US Business

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a drug called baricitinib as the first oral tablet for  treating severe alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder affecting more than 300,000 people in the United States every year.

Alopecia causes either temporary or permanent patchy hair loss that can affect any hair-bearing site of the body, leading to emotional distress. The condition has come to the fore recently through high-profile cases including Hollywood actress Jada Pinkett Smith and congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.

“Access to safe and effective treatment options is crucial for the significant number of Americans affected by severe alopecia,” said FDA official Kendall Marcus in a statement. 

“Today’s approval will help fulfill a significant unmet need for patients with severe alopecia areata.”

Baricitinib, which is made by US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and known by the trade name Olumiant, belongs to a class of drugs called Janus kinase inhibitors. It works by interfering with the cellular pathway that leads to inflammation.

Its approval for use against alopecia was based on the results of two randomized, controlled clinical trials involving a total 1,200 adults with severe alopecia.

Each trial split participants into three groups: a placebo group, a group that received a two-milligram dose every day, and a group that received a four-milligram dose every day.

After 36 weeks, almost 40 percent of those on the higher dose grew back 80 percent of their scalp hair, compared to around 23 percent of the lower dose group, and five percent of the placebo group.

Around 45 percent of people in the higher dose group also saw significant eyebrow and eyelash regrowth.

The most common side effects included upper respiratory tract infections, headaches, acne, high cholesterol, and increase of an enzyme called creatine phosphokinase.

Prior treatments for alopecia included topical or oral drugs, but these have been considered experimental and none was approved.

Baricitinib was previously approved for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and during the Covid pandemic its license was extended to the treatment of hospitalized Covid patients.

Amazon plans to start flying some purchases to customers later this year, the e-commerce giant said Monday, announcing drone delivery that will debut in a California town.

Retail rival Walmart already offers drone delivery and in May announced it is dramatically ramping up the service, expanding to six states by year-end with the potential to drop off one million packages annually.

Amazon customers in the Northern California town of Lockeford will be able to sign up for free delivery by “Prime Air” drones, the company said in a post.

“Air-eligible” items ordered at the retailer’s website will be packed into drones that will fly to the delivery addresses, deposit packages outside from safe heights, then fly away, according to Amazon.

The drones can carry loads as heavy as five pounds (2.2 kilograms) in packages about the size of a large shoe box, an Amazon spokesperson told AFP.

Items approved for drone delivery will include household products, beauty items, office supplies and tech gear, the spokesperson said.

Amazon said it has created a sophisticated system to enable its drones to detect and avoid aircraft, people, pets and other obstacles.

“We designed our sense-and-avoid system for two main scenarios: to be safe when in transit, and to be safe when approaching the ground,” the company said.

Feedback from the operations in California will be used to expand the drone service.

A variety of companies ranging from new startups to major tech firms such as Google-parent Alphabet are working on autonomous drone delivery.

Alphabet’s project Wing completed its first real-world drone deliveries in 2014 in rural Australia where they successfully transported first-aid supplies, candy bars, dog treats, and water to farmers, according to the company’s website.

Two years after that, Wing drones were used to deliver burritos to students at a university in Virginia.

“The logistics industry is abuzz with all-things drones,” the Amazon team said.

Hollywood stars including Amy Schumer, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo signed a letter published on Monday calling for movies and television shows to depict responsible gun ownership and to limit scenes involving children with firearms.

The open letter, penned in response to recent US mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, was also signed by top producers J.J. Abrams (“Lost”), Shonda Rhimes (“Bridgerton”) and Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy.

“Cultural attitudes toward smoking, drunk driving, seatbelts and marriage equality have all evolved due in large part to movies’ and TV’s influence. It’s time to take on gun safety,” says the letter shared by the Brady Campaign, a gun control nonprofit.

“We are not asking anyone to stop showing guns on screen. We are asking writers, directors and producers to be mindful of on-screen gun violence and model gun safety best practices.”

Suggested measures include showing characters locking their guns up safely, and holding discussions before production begins about whether alternatives to guns could be used without “sacrificing narrative integrity.”

Noting that firearms recently surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among American minors, the letter asks “colleagues in the creative community” to “limit scenes including children and guns.”

Last month, 10 people were shot and killed in a racist attack on a grocery store in New York state. Ten days later, 19 children and two teachers were murdered during a school rampage in Uvalde, Texas.

Overall, 4,368 US children and adolescents up to the age of 19 died from firearms in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The open letter was signed by more than 200 Hollywood figures, also including Jimmy Kimmel, Judd Apatow, Bill Lawrence, Damon Lindelof and Adam McKay.

It noted that guns “are prominently featured in TV and movies in every corner of the globe, but only America has a gun violence epidemic.”

“The responsibility lies with lax gun laws supported by those politicians more afraid of losing power than saving lives.

“We didn’t cause the problem, but we want to help fix it.”

Police in the US state of Idaho have received death threats after arresting 31 members of a white supremacist group who were preparing to riot at a weekend Pride event, an officer said Monday.

The arrests were made Saturday after someone called 911 to warn about masked men who “looked like a little army” climbing into a truck and seemingly headed to the LGBTQ event at a park in the northwestern state.

The men — who police believe are linked to US far-right cell Patriot Front — were intercepted before they could reach Coeur d’Alene City Park.

They were armed with “shields, shin guards and other riot gear… including at least one smoke grenade,” and were arrested for conspiracy to riot, said Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White.

At a Monday press conference, White said half of around 150 calls received by his department since the arrests were from anonymous people wanting to “scream and yell at us” and “offer death threats against myself and other members of the police department, merely for doing our jobs.”

White attributed the abusive calls to “hate groups from outside” Coeur d’Alene, with one person phoning from Norway to “give us their opinions.”

The police chief said he and his department had been surprised by “the level of preparation that we saw” and by the “equipment that was carried and worn by those individuals.”

“It was very clear to us immediately that this was a riotous group” with “some ill intent,” he added.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a justice and rights body which tracks extremist organizations, has labeled Patriot Front a white nationalist hate group. 

White said the arrested men came from at least 11 different US states, and that he had not previously encountered the Patriot Front in the area.

The remote hills of northern Idaho were long associated with Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi group which hoped to establish a separate white-only region, and was tied to numerous violent crimes across the United States.

But Mayor Jim Hammond said the area was “not going back to the days of the Aryan Nations” and was “able to completely rid ourselves of that group and the kind of awful culture that they were trying to present to our community.”

An FBI spokeswoman told AFP that federal officers were assisting local authorities.

“If, in the course of the investigation, information comes to light of a potential federal violation, the FBI is prepared to investigate,” said Sandra Barker via email.

A wildfire was burning out of control Monday in forest outside Los Angeles after a weekend of record-breaking temperatures, and as forecasters warn of fire danger across the parched US West.

Almost 1,000 acres (400 hectares) had been charred by the Sheep fire since it erupted in the Los Angeles national forest on Saturday evening.

Thousands were warned to evacuate their homes in the community of Wrightwood, with the fire just five percent contained.

Firefighters battling the blaze said it was ripping through an area with thick vegetation. 

“The terrain is very steep — it’s a bad area,” Alison Hesterly of Cal Fire San Bernardino told the Los Angeles Times.

Over 200 firefighters were battling the blaze, including from the air.

“They’re really focusing hard on the edges on the northwest side and the south end to secure those edges, to hope that the wind won’t blow the fire out of the containment lines,” Hesterly said. 

“That’s a huge focus for today — securing those high-risk areas with hose lines and hand lines.”

Video on social media showed towering flames gripping trees and being fanned by strong winds.

The fire erupted as parts of California and the West were smothered in extreme heat, with temperatures in Palm Springs on Saturday hitting 114 Fahrenheit (45.5 Celsius), the highest for the day since records began.

The Southwest has been baked by a once-in-a-thousand-years drought that has left vegetation exceedingly dry and flammable.

Fire chiefs are warning that 2022 looks set to be a terrible year for wildfire.

“Given the fuel conditions, the fire conditions that we’re here talking about, I foresee a very tough four, five, six months in front of us,” Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy said last week.

The National Weather Service said Monday that fire danger was widespread across the region.

“An expansive area of critical fire weather conditions is expected across the Southwest into the southern and central Rockies and High Plains,” the NWS said on its website.

“Red Flag Warnings have been raised today for large portions of southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northern and central Arizona and New Mexico today. 

“Dry and windy conditions will promote the rapid spread of fires across these areas.”

In New Mexico, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest have been consumed in wildfires that have been burning for months.

US President Joe Biden on Saturday flew over some of the blazes, before being briefed on efforts to combat the fires.

Temperature variations and wildfires are both expected parts of the natural cycle.

But global warming, driven chiefly by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels, has knocked the climate out of kilter.

Hot periods are hotter than they were and weather cycles are less stable.

This has exacerbated droughts and vastly increases the risk of disastrous wildfires.

Amazon plans to start flying some purchases to customers later this year, the e-commerce giant said Monday, announcing drone delivery that will debut in a California town.

Retail rival Walmart already offers drone delivery and in May announced it is dramatically ramping up the service, expanding to six states by year-end with the potential to drop off one million packages annually.

Amazon customers in the Northern California town of Lockeford will be able to sign up for free delivery by “Prime Air” drones, the company said in a post.

“Air-eligible” items ordered at the retailer’s website will be packed into drones that will fly to the delivery addresses, deposit packages outside from safe heights, then fly away, according to Amazon.

Amazon said it has created a sophisticated system to enable its drones to detect and avoid aircraft, people, pets and other obstacles.

“We designed our sense-and-avoid system for two main scenarios: to be safe when in transit, and to be safe when approaching the ground,” the company said.

Feedback from the service in California will be used to expand the drone service.

A variety of companies ranging from new startups to major tech firms such as Google-parent Alphabet are working on autonomous drone delivery.

Alphabet’s drone project Wing completed its first real-world deliveries in 2014 in rural Australia where they successfully transported first-aid supplies, candy bars, dog treats, and water to farmers, according to the company’s website.

Two years after that, Wing drones were used to deliver burritos to students at a university in Virginia.

“The logistics industry is abuzz with all-things drones,” the Amazon team said.