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Analysts say Corona brewer is a buy despite slowdown in sales across the industry 2024-05-20 20:32:00+00:00 - Two Wall Street research firms are calling Constellation Brands a buy, arguing that worries over a key sales metric for the beer maker are overblown. Analysts at Jefferies last week said industrywide depletions — a measure of how much beer is sold to retailers by distributors — "remain weak" and see a likely April slowdown due to bad weather. However, distributors polled by Jefferies are bullish on Constellation, seeing buyers trade-up for its Modelo brand. Based on their bi-annual survey of the beer market, the analysts expect depletions for Constellation to rise 7% or more this year. To that end, Jefferies remains positive about the company's ability to deliver on its fiscal 2025 guidance of 6% to 7% enterprise net sales growth, with beer up 7% to 9% and wine and spirits between down 0.5% to up 0.5%. It has a buy on STZ shares. STZ YTD mountain Constellation Brands YTD Fears about an industry slowdown are likely why Constellation shares are down 4% since reporting upbeat fiscal 2024 fourth-quarter earnings and forward guidance on April 11 compared to about a 3% rise in the S & P 500 . Shares were down roughly 1% to about $253 on Monday — still about 8% shy of their record closing high of nearly $273. Wells Fargo on Monday said it's time to buy that "depletion miss" sell-off. "It feels like every few months, there's a need to defend STZ's stock on a fundamental debate (usually missing depletions) that has typically not played out, the stock rebounds, and then we go through the same cycle all over again. We appreciate how frustrating this can be for holders of the stock, namely given the focus on weekly depletions for a company that has never missed its annual depletion algorithm for the past decade. We again find ourselves defending the stock today, saying to buy the stock...now...as we think a 'depletion miss' debate is misguided, see valuation therefore too low, and see STZ in general on the cusp of a multi-year profit acceleration cycle," Wells Fargo analysts wrote. We agree with that sentiment, which is why we've stuck by the stock. The Club and Wells Fargo both have $300 as price targets. The Wells Fargo analysts said their work suggests fiscal 2025 first-quarter estimates of depletions rising 6.5% is reasonable, with a Wall Street consensus estimate of up 7.3%. An added bit of bullishness from Wells Fargo was its argument that Constellation's struggling wine and spirits business is not as much of a factor currently. The analysts said, "The unwind of the W & S business for STZ over the past decade is mostly done" — down from 45% of profit a decade ago and 27% of profit in fiscal year 2019. They estimate wine and spirits to be less than 10% of fiscal year 2025 profit. Jim has been calling for Constellation to get out of wine and spirits and concentrate solely on beer. Thus far, the company has not indicated a move in that direction. Elliott Management has a big stake in Constellation and the company is working with the activist investor group, which has a track record of generating value for shareholders. After last month's strong earnings and rosy guide, Constellation CEO Bill Newlands told Jim that the company plans to improve its wine and spirits division by focusing on "critical brands" and execution. Newlands acknowledged at the time, "We spread ourselves a little too thin in the past year." The next event, ahead of fiscal 2025 first-quarter earnings due this summer, is a presentation from Newlands and CFO Garth Hankinson at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference on May 29. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long STZ. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. Cans of Corona and Modelo beer are displayed on a shelf at a BevMo store on January 05, 2024 in San Rafael, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

How major US stock indexes fared Monday, 5/20/2024 2024-05-20 20:18:07+00:00 - U.S. stock indexes drifted to a mixed finish after a quiet day of trading, and the Nasdaq composite rose to another record. The Nasdaq climbed 0.7% Monday. The S&P 500 edged up by 0.1% to finish just short of its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.5% in its first trading after closing above the 40,000 level for the first time. Norwegian Cruise Line helped lead the market higher after giving financial forecasts that topped analysts’ expectations. Treasury yields were relatively steady. Nvidia, one of Wall Street’s most influential companies, will report its quarterly results later this week. On Monday: The S&P 500 rose 4.86 points, or 0.1%, to 5,308.13. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 196.82 points, or 0.5%, to 39,806.77. The Nasdaq composite rose 108.91 points, or 0.7%, to 16,794.87. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 6.78 points, or 0.3%, to 2,102.50. For the year: The S&P 500 is up 538.30 points, or 11.3%. The Dow is up 2,117.23 points, or 5.6%. The Nasdaq is up 1,783.52 points, or 11.9%. The Russell 2000 is up 75.43 points, or 3.7%.

2 top Penguin Random House editors are leaving amid ongoing changes at publishing house 2024-05-20 20:16:55+00:00 - NEW YORK (AP) — Two top editors at Penguin Random House are leaving as the country’s leading trading publisher continues to transform during a period of uncertain revenues and generational change. The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a Penguin Random House division, announced Monday the departures of Alfred A. Knopf publisher Reagan Arthur and Pantheon/Schocken publisher Lisa Lucas. A publishing official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the restructure was for financial reasons. Knopf and Pantheon/Schocken are two of the industry’s most established literary publishers and Arthur and Lucas two of the most widely liked editors. The book market has softened since early in the pandemic, when sales surged amid shutdowns in the entertainment industry and beyond. In a year-end company letter sent in December 2023, Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya referred to “very difficult and challenging” changes facing the company. On Monday, Knopf Doubleday publisher Maya Mavjee said the latest “realignment” was “necessary for our future growth.” “Our new structure –- consisting of a nimble, concentrated leadership team –- will enable us to meet the trials of an ever-shifting marketplace, hone the shape and focus of our imprints, and continue to allow us to do what we do best: publish great books,” Mavjee said. Jordan Pavlin, currently Knopf’s editor in chief, will now also serve as publisher. At Pantheon, vice president-editorial director Denise Oswald will report to the publisher of Doubleday, Bill Thomas. Over the past few years, much of Penguin Random House’s leadership team has retired, died or otherwise departed. CEO Markus Dohle left after the publisher’s purchase of rival Simon & Schuster was blocked in 2022 by a federal judge, and numerous longtime officials accepted buyouts. Arthur’s immediate predecessor at Knopf, Sonny Mehta, died in 2019. One of Knopf’s most celebrated editors, Robert Gottlieb, died last year. Arthur, who joined Knopf in 2020 after heading Little, Brown and Company, had worked with Ian McEwan and Nathan Hill among others. A Knopf novel, Jayne Anne Phillips’ “Night Watch,” is this year’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Lucas was also hired in 2020, after serving four years as executive director of the National Book Foundation, where she had been the first Black person and first woman to head the non-profit organization. Her books at Pantheon included Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s novel “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” a National Book Award finalist, and Laura Warrell’s novel “Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner prize. Lucas wrote on X that she learned of her dismissal soon after being honored by her alma mater, the University of Chicago, for professional achievement. The news also came almost exactly six years since the death of her father, musician Reggie Lucas. “WILD RIDE FOR ONLY FOUR DAYS,” she wrote. Pantheon author Nina McConigley wrote on X: “As an author who signed with @PantheonBooks — @likaluca was one of the reasons I was so excited. She is a role model in so many senses of the word. So so brokenhearted.”

Ivan Boesky, notorious trader who served time for insider trading, dead at 87 2024-05-20 20:13:00+00:00 - Ivan F. Boesky, the flamboyant stock trader whose cooperation with the government cracked open one of the largest insider trading scandals in the history of Wall Street, has died at the age of 87. A representative at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, owned by Ivan Boesky's daughter, confirmed his death. No other details were given. The son of a Detroit delicatessen owner, Boesky was once considered one of the richest and most influential risk-takers on Wall Street. He had parlayed $700,000 from his late mother-in-law's estate into a fortune estimated at more than $200 million, hurtling him into the ranks of Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans. Once implicated in insider trading, Boesky cooperated with a brash young U.S. attorney named Rudolph Giuliani in a bid for leniency, uncovering a scandal that shattered promising careers, blemished some of the most respected U.S. investment brokerages and injected a certain paranoia into the securities industry. Working undercover, Boesky secretly taped three conversations with Michael Milken, the so-called "junk bond king" whose work with Drexel Burnham Lambert had revolutionized the credit markets. Milken eventually pleaded guilty to six felonies and served 22 months in prison, while Boesky paid a $100 million fine and spent 20 months in a minimum-security California prison nicknamed "Club Fed," beginning in March 1988. Linked to Gordon Gekko After Boesky's arrest, accounts circulated widely that he had had told business students during a commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley in 1985 or 1986, "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." The line was memorably echoed by Michael Douglas in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Gordon Gekko, a high-flying trader, in Oliver Stone's 1987 film "Wall Street." "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good," Douglas tells the shareholders of Teldar Paper. "Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." Boesky, however, said he couldn't remember saying "greed is healthy" and denied another quotation attributed to him in the 1984 Atlantic Monthly, in which he allegedly said that climbing to the height of a huge pile of silver dollars would be "an aphrodisiac experience." While he usually worked 18-hour days, the silver-haired and lean Boesky also lived a life of opulence. He wore designer clothes, traveled in limousines, private airplanes and helicopters and revamped his 10,000-square-foot Westchester County mansion with a Jeffersonian dome to resemble Monticello. "There was a very substantial amount of materiality available," Boesky said during his 1993 divorce proceedings. "We had places in Palm Beach, Paris, New York, the south of France." Briefcases stuff with cash Boesky was an arbitrageur, a risk-taker who made millions by betting on stocks thought to be the target of corporate takeovers. But some of his tips came from within the mergers and acquisitions departments of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. Dennis Levine of Drexel and Martin Siegal of Kidder, Peabody fed Boesky confidential information in return for promised cut of profits of either 1% or 5%. Boesky paid Siegal $700,000 in three installments, with a courier delivering briefcases full of cash at three clandestine meeting on a street corner and in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Boesky had made millions on Siegal's tips, which included word that Getty Oil and Carnation Co. were ripe for takeovers. Levine was arrested before his payout could come, tripped up by his own insider trading. Facing harsh penalties under the government's racketeering statutes, Levine revealed everything and Boesky began talking as well, providing information leading to convictions or guilty pleas in cases involving former stockbroker Boyd Jefferies, Siegel, four executives of Britian's Guiness PLC, takeover strategist Paul Bilzerian, stock speculator Salim Lewis and others. The most notable arrest was of Milken, the pioneering financier who had transformed capital markets in the 1970s with a new form of bond that allowed thousands of mid-sized companies to raise money. In the 1980s those "junk" bonds were used to finance thousands of leveraged buyouts, including Revlon, Beatrice Companies, RJR Nabisco Inc. and Federated Department Stores, making Milken a hated and feared figure on Wall Street. The financier and philanthropist was indicted on 98 counts, including securities and mail fraud, insider trading, racketeering and making false statements. Prosecutors said Milken and Boesky conspired together to manipulate securities prices, rig transactions and evade taxes and regulatory requirements. Milken eventually pleaded guilty to six securities violations, including telling Boesky he'd cover any losses he suffered trading the stock of Fischbach Corp., a takeover target at the time. Prosecutors said Boesky's cooperation provided the government with the most information about securities law violations since the legislative hearings that led to the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts. Targeted for death When John Mulheren Jr. feared he was about to be implicated, the Wall Street executive loaded an assault rifle with the intent of killing Boesky and Boesky's former head trader, police said. Mulheren was captured en route. At trial, Mulheren's attorney, Thomas Puccio, called Boesky a repeat liar and "pile of human garbage" who was motivated to say anything to assist federal authorities in exchange for leniency. "If there ever was a person to whom the title Prince of Darkness could be applied, Ivan Boesky is that man," Puccio said. "The king of greed, a person who stood for nothing except his own ambition, his own greed." The jury convicted Mulheren, but his conviction was later overturned. Other convictions were reversed as well — those of GAF Corp. and a senior executive, five principals of Princeton-Newport Partners and that of a former Drexel trader. The reversals bolstered the arguments of free-traders who argued that Wall Street had been victimized by a publicity-seeking federal prosecutor using racketeering statutes usually reserved to combat organized crime. The government had previously done little to police insider trading, and some said it should be legalized. But no one could defend payoffs involving suitcases full of cash. Levine, writing in the pages of Fortune after his release, said he couldn't understand why Boesky would risk so much by engaging in something so clearly illegal. "And I don't know why Ivan engaged in illegal activities when he had a fortune estimated at over $200 million," Levine wrote in 1990. "I'm sure he derived much of his wealth from legitimate enterprise: He was skilled at arbitrage and obsessed with his work. He must have been driven by something beyond rational behavior." At his 1987 sentencing Boesky's lawyer quoted his psychiatrist as saying Boesky "has begun to recognize that he suffered from an abnormal and compulsive need to prove himself, to overcome some sense of inadequacy or inferiority that is rooted in his childhood." Landing on his feet Three years after his release from a Brooklyn halfway house in April 1990, Boesky and his wife Seema divorced after 30 years of marriage. Claiming he had been left penniless after paying fines, restitution and legal fees, he won $20 million in cash and $180,000 a year in alimony from his wife's $100 million fortune. He also got a $2.5 million home in the La Jolla section of San Diego, where he lived with his boyhood friend, Houshang Wekili. Ivan Frederick Boesky was born in Detroit in 1937 into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. Boesky said he learned industriousness from his father, who operated three delicatessens. At the age of 13 Boesky bought a 1937 Chevy truck, painted it white and sold ice cream from it in Detroit parks, making about $150 a week in nickels and dimes. A three-time college dropout, Boesky entered the Detroit College of Law in 1959, which then did not require an undergraduate degree for admission. He withdrew twice before receiving his degree five years later. While in law school Boesky married Seema Silberstein, the daughter of Ben Silberstein, a real estate developer and the owner of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Unable to find employment with any major Detroit law firm, Boesky moved in 1966 with his wife and the first of their four children to New York, where he floated from job to job on Wall Street. In 1975 Boesky struck out on his own, opening small brokerage that he eventually parlayed into a sprawling group of investment companies with more than 100 employees. He worked grueling hours, gave self-promoting newspapers interviews and wrote a 1985 book entitled "Merger Mania." He was also an active philanthropist, especially with Jewish causes, giving $20 million to endow a library at the Jewish Theological Seminary that was later renamed.

Bankruptcy judge approves Genesis Global plan to refund $3 billion to creditors, crypto customers 2024-05-20 19:48:10+00:00 - ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A bankruptcy court judge has approved a plan by the cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global to return about $3 billion to its creditors and investors, including thousands of people who New York regulators say were defrauded by the company. The plan and settlement approved Friday by Judge Sean H. Lane includes up to $2 billion to settle a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said the company misled investors about the risks of putting their money into a company program known as Gemini Earn. “This historic settlement is a major step toward ensuring the victims who invested in Genesis have a semblance of justice,” James said in a statement Monday. “Once again, we see the real-world consequences and detrimental losses that can happen because of a lack of oversight and regulation within the cryptocurrency industry.” Creditors whose claims were in U.S. dollars will be receiving 100% of their loan balances by the firm, which filed for bankruptcy last year. Those with claims in cryptocurrency will see some short of shortfall, according to the decision. The settlement includes a victim fund for Genesis’ creditors to help recover some of their losses, James’ office said. “We look forward to putting the Plan into effect and making distributions as expeditiously as possible,” Genesis Interim CEO Derar Islim said in a statement on Friday.

Billionaire rains cash on UMass graduates to tune of $1,000 each, but says they must give half away 2024-05-20 19:47:47+00:00 - MEREDITH, N.H. (AP) — The clouds weren’t alone in making it rain on the commencement ceremony at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth last week. On stage, billionaire philanthropist Rob Hale surprised the graduating class of more than 1,000 by pointing to a nearby truck holding envelopes stuffed with cash. Huddling under ponchos and umbrellas at the soggy ceremony, the graduates yelled and cheered, their mouths agape, as Hale announced he was showering money upon them. Security guards then lugged the cash-filled duffel bags onto the stage. Hale told the students each would get $1,000. But there was a condition: They were to keep $500 and give the rest away. Hale said the greatest joy he and his wife Karen had experienced in their lives had come from the act of giving. “We want to give you two gifts. The first is our gift to you,” Hale told the students. “The second is the gift of giving. These trying times have heightened the need for sharing, caring and giving. Our community needs you, and your generosity, more than ever.” The founder and chief executive of Granite Telecommunications, Hale is estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $5.4 billion. He owns a minority stake in the Boston Celtics. It’s the fourth year in a row that he has given a similar gift to a group of graduating students. Last year it was to students at UMass Boston, and before that it was to students at Roxbury Community College and Quincy College. But the students at UMass Dartmouth had no idea in advance Hale would be speaking — let alone giving away money. “I was very surprised,” said Joshua Bernadin, who graduated with a chemistry degree. “Everybody around me was in shock for a few seconds, and then they were all so happy.” Bernadin said he, too, was very happy to get the money. He hasn’t yet decided what to do with his $500, although it could go toward paying down his student loans. He plans to donate the other $500 to the theater company and gospel choir he was involved in at the university. He said he liked the idea of being compelled to donate. “I feel like a lot of people, especially in my generation, are very, like, ‘I need to take this, I need to take that.’” He said that attitude was somewhat justified given the difficulty in getting established in today’s world, but it was also important to remember those who had helped along the way and to give back. Hale told students his path to success had been rocky, after his previous company Network Plus filed for bankruptcy in 2002, during the dotcom crash. “Have you ever met someone who lost a billion dollars before? Hale said, as he joked about giving the students career advice. “I may be the biggest loser you ever met, and you have to sit in the rain and listen to me.” In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Hale said part of the message he wanted to get across was that it was okay to take chances in life and fail. He said he and his wife had started the tradition of cash giveaways in the thick of the pandemic when students had little to celebrate. The most impactful part of it was hearing the heartfelt messages from those who had benefited from the students’ gifts, he said, from struggling local organizations to families that could suddenly afford Christmas gifts. Graduating students that didn’t attend the ceremony missed out on the money. Hale said he hears from some afterward every year, with a variety of reasons for their absences. “We say to them, one of the messages is, you’ve got to show up,” Hale said. He said local elementary schools personalize the two envelopes given to each of the students. One says “Gift” and one says “Give” and each contains $500. He acknowledged there was no way to ensure the students give away half the money. “But I believe that the vast majority do the right thing and then are joyful because of it,” he said. Hale is — unsurprisingly — in hot demand as a commencement speaker, and he said he plans to give away more cash next year. But which commencement he will attend will again remain a surprise.

Top U.S. drug agency a notable holdout in Biden’s push to loosen federal marijuana restrictions 2024-05-20 19:46:10+00:00 - In an isolated part of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters known as the 12th-floor “bubble,” chief Anne Milgram made an unusual request of top deputies summoned in March for what she called the “Marijuana Meeting”: Nobody could take notes. Over the next half hour, she broke the news that the Biden administration would soon be issuing a long-awaited order reclassifying pot as a less-dangerous drug, a major hurdle toward federal legalization that DEA has long resisted. And Milgram went on to reveal another twist, according to two people familiar with the private meeting who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, that the process normally steered by the DEA had been taken over by the U.S. Justice Department and the action would not be signed by her but by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Milgram didn’t give aides a reason for the unprecedented omission and neither she nor the DEA has explained since. But it unfolded this past week exactly as laid out in that meeting two months ago, with the most significant drug policy change in 50 years launched without the support of the nation’s premier narcotics agency. “DEA has not yet made a determination as to its views of the appropriate schedule for marijuana,” reads a sentence tucked 13 pages into Garland’s 92-page order last Thursday outlining the Biden administration proposal to shift pot from its current Schedule I alongside heroin and LSD to the less tightly regulated Schedule III with such drugs as ketamine and some anabolic steroids. Internal records accompanying the order indicate the DEA sent a memo to the Justice Department in late January seeking additional scientific input to determine whether marijuana has an accepted medical use, a key requirement for reclassification. But those concerns were overruled by Justice Department attorneys, who deemed the DEA’s criteria “impermissibly narrow.” Several current and former DEA officials told the AP they believe politics may be at play, contending the Justice Department is moving forward with the marijuana reclassification because President Joe Biden wants to use the issue to woo voters in his re-election campaign and wasn’t willing to give the DEA time for more studies that likely would have dragged beyond Election Day. Those officials also noted that while the Controlled Substances Act grants the attorney general responsibility for regulating the sale of dangerous drugs, federal law still delegates the authority to classify drugs to the DEA administrator. “It’s crystal clear to me that the Justice Department hijacked the rescheduling process, placing politics above public safety,” said Derek Maltz, a retired agent who once headed the DEA’s Special Operations Division. “If there’s scientific evidence to support this decision, then so be it. But you’ve got to let the scientists evaluate it.” Former DEA Administrator Tim Shea said the striking absence of Milgram’s sign-off suggests she was backing “the DEA professionals.” “If she had supported it she would have signed it and sent it in,” said Shea, who served in the Trump administration. “DEA was opposed to this and the politics entered and overruled them. It’s demoralizing. Everybody from the agents in the streets to the leadership in DEA knows the dangers this brings.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment but Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre previously said Biden was committed to fulfilling a 2020 campaign promise. “He said no person, no American who possesses marijuana should go to jail. It is affecting communities across the country, including communities of color.” Justice Department attorneys defended Garland’s decision to proceed without Milgram’s backing, saying in a separate memo that the action was prompted by “sharply different views” between DEA and the Department of Health and Human Services. The HHS last year recommended reclassifying marijuana, deeming it less risky to public health than cocaine, heroin and oxycodone, and effective in treating anorexia, pain and other ailments. HHS concluded in part that “although abuse of marijuana produces clear evidence of a risk to public health, that risk is relatively lower than” that posed by other drugs. The DEA balked at those findings and Garland’s order cites at least 10 times when the drug agency requested additional information before blessing HHS’ medical findings. It did not respond to AP questions seeking further comment. The Justice Department didn’t comment on internal differences but in a statement said that the proposal was “consistent with the scientific and medical determinations of HHS.” The dissonance within the federal government underscores the continuing debate over the risks posed by cannabis, even as 38 states have legalized medical marijuana and 24 have legalized its recreational use. All the while, more voters — 70% of adults, according to a Gallup poll last fall — support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm. “The argument that marijuana is as dangerous as fentanyl, cocaine and meth is laughable,” said Matthew C. Zorn, a Houston-based attorney who writes a newsletter on cannabis regulation. “The DEA isn’t where most Americans are. They’re standing on the wrong side of history.” But even HHS’ National Institute on Drug Abuse has come out with statements in apparent conflict with HHS’ recommendation to reclassify pot, saying the potency of marijuana has been steadily increasing over the years, resulting in higher numbers of emergency room visits to treat a wide range of physical and mental effects, from breathing problems and mental impairment to hallucinations and paranoia. “Whether smoking or otherwise consuming marijuana has therapeutic benefits that outweigh its health risks is still an open question that science has not resolved,” Nora Volkow, a neuroscientist who leads NIDA, is currently quoted as saying on the institute’s website. She did not immediately respond to the AP’s request for comment. The NIDA last performed a medical evaluation of marijuana in 2015 — a year before the Obama administration’s DEA rejected a similar request to reschedule the drug. This time, after Biden ordered a review of the drug’s status in 2022, HHS adopted new criteria to reach its rescheduling conclusion, taking into account the states that have already legalized medical marijuana. The rescheduling move, first reported by the AP last month, faces a potentially lengthy process. The DEA, which is not bound by HHS’ medical determinations at this point, will take public comment on the rescheduling plan before a review by an administrative judge and the publishing of a final rule. Federal prosecutions involving marijuana are already exceedingly rare but a Schedule III classification would still make pot a controlled substance subject to rules and regulations For her part, Milgram has said little about her stance on marijuana and was not asked about it during her confirmation. When she took the helm of the agency in 2021, she privately told colleagues she considered the legalization debate a distraction from the far more serious fentanyl crisis, according to one of the people who spoke to the AP. Milgram is known for a progressive, data-driven approach to law enforcement dating to her days as the Democratic attorney general of New Jersey. When the state’s governor, a close ally, signed a bill in 2010 making the state the 14th to make marijuana legal for medical purposes, she said only that the legislation was “workable.” This past week, she was similarly opaque in a three-sentence announcement to DEA employees obtained by the AP. “As required,” she wrote, “the DEA will post this notice and all attachments on our website.” _____ Goodman reported from Miami, Mustian from New York. AP Writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed. _____ Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/

The death of Iran president Ebrahim Raisi won’t fundamentally change the country 2024-05-20 19:41:51+00:00 - The helicopter crash deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and seven others caught the world by surprise Monday morning, bringing abrupt changes to Iran’s domestic and diplomatic leadership at a time when the Middle East is a boiling kettle of toil and trouble. The death of Iran’s head of leadership won’t fundamentally change Iran’s stripes, for a number of reasons. The change in leadership comes while Iran and its proxy groups are taking advantage of Netanyahu’s invasion of Gaza, launching a retaliatory attack on Israel earlier this month and increasing support for Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. A fish rots at the head, the proverb goes. But the death of Iran’s head of leadership won’t fundamentally change Iran’s stripes, for a number of reasons. The Islamic Republic of Iran is still a regime that believes its survival depends on standing up to Israeli, Saudi and American interests throughout the region. Raisi himself was no reformer. He rose up the ranks in Iran’s dual theocratic and electoral system as a prosecutor closely allied with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate arbiter of all policy decisions. Elected in 2021, while Iran was in a deep economic depression and struggling to access Covid vaccines, Raisi doubled down on hard-line identity politics, tightening the nation’s morality laws and ordering violent crackdowns on the millions who protested the police killing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman taken into custody for showing her hair in public, and whose death after being detained by Iranian police sparked an ongoing movement against the repressive regime. Under Raisi and Amirabdollahian, Iran’s diplomacy took a more bellicose turn with negotiators openly using then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the U.S.'s war in Afghanistan to sow the narrative that the United States cannot be a trusted partner. Shortly after Raisi’s election, Iran ramped up its violations with its Parliament passing laws requiring the violation of the deal’s limits. As a result, Iran now has surpassed the limits of stockpiled, enriched uranium. Iran is a sophisticated regime and the succession plan is already in motion. Under the nation’s Constitution, the vice president steps up and elections must be held in 50 days. Two men close to the theocratic leader Khamenei have already been appointed and sworn in, with Mohammad Mokhber as acting president and nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani as the head diplomat, so we can expect continuity on Iran’s strategic and rhetoric presentation on the world stage. A change in president is not going to change the fact that Iran considers U.S. influence to be the No. 1 threat to its national identity and security. The greater challenge is for Khamenei himself and the future of the theocracy. He has been in power since 1989, overseeing a period of dramatic economic hardship, isolation and technological advancement for his people. Khamenei’s persona and power have shaped everything about modern life in Iran. But he is 85 years old and was grooming Raisi as a potential successor. While as a puppet master the ayatollah can manipulate the secular operation to maintain stability, Khamenei’s own succession — and the future grip of the theocracy — is the real target of opportunity for ambitious clerics, human rights activists and world leaders looking to change the course of Iran’s future.

Supreme Court Justice Alito doesn’t need to trade stock in the first place 2024-05-20 19:40:09+00:00 - Supreme Court justices have lifetime appointments at decent salaries. They don’t need to own and sell individual stocks. A new report about Justice Samuel Alito is a reminder of the unnecessary issues that doing so can cause. To be clear, I’m not referring to The New York Times report about an inverted flag outside Alito’s home after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which raised questions about his ability to serve impartially in pivotal pending appeals. Instead, this later report addresses Alito’s apparent sale of Bud Light-maker Anheuser-Busch stock — and his possibly related purchase of Molson Coors stock — in the wake of an anti-trans Bud Light boycott last year. Chris Geidner, who wrote the stock-related report for Law Dork exploring Alito's possible boycott participation, observed: Participating in a boycott is undeniably a political statement. And there are pending cases for which participation in an anti-trans beer boycott could be seen as his having a finger on the scale of justice on the side of the anti-trans advocates supporting — and in some cases, defending — these laws such that recusal could be required. Alito didn’t respond to Geidner for his report, which quoted watchdog Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth as saying that it’s “possible the sale was innocuous, or not related to the controversy, but given Alito’s priors, he’s lost the benefit of the doubt in my view.” Whatever Alito’s intentions, this is an issue of the justice’s own making. There’s no need for justices to own and sell individual stocks — as opposed to, say, investing in mutual funds if they want to avoid these sorts of recusal questions. Most justices seem to abide by this, though Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts and the now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer are three members of the court known for their stock ownership in recent years. Alito and the court have enough (self-imposed) problems. This is an easy one to solve. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.

Ivan Boesky, inspiration for 'Wall Street' villain Gordon Gekko, dead at 87 2024-05-20 19:39:00+00:00 - Ivan Boesky, a onetime Wall Street titan-turned-convict who served as the partial inspiration for the 1987 Oliver Stone film "Wall Street," has died at the age of 87. Though he denied ever saying it, contemporary accounts reported Boesky extolling the virtues of avarice in a commencement speech at the University of California Berkeley in 1986. “I think greed is healthy," Boesky reportedly said. “You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” At that point, he was seen as a money-making visionary for his seeming ability to predict business mergers. By the end of that year, Boesky had been charged with insider trading, having made lucrative stock bets based on illicit access to proprietary information. As it turned out, Boesky was sending literal briefcases full of cash to an insider at a well-known Wall Street firm in exchange for tips about acquisition activity.

Hims & Hers says it's selling a GLP-1 weight loss drug for 85% less than Wegovy. Here's the price. 2024-05-20 19:28:00+00:00 - Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical startup Hims & Hers Health said it is selling injectable GLP-1 weight loss drugs for a fraction of the cost of brand-name competitors such as Wegovy and Ozempic. Following the announcement, shares of the telehealth company soared more than 30% Monday. Hims & Hers will provide patients with compounded GLP-1 drugs that start at $199 a month, or about 85% less than brand-name versions like Ozempic and Wegovy. The injectables use the same active ingredients as the branded versions, which currently are in short supply in some doses. Shares of Hims & Hers soared $4.21, or 29%, to $18.79 in Monday afternoon trading. GLP-1 drugs, which stands for glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists, help people feel fuller and less hungry, aiding their efforts to lose weight. But the brand-name versions made by a handful of pharmaceutical companies can be pricey, with Novo Nordisk's Wegovy costing about $1,350 a month, or more than $16,00 a year, without insurance, according to GoodRx. Hims & Hers Health's may also beat out competitors on another key metric: availability. The startup said its GLP-1 injectable drug, which is made in partnership with a manufacturer of compounded injectable medications, will have "consistent" availability. The company added that it will also sell brand-name versions of GLP-1 drugs, once supply rebounds. "We've leveraged our size and scale to secure access to one of the highest-quality supplies of compounded GLP-1 injections available today," Hims & Hers Health CEO and co-founder Andrew Dudum said in a statement Monday. "We're passing that access and value along to our customers, who deserve the highest standard of clinical safety and efficacy to meet their goals, and we're doing it in a safe, affordable way that others can't deliver." Customers will need a prescription from their medical provider, based on what is "medically appropriate and necessary for each patient," the company said. The company is tapping an opportunity to profit by focusing on Americans' desire to slim down. It already has an existing weight-loss program that is on track to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by 2025, with the program selling oral weight-loss medications for about $79 per month. Compounded drugs are made by pharmacists to tailor a medication to a patient or if some drugs are in short supply. To be sure, the Food and Drug Administration warns that patients should not use compounded drugs when approved drugs are available to patients. The agency does not review compounded GLP-1 medications for safety, and said it has received "adverse event reports" from patients who have used compounded semaglutide medications. Some consumers have turned to compounded versions of the medications as demand for brand name drugs like Wegovy, Ozempic and Eli Lilly's Mounjaro, dubbed "miracle drugs" by users who have slimmed down, soars and strains supply.

New documents show how disinformation expert was unfairly tarred 2024-05-20 19:04:10+00:00 - It may seem like a distant memory at this point, but the conservative crusade against disinformation experts truly ramped up in 2022 with the MAGA movement’s attacks on respected researcher Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz had been tapped to run a now-defunct panel within the Department of Homeland Security which was going to focus on the spread of harmful disinformation and devise ways to counter it. The panel was scrapped after Republicans — in particular, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan — framed Jankowicz as the face of anti-conservative citizenship and waged a smear campaign against her. Now, Jankowicz is clapping back. After being called to testify in front of the committee last year, she received help from Democratic committee members in prying loose some of the transcripts, which Jordan released Friday. The documents undermine claims from the Ohio lawmaker and other Republicans portraying Jankowicz as a liberal weapon. Just read what Jankowicz told Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, for example, when he asked if there were specific organizations she planned to seek out for help combating disinformation. She said: I really wanted to make sure that the working-level individuals at the Department of Homeland Security kind of were exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints and research on disinformation. Before Congress, in, you know, my previous testimony, I’ve always reminded everyone that disinformation is a nonpartisan issue. It affects everyone, no matter your political party. And so I consume and read a lot of different things from a lot of different institutions, and, you know, I would put that before everybody as Executive Director as well. Jankowicz even named the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation as an example of an organization she might have considered tapping for guidance on rooting out disinformation, citing its previous work on the issue. Later in the deposition, she said the board “did not have the intention to arbitrate, oversee, [or] restrict any thoughts.” And she dispelled claims about her supposed nefarious intent by noting that Democrats and Republicans had invited her in the past to testify on her expertise. “I was a witness at the request of Senator Grassley in 2018, so, clearly, some Republicans thought I was getting something right,” she said in the deposition. “My scholarship has been about arming people with truthful information, not taking away their right to free speech.” In a press release after the committee shared the deposition, Jankowicz called the move a “major victory for transparency and truth” and said it “dispels the lies” about her brief period as executive director of the disinformation board.

New York reaches $2bn settlement with crypto lender Genesis over fraud claims 2024-05-20 19:04:00+00:00 - New York’s attorney general has secured a $2bn settlement with the bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global over allegations it had defrauded thousands of investors. Genesis, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US in January 2023, received court approval last week to return about $3bn in cash and cryptocurrency to its customers in a liquidation. “Once again, we see the real-world consequences and detrimental losses that can happen because of a lack of oversight and regulation within the cryptocurrency industry,” said the New York attorney general, Letitia James. On Monday, James announced a victims fund, established through the settlement, to “help defrauded investors”, including at least 29,000 New Yorkers said to have contributed more than $1.1bn to Genesis through its Gemini Earn scheme. James said it was the largest settlement that New York state had ever reached with a cryptocurrency company. “When investors suffer losses because of fraud and manipulation, they deserve to be made whole,” said James. “This historic settlement is a major step toward ensuring the victims who invested in Genesis have a semblance of justice. James first filed a lawsuit against Genesis last October, accusing it of having concealed losses from investors who provided digital assets through Gemini Earn. Under the settlement, the firm has neither admitted or denied the allegations. Genesis was among several crypto casualties caught up in the collapse of FTX, which had been one of the world’s largest exchanges. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion “New York investors deserve the peace of mind that comes from a properly regulated marketplace,” she added.

World is ill-prepared for breakthroughs in AI, say experts 2024-05-20 19:01:00+00:00 - The world is ill-prepared for breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, according to a group of senior experts including two “godfathers” of AI, who warn that governments have made insufficient progress in regulating the technology. A shift by tech companies to autonomous systems could “massively amplify” AI’s impact and governments need safety regimes that trigger regulatory action if products reach certain levels of ability, said the group. The recommendations are made by 25 experts including Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three “godfathers of AI” who have won the ACM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work. The intervention comes as politicians, experts and tech executives prepare to meet at a two-day summit in Seoul on Tuesday. The academic paper, called “managing extreme AI risks amid rapid progress”, recommends government safety frameworks that introduce tougher requirements if the technology advances rapidly. It also calls for increased funding for newly established bodies such as the UK and US AI safety institutes; forcing tech firms to carry out more rigorous risk-checking; and restricting the use of autonomous AI systems in key societal roles. “Society’s response, despite promising first steps, is incommensurate with the possibility of rapid, transformative progress that is expected by many experts,” according to the paper, published in the Science journal on Monday. “AI safety research is lagging. Present governance initiatives lack the mechanisms and institutions to prevent misuse and recklessness, and barely address autonomous systems.” A global AI safety summit at Bletchley Park in the UK last year brokered a voluntary testing agreement with tech firms including Google, Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, while the EU has brought in an AI act and in the US a White House executive order has set new AI safety requirements. The paper says advanced AI systems – technology that carries out tasks typically associated with intelligent beings – could help cure disease and raise living standards but also carry the threat of eroding social stability and enabling automated warfare. It warns, however, that the tech industry’s move towards developing autonomous systems poses an even greater threat. “Companies are shifting their focus to developing generalist AI systems that can autonomously act and pursue goals. Increases in capabilities and autonomy may soon massively amplify AI’s impact, with risks that include large-scale social harms, malicious uses, and an irreversible loss of human control over autonomous AI systems,” the experts said, adding that unchecked AI advancement could lead to the “marginalisation or extinction of humanity”. The next stage in development for commercial AI is “agentic” AI, the term for systems that can act autonomously and, theoretically, carry out and complete tasks such as booking holidays. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to TechScape Free weekly newsletter Alex Hern's weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Last week, two tech firms gave a glimpse of that future with OpenAI’s GPT-4o, which can carry out real-time voice conversations, and Google’s Project Astra, which was able to use a smartphone camera to identify locations, read and explain computer code and create alliterative sentences. Other co-authors of the proposals include the bestselling author of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, the late Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in economics, Sheila McIlraith, a professor in AI at the University of Toronto, and Dawn Song, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The paper published on Monday is a peer-reviewed update of initial proposals produced before the Bletchley meeting. A UK government spokesperson said: “We disagree with this assessment. The AI Seoul summit this week will play an important role in advancing the legacy of the Bletchley Park summit and will see a number of companies update world leaders on how they are fulfilling the commitments made at Bletchley to ensure the safety of their models.”

Microsoft’s AI chatbot will ‘recall’ everything you do on a PC 2024-05-20 18:57:37+00:00 - REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft wants laptop users to get so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you’re doing on your computer and help figure out what you want to do next. The software giant on Monday revealed a new class of AI-imbued personal computers as it confronts heightened competition from Big Tech rivals in pitching generative AI technology that can compose documents, make images and serve as a lifelike personal assistant at work or home. The announcements ahead of Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference centered on fusing its AI assistant, called Copilot, into the Windows operating system for PCs, where Microsoft already has the eyes of millions of consumers. The new features will include Windows Recall, giving the AI assistant what Microsoft describes as “photographic memory” of a person’s virtual activity. Microsoft promises to protect users’ privacy by giving them the option to filter out what they don’t want tracked, and keeping the tracking on the device. It’s a step toward machines that “instantly see us, hear, reason about our intent and our surroundings,” said CEO Satya Nadella. “We’re entering this new era where computers not only understand us, but can actually anticipate what we want and our intent,” Nadella said at an event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The conference that starts Tuesday in Seattle follows big AI announcements last week from rival Google, as well as Microsoft’s close business partner OpenAI, which built the AI large language models on which Microsoft’s Copilot is based. Google rolled out a retooled search engine that periodically puts AI-generated summaries over website links at the top of the results page; while also showing off a still-in-development AI assistant Astra that will be able to “see” and converse about things shown through a smartphone’s camera lens. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI unveiled a new version of its chatbot last week, demonstrating an AI voice assistant with human characteristics that can banter about what someone’s wearing and even attempt to assess a person’s emotions. The voice sounded so much like Scarlett Johansson playing an AI character in the sci-fi movie “Her” that OpenAI dropped the voice from its collection Monday. OpenAI also rolled out a new desktop version of ChatGPT designed for Apple’s Mac computers. Next up is Apple’s own annual developers conference in June. Apple CEO Tim Cook signaled at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in February that it has been making big investments in generative AI. Some of Microsoft’s announcements Monday appeared designed to blunt whatever Apple has in store. The newly AI-enhanced Windows PCs will start rolling out on June 18 on computers made by Microsoft partners Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, as well as on Microsoft’s Surface line of devices. But they’ll be reserved for premium models starting at $999. While Copilot is rooted in OpenAI’s large language models, Microsoft said the new AI PCs will also rely heavily on its own homegrown “small language models” that are designed to be more efficient and able to more easily run on a consumer’s personal device. Powered by Qualcomm chips, many of the computers will end up in the hands of workers at big organizations looking to refresh their inventory, said Gartner analyst Jason Wong. AI applications from graphics production to language translation “can now run locally without having to go back to the cloud to process it,” said Wong. “That’s going to help with what you can do without connected internet, and make it that much more high-performing.” —- O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

Genesis to pay $2 billion to victims of alleged cryptocurrency fraud 2024-05-20 18:55:00+00:00 - Bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Genesis will repay $2 billion to hundreds of thousands of investors across the U.S. who were defrauded by the company, New York prosecutors said Monday. Pending approval by a bankruptcy court, the announced settlement — the largest ever by the state against a cryptocurrency company — will establish a victims fund for investors and creditors nationwide, including at least 29,000 New Yorkers. "This historic settlement is a major step towards ensuring the victims who invested in Genesis have a semblance of justice," New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. "Once again, we see the real-world consequences and detrimental losses that can happen because of a lack of oversight and regulation within the cryptocurrency industry." The settlement also bars Genesis from operating in New York. James filed suit against Genesis in October of 2023, accusing it of hiding more than $1.1 billion in losses from investors. Genesis neither admitted nor denied the allegations outlined in the lawsuit, which continues against other defendants. Genesis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early last year as falling prices and the collapse of FTX reverberated throughout the industry. A court on Friday approved a Chapter 11 repayment plan by Genesis, including the settlement with James' office, while dismissing a legal challenge by Digital Currency Group, the company's corporate parent. The ruling paved the way for Genesis being able to return customer assets held on its platform since November 2022 after the collapse of other major crypto companies.

Dog food sold by Walmart is recalled because it may contain metal pieces 2024-05-20 18:47:00+00:00 - Is expensive pet food worth it? According to experts, not necessarily Is expensive pet food worth it? According to experts, not necessarily 05:31 Attention Walmart shoppers: bags of dry Pedigree-branded dog food sold by the retailer have been recalled because they may contain loose pieces of metal, posing a health hazard to pets. The recall involves 44-pound bags of Pedigree Adult Complete Nutrition Grilled Steak & Vegetable Flavor Dry Dog Food sold by Walmart in these states: Arkansas Louisiana Oklahoma Texas Franklin, Tenn.-based Mars Petcare, which manufactures Pedigree dog food, said in a notice posted on Saturday by the Food and Drug Administration that the recall involves 315 bags of the kibble. Image of recalled dry dog food. U.S. Food and Drug Administration The recalled product has a best-by-date of March 4, 2025 and the lot code 410B2TXT02 printed on the bottom of the back of the packaging, according to the company, a division of food conglomerate Mars Inc. of McLean, Va. Image of recalled dry dog food. U.S. Food and Drug Administration The recalled dog food was sold at 176 stores in four states, according to Walmart. See list of stores here. Those who purchased the impacted dog food should stop using it and contact the the company for a return. Mars Petcare can be reached at 1-800-525-5273 or by visiting https://www.pedigree.com/update. Mars worked with Walmart in the four states where the product was distributed to ensure the recalled food was taken off store shelves, it said. Extraneous pieces of metal as well as plastic are a frequent source of food recalls. The Department of Agriculture earlier in the month issued a public health alert due to worries raw pork chorizo products might be contaminated with hard plastic and metal, and H-E-B last month recalled ice cream due to potential metal fragments in cups of Creamy Creations.

Supreme Court Justice Alito sold Bud Light stock amid boycott 2024-05-20 18:34:00+00:00 - Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sold shares of beer giant Anheuser-Busch as conservatives were ditching the Bud Light brewer over its partnership with a transgender social media influencer. On the same day Alito sold Anheuser-Busch, he then bought the same amount of stock in Molson Coors, a company with a history of facing political boycotts of its own, the filing shows. The transactions have bred fresh accusations that Alito, one of the high court’s six conservatives, is engaging in or aligning with partisan politics, despite a recently adopted code of conduct that directs the justices to “refrain from political activity.” Alito sold between $1,000 and $15,000 of AB InBev’s stock on Aug. 14, 2023, according to a financial disclosure filing for the justice that was recently made visible through a federal judicial database. The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Alito’s transaction report or the timing of his stock activity. At the time of Alito’s stock sale, Anheuser-Busch was still grappling with a monthslong campaign to boycott Bud Light after the company partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in an April 2023 social media campaign. The partnership threw the world’s largest beermaker to the center of a broader fight over transgender rights and acceptance in the U.S. — and stoked a backlash from both conservatives and supporters of Mulvaney, who was reportedly stalked and targeted with death threats amid the controversy. In May 2023, Modelo replaced Bud Light as the top-selling beer in the U.S. Data from around that time showed sales of Bud Light had dropped nearly 25% year over year. AB InBev nevertheless reported better-than-expected profits in the second fiscal quarter of 2023, and as of May appears to have emerged from the boycott efforts virtually unscathed. Alito’s switch to Coors is also noteworthy in light of the company’s history of facing boycotts from Mexican-Americans, Black people and the LGBTQ community over workplace practices. Alito’s investment activities came to light as the associate justice is facing a swell of criticism over a New York Times report that an upside-down U.S. flag — a symbol used by supporters of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” conspiracy — was flown at his home in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Alito denied any involvement in inverting the flag. He told the Times that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, “briefly” did so “in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” But that statement has not quelled Alito’s critics, some of whom are now demanding he explain the timing of his sale of Anheuser-Busch. “This sale, given the timing and much like an upside-down flag, can be construed as a political statement,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonprofit judicial watchdog group Fix the Court, in an email to CNBC. “I believe Supreme Court justices should refrain from making political statements — even oblique ones or even ones their wife or broker may have made on their property or in their brokerage accounts, respectively,” Roth said. Roth noted that the beer companies in question have no pending business before the Supreme Court that he can think of. But if Alito or his broker were truly reacting to the Bud Light boycott or the surrounding culture war, Roth said, then the stock sale “speaks more about the justice’s media intake and where that puts him on the political spectrum.” “If the sale was in response to the Bud Light controversy last year, he might have an appearance-of-bias problem when it comes to future court cases related to trans rights,” Roth said. The transaction notice was one of several that were posted to the Federal Judicial Financial Disclosure Reports database last week, and then removed without explanation. Roth said their disappearance was “possibly due to the newness of the system.” The reports had reemerged on the database as of late Monday morning. The filings were first reported earlier Monday by the legal blog Law Dork. The court is set to soon deliver a ruling on whether former President Donald Trump enjoys presidential immunity from criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The court, which bears a six-to-three conservative majority after Trump appointed three justices, is not expected not to grant Trump’s sweeping immunity claim that a former president cannot be charged for any official acts they perform in office. But the justices in oral arguments in April seemed skeptical of parts of federal prosecutors’ case against Trump.

Spirit Airlines gets rid of change and cancellation fees, joining Frontier 2024-05-20 18:23:00+00:00 - Spirit Airlines is doing away with both change and cancellation fees, effective immediately, days after Frontier’s similar announcement, part of an overhaul of the country’s biggest discount carriers’ longtime strategy. Prior to the new rule, Spirit used to charge anywhere between $69 and $119 for ticket changes and cancellations, depending on how close to departure the customer made the change. “This new policy is among the best in the industry because it applies to each and every guest,” Spirit said in a statement to CNBC. “We have many other enhancements in the works and look forward to sharing more soon.” The changes mark a shift for budget airlines’ longtime pricing approach, which includes low base fares to attract customers and add-on fees for advanced seating assignments, bottled water and cabin baggage. Ancillary revenue routinely surpasses those airlines’ ticket prices. “As we continue to see the demand and competitive environments develop, we know that we must also change with the times,” Spirit’s Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein said on an earnings call earlier this month. “We will continue to test out new merchandising strategies, which we anticipate will change how we think about the components of total revenue generation.” Both Spirit and Frontier are trying to return to profitability in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, while larger airlines that offer both bare-bones fares to domestic destinations and big international networks have posted profits. Most larger rivals such as Delta, American, Alaska and United got rid of change fees during the pandemic except for the cheapest, most restrictive tickets. Southwest Airlines does not charge customers a flight-change fee. Along with getting rid of change fees, Frontier also announced Friday that it will start offering bundles that include add-on options such as early boarding and checked baggage that they previously offered a la carte. Spirit is also offering bundled packages with varying prices that include perks such as checked bags. President Joe Biden and the Department of Transportation have been cracking down on what they deem “junk fees.” As part of that push, the DOT issued a new rule requiring airlines to be upfront about add-on fees such as those for checked or carry-on baggage, which was subsequently challenged by a slew of airlines. Spirit said the end of cancellation fees were not tied to the new rules. The Biden administration also recently issued a new rule requiring airlines to offer automatic cash refunds for cancellations rather than in response to a customer’s request.

Hims & Hers Health says it will offer compounded GLP-1 injections 2024-05-20 18:10:00+00:00 - Digital pharmacy startup Hims & Hers Health is introducing access to compounded GLP-1 weight loss injections, the company announced Monday. Shares of the company surged. The company, which offers a range of direct-to-consumer treatments for conditions like erectile dysfunction and hair loss, launched a weight loss program in December. But GLP-1 medications — such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which have skyrocketed in popularity — were not previously offered as part of that program. Customers can access the compounded GLP-1 medications via a prescription from a licensed health-care provider on the Hims & Hers platform. Hims & Hers said it plans to make branded GLP-1 medications available to its customers once supply is consistently available. The company’s oral medication kits start at $79 a month, and its compounded GLP-1 injections will start at $199 a month. Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, Hims & Hers said in its fourth-quarter earnings report that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025. The company plans to offer updated guidance in its next earnings report. The GLP-1 market, dominated so far by pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, has faced supply constraints in recent months as the drugs get expanded approval from health regulators and increased health coverage. GLP-1s mimic a hormone produced in the gut to tamp down a person’s appetite and regulate their blood sugar. When those medications are in shortage, certain manufacturers can prepare a compounded version if they meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements. The FDA does not review the safety and efficacy of compounded products, which are custom-made alternatives to brand drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs. In a January release, the FDA said patients should not use a compounded GLP-1 drug if an approved drug, such as Wegovy, is available. Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum told CNBC that the company is “confident” that customers will be able to access a consistent supply of the compounded medications. Dudum said Hims & Hers has spent the last year learning about the GLP-1 supply chain and has partnered with one of the largest generic manufacturers in the country that has FDA oversight. “We have a certain degree of exclusivity with that facility that will guarantee our consumers consistent volume and supply,” he said.