📊 Cameroon, National Debt, and Moderna

Presidential health, ballooning record, and post-landmark stock spike.

Aug 20, 2026

Greetings! Happy National Radio Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe to PM Daily below:

SPONSORED SECTION

Sponsor PM Daily! Unlike other free daily newsletters, PM’s ad model works differently: 1. one single sponsor slot per issue; 2. 100% share of voice (SOV) guaranteed; 3. higher return on ad spend (ROAS) from your first placement.

No-brainer, little risk, high upside. Q3 slots are filling up quickly! Reach our rapidly scaling, high-intent, vetted premium audience by replying to this email right now.

🌎 GLOBAL NEWS

🇨🇲 Paul Biya returns after 10-week absence fuels health concerns. Cameroonian President Paul Biya has returned home after more than 10 weeks abroad, ending the longest recorded absence of his presidency. The 93-year-old arrived in Yaoundé from Geneva, Switzerland. His office had described the June 7th departure as a brief private stay in Europe. The prolonged absence instead intensified questions about his health and whether Cameroon faced a leadership vacuum. Biya is the world’s oldest sitting president. He has ruled Cameroon since 1982. He began an eighth term in November after a disputed October election. That seven-year term could keep him in office until nearly age 100. Biya is rarely seen in public, and critics have long questioned whether age limits his capacity to govern. His strongest 2025 challenger, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, also claimed victory in the election. Protests over the result turned deadly. Cameroon meanwhile faces an armed separatist conflict in its English-speaking regions. Boko Haram also remains a security threat in the country’s Far North. Poverty affects 43% of Cameroonians by core living-standard measures cited by the United Nations. Biya’s return resolves the immediate question of where the president is. It does not resolve the larger uncertainty surrounding his health, succession, and a political system built around one man for more than four decades.

🇱🇷 America begins third-country deportations to Liberia. The United States has sent 20 deportees to Liberia under an agreement allowing the West African country to receive up to 1,200 people who are not Liberian. The first group landed at Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia. Liberian Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah says future arrivals may include people from Africa, North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Justice Minister Natu Oswald Tweh says deportees may seek asylum in Liberia if they choose. The State Department has released few details about the arrangement. President Trump’s administration describes third-country deportations as part of its broader immigration enforcement strategy. Such agreements allow authorities to remove people to countries other than their own. Critics say the practice can send migrants to unfamiliar places where they may face safety risks. Third Country Deportation Watch says the administration has reached agreements with at least 35 countries. The group estimates more than 23K people have been deported to 26 countries under those arrangements. Liberia’s six-page September 2025 agreement did not publicly specify the number or nationalities it would accept. Officials now say the ceiling is 1,200. Liberia has also been considered as a destination for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man fighting removal in federal court. Costa Rica has separately said it would accept him. The Liberia flight marks the first operational use of one of the administration’s largest third-country deportation pacts.

🇺🇸 LOCAL NEWS

💰 American national debt crosses $40T. The national debt has surpassed $40T, reaching another record only five months after crossing $39T. It had reached $38T five months before that. The accelerating total reflects decades of federal spending exceeding tax revenue. Defense costs, Social Security, Medicare, and interest payments consume large shares of the budget. The war with Iran has added another major spending pressure. President Trump’s tax-cut and spending law enacted last year also increased federal commitments. White House spokesperson Kush Desai says the administration is targeting waste while pursuing faster economic growth. Fiscal-policy groups argue the debt is already affecting households. Higher federal borrowing can push up interest rates for mortgages, cars, businesses, and government itself. It can also crowd out private investment. The debt expanded sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic under both Trump and former President Joe Biden. Congress repeatedly borrowed to stabilize the economy and finance recovery. The United States also operates under a statutory debt limit. The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates the government could reach the current $41.1T ceiling between late winter and mid-summer 2027. Congress would then again need to raise or suspend that limit. The $40T milestone is not a default or an immediate fiscal rupture. It is another marker of a borrowing trajectory that makes each future budget choice more expensive.

💊 President Trump picks Heidi Overton to lead the FDA. President Trump has nominated Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House health-policy aide, to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Overton is a physician and deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She has worked on several major health initiatives during Trump’s second term. Her nomination requires Senate confirmation. If approved, she would replace Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned in May. Makary left unfinished work involving ultraprocessed foods, antidepressants, vaccines, and tobacco products. Overton previously served as chief policy officer at the conservative America First Policy Institute. She attended medical school at the University of New Mexico. She also earned a doctorate in clinical investigation from Johns Hopkins University. Overton has promoted Trump’s drug-pricing agreements and his recent vaccine-order changes. That order sought to separate the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three immunizations despite opposition from medical groups. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised Overton’s judgment and professionalism. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy has nevertheless raised concerns about her managerial experience and vaccine-policy role. Democratic senators have also attacked the nomination. Drugmakers and patient groups will watch for changes in approval policy after recent FDA leadership turnover. Overton would inherit an agency caught between deregulation, public-health disputes, drug-industry pressure, and the administration’s health agenda.

🗂️ MISC

🧬 Moderna surges after personalized cancer vaccine clears key test. Moderna ($MRNA) shares more than doubled after the company announced positive initial results for an experimental personalized cancer treatment. Moderna and Merck ($MRK) are developing the therapy, called intismeran. It uses messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology to target mutations unique to an individual patient’s tumor. Researchers are pairing the vaccine with Merck’s Keytruda immunotherapy. The study tested the combination in patients with melanoma. Companies compared intismeran plus Keytruda against Keytruda alone. They say patients receiving both treatments lived longer without their cancer returning or spreading. The companies have not yet disclosed how long that improvement lasted. They also have not said whether the combination increased overall survival. Full results are expected at an international medical meeting. Regulators have not approved the treatment. If eventually approved, it would be the first therapy of its kind. Moderna shares climbed more than 120% to $140.12. Merck rose about 11%. The result is particularly consequential for Moderna as it tries to extend mRNA technology beyond infectious-disease vaccines. Personalized cancer vaccines require sequencing each patient’s tumor and manufacturing a treatment around its mutations. The early result is therefore medically promising and commercially significant, but the missing survival data still matter before the therapy’s ultimate value can be judged.

📉 Walmart and rising yields pull stocks lower. American stocks fell as higher oil prices revived inflation worries and pressure returned to the bond market. The Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) slipped 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 424 points, or 0.8%, in afternoon trading. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.7%. Walmart ($WMT) helped lead the decline after reporting its slowest American comparable-sales growth in six years. Its shares fell more than 8%. Oil added another source of pressure. Brent crude climbed 1.8% to $93.24 per barrel as uncertainty persisted around tanker traffic from the Persian Gulf. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.70% from 4.65%. That nearly erased the previous session’s decline after Treasury announced larger purchases of long-term government bonds. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to at least double those purchases between September 9th and November 4th. Analysts warn the intervention is small relative to the overall Treasury market. The national debt also crossed $40T, reinforcing investor concern over federal borrowing. Higher yields increase financing costs for households, companies, and government. They can also make expensive stocks less attractive. The S&P 500 is now heading toward its fourth decline in five sessions since reaching a record. The bond market is again reminding equity investors that relief can disappear faster than it arrives.