage, which is often limited, the drug can still cost over $1,000 a month, however.
The AAP’s guidelines arrive at a time when the rise in U.S. obesity rates, including among children, has only accelerated, likely in part due to the covid-19 pandemic. The new recommendations notably do not cover how best to prevent obesity in children, though the organization has promised to release separate recommendations for that in the near future.
“The medical costs of obesity on children, families and our society as a whole are well-documented and require urgent action,” said lead author Sarah Hampl in a statement. “This is a complex issue, but there are multiple ways we can take steps to intervene now and help children and teens build the foundation for a long, healthy life.”
A queue of ambulances outside the Royal London Hospital emergency department on Nov. 24, 2022, in London. In the U.K., the number of “economically inactive” people — those neither working nor looking for a job — between the ages of 16 and 64 rose by more than 630,000 since 2019.
Leon Neal/Getty Images
LONDON — Along with sky-high inflation and energy costs, a Brexit-related trade tailspin and a recession in progress, the U.K. economy is being hammered by record numbers of workers reporting long-term sickness.
The Office for National Statistics reported that between June and August 2022, around 2.5 million people cited long-term sickness as the main reason for economic inactivity, an increase of around half a million since 2019.
The number of “economically inactive” people — those neither working nor looking for a job — between the ages of 16 and 64 has risen by more than 630,000 since 2019. Unlike other major economies, recent U.K. data shows no sign that these lost workers are returning to the labor market, even as inflation and energy costs exert huge pressure on household finances.
The U.K. avoided mass job losses during the Covid-19 pandemic as the government’s furlough program subsidized businesses to retain workers. But since lockdown measures were lifted, the country has seen a labor market exodus of unique proportions among advanced economies.
In its report last month, the ONS said a range of factors could be behind the recent spike, including National Health Service waiting lists that are at record highs, an aging population and the effects of long Covid.
“Younger people have also seen some of the largest relative increases, and some industries such as wholesale and retail are affected to a greater extent than others,” the ONS said.
Though the effects of the issues mentioned above haven’t been quantified, the report suggested the increase has been driven by “other health problems or disabilities,” “mental illness and nervous disorders” and “problems connected with [the] back or neck.”
Legacy of austerity
Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, told CNBC the scale of the labor market depletion is likely a combination of long Covid; other pandemic-related health issues such as mental illness; and the current crisis in the NHS.
On top of that, he noted that factors that hurt public health directly — such as increased waiting time for treatment — could have a knock-on effect: people may have to leave the workforce to care for sick relatives.
“It’s worth remembering the U.K. has been here before, arguably at least twice. In the early 1990s, the U.K. saw a sharp recovery, with falling unemployment, after ‘Black Wednesday,’ but it also saw a large, and lasting, rise in the number of people claiming incapacity-related benefits,” Portes said, adding that not working is generally bad for both health and employability.
“The government clearly isn’t doing very much about this. Apart from resolving the crisis in the NHS, the other key policy area is support for sick and disabled people to get back to work, and there’s not nearly enough happening on this — instead the government is harassing people on Universal Credit with penalties and sanctions which we know don’t help much.”
In his recent Autumn Statement, Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt announced that the government will ask over 600,000 people receiving Universal Credit — a means-tested social security payment to low income or unemployed households — to meet with a “work coach” in order to establish plans to increase hours and earnings.
Hunt also announced a review of the issues preventing re-entry into the job market and committed £280 million ($340.3 million) to “crack down on benefit fraud and errors” over the next two years.
Although the pandemic has greatly worsened the health crisis leaving a hole in the U.K. economy, the rise in long-term sickness claims actually began in 2019, and economists see several possible reasons why the country has been uniquely vulnerable.
Portes suggested that the government’s austerity policies — a decade of sweeping public spending cuts implemented after Former Prime Minister David Cameron took office in 2010 and aimed at reining in the national debt — had a significant part to play in leaving the U.K. exposed.
“The U.K. was particularly vulnerable because of austerity — NHS waiting lists were rising sharply, and performance/satisfaction was falling sharply, well before the pandemic,” Portes said.
“And support for those on incapacity and disability benefits was hollowed out in the early 2010s. More broadly, austerity has led to a sharper gradient in health outcomes by income/class.”
Inequality and surging waiting lists
That’s borne out in the national data: The ONS estimates that between 2018 and 2020, males living in the most deprived areas of England on average live 9.7 years fewer than those in the least deprived areas, with the gap at 7.9 years for females.
The ONS noted that both sexes saw “statistically significant increases in the inequality in life expectancy at birth since 2015 to 2017.”
In the aftermath of the pandemic, NHS waiting lists grew at its fastest rate since records began in August 2007, a recent House of Commons report highlighted, with over 7 million patients on the waiting list for consultant-led hospital treatment in England as of September.
However, the report noted that this isn’t a recent phenomenon, and the waiting list has been growing rapidly since 2012.
“Before the pandemic, in December 2019, the waiting list was over 4.5 million – almost two million higher than it had been in December 2012, a 74% increase,” it said.
“In other words, while the rise in waiting lists has been accelerated by the pandemic, it was also taking place for several years before the pandemic.”
Former Bank of England policymaker Michael Saunders, now a senior policy advisor at Oxford Economics, also told CNBC that the U.K. has been particularly badly affected by Covid in terms of severity, and that some of this may have been the result of the country’s higher rates of preexisting health conditions — such as obesity — which may have been exacerbated by Covid.
“The U.K. is a relatively unequal country, so that may be part of the reason why even if we’ve had the same Covid wave as other countries, we might get a bigger effect on public health, because if you like you have a greater tail of people who would be worst affected by it,” he added.
Saunders suggested that any growth strategy from the government should include measures to address these health-care challenges, which are now inextricable from the labor participation rate and the wider economy.
“It’s not just a health issue, it’s an economic issue. It’s important in both ways. I think it’s important enough as a health issue, but it merits extra importance because of the effects on potential output which then feed through to these other economic problems.”
As inflation has kept prices high in 2022, Social Security beneficiaries may look forward to a record high cost-of-living adjustment in 2023.
“Your Social Security benefits will increase by 8.7% in 2023 because of a rise in cost of living,” the Social Security Administration states in the annual statements it is currently sending to beneficiaries.
The 8.7% increase will be the highest in 40 years. It is also a significant bump from the 5.9% cost-of-living increase beneficiaries saw in 2022.
The increase is “kind of a double-edged sword,” according to Jim Blair, a former Social Security administrator and co-founder and lead consultant at Premier Social Security Consulting, which educates consumer and financial advisors on the program’s benefits.
More from Personal Finance: Why more workers need access to retirement savings If you’re unretiring, avoid this Social Security surprise Why long Covid may be ‘the next public health disaster’
“It’s good for people on Social Security,” Blair said. “It’s not so good for the economy with inflation.”
Social Security benefit checks will reflect the increase starting in January.
The average retiree benefit will go up by $146 per month, to $1,827 in 2023 from $1,681 in 2022, according to the Social Security Administration The average disability benefit will increase by $119 per month, to $1,483 in 2023 from $1,364 in 2022.
What’s more, standard Medicare Part B premiums will go down by about 3% next year to $164.90, a $5.20 decrease from 2022. Medicare Part B covers outpatient medical care including doctors’ visits.
Monthly Part B premium payments are often deducted directly from Social Security checks. Due to the lower 2023 premiums, beneficiaries are poised to see more of the 8.7% increase in their monthly Social Security checks.
“The good news about these letters is people are realizing 100% of the 8.7% lift,” said David Freitag, a financial planning consultant and Social Security expert at MassMutual.
“Of course, the economy is inflated at a frightful rate, but this represents the value of cost-of-living adjusted benefits from Social Security,” Freitag said.
Few other income streams in retirement offer cost-of-living adjustments, he noted.
What to look for in your Social Security statement
Justin Paget | Digitalvision | Getty Images
If you’re wondering how much more you stand to see in your checks, the personalized letter from the Social Security Administration will give you a breakdown of what to expect.
That includes your new 2023 monthly benefit amount before deductions.
It will also tell you your 2023 monthly deduction for premiums for Medicare Part B, as well as Medicare Part D, which covers prescription drugs.
The statement will also show your deduction for voluntary tax withholding.
The good news about these letters is people are realizing 100% of the 8.7% lift.
David Freitag
financial planning consultant and Social Security expert at MassMutual
After those deductions, the statement shows how much will be deposited into your bank account in January.
Of note, you do not necessarily have to be receiving Social Security checks now to benefit from the record 2023 increase, Blair noted.
“The good news is you don’t have to apply for benefits to receive the cost-of-living adjustment,” Blair said. “You just have to be age 62 or older.”
When you may pay Medicare premium surcharges
If your income is above a certain amount, you may pay a surcharge called an income related monthly adjustment amount, or IRMAA, on Medicare Parts B and D.
This year, that will be determined by your 2021 tax returns, including your adjusted gross income and tax-exempt interest income. Those two amounts are added together to get your modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI.
In 2023, those IRMAA premium rates kick in if your modified adjusted gross income is $97,000.01 or higher and you filed your tax return as single, head of household, qualifying widow or widower or married filing separately; or $194,000.01 or higher if you are married and filed jointly.
Notably, just one dollar over could put you in a higher bracket.
“It’s important for everyone to make sure that the amount of adjusted gross income that they’re using for the IRMAA surcharges agrees with what they filed on their tax return two years ago,” Freitag said.
If the information does not match, you “absolutely need to file an appeal,” he said.
Because the IRMAA surcharges can be extremely significant, that is an area to watch for errors, Freitag said.
When to appeal your Medicare surcharges
If your income has gone down since your 2021 tax return, you can appeal your IRMAA.
That goes if you have been affected by a life changing event and your modified adjusted gross income has moved down a bracket or below the lowest amounts in the table.
Qualifying life changing events, according to the Social Security Administration, include marriage; divorce or annulment; death of a spouse; you or your spouse reduced your work hours or stopped working altogether; you or your spouse lost income on from property due to a disaster; you or your spouse experienced cessation, termination or reorganization of an employer’s pension plan; or you or your spouse received a settlement from an employer or former employer due to bankruptcy, closure or reorganization.
To report that change, beneficiaries need to fill out Form SSA-44 with appropriate documentation.
How higher benefits could cost you
Andrew Bret Wallis | The Image Bank | Getty Images
As your Social Security income goes up with the 8.7% COLA, that may also push your into a different IRMAA or tax bracket, Freitag noted.
That calls for careful monitoring of your income, he said.
Keep in mind that two years in the future you may get exposed to IRMAA issues if you’re not careful.
In addition, more of your Social Security benefits may be subject to income taxes. Up to 85% of Social Security income may be taxed based on a unique formula that also factors in other income.
It is a good idea to have taxes withheld from Social Security benefits in order to avoid a tax liability when you file your income tax returns, according to Marc Kiner, a CPA and co-founder of Premier Social Security Consulting.
“Do it as soon as you can,” Kiner said of filling out the voluntary withholding request form.
To better gauge how IRMAA or taxes on benefits may affect you going forward, it may help to consult a tax advisor or CPA who can help identify tax-efficient strategies, Freitag said.
US President Joe Biden speaks about strengthening the economy for union workers and retirees in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2022.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
“No thanks!”
That’s how majorities of the public responded when the CNBC All-America Economic Survey asked if President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump should run again for president.
The survey found 61% of the public think Trump should not seek the presidency, compared with 30% who believe he should. And 70% say Biden should not run for a second term with just 19% supporting a run.
Substantial numbers in each politicians’ own party prefer their names not be on the ballot, including 37% of Republicans who don’t want Trump to run along with 61% of independents and 88% of Democrats.
For Biden, 57% of Democrats say he shouldn’t stand for office in 2024 along with 66% of independents and 86% of Republicans.
CNBC’s Democratic and Republican pollsters both believe Democrats will likely support Biden if he’s the nominee and that Republicans will support Trump. In a primary, each candidate would have a substantial level of support that could allow them to gain their party’s nod, especially against a large field of competitors who would split the vote.
Still, both pollsters pointed to the large opposition from within each party and said neither Trump nor Biden is starting off in a strong place. While Trump has announced he’s running, President Biden has yet to officially do so.
The poll of 801 Americans nationwide was conducted Nov. 26-30. It has a margin of error of +/-3.5%.
The survey found that 47% of those who think Biden should not run say age is a major reason, including 61% of Democrats who don’t want him on the ballot and 66% of seniors. By contrast, just 43% of the 18-49 demographic group cite age as a major reason. Biden turned 80 last month.
Just 8% say age is a major reason they don’t back another run for Trump, who is 76.
Biden approval ratings slip
Biden has other problems other than age. Despite a stronger than expected showing by Democrats in the congressional elections and several legislative victories, Biden’s overall approval slipped to 41% from 46% in the October survey, with his disapproval rising to 54% from 50%. The President’s economic approval slipped to 38% from 40% and disapproval rose a point to 57%.
Just 20% of the public think the Biden administration’s efforts to ease inflation are helping, a five-point decline from October; 28% believe they are hurting, a two-point decline, and 49% say they’re not making much difference, a 7-point jump.
The survey found broadly negative views on the economy and the outlook with just 14% saying the economy is good or excellent, the lowest level since 2013
When it comes to top priorities for Congress, American are unusually united: they want lawmakers to tackle inflation. 87% of the public say it should be job No. 1 and it’s the top pick for both parties and for independents.
Other issues show the more traditional divisions: reducing the deficit and spending is the second overall pick for both the public, Republicans and independents. But just 47% of Democrats think it should be a Congressional priority, compared to 84% of Republicans.
National protection for abortion rights is the second highest priority for Democrats. It was chosen by 72% of Democrats but just 39% of independents and 17% of Republicans. And 68% of Republicans say investigating the Biden administration should be a top priority compared to 38% of independents and 12% of Democrats.
Immigration and border security rank highly for Republicans but not Democrats. And Democrats strongly support Congress providing aid for Ukraine, a low priority for Republicans.
is planning to significantly expand its data-encryption practices, a step that is likely to create tensions with law enforcement and governments around the world as the company continues to build new privacy protections for millions of iPhone users.
The expanded end-to-end encryption system, an optional feature called Advanced Data Protection, would keep most data secure that is stored in iCloud, an Apple service used by many of its users to store photos, back up their iPhones or save specific device data such as Notes and Messages. The data would be protected in the event that Apple is hacked, and it also wouldn’t be accessible to law enforcement, even with a warrant.
While Apple has drawn attention in the past for being unable to help agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation access data on its encrypted iPhones, it has been able to provide much of the data stored in iCloud backups upon a valid legal request. Last year, it responded to thousands of such requests in the U.S., according to the company.
With these new security enhancements, Apple would no longer have the technical ability to comply with certain law-enforcement requests such as for iCloud backups—which could include iMessage chat logs and attachments and have been used in many investigations.
Apple has added additional methods to help users recover their end-to-end encrypted data.
Photo:
Apple
The company said the security enhancements, which were announced Wednesday, are designed to protect Apple customers from the most sophisticated attackers.
“As customers have put more and more of their personal information of their lives into their devices, these have become more and more the subject of attacks by advanced actors,” said
Craig Federighi,
Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, in an interview. Some of these actors are going to great lengths to get their hands on the private information of people they have targeted, he said.
The FBI said it was “deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only-access encryption pose,” according to a statement provided by an agency spokeswoman. “This hinders our ability to protect the American people from criminal acts ranging from cyberattacks and violence against children to drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism,” the statement said. The FBI and law enforcement agencies need “lawful access by design,” it said.
A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment.
Former Western law-enforcement and intelligence officials said they were surprised by Apple’s decision in part because the company had refrained in the past from rolling out such encryption settings for iCloud. The officials said Apple would sometimes point authorities to the iCloud as a possible means of collecting information that could be useful for criminal investigations.
Ciaran Martin,
former chief of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, said the announcement by Apple could pose legal complications for the company in multiple democracies that in recent years have adopted or weighed restrictions on technology that can’t be responsive to law-enforcement demands.
“Things will only be clearer when further technical details are given,” Mr. Martin said. “But on the face of it, existing legislation in Australia and looming legislation in the U.K. would seem to give those governments the power to tell Apple in those countries effectively not to do this.”
Last year, Apple proposed software for the iPhone that would identify child sexual-abuse material on the iPhone. Apple now says it has stopped development of the system, following criticism from privacy and security researchers who worried that the software could be misused by governments or hackers to gain access to sensitive information on the phone.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think about Apple’s new security feature? Join the conversation below.
Mr. Federighi said Apple’s focus related to protecting children has been on areas such as communication and giving parents tools to protect children in iMessage. “Child sexual abuse can be headed off before it occurs,” he said. “That’s where we’re putting our energy going forward.”
Apple released a feature in December 2021 called “Communication Safety” in Messages, which offers tools for parents that warn their children when they have received or attempt to send photos that contain nudity. The option is part of Apple’s “Screen Time” parental-controls software.
The new encryption system, to be tested by early users starting Wednesday, will roll out as an option in the U.S. by year’s end, and then worldwide including China in 2023, Mr. Federighi said.
“This development will prompt questions at home and abroad, including whether the government of China will really accept a loss of data access,” said Sumon Dantiki, a former senior FBI and Justice Department official who worked on cyber investigations and is now a partner at the King & Spalding law firm. U.S. officials have long pointed to China’s increasingly strict demands for access to data on companies that operate within its borders as a national-security concern.
In addition to Advanced Data Protection, Apple is also modifying its Messages app to make it harder for messages to be snooped on, and it will now allow users to log in to their Apple accounts with hardware-based security keys made by other companies such as Yubico.
Privacy groups have long called on Apple to strengthen encryption on its cloud servers. But because the Advanced Protection encryption keys will be controlled by users, the system will restrict Apple’s ability to restore lost data.
Apple has added additional methods to help users recover their end-to-end encrypted data.
Photo:
Uncredited
To set up Advanced Data Protection, users will have to enable at least one data-recovery method. This could be a recovery key—a long list of numbers and characters that users could print out and store in a secure location—or the user could assign a friend or family member as a recovery contact.
Over the past two decades, businesses and consumers have moved much of their data off computer systems that they control and onto the cloud—data centers filled with servers that are operated by large technology companies. That trend has made these cloud systems an attractive target for cyber intruders.
Mr. Federighi said that Apple isn’t aware of any customer data being taken from iCloud by hackers but that the Advanced Protection system will make things harder for them. “All of us in the industry who manage customer data are under constant attack by entities that are attempting to breach our systems,” he said. “We have to stay ahead of future attacks with new protections.”
As Apple has locked down its systems, governments worldwide have become increasingly interested in the data stored on phones and cloud computers. That interest has led to friction between Apple and law-enforcement agencies, along with a growing market for iPhone hacking tools. In 2020, Attorney General
William Barr
pressured Apple for a way to crack the iPhone’s encryption to help with a terror investigation into a shooting that killed three people at a Florida Navy base.
Newsletter Sign-up
Tech Things With Joanna Stern
Everything is now a tech thing. Columnist Joanna Stern is your guide, giving analysis and answering your questions about our always-connected world.
Advanced Protection will reduce the amount of iCloud information that Apple can provide to law-enforcement agencies, who frequently request iPhone data from Apple as part of their investigations. Apple received requests for information on 7,122 Apple accounts from U.S. authorities in the first six months of 2021, the last period for which the company has provided information.
Apple had already offered end-to-end encryption for some of its services, but the protection will now extend to 23 services, including iPhone backups and Photos. However, three services—Mail, Contacts and Calendar—won’t qualify for Advanced Protection because they use older technology protocols, Mr. Federighi said.
Mr. Federighi said Apple believes it shares the same mission as law enforcement and governments: keeping people safe. If sensitive information were to get in the hands of an attacker, a foreign adversary or some other bad actor, it could be disastrous, he said.
“We’re giving users the option to keep that key only on their devices, which means that even if an attacker were to successfully breach the cloud and access all that data, it would be nonsense to them,” Mr. Federighi said. “They’d lack the key to decrypt it.”
Streptococcus A — or Group A Strep (GAS) — is a bacterial infection of the throat or skin, which typically arises during the winter months.
Halfpoint Images | Moment | Getty Images
Health officials in the U.K. are warning parents to be alert after a recent spate of severe Strep A infections resulted in the deaths of at least six children.
The U.K.’s Health Security Agency issued a rare health warning Friday urging parents to monitor their children for tell-tale symptoms of the illness, which can include a sore throat, headache, fever, and body rashes.
At least six children have died of severe cases of the infection since September, health agencies said, while reported cases have risen over 4.5 times the amount seen in recent years.
What is Strep A?
Streptococcus A — or Group A Strep (GAS) — is a bacterial infection of the throat or skin which typically arises during the winter months.
While most cases are mild and often go unnoticed, it can also lead to more serious illness and complications, such as scarlet fever.
Scarlet fever is a highly contagious bacterial infection that mostly affects young children. It typically causes flu-like symptoms and a fine, sandpaper-like rash, which can usually be treated with antibiotics.
However, in rare occasions, the bacteria can get into the bloodstream and cause an illness called invasive Group A strep (iGAS).
These severe infections can be deadly, and are thought to be the cause of the recent spate of deaths.
Make sure you talk to a health professional if your child is showing signs of deteriorating after a bout of scarlet fever.
Dr Colin Brown
deputy director, UKHSA
Health officials have therefore urged parents to be vigilant for warning signs of the invasive illness, including a temperature above 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
“It is important that parents are on the lookout for symptoms and see a doctor as quickly as possible so that their child can be treated and we can stop the infection becoming serious,” Dr Colin Brown, deputy director at UKHSA, said.
“Make sure you talk to a health professional if your child is showing signs of deteriorating after a bout of scarlet fever, a sore throat, or a respiratory infection,” he added.
Cases surge post-Covid
Five of the deaths have occurred in children under the age of 10 in England, according to the UKHSA. The sixth death was reported at a Welsh primary school (elementary school) by Public Health Wales.
A further death of a 12-year-old schoolboy from London was reported Saturday, but has not yet been confirmed.
Typically, one or two children under the age of 10 die as a result of Strep A during winter in the U.K.
In the week to November 20., there were 851 cases of scarlet fever reported in the U.K., compared to an average of 186 for the preceding years.
Health officials have said there is currently no evidence that a new strain is circulating. The increase is instead likely related to high amounts of circulating bacteria and social mixing following the end of Covid-19 restrictions.
“(We) need to recognize that the measures that we’ve taken for the last couple of years to reduce Covid circulating will also reduce other infections circulating,” Dr Susan Hopkins, UKHSA’s chief medical adviser, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program Monday.
“That means that, as things get back to normal, these traditional infections that we’ve seen for many years are circulating at great levels,” she added.
The latest outbreak follows a surge in other illnesses this year, including monkeypox and a mysterious liver disease affecting children.
Some medics are concerned about the impact the latest outbreak could have on the U.K.’s already struggling National Health Service.
“The last thing we want is for A&E departments to be flooded with a new influx of worried parents,” Neena Modi, professor of neonatal medicine at Imperial College London, told the Guardian.
The UKHSA said concerned parents in the U.K. should contact NHS 111 or their local GP in the first instance if they notice early symptoms in their children, while more severe cases should contact 999 or visit A&E.
A/S flubbed the launch of its buzzy new weight-loss drug Wegovy, missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and squandering a head start before a rival could begin selling a competing product.
Wegovy is among a new class of drugs that health regulators have approved to cut the weight of people who are obese, a goal long sought by doctors and patients. Their weight-dropping potential became a viral sensation on social media. Elon Musk tweeted about Wegovy in October. And a related drug for diabetes, Ozempic, is a hot topic in Hollywood among celebrities seeking to stay thin, according to doctors.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Will Novo Nordisk A/S be able to retain its competitive edge with its weight-loss drug? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.
Yet Denmark-based Novo underestimated how big demand for the drug would be, and wasn’t ready to make enough to fill the prescriptions that flooded in after U.S. approval last year. Then a contract manufacturer halted production to address inspection issues.
“We should have forecasted better, which we did not,” Novo Chief Executive
Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen
said. “Had we forecasted that, we would have built a different supply chain.”
The missteps have proven costly for Novo, which was forced to ration Wegovy to patients who already had started taking it. The company has recorded around $700 million in sales to date, well short of the $2 billion in 2021 and 2022 sales that some analysts had projected before supply issues hit.
Novo Nordisk Chief Executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen admits the drug company misjudged how popular Wegovy would be.
Photo:
Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg News
Amber Blaylock, a music teacher from Springfield, Mo., said she has been trying to get Wegovy to help her reduce weight since hearing about the drug on TikTok and YouTube. She asked her doctor in September to prescribe it, but hasn’t been able to find it.
“Frustrated and impatient for sure,” said Ms. Blaylock, 29 years old.
To turn things around, Mr. Jørgensen said Novo has increased its capacity to make Wegovy and plans a “relaunch” early next year, which should fulfill all orders.
Novo, however, lost valuable time establishing a beachhead in the lucrative obesity-drug market before rival
Eli Lilly
LLY 1.20%
& Co. can enter. Lilly is expected to launch a similar, competing drug named Mounjaro late next year or in early 2024.
The market for anti-obesity drugs, now worth $2.4 billion worldwide, could reach $50 billion in 2030, Morgan Stanley estimates.
“Novo has left the door open for Lilly,” said BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan David Seigerman.
Mr. Jørgensen said the company can regain lost ground because of high demand for Wegovy and the large potential for what is still a mostly untapped market. He said he was unconcerned with the looming competition with Lilly’s drug, because there is room for both products.
“We disappointed physicians and patients in the first round,” he said. “The company wants to be better prepared for the second round.” Novo lists Wegovy at $1,349 a month. Some commercial insurers cover the drug.
Wegovy works by imitating a hormone called GLP-1, which occurs naturally in the body and suppresses appetite, among other effects.
Novo developed GLP-1 drugs to treat diabetes. In 2017, the company began selling semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy, under the brand name Ozempic to treat diabetes.
During the drug’s development, Novo found that weight loss was a side effect, prompting the company to probe using semaglutide to treat obesity. A key trial found that Wegovy helped people with a high body-mass index shed up to 15% of their weight, surpassing the results for older obesity drugs like Novo’s Saxenda.
Saxenda and other older weight-loss drugs had sold modestly, partly due to their limited weight loss, as well as some unpleasant side effects and the refusal of many health insurers to pay up.
Novo worked with Catalent to fill its Wegovy weight-loss drug into syringes.
Photo:
yara nardi/Reuters
Given the experience, Novo figured Wegovy sales would increase gradually. To augment its own production, Novo contracted with a single manufacturer,
Catalent Inc.,
to fill the drug into syringes. Novo said it thought it would have time to add manufacturing capacity to meet a gradual increase in demand.
Wegovy may be superior to older drugs, but “we thought it would still be a journey to open up the market,” Mr. Jørgensen said.
When Novo started selling Wegovy in the U.S. in June last year, however, demand took off. Doctors with large followings on social media touted Wegovy as groundbreaking, while users posted photos holding injection pens and shared their progress losing weight.
“Demand for these new agents has been unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my time in medicine,” said Dr. Michael Albert, a physician specializing in weight-loss treatment at telehealth provider Accomplish Health who has consulted for Novo. Many of his patients began asking about Wegovy, he said, after they heard about it in Facebook groups or on TikTok.
It took only five weeks for doctors to write new prescriptions for Wegovy at the same weekly volume that Saxenda took four years to reach, according to Mr. Jørgensen. “It’s a completely different ballgame that we’re in,” said Ambre Brown Morley, the company’s vice president of media and digital global communication.
Within weeks, supplies were strained. Novo warned that patients might experience delays in receiving their prescriptions. Then in December 2021, Catalent temporarily stopped deliveries and manufacturing at its plant after Food and Drug Administration inspections found faulty air filters and damaged equipment.
To date, Novo has recorded around $700 million in Wegovy sales compared with the $2 billion in 2021 and 2022 sales that some analysts had projected before supply issues emerged.
Photo:
JACOB GRONHOLT-PEDERSEN/REUTERS
Many people who couldn’t get Wegovy for weight loss have sought prescriptions for Novo’s Ozempic and Lilly’s Mounjaro, according to analysts, even though the FDA hasn’t approved the latter two drugs for such use. Ozempic sales increased so much that certain doses are in short supply through at least January, the FDA said.
Lilly is studying Mounjaro, its GLP-1-containing drug for diabetes, for weight loss.
Novo and Lilly said they don’t promote their diabetes drugs for the “off-label” use treating obesity.
A Catalent spokesman said the company is still making improvements to the plant and working with customers to limit the impact of supply constraints on patients. The company restarted filling Wegovy syringes at the facility in the spring.
Novo has been amassing a sufficient inventory before the Wegovy relaunch, Mr. Jørgensen said. When Wegovy relaunches, he said, insurance coverage will be broader than when the drug first went on sale.
Write to Peter Loftus at Peter.Loftus@wsj.com and Denise Roland at denise.roland@wsj.com
faces a difficult choice between loosening China’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policy or doubling down on restrictions that have locked down neighborhoods and stifled the country’s economy over the past three years.
Neither option is a good one for a regime focused on stability. Stock markets around the globe declined Monday as protests in China fueled worries among investors about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy.
“Xi’s leadership is in a bind,” said
Yuen Yuen Ang,
a political scientist focused on China at the University of Michigan. “If they compromise and relax zero-Covid, they fear it will encourage mass protests. If they repress more, it will create wider and deeper grievances.”
Protesters across China have directly challenged the authority of the Chinese leader and the Communist Party in scenes unthinkable just a month ago, when Mr. Xi secured a third term in power.
In Shanghai over the weekend, protesters used call-and-response chanting to demand political change. In Beijing, crowds shouted “Freedom.” In other large cities, demonstrators marched holding blank sheets of paper—a swipe at government censorship.
China experts say the protests are unlikely to translate into a leadership change, in the near term at least. But Beijing’s dilemma is a tough one. It could lift restrictions and risk a large and potentially deadly wave of Covid infections that could undermine its credibility. Or it could crack down on the demonstrators and stick with a strict pandemic strategy that large parts of the population are clearly fed up with.
All three benchmark U.S. stock indexes closed more than 1% lower on Monday as investors worried that the protests would lead to more market volatility.
Widespread and public outpourings of political grievance have been extremely rare in a country where people have long consented to obey party authorities—as long as they deliver prosperity and allow citizens relative freedom in their personal lives.
People sang slogans and chanted for political change on a street in Shanghai on Sunday.
Photo:
hector retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Police cars were parked on a Shanghai street on Monday, a day after rare demonstrations were held.
Photo:
hector retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The protests put in stark relief the fraying of that social contract, showing that the climbing economic and social costs of China’s zero-Covid policies—coupled with an increasingly authoritarian regime’s zero-tolerance for dissent—have driven many to a kind of breaking point.
Demonstrations aren’t unusual in China, but they are largely over local grievances such as unpaid wages, land disputes or pollution. Since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the party has made it a priority to prevent nationwide protests of a political nature.
The current wave of unrest started last week in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang after 10 people died in a fire. Residents contended that Covid restrictions were partly to blame for delaying rescuers and contributing to the death toll. Officials said some barriers had to be moved but attributed the delay to parked cars in the way.
In the days since, the anger has spread across China. On Monday, authorities moved broadly to prevent any new protests, including dozens of uniformed and undercover police swarming the area around a highway bridge in Beijing where a lone protester hung a banner denouncing Mr. Xi in October. On Sunday, protesters had chanted lines from the banners.
In a rare show of defiance, crowds in China gathered for the third night as protests against Covid restrictions spread to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. People held blank sheets of paper, symbolizing censorship, and demanded the Chinese president step down. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
The unrest also underlined how anger about the Covid restrictions has united people from a range of social backgrounds—from migrant workers assembling iPhones in central China and residents of the remote region of Xinjiang to college students and middle-class urbanites in the nation’s biggest cities.
“The mass protests represent the biggest political crisis for Xi,” said
Minxin Pei,
editor of quarterly academic journal China Leadership Monitor. “It’s the first time in recent decades that protesters from a broad coalition of social groups have mounted a direct challenge to both the top leader himself and the party.”
Students staged a small protest Sunday at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Photo:
Associated Press
Sudden reopening could lead to millions of intensive-care admissions in a country with fewer than four ICU beds per 100,000 people, and where many elderly still haven’t been fully vaccinated, according to public-health experts and official data. In addition, such a compromise would send a signal to the general public that mass protests are an effective means to win change, not something the government would want to encourage.
On the other hand, sticking to the zero-Covid policy could stir up even greater public resentment toward the leadership, with hard-to-gauge consequences.
The University of Michigan’s Ms. Ang and others say that the protests are unlikely to lead to any radical policy shift. Rather, one likely outcome is a mixture of selective relaxation of controls and harsh retaliation against select protesters.
Protesters and police stood on a street in Beijing on Monday.
Photo:
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
“The danger is that if the leadership responds with repression, that could take China down a vicious cycle of control, leading to more grievances, to more control,” Ms. Ang said.
China’s Covid struggle underscores the limits of a political system where a lack of public debate has made it hard to adjust policies as other countries have done.
Many public-health experts say Beijing has missed the window to put in place a gradual exit plan out of zero-Covid. For the past three years, the government has spent significant resources on building ever more quarantine facilities and expanding mass-testing capabilities, while China’s progress on developing more effective vaccines has been slow.
Partly thanks to Beijing’s early successes at stemming infections, the Chinese population has developed little natural immunity. It only has access to homegrown vaccines that are less effective than some of the global alternatives.
A neighborhood in Beijing where access is restricted because of Covid regulations.
Photo:
Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
Notably, negotiations between China and the European Union over mRNA vaccine imports from the bloc fell through nearly two years ago, according to people familiar with the matter, after Beijing insisted that Europe recognize Chinese vaccines.
Beijing has also resisted approving any large-scale adoption of the mRNA vaccine co-developed by
Pfizer Inc.
and
BioNTech SE,
a decision healthcare and foreign-policy experts attribute partly to China’s strained relations with the U.S.
Mr. Xi and the party have faced public anger before, most notably during the early days of the pandemic when emotions swelled with the death from the virus of
Li Wenliang,
a young doctor in the city of Wuhan who was punished for trying to raise an early alarm. Ultimately, much of the nation’s anger then was directed at local authorities.
In the years since, Mr. Xi has identified himself closely with the zero-Covid strategy. That is now turning him into the natural target of protesters’ fury and has also made it nearly impossible to shift course without diminishing his standing. Notably, a People’s Daily article on Sunday continued to stress the importance of unwaveringly sticking to the existing Covid-control policy.
A Covid testing station in Shanghai on Monday. The government has built quarantine facilities and expanded mass-testing capabilities, while its development of more-effective Covid vaccines has been slow.
Photo:
Bloomberg News
As repeated lockdowns kept businesses closed and pushed up unemployment, some hoped there would be a shift away from the zero-Covid strategy once an October party conclave that handed Mr. Xi another five-year term was over.
As long as the top leader felt politically secure enough, those people argued, he would want to adjust the policy to help the economy—which still matters to the leadership despite its increased emphasis on ideology and party control.
Newsletter Sign-up
What’s News
Catch up on the headlines, understand the news and make better decisions, free in your inbox every day.
Businesses and investors alike cheered when Beijing earlier this month unveiled plans to “optimize and adjust” the Covid policy, including shortened quarantine restrictions. Many market analysts viewed the step as the beginning of a gradual exit from zero-Covid.
However, as Covid cases surged again along with the colder season, local officials across the country reimposed strict restrictions for fear of putting their jobs in jeopardy. Keeping Covid under control has remained the overarching political priority for localities that are also struggling to reboot economic activity.
The contrast of China’s continued Covid lockdowns as the rest of the world has moved on became more obvious over the past week as many Chinese soccer fans have seen TV images of thousands of maskless spectators cheering in stadiums during the World Cup in Qatar.
Then came the deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where residents had struggled with lockdowns of more than 100 days, prompting protesters across the country to defy the risks of expressing dissent to seek change.
People lighted candles on Sunday in Beijing for victims of a deadly fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
