A Real Debate At Last | FDA Approves Remdesivir | Bay Area's Latest $1 Billion Startup

Plus: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Carolyn Rafaelian, The Former Alex And Ani Bangle Billionaire

Good morning.

A much less chaotic debate allowed Americans a final chance to see where Donald Trump and Joe Biden stand on various issues, such as the handling of the pandemic, a green energy transition and, for the first time in the campaign so far, immigration.

This doesn’t mean that there weren’t a number of falsehoods emerging from the discussion—we rounded up the main ones. As to who won the confrontation, for some there is one clear winner: moderator Kristen Welker.

In other news, remdesivir gets FDA approval as a coronavirus treatment, global wealth tops $400 trillion for the first time, and a Bay Area startup achieves "unicorn" status.

And in case you missed it, here’s how Goldman Sachs is planning to clawback at least $174 million from current and former executives after agreeing to pay $2.8 billion in settlement to global regulators over a Malaysian corruption scandal.


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What Else To Know Now

The Panhandle Health District board voted to end a local mask mandate in Kootenai, Idaho’s third most populated county, despite hearing from a hospital so overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases that it said it was considering sending patients to Seattle for care.

The U.S. signed an anti-abortion declaration cosponsored with Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Brazil, and Uganda, whose signatories include several other countries considered to be authoritarian regimes or failed democracies.

Top Take-Aways

“We’ve come, I think, to terms.” These were the words House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used to characterize progress in the White House negotiations on a stimulus package. But among GOP senators there are rumors of discontent at the Treasure Secretary’s concession to the Democrats.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor said he expects a blue wave election outcome that could pump trillions into the American economy, while more than 700 economists have come out against a Donald Trump reelection.

Credit Suisse reported global household wealth topped $400 trillion for the first time this year. As the driving factor was a rapid rebound of stock markets fueled by governments pumping billions into their economies, the main beneficiaries are equity owners, with inequality remaining pervasive on a global level.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Sciences’ drug remdesivir as a treatment for hospitalized coronavirus patients, despite mixed clinical trial data.

Little-known Bay Area startup Applied Intuition has reached “unicorn” status by offering the self-driving vehicle industry the software needed to run autonomous tests.

On November 3, Californian voters will find on their ballot Proposition 16, which would reverse a 24-year ban on affirmative action and is backed by at least five billionaires.

Besides a small refrigerator-sized asteroid 2018VP1 coming in the vicinity of Earth around election day, there are five other sky events—from a brightening comet to a total solar eclipse—that are happening around the November 3 vote.

Reports of life on the clouds of Venus have been greatly exaggerated, according to a new study that calls into doubt earlier detections of phosphine, a gas that—on Earth, at least—is produced through biological processes.

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