On August 5, Vaxcyte (NASDAQ:PCVX) reported second-quarter results that read less like a snapshot of today and more like a countdown to a verdict. The clinical-stage vaccine maker has no product on the market yet, but its three late-stage trials for its lead pneumococcal candidate are now fully enrolled, with the first major readout due before year-end. Add a net loss that nearly doubled and a boardroom that just brought in two vaccine-industry veterans, and you have a company betting its near-term story on data still to come.
Vaxcyte's three Phase 3 studies of VAX-31, its next-generation pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, have dosed 6,191 adults combined, with roughly 3,500 of them receiving the actual candidate. The largest, OPUS-1, put 4,049 participants through head-to-head comparisons against Prevnar 20 and Capvaxive, the two shots VAX-31 needs to beat to earn a spot in the standard vaccination schedule. Data on safety, tolerability, and immune response from that trial are due in the fourth quarter of 2026, with results from OPUS-2 and OPUS-3 following in the first half of 2027.
A separate Phase 2 study testing VAX-31 in infants, covering both the primary immunization series and a booster dose, is on a similar timeline. In June, Vaxcyte also dosed the first participants in a Phase 1 study of VAX-A1, aimed at preventing disease from Group A Streptococcus, with topline data expected in the second half of 2027. As of June 30, cash and investments stood at $2.5 billion, up from $2.44 billion at the end of 2025, and the board added Dr. Moncef Slaoui, previously chief scientific advisor to Operation Warp Speed and a three-decade GSK veteran, alongside Dr. John Markels, the former president of Merck's global vaccines business.
None of that pipeline progress comes cheap. Vaxcyte's net loss for the quarter ended June 30 was $284.3 million, up from $166.6 million in the same period a year earlier, and the increase shows up on both sides of the ledger. R&D spending rose to $267.9 million from $194.2 million, driven by manufacturing work to prepare for a possible launch and by the cost of running three simultaneous Phase 3 trials at once. G&A expenses climbed too, to $34.9 million from $32 million, largely from adding headcount.
Because Vaxcyte has no approved product generating sales, every one of those dollars comes straight off the balance sheet. The calendar adds pressure of its own: even a clean OPUS-1 readout in the fourth quarter of 2026 still leaves the OPUS-2 and OPUS-3 results, plus a required manufacturing consistency study, sitting in the first half of 2027, pushing any license application and launch well beyond that. The newer VAX-A1 program is earlier still, with its second stage contingent on a safety board signing off on the first.

#opus #data

SCARDOVARI, Italy (AP) — Italian fishermen for two years incinerated most of the invasive Atlantic blue crabs caught in the Po River Delta south of Venice. Few Italians had an appetite for the alien predator blamed for decimating their prized Manila clams.
While experiments in containment continue, including the release of tens of thousands of octopus predators, the industry's response has been shifting to find new markets for the crustaceans. The strategy is already salvaging the livelihood of some fishermen and, some hope, may even rehabilitate the much-maligned crab's image in Italy.
Like other members of his local cooperative, second-generation fisherman Federico Zago saw his income crash after the crab invasion. The Polesine Fishermen's Cooperative Consortium's revenues fell 75% to 15 million euros ($17 million) in 2024 and 2025; the cooperative's active members also shrank from 1,500 to 850.
"We needed to change strategy, and create an opportunity from this disaster," said Paolo Mancin, the cooperative's president.
Desperate, they pivoted to exporting the unwanted crabs, with the aim of preserving the Manila clams — invasive themselves — and mussels that created decades of prosperity in the shallow lagoons of Veneto and Emilia Romagna.

#manila #million

Klay Thompson's father has warned the critics of his son ahead of the new season.
Following a disappointing two-year stint with the Dallas Mavericks, Klay Thompson agreed to a contract buyout with the Western Conference side.
At 36, Thompson is undoubtedly out of his prime, but it didn't take long for the 4x NBA champion to find his next destination.
Thompson quickly agreed to a two-year deal with the Miami Heat as he is all set to become teammates with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo.
Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Opus Bank

#thompson #following #dallas

Can AI accurately measure America's retirement readiness? In this episode, we put Claude Opus 4.8 to the test on key questions about the U.S. workforce and retirement coverage, then had one of the nation's leading retirement economists fact-check every number. Our guest, Andrew G. Biggs, PhD, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, breaks down where the AI got it right, where it fell short, and what the real data actually reveals about how prepared Americans truly are for retirement.
Subscribe To "Broadcast Retirement Network" On YouTube For Aging, Finance, Lifestyle, Privacy, Retirement, and Wellness programming Monday through Sunday at 7:30 AM ET.
Transcript:
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
We're going to welcome back to the program, Dr. Andrew Biggs. He's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Biggs. It's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for stopping by the program this morning.

#american #institute #broadcast #network

Anthropic's revenue surged sevenfold to $65B annualized, supporting a planned $2 trillion IPO with $200B in revenue targeted by 2028.
Anthropic's most powerful Fable 5 model stalled at just 11% of corporate AI spending, while the cheaper Opus 5 surpassed it within weeks.
If customers keep choosing cheaper 'good enough' models over frontier AI, Anthropic's $200B revenue target by 2028 becomes significantly harder to reach.
Don't wait: the **** yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks. See the full list FREE now.
The AI market has entered a new phase. Early buyers were willing to pay almost any price for the most capable models, but businesses are now asking a more ordinary question: How much intelligence do we actually need for the job?

#models #don 't #free

Kevin De Bruyne is Manchester City's greatest ever player. Erling Haaland will hoover up the club's goalscoring records; or those he does not already possess, anyway. Bernardo Silva made the most appearances of anyone for City in the last four decades, the most under Pep Guardiola and felt the manager's favourite.
And yet perhaps the Barcelona-bound Rodri was the definitive player of Guardiola's time at the Etihad Stadium. It helped, of course, that he scored the most momentous goal, the one that finally made City champions of Europe. Rodri against Inter in Istanbul: few supporters will ever need an explanation of that.
Rodri bids farewell to Manchester City after a talismanic spell at the club (PA)
Rodri was a colossal figure but also a symbolic one. Guardiola's football stemmed from the midfield and Rodri was the controller supreme, with a pass completion rate forever in the nineties and an ability to win the ball back. He was simultaneously a constructive and destructive presence. He played in Guardiola's old position; yet he smashed through the glass ceiling for defensive midfielders.
None had won the Ballon d'Or, arguably, since Josef Masopust in 1962. Rodri did. None had ever won the World Cup's Golden Ball. Rodri did. He arrived at the Etihad Stadium with the suspicion he may have been overpriced, having to adapt from Diego Simeone's football to Guardiola's, at the end of a long search for Fernandinho's successor which had taken in midfielders as different – from each other as from him – as Fred and Jorginho.

#player

As high school flag football continues to grow in popularity, so does the number of Section V players earning recognition among the state's best.
The New York State Sportswriters **** ociation put together the first set of all-state flag football teams in 2025. This year's selections include seven players at Section V schools named first team all-state, one more than last season.
Webster Schroeder quarterback Emma Rascoe has completed her high school playing days as a two-time member of the Class B all-state first team offense.
Rascoe, the 2026 Democrat and Chronicle All-Greater Rochester Player of the Year, finished with 63 touchdown passes and 78 total touchdowns during her senior season as Webster Schroeder went 14-2. She finished with 4,729 all-purpose yards, including 3,776 passing yards, while helping the Warriors win the Section V Class B championship. The Warriors were state champions in 2025.
Bishop Kearney standout Nela Lopusanova, a three-time AGR first team member, and East Rochester defensive star Payton Kinney earned Class C first-team all-state honors for the second consecutive year.

#section #schroeder #rascoe

Warning: This story contains an image that some readers may find upsetting
A cat rescue has been left "speechless" after a cat in their care gave birth to a kitten with two noses and two mouths.
PurrfectlyFeral in Llangedwyn, Powys, shared the discovery after the kitten was born with a rare congenital disorder called diprosopus, also known as craniofacial duplication.
Known as Janus cats, the condition is named after the mythological Roman god who is traditionally depicted with two faces and is extremely rare in cats.
Rescue founder Shelley Jones said most Janus kittens are either stillborn or survive only for a short time after birth, so the "little miracle", who has been named Gemini, is being monitored "around the clock".

Seccl, the embedded investment platform owned by Octopus, has created an Irish subsidiary as it seeks to expand into the European market.
Ronan Gahan will lead the new Irish unit, Seccl Ireland DAC, as the chief executive.
The step follows demand from existing clients seeking to offer investment services outside the UK, noted the company.
Seccl's systems currently serve around one million investors in the UK.
The new Irish operation is intended to help extend that model into European markets, with local market knowledge and regulatory capability in place.

At the WSJ Leadership Institute CEO Summit in London, Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson joins WSJ Leadership Institute President Alan Murray and fellow business leaders to discuss why falling costs for solar, batteries and electric vehicles are reshaping the global economy—and why countries that move fastest on electrification could gain a lasting competitive advantage.

Tech stocks ended last week with gains as the Nasdaq 100 (^NDX) crossed the 30,000 mark for the first time amid cautious optimism for an extended ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran.
The tech sector faces its next series of tests this week as a raft of labor data offers insight into how artificial intelligence is affecting the workforce, more chip and cybersecurity companies release their quarterly results, and the world’s chip giants descend on Taiwan for the annual Computex Taipei conference.
On June 1, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivered his keynote address at the chip summit, where he stated that “AI is now a profit generator” and expanded upon the company’s products, particularly its Vera Rubin AI platform.
In the private markets, Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) announced last week that it had completed its Series H funding round, valuing the company at $965 billion, making the Claude Code creator more valuable than OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and the most valuable AI startup in the world. Anthropic also released an update to its flagship Opus 4.8 model last Thursday.
Investors continue to **** s what the looming mega IPOs from Anthropic, OpenAI, and **** eX (SPAX.PVT) mean for the booming AI and tech trade.

At what point do "you" end and the outside world begins?
It might feel like a weird question with an obvious answer, but your brain has to work surprisingly hard to judge that boundary. Now, scientists have linked a specific set of brain waves in a certain part of the brain to a sense of body ownership.
In a series of new experiments, researchers from Sweden and France put 106 participants through what's called the rubber hand illusion, monitoring and stimulating their brain activity to see what effect it had.
Related: Octopuses Fall For The Classic Fake Arm Trick – Just Like We Do
This cl

Experts puzzled after 'incredibly rare' creature washes up on beach: 'Something we clearly hadn't seen before'

Pieces of a seldom-seen creature from the North Sea's twilight zone have been found on a beach near Aberdeenshire, Scotland, according to the BBC.
The discovery spotlights that our understanding of the seas' depths and the creatures in it remains murky.
The sucker-laden remains belong to a blob-like, seven-armed octopus that lives at depths of up to 3,900 feet. Females can be large, weighing 165 pounds, but males are much smaller, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute repo

Researchers aboard a Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute vessel recently captured rare footage of a seven-armed octopus, offering a vivid reminder of how patient observation and careful environmental management can unlock new knowledge.
Senior scientist Steven Haddock spotted the elusive animal on November 6th, while piloting a remotely operated vehicle in Monterey Bay, an encounter so uncommon it had not been documented since 2017, reported Monterey County NOW.
As Haddock told the outlet, "You never know what you're going to see."
The octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, was observed nearly

'Vampire Squid From ***** ' Reveals The Ancient Origins of Octopuses

The elusive 'vampire squid from ***** ' has just yielded the largest cephalopod genome ever sequenced, a monster clocking in at more than 11 billion base pairs – more than twice as large as the biggest squid genomes.
Hidden in its mix of A, T, G, and C was a deep evolutionary story. Despite not being an actual squid, Vampyroteuthis infernalis has preserved a surprisingly squid-like chromosomal architecture – a layout shared long ago with the ancestor of modern octopuses and squids.
The vampire squid is a fascinating twig