President Obama made a surprise visit over Memorial Day weekend to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Following a performance by country music star Brad Paisley, the President addressed about 3,000 troops in a hangar on the base. Video of the event, as well as a transcript of the president’s remarks, are up on the White House website.
GlaxoSmithKline PLC will pay $105 million to dozens of states to settle allegations that it unlawfully marketed its asthma drug Advair and the antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin.
Under the settlement announced Wednesday, the London-based pharmaceutical also agreed to rules that bar it from paying doctors to promote its products; providing financial incentives that encourage salespeople to market drugs for unapproved uses; marketing drugs using results from inadequate studies or making unapproved claims that a product was “better, more effective, safer or has less serious side effects,” according to a statement from California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris. Continue reading “GlaxoSmithKline Agrees to $105 Million Settlement”
MONCTON, New Brunswick (AP) — Royal Canadian Mounted Police combed the streets and woods of this normally tranquil city Thursday in search of a man suspected of killing three officers in the deadliest attack on their ranks in nearly a decade.
The suspect, 24-year-old Justin Bourque, was armed with high-powered long firearms. He was spotted three times while eluding the massive manhunt that emptied roads and kept families hunkered in their homes in Moncton, an east coast city where gun violence is rare. Continue reading “Hunt on for Canadian suspected in police killings”
WARREN, Mich. (AP) — General Motors said Thursday that it has forced out 15 employees for their role in the deadly ignition-switch scandal and will set up a compensation fund for crash victims, as an internal investigation blamed the debacle on engineering ignorance and bureaucratic dithering, not a deliberate cover-up.
GM took more than a decade to recall 2.6 million cars with bad switches that are now linked to at least 13 deaths by the automaker’s count. “Group after group and committee after committee within GM that reviewed the issue failed to take action or acted too slowly,” Anton Valukas, the former federal prosecutor hired by the automaker to investigate the reason for the delay, said in a 315-page report. “Although everyone had responsibility to fix the problem, nobody took responsibility.” Continue reading “GM ousts 15 employees over ignition-switch scandal”
WASHINGTON (AP) — An additional 18 veterans in the Phoenix area whose names were kept off an official electronic Veterans Affairs appointment list have died, the agency’s acting secretary said Thursday — the latest revelation in a growing scandal over long patient waits for care and falsified records covering up the delays at VA hospitals and clinics nationwide.
Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said he does not know whether the 18 new deaths were related to long waiting times for appointments but said they were in addition to the 17 reported last month by the VA’s inspector general. The announcement of the deaths came as senior senators reached agreement Thursday on the framework for a bipartisan bill making it easier for veterans to get health care outside VA hospitals and clinics. Continue reading “VA chief: 18 vets left off waiting list have died”
Earlier this week, workers in Japan began constructing an underground “ice wall” around the melted-down nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The wall is designed to stop hundreds of tons of radioactive groundwater from leaking into the nearby Pacific Ocean.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scolded reporters for questioning the timing of the phone call from the White House notifying him of President Obama’s decision to exchange five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release.
Anyone who follows the financial markets in recent years has come to expect dramatic proclamations of doom from Peter Schiff, president of EuroPacific Capital.
As police hunted for Justin Bourque in a wooded area in suburban Moncton, N.B., this week, one of the primary concerns officers dealt with was determining exactly what weapons he was carrying with him,
Based on a widely circulated image of the suspect, B.C.-based firearms instructor Rod Giltaca identified the two long guns Bourque was carrying as a semi-automatic centre-fire rifle — possibly an M14 or a cheaper knockoff version — and a pump-action shotgun. Both guns can be obtained legally and are commonly used by hunters, he said. Continue reading “Moncton shooting: Justin Bourque was armed with rifle, shotgun”
SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle police now say there are four victims in a shooting Thursday afternoon on the campus of Seattle Pacific University. They say one suspect is in custody.
Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong. They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc. etc. However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view. What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite. Continue reading “The Purchase of Our Republic”
A family is upset the death of their long time companion at the hands of officers from the Round Rock, Texas, police department has been ruled justified.
We have been reporting on how the US government is using very nefarious and egregious methods on tracking its own citizens’ financial information, fining them and even instituting the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as a form of subterfuge capital controls which is closing off international banking to Americans (as we reported yesterday in Mexico).