The Texas Senate Doesn’t Want Students To Learn That The Ku Klux Klan Is “Morally Wrong”

Erin Corbett 12 hrs ago


In another legal attempt to push back against “Critical Race Theory” the Texas Senate voted on Friday to end a requirement for educators in public schools to teach their students that the Ku Klux Klan is “morally wrong.” The proposal stated that the history of white supremacy, which includes American slavery, eugenics, and violence carried out by the KKK cannot be taught in a way that suggests this history is immoral, HuffPost reported.

 

© Provided by Refinery29 A banner anti KKK is seen during march Against Hate Held In Philadelphia In Wake Of Charlottesville, on August 16, 2017. Demonstrations are being held following clashes between white supremacists and counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in Charlottesville when a car allegedly driven by James Alex Fields Jr. barreled into a crowd of counter-protesters following violence at the Unite the Right rally. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The suggested provision is part of Senate Bill 3, which passed in the Senate on Friday by 18 votes to 4. If passed, the bill would also remove a mandate that requires educators to teach about the Civil Rights movement, Native American history, and the Chicano movement. Further, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the works of figures like United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez and suffragist activist Susan B. Anthony, would also be dropped from the public school curriculum.

Friday’s vote was an amendment to a bill that passed in June, which attempted to prohibit critical race theory from being taught in schools. While the legislation doesn’t mention critical race theory by name, Texas Republicans are clearly using it in an attempt to censor teachers from engaging students in difficult discussions about race and racism when teaching U.S. history and civics.

“Teachers should not be censored from educating students about our history, no matter how inconvenient elected officials find it to talk about race,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said in a tweet.

Opponents of the bill called it “anti-civics” education, and say it could discourage important conversations in the classroom about historical and cultural issues that continue to impact current affairs, the Dallas Morning News reports.

“How could a teacher possibly discuss slavery, the Holocaust, or the mass shootings at the Walmart in El Paso or at the Sutherland Springs Church in my district without giving deference to any one perspective?” Democratic Sen. Judith Zaffirini asked.

Democratic State Rep. James Talarico, who successfully helped block the original bill in May was disappointed to see it revived last week. “The amendments the House added were essential to ensure that we were teaching students all of American history — the good, the bad, and the ugly,” he told the Texas Tribune. “They were put in place to ensure that teachers wouldn’t be punished for telling their students the truth. And if we were to strip them, I could see teachers across the state of Texas being silenced. It’s a frightening dystopian future that starts to come into focus,” he added.

But Republicans are once again claiming that school curricula that teach American history with a critical lens are a form of “leftist indoctrination.” Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the legislation rejects “philosophies that espouse that one race or sex is better than another,” HuffPost reports. He further claimed in a statement that parents “want their students to learn how to think critically, not be indoctrinated by the ridiculous leftist narrative that America and our Constitution are rooted in racism.”

According to activists and opponents, this type of legislation is being crafted and introduced in an effort to silence the Black liberation movements that have re-emerged and continued in recent years over racial injustices and police violence against Black people and communities. The discourse and legislative action taken against critical race theory are nothing more than a right-wing attempt to take back control following the momentum gained by the Black Lives Matter movement.

However, the good news is that the bill isn’t likely to become law, as it requires a vote in the House of Representatives, which is deadlocked after 56 Democratic Representatives left the state in an effort to block the legislative session.

CANADA
Border reopening plan facing roadblock as thousands of border officials consider strike action

Catharine Tunney

© Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press A Canada Border Services Agency officer is silhouetted at the Douglas-Peace Arch border crossing in Surrey, B.C.

The federal government's plan to reopen the border to fully vaccinated U.S. citizens next month could be complicated by the threat of strike action.

This week, more than 8,500 Canada Border Services Agency officers — who have been without a contract since June 2018 — are voting on whether they're willing to walk out.

If more than half vote yes, they could be in a strike position by early August — just as the country prepares to again welcome fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents.


While a number of CBSA officers would be deemed essential workers, a strike could cause massive delays for those travelling by air and land.

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"Potentially, it could slow things down," said Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union.

"We're not doing it with any kind of joy because we really want the borders to run smoothly. We've been working so hard for a year and a half to keep them running smoothly under probably the most difficult circumstances any of us have ever encountered."

Weber said the union is fighting primarily for three things: salary parity with other law enforcement workers in Canada, better protections against harassment and discrimination, and a remote work policy for non-uniformed members.

He said on-the-job harassment is making the CBSA "a very cold and dark place" to work.

Weber said that while the union doesn't want to cause hardships for Canadians and tourists at the border, it feels it has hit a wall in negotiations.

"To see it get to this is not a moment we relish, but three years in and a refusal to really bargain on the other side, we're really running out of options," said Weber.

"We've worked really hard to keep the borders running smoothly and doing that work every day. No one wants to see that blown up."
Influx anticipated at ports of entry

A spokesperson for the CBSA said the agency is preparing for a possible work disruption.

"The Canada Border Services Agency will respond quickly to any job action/work disruption in order to maintain the security of our border, ensure compliance with our laws and facilitate the flow of legitimate goods and travel," said Louis-Carl Brissette Lesage in an email to CBC News.

"We expect that our officers will continue to fulfil their duties with the highest level of integrity and professionalism."

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government is concerned but has confidence in CBSA's contingency plan.

He said he's hoping it doesn't get to that point.

"We're hopeful that we can arrive at the appropriate settlement before that would even be an issue," he told CBC's Power&Politics.

"The country cannot be in a position where we have insecure borders."

Voting for union members wraps on Thursday and results are expected early next week.

A strike wouldn't be triggered automatically if most union members vote 'yes'. It would give the union a strike mandate and provide the bargaining team with a series of options to apply pressure on the CBSA — such as work-to-rule or a rotating, general or strategic strike.

On Monday, the federal government announced plans to let fully vaccinated tourists visit Canada again soon.

Starting Aug. 9 at 12:01 a.m. ET., fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents living in that country will be able to visit Canada.

The government said it plans to open Canada's borders to fully vaccinated travellers from all other countries on Sept. 7.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Robinhood said it expects to pay a $30 million fine as part of anti-money laundering probe of its crypto business
mfox@businessinsider.com (Matthew Fox) 

© JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Robinhood said it expects to pay a $30 million penalty related to an anti-money laundering probe of its crypto business.

The penalty would be on top of a $70 million fine from FINRA, and a $65 million settlement with the SEC.

The disclosure came in an amended S-1 filed with the SEC on Monday.

Robinhood said it expects to pay a $30 million penalty in relation to an anti-money laundering probe of its cryptocurrency business, according to an amended S-1 filed with the SEC on Monday.

The online trading app said that in July of 2020, the New York Department of Financial Services said Robinhood's crypto unit had a number of "matters requiring attention," primarily focused on anti-money laundering and cybersecurity-related issues.

In March, a subsequent investigation by the Consumer Protection and Financial Enforcement division of the NYDFS found alleged violations of anti-money laundering and New York Banking Law requirements, "including the failure to maintain and certify a compliant anti-money laundering program," according to the filing.

Other violations include of cybersecurity and virtual currency requirements, "including certain deficiencies in our policies and procedures regarding risk assessment, lack of an adequate incident response and business continuity plan, and deficiencies in our application development security," the filing said.

Robinhood said its crypto business has reached "a settlement in principle with respect to these allegations, subject to final documentation." The brokerage firm expects to pay a monetary penalty of $30 million and engage a monitor, likely to prevent further violations.

This isn't Robinhood's first multi-million dollar penalty in relation to its business operations. In December, the company agreed to pay a $65 million settlement with the SEC for misleading its customers about revenue sources and failing to satisfy its duty of best execution for customer trades.

And in June, Robinhood agreed to pay a $70 million fine with FINRA to settle claims that the brokerage misled millions of customers, approved ineligible traders for risky strategies, and didn't supervise technology that locked millions out of trading, the regulator announced today.

The $165 million in total one-time fines Robinhood has been ordered to pay represent 32% of the company's first quarter revenues of $522 million.

Read the original article on Business Insider

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M TAX AVOIDANCE

Lee Kun-hee: South Korea unveils late Samsung boss' 23,000-strong art collection

Museum visitors have been given a first look at some of the 23,000 artworks donated to South Korea from the collection of Samsung's late chairman, Lee Kun-hee.

Oscar Holland, CNN | Yoonjung Seo, CNN and Jake Kwon, CNN

© Courtesy National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art "Bull," (c. 1950s) by painter Lee Jungseop.

Two exhibitions of the items opened in Seoul on Wednesday, just months after the businessman's family announced the donation as it seeks to settle an inheritance tax bill of over 12 trillion won ($10.4 billion).

The works are showing at the National Museum of Korea and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), the recipients of Lee's vast collection. Items on display include centuries-old antiques and contemporary Korean artworks, while paintings by Western names like Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet are set to be unveiled next year.

Lee, whose father founded technology conglomerate Samsung in the 1930s, died last October aged 78. In April, his family announced that it was expecting to pay more than half the value of his estate in inheritance tax over a period of five years.

That same day, South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism revealed that the Lee family was donating approximately 23,000 antiques and artworks to public collections. In a press statement at the time, the ministry said the acquisition would help the two institutions "compete with famous museums abroad."

Neither Lee's relatives nor the museums have disclosed the value of the donation or confirmed how, or even whether, it will figure into the family's inheritance tax commitments.

MMCA received almost 1,500 of the works, in what the museum this week called "the donation of the century." According to senior curator Park Mihwa, the collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures represented the single largest contribution received by the museum "in terms of both value and scale."

"The rare and major artworks of the early 20th century and overseas works have greatly enhanced the quality and quantity of the museum," Park told CNN, describing the acquisition as "an opportunity to expand the horizons of art history research through continuous research."

"We have obtained masterpieces that would have been difficult to purchase with our annual collection budget of 5 billion won ($4.35 million)," she added. "So we expect this collection will help art tourism as well as help South Korea to become a powerhouse of art culture in the future."


Artists 'loved by Koreans'

Among the items acquired by MMCA are 119 works by Western artists, including Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. But more than 90% of the pieces are by contemporary Korean artists, including over 100 works by painter Lee Jungseop and almost 70 by celebrated craftsman Yoo Kangyul.

The museum's new exhibition features art created from the 1920s to 1970s, spanning the periods of Japanese occupation, the Korean War and the subsequent military dictatorship. Park said the show highlights work "by 34 artists loved by Koreans," including influential landscape artist Byeon Gwansik, abstract painter Kim Whanki and contemporary sculptor Kwon Jinkyu.

© Courtesy National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art "Women and Jars," by Korean painter Kim Whanki.

At the National Museum of Korea, meanwhile, an exhibition of older artifacts from Lee's collection also opened Wednesday. The show features 45 historical items, including Buddhist statues, rare woodblock prints and Bronze Age earthenware.

The museum is also exhibiting a number of items deemed "National Treasures" by the South Korean government, including an ink wash painting by the Joseon dynasty court artist Jeong Seon and a gilt bronze bodhisattva dating back to the 6th century.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism revealed that it is planning to build a new museum dedicated entirely to Lee's collection, with two candidate sites in Seoul currently under consideration.

  

"Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang," created by court painter Jeong Seon in 1751.

 

A painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "La Lecture," was among the items donated by Lee's family to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA).

A bodhisattva, cast in bronze in the 6th century, was among the items deemed a "National Treasure" by South Korea's government.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Slammed for bribery, Siemens continued to ignore red flags


German engineering giant Siemens ignored some of its own red flags for foreign bribery in the aftermath of a major corruption scandal in 2008, according to newly released reports by an independent monitor and other confidential documents.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The warnings involved the company’s use of third-party resellers, who have often served as conduits for bribing foreign officials, according to former company insiders and company internal assessments. Evidence from public records in China suggests that problems with resellers have continued during the pandemic, and resulted in the sale of medical equipment to Chinese state-owned hospitals at vastly inflated prices.

The monitoring reports, which Siemens was obliged to commission from 2009 to 2012, stem from a $1.6 billion landmark settlement of bribery charges by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2008. During their investigation, US and German authorities found over $1 billion of bribes paid to foreign government officials in return for business, in what the SEC called a “systematic practice” spanning decades and virtually every region in which Siemens operated, violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Siemens admitted to failures of internal controls and record-keeping.

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This story was provided to the Associated Press by 100Reporters, a nonprofit news organization based in Washington, D.C.

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The nonprofit news organization 100Reporters, represented by the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, sued the Justice Department for the release of the monitoring reports under the Freedom of Information Act. The DOJ, Siemens, and its independent monitor, former German Finance Minister Theo Waigel, all fought to keep the contents of the monitoring reports secret, and despite the court-ordered release, much of the material remains cloaked behind heavy redactions

Waigel declined comment, saying he did not remember details of his monitorship. Nevertheless, Waigel has since gained a reputation in Germany as a compliance troubleshooter for major international corporations, partly as a result of his oversight at Siemens.

In a statement, Siemens said that the company has “an extensive global compliance program designed to prevent, identify, and eliminate corruption,” and that it was “making extensive efforts to identify and eliminate business practices that promote corruption (in China). This includes ending the use of sales partners and consultants in the event of misconduct.”

The appointment of Waigel, a highly-regarded figure in German government and business circles, reflected the importance of Siemens’ reputation and worldwide business to Germany’s political establishment.

RED FLAGS: ATTENTION OPTIONAL

Evidence from one lucrative sector, the sale of healthcare equipment in China, suggests that even during the four years of Waigel’s monitorship and the rebuilding of the company’s reputation, Siemens was intentionally relaxing rules where it could.

In his initial report, Waigel made 114 recommendations for changes in Siemens’ compliance practices to prevent bribery. The court permitted the Justice Department to redact all of those recommendations in the current release, but a former Siemens employee, Meng-Lin Liu, disclosed one key issue: a review of the company’s internal controls for scrutinizing business partners, particularly the use of resellers or distributors in contracts that would otherwise be handled directly between Siemens and the purchaser.

The alleged bribery by third-party resellers to advance Siemens’ business interests represented a main plank of the SEC’s criminal complaint against Siemens in 2008, and a problem that would continue to dog Siemens, prompting subsequent investigations in Brazil and China. The problem was not unique to Siemens. According to a 2014 briefing by the law firm Clifford Chance, over 90 percent of all FCPA prosecutions in China involve such third-party agents.

Waigel raised the same point in an October 2011 monitoring report, alerting Siemens to the risk that resellers carry with respect to “relationships with current and former government officials.” He added, “An organization should take steps to monitor its third-party relationships continuously for corruption red flags and terminate relationships that expose the organization to liability.”

A 34-page “Special Review,” of the company’s system for scrutiny of potential partners completed in January 2010, called the Business Partner Tool (BPT), showed that in November 2009, Siemens assembled a team to examine how the company vetted these third parties, referred to as import/export companies in the documents.

When the team interviewed Liu that December, Liu said that he expressed concern that Siemens was allowing some business partners to sidestep vetting through the BPT, thus allowing what were, according to Siemens’s own definition, “high-risk” entities to conduct the company’s business in China without proper due diligence. It appeared that the review team listened to Liu. The review stated that a 2008 decision to “exclude (import/export companies) related to sales and tendering business from the BPT approval” should be reexamined.

The team even noted other red flags that should, in its view, intensify scrutiny of import/export companies. One such red flag was the fact that Chinese hospitals chose a “partner of trust” from which to buy equipment and assigned that partner of trust to a respective Siemens unit. A second flag was that some import/export companies used by bigger hospitals were actually former purchasing departments of those hospitals.

In an emailed statement, Siemens did not directly address this review, but insisted that its compliance system was “adequately conceived,” and pointed to Waigel’s positive appraisal of the company at the end of his monitorship.

Otto Geiss, a former compliance officer at various German companies and board member at the European Business Ethics Network Germany (DNWE), said the company was turning a blind eye to a dubious system.

“Of course, if the hospital has an influence on who imports the product I would say right away that kickback payments are being paid,” Geiss said. “What interest could a hospital possibly have in whether Mr. X or Mr. Y. is doing the importing? That means they have an influence on who gets the business.”

Moreover, five months later, a memorandum issued by Siemens’ compliance officers reinforced the 2008 decision to ignore such warning signs. The June 2010 memo, sent to Liu among others, declared that three of the four different ways that Siemens works with import/export companies in China could be exempt from this heightened scrutiny.

“Why would I figure out a methodology for red flags and then not apply it?” Geiss asked. He noted that Siemens was widely praised for developing its IT-based Business Partner Tool to help weed out corruption as part of the comprehensive compliance infrastructure it built after the 2008 scandal. “Why would I make a rule, then define all the exceptions, then say, only the exceptions apply?” he asked.

The June 2010 memo also included a rather alarming footnote to one of the business models. Under what was called “Model B,” in which the import/export company is considered an agent of the hospital rather than Siemens, the officers acknowledged that “it’s not clear to Siemens whether the (import/export company) signs a further contract with the end-customer.” The footnote admits, “We cannot exclude the possibility that the (import/export company) and the end-customer abuse the structure and make other dealings under the table.”

In other words, the memo expressly acknowledged the risk of bribery, but neither addressed how to prevent it nor how to remedy it if it occurred.

Siemens fired Liu in 2010, after he drew attention to the due diligence failures. A Siemens spokesman said that Liu left the company by “mutual termination agreement,” while Klaus Moosmayer, Siemens’ then-Chief Compliance Officer, said at the time that Liu was terminated following “performance issues.”

In November 2010, after Liu learned of his firing, he emailed Waigel and the company’s compliance department, detailing what he said were many compliance failures.

How Waigel dealt with Liu’s concerns in his monitoring reports, or even whether he read Liu’s email, is unknown, thanks to the secrecy he and Siemens insisted upon in fighting against their public release. Nevertheless, Waigel’s second-year workplan reported that “Siemens . . . is working to implement all 114 recommendations (from his initial report) in a timely manner.” In October 2011, after three years of assessing Siemens’ compliance policy and procedures, Waigel concluded that the German company had “fully implemented all of his Year One recommendations”.

To the letter, Waigel was correct. The monitor had recommended a “review” of the company’s practices involving resellers, which Siemens had indeed conducted. However, the spirit and intent behind the recommendation–rooting out practices conducive to bribery–appear to have been largely sidestepped in favor of a more passive approach, of reacting only after corrupt actors had been identified by external parties - such as the Chinese courts.

In the face of Siemens’ apparent inaction, the problem persisted. According to a recently-released Chinese court verdict, in that same year that Waigel gave Siemens a clean bill-of-health, a Siemens business manager offered to pay a hospital president in the Anhui district 2 million renminbi ($300,000) to ensure that Siemens products won bids. The hospital president who made this confession was convicted of taking bribes from 2004 to 2017.

Two years after Waigel’s monitorship of Siemens ended, the most senior sales manager at Siemens China, like Liu before him, blew the whistle on corruption among third-party resellers. In a 2013 email to dozens of senior staff at Siemens China, the manager, Cao Yong Sheng, pointed to a “huge gap between biddings and contracts,” and asked, “Where’s the gap going?”

Sheng, sacked over his own alleged corruption, maintained that Siemens knew full well that intermediaries were overcharging for equipment, building in the cost of bribes to hospital officials. “It made us very uncomfortable and so worried,” he wrote.

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This article is an abridged version of an investigation produced by 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative news organization, in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. The full investigation can be found at 100R.org.

By Ben Knight, The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Ex-Goldman Sachs banker in 1MDB corruption case gets smaller ankle bracelet


By Elizabeth Dilts Marshall  

© Reuters/Olivia Harris FILE PHOTO: Traffic passes a 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) billboard at the Tun Razak Exchange development in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Goldman Sachs banker charged in connection with a multibillion-dollar scandal at Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB won a Brooklyn judge's permission to replace his ankle monitor with a smaller one so he can jog more comfortably.


Federal prosecutors objected to the smaller ankle monitor, arguing that the former head of investment banking for Goldman Sachs in Malaysia could become a greater flight risk.

Lawyers for Roger Ng said the "cumbersome and heavy nature" of the GPS monitoring device, which constantly streamed Ng's location to authorities, made it uncomfortable for Ng to run, which is his preferred method of exercise.

U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie ruled the request to switch to the smaller device, which notifies authorities only when Ng leaves and returns to his home, was reasonable, in part because Ng has followed his probation terms for the past two years.

Ng is on probation pending trial in Brooklyn federal court where he stands accused of conspiring to violate an anti-bribery law and launder money. Ng pleaded not guilty to those charges last December.

Goldman Sachs helped sell $6.5 billion of bonds for 1MDB, which former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak launched over a decade ago to promote economic development.

U.S. and Malaysian authorities said fund officials and accomplices looted some of the money to spend on luxuries and finance Hollywood films, while Goldman bankers paid more than $1.6 billion in bribes to officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi for 1MDB business.

Tim Leissner, another former Goldman banker, pleaded guilty in 2018 over his role in the scandal. He has not been sentenced.

In May 2019, Ng was extradited from Malaysia to the United States, where he was released in exchange for a $20 million bond and required to wear an ankle bracelet. https://reut.rs/3wPGRUR

The case is U.S. v. Ng, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 18-cr-00538.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Dilts Marshall; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Richard Chang)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M BIG PHARMA TOO

New York, drug distributors reach $1.18 billion opioid settlement as national deal looms

 Reuters/Bryan Woolston FILE PHOTO: Tablets of the opioid-based Hydrocodone at a pharmacy in Portsmouth

By Brendan Pierson and Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The three largest U.S. drug distributors agreed mid-trial to pay up to $1.18 billion to settle claims by New York state and two of its biggest counties over their role in the nationwide opioid epidemic, the state's attorney general said on Tuesday.

McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp settled as state attorneys general prepare to announce as soon as this week a landmark $26 billion deal with the distributors and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson resolving cases nationwide.

The deal with New York Attorney General Letitia James and the populous Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk came three weeks into the first jury trial accusing companies of profiting from a flood of addictive painkillers that devastated communities.

"While no amount of money will ever compensate for the millions of addictions, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, or the countless communities decimated by opioids, this money will be vital in preventing any future devastation," James said.

Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer for Nassau County at the law firm Napoli Shkolnik, said in a statement that unlike the proposed national settlement, the New York deal "is not contingent on the rest of the country or other states joining."

In a joint statement, the distributors called the settlement "an important step toward finalizing a broad settlement with states, counties, and political subdivisions."

'GETTING CLOSE' ON NATIONAL SETTLEMENT

The national settlement is expected to be announced later this week, people familiar with the matter said. Joe Rice, a lead negotiator for lawyers for the cities and counties at Motley Rice, told reporters the parties are "getting close" to finalizing a deal.

State attorneys general from 10 states including Tennessee, Texas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina in a joint statement on Tuesday said their "negotiations are progressing well and potentially nearing their completion."

After the framework is announced, states and their subdivisions will need to decide whether to join the global accord, the sources have said. The ultimate settlement price-tag could fluctuate depending on how many agree to the deal or reject it to pursue litigation on their own.

The settlement also calls the creation of a national clearinghouse of data on opioid shipments operated under the oversight of an independent third-party monitor.

Paul Geller, a lead negotiator for the plaintiffs at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, said that provision would be "transformative" in battling drug oversupply.

Nearly 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the United States from 1999 to 2019, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC last week said provisional data showed that 2020 was a record year for overall drug overdose deaths with 93,331, up 29% from a year earlier.

REMAINING DEFENDANTS

More than 3,300 cases have been filed largely by states and local governments alleging drugmakers falsely marketed opioid painkillers as safe, and distributors and pharmacies of ignoring red flags that they were being diverted to illegal channels.

The New York trial will continue against three drugmakers accused of deceptively marketing their painkillers - Endo International Plc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and AbbVie Inc's Allergan unit.

Ahead of the trial, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $263 million to resolve the claims by the state and counties. Pharmacy operators Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc, CVS Health Corp, Rite Aid Corp and Walmart Inc agreed to settle with the counties for a combined $26 million.

Two other opioid cases are also on trial in West Virginia and California. The companies have denied wrongdoing.

James' office said that of the nearly $1.18 billion the distributors agreed to pay, more than $1 billion will go toward addressing the epidemic. The counties have said the money will be used for mental health and addiction programs.

Payments will start in two months and will continue over the next 17 years, James said.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York and Nate Raymond in BostonEditing by Tom Hals, Chizu Nomiyama, Bill Berkrot, Nick Zieminski and Marguerita Choy)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M BIG PHARMA

EXPLAINER: $26B opioid settlement big step, but not the end


COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A $26 billion settlement between the three biggest U.S. drug distribution companies and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and thousands of states and municipalities that sued over the toll of the opioid crisis is certainly significant — but it is far from tying a neat bow on the tangle of still unresolved lawsuits surrounding the epidemic.

\

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Besides the monthslong process of state and local governments deciding whether to sign onto the settlement, there are three current cases in the U.S., others set to begin soon and the bankruptcy of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to resolve.

Here's a look at other legal proceedings across the nation:

OPIOID TRIALS ARE HAPPENING NOW. DOES THIS END THEM?

The three opioid trials happening already are expected to continue, but one of them will be a lot different.

That's New York. Unlike other states, it reached a deal on its portion of the settlements.

Those companies were all dropped immediately from the case. But the trial is continuing against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Endo International and AbbVie, Inc.

Two other trials are also expected to continue.

In West Virginia, a trial of claims brought by the city of Huntington and surrounding Cabell County against the nation’s three largest opioid distributors is scheduled to wrap up next week.

Because the new settlement will not be finalized before closing arguments, proceedings are expected to move forward as planned.

Meanwhile, several California counties — including populous Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara — and the city of Oakland went to trial in April in a case alleging four drugmakers were complicit in the U.S. opioid epidemic through the use of deceptive marketing and soft-pedalling the painkillers' addictive aspect.

It has been a virtual, nonjury trial.

The municipalities seek $50 billion from Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Endo and AbbVie to cover the costs of remedying the epidemic's fallout, as well as penalties.

That trial is continuing.

WHAT ABOUT PURDUE PHARMA, THE COMPANY MOST CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH OPIOIDS?

This deal doesn't directly affect Purdue's situation. But the company is getting closer to a settlement itself.

Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, is in bankruptcy court to settle the lawsuits it faces. Its plan calls for the Connecticut-based firm to transform into a business with profits used to fight the opioid crisis. And members of the Sackler family who own the company have agreed to give up not only the company but also control of $4.5 billion over time in a deal the company says could be worth $10 billion.

This month, it reached a breakthrough when a group of states that had opposed the plan agreed to support it.

A judge will decide after a hearing scheduled for Aug. 9 whether to accept the deal.

While lawyers for most state and local governments are now on board, the proposal does face opposition from a handful of remaining states, as well as from the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, a group of Native American tribes and some individual victims, who all say it does not hold Sackler family members accountable.

WHAT ABOUT FUTURE CASES?

None will be derailed immediately by Tuesday's news, though it's likely that a lot fewer opioid cases will go to trial eventually than otherwise would have.

Some of the next cases include one in Tennessee where a judge issued a default judgment against Endo Pharmaceuticals and its attorneys this spring for engaging in a “coordinated strategy” to delay proceedings, deprive plaintiffs of information and interfere with the administration of justice.

The only issue there is what the damages are.

And a case of claims brought by the Ohio counties of Lake and Trumbull against CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart and Giant Eagle pharmacy chains is scheduled to start in October.

The pharmacies are not part of the settlement at hand and no case against them has been tried so far.

The two northeast Ohio counties’ lawsuits against the chains were the first to target retail pharmacy chains as both distributors and dispensers of painkillers. The plaintiffs contend the chains’ stores in the two counties bought a combined total of nearly 130 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills — the most frequently diverted and abused painkillers — between 2000 and 2014. That would be roughly 266 pills for every Lake County resident and 320 pills for every Trumbull County resident during that 15-year period.

Other trials are on the calendar over the next year in Texas, California and Alaska.

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Julie Carr Smyth And Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press

Book review: Can mighty Facebook control false information?

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“An Ugly Truth,” by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang (Harper)

Authors Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang in “An Ugly Truth” build a compelling case that Facebook has grown far past its origins as a sharing place for birthday parties, vacation pictures and news of family and friends into a delivery system perfectly suited for the propagation of extremist views and outright untruths.

It’s worth keeping in mind that in signing up for Facebook, we all willingly surrender personal information that provides the fundamental net worth to Facebook’s computer algorithms’ ability to guide targeted messages to us.

How to curate and check the range of postings and ads produced by Facebook users, good and bad?

The book details how it took the company months to find the origins of some of the ads that Russian interests had placed during the 2016 presidential campaign. One ad, for example, featured a doctored image of Hilary Clinton in a hijab, a veil that Muslim women wear. You can imagine the reception to that ad among conservative Americans.

From the beginning, Zuckerberg envisioned an online site that would connect the world, a place where people could share their lives, hopes, favourites and news. No one seems to have anticipated that Facebook and other social media could become such powerful tools for disinformation campaigns. Recently, many have argued that it allows outright fiction about COVID-19 vaccines to flourish.

Facebook says it is promoting authoritative vaccine information. Moreover, Facebook says neither the FBI nor any U.S. intelligence agency knew the extent of Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election.

Can Congress regulate Facebook and other social media giants? As the authors write, in a 2018 Senate hearing, many senators didn’t seem to grasp the basics of how Facebook operated. It’s tempting to conclude from Frenkel and Kang’s book that Zuckerberg lacks the leadership and management skills to guide the colossus he created. Where would he get those skills? He started Facebook in college and has been the boss ever since then.

Did the ads with outright lies sway the 2016 presidential election? We don’t know – yet. And we may never, but Frenkel and Kang offer a compelling argument that in the interest of preserving democracy, we must take steps to purge Facebook of outright falsehoods, hate and disinformation now.

No one has quite figured out how to do that yet.

Jeff Rowe, The Associated Press

Pressure on Big Tech builds as Biden picks another critic for key Justice post

By Nandita Bose and Diane Bartz 

© Reuters/CARLOS BARRIA FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden departs after giving a briefing at the White House in Washington

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden nominated lawyer and Google critic Jonathan Kanter as the Justice Department's antitrust chief on Tuesday in the latest sign the White House is determined to rein in the world's biggest corporations, especially Big Tech.

Progressives who advocate tougher enforcement of antitrust law pushed for the nomination of Kanter, who recently started his own law firm, Kanter Law Group LLP, which bills itself as an "antitrust advocacy boutique."

The White House called Kanter "a leading advocate and expert in the effort to promote strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy."

He has spent years representing rivals of Alphabet Inc's Google, which the Justice Department sued last year, alleging that it broke antitrust law in seeking to hobble rivals.

The Biden administration previously chose two antitrust progressives with tech expertise, Tim Wu for the National Economic Council and Lina Khan to be a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.

Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said Kanter "has crafted many of the most successful legal arguments driving the major antitrust investigations into Big Tech."

Kanter declined comment on the nomination.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kanter, who previously worked for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP and two other big law firms, will take the reins of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division amid calls for tougher enforcement overall, with special criticism aimed at Google, Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc.

The tech giants have been under investigation for about two years, with a U.S. House of Representatives panel issuing a report in October that said they used "killer acquisitions" to fend off rivals, charged exorbitant fees and forced small businesses into "oppressive" contracts in the name of profit.

The companies have vigorously denied any wrongdoing.

The Justice Department Antitrust Division under Kanter will play a key role in implementing the Biden executive order aimed at promoting competition across the U.S. economy. In addition to suing Google, the Justice Department is also investigating Apple.

The Federal Trade Commission shares the job of antitrust enforcement with the Justice Department.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Diane Bartz; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Marguerita Choy and Peter Cooney)