PARIS — Shares of French biotechnology company Abivax surged Tuesday after fresh clinical trial data eased investor concerns about potential cancer risks tied to the company’s experimental ulcerative colitis treatment, clawing back the bulk of a steep selloff that had hammered the stock earlier this month.

The U.S.-listed stock climbed $32.81, or 34.12%, to $128.96 as of 9:47 a.m. EDT. In Paris, where Abivax is headquartered and primarily listed, shares were trading up roughly 36% at €113.30, after earlier touching gains as high as 36% intraday, according to multiple market trackers. The rally extends a recovery that began Monday evening, when U.S.-listed shares jumped 26.4% to 28% in extended trading immediately following the data release.

Tuesday’s surge comes almost exactly four weeks after Abivax shares collapsed by as much as 44% on June 2, when an earlier readout from the same trial identified seven distinct cancer diagnoses among patients taking the highest dose of the company’s lead drug, obefazimod. While investigators at the time assessed none of those cases as likely connected to the drug itself, the disclosure was enough to rattle markets and trigger one of the steepest single-session declines the stock had experienced.

The newly released data, covering the second part of Abivax’s Phase 3 ABTECT maintenance trial, gave investors a considerably larger and more reassuring safety picture. The expanded, combined safety database from the company’s Phase 2 and Phase 3 programs now spans the equivalent of 1,704 patient-years of drug exposure. Within that larger dataset, malignancies excluding non-melanoma skin cancer occurred at a rate of 0.35 events per 100 patient-years across all active treatment doses combined, falling squarely within the company’s expected background range of 0.30 to 0.70 cases typically seen in ulcerative colitis patients generally. Four cases of non-melanoma skin cancer were reported in the latest data, split evenly between the two dose arms, with all four occurring in patients who carried established risk factors such as older age, prior use of thiopurine medications, or a personal history of skin cancer. Two additional non-skin malignancies were reported in the higher 50-milligram dose group and were deemed unrelated to the drug.

Beyond the safety data, the update also offered encouraging efficacy results for patients who had struggled to respond to earlier treatment. Among patients who failed to respond during the trial’s initial induction phase, 37.2% achieved clinical remission and 34.5% reached endoscopic remission after 44 weeks of continued treatment on the 50-milligram dose of obefazimod. Among patients whose disease had relapsed after initially responding to a lower 25-milligram dose, escalating treatment to the 50-milligram dose helped restore clinical remission in 45.5% of cases.

Abivax Chief Executive Marc de Garidel described the results as a significant milestone for the drug’s development, characterizing the expanded dataset as substantially strengthening the company’s long-term safety database. Remo Panaccione, a professor of medicine and director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic at the University of Calgary, offered an outside clinical perspective on the malignancy figures, noting that the observed rates were consistent with expected background rates for the patient population being studied.

Wall Street’s reaction to the update was broadly favorable. Piper Sandler said the results should help put to rest concerns that obefazimod could cause tumors, while analysts at Jefferies called the update supportive, though they cautioned that some generalist investors, as opposed to specialists and physicians closer to the data, might remain hesitant to fully embrace the stock given the lingering cancer signal and the company’s ongoing funding needs. Stifel maintained its buy rating and €115 price target on the stock, while Oddo BHF kept its outperform rating and €120 target, noting that while the new analyses did not constitute definitive proof of an absence of risk, they offered meaningfully more reassurance than the company’s earlier maintenance data readout. Several other firms, including Citizens, Barclays, Guggenheim, Truist and Morgan Stanley, have maintained buy or overweight ratings on the stock throughout the recent volatility.

Abivax confirmed it remains on track to submit a New Drug Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for obefazimod in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a potential commercial launch widely expected in 2027 if the filing is approved. The company is also evaluating obefazimod as a potential treatment for Crohn’s disease, a related and similarly difficult-to-treat form of inflammatory bowel disease, with results from a mid-stage Phase 2b trial expected around mid-2027. Analysts have continued to describe obefazimod as a potential best-in-class treatment within the broader inflammatory bowel disease category, a market collectively worth billions of dollars annually.

The stock’s dramatic swings over the past month reflect both the high-stakes nature of single-asset clinical-stage biotech investing and the considerable run Abivax has had over the past year more broadly. Shares gained nearly 1,700% during 2025, pushing the company’s market capitalization to roughly €8 billion even after accounting for this month’s volatility. Heading into Tuesday’s session, shares had been down about 14% year-to-date, a deficit that has now narrowed to roughly 6% following the rally. Abivax has also long been viewed by market watchers as a potential acquisition target, with persistent, unverified speculation that one or more major pharmaceutical companies have considered a takeover of the Paris-based biotech, a dynamic that some investors said factored into Tuesday’s enthusiastic reaction alongside the underlying clinical data itself.

Tuesday’s rally also came against a generally constructive backdrop for European equities, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 index on track for its strongest quarterly performance since October 2020, and Abivax’s home index, the CAC 40, trading modestly higher on the day. Even so, market commentators were careful to note that the scale of Abivax’s single-session move was driven overwhelmingly by company-specific news rather than broader market tailwinds, underscoring just how heavily clinical-stage biotech valuations can swing on individual trial readouts, in either direction, for a company whose fortunes remain closely tied to the fate of a single experimental drug.

Asia Society Policy Institute calls for shared metrics as fragmented national strategies risk deepening regional inequalities and stalling adoption

A sweeping new analysis of artificial intelligence governance across 15 Asian countries has found that while nearly every nation in the region invokes “trust” as central to its AI strategy, none has a reliable or consistent way to measure it, a gap that experts warn could undermine the continent’s ambitions as it races to harness AI for economic growth.

The report, published by the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), proposes nine measurable factors, or metrics, for what it terms “trusted AI ecosystems,” covering everything from data quality and compute infrastructure to misinformation governance and environmental sustainability. Its findings draw on policy analysis and two roundtable discussions held on the sidelines of the 2026 AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, involving experts from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

A Race with High Stakes

The economic stakes behind the region’s AI push are considerable. UNESCO’s AI readiness assessments project suggests that widespread adoption could add up to USD 1.9 trillion to India’s GDP by 2035 and USD 113.4 billion to Malaysia’s economy by 2030. Indonesia’s national strategy frames AI adoption as the path to developed-country status by 2045.

Yet the report finds that this urgency is running ahead of governance. Regulatory frameworks across Asia remain calibrated largely around model-level risks, even as AI development has moved toward agentic systems, autonomous agents that access, combine, and act on data across jurisdictions. The report’s authors warn that governance frameworks unable to measure trust in static deployments are “even less equipped to track it across dynamic, multi-actor agentic architectures.”

Nine Factors, One Framework

ASPI’s proposed framework breaks trust down into nine domains:

1. Trusted datasets. Many Asian nations acknowledge the importance of open government data, but few have addressed whether that data is actually ready for AI training, properly labeled, structured, interoperable, and representative of diverse populations. The report identifies a three-layer trust problem: trust between government ministries (a challenge Indonesia candidly calls “ego-sectoral” attitudes), trust between the state and citizens regarding data collection and consent, and the technical coherence of the data itself. India’s AI Kosh initiative and Singapore’s “data concierge” mechanism are cited as early models, though the report notes that most countries hold ambitions that “far outpace tangible progress.”
2. AI infrastructure. Nations across Asia are building data centers and expanding cloud services, but geopolitical tensions, particularly between the United States and China, have intensified concern about dependence on foreign providers. Smaller economies like Bhutan and Nepal are positioning their renewable energy resources as a potential competitive edge in hosting energy-efficient infrastructure, while countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka continue to face foundational shortfalls in domestic computing capacity.
3. AI skills and awareness. The report draws a sharp distinction between the challenge of developing frontier technical talent, where South Korea and Taiwan are investing in semiconductor expertise and AI chip programs, and the broader challenge of preparing low-skill workforces in populous economies like Bangladesh and the Philippines for automation-driven disruption. Across the region, reskilling ambitions are common, but concrete curricula and measurable targets are rare. The roundtables recommended creating an Asia AI Knowledge Facility to pool process knowledge and enable peer learning.
4. Global AI value chain leverage. Most of Asia remains downstream in the global AI supply chain, dependent on hardware and compute it does not control. China’s dominance in processing rare earth minerals gives it structural leverage over every other nation’s AI ambitions. Indonesia’s experience as the world’s leading nickel producer offers a cautionary note: despite pursuing downstream processing, Chinese firms still control roughly 75% of refining capacity. The report argues that trust in Asia’s AI ecosystem depends partly on “managed interdependence, not pure self-sufficiency.”
5. Ethical AI development. Across the region, ethics guidelines are common; enforceable ethics law is rare. Japan’s flagship AI legislation takes a soft-law, voluntary compliance approach. South Korea stands out with its AI Framework Act, which includes penalties for breaches and an AI ethics committee, though it has drawn criticism from start-ups who say it favors foreign firms. Singapore has built a layered system of sector-specific guidelines across finance, healthcare, and generative AI. Several countries, including Indonesia and Brunei, ground their ethical frameworks in national philosophies or religious principles rather than imported international standards.
6. Misinformation governance. China has enacted the region’s most operationalized response with a 2025 law mandating both implicit and explicit labeling of AI-generated content. South Korea’s Framework Act includes fines for non-compliance with content labeling requirements. The Philippines adopted sector-specific rules during its 2025 elections, requiring disclosure of AI-generated campaign materials. The report notes, however, that some governments may have incentives to exploit AI-enabled misinformation rather than combat it, framing the issue as “a public health problem with a range of responses.”
7. AI governance frameworks and institutions. The region broadly favors “pro-innovation, pro-safety” governance, principle-based, risk-tiered, and sector-sensitive, over sweeping punitive regulation. But institutional capacity varies enormously. Malaysia’s governance has been fragmented across multiple ministries; the country recently created a National AI Office to coordinate efforts. The report calls for “iterative governance” with clear roles for developers, deployers, users, and regulators, and urges that AI governance be reframed around the full lifecycle of agentic AI systems, including post-deployment monitoring.
8. Environmental sustainability. AI’s environmental footprint is growing rapidly. International Energy Agency data cited in the report estimates that data center electricity consumption represented approximately 1.5% of global electricity use in 2024, a figure projected to reach 4.4% by 2035. The report finds that most Asian national strategies treat this challenge as peripheral. Bhutan’s 2025 National AI Strategy is highlighted as an exception for explicitly naming environmental concerns. A coordinated systems approach proposed at the AI Impact Summit calls for energy proportionality, infrastructure assessed against environmental criteria, carbon transparency frameworks, and standardized cross-border metrics.
9. Cybersecurity. Threats range from AI-driven financial crime and phishing (a priority for Singapore, Thailand, and Bangladesh) to vulnerabilities in critical information infrastructure in less-developed digital economies. The report warns that governance discourse has been disproportionately focused on generative AI misuse, synthetic content, and deepfakes, while neglecting model security, data integrity, supply chain vulnerabilities, and systemic resilience. One roundtable speaker described an attempt by a commercial entity to replicate a large language model through systematic prompt injection, illustrating how adversarial AI behavior now extends well beyond nation-states and criminal groups.

A Call for Regional Coordination

A central argument running through the report is that Asian countries are largely pursuing “sovereign” AI strategies in isolation, competing for investors rather than pooling resources, and often replicating, rather than reducing, their dependencies on external players.

The report does not argue that national differences should be erased. Rather, it calls for a common analytical foundation: baseline interoperable principles on safety, accountability, and transparency; mutual recognition pathways for audits and incident response; cross-border data-sharing arrangements; and regular regulator-to-regulator cooperation.

Roundtable participants also recommended that rather than constructing new trust indices, policymakers should extract trust-relevant components from existing governance, digital readiness, and cybersecurity indices that are already being collected, but not yet being used to systematically assess trust.

“Trust cannot be generated in isolation,” the report concludes, “particularly in economies deeply embedded in global markets and technology dependencies.” Without shared metrics, cross-country comparisons remain abstract, and effective practices continue to be shared on an ad hoc basis, leaving one of the world’s most consequential technology transitions without a common map.

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Intuit shares slipped slightly Tuesday, easing back from a recent stabilization near 52-week lows as the QuickBooks and TurboTax maker continues working through one of the most punishing stretches in its history as a publicly traded company.

Shares of the Mountain View, California-based financial software giant were trading at $264.78 as of 9:51 a.m. EDT, down $1.61, or 0.61%, on the day. The modest pullback follows a brutal year-to-date slide that has made Intuit one of the worst-performing stocks in the entire S&P 500, with shares down more than 51% so far in 2026 and roughly 62% off the all-time high of $813.70 the stock reached in July 2025. The decline has erased more than $131 billion in market value over the past year, pushing Intuit’s market capitalization down to roughly $73 billion from a peak above $219 billion.

The root of Intuit’s collapse traces back to mounting investor fears that generative artificial intelligence tools could disrupt the company’s core software businesses, particularly TurboTax, its do-it-yourself tax preparation product that accounts for roughly a quarter of Intuit’s total revenue and operating income. Concerns intensified in February following the release of an updated Claude AI model from Anthropic, which the company said could automate a wide range of tasks across customer service, product management, marketing, legal work and data analysis, fueling speculation that AI-native competitors could eventually erode demand for traditional software subscriptions like TurboTax.

Those fears compounded sharply on June 2, when Intuit shares plunged 8.9% in a single session after Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges downgraded the stock from Neutral to Sell, slashing the 12-month price target to $276 from an earlier estimate of $519, a reversal from projecting roughly 61% upside to forecasting a 14% decline. Borges cited specific concern that a new generation of AI-driven tax platforms, including products like Perplexity Tax, could erode both TurboTax’s pricing power and its market share over the next two years. That single-day decline made Intuit the worst-performing stock in the entire S&P 500 for the year at the time, trailing only real estate analytics firm CoStar Group and medical device maker Insulet among the index’s steepest decliners.

The downgrade followed roughly a month after Intuit had already rattled investors with a separate announcement: the company disclosed it would cut its full-time global workforce by 17%, or approximately 3,000 roles, while simultaneously lowering its full-year revenue estimates for TurboTax. Shares fell more than 14% on that news alone, part of a broader pattern that has seen Intuit’s stock repeatedly punished throughout the year as the company has tried to recalibrate investor expectations around its AI strategy and its traditional, high-margin tax business simultaneously.

Intuit has continued to defend its broader business performance even amid the stock’s collapse. The company’s third-quarter fiscal 2026 results, reported May 20, showed revenue rising 10.4% year-over-year to $8.56 billion, with growth led by its Global Business Solutions segment and TurboTax Live, the company’s assisted tax-filing offering. Non-GAAP earnings per share beat Wall Street’s consensus estimate for the 19th time in the past 20 quarters, and management used the report to raise its full-year revenue guidance to approximately $21.3 billion, signaling continued confidence in the company’s broader growth trajectory even as the stand-alone, do-it-yourself TurboTax segment has faced industry-wide contraction and elevated customer churn. Shares initially surged roughly 5% following that earnings report, though the gains proved short-lived against the backdrop of the broader AI disruption narrative that has continued to weigh on the stock in the weeks since.

To shore up its balance sheet amid the turbulence, Intuit completed two fixed-rate senior unsecured note offerings on June 11, raising approximately $1.74 billion in net proceeds through $750 million of 4.950% notes due 2031 and $1 billion of 5.500% notes due 2036. The company has said the proceeds may be used for general corporate purposes, including refinancing nearer-term debt maturities, with some analysts characterizing the move as largely routine balance sheet management rather than a signal of financial distress.

Wall Street’s broader view of the stock has grown more divided as the selloff has deepened. Stifel downgraded Intuit to Hold from Buy on June 17, cutting its price target to $275 from $375, with the firm citing concerns that management may need to lower its near-to-medium-term growth targets given the competitive pressures facing TurboTax. Citi, by contrast, reaffirmed its Buy rating on the stock on June 25, while other analysts have pointed to Intuit’s steep valuation compression, with its forward price-to-earnings ratio falling to roughly 12 against a 20-year historical average closer to 30, as evidence the selloff may have run further than the underlying fundamentals justify. Despite the recent string of downgrades, the broader analyst consensus tracked across 34 firms remains a “Buy” rating, with an average 12-month price target of roughly $486.61, implying substantial potential upside from current trading levels.

The stock found some relief late last week, climbing alongside a broader rebound in heavily shorted and beaten-down software names as the technology sector stabilized following weeks of pressure tied to fears, sometimes referred to as the “SaaSpocalypse,” that AI tools from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic could fundamentally disrupt traditional subscription software business models. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF jumped more than 3% in that session, helping lift Intuit even as the broader Nasdaq-100 slipped on continued weakness in semiconductor stocks. Even with that bounce, Intuit remained deep in a longer-term technical downtrend, trading well below its 20-day, 50-day, 100-day and 200-day moving averages.

Intuit has continued to push forward with new AI-related product launches despite the stock turbulence, including the May 28 launch of Mailchimp Analytics AI, designed to give brands conversational, AI-powered marketing intelligence and expanded data integrations. The company also continues to pay a quarterly dividend, with its most recent payout set at $1.20 per share and an ex-dividend date of July 9, alongside a forward annual dividend yield of roughly 1.8%.

Adding another layer of scrutiny to the stock, securities law firm Bleichmar Fonti & Auld announced an investigation in late June into Intuit for potential securities fraud tied to the company’s 2026 tax-season disclosures, joining a string of similar investigation announcements from the firm dating back to early June. Intuit’s next quarterly earnings report is expected around Aug. 19, a date that will offer investors their next substantive opportunity to assess whether the company’s AI-driven growth strategy across QuickBooks, Credit Karma and its broader mid-market platform can offset continued pressure on TurboTax pricing and market share heading into the back half of the year.

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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a federal lawsuit against Federal Express Corporation on Tuesday, alleging the delivery giant violated federal law by discriminating against blind employees at a North Carolina facility.

The federal agency claims that FedEx, formerly known as FedEx Ground Package Systems, Inc., failed to provide reasonable accommodations to four package handlers and a larger class of blind workers at its Kernersville location. 

According to the lawsuit, denying the accommodations prevented the employees from performing their essential job functions and enjoying the same employment privileges as workers without disabilities.

FILE – FedEx trucks are parked at a distribution center on May 3, 2025 in San Diego, California.  (Kevin Carter / Getty Images)

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In addition to the discrimination charges, the EEOC suit alleges FedEx failed to maintain required administrative records in compliance with federal law.

Melinda Dugas, the regional attorney for the EEOC’s Charlotte district, said the alleged conduct is a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates workplace accommodations for disabilities unless they cause an undue hardship for the employer.

FILE – Side view of Fedex Ground shipping truck in San Ramon, California, March 3, 2022. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images / Getty Images)

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“Federal law is clear that failure to provide a needed reasonable accommodation for a disability where one is available and can be provided without causing undue hardship is unlawful discrimination,” Dugas said.

The agency noted that it pursued litigation only after prior attempts to reach a pre-litigation settlement through an administrative conciliation process were unsuccessful.

FILE – FedEx is a delivery service with operations around the world.

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In a statement to FOX Business, a FedEx spokesperson said the company is aware of the lawsuit and is “currently reviewing the matter.”

“We are committed to complying with all requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination of any kind,” the spokesperson said.

On today’s Big Take podcast, David Gura, along with Bloomberg’s Drake Bennett and Jordan Robertson, discuss the case of Eileen. They analyze its implications, providing insights into the circumstances and broader impact of the situation. The conversation offers a detailed examination of the case and its significance in current contexts.

There are concerns about a covert network of US agents operating within China, often referred to as China’s “hidden network.” These agents are believed to be engaged in intelligence gathering, espionage, and political manipulation, often working under the radar to avoid detection by Chinese authorities. Their presence raises fears of a clandestine struggle for influence in a high-stakes geopolitical environment.

This network is reportedly composed of individuals with various backgrounds, including former diplomats, business professionals, and scholars, who have access to sensitive information. They may operate through secret communication channels, covert meetings, or using technology to relay intelligence back to the US. The covert nature of these activities complicates efforts to identify and counter them, making it a significant challenge for Chinese security agencies.

The existence of such a vast covert network underscores the ongoing tension between the US and China, especially in the realms of espionage and intelligence. While the full extent and impact of this network remain uncertain, it highlights the complex and often hidden battlefield where influence and information are fiercely contested.

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