Zerohedge

Why Is A British Charity Telling Migrants Not To Be 'Deceived' By Underage Girls? Authored by James Dixon via Spiked, Three words in a video that did the rounds last month made my skin crawl: 'Don't be deceived.' They might sound perfectly innocent at first pass, but in context, they are chilling. The footage in question comes from a recorded session apparently run by the Aberdeen-based Mamacita Foundation, a charity that works with asylum seekers. The subject in question is sexual consent - more specifically, the age of consent. In the footage, the seminar leader, herself an immigrant, asks the men present what age someone must be before they can approach them for 'anything sexual, intimacy'. At one point, she even seems to admit surprise that the age of consent is 16 throughout the UK - she herself had believed up until that very moment, apparently, that it was 18. She establishes the correct answer there and then, while reading from her notes. Can we not admit that this is already quite a strange spectacle? Adult men are sitting in Britain, being taught the legal age at which they can have sex with British teenagers. But then it gets quite a lot worse. 'Please, this is very, very essential', the seminar leader says (trying to make herself heard over the chatter of the bored participants). 'Because we've had young men fall for these things that could be preventable.' Fall for these things. She then goes on to advise the men to ask young people their age and even request identification, before coming in with the extraordinary warning: 'Don't be deceived, we have young persons growing bigger than their age.' Twelve and 14-year-olds, she explains, can be taller than she is. A consent session for migrants in Aberdeen reportedly took a bizarre turn when the facilitator got England’s age of consent wrong & an attendee suggested it was 14. They said it was important because young men “fall for these things” I can’t believe this https://t.co/Td5yWUOZaN — Anna McGovern (@AnnaMcGovernUK) September 18, 2026 It should really go without saying, but a 13-year-old girl who happens to look older than 13 (as many do) is not deceiving anybody. She is simply existing in the body she happens to have, as it has naturally developed. A child (for that is what she is) does not trick a grown man by being tall for her age or developing early. She should also be able to dress and do her makeup how she likes, or how her parents agree for her to, without fear of advances or attack. Nor does a grown man who has sexual contact with a child 'fall for' her supposed wiles. The language employed here is very revealing. It shows us quite plainly the assumptions underpinning the consent seminar. The men are accorded less moral agency than their potential victims. They are seemingly seen as being at risk of an unfortunate misunderstanding, or worse still, of being sexually manipulated by children. What they are not seen as is adults with clear legal and moral responsibilities. It's absurd and grotesque. But perhaps most disturbing is the reduction of the whole question to the age of consent. There is nothing inherently objectionable about teaching newcomers the laws, including the age of the consent, of the country in which they now live (though the fact that it's deemed necessary should be a bit of a red flag). Yet the law represents the minimum standard of conduct enforced by the state. It does not exhaust our moral expectations of one another. Far from it. If the principal lesson an adult man can take from training courses like this is that 16 is the magic number, something (or plenty) has gone badly wrong. Most Western adults understand that legality is not the only consideration governing relations between adults and teenagers. A middle-aged man propositioning a girl who turned 16 two months ago will not escape moral opprobrium by claiming he was following the rules. There are norms beyond the letter of the law, and norms that cannot be taught so quickly in a simple seminar (especially one in which none of the attendees seems to be listening). The Mamacita footage is particularly unsettling because its language is so protective of the men in the room. Be careful, check ID, don't be deceived. Where is the corresponding concern for the girls? Imagine being a 14-year-old girl hearing a grown woman telling grown men that girls your age 'sometimes grow bigger than their age', and that men should therefore avoid being 'deceived'. You would think that you and your behavior are the problem. We have spent decades trying to drive precisely this thinking out of discussions about sexual misconduct. We were so close to doing away with victim-blaming and slut-shaming - with asking whether she led him on or looked older. We recognize these as ways of shifting responsibility from aggressor to victim, from the adult who acts to the girl who is acted on. This principle should not disappear simply because immigration enters the conversation. I'm not smearing migrants when I say this. I'm talking about who should hold individual responsibility in any given situation, and saying that, generally speaking, it should be the adult. He is the moral actor responsible for obeying the moral norms in the society in which he lives. If someone comes to Britain, he should be treated as a moral adult. That means granting him the dignity of agency - and demanding the responsibility accompanying it. If he commits a sexual offense, responsibility belongs to him, not to licentious Western culture (because nobody is ever asking for it), and certainly not to a teenage girl who has the misfortune to look older than her years in a man's eyes. Girls do not 'deceive' grown men simply by growing up. James Dixon is a Glasgow-based novelist, poet and playwright. Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 02:00

Customs & Border Protection Has Scanned More Than 1 Billion Travelers With Facial Biometrics Customs and Border Protection says it has now verified the identity of more than 1 billion travelers with facial biometrics, announcing the milestone in an Oct. 5 statement. The agency says the system runs at entry in every U.S. airport with international arrivals, at exit in 66 airports, at 42 seaports, and in all pedestrian lanes at the northern and southwest border crossings, with some vehicle lanes covered as well. A passenger walks toward the airbridge as another walks up to use biometric boarding for an international flight United Airlines flight at IAH George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, on July 21, 2020. Adrees Latif/ReutersCBP also says it received $673 million under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to expand the system across all U.S. ports of entry, and it has struck data-sharing deals with cruise lines. By its own count, the program has biometrically identified more than 600,000 overstayers and more than 2,300 impostors since 2018. CBP says it discards photos of American citizens within 12 hours of identity verification. Citizens who prefer to opt out can simply notify an officer or airline representative and have their passport inspected manually, the agency says. As the Epoch Times notes further, the need for speeding up the implementation of an automatic biometric entry/exit data system came into focus following the 9/11 attacks, when several pieces of legislation, along with the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, emphasized the need for it. In 2013, Congress mandated identifying noncitizens who enter and leave the United States. The CBP developed the Traveler Verification Service as part of the effort - a facial biometrics matching service that automates the process. Facial biometrics enable CBP to identify criminals, including suspected terrorists; identify people overstaying in the United States; prevent visa fraud; and block individuals already removed from the United States from reentering illegally. "Although U.S. citizens are not covered by this rule, they may continue to voluntarily participate in the facial biometrics process at entry and exit," CBP said. "U.S. citizens who prefer to opt out of the facial biometrics process may simply notify a CBP officer or airline representative and undergo manual inspection of their passport, as required for international travel." Identification Systems The United States has various identity verification and storage mechanisms, including biometrics. The Automated Biometric Identification System holds more than 320 million unique identities, processing 400,000 biometric transactions daily. The system is owned by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which uses biometrics for various purposes, including facilitating legitimate travel, as well as identifying and preventing illegal entry into the country. CBP, which comes under DHS, operates the Automated Targeting System, which is a tool that compares traveler, conveyance, and cargo information against law enforcement and intelligence data. U.S. law also requires air carriers operating in the United States to provide DHS and the CBP with certain passenger reservation details. "This information is transmitted to CBP before departure and used primarily for purposes of preventing, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting terrorist offenses and related crimes and certain other crimes that are transnational in nature," according to CBP. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 23:00

Nvidia-Backed Australian Data Center Pulls IPO As Investors Balk At Valuation Update (10pm ET): Earlier we reported that Australian data center operator Firmus, perhaps the biggest pillar of Nvidia's circular financing scheme Down Under, closed the books on its struggling IPO "without clear indication of the price or the deal structure," as investors grew "increasingly concerned that the deal could be pulled." Specifically, the Nvidia-backed company had been trying to raise as much as $5.5 billion at A$11 a share, which valued it at A$43.7 billion ($30.4 billion) and would have made it one of the largest listings in Australian history. By the time the books closed, the A$11 was gone: per the Australian Financial Review via Reuters Breakingviews, Firmus cut the price to as low as A$8, a 25% haircut, and was "scrambling" to hold it at A$8.25. Not any more: late on Thursday, Firmus decided to abandon its attempt at one of Australia’s biggest-ever initial public offerings rather than keep cutting its valuation offer in hopes of hitting the bid, after the center company failed to "lure global investors who’ve grown increasingly skittish over frothy AI valuations" in Bloomberg's reporting. It has been another turbulent and dramatic about-face for a company that just days ago was signaling healthy demand for a deal that would have valued it at $30 billion, up from $10.5 billion less than three months ago. The cancelled deal is a stark example of investor pushback against AI financing terms that some worry have become too generous as global borrowing costs climb and the long-term payoff from the technology remains uncertain. Firmus, whose business model hinges on a steady influx of fresh capital, will withdraw its application to list on the Australian Securities Exchange and consider other funding options such as private credit, according to a statement Friday, which confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report. “Having considered recent market volatility and prevailing market conditions, the board determined that the terms on which the offer could proceed would not appropriately reflect the strength of the company’s business and long-term growth outlook,” it said. Firmus, which was looking to raise as much as $5.5 billion including a greenshoe option, must now find other ways to raise funds to keep its ambitious expansion plans on track. The company aims to build data centers it calls AI factories using hardware from backer Nvidia. It has a pipeline of 912 megawatts, of which only 46MW has been built, according to investor documents seen by Bloomberg. According to Bloomberg, the company - which began as a Bitcoin mining operation in Australia in 2019- is now weighing a private funding round and is in talks with existing investors and others.  In other words, just as we said earlier... The hyperscaler and AI pipeline for IG/HY debt is done: no more can fit. That's why everyone is scrambling to use SPVs/Project financing/chip-collateralized structures to fund capex before that last door slams shut too. — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 8, 2026 ... with all other capital-raising pathway - from equity to corporate debt - now slammed shut, the only loophole remain SPVs also known as "chip collateralized project financings." “I’ve never seen an IPO so polarizing,” Jun Bei Liu, co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Ten Cap Investment, said on Bloomberg TV. “There was a lot of international investor interest, however, when it comes to the crunch, the demand seems like it isn’t there when they were asked to put up the capital that’s required.” And now, instead of sophisticated investors with high hurdle rates, Firmus - as well as most US data centers - will instead rely on life insurance policies managed by such capital steward titans as Apollo and Blue Owl.  Proceeds from the now pulled IPO would have funded purchases of GPU for its first data center project in Batam, Indonesia, being developed with DayOne Data Centers, as part of an eight-year partnership with Nvidia. In other words, Nvidia invests in Firmus, Firmus raises money partly from its own backers, and the money goes back to Nvidia for chips. If only there were a word for such an arrangement.  * * *  Two weeks ago, when SoftBank's SB Energy pulled the marketing of its giant IPO meant to find its even more giant data center, we wrote that "slowly the data center dream is turning into a nightmare" ("SB Energy Delays IPO Funding World's Largest Data Center Amid Investor Revolt, Public Outcry", Sep 22). Two days later we went a little further: SB Energy is next and then it's all over — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 24, 2026 "All over" may be premature. "Next," however, has arrived right on schedule. Overnight, Bloomberg reported that Australian data center operator Firmus closed the books on its struggling IPO "without clear indication of the price or the deal structure," as investors grew "increasingly concerned that the deal could be pulled." Artist rendering of what the data center will look like... maybe... one day...  if it's ever completed.The Nvidia-backed company had been trying to raise as much as $5.5 billion at A$11 a share, which valued it at A$43.7 billion ($30.4 billion) and would have made it one of the largest listings in Australian history. By the time the books closed, the A$11 was gone: per the Australian Financial Review via Reuters Breakingviews, Firmus cut the price to as low as A$8, a 25% haircut, and was "scrambling" to hold it at A$8.25. How's the SB Energy IPO going? — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 8, 2026 Put differently, the second mega data center IPO in a month has just hit the same wall as the first. This time the wall came with a twist, and that twist is why this story belongs in our long-running coverage of the debt holding up the AI supercycle. Below we explain how Firmus got from a $5.5 billion private valuation to a $30 billion IPO in six months, why the "creative" valuation metric failed to sell it, and why at the reduced price the equity is worth less than the debt. Books Closed, Price... TBD The cracks were visible before the books closed. On Wednesday evening Goldman's Sydney futures desk wrote in its morning comment that "the AFR reports bankers managing the IPO of Firmus are considering a potential cut in the listing price because of weak demand from foreign investors." Within hours that "consideration" was a 25% cut. Equity investors with direct exposure did not wait around. Shares of Firmus backer Maas Group fell as much as 30% in Sydney, the most on record, which prompted the company to note "significant market speculation and commentary" about whether the IPO would go ahead. Meanwhile Plato, an Australian fund manager running about $6 billion, called Firmus a "screaming short", citing 30 "red flags" ranging from valuation to senior management. Ten Cap's Jun Bei Liu summed up the bookbuild on Bloomberg TV: "I've never seen an IPO so polarizing. There was a lot of international investor interest, however, when it comes to the crunch, the demand seems like it isn't there when they were asked to put up the capital that's required." Translation: everyone loves AI infrastructure until they are asked to pay for it. For the record, the bookbuild was pulled forward from Friday to Thursday just three days ago because of "early indications of demand in excess of the offer size." That's the same "oversubscribed" (just as the Paramount bond deal had over $100 billion in "demand" and its bonds are now crashing every day) deal now negotiating with itself over A$0.25 a share. From $5.5 Billion To $30 Billion In Six Months The rerating is the whole story. Firmus started out as a Bitcoin mining operation in 2019. In February it landed a $10 billion debt package led by Blackstone and Coatue. In April a Coatue-led round valued it at $5.5 billion. In August a $2 billion round with Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone and Jane Street nearly doubled that to $10.5 billion. Then, less than two months later, the IPO asked public investors for three times the August price. Behind that price tag, according to Breakingviews, Firmus has so far built just 42 megawatts of capacity out of a pipeline of about 1 gigawatt, or just over 4%. It recently shifted away from a mostly domestic partnership with CDC Data Centres toward Malaysia and Indonesia, to serve hyperscalers such as OpenAI and Meta. Per Reuters, the draft prospectus forecast a $77 million loss in the first half of FY27 and no forecasts at all beyond June 2027. Australian fund managers were less than impressed. Morningstar's Lochlan Halloway saw signs of a "boom phase," pointing to the "wild increase in valuation in such a short period of time." Merlon's Kirit Hara said his process "prevents us from effectively buying into, kind of, the hopes and dreams." Katana's Romano Sala Tenna admitted "we are struggling with the fundamental arithmetic," and Blackwattle's Joseph Koh, who will not bid, put it more simply: "There are so many unknowns." Introducing "EV+1/EBIT+2" When the arithmetic doesn't work, you change the arithmetic. As Breakingviews' Antony Currie explains, the deal leaned on a new valuation tool, "EV+1/EBIT+2." It takes enterprise value using the net debt the company will have in 12 months and divides it by the EBIT it hopes to earn two years from now.  The logic is that data center developers fund up to 90% of construction with debt and can start generating revenue within a year, so today's numbers flatter nobody. The problem, as Currie notes, is that the metric is "easy to manipulate." Capex assumptions can be inflated to pump up EV, and any delay in permits, equipment, power or water means "EV+1 becomes +2 or +3, with EBIT delayed to +3, +4 or beyond."  This is pure batshit insanity, and shows just how big the AI bubble has become for a company to realistically think that such "vibes" garbage can be credibly used an investment highlight for institutional investors.  Regular readers know how that goes: Project Jupiter declared force majeure and Oracle's 1.3GW Wisconsin "Lighthouse" campus slipped earlier this week, so "+1" is the optimistic case. Then again, nothing says "mature asset class" like a valuation multiple whose denominator is two years in the future. Half The Deal To... The Existing Shareholders A second detail also spooked buyers. Firmus planned to allocate about half of the IPO to "selected existing strategic and financial investors", a list that includes Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone and Jane Street. At the same time, pre-IPO holders could reportedly sell up to 20% of their stakes from day one. Bloomberg says this overhang was what turned potential investors cautious, on top of "what some investors see as an aggressive pricing strategy." Then there is where the money goes. IPO proceeds would fund purchases of Nvidia GPUs for Firmus' first project in Batam, Indonesia, built with DayOne as part of an eight-year partnership with Nvidia. In other words, Nvidia invests in Firmus, Firmus raises money partly from its own backers, and the money goes back to Nvidia for chips. We have seen this kind of Nvidia circular financing before, just never quite this small. One more detail: the four joint lead managers are Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Morgans. That would explain the absence of sell-side research on the deal from three of the largest research shops in the world. When The Equity Is Worth Less Than The Debt This is where the deal stops being an IPO story and becomes a credit story. As one reader put it in a reply to our tweet, "At that point an AI data centre stops being a growth stock and starts being a credit." The napkin math is simple, and alarming. Morningstar estimates Firmus' debt at about $30 billion, roughly six times its own forecast earnings. At A$11 the equity was worth about $30.4 billion, so the company was valued at about one dollar of equity for every dollar of debt. At A$8.25, and assuming the same share count, it is worth roughly A$33 billion, or about $23 billion, some $7 billion less than the debt it carries. At A$8 it is $22 billion. In other words, at the price the bankers are now "scrambling" to defend, the shareholders' stake would be worth less than what Firmus owes its lenders, before the stock trades for a single day. That is a leveraged credit with an equity ticker, and it lands at the worst possible moment for AI credit, which we summarized yesterday afternoon: Credit remains the big story: here everything is falling apart. 1. Oracle bond yields, CDS record high 2. SpaceX bonds new all time low/YTW high 3. Bond behind Meta's Hyperion data center (proj Beignet) hit record low 4. Paramount CDS trading at financial crisis levels https://t.co/bxEqe8IQFw — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 7, 2026 Throw in 10Y Treasury yields that hit 5.36% on Wednesday, a 24-year high, per the same Goldman Sydney note, and the cost of carrying $30 billion of data center debt only goes one way. SB Energy, Then Firmus... Then Who? Firmus is the second data center mega-IPO to stumble in three weeks. SoftBank-backed SB Energy postponed marketing its IPO in late September after more SEC questions and investor pushback on a valuation of around $60 billion, and on its dependence on a single customer, OpenAI. Nvidia had agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion to help OpenAI lease SB Energy's Ohio data center, while also investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy itself. Back then we asked the obvious question: Is it a coincidence that the 2 key data centers of OpenAI's Stargate are suddenly on the ropes? Project Jupiter (4.5GW) loans trading < 90, major delays... SB Energy (8GW) delaying IPO, major delays. Without these two DCs having clear timeline/funding, OpenAI can just cancel IPO — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 23, 2026 And the line behind them is long. Singapore's DayOne, which also happens to be Firmus' partner in Batam, wants to raise up to $5 billion at a $20 billion valuation in a US listing as soon as November. Switch has filed confidentially, Vantage and CyrusOne are exploring listings, and London's Nscale just raised $3.36 billion in pre-IPO convertibles. As Shenton Research's Ke Yan told Reuters, "the dividing line is whether demand is contracted and already energised, or only planned." Firmus, with 42MW built against a gigawatt pipeline, is firmly on the "planned" side of that line. Goldman: $1 Trillion Of AI Spending... And Everyone Hiding In The Mag 7 None of this means the AI spending boom is slowing. Goldman's Global Corporate Access team flagged in Wednesday's IR Kick-Start (available to pro subs) that GS Research now estimates global AI investment will exceed $1 trillion this year, with the US and Asia accounting for more than 80% of net data center additions (Europe gets about 10%). The question was never whether the money gets spent. It's who funds it, and at what price. Goldman's Asia sales desk answered part of that overnight in "Power Back On" (also available to pro subs): hedge funds have "certainly re-engaged in tech as a result of macro uncertainty," with net exposure to the Mag 7 as a share of total US exposure on GS' prime book at ~22%, the highest since the start of 2022. Put differently, investors still want AI, but they want it through companies with balance sheets that can fund a trillion dollars of capex, not through a 42-megawatt former Bitcoin miner levered six times its forecast earnings. The same GS desk notes that "the positioning within AI and large-cap tech no longer seem to be tailwinds," which means the crowd is all on one side of the boat, and it's not the side Firmus is on. Bottom Line This week, Mike Novogratz told the Greenwich Economic Forum that AI is the "biggest bubble of our lifetime," but that it can't burst yet because it "isn't spectacular enough" (which we discussed earlier). Ray Dalio disagreed and speaking at a CEO conference in Singapore, called it a "classic bubble" nearing its bursting point because of rising rates and the debt behind AI infrastructure. We side with Dalio, and the reason is the IPO window. Bubbles don't end when the bulls run out of narrative; they end when the marginal buyer refuses to take paper off the hands of the early investors at the asking price. That has now happened twice in three weeks, first with SB Energy and now with Firmus. Each time the issue was the same: too much debt, too little contracted revenue, and existing backers looking for an exit. Having warned since October 2025 that AI is a debt bubble too, something that virtually everyone - even the WSJ - now accepts, we'll allow ourselves another prediction: when the equity cushion under a data center is smaller than the debt, the equity investors stop pricing a growth story, and it becomes the bondholders' problem. Just ask Oracle's lenders. Firmus is scheduled to lodge its prospectus on October 12 and start trading on October 23, assuming there is still a deal. We'll see whether the "+1" in EV+1 refers to years, or to the number of IPOs that follow it into the wall. Much more in the full Goldman "Power Back On" and "IR Kick-Start" notes, both available to pro subs. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 22:10

Emotional Reunion: USS Abraham Lincoln Finally Pulls Into San Diego After Record Deployment The US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has finally returned to port in San Diego after spending over ten months at sea - most of that time being engaged in war with Iran as part of Trump's Operation Epic Fury. It made a badly needed port call in Thailand last month before traversing the Pacific Ocean to get back to its home port. The carrier spent a record 265 consecutive days at sea, and over 300 days in total on the deployment. Via AP: Sailors stand aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier returns to Naval Air Station North Island after deployment Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Coronado, CalifThe plight of the Lincoln carrier and its crew of some 5,000 sailors and Marines grabbed international headlines for months, given reports of substandard living conditions, food and supply shortages, and mental health crises which led to attempted suicides among servicemembers. The Navy later acknowledged some of the problems, such as resupply and logistics challenges, amid an avalanche of stories that included dangerous hygiene challenges and derelict facilities. In late September, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao informed Congress that eight sailors in the USS Lincoln's carrier strike group attempted suicide during the lengthy and strained deployment. US War Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the carrier on Wednesday when it docked, and in a ceremony awarded crew with the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest military award which can be bestowed on a unit. Emotional reunions with families after grueling deployment: It’s an emotional day in Coronado, California, as hundreds of families prepare to reunite with loved ones who were aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which has been at sea for more than 300 days. Nearly 5,000 service members were aboard the Lincoln, which has been supporting the U.S. war against Iran. Its deployment included a record-setting stretch of uninterrupted time at sea. "Thank God they're home. Thank God it's over and nothing by happiness from all these people," one mother told @CarterEvans. — CBS News (@CBSNews) October 8, 2026 He has resisted the constant criticism related to the Lincoln, which some reports and Congressman held up as "a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission." Hegseth said in his remarks aboard the ship: “There were a few folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol, a symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a failed mission,” Hegseth said. “When I talk to your leadership,” he added, “I know it’s the exact opposite.” The Lincoln departed its San Diego home base on Nov. 21, 2025, on what was supposed to be a seven-month deployment.  Sailors meeting their recently born children for first time: A sailor’s wife arrived to welcome home her husband from the USS Abraham Lincoln’s historic deployment, with their 10-week-old son in her arms. Mackenzie said they'd planned the pregnancy around her husband's return, and "he's finally going to get to meet his son" after the carrier's extended tour in the Middle East. — CBS News (@CBSNews) October 8, 2026 After departing, the carrier made a mere one-day stop in Guam two weeks before Christmas. "[It] was so brief that much of the crew likely never went ashore," observed the War Zone's Ian Ellis-Jones. Typically, a carrier crew might expect a port call every 30 to 45 days, with each break spanning around 3 to 5 days. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 21:20

"We Can't Be Part Of A Lost Generation": Bolsonaro Wins Four Key Party Endorsements Ahead Of Brazil Runoff In a postmortem published Wednesday on Sunday's first-round Brazilian presidential election, Alberto Ramos, Goldman Sachs' chief Latin American economist, described a "conservative wave" that swept the country, culminating in right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro's win over unhinged socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro's momentum continued mid-week after he secured endorsements from four center-right parties, strengthening his coalition ahead of the October 25 runoff election against Lula.  Bloomberg reports that Uniao Brasil, Progressistas, Republicanos and Novo backed Bolsonaro on Wednseday, one day after former rival Ronaldo Caiado backed him.  "We can't be part of a lost generation," Sao Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas told Bolsonaro at a Republicanos event late Wednesday. Freitas added, "We have to deliver on the work that your father started." Freitas is describing the nation-killing socialist policies of Lula and how a once-in-a-generation conservative sweep has shifted South America from left-wing to right-wing after years of economic despair under socialist rule.  If Bolsonaro wins the runoff, it would cement the South American shift from left to right, with the continent's largest GDP joining it.  Goldman's Ramos commented on the upcoming runoff: Whether Senator Bolsonaro or President Lula wins, the next president will need to build a multiparty coalition.  If elected, Senator Bolsonaro would likely need centrist support to form a governing coalition, but he would begin with a strong right- and center-right base (PL, PP, União Brasil, Republicanos, and Novo) for passing ordinary legislation.  By contrast, a runoff victory by President Lula would likely leave his administration facing even greater challenges in Congress because of the larger conservative opposition bloc and the fact that his political capital will be limited because he cannot seek reelection in 2030. Separately, David Beker, Bank of America's chief Brazil economist, commented on the economic challenges for Brazil that lie just ahead, saying: For markets, the key challenge following Brazil's elections will be ensuring debt sustainability. Brazil's gross debt-to-GDP ratio is set to increase by more than 10 percentage points during President Lula's third term, making fiscal reform the top priority for the next administration to foster a more sustainable macroeconomic environment.  We currently forecast debt-to-GDP at 83.0% by YE26, rising to 90.4% by year-end 2028. Stabilizing the debt trajectory would require a primary surplus of roughly 3.0% of GDP, implying an additional fiscal adjustment of approximately 3.5% of GDP, as we project the public sector balance to deteriorate to a deficit of 0.6% of GDP by YE28. Meanwhile, the Brazilian real strengthened and the benchmark Bovespa stock index rallied sharply earlier this week, signaling the market has had enough with socialists and welcomes Bolsonaro, who would pursue greater fiscal discipline. The moves come as his economic team prepares to outline a plan to curb out-of-control spending under Lula's administration. UBS hosted Ideia Big Data on Tuesday and came to the consultancy firm assigned Bolsonaro an 85% probability of victory (read report). Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 20:30

Canada Slams Brakes On Euthanasia For Mental Illness Indefinitely, Then Votes Down Tory Bill To Ban It Outright Canada will not extend medically assisted death to people whose only condition is mental illness, Justice Minister Sean Fraser announced Wednesday, as CP24 reports. The Liberals will table legislation this fall to make the exclusion indefinite, although the bill is still being drafted and has no date. Minister of Justice Sean Fraser listens to questions during a media availability to outline next steps in the federal government's medical assistance in dying laws, in the Foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang"Canada has made a decision not to move forward with the expansion that is scheduled in the Criminal Code of medical assistance in dying in circumstances where mental illness is the sole basis," Fraser told reporters on Parliament Hill. The expansion is set to take effect in March 2027, after the Trudeau government delayed it in 2024 until after the next federal election. Fraser said the decision reflects the direction of a special joint parliamentary committee, which heard from more than three dozen witnesses and reported in June. He cited "very real concerns about people who live in communities with inadequate access to mental-health services" and testimony on "a lack of consensus when mental illness is irremediable." He said the government had only "very, very recently finally formalized its position," more than three months after the report, and that it was not "based on where we believe the politics is going to land." 🚨The Liberals have defeated MP Tamara Jansen's Private Member's Bill to stop the upcoming expansion of MAiD to include those with mental disorders. Canadians struggling with mental illness deserve care, support, and hope. We must help people get the support they need and remind them that their lives matter. — Ned Kuruc (@NedKurucMP) October 7, 2026 MPs also voted Wednesday on a private member's bill from Conservative MP Tamara Jansen that would have amended the Criminal Code to provide that a mental disorder is not a "grievous and irremediable medical condition" for MAID. Fraser thanked Jansen but said the Liberals have "some challenges" with it on a technical level and would vote against it. The bill was defeated 187-141, with the Liberals and Bloc Québécois against and the Conservatives and NDP in favor. A multi-partisan parliamentary committee recommended against expanding MAID to people with mental illness. The Liberals ignored that recommendation and voted against Tamara Jansen’s Bill C-218, which would have stopped the expansion. https://t.co/sFpjmi0thX — Michael Guglielmin (@MikeGuglielmin) October 7, 2026 The coming Liberal bill will also allow advance requests for MAID from people diagnosed with an illness that will later take away their capacity. Fraser said those provisions must comply with provincial legislation, and that provinces differ on the issue. They were going to open the door. Today they said the door stays shut. Sean Fraser, Justice, this afternoon. Canada will not move ahead with medical assistance in dying where mental illness is the only condition. A bill this fall keeps that exclusion indefinite. The Criminal Code had the expansion on a timer. The timer just got pulled. This is the same system doctors have been warning is already too loose. A woman in her 70s was approved because she could no longer cook for her family and felt she had no value. She stepped back because someone talked to her. In 2024, MAID was 16,499 deaths, 5.1 percent of everyone who died in the country. That was the version sold as a last resort for the dying. Holding the mental-illness clause is not a victory lap. It is the government admitting the next step was a mistake before they took it. The bill is the part that counts. A sentence at a microphone is how the last expansion started. #cdnpoli — JayGen 𝕏 er🇨🇦 (@JayGenXer) October 7, 2026 Disability advocacy group Inclusion Canada welcomed the exclusion for mental illness but opposed advance consent. "Consent at the time is the most basic protection a person has. Parliament should not take it away," said CEO Krista Carr. There are seven sitting weeks left before the winter break. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 19:40

When Did Obesity Become A Drug Deficiency? Authored by Joseph Varon via The Brownstone Institute, Look at almost any photograph of an American crowd taken 60 years ago. It can be a baseball game, a high school graduation, a beach, an airport terminal, a factory floor, or simply people walking down a city street. Something is immediately noticeable to modern eyes, although almost nobody in the photograph would have considered it remarkable: most people are relatively thin. They did not have continuous glucose monitors, smartphone applications that counted calories and macronutrients, wearable devices reminding them to stand, boutique fitness studios, bariatric surgery centers, or medications capable of producing 15 or 20 percent reductions in body weight. They were not necessarily more virtuous than we are, and they certainly did not possess superior genes. They lived in a different metabolic environment. The data backs up what we see in those old photos. In the early 1960s, about 13 percent of American adults were obese. By August 2023, that number had jumped to 40.3 percent, with another 31.7 percent considered overweight and nearly one in ten classified as severely obese.[1] This trend isn't just in the United States. A huge study of over 220 million people from 200 countries found a dramatic global rise in obesity between 1990 and 2022.[2] Our genes haven't changed much in that time. Something else has. We're now at a turning point in medicine. Faced with one of the biggest and fastest changes in human health, we're treating the results as a condition that needs lifelong medication. The newest drugs are very effective, and that's important to recognize. Semaglutide and tirzepatide have led to weight loss that older nonsurgical treatments rarely matched.[3,4] Semaglutide has also reduced the risk of major heart problems in people with overweight or obesity and heart disease who didn't have diabetes.[5] Tirzepatide has greatly improved sleep apnea in people with obesity.[6] These results are significant, and these drugs are much more than cosmetic weight-loss aids. That's why we need to look closely at what's happening now. The problem isn't that these drugs don't work; they clearly do. The real concern is that they might work so well that we stop asking why so many people need them in the first place. We could be seeing a major medical breakthrough, but at the same time, we might be accepting that the effects of an unhealthy environment should just be managed with medication. The real question isn't whether these "GLP-1" drugs are effective. It's whether their success is making us stop looking for the root causes of the obesity epidemic. The Epidemic That Became a Diagnosis For decades, obesity was framed largely as an individual failure. The explanation was simple: people ate too much, exercised too little, and lacked the discipline necessary to change. That view was scientifically inadequate and often cruel. Body weight is influenced by genetics, neuroendocrine signaling, appetite regulation, insulin sensitivity, adipocyte biology, medications, sleep, psychological factors, socioeconomic conditions, physical activity, and environmental exposures. Contemporary medicine appropriately recognizes obesity as far more complicated than failure of willpower. Recent international efforts have gone even further, distinguishing excess adiposity from clinical obesity and emphasizing the actual effects of adiposity on organ and tissue function rather than relying exclusively on body mass index.[7] It was important to stop blaming people for obesity. But now, medicine might be swapping one simple explanation for another. Just because obesity is a real biological condition doesn't mean it starts inside each person. A disease can be both real and caused by the environment. For example, asthma from air pollution is still asthma, and lead poisoning is still a real illness even if the cause is environmental. If a whole community gets sick after a change in the water supply, doctors treat the patients, but no one thinks the community suddenly developed a genetic problem. We should be just as curious about obesity. When a condition becomes much more common in just a few generations, our first question should be: what has changed in our environment, habits, or society to cause this? Instead, the focus is quickly shifting to which drug can best fight it. We changed the world around us, saw people's bodies change in response, and now we're treating those changes as the main problem. There is another change that occurred alongside the biological one: our culture gradually changed its definition of what was normal. I have written about this before, using the transformation of Victoria's Secret as one highly visible example. The famously thin "Angels" who once defined the brand were eventually replaced by models representing a much broader range of body sizes, part of a larger and understandable effort to move away from unrealistic beauty standards and the humiliation of people because of their weight.[8] There was much about that change that was humane and necessary. No person should be shamed, ridiculed, or assigned less dignity because of body size. But compassion and normalization are not the same thing. As obesity became progressively more common, society did more than become more accepting of people with obesity; it also became increasingly reluctant to acknowledge obesity itself as abnormal. The distinction matters because one can respect every human body while still recognizing that excess adiposity carries important medical consequences. In a remarkably short period, we changed the food environment, changed the physical environment, watched the population become heavier, and then changed the cultural image of what a normal body looked like. Now we are entering the next stage of that progression: pharmacologically treating the metabolic consequences. What Changed Was Almost Everything Today, people live in a very different world than past generations. Food is everywhere, all the time. Much of it is designed to be convenient, tasty, long-lasting, quick to eat, and easy to buy again. Foods that once took time to prepare can now be eaten in seconds. Drinks can add a lot of calories without making us feel full. Portion sizes have grown, people move less, jobs are more sedentary, transportation often means less walking, and entertainment usually means sitting. No single food or habit explains obesity, but the environment that shapes our eating and activity has changed a lot. A key experiment by Hall and his team at the National Institutes of Health showed this clearly. In a controlled study, people ate either ultra-processed or unprocessed diets, matched for calories, nutrients, sugar, salt, and fiber. They could eat as much or as little as they wanted. On an ultra-processed diet, people ate about 500 more calories a day and gained weight. On the unprocessed diet, they lost weight.[9] No one told them to eat more or took away their willpower. Just changing the food environment changed how much they ate. Physical activity has also dropped a lot. A large study of over 5 million people found that not getting enough exercise became more common worldwide from 2000 to 2022, and by 2022, almost a third of adults weren't active enough.[10] Sleep is important too, even though it's often overlooked. Research shows that not getting enough sleep raises the risk of obesity.[11] All these factors, along with stress, income, medications, food access, work hours, city design, and more, combine in ways that can't be fixed by simply telling people to eat less and move more. Scientists are also looking at environmental chemicals that might affect metabolism and hormones. The idea of "obesogens" is still new and shouldn't be seen as the only reason for the obesity epidemic. Still, studies suggest that some environmental exposures could affect how our bodies store fat, use energy, or regulate appetite in ways that make weight gain more likely.[12] The right approach is to keep studying these possibilities, especially since the rise in obesity is so widespread. The most defensible conclusion is therefore also the least sensational: obesity probably does not have one cause. Food changed. Physical activity changed. Sleep changed. Work changed. Transportation changed. Stress changed. Medications changed. Chemical exposures changed. Marketing changed. Portion sizes changed. The economics of food changed. The built environment changed. Human beings then responded biologically to those changes. The mystery is not that metabolism responded to a dramatically altered environment. The mystery is why medicine became so comfortable treating that response without demonstrating comparable urgency about the environment that produced it. Then Came the Drugs That Actually Worked Obesity medicine has a long and sometimes uncomfortable pharmacological history. Earlier drugs frequently produced modest weight loss, troublesome adverse effects, or both. Several were eventually withdrawn because their risks became unacceptable. Against that background, modern incretin-based therapies represented a genuine therapeutic breakthrough. In the STEP 1 trial, adults with overweight or obesity who received once-weekly semaglutide 2.4 mg lost an average of 14.9 percent of their baseline body weight over 68 weeks, compared with 2.4 percent among those receiving placebo, with both groups receiving lifestyle intervention.[3] For nonsurgical obesity treatment, this was an extraordinary result. Tirzepatide moved the numbers even further. In SURMOUNT-1, 2,539 adults with obesity or overweight and at least one weight-related complication, but without diabetes, were randomized to tirzepatide or placebo. At 72 weeks, average weight reductions were 15.0 percent, 19.5 percent, and 20.9 percent with the 5 mg, 10 mg, and 15 mg doses, respectively, compared with 3.1 percent with placebo.[4] Weight reductions exceeding 20 percent begin to approach territory historically associated with bariatric procedures rather than medication. For patients who have struggled unsuccessfully with obesity for years, it is easy to understand why these drugs can feel revolutionary. More importantly, the story extends beyond the scale. In SELECT, more than 17,000 adults with preexisting cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity, but without diabetes, were randomized to semaglutide or placebo. Major cardiovascular events occurred in 6.5 percent of patients receiving semaglutide and 8.0 percent receiving placebo, corresponding to a hazard ratio of 0.80.[5] Subsequent analysis also demonstrated a lower incidence of a prespecified composite kidney endpoint among patients receiving semaglutide.[13] Tirzepatide has produced substantial reductions in apnea-hypopnea index among patients with obesity and moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea.[6] These findings make it impossible to dismiss the GLP-1 era as mere pharmaceutical vanity medicine. Physicians should welcome effective therapies. A patient with severe obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, impaired mobility, or other obesity-related complications should not be denied a beneficial treatment because society has failed to solve the larger causes of obesity. We treat the patient who exists today, not the healthier society we wish existed. The mistake would be turning that entirely reasonable clinical principle into permission to stop asking the larger question. What Happens When the Injection Stops? Perhaps the most revealing aspect of GLP-1 therapy appears when treatment ends. In the STEP 1 extension, participants who discontinued semaglutide regained approximately two-thirds of their previous weight loss during the following year, while many cardiometabolic improvements moved back toward baseline.[14] SURMOUNT-4 demonstrated a similar phenomenon with tirzepatide. After an initial 36-week period during which participants lost an average of 20.9 percent of their body weight, those randomized to discontinue tirzepatide and receive placebo regained substantial weight, whereas those who continued therapy maintained and further increased their weight reduction.[15] The conventional interpretation is straightforward: obesity is a chronic relapsing disease, and chronic diseases frequently require chronic treatment. This argument has considerable logic. Blood pressure often rises when antihypertensive medications are stopped. LDL cholesterol generally rises after discontinuation of lipid-lowering therapy. Nobody claims that the recurrence of hypertension proves that antihypertensive drugs failed. The 2026 American Diabetes Association Standards of Care therefore recommend continuing obesity pharmacotherapy beyond achievement of weight-loss goals when indicated for chronic therapy, noting that discontinuation often results in recurrent weight gain and reemergence of cardiometabolic risk factors.[16] The World Health Organization likewise now states that GLP-1 therapies may be used as long-term treatment for adults living with obesity. However, its recommendation is conditional and recognizes the need for comprehensive behavioral and lifestyle intervention.[17] Yet, obesity differs from many chronic diseases in one important respect: its prevalence changed dramatically within a remarkably short historical period. That should make us cautious about letting "chronic disease" end the discussion. If the environment continually pushes human metabolism toward excess adiposity, and a drug successfully counteracts that pressure only while it is administered, lifelong pharmacotherapy may be entirely appropriate for some patients. But it should simultaneously intensify our interest in the pressure itself. Otherwise, we risk defining successful medicine as the indefinite pharmacological adaptation of human beings to an unhealthy environment. Losing Weight Is Not the Same As Losing Fat Another part of this conversation deserves more attention, particularly as these medications expand into older populations. Large reductions in body weight do not consist exclusively of adipose tissue. During weight loss, some lean tissue is generally lost as well, regardless of whether weight reduction occurs through caloric restriction, surgery, or pharmacotherapy. The relevant question is not whether lean mass changes, but how much is lost, in whom, and what the functional consequences may be. A DXA substudy of SURMOUNT-1 found that participants receiving tirzepatide experienced a 21.3 percent reduction in body weight, accompanied by a 33.9 percent reduction in fat mass and a 10.9 percent reduction in lean mass. Approximately three-quarters of the lost weight was fat, and one-quarter was lean mass.[18] That is a far more nuanced finding than the popular claim that GLP-1 drugs "destroy muscle." They do not. Body composition generally improves because more fat than lean tissue is lost proportionally. Nevertheless, lean tissue is biologically important, and its loss should not be treated as irrelevant simply because the scale is moving in the desired direction. This is especially important in older patients, in whom sarcopenia, frailty, falls, osteoporosis, and loss of functional independence already represent major clinical concerns. Skeletal muscle is not decorative tissue. It is central to glucose disposal, mobility, balance, strength, metabolic reserve, and resilience during acute illness. A 35-year-old with severe obesity losing some lean mass during substantial fat reduction is not clinically equivalent to a frail 78-year-old doing the same. Responsible obesity medicine therefore cannot consist simply of prescribing an injection and celebrating weight loss. Nutrition, adequate protein intake, resistance exercise, physical function, and muscle preservation should become integral parts of treatment. The goal is not to make patients lighter. The goal is to make them healthier. The Economics of Treating the Consequence This discussion has an uncomfortable economic dimension that does not require conspiracy theories or accusations of bad faith. Modern health care is exceptionally effective at creating financial structures around treatment. A pharmaceutical product can be researched, patented, manufactured, marketed, prescribed, reimbursed, monitored, and administered repeatedly. Hospitals can build programs around it. Insurers can establish coverage criteria for it. Physicians can prescribe it. Investors can calculate its market. Patients can measure its effects. The entire structure of modern medicine understands how to assign economic value to an intervention. Prevention is different. No comparable recurring revenue stream is generated when a child grows up eating mostly minimally processed food, sleeping adequately, walking and exercising regularly, maintaining muscle, and never developing metabolic disease. No blockbuster pharmaceutical product is called adequate sleep, no patent exists on resistance exercise, and no quarterly earnings call celebrates the number of patients who never became sick. That does not mean pharmaceutical companies created the obesity epidemic. It means that our economic system has far more powerful mechanisms for rewarding treatment than for rewarding the absence of disease. The result can emerge without anyone designing it. Industry develops products that generate returns. Physicians work within reimbursement systems built around identifiable diagnoses and interventions. Insurers reimburse treatments meeting defined criteria. Hospitals organize programs around services they can deliver and bill. Patients understandably prefer interventions that produce meaningful results, particularly after years of unsuccessful attempts at weight loss. Each participant can behave rationally, yet the system can drift toward a remarkable destination: we construct an environment that promotes metabolic dysfunction and then build an increasingly sophisticated medical economy around helping people survive it. Now the Government Is Buying In This discussion became even more consequential in 2026. Beginning July 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, a demonstration program providing eligible Medicare Part D beneficiaries access to certain GLP-1 drugs with a $50 copayment. The program is scheduled to continue through December 31, 2027.[19] Whatever one thinks about the policy, it represents an important transition. GLP-1 therapy for obesity is no longer simply a matter between an individual patient, physician, insurer, and manufacturer. The federal government is now directly participating in expanded access. For many patients, this may be excellent news. Obesity disproportionately affects populations that often have the least access to effective treatment, and cost has been a substantial barrier to modern obesity pharmacotherapy. If these medications reduce cardiovascular events, diabetes, kidney disease, sleep apnea, disability, and other obesity-related complications, expanding access may ultimately prove both humane and economically rational. Those outcomes should be studied carefully, not presumed. But public financing also creates a public obligation to ask what we are buying. Are we purchasing durable reductions in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, disability, and mortality? Are we reducing total health-care expenditure over time? Are patients becoming stronger and metabolically healthier, or simply lighter? What happens after five, ten, or twenty years of treatment? What proportion of patients remain on therapy? What happens to those who discontinue it? What are the nutritional and functional consequences in older adults? And perhaps most importantly, how much are we simultaneously investing in understanding and modifying the conditions that made treatment necessary? Those questions are not arguments against coverage. They are precisely the questions that should accompany responsible coverage. Medicine Must Be Able to Hold Two Ideas at Once Public debates increasingly demand that we choose teams. Either GLP-1 drugs are miracle therapies that should be celebrated without reservation, or they are dangerous pharmaceutical shortcuts that should be rejected in favor of diet and exercise. Both positions are intellectually unsatisfying. Medicine should be able to hold two ideas simultaneously, particularly when both are supported by evidence. The first is that GLP-1-based therapies represent a major medical advance. They produce substantial weight loss, improve important metabolic parameters, and have demonstrated benefits extending to cardiovascular outcomes, kidney outcomes, and obstructive sleep apnea in appropriately selected populations. [5,6,13] For many patients, they may prevent disease, restore mobility, improve quality of life, and possibly extend survival. Patients who benefit from them should not be ashamed for using them any more than a patient with hypertension should be shamed for taking an antihypertensive medication. Second, a civilization in which enormous numbers of people may require lifelong pharmacological manipulation of appetite and metabolism to maintain health should be intensely curious about how that situation arose. Calling obesity a chronic disease does not relieve us of that responsibility. If anything, the scale of the disease makes the responsibility greater. We should therefore reject the false choice between treating obesity and preventing it. Physicians must treat the patient standing in front of them with the best tools available today. Scientists and public health institutions must also investigate why so many patients present with the same problem. Government should evaluate whether policies affecting food, cities, schools, physical activity, sleep, and environmental exposures promote metabolic health or undermine it. Medicine should study not merely how efficiently we can produce weight loss, but whether we can preserve muscle, metabolic health, function, and independence while doing so. The Question Our Grandchildren May Ask Medical history is filled with treatments that became so familiar that physicians stopped asking the questions that originally justified them. Sometimes the treatments were eventually shown to be wrong. Sometimes they were useful but applied too broadly. And sometimes the treatment worked exactly as intended while distracting medicine from a more fundamental cause of disease. The GLP-1 revolution may ultimately belong to an entirely different category: therapies that are genuinely transformative and beneficial, but whose very effectiveness risks concealing the magnitude of the societal failure that made them necessary. Imagine medicine 20 or 30 years from now. The drugs will almost certainly be better. Oral formulations, combinations of incretin and other metabolic pathways, agents that better preserve lean mass, and therapies we cannot yet imagine may make obesity increasingly controllable. Perhaps cardiovascular disease and diabetes will decline dramatically as a result. That would be a genuine triumph of medical science. But imagine another possibility as well. Suppose half of the adult population requires continuous pharmacological intervention to maintain metabolic health while children continue entering the same environment that produced the epidemic. Suppose we become extraordinarily proficient at altering the individual's biology while leaving the biology-disrupting environment essentially untouched. Would we call that prevention? Would we call it health? Or would we have become very good at treating the consequences of something we never dared to confront? Those are not reasons to take an effective drug away from a patient who needs it. They are reasons to refuse the complacency that can accompany therapeutic success. The physician's responsibility is to treat disease. Medicine's responsibility is larger. It must also remain curious about why disease occurs, particularly when its prevalence changes before our eyes. The great irony of the GLP-1 era may therefore be that the medications are not the problem at all. They may be among the best tools we have ever developed for treating obesity. The real problem will arise if their success convinces us that the epidemic itself has been solved. A weekly injection can change appetite, body weight, glucose metabolism, cardiovascular risk, and perhaps the trajectory of an individual patient's life. What it cannot do is explain why a condition that affected a relatively small minority of Americans 60 years ago now affects roughly four in ten adults. We should use these medications when they improve our patients' lives. We should study them rigorously, monitor their long-term consequences, make access rational and equitable, and resist both their demonization and their indiscriminate use. But every prescription should coexist with a much larger scientific question, one that medicine should have been asking with far greater urgency for decades: what did we change that made so many people sick? The tragedy of the GLP-1 era will not be that these drugs failed. The tragedy will be if they succeed so spectacularly that an entire generation of physicians stops asking why we needed them in the first place. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 18:25

Pharmaceutical Lobby Sues Over Trump Admin Program To Reduce Drug Prices Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, A lobbying group that represents pharmaceutical manufacturers filed suit against the federal government on Oct. 7 over a program aimed at reducing the prices of drugs. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) stated in a legal complaint in federal court in Washington that the most-favored-nation policy, planned for Medicare by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), illegally imposes foreign price controls. "[The program] is unlawful and clearly exceeds CMS' authority," Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of the lobbying organization, said in a statement. "The policy doesn't make medicines more affordable for most beneficiaries, while putting future medical innovation and patient access at risk. We share the administration's goal of ensuring Americans can access and afford their medicines, but CMS cannot rewrite the law and bypass Congress to impose foreign price controls. Patients need more choices and more breakthroughs - not government price-setting schemes that undermine both." The Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of CMS and one of the defendants named in the suit, did not return a request for comment by publication time. CMS has stated in notices that it has statutory authority to implement changes to drug pricing, including from portions of the Social Security Act. Government officials have also pointed to part of the act stating that there shall be no judicial review of certain changes to pricing. PhRMA, which represents 34 manufacturers including Pfizer and Sanofi, filed suit against the government during the first Trump administration over an earlier iteration of the pricing rule. A federal judge entered a temporary restraining order, ruling in favor of the group. The rule was withdrawn after Joe Biden became president. President Donald Trump in 2025 announced a new most-favored-nation pricing effort and has since unveiled agreements with dozens of manufacturers, including Pfizer, Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline. "Americans - who have for decades paid, by far, the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs - will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs," Trump said in a speech in February. One of the components is an update to Medicare's drug pricing model, basing pricing on the average sales price across a number of nations. The rule, due to take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, "would untether Medicare pricing from the statute and the American market, instead importing foreign price controls from 19 countries," the new lawsuit states. Officials do not have a statutory basis to implement the program, PhRMA stated in the complaint. "CMS relies on an obscure statutory provision," it stated, "[which does not give it] carte blanche to rewrite the Medicare program to fit policy priorities that Congress has not authorized." Market-based pricing is critical for ensuring that Americans can access vital medicines, the lobbying group stated, and keeping the program in place would "upend ... stability and predictability, harming seniors and imperiling our nation's global pharmaceutical leadership." The group is asking the court to declare the program illegal and prohibit government officials from enforcing it. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 17:40

Are El-Sayed's Wheels Coming Off? Authored by J.R. Dunn via American Thinker, The past week has been a rough one for Abdul Muhammed El-Sayed... El-Sayed, as we all know, is the Great Muslim Hope for the Democrats. He debuted as just about the perfect candidate for the Senate - photogenic, a professional, just radical enough for the youth vote, and with no obvious baggage to excuse. But his campaign wrongfooted itself at the very outset by attempting to cozy up to Hasan Piker, the would-be Goebbels to any movement that will have him. Piker's anti-Semitic and anti-American comments soon became intertwined with similar rhetoric from El-Sayed, forcing the candidate to spend weeks of valuable campaign time extricating himself from direct identification with Piker while at the same time not alienating Piker's "four million" (actually in the low five digits) followers. For a time, it seemed to be working, but recently, the carefully prepared image of a benign, moderate Muslim candidate has been fading faster than the picture of Dorian ibn el-Gray. First came the resignation of Jordan Domingue, a longtime staffer who worked on El-Sayed's gubernatorial and senatorial campaigns. Domingue, a former Marine who describes himself as a "Lockheed Liberal," explained the move in a post on X: I protected Abdul for two years, I worked as his personal assistant/executive protection lead on his campaigns. I departed two jobs early from working abroad, moved to Michigan twice, and took paycuts averaging 50,000k. [snip] When I finally realized he didn't actually care about civilians and peace, everything I had previously ignored or excused made it obvious to who he was and that I was on the wrong side." [snip] On the trail he likes to say he has '10 years of public service experience." I knew that was a lie while working for him, but I was also surprised he would say it. As might be expected, the Usual Suspects immediately piled on, accusing Domingue of betraying El-Sayed for money and working for unknown interests. If El-Sayed himself commented, there's no sign of it. Scarcely had this story broken when yet another shoe dropped: The Michigan Professional Firefighters Union didn't actually withdraw its endorsement of El-Sayed as much as claim that it had never really endorsed him in the first place. The union's story is that El-Sayed's name was placed on a list of endorsed candidates "by a clerical error," and then released by sheer accident. In truth, it's likely that it ended up on the list thanks to the fact that he's a Democrat, with the realization that this was the same guy who was calling for the abolition of the police and prisons coming only later. Rank-and-file union members have stated that the name was pulled only after the membership spoke up. Topping it all off was the discovery of social media posts detailing his connections with the Democratic Socialists of America, only days after he declared that he was kind-of a capitalist to the New York Times: "Welcome to the team, comrade," the Detroit branch of the DSA wrote, going on to praise him for supporting Bernie Sanders: "Thank you to our friend and ally Abdul El-Sayed for endorsing Bernie Sanders. Our movement is unstoppable." While all this may not amount to a knockout blow, it does reveal a campaign in serious disarray and unable to seal the deal in the critical final weeks of the campaign. Throw in accumulating evidence that he's starting to lose the black vote, and that will mark "finis" for Abdul Muhammed. On to November. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 17:00

Iran Says More Tankers Struck By Mines, After Trump Declared He Won't Bomb Before Midterms Summary Late night 'heavy explosions' reported in southern Strait of Hormuz, Fars says result of vessels hitting mines. Oil plunged after Trump said on Truth Social the US will not attack Iran before the November midterms. Late Wednesday reports said Pentagon was ordered to prepare Iran attack options for before midterms. Iran expanded tanker attacks beyond the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. In Saudi Arabia, Riyadh airport suffers direct missile attack from Iran-aligned Houthis. //--> //--> US announces end of Iranian blockade by October 31, 2026? Yes 22% · No 79%View full market & trade on Polymarket *  *  * More Vessels Attacked in Hormuz Strait in Evening Hours In late night hours (Tehran time), Iranian state media has announced more attacks on ships in the southern part of the Strait of Hormuz. According to Fars: Military sources shows that several heavy explosions occurred minutes ago in the southern passage of the Strait of Hormuz, which was caused by violating oil tankers hitting mines spread in the area from the sea; Fars reports At the same time Iran's President Pezeshkian stated Thursday that negotiations with the US are not completely dead yet. "We exchanged proposals with America through intermediaries and introduced some amendments," he said. And importantly, "despite US attacks, we never left the negotiating table," he said. "We are currently compiling proposals, and after the final text is prepared, we will review it through mediators and convey all proposals." Meanwhile, more of these piecemeal reports and claims: US military has drafted options for three days of strikes as President Trump hesitates, according to NYT NEW: Just moments ago, the IRIB stated that “several heavy explosions” occurred after tanker(s) struck MINES in the Strait of Hormuz. It should be fairly noted that Iran has erroneously claimed that vessels struck mines previous along the Omani Route, but at the same time… President Trump’s aversion to any kind of escalation in the past few weeks raised the odds significantly that Iran WILL look to re-mine the Strait of Hormuz and Omani Route before the U.S. midterms. — Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) October 8, 2026 Oil Plunges As Trump Says No Attacks Before Midterms President Trump just issued a new Truth Social Post Thursday just after noon time (eastern), wherein he declared "we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections" in November. Oil dropped on the statement (though is still up on the day)... The full Trump post below, wherein Trump also claims that active discussions with the Iranians are still happening, and that oil is "flowing in record numbers"... Quick Iranian rection: U.S. and Israeli officials say Iranian leaders are deeply suspicious of Trump's statements. The officials said Iranian leaders want to avoid a third surprise attack, reports Axios. To recall, The Atlantic reported late Wednesday that the Pentagon is preparing strike options for the Commander-in-Chief to consider, and that Trump may actually pull the trigger before the midterm elections - though the report emphasizes that the decision was still being debated: After months of on-again, off-again fighting, the United States hasn’t struck Iran in several weeks. The stretch of relative tranquility is coinciding with the final phase of the midterm-election campaign, and the assumption has been that President Trump will want to keep it going through November 3 so as not to remind voters of an unpopular war that is dragging Republican candidates down nationwide. But that may not be what happens. The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials. The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote, administration officials told us. And yet a renewed outbreak of direct bombing would likely actually serve to do the opposite, given oil prices have tended to shoot up on headlines of major direct escalation. Reports out of Iran confirmed earlier Wednesday that negotiations are 'stalemated' - also as the Iranians have ramped up targeting tankers with drones in the Strait of Hormuz over the last week. Iran Expands Tanker Assaults Beyond Narrow Confines Of Strait Of Hormuz Iran has significantly widened its maritime operations by shifting attacks beyond the narrow confines of the Strait of Hormuz into the broader waters of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Over a recent 24-hour window, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) may have struck two commercial ships outside traditional chokepoints, including a vessel off Qatar, as well as a Very Large Crude Carrier near the United Arab Emirates. The latter instance has less confirmation at this point. This escalation indicates a tactical shift, given the IRGC is no longer waiting for vessels to explicitly violate its designated maritime enforcement corridors. Instead, any ship suspected of trying to bypass Iranian blockades now faces active targeting across the entire regional waterway. This at least is what Tehran is likely seeking to demonstrate to Washington and its Gulf allies, and comes after record numbers of vessels have been making it through so far this month under US naval watch and protocol. Source: UKMTOThe first of these incidents, which was widely reported overnight and is now being given greater confirmation Thursday, occurred 51 nautical miles north of Madinat ash Shamal, Qatar. The vessel was struck multiple times, in what appears an effort to specifically to kill crew members. An unknown amount of casualties has been reported: It said there were multiple casualties as a result of the attack. The extent of the casualties is unknown, however, in previous UKMTO warnings the word “casualties” has been used to describe seafarer deaths rather than injuries. The Guardian details further of the unusual location of the attack: The vessel was in the Gulf, about 500km (300 miles) west of the strait of Hormuz, when it reported being struck “by multiple projectiles”, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said on Wednesday. The UK authority did not specify the origin of the ship. Wednesday’s attack comes as strikes on tankers sailing through the strait of Hormuz hit their ⁠highest weekly level since the Iran war began, according to maritime security firms, as oil prices climbed above $100 per barrel. Oil Price writes, "A tanker has been struck by multiple projectiles north of Qatar’s tip in the first such attack deep within the Persian Gulf in nearly a month." Not only have drone and missile attacks on vessels picked up over the last nearly two weeks, but casualties as well. "In the ‌week to 5 October, there were at least 12 attacks ‌on oil, liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas tankers around the strait, according to data from three security sources," continues The Guardian. "On Tuesday, India’s ​foreign ministry said 12 crew members were injured after an attack on a Panama-flagged oil tanker passing through the strait of Hormuz." Tanker Fire Off UAE: Second Vessel Attacked? The second of these events, off UAE, has been less confirmed. Newsquawk notes: Oil tanker assembly site reportedly explodes near UAE, Mizan reports; "Ocean sources reported the detection of a fire in the Gulf of Oman, approximately 30 nautical miles east of Fujairah" And via DropSite News: Possibly second vessel hit near UAE’s Fujairah bypass port. — Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 8, 2026 Maritime and satellite open source channels have been observing a fire, with potential US military assets circling the area, at the below location: If this second attack is confirmed, it marks a serious escalation in terms of Iran's efforts to extend its own blockade and 'answer' to so many ships getting through under the US Navy's protocol. Houthis Attacking Saudi Airports From bad to worse in the Saudi-Houthi war... WATCH: Footage confirms a Houthi strike hit a stationary aircraft at Riyadh Airport, Saudi Arabia. https://t.co/0FLJXDyA4U — Clash Report (@clashreport) October 8, 2026 More Latest Regional Developments via Newsquawk The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials. The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote. The Atlantic The US military has been ordered to be ready for possible Iran strikes as President Trump weighs the timing, with the Pentagon said to have instructed CENTCOM several days ago to conclude preparations for resuming major combat operations in Iran; any campaign is expected to be a joint US-Israeli one including large bombing of Iranian energy, infrastructure and nuclear targets. Axios US President Trump stated that he doesn't think an Iran deal is something he wants to do. It was separately reported that Trump said the Iranians are ready to offer us anything to stop what's happening, even though an agreement with them is not the option he truly wants, while Trump was also reported to say that Witkoff is now working on reaching an agreement with Iran and is making very good progress, according to Al Jazeera. The US military has been ordered to be ready for possible Iran strikes as President Trump weighs the timing, with the Pentagon said to have instructed US CENTCOM several days ago to conclude preparations for resuming major combat operations in Iran, according to Axios. The directive didn't include a specific date for launching strikes and President Trump hasn't made any final decisions, although US and Israeli sources said it could happen before the US midterm election. Furthermore, it was stated that if major combat operations resume, they are likely to be a joint US and Israeli campaign and expected to include large bombing of Iranian energy, infrastructure and nuclear targets. US President Trump and his national security team have discussed possibly resuming large-scale US military operations in Iran in the coming weeks, including the option of launching strikes before the midterm elections next month, according to NBC. The US is stepping up preparations and has completed operational plans in case President Trump orders strikes against Iran, i24 News reported citing sources. The report added that forces at Fort Bragg are ready to deploy to any theatre within 18 hours. Iran's working assumption is that there will be a US attack, according to Jerusalem Post's Stein, citing two regional diplomats, while the debate in Tehran is if they should attack first. US CENTCOM rejected IRGC claims that the Strait of Hormuz is closed and that Iran has full control over it, while it stated that traffic is flowing through the strait carrying commercial goods and energy supplies, including 20mln bbls of crude.  Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei said Iran's considerations and conditions for ending the war on all fronts and restoring security to the Persian Gulf region and the Strait have been clearly and firmly explained, and the necessary response to US proposals will be provided through mediators. He also stated that Iran will continue its efforts to strengthen trust and interaction between regional countries, while he stated that Tehran has spared no effort, in consultation with Oman as another coastal state, to restore security to the Strait of Hormuz, and the two sides had agreed on the geographical coordinates for safe transit routes and on how the agreement will be presented internationally, while the agreement between Iran and Oman on the safe routes of Hormuz will soon be reflected in international references. Iranian intelligence services are reportedly targeting the US Ramstein and Spangdahlem air bases in Germany, WiWo reported. The report added that Iranian intelligence services are reportedly also targeting other US bases in Europe and planning complex attacks, with the UK also said to be a potential target. Pakistan's Army Chief said they are working to reduce the differences between the US and Iran, according to Nour News. Reports of explosions heard and fires visible in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, according to Sabereen News. Satellite images also showed smoke rising from the Abqaiq oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, and a fire at both Abqaiq facilities and Tanjib gas plant. Oil tanker assembly site reportedly exploded near UAE, Mizan reported; "Ocean sources reported the detection of a fire in the Gulf of Oman, approximately 30 nautical miles east of Fujairah."  Yemen's Houthis said they attacked King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a ballistic missile and stated Saudi airspace will be a target of operations except over Mecca and Medina. Syria officially denied reports of sending troops to Yemen, with its presidential media advisor stating the reports are lies with no truth, and affirmed that Syria stands with Saudi Arabia's security.     OCTOBER ONLY.$10 OFFYOUR NEXT ORDER.$30 min. Ends Oct 31. One per customer.GET MY $10 OFF →Signs you up for ZeroHedge Store emails. Can't be combined. Every order helps support ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Thu, 10/08/2026 - 16:30