(PRO Views are exclusive to PRO subscribers, giving them insight on the news of the day direct from a real investing pro. See the full discussion above.) The S & P 500 will have to hold a key level at 6,550 for an auspicious start to December, according to New York Stock Exchange insider Jay Woods. Stocks are coming off a brutal week, with the major averages nursing bad month-to-date losses. The S & P 500 was last down about 2%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost about 4%. Still, so long as the S & P 500 is able to hold above that major support level during this holiday-shortened week, it should be able to get its year-end rally, Woods said. “Let’s see if we can end this week, start December off on the right foot. 6,550, the key level the traders are watching, we got a rally,” he said. .SPX 1M mountain S & P 500, 1-month performance Here’s what else Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, is watching this week: Federal Reserve speakers have the potential to move the market in the near term, especially ahead of the Dec. 9-10 meeting. New York Fed President John Williams helped the market rebound , Woods said. However, Boston Fed CEO Susan Collins has the trader “a little trepidatious.” Earnings from companies including Dell , which got a double downgrade from Morgan Stanley last week and could be in trouble if it breaks support at $120. However, he thinks the stock could hold and even rebound over the longer term. Deere is another stock that could surge back to old highs if it holds at $480. Alibaba and Zoom are other names he’s watching. (This weekly Monday video is exclusively for CNBC PRO subscribers.)
Each day, Kiran Kasbe drives a rickshaw taxi through his home neighbourhood of Mahul on Mumbai’s eastern seafront, down streets lined with stalls selling tomatoes, bottle gourds and aubergines–and, frequently, through thick smog.
Earlier this year, doctors found three tumours in his 54-year-old mother’s brain. It’s not clear exactly what caused her cancer. But people who live near coal plants are much more likely to develop the illness, studies show, and the residents of Mahul live a few hundred metres down the road from one.
Mahul’s air is famously dirty. Even behind closed car windows, there is a heavy stench of oil and smoke.
“We are not the only ones facing health challenges in the area,” said Kasbe, who is 36. “It’s all covered with filth.”
Two coal plants plant run by the Indian multinationals Tata Group and Adani were due to close last year in a government push to cut emissions. But late in 2023, those decisions were reversed after Tata argued that electricity demand was rising too fast for Mumbai to go without coal.
Neither company responded to requests for comment.
Buildings shrouded in smog in Mumbai, India, in January. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Economic growth and the need for air conditioning in climate change-linked extreme heat have seen India’s electricity demand soar in recent years. But an investigation by SourceMaterial and the Guardian reveals the biggest single factor in the city’s failure to end its dependence on fossil fuels: energy-hungry datacentres.
Leaked records also reveal the scale of the presence of the world’s biggest datacentre operator, Amazon, in Mumbai.
In the city’s metropolitan area, Amazon, on its website, records three “availability zones”, which it defines as one or more datacentres. Leaked records from last year seen by SourceMaterial from inside Amazon reveal the company used 16 in the city.
As India transforms its economy into a hub for artificial intelligence, the datacentre boom is creating a conflict between energy demand and climate pledges, said Bhaskar Chakravorti, who researches technology’s impact on society at Tufts University.
“I’m not surprised they’re falling behind their green transition commitments, especially with the demand growing exponentially,” he said of the Indian government.
Kylee Yonas, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said Mumbai’s “emission challenges” were not caused by Amazon.
“On the contrary – Amazon is one of the largest corporate investors in renewable energy in India, and we’ve supported 53 solar and wind projects in the country capable of generating over 4m megawatt hours of clean energy annually,” she said. “These investments, which include our 99 megawatt wind project in Maharashtra, are enough to power over 1.3m Indian homes annually once operational.”
Amazon is building hundreds of datacentres around the world as it vies with Microsoft, Google and others for leadership of the booming AI market.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd office in Mumbai, India. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
The company is failing to take responsibility for its role in prolonging the use of the most polluting energy sources, said Eliza Pan, a spokeswoman for Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.
“Amazon is using the shiny thing of AI to distract from the fact that it’s building a dirty energy empire,” she said.
Yonas denied this, saying: “Not only are we the leading datacentre operator in efficiency, we’re the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for five consecutive years with over 600 projects globally.”
Amazon’s claims on green energy are controversial: the company has been criticised for using “creative accounting” by buying renewable energy certificates alongside direct purchases of green energy, as described by a member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.
‘Everything is contaminated’
Mahul, where Kasbe drives his rickshaw, is a former fishing village now home to tens of thousands of people who moved there after slum clearances elsewhere in the city.
Kasbe and his mother arrived there in 2018 after their home in the suburb of Vidyavihar was bulldozed. She had been healthy before the move but deteriorated rapidly until eventually she was diagnosed with brain cancer, he said.
Gajanan Tandle, who lives nearby, said pollution-linked illnesses were common. “There are so many cases of skin and eye irritation, cancer, asthma, TB and more, and no assistance from the government,” he said.
Another local, Santosh Jadhav, has lobbied the government to move people away from Mahul.
“Everything is contaminated. We are tired of fighting for a decent means of living,” he said. “It’s hell for us here.”
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Hidden datacentres
Amazon, an online marketplace that processes 13 million customer purchases each day, according to research by CapitalOne, has bet billions of dollars on an expansion of its lucrative cloud computing business and expansion of AI-assisted services, from automated coding to translation.
The reason so many of its Mumbai centres have slipped under the radar is that they are leased rather than owned by the company. Whereas in the US Amazon tends to own its facilities outright, elsewhere it often rents either entire data farms or server racks in centres shared with other companies.
Shared “colocation” units account for a larger increase in datacentre energy use worldwide than owned or wholly leased, according to Shaolei Ren, a computing specialist at the University of California, Riverside.
“Most of the energy in the datacentre industry is going into colocations,” he said. “They are everywhere.”
Workers near Amazon Prime branding in Mumbai, India, on September. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
Amazon’s Mumbai colocation datacentres used 624,518 megawatt hours of electricity in 2023, enough to power over 400,000 Indian households for a year, the leaked data shows.
India is poised to overtake Japan and Australia to become the second-largest user of datacentre electricity in the Asia-Pacific region, S&P has forecast. By 2030, datacentres will consume a third of Mumbai’s energy, according to Ankit Saraiya, chief executive of Techno & Electric Engineering, an Indian power infrastructure supplier.
‘Toxic hell’
As it scrambles to keep ahead of demand for power, the state government of Maharashtra has extended the life of Tata’s coal plant in Mahul by at least five years. At the same time, it also postponed the shutdown of a 500-megawatt station operated by Tata’s rival, Adani Group, north of the city.
When Tata argued for the extension in a petition to the state energy board, the biggest single factor the company cited was increased energy demand from datacentres. Adani said most anticipated new demand in the five years after the date by which its station was due to close would be from datacentres.
The power stations are just two of many polluters in Mumbai’s Mahul district. The area is also home to three refineries and 16 chemical factories, according to a 2019 report published by India’s Centre for Policy Studies which called the neighbourhood a “toxic hell”.
But the Tata station, opened in 1984 and like other older power stations subject to laxer emissions rules, is “one of the key sources of air pollution in Mumbai”, according to Raj Lal, chief air quality scientist at the World Emission Network.
It contributes nearly a third of local PM2.5 pollution, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. PM2.5 refers to airborne particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter that can cause significant health problems when inhaled.
Smoke rises from a chimney at the Tata Power Co Trombay Thermal power plant in Mumbai, India, in August 2017. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Toxic heavy metals in coal ash from the plant are likely to cause “respiratory diseases, kidney issues, skin problems, cardiac issues”, said Shripad Dharmadhikary, founder of the environmental organisation Manthan Adhyayan Kendra.
Even with the Tata plant kept running, Mumbai’s power grid is creaking under the strain of surging demand. To guard against blackouts, Amazon’s colocation datacentres in the city have bought 41 diesel generators as backup and are asking for approval to install more, documents show.
In August a report by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) identified diesel generators as a major source of air pollution in the region.
The presence of datacentres that require constant power and diesel generators for backup “will naturally exacerbate emissions”, said Swagata Dey, air quality specialist at (CSTEP), asserting that datacentre operators should be required by law to power them with pollution-free solar electricity.
One Amazon site in particular, just across the Thane Creek from Mahul, hosts 14 generators. One of the company’s partners received permission earlier this year to install 12 further generators at the site.
“Public health impacts must be a central consideration when siting datacenters and choosing energy sources,” said Ren of the University of California, Riverside, who co-wrote a recent paper assessing public health risk from diesel generators at US datacentres.
Sushmita does not use a surname because in India a surname indicates the caste–a hierarchical and discriminatory social structure.
Findings from a prospective phase 2 clinical trial show that isatuximab (Sarclisa), an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody, is an effective and well-tolerated treatment for patients with relapsed and/or refractory systemic light chain (AL) amyloidosis.1
The SWOG S1702 trial (NCT03499808) was a multicenter, cooperative group phase 2 study designed to address this gap by evaluating the efficacy and safety of isatuximab monotherapy for patients with relapsed/refractory AL amyloidosis.
Isatuximab demonstrated high rates of deep and rapid hematologic responses, which were associated with organ function improvement and favorable survival outcomes. The median follow-up was 21.7 months.
The overall response rate was 77 patients (n = 27/35). This was significantly greater than the null hypothesis rate of 10% (P < .0001). The complete response (CR) rate was 6% (n = 2), partial response (PR) was 20% (n = 7), and very good partial response (VGPR) was 51% (n = 18). The hematologic CR rate increased from 6% to 17% (n = 6). The median time to PR or better was 1.1 months, and the median time to VGPR or better was 3 months. At 24 months, the estimated rate of patients remaining in hematologic response was 81%.
The cardiac response was 57% (n = 8/14 evaluable patients with baseline NT-proBNP ≥ 650 pg/mL). The renal response was 50% (n = 7/14 patients with renal involvement). The median time to renal response was 18.5 months. Responses were observed in 100% of patients with gastrointestinal (2/2) and liver (1/1) involvement.
The 24-month estimated overall survival rate was 85% (95% CI, 73%–97%). The 24-month estimated progression-free survival rate was 74% (95% CI, 59%–88%).
The 2 patients who had prior daratumumab (hyaluronidase-fihj; Darzalex Faspro) exposure did not respond to isatuximab. High response rates (PR or better) were observed across cytogenetic subgroups, including translocation t(11;14) (90%) and gain 1q (n = 3/3).
Safety Findings
Isatuximab was well-tolerated, with 49% of patients completing the full 24 planned treatment cycles. Grade 3 or 4 treatment-related adverse events (TRAE) occurred in 23% of patients.
Infusion-related reactions (IRR) occurred in 49% of patients (n = 17/35), and reactions were predominantly grade 1 or 2. Of the total patients, 1 experienced a grade 4 IRR and permanently discontinued treatment. Beyond the first cycle of therapy, no IRRs occurred.
The most common TRAEs of any grade were lymphocyte count decrease (26%), anemia (23%), diarrhea (20%), fatigue (20%), headache (17%), upper respiratory infection (17%), and lung infection (17%). Of the patients, 2 experienced grade 3 lung infections (pneumonia); both had severe hypogammaglobulinemia (IgG <400 mg/dL) prior to the event.
Study Design and Methodology
The study was a single-arm, 2-stage, multicenter phase 2 trial. From March 2018 to September 2019, 43 patients were registered across 20 institutions. Of these, 36 were eligible and 35 received at least 1 dose of isatuximab, forming the evaluable patient cohort.
Isatuximab was administered at 20 mg/kg intravenously. Patients were treated weekly on days 1, 8, 15, and 22 of treatment for the first 28-day cycle, then on days 1 and 15 for cycles 2 through 24. Patients received premedication with diphenhydramine, methylprednisolone, ranitidine, and acetaminophen to mitigate IRRs. All patients received antiviral prophylaxis (eg, acyclovir) and were recommended to receive a proton pump inhibitor.
Patient Characteristics
The median age of the 35evaluable patients was 70 years. The cohort had received a median of 1 prior treatment line. Cardiac (71%) and renal (40%) involvement were the most common.
Of the total patients, 54% were female and 46% were male. Patients had an ECOG performance score of 0 to 2.
The demonstrated safety and efficacy support the investigation of isatuximab in combination regimens.
“The current clinical trial was designed and conducted prior to the approval of daratumumab in combination with cyclophosphamide, bortezomib [Velcade], and dexamethasone [VCd] in the front-line setting,” said Parker T et al, authors of the study. “With this approval, most patients are now exposed to an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody, which was not the case in the current trial as only 2 patients here had received prior treatment with daratumumab. Importantly, these 2 patients did not achieve a hematologic response.”
In the ANDROMEDA trial (NCT03201965),2 which the above approval was founded upon, patients received up to 24 cycles of treatment prior to discontinuation.As continuous maintenance therapy is not typically given in AL amyloidosis, there may be a role for retreatment with an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody at the time of progression. Additional studies are needed to determine the efficacy of isatuximab in AL amyloidosis following daratumumab exposure.
REFERENCES
1.Parker T, Rosenthal A, Sanchorawala V et al. Isatuximab for relapsed and/or refractory AL amyloidosis: results of a prospective phase 2 trial (SWOG S1702). Blood (2025) 146 (21): 2507–2516. doi: 10.1182/blood.2024027962
2.A study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of daratumumab in combination with cyclophosphamide, bortezomib and dexamethasone (CyBorD) compared to CyBorD alone in newly diagnosed systemic amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis. ClincalTrials.gov. Updated May 25, 2025. Accessed November 24, 2025. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03201965
As the United States and China push to lead in artificial intelligence, there is growing acknowledgment that some AI risks are too significant for either nation to manage alone. While competition drives innovation, high-stakes failures—such as models enabling biological threat design or automated cyberattacks—create cross-border dangers that demand coordinated responses.
As Daniel Castro writes in China Daily, the two countries don’t need shared laws or aligned regulations to cooperate on technical AI safety. Joint research, incident reporting, and red-team testing can reduce duplication, prevent accidents, and maintain global trust in advanced AI systems—much like US-Soviet collaboration on nuclear safety during the Cold War. Strategic safety is a shared security interest, even as technological competition continues.
Read the China Daily op-ed here.
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Nov 24 (Reuters) – Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N), opens new tab said on Monday it has begun a correction in the United States for certain FreeStyle Libre 3 and FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus glucose monitoring sensors after internal testing showed some units may report falsely low glucose readings.
About 3 million sensors are affected in the U.S., roughly half of which are estimated to have expired or already been used, the company said.
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Abbott has received 736 reports globally of severe adverse events and seven deaths that may be linked to the issue. None of the deaths occurred in the U.S.
The problem, tied to one production line, could lead to incorrect treatment decisions for people with diabetes, including excessive carbohydrate intake or missed insulin doses, posing serious health risks, the company said.
A correction is an action to address a problem with a product already on the market or in use without physically removing it from circulation.
Last year, Abbott issued a similar correction, opens new tab for a small number of FreeStyle Libre 3 sensors in the United States that could report inaccurately high glucose readings.
Abbott said it has resolved the manufacturing issue and continues to produce sensors to meet replacement and new orders without significant supply disruptions.
Users can check if their sensors are affected and request free replacements at www.freestylecheck.com.
The company advised users to stop using any confirmed affected sensors immediately and to rely on a blood glucose meter for treatment decisions when sensor readings do not match symptoms.
Other Libre products, readers and apps are not affected, and the correction is also being implemented in other countries where Libre 3 and Libre 3 Plus sensors are sold, Abbott said.
(This story has been corrected to say that none of the deaths occurred in the US, in paragraph 3)
Reporting by Puyaan Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
The vision of unrestricted cloud adoption, once heralded as the pinnacle of digital transformation, is now encountering significant obstacles. This shift is primarily driven by mounting geopolitical risks, increasingly stringent regulatory mandates, and the unavoidable realization that uncompromising data control is essential for sensitive workloads—a necessity amplified by the accelerating AI revolution.
European organizations, in particular, are demanding solutions that offer secure, resilient, and sovereign cloud alternatives. The challenge they face is that global hyperscalers often struggle to satisfy the comprehensive data, operational, and jurisdictional sovereignty requirements stipulated by European frameworks.
The regulatory landscape is clear: The European Union (EU) requires sovereign clouds delivered by in-country or EU-wide Service Providers.
A Strategic Leap Forward, Not a Retreat
The pathway to compliance and resilience is not a reversal to outdated legacy IT infrastructure. Instead, we believe it necessitates a decisive leap toward a modern, integrated cloud platform engineered to support private, hybrid, and public cloud environments cohesively.
At Broadcom, we are demonstrating a significant commitment to Europe’s digital autonomy through focused investment in our EU partner ecosystem. By collaborating closely with European Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), we are facilitating the construction of a powerful suite of sovereign cloud solutions, all powered by VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
VMware Cloud Foundation: The Cornerstone of Control
We know that VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is crucial to meeting the sovereignty mandate by providing:
Ultimate Control: Customers retain the prerogative to keep critical workloads on-premises, thereby guaranteeing that data remains within national borders and fully under their organization’s control.
Unbeatable Value: VCF delivers a robust sovereign cloud solution at highly competitive economic terms, making control both feasible and cost-effective.
VCF enables our European partners to effectively manage infrastructure, retain customer data control, support their clients’ digital futures, and maintain perfect alignment with evolving European regulatory frameworks.
Dual Routes to Market: Empowering the Ecosystem
Our approach is designed to enable the entire partner ecosystem to drive customer success:
Cloud Service Providers (CSPs): We enable CSPs to offer sovereign cloud services based on VCF.
Resellers and Professional Services Partners: Collaboration with EU Resellers is aimed at accelerating their ability to sell and deploy a modern, VCF-based private cloud for EU customers. As organizations plan the repatriation of workloads (bringing data back from public cloud), the VMware partner ecosystem simplifies this transition, providing the necessary tools to manage data retention, control, and sovereignty across any preferred IT environment.
VCF grants partners the necessary speed and agility of public clouds within a secure, on-premises environment. We can confidently say this modern private cloud platform delivers tangible results by:
Enabling Innovation: Freeing application teams to concentrate on development of new AI and cloud-native applications rather than infrastructure management.
Streamlining Complexity: Consolidating infrastructure to achieve operational efficiency.
Unifying Strategy: Bridging organizational and technological barriers for seamless execution.
We are proud to support our partners as they offer a truly European private cloud alternative. This solution champions data control, regulatory compliance, and technological independence, ensuring the continent’s technology ecosystem is equipped to thrive. For our Professional Services Partners, we enable them to build and scale practices that drive VCF adoption and deliver maximum client value.
Broadcom’s Commitment
We remain dedicated to providing the flexibility, control, and innovation required to help European organizations grow, compete, and navigate a rapidly changing, data-driven landscape. This commitment is delivered through our focused and strengthened partner ecosystem, encompassing Cloud Service Providers, Resellers, and Professional Services Providers.
Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) advised Okeanis Eco Tankers Corp. (“Okeanis”) on its successful offering of about 3.2m new shares of common stock, raising approximately US$115m.
Proceeds from the offering will be used as partial consideration for the acquisition of two newbuild Suezmax vessels currently under construction at Daehan Shipbuilding Co. in the Republic of Korea.
The transaction attracted strong investor demand, and the shares were issued at price above net asset value. Following issuance and settlement, the new shares will be able to be traded on the New York and Oslo Stock Exchanges.
Okeanis is an international tanker company active in the crude oil shipping sectors. It owns, charters out and manages a fleet of modern tanker vessels.
The WFW New York Maritime team that advised Okeanis was led by Capital Markets Partner Steven Hollander, supported by Partners Filana Silberberg and Will Vogel, Counsel Todd Johnson, Senior Associates Ioanna Pantelaki and Haris Kazantzis, and Associate Lucie Couillard Sosa.
Steven commented: “We’re delighted to have advised Okeanis on a transaction that represents another significant milestone in its strategic plans. Issuing shares above net asset value reflects strong market confidence in the company’s outlook, and we look forward to continuing to support them going forward.”
Iraklis Sbarounis, Chief Financial Officer of Okeanis, stated: “We are grateful for WFW’s support in successfully concluding this important transaction. Steve and his team worked tirelessly and effectively, within a short timeframe, and were instrumental in getting this through the finish line.”
