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President Trump says he will announce new tariffs on pharmaceutical goods soon, and will probably describe them as a shot in the arm for US drug companies, or healthy competition, or something.


This advance notice from President Trump gives newspaper editors time to polish up some medical puns for their headlines.


‘Strong medicine’ would be a suitable short, but slightly lazy headline. More sophisticated efforts might include ‘stop taking the tablets’ or ‘fly in the ointment’. More desperate efforts could include ‘anti-buy-otics’, ‘tariffs on depression meds are a real downer’, ‘medicine balls’, ‘now you’ll just have to make do with sex and rock’n’roll’ and ‘now it’s harder to get Viagra’.


You can expect Donald Trump to be referred to as a drug lord or medicine man and his tariffs as ‘a drug on the market’ and/or ‘an ill wind’. Or how about 'Trump calls in sick'. Or 'Trump's prescription'? In comparison, British invalids, and the workshy, will be 'worried sick'.


You can expect plenty of pill references – bitter pill, poison pill, no sugaring the pill, for example. Unhappy pills, perhaps. ‘Trump imposes tariffs on suppositories by the backdoor’ is a possibility. Not really what you’d want to read at breakfast time. But hey! - if it sells newspapers....


Don’t say we didn’t warn you.



Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay



The existence of Ukraine’s Constitution will prevent Kyiv from initiating peace talks with Russia and ending the war, said Russia’s former Defense Minister and current Security Council Secretary, earlier today.


'The main difficulty is their constitution prohibits negotiations on changing territorial integrity, whereas the Russian Constitution allows changing the borders, but only if they move further away from Moscow.


The remarks were made to Russian state-run media TASS, and appeared to express surprise Ukraine wants to retain control of its borders.


The former official demanded that before there could be a cease-fire, Ukraine's constitution should be amended to make it more similar to the Russian Constitution, and allow border changes in the direction further away from Moscow.


'Except for the frontline in Southern Ukraine, where for geographical reasons that would would give territory back to Ukraine. Which of course is absurd.'


Photo by Eugene on Unsplash

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