WSJ What’s News - Israel Tells Civilians Near Hezbollah Targets to Evacuate

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

 A.M. Edition for Sept. 23. Israel and Hezbollah intensify their cross-border attacks, bringing them as close to full-out war as they have been in their nearly year-long conflict. Plus, chip giants TSMC and Samsung discuss building megafactories in the United Arab Emirates. And, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly dangle big discounts for their weight-loss drugs. The WSJ’s Peter Loftus explains who stands to win in this price war. Azhar Sukri hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ecolab Water for Climate. Less water, more growth. Results will vary. Learn more at ecolab.com slash ewc. Ecolab Water for Climate. Transforming the way the world thinks about water. Israel tells civilians close to Hezbollah targets in Lebanon to evacuate as strikes intensify. Closed to Hezbollah targets in Lebanon to evacuate as strikes intensify. Plus, TSMC and Samsung discuss building mega factories in the Middle East. And price competition heats up in the market for weight loss drugs. We'll look at what that means for Big Pharma and for patients. What the companies are doing is trying to persuade more insurers to cover their drugs. That means more prescriptions will get filled, which means more sales for them.

It's Monday, September 23rd. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. Here is the 8am edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin in the Middle East, where Israel and Hezbollah have been stepping up their cross-border attacks. Israel said it launched a series of airstrikes in Lebanon this morning targeting Hezbollah's military infrastructure. It told civilians in Lebanon to evacuate from places close to where Hezbollah stores its weapons.

Over the weekend, its warplanes hit targets in southern Lebanon. Residents in the area said it was one of the heaviest bombardments of southern Lebanon that they could recall since the conflict began. According to the Israeli military, Hezbollah has fired some 150 projectiles at northern Israel in the past 24 hours. The recent escalation in hostilities is raising concerns of all-out war between the two sides, who had previously spent months trading tit-for-tat strikes across the border. previously spent months trading tit-for-tat strikes across the border. Climate Week NYC is starting today, and it's shaping up to be the event of the year when

it comes to sustainability and climate change. About 100,000 people are expected to be there, while organisers of COP29 in Azerbaijan's capital Baku are only expecting about 40,000 attendees later this year. Journal Sustainability reporter Yousuf Khan has more. So climate week NYC, it's almost a bit like climate Christmas I guess. What we're expecting is lots of announcements from big banks, governments committing to different initiatives, funding announcements and that sort of thing. And then also there's going to be a lot of sideline meetings with the event attached to the UN General Assembly. So you'll have a lot of politicians, a lot of lawmakers,

a lot of decision makers meeting, striking deals. With global carbon emissions at record levels, the energy transition slowing amid high costs and power demand surging, stakeholders will certainly have plenty to talk about. We are exclusively reporting that chip giants TSMC and Samsung Electronics have discussed building mega-factories in the United Arab Emirates. Senior leaders from both companies have recently visited the country to discuss this. The projects would be funded by the UAE, with Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubardela playing a central role. The talks are still in the early stages and hurdles remain, but they show the UAE's growing

tech ambitions, as well as a push to fund expanded chip production to fuel the AI boom. Projects on the scale being discussed could cost more than $100 billion. A Mubadala spokesman said state-backed company MGX has made semiconductor manufacturing a strategic pillar and is quote in regular dialogue with partners around the world end quote. Although there are no specific plans currently for a facility in the UAE. And in Markets News today, Australian-listed R.E.A. Group has increased its offer for UK real estate listing platform Rightmove. The new offer values Rightmove's equity at around $8.1bn.

R.E.A. is controlled by News Corp, which also owns Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Rightmove shares are trading moderately higher in London. Coming up, a price war has broken out in the market for weight loss drugs. We'll look at what that means for Big Pharma, as well as patients, after the break.

for Big Pharma as well as patients after the break. So what's it like to buy your first cryptocurrency on Kraken? Well, let's say I'm at a food truck I've never tried before. Am I gonna go all in on the loaded taco? No, sir. I'm keeping it simple, starting small. That's trading on Kraken. Pick from over 190 assets and start There's a price battle going on in the arena for weight loss drugs. Pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are offering big discounts to help them win market share and get more health insurers to pay up for their products. And joining me now to help us understand who the winners are in that competition is journal's special writer Peter Loftus, who covers the pharmaceutical industry. Peter, we're basically talking about just two brands going head to head here, right? Correct. Yeah, the main weight loss drugs are Wigovie from

Novo Nordisk and ZepBound from Eli Lilly. They're very similar to these other drugs for diabetes that I'm sure some people have heard of, including Ozempic and Mungaro. So what strategy are the big pharmaceutical companies adopting as pricing competition heats up? So what the companies are doing is trying to persuade more insurers to cover their drugs. That means more prescriptions will get filled,

which means more sales for them. And the way they do that is by offering rebates that effectively amount to a discount so that you still have these official list prices that are above $1,000 a month, but it brings the net price down closer to say 600 to $800 a month. So that's a rebate that lowers the price for insurers but not necessarily for the consumers,

is that right? That's right. Now the way that they do affect patients is if by offering a rebate a manufacturer persuades an insurer to cover the drug, then those patients that have that insurance, they will go down to paying a copay that's more manageable, something like $25 to $50 a month. Okay, so definitely good news for those patients. But what about people who don't have insurance coverage for these drugs?

So they are facing a situation where they either have to pay full price. Or more recently, Eli Lilly introduced a lower cost vial format for their drug ZepBound that costs anywhere from $3.99 to $5.49 a month. And one sort of big group that's still in a tough place are people on Medicare, the federal program for the elderly. It generally does not cover these weight loss drugs if they're just used for weight loss alone. And not only that, but the people who have Medicare are not eligible to receive some of the direct discounts and savings from the manufacturers. So some of those people still face the decision of either paying full list price for these drugs over a thousand a month or just not taking them at all.

Yeah. I mean, even with the discounts, it's still a lot of money, but let's just talk about the pharmaceutical companies again. Between the two, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, who looks to have the upper hand in all of this? The momentum is probably with Eli Lilly for a couple of reasons. One is that the clinical trials for these drugs showed that ZepBound, the Eli Lilly drug, on average can help people lose more weight than what the data showed for Wigovie from Novo Nordisk. And another thing is the price,

because Eli Lilly came out of the gate with a lower starting price than Wigovie, and then they came out with these vials that are at an even lower price and They also seem to have a better handle on the supply situation They've kind of worked through some shortages and have been able to get all doses out there. Whereas Novo Nordisk still has some limitations. Peter, so just finally looking ahead you say that this pricing war could accelerate. So what should we expect? Well, I think over time you may see more insurers cover these drugs.

Now, as the industry competition heats up, a bunch of other companies are developing their own weight loss drugs. And so the more drugs that come into the market, the more pressure that's likely to put on prices. And so we could see that unfold over the next couple of years. We still have to see whether all these other drugs that are in the pipeline pan out in clinical trials and actually get approved by regulators. That was Wall Street Journal special writer Peter Loftus.

Peter, thank you very much indeed. Thanks for having me. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy set business leaders and workers abuzz last week with a surprise memo calling corporate staffers back to the office full-time. A tougher labour market is shifting the balance of power from workers to bosses, many of whom are worried that productivity and innovation suffer when people aren't together in an office. Vanessa Fuhrman's covers workplace issues for the Journal. She told our tech news briefing podcast that other

employers will be watching Amazon closely. The CEOs we've spoken to say they are buzzing about it, they're hearing from other CEOs about it and they're also hearing from their workforces asking, are we going to follow suit? Amazon is seen as such a bellwether for a lot of companies, including the way they set wages, other types of workplace policies. We also have a pullout from KPMG, which regularly surveys US CEOs and the number of CEOs at this time around, who said they expect in three years full-time office attendance,

was nearly 80 percent. And it was only 34 percent just in April. And as companies call more employees back to the office, the commute remains one of the top gripes for workers. But there are some cities where driving during rush hour is a breeze. According to a new analysis of federal data, Columbus, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee and Milwaukee are among the cities with the fastest commutes in the US. And if you're curious as to how that compares with your commute, check out

our story on wsj.com. And that's it for What's News for Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivand with supervising producer Christina Roker. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.