By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden traveled to the western United States on Thursday as part of his final major campaign swing ahead of midterm elections that the White House seeks to turn into a referendum on Republicans, and Republicans into a vote on Biden.

Biden’s three-day campaign swing will take him to New Mexico, California and Illinois and will conclude in Pennsylvania on Saturday. He will appear at a rally in Maryland on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s congressional elections.

Biden, whose percentage job approval rating in the low 40s is a drag on Democratic candidates, is fighting to help his party hold off a strong challenge mounted by Republicans for control of the U.S. Congress.

Polls show Republicans have the edge among voters, many of whom are worried about the U.S. economy and inflation, and they are widely expected to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. Opposition parties historically fare better in midterm elections, providing a balance for new presidents in the second half of their terms.

At his first stop, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Biden will tout the benefits of his student loan debt relief plan and then headline a rally for the state’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is trying to fend off Republican nominee Mark Ronchetti.

He will move on to San Diego, California, to participate in an event for Democratic congressional candidate Mike Levin. On Friday and Saturday he will spend time in Chicago before campaigning for Democrats in Philadelphia with former President Barack Obama.

Biden warned on Wednesday night that Republican loyalists to former President Donald Trump are a threat to democracy by refusing to say they will accept the results of elections if they are defeated on Tuesday.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Alistair Bell)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A push in the U.S. Congress to make daylight-saving time permanent, which was unanimously passed by the Senate earlier this year, has stalled in the House, with a key lawmaker telling Reuters they have been unable to reach consensus.

In March, the Senate voted to put a stop next year to the twice-annual changing of clocks, which supporters say will lead to brighter afternoons and more economic activity.

U.S. Representative Frank Pallone, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee that has jurisdiction over the issue, said in a statement to Reuters the House is still trying to figure out how to move forward.

“We haven’t been able to find consensus in the House on this yet. There are a broad variety of opinions about whether to keep the status quo, to move to a permanent time, and if so, what time that should be,” Pallone, a Democrat, said, adding that opinions break down by region, not by party.

Legislative aides told Reuters they do not expect Congress to reach agreement before the end of the year. Supporters in the Senate would need to reintroduce the bill next year if it is not approved by the end of the year.

Daylight-saving time has been in place in nearly all of the United States since the 1960s. Year-round daylight-saving time was used during World War Two and adopted again in 1973 in a bid to reduce energy use because of an oil embargo and repealed a year later.

“We don’t want to make a hasty change and then have it reversed several years later after public opinion turns against it — which is exactly what happened in the early 1970s,” Pallone said.

On Sunday, Nov. 6 at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT), the United States will resume standard time.

Pallone previously said he backs ending the clock-switching but has not decided whether to support daylight or standard time as the permanent choice.

Supporters also argue that if approved, the so-called Sunshine Protection Act would allow children to play outdoors later, and reduce seasonal depression. It would also prevent a slight uptick in car crashes that typically occurs around time changes — notably crashes with deer.

They also point to studies suggesting a small increase in heart attacks and strokes soon after the time change and argue the measure could help businesses like golf courses draw more customers into the evening.

Critics, including the National Association of Convenience Stores, say it will force many children to walk to school in darkness during the winter, since the measure would delay sunrise by an hour in some places.

On Sunday, Mexico rolled back its clocks one last time after the passage of a law last week to abolish daylight-saving time. Some northern towns will continue to practice the time change come spring, however, likely due to their ties with U.S. cities across the border.

The move, long sought by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was based on backing by voters as well as negligible energy savings and negative health effects from the time change, officials said.

The White House declined to say earlier this year if Biden supports making daylight-saving time permanent.

Since 2015, about 30 states have introduced or passed legislation to end the twice-yearly changing of clocks, with some states proposing to do it only if neighboring states do the same.

The bill would allow Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe daylight-saving time, to remain on standard time as well as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; additional reporting by Kylie Madry in Mexico City; editing by Diane Craft)

Julie Bowen fell in love with a gay woman who didn’t like her “in that way”.

Opening up about her sexuality, the mum-of-three ‘Modern Family’ actress, 52, added she identifies as straight despite being once interested in a female.

She told Becca Tilley, 34, on the latest episode of her ‘Quitters’ podcast, released on 1 November: “I’m straight. I’ve always been straight. I was in love with a woman for a while but she didn’t love me back.

“She liked women, but she didn’t like me in that way.

“It never really took off so I never really had to challenge my concept of my sexuality.”

Julie – who shares sons Oliver, 15, and 13-year-old twins John and Gus with her ex-husband Scott Phillips – added to the former ‘The Bachelor’ competitor about keeping sexuality private: “I hope people don’t always have to come out. What you do with your body should not be the first thing we know about people, or care about – that’s your business.

Becca responded she has “never thought about a label” when it came to defining her sexuality.

Julie said in January on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ she has “retired” from dating and is “very single” – though admitted she would come out of retirement for Harry Styles.

Guest host Adam DeVine said while mentioning Julie was at the former One Direction singer’s ‘Fine Line’ tour in 2021: “Word on the street is that you have a little bit of a crush, girl.”

Julie replied: “You’re asking me if I’d come out of (dating) retirement for Harry Styles? Oh, hell yeah. Him? Look at him!”

Julie added during the show’s ‘Five Second Rule’ game her three celebrity crushes were Harry, 28, Timothée Chalamet, 26, and guest host Adam DeVine, 38.

The actress’ marriage to real estate developer Scott lasted 13 years before they split, with Julie ending her divorce filing in February 2018, before it was finalised in September that year.

By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s approval rating edged higher with just a week to go before U.S. midterm elections when his Democratic Party is expected to lose control of the House of Representatives, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday found.

The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, a percentage point higher than a week earlier.

Despite the increase, Biden’s approval rating remains near the lowest levels of his presidency, and his unpopularity is helping drive the view that Republicans will win control of the House and possibly also the Senate on Nov. 8.

Control of even one chamber of Congress would give Republicans the power to bring Biden’s legislative agenda to a halt.

Taking office in January 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden’s term has been marked by the economic scars of the global health crisis, including soaring inflation. This year, his approval rating drifted as low as 36% in May and June.

In this week’s Reuters/Ipsos poll, about a third of respondents picked the economy as the country’s biggest problem, a much larger share than the one in 10 who picked crime or the end of national abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s June decision.

The poll, conducted online in English throughout the United States, gathered responses from 1,004 adults, including 455 Democrats and 355 Republicans. It has a credibility interval – a measure of precision – of 4 percentage points either way.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Washington (AFP) – Requests by Americans for abortion pills from outside the United States have surged since the US Supreme Court’s explosive decision last summer to overturn the nationwide right to the procedure, according to a study published Tuesday.

Researchers, whose work was published in the medical journal JAMA, analyzed the number of requests submitted to telemedicine service Aid Access, which delivers abortion pills from abroad to 30 US states.

Aid Access was purposefully set up to help women “self-manage” their abortions at home, circumventing local bans or other barriers.

After the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in late June, many Republican-led states severely restricted or outright banned abortions.

According to the study, Aid Access received an average of 83 requests per day before the Supreme Court’s decision from the 30 states in which it operates.

But in the two months after, that number jumped to 213 per day — an increase of about 160 percent.

Proportional to the number of women in each state, the increase in Aid Access requests were highest in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma — all of which completely banned abortions.

In the states that outlawed abortions, “current legal restrictions” was cited as women’s motivation for using the service in about 62 percent of cases after the Supreme Court decision, compared to 31 percent before.

The study did analyze requests for the pills on other sites, where they are easily available for a few hundred dollars — but without medical supervision.

Another study, also published Tuesday in the journal JAMA, looked at the average travel time for women to reach an abortion clinic in the United States.

The average time was 28 minutes before the Supreme Court’s decision, and it increased significantly to 1 hour and 40 minutes afterward. The national average however masks wide local disparities.

In states that implemented a total abortion ban or limits after six weeks of pregnancy, the average travel time increase was four hours, according to the study, which added that the lack of access was especially a problem for those with fewer resources.

In the 100 days following the Supreme Court ruling, at least 66 clinics stopped performing abortions, according to a report in early October by the Guttmacher Institute.

New York (AFP) – An original copy of the US Constitution — one of only two known to be in private hands — will be auctioned off in December with bidding estimated to go as high as $30 million, Sotheby’s announced Tuesday.

Five hundred first printings were made of the US Constitution’s final text and provided to participants at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin, but almost all have been lost to history.

Of the 13 that are known to have remained, 11 are owned by governments and institutions.

Last year, one of the two privately held copies was bought for $43.2 million by US hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who outbid a group of 17,000 cryptocurrency investors who had raised $40 million to try to buy the document, vowing to exhibit it in the public digital domain.

Griffin’s purchase, which he has since lent for display at a free public museum, set a record for the highest price ever paid for a historical document at auction, according to Sotheby’s.

The second copy will be auctioned off on December 13 for up to $30 million dollars, but bidding could soar even higher, according to Richard Austin, an expert in manuscripts and old books at Sotheby’s New York auction house.

Austin told AFP he would “like to see another private individual or perhaps a group being responsible for the care of this very important document.”

The artifact will be on public display at Sotheby’s New York starting on November 4.

Washington (AFP) – The White House said Wednesday it was increasingly concerned over Moscow’s talk of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, after a media report said top Russian military officials had discussed how and when to use such a weapon.

“We have grown increasingly concerned about  the potential as these months have gone on,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby. 

Kirby did not confirm a New York Times report that said high-level Russian military officials recently discussed when and how they might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

The report, which cited unnamed US officials, said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not take part in the discussions, and there was no indication that the Russian military had decided to deploy the weapons.

But Kirby said any comments on the use of nuclear weapons by Russia are “deeply concerning,” and said the United States takes them seriously.

He pointed to recent Putin comments talking about nuclear weapons and referencing the bombs US forces dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II.

“We take note of that,” Kirby said.

“It increasingly is unsettling in terms of the degree to which he feels he has to continue to stretch to prosecute this war,” he said.

At the same time, Kirby reiterated, Washington sees no indications that Russia is making preparations to use nuclear weapons, adding that US intelligence does not necessarily see or know everything.

The United States has been warning Moscow for weeks over public comments from top Russian officials that they could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in certain cases, particularly if they felt there was a threat to Russian territorial integrity.

The most recent threat came from former Russian president and senior security council official Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s objective to reclaim all its territories occupied by Russia, which include the Donbas region and Crimea, would be a “threat to the existence of our state.”

That, Medvedev said, would be “a direct reason” to invoke nuclear deterrence.

However, early Wednesday Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Western media was “deliberately pumping up the topic of the use of nuclear weapons.”

Moscow does “not have the slightest intention to take part in this,” he said, calling the Times report “very irresponsible.”

In September, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, said that the United States has warned Russia at “very high levels” of “catastrophic consequences” for using nuclear arms.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on October 13 that Russian forces would be “annihilated” by the West if Putin uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

By Sheila Dang

(Reuters) – Banned accounts will not be allowed back onto Twitter until the social media platform has “a clear process for doing so,” Elon Musk tweeted in the early hours on Wednesday, giving more clarity about the potential return of Twitter’s most famous banned user, former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Creating such a process would take at least a few more weeks, Musk tweeted. The new timeline implies Trump will not return in time for the midterm elections on Nov. 8.

Twitter users, advertisers and its own employees have been watching closely for signs of what Musk will do in his first week as Twitter’s owner. The Tesla chief executive has previously said Twitter should not permanently ban users and that he would reverse the ban on Trump, who was suspended for risk of further incitement of violence after the U.S. Capitol riot last year.

Musk’s tweets came after he held a call with several civil rights organizations including Color of Change, the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP on Tuesday.

During the call, Musk committed to uphold Twitter’s content moderation policies and enforcement around election integrity, said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, in an interview.

Musk also reiterated in his tweet on Wednesday that Twitter will create a content moderation council composed of representatives with “widely divergent views.”

The billionaire expressed during the call that he would like the civil society groups to join the council, Robinson said, adding the discussions were still at an early stage.

“Actions will speak louder than words,” he said. “The issues that were addressed in this meeting were just the tip of the iceberg.”

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

By Deena Beasley

(Reuters) – The annual price of a newly-launched cancer drug in the United States averaged $283,000 last year, a 53% increase from 2017, according to a new report from U.S. Democratic Representative Katie Porter, a consumer bankruptcy law professor running for re-election in California.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, oncology treatments are nearly four times as costly as other therapies and are largely paid for by taxpayer-funded programs like the government’s Medicare plan for people over age 65, the report notes.

Reuters reported in August on the record-high launch prices of new drugs in 2022 versus 2021 – an area that has driven drugmaker profits as they limited year-over-year price increases on existing drugs due to pressure from lawmakers and the public.

This new analysis is a first look at the degree to which cancer drugmakers rely on high launch prices, an area left out of the Medicare pricing limits set out in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by U.S. President Joe Biden in August.

The IRA focuses on Medicare price negotiation for older drugs and caps on price increases. It also limits annual out-of-pocket drug costs for beneficiaries to $2,000, which means the Medicare plan will be responsible for costs over that amount.

By law, Medicare is required to cover all cancer medications.

“Launch prices are an important issue and one that is not touched by the IRA,” Stacie Dusetzina, an associate professor of health policy at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center who studies drug costs told Reuters. “I do think there is a possibility we see launch prices go up,” she said.

Cancer drugs set to get costlier https://graphics.reuters.com/US-DRUGS/xmpjkgqnrvr/chart.png

Porter, who championed inflation-based caps on drug prices, is calling for additional national legislation to link launch prices to how well a drug works. And, in the case of drugs approved under the Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated pathway, limiting prices until there is sufficient data to show the drugs are effective.

“The trend toward ever higher launch prices is ongoing and accelerating. And I think we should expect it to continue unless we do something about it,” Porter told Reuters.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry’s main trade group, has maintained that “government price setting has a devastating impact on biopharmaceutical research and development and places an additional barrier between patients and innovative medicines.”

CANCER PILLS ROSE NEARLY 26% IN FIVE YEARS

Many of the newer cancer drugs are biologics that need to be given as an infusion by a healthcare professional, but an increasing number are self-administered pills or tablets.

The report found that the average launch price of a self-administered cancer drug, after adjusting for inflation, rose by nearly 26% to $238,000 between 2017 and 2021.

U.S. cancer drug launch prices in 2017 https://graphics.reuters.com/US-DRUGS2017/akpeqgygjpr/chart.png

U.S. cancer drug launch prices in 2021 https://graphics.reuters.com/US-DRUGS2021/lbpggryrdpq/chart.png

The analysis excluded an ultra-expensive class of treatments called CAR-T, which involve drawing white blood cells from a patient, processing them in the lab to target cancer and infusing the cells back into the patient.

In 2017, the most expensive new cancer tablet was Celgene’s Idhifa at $298,465 a year. Celgene was later acquired by Bristol Myers, which said in 2020 that a study of Idhifa, approved to treat a subset of leukemia patients, failed to show that it improved survival compared to standard care.

No other new drug launched in 2017 had an annual price over $200,000.

By 2022, six out of the eight newly-launched oral cancer drugs had prices over $200,000 per year. These included lung cancer pills such as Takeda Pharmaceutical’s Exkivity at $299,995, Merck KGaA’s Tepmetko at $250,775 and Amgen Inc’s Lumakras at $214,800.

Based on current trends, the report calculated that by 2026, when Medicare will first be able to negotiate drug prices, the average self-administered cancer drug launch price will be nearly $325,000 per year and over $525,000 for pills and biologics.

(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Caroline Humer and Josie Kao)

Mariah Carey says writing “saved” her as she used poetry and music as an escape.

The 52-year-old star has penned new children’s book ‘The Christmas Princess’ about a 12-year-old girl called Mariah who is rescued by her music, and she has noted some parallels with her own life.

The ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ hitmaker explained while the story is “a fairy tale”, there are some similarities.

As well as the character’s “shack”, her mum is called Diva, while Mariah’s actual mother Patricia was an opera singer.

The age of the protagonist is also relevant, as the singer told PEOPLE magazine: “That’s the age when I learned I was definitely ‘other.’ “

She added: “It would’ve been great to actually be a chameleon, but I didn’t have the tools for it. Meaning we didn’t have money.”

Instead, Mariah turned to poetry and music as an excape, with her childhood inspiring the lyrics for tracks like 1997’s ‘Outside’.

She said: “Writing saved me.”

Referencing the book’s character, she noted: “Her music rescues her. It’s not a Prince Charming who comes in. She saves her own day.”

Meanwhile, Mariah – the self-professed Queen of Christmas – admitted another festive holiday gave her the spark to start writing the book.

She explained: “It was two years ago at Thanksgiving, and I was making a pot of greens. They were so good we named them the Anointed Greens.

“Cooking for my friends and family, everything that I was doing at the time, I thought, ‘Wow, this is so different from when I was little.’ “

Mariah previously suggested diamonds really might be a girl’s best friends as she reflected on her butterfly-themed jewellery collections with Chopard and insitsed most people “let you down”.

She said: “I hate to say it, but for the most part, people let you down. So I might have to go with it. With very few exceptions, but for the most part, yeah.”

Robbie Williams thinks Tom Hanks and Noel Gallagher are the only people unaffected by fame.

The ‘Let Me Entertain You’ hitmaker – who has been honest about his battles with addiction and the difficulties of life in the spotlight – suggested the Hollywood actor and Oasis legend appear to have come through relatively unscathed.

Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, he said: “I play this game, that who has got through that [fame], come through the other side and gone, ‘I enjoyed every bit about it, and I’m totally mentally really well and I’m happy to continue. Let’s do more of it.’

“Do you know, here’s the thing. The first person that jumps to my head is Tom Hanks. But, we don’t know the real Tom Hanks. So we don’t know what went on with his life.

“The other one who I think… Noel Gallagher seems to have handled extreme fame really, really well. They still achieved what they achieved, and he’s still Noel Gallagher.”

Of course, the challenges of fame are well known, and the former Take That singer himself thinks it can be particularly tough for members of boybands and girlbands.

He explained: “If you run through every boyband and girlband that’s ever existed. With Take That, Gary Barlow leaves the band, his career’s supposed to do that and it didn’t.

“He suffered with bulimia, didn’t leave his house, went to sleep underneath his piano because he’d forgotten how to write songs. Incredibly depressed.

“Changed his name on his credit card because he didn’t want people to see Barlow.

“Howard Donald wanted to commit suicide after he left Take That. Mark Owen’s been to rehab and Jason Orange just can’t do it.”

As well as his former bandmates, the 48-year-old star has battled his own issues, and he thinks a lot of that can be blamed on “this machine”.

He explained: “And then there’s me, the mental health, the rehabs, the addiction, there’s all of that. So that’s what being in a boyband really does.

“And I’m sure that in five or 10 years’ time if you sit down with One Direction to a man, they’re all going to have their isms that have been caused by this machine.

“I want to do a documentary about it. Maybe we should do it together. About boybands and girlbands and what really happens. Why fame does that to you.”

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – Democratic former President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned that “more people are going to get hurt” unless the U.S. political climate changes, after the husband of the Speaker of the House was attacked by a man wielding a hammer.

A 42-year-old man has been charged with breaking into the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday and, in her absence, attacking her 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, fracturing his skull and causing other injuries. The suspect pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and a host of other state charges.

Campaigning at a rally for Democratic candidates in Nevada, the former president said he had spoken to Paul Pelosi recently and “he’s going to be OK.”

But Obama expressed grave concern about “this erosion of just basic civility and democratic norms,” in a country where supporters of Republican former President Donald Trump violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.

“This increasing habit of demonizing political opponents creates a dangerous climate,” Obama said, faulting elected officials who fail to reject the violence, make light of it, or inflame the situation with heated rhetoric.

“If that’s the environment that we create, more people are going to get hurt.”

Obama was in Las Vegas to lend his star power to candidates who are in extremely close races for U.S. Senate and governor ahead of the Nov. 8 election. He also backed candidates further down the ballot in races for the U.S. Congress, state attorney general and secretary of state.

The two-term president, who left office in 2017, remains the Democratic Party’s most popular figure and has already made campaign stops in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.

The Obama tour will continue on Wednesday in Arizona and Saturday in Pennsylvania, two more states with tight races for governor and senator.

In Nevada, incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is facing a fierce challenge from Republican Adam Laxalt, a former attorney general who supported Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by fraud.

The Nevada race could determine which party controls the Senate, which is split 50-50 and in Democratic hands only because Vice Present Kamala Harris can break any ties.

In the race for governor, Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak is locked in a close race with Republican challenger Joe Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Kim Coghill)