Illustrating the divide in the Democratic Party, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed 16-term incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx) after progressive darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threw her weight behind his challenger, Jamaal Bowman.
“I firmly support Eliot Engel for Congress and I support Alexandria for Congress as well,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “I think the people of New York are very blessed to have them both in the Congress.”
On Wednesday, the Bronx-Queens congresswoman, who goes by her initials, AOC, on social media, used a series of tweets to announce she was endorsing Bowman, 44, a former middle school principal backed by the left-leaning Justice Democrats — meaning she was trying to oust Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The 73-year-old liberal represents a district from parts of The Bronx and Westchester, next door to Ocasio-Cortez’s home base. “This moment requires renewed and revitalized leadership across the country AND at the ballot box,” Ocasio-Cortez, 30, said in a tweet.
She called Bowman, who is black, “a profound community leader.” Engel’s district has mostly black and Hispanic voters. Engel was embroiled in controversy this week when he was overheard on a hot mic saying he didn’t really care about the looting rocking his constituents. During a press conference with local leaders and elected officials, he asked Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. if he could make some remarks at the microphone.
When Diaz Jr. said there were too many people on the list, Engel mumbled through his face mask: “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.” “What was that?” Diaz Jr. asked him, according to the audio captured on a News 12 live feed of the event and shared on Twitter by NY1 reporter Emily Ngo. “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care,” he repeated. “Don’t do that to me,” Diaz Jr. scolded him.
Political pundits fear Engel is setting himself up to be the next Joe Crowley, the longtime powerful incumbent whom AOC defeated in a stunning 2018 upset in the adjoining district.
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Nat Gas can Be an Economic Catalyst
A dozen years ago, as our economy began to heal from the depths of the Great Recession, natural gas development lifted parts of the coutry’s economy, creating good-paying jobs, filling union halls, and getting people working again. Today, as we begin our gradual pandemic recovery, natural gas can be there again, serving as a catalyst for growth.
Like many businesses and industries, energy producers are facing tough headwinds. The count of active U.S. drilling rigs hit the lowest level since 1949 forecasting a huge slowdown in activity. As we look ahead, though, modern society demands reliable, affordable, clean energy – and that’s exactly what natural gas is.
Natural gas “has resulted in a growing population, low taxes, and more job opportunities for our county,” Washington County, PA Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jeff Kotula recently said. “Now we are in a growth position again with the cracker plant and the petrochemical businesses that will follow and want to take full advantage of those opportunities.”
Mr. Kotula’s perspective – that natural gas is a critical key to unlocking our economy and manufacturing growth – is shared broadly across our gas producing states.
In fact, this pandemic – as challenging and as painful as it has been – would be even worse if it were not for the medical supplies produced from American oil and natural gas. For example, wen the demand for personal protective equipment soared in response to the spread of COVID-19, brave men and women stepped up at the Braskem America manufacturing facility in Marcus Hook, Pa., and voluntarily lived at the plant for 28 days to produce critical medical supplies.
Natural gas is a catalyst for growth, economic progress and a stronger, more prosperous future. It can be a key to unlocking the future of manufacturing and economic growth, and we must find solutions that leverage this resource for generations to come.
Minnesota Based UNH Re-Commits
After culling a $2.6 billion biobucks pact last year, Bristol Myers Squibb is making a second and final cut to its pact with four-year immuno-oncology biotech Jounce Therapeutics.
Last summer, Celgene (now Bristol) restructured its alliance with Jounce, dropping the broad $2.6 billion pact it formed in 2016 while securing full rights to a single asset. The changes cut Celgene’s ties to ICOS and PD-1 programs that overlapped with those in Bristol’s pipeline and portfolio as it prepared to be subsumed into its parent company.
This old deal was, however, replaced by an agreement covering that new single asset, JTX-8064, a Jounce antibody that targets the LILRB2 receptor found on macrophages.
Bristol/Celgene paid $50 million for the worldwide rights to the preclinical drug, while Jounce was also in line to receive up to $480 million in biobucks. At the time, Bristol/Celgene was set to advance JTX-8064 toward an IND filing.
Now, that drug has been axed, too. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said that: “As part of its Celgene integration process, Bristol Myers Squibb is streamlining its pipeline and addressing areas of overlap. As a result, Bristol Myers Squibb notified Jounce that the JTX-8064 License Agreement is being terminated.”
Jounce said it was “thrilled” to regain the rights to JTX-8064, with CEO Richard Murray, Ph.D., saying: “We view this as a significant opportunity for Jounce. Though we highly valued our longstanding partnership with Celgene, now a Bristol Myers Squibb company, having an additional wholly-owned program enables us to further our mission to discover new immunotherapies from a variety of important immune cell types, and develop them for patients who are not well served by today’s therapies.”
He added that the biotech remains committed and “eager” to advance this program into the clinic and “will make every effort to do this expeditiously.”
Marines Looking to Use VR to Recruit Pilots
The Marine Corps is searching for new virtual reality flight simulators to bring more pilots into the service amid a pilot shortage. Virtual reality technology is evolving quickly and these simulators can provide a “strikingly realistic experience” to potential applications that currently isn’t available in traditional recruiting settings, according to Maj. Brian Spooner, an aviation assistant for officer procurement with the Marine’s Western Recruiting Region.
Spooner said AAOPs have been eyeing updated simulators for roughly two years and that he had the opportunity to learn more about how the service could incorporate them into the Marine Corps Flight Orientation Program at the Interservice/Industry Training Simulation and Education Conference in 2019.
“All of the AAOPs in Marine Corps Recruit Command felt the VR platforms would allow us to travel easier, spend less money, offer a more reliable recruiting platform, and have the ability to upgrade the technology over time,” Spooner said in an email to Marine Corps Times.
“At this stage of the contracting process we are seeking information from vendors about the capabilities they have on offer, before we formulate an eventual request for proposals,” Spooner said. “So, it is too early to know where the competitive bidding process could land, but we expect these systems would be significantly smaller, more portable and less expensive than current ones.”
“In 2005 I was a civilian sitting next to a fleet military pilot receiving instruction at 5,000 feet executing an instrument approach for the first time,” said Spooner, who was a MV-22 pilot. “That experience will sell just about anybody wanting to fly in the military. As most of the AAOPs will agree, there is no substitute for actually taking a prospective aviation applicant flying, but VR comes close,” Spooner said.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Marine Corps Recruiting Command told Marine Corps Times in May that it remains “cautiously optimistic” it will meet its recruiting goals this year. The Marine Corps last June offered up to $280,000 in bonuses for Osprey and F-35 aviators if they signed eight-year contracts. Likewise, the Marine Corps offered $30,000 bonuses for former captains and majors to return to the active reserve component for three years.
But like the rest of the service, Spooner also said the Marine Corps expects that the service’s aviation program will also continue to meet its recruiting targets.
We Can Hear Hand Gestures
A new study has concluded that people are able to hear hand gestures in others’ speech. Wim Pouw, a cognitive scientist at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, found people who listened to an audio recording of someone saying “ahh” could accurately replicate the speaker’s hand gestures, at the right tempo, without any visual clues.
I’m sure you have to hear it, because what hand gesture does someone make when saying “ahh”? I can’t think of even one. This was probably government funded.