A significant trial of a daily weight-loss pill has found that it helped people to shed the pounds and reduce their blood sugar levels, making it a contender to join the new wave of drugs that combat obesity and diabetes. People who took a 36mg pill of orforglipron lost an average of 7.3kg (16lbs) over nine months, according to results from a phase 3 clinical trial reported by the drug’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, on Thursday. The trial, which enrolled 559 obese people with type 2 diabetes from the US, China,…
Tag: Drugs
US announces actions against 14 foreign companies for importing fentanyl
The US has announced sanctions and indictments against 14 Chinese and Canadian firms for importing fentanyl, one of the most sweeping actions yet to target trafficking of the powerful synthetic opiate. Officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies announced the actions on Tuesday. The indictments and sanctions target what officials described as a “major China-based syndicate” that sold fentanyl to drug dealers and international cartels, the Associated Press reported. The majority of those indicted are based in China but some are based…
Opioid crisis: US and China at odds over influx of fentanyl
Who is responsible for the United States’ opioid epidemic? According to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the culprits are “transnational criminal enterprises” who need to be tackled via international law enforcement operations. But according to Chinese state media, “the fentanyl crisis in the United States is demand-driven”, primarily by “the users themselves”. Blinken was speaking at the launch of a US-led coalition to address synthetic drug threats, which gathered virtually last week. China, which many US lawmakers blame for the crisis, declined to participate. As a string of…
The China-Mexico fentanyl pipeline: increasingly sophisticated and deadly
For a few days in April, news sites across Latin America were running Instagram photos of a glamorous blond woman enjoying trips around the world. There were pictures of Ana Gabriela Rubio Zea, 32, posing in a blue dress and Yves Saint Laurent handbag outside San Miguel de Allende, ice skating in a miniskirt in Central Park and laughing in the Forbidden City. The social media images were then followed by more recent photos: Rubio, in a sweatshirt and jeans, flanked by officers from the national civil police of Guatemala,…
Australia news live: Victorian energy prices to jump almost a third as Bowen calls on Coalition to ‘look in the mirror’
From 1h ago Chris Bowen throws back to Coalition on energy price rises The energy minister is borrowing a turn of phrase out of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech when asked about the Coalition’s suggestion that capping coal and gas prices will, in the longer run, increase prices. Chris Bowen: I invite the Coalition to have a look in the mirror. I mean, he had the independent energy regulator this morning pointing out that without the intervention, the price rises would have been closer to 50%. An intervention that Mr Dutton…
HRT: inside the complex global supply chain behind a $20bn market
In the centre of the factory stand 31 reactors: giant metal globes that can hold up to 10,000 litres of liquid each. Every week, gleaming stainless steel drums arrive by truck at this plant on the outskirts of Oss, in the Netherlands. Their contents are poured into the reactors through a funnel, dissolved, and then heated to boiling point. Standing by one of the vast containers, the factory manager, Robert Dam, compares it to a “cooking pot”. Peering inside, we can see the light liquid bubbling away. At Dam’s factory,…
US sanctions Chinese drugmakers amid addiction epidemic
The US has imposed sanctions on Chinese painkiller makers – including one man described as the biggest producer of anabolic steroids in the world – as it vowed to step up action to curb the addiction epidemic that killed a record 100,000 Americans last year. With people who are dealing with addiction increasingly turning to cheaper pills bought online from abroad, Joe Biden signed an executive order that makes it easier for the US to target foreign drug traffickers. The actions “will help disrupt the global supply chain and the…