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Novo Nordisk cuts forecasts after replica obesity drugs hit US take-up

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Novo Nordisk cuts forecasts after replica obesity drugs hit US take-up

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Danish pharmaceutical group Novo Nordisk has cut sales and profit forecasts after replica drugs hit take-up of its blockbuster GLP-1 obesity and diabetes medicines Wegovy and Ozempic in the US.

The company beat operating profit forecasts for the first quarter of the year but said it had been hit by compounding — preparations custom-made by pharmacies using the active ingredients of patented drugs.

“In the first quarter of 2025, we delivered 18 per cent sales growth and continued to expand the reach of our innovative GLP-1 treatments,” said Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, president and chief executive. “However, we have reduced our full-year outlook due to lower-than-planned branded GLP-1 penetration, which is impacted by the rapid expansion of compounding in the US.”

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Novo also said its US operations would no longer have to meet the company’s global gender goals, as President Donald Trump’s administration applies pressure to remove diversity initiatives.

Sales growth for this year is now expected to be 13 to 21 per cent at constant exchange rates, compared with earlier guidance of 16 to 24 per cent. Operating profit growth is forecast at 16 to 24 per cent, compared with a previous range of 19 to 27 per cent.

Sales rose 18 per cent year-on-year to DKr78.1bn ($11.9bn) at constant exchange rates in the first quarter. Operating profits climbed 20 per cent to DKr38.8bn, beating consensus analyst forecasts.

Novo shares rose more than 5 per cent in morning trading.

Compounding began in the US after the Food and Drug Administration regulator declared official shortages in 2022 of Wegovy, Ozempic and Zepbound, which is made by Novo’s rival Eli Lilly. Patients have been able to buy compounded products for as little as $199 a month. List prices for the branded drugs, charged to people without insurance, are $1,000 or more.

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The FDA has now said the shortage is over, meaning pharmacies must stop selling compounded versions of the Novo drugs by May 22. 

Novo said it expects “a step up in the business that used to go to compounders” in the second half of the year, according to chief financial officer Karsten Munk Knudsen. Another potential boost for Wegovy includes deals to sell it at discounted rates at the drugstore chain CVS and via telehealth companies. Novo also plans to speed up its international expansion of Wegovy outside the US, Knudsen said.

“We’ve launched in around 25 markets currently and we see an accelerated launch schedule following increased supplies,” he said.

In a statement alongside its results, the drugmaker said: “While Novo Nordisk maintains our global aspiration of a minimum 45 per cent representation for each gender by the end of 2025, Novo Nordisk’s operations in the US will no longer participate in this global initiative due to evolving legal requirements,” the company said.

Although none have been announced yet, the pharma industry will potentially have to deal with US tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. Tariffs “may have a negative impact on Novo Nordisk and our industry”, the company said on Wednesday.

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Novo has significant production capacity already in the US and exports more from the country than it imports, Jørgensen said. It has announced more than $24bn of investments in the US over the past decade.

Novo was showing “encouraging” signs of “fighting back” in the face of investor worries that it was losing ground to Lilly, said Emily Field, an analyst at Barclays.

“The results and the guidance cut are for the most part in the realm of what people had been expecting,” Field said. “What people really want to hear from them is how confident they are that volumes are going to increase in the second half — because it’s a volume play.”

Novo has also faced investor scrutiny about its planned successor obesity and diabetes drugs, after two sets of worse than expected trial results for its product CagriSema.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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