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(NEW YORK) — The cash price for popular weight-loss medications Wegovy and and the medication authorized for people with type 2 diabetes Ozempic are dropping by 30% in U.S. on Monday, according to Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that manufactures both drugs.

The new monthly cost for either GLP-1 drug will be $349, down from its current price of $499, for customers who are not using insurance, the company said. The new pricing will be in place on Monday at 70,000 retail pharmacies and other places, including Walmart and Costco’s pharmacies, the drugmaker said.

The previous cash price for Wegovy matched that of a full dose of Zepbound, a competing drug from competitor Eli Lilly.

“As pioneers of the GLP-1 class, we are committed to ensuring that real, FDA-approved Wegovy and Ozempic are affordable and accessible to those who need them,” Dave Moore, Novo Nordisk executive vice president, said in a statement. “The US healthcare system is complex, with different types of insurance and various ways for patients to obtain their medicines. Our new savings offers provide immediate impact, bringing forward greater cost savings for those who are currently without coverage or choose to self-pay.”

Moore added that the price cut is “part of a larger strategy to expand access that includes building relationships with telehealth providers and major retailers, expanding coverage, and working with the Administration to lower costs for people living with chronic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — Fresh jobs data on Friday showed a continued hiring slowdown in the first such release since a dismal jobs report last month prompted President Donald Trump to fire the top official tasked with compiling labor statistics. The reading fell well short of economists’ expectations.

The U.S. added 22,000 jobs in August, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure showed a sharp decrease from 79,000 jobs added in the previous month. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, but it remained at a historically low level.

A previous jobs report showed a sharp slowdown of hiring over the summer, eliciting concern among some economists about a possible recession.

The U.S. added an average of about 28,000 jobs over three months ending in July, which marked a major cooldown from the roughly 196,000 jobs added on average over the previous three-month period, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data showed.

The jobs report on Friday included a downward revision for the month of June, saying the U.S. labor market had lost 13,000 jobs that month, much lower than a previous estimate of 14,000 jobs added. It marked the first monthly job loss since December 2020.

The latest jobs data holds implications for a widely expected interest rate cut when top Federal Reserve policymakers gather in two weeks.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell recently said the central bank would “proceed carefully” but he hinted at the possibility of an interest rate cut, appearing to indicate greater concern for flagging employment growth than rising prices.

The lower-than-expected reading on Friday could cement a potential interest rate cut, which would amount to the first interest-rate adjustment since last year.

Late Thursday, investors pegged the chances of a quarter-point rate cut this month at 97%, according to CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment. As of Friday morning, the odds of a a quarter-point cut had risen to 99%.

Hours after the release of the weak jobs report last month, Trump removed BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. The jobs report featured downward revisions, prompting Trump to suggest without evidence that the job statistics had been “manipulated.” The BLS routinely revises estimates of jobs added in previous months.

McEntarfer, a Biden appointee who was confirmed by the Senate in 2024, had served in the federal government for two decades.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy,” McEntarfer said in a social media post after her dismissal. “It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.”

William Beach, a former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was appointed by Trump, condemned McEntarfer’s dismissal.

“The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS, sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau,” Beach posted on X.

McEntarfer did not respond to an earlier ABC News request for comment.

As a replacement for McEntarfer, Trump nominated E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. Antoni is a longtime critic of the BLS and a contributor to the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025.

“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump said of Antoni in a social media post.

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(NEW YORK) — SpaceX’s Starship is about to face its 10th test flight following explosions on previous launches. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has promised that the world’s most powerful rocket and spacecraft will one day take humans to Mars and beyond. But leading up to its 10th launch, scheduled for Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET, Starship has yet to achieve all its mission goals. And the last three flight tests, plus a static engine test in June, ended in explosions.

“We now have serious questions whether the architecture of Starship is in fact feasible or not,” said Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program professor of Astronautics and Engineering Systems at MIT and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. “I’m much, much less concerned about the Super Heavy booster. But the upper stage, the Starship itself, I’m starting to have some serious doubts about whether they’ll be able to make it work. Certainly, with the payload that they have in mind.”

Starship’s 10th flight test will lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The company has yet to successfully launch and land the stainless-steel spacecraft, which is being engineered to be fully reusable and would be able to carry up to 100 people to deep space destinations.

Can Musk achieve his vision?
During a presentation in May, Musk shared his vision for how Starship will eventually make humans multiplanetary, something he said is necessary to ensure the survival of humanity.

“Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. That’s how we’re gauging our progress here at Starbase,” Musk said. “Rapidly reusable reliable rockets is the key.”

De Weck agrees that aiming for a human presence on Mars is a worthwhile endeavor, but he thinks it will take decades to land astronauts on the Mars surface and return them to Earth. He said while Starship’s Super Heavy booster, the first stage that lifts the spacecraft into orbit, has been “pretty successful,” he questions the design of the Starship itself, and its ability to carry humans into space safely.

De Weck said the company is facing challenges with convergence, an engineering concept where the goal is for all the vehicle’s systems to function correctly together.

“Convergence means that with every test, every launch you do, the prior problems that you saw on the prior launch have been addressed,” explained de Weck. “The problem that SpaceX has right now with Starship is every launch that they do, yes, they address the battles, so to speak, from the prior launch, but now the fix that they made causes new problems that didn’t show up on the prior launch.”

De Weck described the process as playing “Whac-A-Mole,” where each fix causes new problems that weren’t an issue in earlier configurations. This has been a challenge for the company in previous test flights.

Musk has acknowledged the challenges of his endeavor, writing on X that “There is a reason no fully reusable rocket has been built – it’s an insanely hard problem. Moreover, it must be rapidly & completely reusable (like an airplane). This is the only way to make life multiplanetary.”

Problems with previous test flights
In mid-June, a Starship exploded on the launch pad during a pre-flight engine test.

SpaceX determined that “the vehicle was in the process of loading cryogenic propellant for a six-engine static fire when a sudden energetic event resulted in the complete loss of Starship and damage to the immediate area surrounding the stand.” An analysis by the company found that the likely cause was the failure of a pressurized tank that stores gaseous nitrogen for the ship’s environmental control system, which triggered the explosion.

That explosion occurred less than a month after test flight nine ended prematurely when the “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly” due to several mechanical failures minutes into the flight, according to SpaceX.

The company also lost the first stage heavy booster during the test after it appeared to explode while splashing down in the Gulf. SpaceX blames “higher than predicted forces on the booster structure” for the loss.

Test flight eight in March ended after what SpaceX described as a “hardware failure” with one of the upper-stage Raptor engines, leading to fuel igniting where it shouldn’t have. The company believes the vehicle then automatically self-destructed. Debris was spotted across South Florida and the Atlantic, prompting temporary ground stops at nearby airports.

A similar failure occurred in January 2025 during Startship’s seventh flight test when stronger-than-expected vibrations caused a propellant leak, explosion and the loss of the spacecraft.

In a post-incident report, SpaceX said it has made “hardware and operational changes” to improve the reliability of Starship and the Super Heavy booster during the next mission.

“Each launch is about learning more and more about what’s needed to make life multiplanetary and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking ultimately hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to Mars,” Musk said during his address in May.

Can ‘agile engineering’ solve Starship’s challenges?
SpaceX has achieved significant technical milestones with each flight test, however. The company returned the Super Heavy booster to Earth on two occasions, catching it with giant robotic “chopsticks” attached to the launch tower and reused one of them from a previous launch. Flight test nine also demonstrated the vehicle’s suborbital trajectory by reaching suborbital space before mechanical failures ended the mission. And with each subsequent mission, SpaceX makes upgrades and changes to the booster and spacecraft based on the learnings.

Despite the setbacks, the company’s test schedule has remained aggressive, with launches often just months apart. That pace is central to SpaceX’s iterative engineering process, which de Weck describes as “rapid prototyping or agile engineering.”

“We’ll find problems, we’ll test it rapidly, and we’ll fix it as we go. And we gradually approach a perfect product. That does not work as well for safety-critical systems and where the cost of failure is high,” de Weck said.

For flight ten, de Weck says the most important thing to watch is what happens after booster separation during the midstage of the mission.

“I want to see a proper ignition of those engines, the Raptor engines on the upper stage, and then a coasting phase, a cruise phase without any explosions, premature engine shutdowns, and just a relatively clean reentry,” he said.

Even with another mid-phase failure, however, de Weck doesn’t believe that SpaceX would end the program or go back to the drawing board for a new design.

“I think they’re going to keep going at least until 15, 16, 17 flights. I don’t see them abandoning anything before 20 flights,” de Weck said.

As for Musk, his vision is a day when SpaceX is manufacturing two to three Starships a day and sending Starships to the Moon and Mars on a daily, if not hourly basis.

“We could be out there among the stars making science fiction no longer fiction,” said Musk.

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