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Major pharmaceutical companies lashed out following a landmark deal unveiled Thursday to cut the costs of 10 key medicines, with some saying the price-setting process was not transparent.

Their statements came after US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced a deal to lower costs of the first 10 drugs picked for Medicare price talks.

The agreement with drugmakers -- who said they came on board with negotiations as they had no choice -- is set to save seniors in the United States $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs.

It is the result of months of negotiations and is anticipated to save Medicare $6 billion in the first year alone, said Biden, referring to the federal health insurance for seniors.

While the announcement is a likely boon for Democratic presidential candidate Harris as she works on her economic messaging ahead of November's election, pharmaceutical companies have long resisted the cuts.

The US government is initially limited to picking 10 drugs for price talks and can expand the program in subsequent years.

- 'Not objective' -

The agreements come on the back of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a major package of energy transition policy and social reforms.

This allowed Medicare to start negotiating drug costs for the first time in its nearly 60-year existence.

Novartis, whose heart failure treatment Entresto is among the 10 selected medicines, pushed back against the price-setting process as "not objective or transparent."

"Novartis believes the price-setting provisions in the IRA are unconstitutional and will have long-lasting and devastating consequences," the company added in a statement.

It said it agreed to a "maximum fair price" only to "avoid other untenable options including catastrophic fines or the removal of all our products from both Medicare and Medicaid."

For the 10 selected drugs, discounts from 2023 prices range from 38 percent to 79 percent. The new costs will take effect in 2026.

Besides Entresto, the drugs include Farxiga by AstraZeneca used against diabetes, as well as anticoagulant Eliquis -- used by millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

AstraZeneca said in a separate statement that it accepted the price, as "walking away is not an option."

If a manufacturer refused to accept the price, access for Medicare and Medicaid patients could be compromised, it said.

- Patient costs? -

Companies also warned that patients could still face higher costs and argued that the deal undervalued their products.

Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), which is behind Eliquis, cautioned that "insurance plans and their pharmacy benefit managers are ultimately responsible for what patients will pay."

"The IRA does not protect patients from potential increases to their cost sharing or restrictions in access" to Eliquis once the maximum fair price goes into effect in 2026, the company added.

CFRA analyst Sel Hardy, however, noted that BMS management seemed confident it could navigate the impact of the IRA on Eliquis.

A Johnson & Johnson spokesperson called the law arbitrary and lacking in scientific approach.

This "undervalues the benefit our medicines deliver to millions of patients," J&J said.

- 'Historic milestone' -

US residents face the highest prescription drug prices globally, leaving many people to pay partially out of their own pockets despite already exorbitant insurance premiums.

The new deal was reached after Democrats pushed for the government to be able to negotiate prices directly with drug manufacturers for federal health programs.

The White House said the agreement for lower prices is a "historic milestone."

"The vice president and I are not backing down," Biden said in a Thursday statement.

His comments came ahead of a first joint public event with Harris since she replaced him as the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election.

"We will continue the fight to make sure all Americans can pay less for prescription drugs and to give more breathing room for American families," he said.

Rising costs of living are a key issue for the 2024 election.

Last October, drugmakers behind the selected medicines for serious illnesses grudgingly agreed to negotiate on cutting prices.

Just hours after the Guardian's Hugo Lowell reported that the "sharks are circling" for Donald Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Politico broke the news that Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has been added to the 2024 campaign staff.

With the ground beneath the former president's campaign having undergone a seismic shift since Vice President Kamala Harris was elevated as his 2024 presidential opponent, the former president has seen his poll numbers spiral downward and there have been rumors a change was coming.

As Lowell explained on MSNBC on Thursday morning, "It has been a bad enough month, the previous month for the Trump campaign that there are enemies, real and perceived, that are starting to look at Trump campaign leadership team and really start to tell Trump, you know, you've got to get rid of these guys, you've got to reset it."

RELATED: Conservative pollster delivers terrible news to Trump — and worse to J.D. Vance

That reset seems to have been initiated with the hiring of controversial Lewandowski, which was announced by Wiles and LaCivita in a statement that read in part, "As we head into the home stretch of this election, we are continuing to add to our impressive campaign team," before concluding that the new hires, all Trump campaign veterans' "unmatched experience will help President Trump prosecute the case against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the most radical ticket in American history.”

According to Tara Palmieri of Puck News, "Lewandowski told allies over the weekend that he was coming back as a campaign chairman, essentially a layer above Wiles and LaCivita. This comes as Trump, superstitious and nostalgic, wants the team that helped him win in 2016 back."

That news has critics both amused and stunned at how quickly Trump's campaign has collapsed and is widely regarded as a sign of "desperation."

As longtime campaign consultant Matthew Dowd put it on X, "Corey Lewandowski coming back to Trump campaign world is great news for Harris/Walz. Next best thing for Harris/Walz would be if Trump brought back serial liar Kellyanne Conway."

"Donald Trump is so desperate he’s bringing Corey Lewandowski back after he got fired for sexual harassment allegations. Same guy also attacked a reporter during the 2016 campaign. They’re not sending their best, folks," former senior Harris adviser Mike Nellis chipped in.

"This means things are going super good in Trump World," journalist Megan McCarthy quipped.

Referencing an unsubstantiated report that Lewandowski had an affair with Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), Restore Sanity2024, suggested: "Oh I didn’t realize the problem with the Trump campaign was a lack of staffers that can have an affair with Kristi Noem."

"What could possibly go wrong?" political journalist Carla Marinucci dryly asked.

Legal analyst Marcy Wheeler suggested, "The logic is that by bringing Lewandowski back you distract from JD's general misogyny and Trump's own sexual assault and affairs?"

Malex responded to the Politico report with, "Of course they are. Corey Lewandowski was fired from Trump PAC after sexual harassment allegations. Politico reported that the wife of a construction executive, accused Lewandowski of repeatedly touching her and speaking to her in graphic terms at the event. There were four first-hand witnesses who described the alleged incident."

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Supreme Court Justice John Roberts' decision on Donald Trump's presidential immunity claim paved a path for Judge Tanya Chutkan to convict the former president, a Harvard Law School professor argued Thursday.

The controversial ruling granting limited immunity makes it possible for special counsel Jack Smith to land a conviction on federal election interference charges in Washington D.C.'s federal court, Prof. Richard Lazarus wrote in a Washington Post editorial.

"Roberts Jr.’s opinion offers a surprisingly clear road map for the successful felony prosecution of Trump," Lazarus argues. "[Chutkan] should follow that clear pathway without further delay."

Lazarus focused on the allegation that Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election by spreading disinformation he knew to be false.

This allegation involves three acts Smith argues were criminal: Trump's in-person pressure campaign on election officials, the incitement of a mob at the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and his urging former Vice President Mike Pence to block certification of the election.

"At most, only one of these three acts is derailed by the Supreme Court’s ruling," Lazarus wrote, "leaving plenty of room for Trump’s conviction on multiple felony counts."

As proof, Lazarus pointed to Roberts' own words in his majority ruling on limited presidential immunity when conducting "official acts."

The Harvard professor argued Roberts sent a message to Chutkan that she was free to conclude Trump's conversations with public officials and speeches to the public were not official acts simply because he was president at the time.

ALSO READ: Trump's insatiable ego is destroying the former president

"Roberts’s opinion did not hesitate to make clear that Chutkan could legitimately conclude that all these contacts were unofficial in nature," Lazarus wrote. "The court carefully pointed out that 'this alleged conduct cannot be neatly categorized as falling within a particular Presidential function.'”

Lazarus said he doubts the case will be prosecuted before the November election but that a clear path lies ahead for Smith and his team.

"The bottom line is clear," Lazarus wrote. "Whether you are outraged by or sympathetic to the surprising sweep of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, it nevertheless leaves the former president very much open to a successful felony prosecution."

Reacting to Donald Trump adding more rallies to his campaign schedule as he falls behind in the polls in swing states, MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard suggested it is up in the air whether local GOP candidates will want to be seen with him.

After host Ana Cabrera shared new polling showing Trump in a downward spiral since May in seven key states both he and Vice President Kamala Harris will need to win in November, Hillyard suggested down-ticket Democrats ought be happy about the turnaround and Republicans less so.

"He added a campaign event in Montana last Friday night," Hillyard began before adding, "That is where today it is notable he is going to Asheboro, North Carolina, for a campaign rally and on Saturday, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania."

ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability

"You look at those seven states," he continued. "The Trump campaign had been talking about New Hampshire being in play, Virginia being in play, and this is the difficult part for a campaign less than three months out. Suddenly you're working with upwards of nine potentially battleground states, and you have to pick not only where you spend your time but also spend your resources."

"And when you compare it to the Democratic side with their ticket appearing with down-ballot candidates, there are the Senate candidates," he elaborated. "Within North Carolina, there's gubernatorial candidate who right now who has lower polling numbers than Donald Trump. There's a lot that is taking place within the Republican party about Donald Trump's use of time and where he's appearing but also the extent to which he appears or does not appear with some of these down ballot candidates in the extent like Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick."

"Will we see him on Saturday, alongside Donald Trump on stage?" he asked. "There's a lot that the Trump campaign is going through."

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A central stone of the famous Stonehenge monument in southwest England came from 750 kilometers away in northeast Scotland, surprised scientists said Wednesday, solving one mystery but raising another: how did its prehistoric builders move the huge slab so far?

The Neolithic circle of giant stones has been a source of wonder and mystery for nearly 5,000 years -- in the Middle Ages, the wizard Merlin of Arthurian legend was said to have stolen the monument from Ireland.

More recently, scientists have determined that the site's upright sandstones came from relatively nearby Marlborough, while the bluestones arrayed near its centre came from Wales.

But the origin of the Altar Stone, a unique six-tonne slab laying on its side at the heart of the circle, remained elusive.

It was long thought to have also come from Wales, but tests along those lines always "drew a blank," said Richard Bevins, a professor from Aberystwyth University, mid-Wales, and co-author of a new study.

This prompted a team of British and Australian researchers to broaden their horizons -- and in turn discover something "quite sensational", he told AFP.

Using chemical analysis, they determined that the Altar Stone came from Scotland's Orcadian Basin, which is at least 750 kilometres (460 miles) from Stonehenge, according to the study in the journal Nature.

- 'Genuinely shocking' -

The researchers were stunned.

"This is a genuinely shocking result," study co-author Robert Ixer of University College London said in a statement.

The "astonishing" distance was the longest recorded journey for any stone at the time, said fellow co-author Nick Pearce of Aberystwyth University.

Whether people around 2,500 BC were capable of transporting such huge stones from Wales had already been a matter of heated debate among archaeologists and historians.

That a five-by-one-metre (16-by-three-feet) stone made the trip across much of the length of the UK suggests that the British isles were home to a highly organised and well-connected society at the time, the researchers said.

They called for further research to find out exactly where in Scotland the stone came from -- and how it made its way to Stonehenge.

One theory is that the stone was brought to southern England not by humans but by naturally moving ice flows.

However research has shown that ice would actually have carried such stones "northwards, away from Stonehenge", lead study author Anthony Clarke from Australia's Curtin University told a news conference.

Another option was that the Neolithic builders moved the stones over land -- though this would have been extraordinarily difficult.

Dense forest, marshy bogs and mountains all formed "formidable barriers" for prehistoric movers, Clarke said.

- 'Incredibly important' -

Another option is that the stone was transported by sea.

There is evidence of an "extensive network of Neolithic shipping," which moved pottery and gems around the region, Clarke said.

To work out where it came from, the researchers fired laser beams into the crystals of a thin slice of the Altar Stone.

The ratio of uranium and lead in these crystals act as "miniature clocks" for rocks, providing their age, said study co-author Chris Kirkland of Curtin University.

The team then compared the stone's age to other rocks across the UK and found "with a high degree of certainty" that it came from the Orcadian Basin, Kirkland said.

Susan Greaney, an archaeologist at the UK's University of Exeter not involved in the study, said it established the first "direct link" between southern England and northern Scotland during this time.

"The placement of this stone at the heart of the monument, on the solstice axis, shows that they thought this stone, and by implication, the connection with the area to the north, was incredibly important," she told AFP.

Without President Biden in the race, more attention is being paid to Donald Trump's age and how tired he appears.

MSNBC political analyst and Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa made the observation Wednesday when speaking to MSNBC's Ana Cabrera. The host observed Trump keeps mispronouncing Kamala Harris' name, and Hinojosa thinks it's all about "trying to get attention."

"I think, Ana, people are beginning to see the desperation in Donald Trump," said Hinojosa. "It's a little bit strange. It's like you can feel around him that he's in some quicksand. The pick of J.D. Vance (R-OH) is not working out for him."

Read Also: Trump’s smear job climaxed prematurely — and now he’s stuck

Further, she thinks the 78-year-old ex-president is showing his advanced age and low energy.

"He's beginning to look a little desperate, and I have to say I did a double take when I was watching that strange news conference in Mar-a-Lago" last week, she said.

"I was like, wow, Donald Trump, you're looking a little haggard, and I think it's showing in just the way he's speaking and what he's trying to do. It's to try to get attention," she explained.

Trump's interview with a Univision reporter showed him struggling to say Harris' name and pretending her last name was unknown by most people.

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