babysandpiper

Plaintiff says company’s bid to exit bankruptcy omits US government plan to seize $225m that should go to victims

A New York bankruptcy judge approved a disclosure statement last week laying out Purdue Pharma’s proposed reorganization plan – despite an objection alleging the disclosure omits information about the US government’s plan to seize Purdue money that could be used to compensate prescription opioid victims under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act instead.

It’s been five years since Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy in a New Jersey federal court, including for unlawfully dispensing opioid products without a legitimate medical purpose. In a press release at the time, the Department of Justice emphasized that the convictions were part of a strategy to defeat the opioid crisis.

But the plea agreement did not include restitution for opioid victims, reasoning that it would not be “administratively feasible” to distribute the funds. Since then, opioid victims have been unable to seek settlements from Purdue, as the company’s 2019 bankruptcy filing stayed civil lawsuits against the company, and will likely instead be settled in bankruptcy court as part of the reorganization plan.

Donald Trump and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian programme had been set back by only a few months.

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A fired Department of Justice lawyer says that top DOJ official Emil Bove told department attorneys to consider telling judges “f---k you” and ignore any court order barring the Trump administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

Donald Trump has nominated Bove as a federal circuit court appeals judge.

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dick Durbin, an Ilinois Democrat, urged his Republican colleagues not to “turn a blind eye to the dire consequences of confirming” Bove to a lifetime position as a circuit court judge.

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Tesla new car sales in Europe fell 27.9% year-on-year. in May.

The U.S. EV maker has sustained brand and reputational damage in part due to CEO Elon Musk’s incendiary rhetoric and political activity.

Chinese manufacturers, meanwhile, maintained their strong momentum in Europe’s new car market last month.

One of DOGE’s best-known workers Edward Coristine, 19, quits a month after his former boss Elon Musk’s departure

19-year-old Edward Coristine, has resigned from the US government, a White House official said on Tuesday, a month after the acrimonious departure of his former boss Elon Musk.

Last month, Reuters reported that Coristine was one of two Doge associates promoting the use of AI across the federal bureaucracy. Media outlets, including Wired which first reported his departure, revealed that Coristine had been active in a chat room popular with hackers and previously had been fired from a job following an alleged data leak.

In March, Reuters reported that Coristine had provided tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent.

The British paedophile charged in connection with organising a "mock wedding" to a child in Disneyland Paris is Jacky Jhaj, who was found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016, the BBC understands.

Jhaj, 39, has been charged in connection with organising the fake ceremony on Saturday, in which a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was due to feature as his bride.

He was arrested when police were called on Saturday morning by an actor who said he had been hired by Jhaj to play the father of the bride.

The BBC has previously investigated how Jhaj was able to hire hundreds of children to act as his fawning fans at a fake film premiere in London's Leicester Square in 2023.

Canada believes Donald Trump is no longer interested in turning it into the 51st state, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday.

Asked by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on the sidelines of the NATO meeting in the Netherlands whether Trump is still saying he wants to annex Canada, Carney replied, “No, he is not.”

“He admires Canada,” Carney told Amanpour. “I think it’s fair to say, maybe for a period of time (he) coveted Canada.”

U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly deteriorated in June as households increasingly worried about job availability, another indication that labor market conditions were softening against the backdrop of rising economic uncertainty because of the Trump administration's tariffs.

The ebb in confidence reported by the Conference Board on Tuesday was across all age cohorts and nearly all income groups. It was also across the political spectrum, with the largest decline among Republicans.

Consumers remained pre-occupied with the import duties and were mostly undecided on big-ticket purchases. There was a decline in the share expecting their incomes to increase, though perceptions of the current financial situation remained solid.

A review on the use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines slated to be presented on Thursday to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's outside vaccine committee cites a study that does not exist, the scientist listed as the study's author said.

The report, called "Thimerosal as a Vaccine Preservative" published on the CDC website on Tuesday, is to be presented by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense.

It makes reference to a study called "Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain," published in the journal Neurotoxicology in 2008, and co-authored by UC Davis Professor Emeritus Robert Berman.

But according to Berman, "it's not making reference to a study I published or carried out."

China's auto industry has inflated car sales for years through a burgeoning government-backed grey market that registers new cars right off the assembly line and then ships them overseas as "used" vehicles.

These so-called "zero-mileage" cars have never been driven but they are being exported as used to markets like Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East, allowing Chinese automakers to show growth and to dispose of cars that it would be difficult to sell domestically, according to a Reuters review of government documents and interviews with five auto dealers and car traders.

"This is the outcome of an almost-four-year price war that has made companies desperate to book any sales possible," said Tu Le, Michigan-based founder of consultancy Sino Auto Insights.

Decline blamed on health inequalities, COVID disruption and soaring levels of misinformation and hesitancy

Millions of children worldwide are at risk of lethal diseases because vaccine coverage has stalled or reversed amid persistent health inequalities and soaring levels of misinformation and hesitancy, the largest study of its kind has found.

Major progress in rolling out jabs to billions of children in all corners of the globe over the last five decades has prevented the deaths of 154 million children, according to an analysis published in the Lancet.

But since 2010, progress has stalled or reversed in many countries. Measles vaccination rates have fallen in 100 of 204 countries, while coverage for at least one dose against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio or tuberculosis has declined in 21 of 36 high-income countries – including France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.

The reversal, further exacerbated by the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, has left millions of children vulnerable to preventable diseases and death, the authors of the study led by the University of Washington in Seattle said.

Findings by Defense Intelligence Agency suggest Trump’s declaration that sites were ‘obliterated’ may be overstated

An initial classified US assessment of Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend says they did not destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.

The report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency – the intelligence arm of the Pentagon – concluded key components of the nuclear program, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted within months.

The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.