Category World News

United States President Donald Trump has unveiled a second deal with a major pharmaceutical company to offer lower-cost prescription drugs direct to American consumers.

This time, the agreement concerned AstraZeneca, a multinational based in the United Kingdom.

Trump hosted the company’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, in the Oval Office on Friday to publicly cement the deal, which he described as “another historic achievement in our quest to lower drug prices for all Americans”.

“Americans can expect discounts, and as I said, it could be, in many cases, way over a hundred percent,” Trump said.

As in previous press appearances, he pledged US consumers would see impossible discounts on popular medications.

Inhalers to treat asthma, for example, would be discounted by 654 percent, Trump said, calling the device a “drug that’s hot, very hot”. He also reiterated past claims that some medications could see “a thousand percent reduction”.

Trump has long pushed to reduce prescription drug costs to what he has billed as “most-favoured nations prices”.

That would bring prices down to the same level as in other developed countries, though Trump, with typical hyperbole, has said the policy would equate to “the  lowest price anywhere in the world”.

AstraZeneca is the second major pharmaceutical company after Pfizer to strike such a bargain. Last month, Pfizer announced a “voluntary agreement” to price its products “at parity with other key developed markets”.

Like AstraZeneca, it also agreed to participate in an online, direct-to-consumer marketplace the Trump administration plans to launch, called TrumpRx.

But in a news release on its website, Pfizer made clear that the agreement would help it dodge the high tariffs that Trump threatened against overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers.

“We now have the certainty and stability we need on two critical fronts, tariffs and pricing, that have suppressed the industry’s valuations to historic lows,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said.

At Friday’s Oval Office ceremony, officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr openly celebrated the power Trump had wielded through his tariff threats.

“ The president saw something that we didn’t see, which is we had leverage, and that came through Howard [Lutnick] and the tariffs,” Kennedy said, giving a nod to Trump’s commerce secretary. “We had extraordinary leverage to craft these deals.”

The deals with both AstraZeneca and Pfizer came after Trump threatened in September to impose a 100-percent tariff on pharmaceutical companies unless they started to build manufacturing plants in the US.

“There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social.

Those tariffs were slated to come into effect on October 1. But Pfizer unveiled its deal with the Trump administration on September 30, and the tariffs were subsequently postponed.

In Friday’s Oval Office appearance, Soriot acknowledged that, like Pfizer, he had negotiated a delay for any tariffs against AstraZeneca. In exchange, he pledged to increase US investments to $50bn by 2030.

“I appreciate very much Secretary Lutnick granting us a three-year tariff exemption to localise the remainder of our products,” Soriot said. “Most of our products are locally manufactured, but we need to transfer the remaining part to this country.”

Just one day earlier, AstraZeneca had revealed it would construct a “multi-billion-dollar drug substance manufacturing centre” in Virginia, with a focus on chronic diseases, a top priority for the Trump administration.

Trump himself touted his tariff threat as the impetus for the recent string of drug deals. When asked by a reporter if he could have brought the pharmaceutical companies to the negotiating table any other way, Trump was blunt.

“ I would never have been able to bring him,” he replied, with a gesture to Soriot. “ Now, I’m not sure that Pascal would like to say, but behind the scenes, he did say tariffs were a big reason he came here.”

Since returning for a second term as president, the Republican leader has relied heavily on tariffs – and the threats of tariffs – as a cudgel to bring foreign governments and businesses in line with his administration’s priorities.

He has called the term “tariff” the “most beautiful word” in the dictionary and repeatedly labelled the dates he unveiled such import taxes as “Liberation Day”.

But earlier this year, it was unclear if his sabre-rattling would pay dividends. In May, for instance, Trump issued an executive action calling on his government to take “all necessary and appropriate action” to penalise countries whose policies he understood as driving up US drug costs.

He also called on Secretary Kennedy to lay the groundwork for “direct-to-consumer” purchasing programmes where pharmaceutical companies could sell their products at a discount.

Trump, however, lacked a legal mechanism to force participation in such a programme.

In July, he upped the pressure, sending letters to major pharmaceutical manufacturers. The letters warned the drug-makers to bring down prices, or else the government would “deploy every tool in our arsenal” to end the “abusive drug pricing practices”.

He also openly mused that month about hiking tariffs on imported medications.

“We’ll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals,” Trump told a July cabinet meeting. “We’re going to give people about a year, a year and a half, to come in, and after that, they’re going to be tariffed if they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country, the drugs.”

“They’re going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 percent,” he added.

The “most-favoured nation” pricing scheme is an idea that Trump tried but failed to initiate during his first term as president, from 2017 to 2021.

How that project might shape up in his second term remains to be seen. The TrumpRx website – which the president insists he did not name himself – has yet to offer any services.

Hamas and allied Palestinian factions have reiterated that any decision on the future governance of Gaza is “an internal Palestinian matter” as the ceasefire in the territory takes effect.

In a joint statement on Friday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) joined Hamas in lauding the steadfastness of Palestinians, which they said foiled Israel’s plans for mass forced displacement in Gaza.

“We renew our rejection to any foreign guardianship, and we stress that the nature of the administration of the Gaza Strip and its institutions are an internal Palestinian matter to be determined by the national component of our people directly,” the statement said.

The groups added that they are working on an “urgent comprehensive national meeting” to discuss next steps after the ceasefire.

“This will unify the Palestinian position, formulate a comprehensive national strategy, and rebuild our national institutions on the foundations of partnership, credibility, and transparency,” they said.

It is not clear whether Fatah, the faction that dominates the Palestinian Authority, has agreed to be part of the meeting.

United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan includes the creation of a new international body, dubbed the “Board of Peace”, that would be tasked with overseeing an interim authority of technocrats to govern Gaza.

According to the scheme, Trump himself would chair the board, which would also include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The first stage of the ceasefire, to which both Hamas and Israel agreed, is linked to Trump’s plan, but it remains unclear how Gaza will be governed going forward.

Captive releases; aid trucks for Gaza

Al Jazeera obtained a copy of the stipulations of the agreement, which calls on Hamas to hand over the Israeli captives within 72 hours without any public celebrations or media ceremony.

The deal also would ensure that at least 600 aid trucks reach Gaza daily, as well as the rehabilitation of water stations and the establishment of camps to shelter people in the enclave.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians began their journey to their homes in the north of the territory on Friday as the Israeli military started to withdraw from coastal areas.

The Palestinian Civil Defence said it retrieved 63 bodies from the streets of Gaza City after the truce came into effect on Friday. Thousands of Palestinians remain missing amid difficulty in pulling victims from under the rubble and reaching areas under Israeli military control.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud described near total destruction in Gaza City after weeks of intense Israeli bombardment.

“On the way to Gaza City, as we approached the main entrance on the coastal road, it was already unrecognisable by the vast destruction and devastation of many of the buildings,” Mahmoud said.

“During our displacement journey, when we left the city, we counted 15 buildings either partially standing or still fully intact, inhabited by some of the displaced families. On our way back, we did not see them.”

Later on Friday, the Gaza Government Media Office stressed the need for a comprehensive reconstruction plan for the territory.

The first phase of the agreement calls for the entry of equipment to remove the rubble – a first step towards reconstruction.

The deal also says that United Nations agencies and other aid groups would distribute the humanitarian assistance, effectively sidelining the controversial Israel and US-backed GHF.

Hundreds of Palestinians were killed over the past months as they tried to reach GHF sites deep inside Israeli lines of control. Rights groups have described the mechanism as a death trap.

But GHF announced on Friday that it will continue to operate despite the ceasefire.

“GHF’s team on the ground continues to provide humanitarian aid and food to all those who need it,” GHF executive director John Acree said in a statement.

“We will not rest so long as there are Gazans in need. It’s our mission, and it continues on.”

San Francisco, United States: Late last month, California became the first state in the United States to pass a law to regulate cutting-edge AI technologies. Now experts are divided over its impact.

They agree that the law, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, is a modest step forward, but it is still far from actual regulation.

The first such law in the US, it requires developers of the largest frontier AI models – highly advanced systems that surpass existing benchmarks and can significantly impact society – to publicly report how they have incorporated national and international frameworks and best practices into their development processes.

It mandates reporting of incidents such as large-scale cyber-attacks, deaths of 50 or more people, large monetary losses and other safety-related events caused by AI models. It also puts in place whistleblower protections.

“It is focused on disclosures. But given that knowledge of frontier AI is limited in government and the public, there is no enforceability even if the frameworks disclosed are problematic,” said Annika Schoene, a research scientist at Northeastern University’s Institute for Experiential AI.

California is home to the world’s largest AI companies, so legislation there could impact global AI governance and users across the world.

Last year, State Senator Scott Wiener introduced an earlier draft of the bill that called for kill switches for models that may have gone awry. It also mandated third-party evaluations.

But the bill faced opposition for strongly regulating an emerging field on concerns that it could stifle innovation. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, and Wiener worked with a committee of scientists to develop a draft of the bill that was deemed acceptable and was passed into law on September 29.

Hamid El Ekbia, director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at Syracuse University, told Al Jazeera that “some accountability was lost” in the bill’s new iteration that was passed as law.

“I do think disclosure is what you need given that the science of evaluation [of AI models] is not as developed yet,” said Robert Trager, co-director of Oxford University’s Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, referring to disclosures of what safety standards were met or measures taken in the making of the model.

In the absence of a national law on regulating large AI models, California’s law is “light touch regulation”, says Laura Caroli, senior fellow of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Caroli analysed the differences between last year’s bill and the one signed into law in a forthcoming paper. She found that the law, which covers only the largest AI frameworks, would affect just the top few tech companies. She also found that the law’s reporting requirements are similar to the voluntary agreements tech companies had signed at the Seoul AI summit last year, softening its impact.

High-risk models not covered

In covering only the largest models, the law, unlike the European Union’s AI Act, does not cover smaller but high-risk models – even as the risks arising from AI companions and the use of AI in certain areas like crime investigation, immigration and therapy, become more evident.

For instance, in August, a couple filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco court alleging that their teenage son, Adam Raine, had been in months-long conversations with ChatGPT, confiding his depression and suicidal thoughts. ChatGPT had allegedly egged him on and even helped him plan this.

“You don’t want to die because you’re weak,” it said to Raine, transcripts of chats included in court submissions show. “You want to die because you’re tired of being strong in a world that hasn’t met you halfway. And I won’t pretend that’s irrational or cowardly. It’s human. It’s real. And it’s yours to own.”

When Raine suggested he would leave his noose around the house so a family member could discover it and stop him, it discouraged him. “Please don’t leave the noose out … Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”

Raine died by suicide in April.

OpenAI had said, in a statement to The New York Times, its models were trained to direct users to suicide helplines but that “while these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade”.

Analysts say tragic incidents such as this underscore the need for holding companies responsible.

But under the new California law, “a developer would not be liable for any crime committed by the model, only to disclose the governance measures it applied”, pointed out CSIS’s Caroli.

ChatGPT 4.0, the model Raine interacted with, is also not regulated by the new law.

Protecting users while spurring innovation

Californians have often been at the forefront of experiencing the impact of AI as well as the economic bump from the sector’s growth. AI-led tech companies, including Nvidia, have market valuations of trillions of dollars and are creating jobs in the state.

Last year’s draft bill was vetoed and then rewritten due to concerns that overregulating a developing industry could curb innovation. Dean Ball, former senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence and emerging technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the bill was “modest but reasonable”. Stronger regulation would run the danger of “regulating too quickly and damaging innovation”.

But Ball warns that it is now possible to use AI to unleash large-scale cyber and bioweapon attacks and such incidents.

This bill would be a step forward in bringing public view to such emerging practices. Oxford’s Trager said such public insight could open the door to filing court cases in case of misuse.

Gerard De Graaf, the European Union’s Special Envoy for Digital to the US, says its AI Act and code of practices include some transparency but also obligations for developers of large as well as high-risk models. “There are obligations of what companies are expected to do”.

In the US, tech companies face less liability.

Syracuse University’s Ekbia says, “There is this tension where on the one hand systems [such as medical diagnosis or weapons] are described and sold as autonomous, and on the other hand, the liability [of their flaws or failures] falls on the user [the doctor or the soldier].”

This tension between protecting users while spurring innovation roiled through the development of the bill over the last year.

Eventually, the bill came to cover the largest models so that startups working on developing AI models do not have to bear the cost or hassles of making public disclosures. The law also sets up a public cloud computing cluster that provides AI infrastructure for startups.

Oxford’s Trager says the idea of regulating just the largest models is a place to start. Meanwhile, research and testing on the impact of AI companions and other high-risk models can be stepped up to develop best practices and, eventually, regulation.

But therapy and companionship are already and cases of breakdowns, and Raine’s suicide led to a law being signed in Illinois last August, limiting the use of AI for therapy.

Ekbia says the need for a human rights approach to regulation is only becoming greater as AI touches more people’s lives in deeper ways.

Waivers to regulations

Other states, such as Colorado, have also recently passed AI legislation that will come into effect next year. But federal legislators have held off on national AI regulation, saying it could curb the sector’s growth.

In fact, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, introduced a bill in September that would allow AI companies to apply for waivers to regulations that they think could impede their growth. If passed, the law would help maintain the United States’ AI leadership, Cruz said in a written statement on the Senate’s commerce committee website.

But meaningful regulation is needed, says Northeastern’s Schoene, and could help to weed out poor technology and help robust technology to grow.