Author: News Room

The Louisiana state House on Tuesday passed an amended bill that would classify the abortion-inducing drugs misoprostol and mifeprostone as Schedule IV controlled dangerous substances in the state, placing them in the same category as highly regulated drugs such as narcotics and depressants. The House’s final passage vote was 64-29, and the bill now heads back to the Senate for concurrence. Senate Bill 276 would make it a crime to give abortion medication to a person without their consent. The amendment that would classify the drugs as Schedule IV substances was added after it passed out of the Senate. The bill’s sponsor, Republican state…

In 2014, drugmaker Forest Laboratories and its parent, Actavis, had a $28 billion problem. Actavis had spent that sum to acquire Forest and its portfolio of pharmaceutical products. The key patent for one of those drugs, a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease called Namenda IR, was set to expire in July of 2015. Forest had been generating $1.5 billion a year in Namenda IR sales, and Actavis was determined to figure out a way to keep their valuable monopoly going. If they didn’t, generic drugmakers would enter the market and drop Forest’s Namenda revenue by 80 to 90 percent. The strategy…

Luxury winemakers producing some of the most expensive wine in the world will pay up to $50,000 for a single barrel to age their wine. But not just any barrel — a foudre. A foudre is a massive wooden vat that impacts and preserves the overall taste of the wine. Making a foudre starts with French oak, a tightly grained wood that adds unique flavoring to the wine. Cooperages like Foudrerie François pay close attention to the quality of the wood they source to make the foudres they sell and ship worldwide. The wood is so precious — and so…

OpenAI’s fight with Scarlett Johansson isn’t just a PR disaster (and a big one at that). It also reveals a troubling attitude about people’s intellectual property — and even their voice.Most of all, it shows there’s just really, really bad judgment going on at the highest levels of Sam Altman’s company.Let’s say ScarJo had actually agreed to do the voice of “Sky” for ChatGPT instead of Altman’s company hiring someone else to play the breathy, flirty female part. In this scenario, the voice would be not just vaguely reminiscent of the movie “Her” — a winky reference for those in…

By Andy Bruce (Reuters) – British employers handed out pay deals worth almost 5% in the three months to April, the busiest month for annual settlements, according to a survey that adds to signs that pay growth – a major driver of inflation pressure – may be slow to dissipate. Median basic pay settlements in the three months to April were 4.9% higher than a year earlier, up from 4.6% in the three months to March, according to human resources data provider Brightmine – previously known as XpertHR. The Bank of England is closely watching pay data. Before they cut…

By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -Judges on California’s top court on Tuesday considered whether voters had the power to allow app-based services such as Uber (NYSE:) and Lyft (NASDAQ:) to classify drivers in the state as independent contractors rather than as employees with greater benefits. The seven-member California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in San Francisco in a lawsuit by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and four drivers who say a 2020 ballot measure known as Proposition 22 was unconstitutional. The measure exempts app-based drivers from a 2019 state law that narrowed the circumstances in which many workers can be…

By Clark Mindock (Reuters) – Republican attorneys general from 20 U.S. states sued the Biden administration on Tuesday, seeking to block new reforms to the U.S. environmental review process for major projects such as transmission lines and wind and solar farms. States including Iowa, North Dakota, Texas and Florida challenged reforms included in a rule finalized in April by the White House Council on Environmental Quality in North Dakota federal court, arguing they go beyond the agency’s authority, would increase project costs and unfairly favor clean energy projects. The reforms aim to streamline analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act,…

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link. Major business leaders and economists are worried about America’s growing debt problem. Last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon expressed fear that a crisis is looming and that unchecked deficit spending could explode. “Any country can borrow money and drive some growth, but that may not always lead to good growth,” he said in an interview with Sky News. “I think America should be…

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Susan Collins spoke at “Central Banking in the Post-Pandemic Financial System” on Wednesday. Collins said that progress toward interest rate adjustment will take longer.  Fed policymakers stick to cautious script after April CPI inflation sparked rate cut hopes Key quotes Elevated uncertainty continues to be a feature of the economy, can’t overreact to any data point.Progress needed for interest rate adjustment will take longer.Fed well positioned, time for patience.Policy restrictions evident in some indicators.  Warns of potential longer policy lags due to special factors.Medium-term underlying neutral rate could be higher. Patience is the right policy for the Fed. Market reaction The US Dollar…

Jupiter Exchange launched the Giant Unified Market (GUM) initiative to combine different types of investments into one market on the Solana blockchain. The GUM Alliance aims to bring together investments like meme coins, real-world assets, stocks, and forex into a single market, making trading between them easier and more direct. The alliance, comprised of leading teams in asset handling, liquidity, and distribution, plans to add more types of investments to Solana (SOL), ensuring the markets have enough cash flow to operate smoothly and integrating the markets into Jupiter’s platform to encourage adoption. Gabe Otte from DinariGlobal is excited to offer…