NIGERIA
JUST IN: Abuja Primary School Teachers Suspend Strike After Two Weeks

Primary school teachers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have suspended the strike they embarked upon on November 18, 2021....

Dobi Primary School, Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja

By Adam Umar
Wed, 01 Dec 2021 

Primary school teachers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have suspended the strike they embarked upon on November 18, 2021.

They had suspended teaching over the failure of the area councils in the FCT to implement their promotional allowances.

But on Wednesday, Comrade Ameh Baba, Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Kubwa chapter, told Daily Trust that pupils were expected to resume classes immediately.

The union had initially started with a five-day warning strike, which elapsed on November 24, when its secondary schools’ wing suspended its own.

Baba said the decision to halt the strike was achieved following an intervention made by the FCT Senator, Philip Aduda, and Muhammad Musa Bello, Minister of FCT.

He said they promised to resolve the issue in a different way.

He said the development was unfortunate but the teachers were “left with no other option”.

Twitter may remove private images shared without consent under new policy

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Twitter said Tuesday it will ban private images shared without consent, with some exceptions, including images in the public interest, amid growing concerns about online harassment.

The social media giant introduced the new ban as an expansion of its private information policy, which already bans sharing information related to a private individual's identity documents, such as government-issued IDs, and location information.

The ban will not apply to tweets featuring public figures or tweets that are "shared in the public interest or add value to the public discourse," according to an official Twitter Safety blog on the expansion of the policy.

"There are growing concerns about the misuse of media and information that is not available elsewhere online as a tool to harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of individuals," the Twitter Safety blog said. "Sharing personal media, such as images or videos, can potentially violate a person's privacy, and may lead to emotional or physical harm. The misuse of private media can affect everyone, but can have disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities."

Though Twitter can now take down unauthorized use of private images used to harass people when it receives a report from the person whose image was used, it also elaborated on some exceptions.

"We recognize that there are instances where account holders may share images or videos of private individuals in an effort to help someone involved in a crisis situation, such as in the aftermath of a violent event, or as part of a newsworthy event due to public interest value, and this might outweigh the safety risks to a person," the blog said.

In particular, Twitter will look at whether the image is being covered by mainstream, traditional media sites, as part of determining whether or not it should be removed, according to the blog.

Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy urged people not to speculate on how this will affect future posts, The Verge reported.

"We're going to evaluate things in the context in which they're shared, so I would encourage folks not to draw too many conclusions from past instances or hypotheticals," Kennedy told The Verge. "The general rule around our private information policy is that if this is available and easily accessible off of Twitter, we're not going to take action on it on Twitter."

On Monday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, 45, announced his resignation, and Parag Agrawal, who has served as the company's chief technology officer since 2017, replaced him as CEO.

Last week, a new study found social media was linked to increased risk for depression.

Twitter bans sharing photos, video of people without their consent

The social media site may allow images if they're newsworthy but says it'll "try to assess the context."

Sean Keane, Queenie Wong

CNET
Nov. 30, 2021 

People who want images or video of them removed from Twitter can contact the site.

James Martin/CNET

Twitter on Tuesday banned the sharing of photos and videos of private individuals without their consent, the company said in a blog post. The update to its private information policy notes that people can contact the microblogging platform to have such media removed.

The ban doesn't apply to public figures if the media and tweet are of public interest, but content featuring those people may be removed if the site determines it's been shared "to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence them."

"We will always try to assess the context in which the content is shared and, in such cases, we may allow the images or videos to remain on the service," it said.

If the image or video is publicly available, is being covered by news outlets, or "adds value to the public discourse," it may be allowed to remain on the site, Twitter said. In its blog post, the company points out that people might share images of private individuals in a crisis situation to help them, and that could outweigh the safety risks.

The move is an expansion of Twitter's private information policy that the company says is meant to protect people from physical or emotional harm. The policy already bars Twitter users from sharing people's home addresses, government IDs and other sensitive information. Twitter says sharing someone's age or job, or sharing screenshots of text messages doesn't violate its rules. The company also has a separate policy that bars users from posting nude photos of people without their consent.

To report someone for violating this policy, Twitter users can click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the rule-breaking tweet, select Report Tweet, click on "It's abusive or harmful," and select "Includes private information."

First published on Nov. 30, 2021 at 6:34 a.m. PT.

1. May legal definition of May
   https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/May

   2019-05-01 · may. v. a choice to act or not, or a promise of a possibility, as distinguished from "shall" which makes it imperative. 2) in statutes, and sometimes in contracts, the word "may" must be read in context to determine if it means an act is optional or mandatory, for it may be an imperative. The same careful analysis must be made of the word "shall."

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CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Man gets prison for buying Lamborghini, Rolex with COVID-19 relief funds
By UPI Staff

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland established a task force in May to look into fraud in COVID-19 relief funding. File Photo by Michael Reynolds/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- A man who fraudulently acquired more than $1.6 million through the U.S. government's coronavirus pandemic Paycheck Protection Program was sentenced to 9 years and 2 months in prison.

RICH WHITE GUY
Lee Price III, 30, of Houston, was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty in September to wire fraud and money laundering, the Department of Justice announced.

Price amassed over $1.6 million in the scheme, some of which he spent on a Lamborghini, a Ford F-350 and a Rolex watch. He also spent $2,000 at a strip club, $700 at a liquor store, and paid off loans on a residential property.

The DOJ seized $700,000 of the money.

Officials said Price got the funds by falsely submitting the number of employees and payroll expenses in each of his PPP loan applications, as well as fraudulent tax records and other materials.

Price also applied in the name of an individual who died shortly before the application was submitted.

According to the complaint, Price misrepresented information for three different businesses. He said that one of his small businesses, Price Enterprises, had 50 employees and an average monthly payroll of $375,000. In reality, the business had no employees or payroll.

In May, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to fight fraud. Over 150 people have been prosecuted for fraudulently obtaining PPP funding in over 95 criminal cases.

More than $75 million in cash has been seized by the DOJ in fraudulently obtained funds, along with real estate properties and luxury items purchased with the proceeds.

Coffee may help lower odds for Alzheimer's disease, study suggests

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

New research suggests coffee could help lower risk for Alzheimer's disease. 

File Photo by stokpic/Pixabay

Coffee lovers know a steaming cup of java can quickly deliver energy and mental clarity every morning, but new research suggests it may also guard against Alzheimer's disease in the long run.

"Worldwide, a high proportion of adults drink coffee every day, making it one of the most popular beverages consumed," said lead researcher Samantha Gardener, a post-doctoral research fellow at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.

"With Alzheimer's disease, there's currently a lack of any effective disease-modifying treatments. Our research group is specifically looking at modifiable risk factors that could delay the onset of the disease, and even a five-year delay could have massive social and economic benefits," she added.

For the study, Gardener and her team investigated whether coffee intake affected the rate of cognitive decline over 10 years in more than 200 people who were part of the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle Study.

RELATED Coffee, tea may lower stroke, dementia risk, study finds

The investigators found that people who had no memory impairments and who consumed higher amounts of coffee had a lower risk of transitioning to mild cognitive impairment.

This stage often precedes Alzheimer's disease. Those participants also had lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease during the study period.

In the study, higher coffee intake appeared to be slowing the accumulation of amyloid protein in the brain, as well as being linked to positive results in the areas of executive function and attention.

Drinking coffee could be an easy way to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease, Gardener suggested, but more research is needed.

"This is, obviously, preliminary data and it needs a lot more research before being recommended, but it's really positive, and hopefully in the future it can be incorporated as a modifiable lifestyle factor that can delay Alzheimer's disease onset," Gardener said.

It's not clear what component of coffee might make the difference.

RELATED Coffee could fight Parkinson's disease, study says

The study did not differentiate between caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee, whether it was prepared at home or purchased outside the home or whether the coffee drinker added milk or sugar.

It could be that the benefits are derived from caffeine or from what's known as "crude caffeine," which is the byproduct of decaffeinating coffee.

The latter has been found in previous research to be effective in partially preventing memory impairment in mice. Other animal studies have found that other coffee components -- cafestol, kahweol and Eicosanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamide -- have had an impact on cognitive impairment.

Getting the brain benefits may be as simple as pouring another cup. Increasing coffee intake from one cup to two could potentially lower cognitive decline by 8% over 18 months and decrease amyloid accumulation in the brain by 5%, Gardener said.

"We couldn't in this research find the maximum number of beneficial cups, so there will be a point where you can't just have five cups and continue to get more beneficial effects. That's something for future research as well, to find the ideal number of cups of coffee to have these positive effects," she added.

The findings were published in the November issue of the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

A number of studies have suggested that coffee may have a protective factor, said Dr. Howard Fillit, founding executive director and chief science officer of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation in New York City, which provided some funding for this study.

"I think we continue to find really interesting ways to prevent and treat Alzheimer's, and it's a very exciting time in the field. I think this is probably, in my read, one of the most well-done studies of coffee and its prevention of cognitive decline and dementia that I've seen so far," Fillit said.

A number of lifestyle choices besides drinking coffee also seem to have a protective effect against Alzheimer's disease, he said, including a Mediterranean diet and exercise.

Fillit thinks the near future will include routine blood tests that can help a person determine their risks for prevention and treatment of the disease.

For the future of coffee research, he'd like to see a large, randomized trial that tries to pinpoint the impact while also further teasing out what component of coffee might be making the difference.

Heather Snyder, vice president of medical and scientific relations for the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago, which also provided some of the funding for the research, said the study was intriguing because it suggests higher coffee intake is associated with less buildup of beta amyloid in the brain, a hallmark brain change in Alzheimer's.

This is an association and not a cause-and-effect link, she cautioned, and more research is needed to understand what this association may mean.

Testing risk reduction strategies, including nutrition, is a pressing need with more than 6 million Americans living with Alzheimer's and dementia, Snyder said. The Alzheimer's Association has launched a two-year clinical trial meant to do just that.

"Today, there isn't a single food, ingredient or supplement that -- through rigorous scientific research -- has been shown to prevent, treat or cure Alzheimer's or other dementia," Snyder said.

"The Alzheimer's Association, based on evidence to date, encourages everyone to eat a healthy and balanced diet -- one high in vegetables and fruits and low in saturated fats -- as a way to potentially reduce the risk of cognitive decline as we age."

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more on Alzheimer's disease.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

British antitrust watchdog says Facebook's owner must sell Giphy

"Both consumers and Giphy are better off with the support of our infrastructure, talent and resources," Meta said in response to the order Tuesday.

Meta completed the acquisition of Giphy 18 months ago, but has been required to hold it as a separate business since June 2020 pending the outcome of the investigation. 

File Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA-EFE

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Britain's antitrust watchdog on Tuesday blocked Facebook's parent company from owning the GIF-sharing platform Giphy, saying that the acquisition would give the platform too much social media power and stifle competition.

The Competition and Markets Authority ordered Meta to sell Giphy following a lengthy investigation.

CMA said Meta's acquisition may affect both the supply of display advertising in Britain and social media services worldwide.

"By requiring Facebook to sell Giphy, we are protecting millions of social media users and promoting competition and innovation in digital advertising," Stuart McIntosh, head of the independent inquiry group that conducted the investigation, said in a statement.

The watchdog said the Giphy acquisition would reduce competition by removing the GIF sharing platform as a potential challenger in the display advertising market.

Meta completed the acquisition of Giphy 18 months ago, but has been required to hold it as a separate business since June 2020 pending the outcome of the investigation.

The CMA concluded that allowing Meta to keep Giphy would deny other platforms access to it and drive more traffic to other Meta-owned sites. WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook already account for 73% of user time spent on social media in Britain, it noted.

The CMA found that prior to the acquisition, Giphy launched innovative advertising services that were expanding to countries outside the United States. But Meta has since ended those services and, thus, restricted competition, the watchdog found.

The CMA fined Meta more than $57 million last month for violating an enforcement order during its investigation into the Giphy merger.

Meta responded to the order on Tuesday by saying that it's reviewing all possible options to move forward with its purchase of Giphy.

"We disagree with this decision," a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement to UPI. "Both consumers and Giphy are better off with the support of our infrastructure, talent and resources.

"Together, Meta and Giphy would enhance Giphy's product for the millions of people, businesses, developers and [app] partners in the U.K. and around the world who use Giphy every day, providing more choices for everyone."

With federal COVID-19 sick leave gone, workers feel pressure to go to work

By Rae Ellen Bichell, Kaiser Health News

Some teachers and other workers are having to tap into their accrued sick leave to stay home with a case of COVID-19. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Economists and public health experts alike say paid sick leave is an essential tool -- like testing, masks and vaccines -- in the effort to prevent covid-19 infection and keep workplaces safe.

Yet the United States is in the midst of another COVID-19 holiday season, and federal laws that offered COVID-19-related paid sick leave to workers have expired. Colorado, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are among a small number of places that have put in place their own COVID-19 protections, but many sick workers across the country must wrestle with difficult financial and ethical questions when deciding whether to stay home.

"Millions of workers don't have access to paid sick leave, and we're still in a pandemic," said Nicolas Ziebarth, a labor economist at Cornell University.

The United States is one of only a few industrialized nations that have no national paid sick leave policy. By contrast, Germany, Ziebarth's homeland, has had one for nearly 140 years.

The coronavirus pandemic led to short-term change. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act mandated paid sick leave nationally, a first in U.S. history, according to Ziebarth. The law included about two weeks of full pay for employees who were quarantined or seeking medical attention for COVID-19-like symptoms and additional weeks at partial pay to care for a child stuck at home because of COVID-19.

But the paid sick leave mandate consistently applied only to employers with 50 to 499 employees and lasted just nine months, expiring at the end of 2020. After that, employers could decide whether they wanted to continue offering paid sick leave in return for tax credits, though those expired at the end of September.

About 5% of U.S. employees used the federal COVID-19 sick leave protection, Ziebarth and his colleagues wrote in the journal PNAS, and it appears to have helped flatten the curve of the pandemic initially. But it wasn't enough. The number of people who were sick with any kind of illness but couldn't take time off went from about 5 million per month before the pandemic to 15 million in late 2020 -- even with the federal leave in place.

RELATED 'Long COVID' symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, study finds

People with the lowest incomes are the least likely to be covered by paid sick leave, said Dr. Rita Hamad, a social epidemiologist and family physician at the University of California-San Francisco. "We're just left with whatever patchwork of employer and state policies that existed before, which leave the most vulnerable people least covered," she said.

The Build Back Better Act, which is up for a vote in the Senate after passing the House on Nov. 19, may grant some paid medical and family leave so workers can deal with longer-term illnesses or caregiving, but it does not include time off for recovering from short-term illness.

Jared Make, vice president of A Better Balance, a national legal nonprofit advocating for worker rights, has been pushing federal, state and local lawmakers for years to expand paid sick leave and has drafted model legislation. He said 16 states, Washington, D.C., and about 20 localities have permanent paid sick time laws. One of the most generous, New Mexico's, will take effect in July. Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York and the District of Columbia provide COVID-19-specific emergency sick leave, as do Pittsburgh and a few cities in California, such as Los Angeles, Oakland and Long Beach.

In some places, employers are taking the initiative to address the problem. A recent KFF survey of about 1,700 employers from across the nation found that 37% of workers work in a place that expanded or started paid leave, either to recover from an illness or to help a relative recover from one. Meanwhile, 1% of workers had their paid sick leave reduced or eliminated.

Still, calls to A Better Balance's free legal help line have skyrocketed since the pandemic began, Make said. "Many workers are either risking their job, or they have no choice but to go to work when they're sick, and it's a real public health concern."

In August, local public health departments in California asked state leaders to extend paid sick leave to all workers, saying that failing to do so discouraged people from getting a COVID-19 vaccine and disproportionately affected disadvantaged communities.

Many people who have avoided vaccination are afraid they'll suffer side effects that will force them to miss work for a day or two, which they can't afford, Hamad said.

But without federal funds to reimburse employers, California and other states would have to find money to pay for sick leave -- and there's little enthusiasm among lawmakers for passing the costs on to businesses.

"It is a glaring gap, in our opinion, that the federal government hasn't continued some form of even COVID-19 emergency sick leave," Make said. "It's obviously a huge shortcoming given where we are in the pandemic."

Colorado, which is experiencing a COVID-19 surge, passed last year what Denver-based Make considers the strongest COVID-19 sick leave protections of any state. The law, which allows any employee to earn up to six days of paid sick leave per year and takes effect fully in January, says that when local, state or federal officials declare a public health emergency, employers must supplement workers' accrued leave so an employee can take up to two weeks of paid sick leave for, in this case, COVID-19-related reasons. The emergency leave provision won't expire until at least February.

However, some employers aren't complying. As of early November, Colorado's Division of Labor Standards and Statistics was looking into complaints related to the sick leave law that were filed against 71 employers, according to outreach manager Eric Yohe. That represented about 8% of all its wage complaints under investigation. Yohe said his division had already restored paid time off for "a good number" of employees under the new law.

Colorado's leave law still has limitations. Workers don't get "refills" of COVID-19 leave if they get sick again or a relative gets sick -- just 80 hours total from January 2021 until the public health emergency ends. And the law allows some workplaces to force employees to use their paid time off instead, as long as they notify employees in advance and offer at least two weeks of PTO to full-time employees.

Jamie Bradt, a special-education teacher at a high school in Mead, Colo., found herself in that situation this month after testing positive for COVID-19. Bradt, who is fully vaccinated, thought she could tap into state-sanctioned COVID-19 sick leave. But her employer, St. Vrain Valley Schools, told her she would have to use her PTO, which she had been saving up for about decade.

"It is so frustrating that I'm being punished for accruing my leave," said Bradt, who was isolating at home. The district did not respond to questions.

Policies that push employees to work when they're sick are counterproductive, said Barbara Holland, an adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management, a national trade group. "It's a communicable disease," she said. "You don't want them showing up in the workplace."

Since the federal provisions expired, Cristina Cuevas and her colleagues at a Minnesota school have been required to use their accrued sick and vacation time if they come down with COVID-19.

Recently, a co-worker of Cuevas' went to work sick, assuming it was a cold. "She actually had COVID the whole time," Cuevas said. The school had to shut down briefly, Cuevas said, and several students got sick.

California Healthline correspondent Rachel Bluth contributed to this story.

#LEGALIZEDRUGS

NYC OKs safe sites for drug use, aiming to curb overdoses

By JENNIFER PELTZ

In this June 19, 2018, photo, a safe needle disposal container hangs in the bathroom of VOCAL-NY headquarters in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The first officially authorized safe havens for people to use heroin and other narcotics have been cleared to open in New York City in hopes of curbing overdoses, the mayor and health commissioner said Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)


NEW YORK (AP) — The first officially authorized safe havens for people to use heroin and other narcotics have been cleared to open in New York City in hopes of curbing deadly overdoses, officials said Tuesday.

The privately run “overdose prevention centers” provide a monitored place for drug users to partake. Also known as supervised injection sites or safer consumption spaces, they exist in Canada, Australia and Europe and have been discussed for years in New York and some other U.S. cities and states. A few unofficial facilities have operated for some time.

Proponents see the facilities as pragmatic, life-saving tools for stopping overdoses, which are claiming a record number of lives in the U.S. and its most populous city.

“I’m proud to show cities in this country that after decades of failure, a smarter approach is possible,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Opponents, however, see the sites as moral failures that essentially sanction people harming themselves and create hubs of drug use. Further, federal law bans operating a place for taking illegal drugs, and the government successfully sued in recent years to block a supervised consumption space in Philadelphia.

The U.S. Justice Department declined Tuesday to comment on New York City’s approach, which is allowing supervised injection sites at existing syringe exchange programs. City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said the supervised consumption sites were open as of Tuesday.

The sites don’t sell drugs — users bring their own — but have monitors who watch for signs of overdose and can administer an antidote if needed. Sterile syringes and other accoutrements are usually on hand. Chokshi said the facilities also would offer referrals to drug treatment and other services.

Proponents say supervised consumption spaces sometimes can gently steer users toward treatment, but it’s not a requirement. The primary aim is just to keep them from overdosing to death.

“This place is about meeting people where they are and giving them the hours and the days and the support that they need to make choices for themselves,” said Kassandra Frederique of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that advocates for less punitive drug laws.

Advocates and city officials also argue that the sites can help curb drug use in public places.

The U.S. has been contending for years with a boom in opioid use and deaths, fueled at first by increased prescribing, including newly available painkillers, in the 1990s and then by heroin and illicit fentanyl. Nearly 500,000 people nationwide died of opioid overdoses from 1999-2019, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the epidemic only worsened last year.

The CDC estimates there were more than 93,300 overdose deaths in 2020, up nearly 30% from the prior year’s number. In New York City, more than 2,060 people died of overdoses last year, the most since reporting began in 2000.

Looking at such statistics, cities from San Francisco to the college town of Ithaca, New York, have sought to open supervised injection sites. In July, Rhode Island became the first state to authorize them.

At the same time, some communities in the Seattle area and elsewhere have moved to ban them or discussed doing so.

Researchers have estimated that supervised injection sites in New York City could prevent 130 deaths and save $7 million in health care expenses per year. Studies have also found that such facilities reduce HIV infections and 911 calls for overdoses, among other problems.

De Blasio, who is term-limited and leaving office next month, first asked the state for permission to authorize such sites in 2018. At the time, city officials said they would need approval from the state Health Department and the district attorneys in the areas of the sites, among other officials.

An inquiry was sent Tuesday to the Health Department.

Some of New York City’s five district attorneys, including those in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, are open to safe injection sites.

Queens DA Melinda Katz “believes we must explore all viable public health and safety strategies to save lives and connect drug users to treatment, medical care and critical social services,” spokesperson Chris Policano said.

But Staten Island DA Michael McMahon has opposed the facilities, saying they amount to government encouragement of illegal drug use.

“I believe creating supervised injection sites undermines prevention and treatment efforts, and only serves to normalize use of these deadly drugs,” McMahon, a Democrat like the other four elected DAs, said in a 2018 statement that his office offered as a response to Tuesday’s announcement. “There are better ways to accomplish our shared goal of saving lives.”

City special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan also has expressed reservations in the past, saying the facilities could risk legal problems, neighborhood tension and giving a misimpression that drug use is safe.

After Tuesday’s announcement, Brennan didn’t criticize the new consumption spaces but called on the city to measure their effectiveness — at both reducing overdoses and getting people into treatment — and get input from police and the sites’ neighborhoods.

The New York Police Department said it had been consulted about the city’s authorization of injection sites, but the department didn’t immediately elaborate.

The announcement came less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a Philadelphia group’s fight to open a safe injection site, which a divided federal appeals court had rejected. Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia had sued to stop the plan, citing a 1980s law that was aimed at shuttering locations where people used crack cocaine.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

States: Sackler family members abusing bankruptcy process


FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2021, file photo, fake pill bottles with messages about OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma are displayed during a protest outside the courthouse where the bankruptcy of the company is taking place in White Plains, N.Y. A federal judge should reject a sweeping settlement to thousands of lawsuits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, a group of states said at a hearing Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021 arguing that the protections it extends to members of the Sackler family who own the firm are improper. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge should reject a sweeping settlement to thousands of lawsuits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, a group of states said at a hearing Tuesday, arguing that the protections it extends to members of the Sackler family who own the firm are improper.

States have credible claims that family members took more than $10 billion from the company, steered it toward bankruptcy, and then used a settlement crafted in bankruptcy court to gain legal protections for themselves, Washington state Solicitor General Noah Purcell told U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon.

“If that is not an abuse of the bankruptcy process,” Purcell said, “it’s unclear what would be.”

The plan, crafted largely by those with claims against Purdue and approved in September by a federal bankruptcy judge, calls for members of the Sackler family to contribute more than $4 billion in cash, plus the company itself, to fight the opioid epidemic, which has been linked to more than 500,000 U.S. deaths in the past two decades, including deaths linked both to prescription and illicit drugs.

In exchange, members of the family are to be protected from lawsuits accusing them of spurring the crisis. The suits accuse the company and family members of helping to spark the overdose crisis by aggressively marketing OxyContin, a powerful opioid painkiller.

They would not be protected from criminal charges. They’re not facing any now, though a group of activists has been pushing federal authorities to bring charges against some members of the family, which includes some people who were executives and board members at the company and others with no involvement other than receiving money from it. Much of their fortunes are held in offshore trusts that could be hard to access in U.S. lawsuits.

Most state and local governments and thousands of individual victims of the epidemic agreed to the deal, though many did so grudgingly. Those groups are now joining with Purdue and Sackler family members to defend the plan from appeals from an office of U.S. Department of Justice, eight states, the District of Columbia, some Canadian local governments and Native American tribal groups, plus some individual victims.

In the hearing Tuesday in a New York City courtroom, McMahon focused on the $10.4 billion in transfers from Purdue coffers to family trusts from 2008 to 2018. Nearly half of that was used to pay taxes on the earnings.

The judge said that by taking bigger distributions over the decade leading to the company’s bankruptcy filings, Sackler family members “made themselves necessary” to the negotiations over how much money would be available for claimants.

Lawyers for the family said that distributions were bigger because the company was making more money and that there’s no evidence any of them were trying to manipulating the bankruptcy system.

Those appealing the plan contended that the protections the Sacklers got are more generous than what they could have received had they filed for bankruptcy themselves. Bankruptcy would also protect the company from lawsuits.

They also said that allowing the deal would usurp states’ ability to sue Sackler family members to hold them accountable.

“What confirmation of this plan does in this case is strip the states of police powers,” Maryland Assistant Attorney General Brian Edmunds said, “to protect the public from harm.”

Marshall Huebner, a lawyer for Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue, said the states were misstating some details of the settlement plans, including how U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain insisted that Sackler family members would receive protections from lawsuits involving only opioids made by Purdue.

He also noted that the overwhelming majority of governments agreed to the plan, which would funnel money to individual victims of the opioid crisis and to efforts to fight the crisis.

McMahon cut him off. “My questions focus on aspects of legality of the releases,” she said. “I don’t want to hear about the wonderful things it’s going to do. I know it was approved by a supermajority.”

Still, Huebner noted, there would be far less money to work on the crisis without money from Sackler family members. He said that if they could be sued and prevailed, they might not pay the settlement. And if they lost other lawsuits — they now face about 860 of them — they might not be able to afford to.

Kenneth Eckstein, a lawyer for a group of government entities supporting the settlement, said they also wanted the releases for Sackler family members.

If some states could sue the family, he said, the others would not accept a payment plan that stretches over nine years because of a risk that the Sacklers’ money would dry up before the installments could all be paid.

Mitchell Hurley, a lawyer for unsecured creditors who were seeking pieces of Purdue’s assets, said that if most of those groups had not joined to agree to a settlement, “the value of Purdue was going to be wasted and go to lawyers” rather than addressing the opioid crisis.

He noted that the government and private creditors — except the individual victims — have agreed to use all the money they receive to fight opioids, which are claiming 200 lives a day in the U.S. And that money, he said, could start flowing soon if it’s allowed.

“If it fails, if it blows up,” Hurley told McMahon, “it’s going to be the creditors who uniquely suffer the consequences.”

But Maria Ecke, who lost her son Jonathan in 2015 to an addiction that began 17 years earlier when he was prescribed opioids after being injured in a car crash, said the settlement hurts.

The Connecticut resident on Tuesday showed McMahon a poster of photos of her son and pleaded that the settlement not be allowed.

“The plaintiffs have suffered and continue to suffer physical and mental injuries,” she said.

McMahon has said she hopes to rule by next week, though a decision could take longer. Hers almost certainly won’t be the last word; whatever decision she reaches is likely to be appealed to a higher court.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Ghislaine Maxwell's and Elizabeth Holmes' fake feminist defenses are an insult to #MeToo

Amanda Marcotte, Salon
November 30, 2021

Ghislaine Maxwell (Photo: via Wikipedia)

ELIZABETH HOLMES

In the midst of all the tumult over the pandemic and other ongoing political disasters, it's easy to overlook the other historically remarkable moment happening right now: Ghislaine Maxwell and Elizabeth Holmes, the defendants in the two most high profile trials in the country this week, both happen to be women.

The crimes the two are charged with are, to be clear, very different. Maxwell's alleged victims are innocent teenage girls who she is accused of sex trafficking for her boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein. The alleged victims in the Holmes case, on the other hand, are less sympathetic — wealthy investors who were seemingly snookered due to their own arrogance and poor character judgment. (Holmes' company, Theranos, also harmed ordinary people who got false tests showing results like breast cancer or HIV, but they are not technically the victims in the government's fraud case.) But in a society where men are three times as likely to be charged with a crime than women, it's notable that what the two most famous alleged criminals on trial right now have in common is their gender.

To be certain, they have other things in common, as well.

Both are white women from high-class backgrounds. Their alleged crimes played out in the world of famous and wealthy people. Both seem to have a peculiar charm that they are accused of using to manipulate people. And most disturbingly, both have legal defenses that are relying on a glib and phony form of feminism.

Whether it works or not, feminists should be alarmed by this defense strategy, as it has the potential to confuse the public about what feminism is and what it isn't — and whether or not women should be treated like true equals of men, even if that means holding them equally accountable for their behavior.

"Ever since Eve has been blamed for tempting Adam with an apple, women have been blamed for things men have done," Maxwell's lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, said during her opening statements on Monday. She called Maxwell a "scapegoat," and added, "She is not Jeffrey Epstein. She is not anything like Jeffrey Epstein."

On the stand this week, Holmes finally unveiled a defense that her legal team has been hinting at throughout the trial: That she is not accountable for fraud, because she's the hapless victim of male abuse. On Monday, Holmes first testified that she was a rape victim in college, suggesting that is the reason she dropped out of Stanford at 19 in order to start Theranos. Prior to being charged with defrauding investors, however, Holmes had portrayed her dropping out in purely positive terms. She was routinely equated with other Silicon Valley figures— most notably her hero, Apple CEO Steve Jobs — who had dropped out because their purported genius could not be contained by the tedium of traditional education.

Holmes then got into the meat of her defense, accusing her business partner and then-boyfriend, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, of being controlling and abusive. "Holmes testified that Balwani, 20 years her senior, coached her to adopt a rigorous daily schedule, dictated how she should control her body movements and behave as a business person, and forced her to have sex with him, 'because he said he wanted me to know that he still loved me,'" NBC News reports.

All this may be true, though Balwani denies it. But as an explanation for why Holmes repeatedly appeared to mislead investors, it leaves a lot to be desired. Instead, as with the opening statements in the Maxwell case, the defense appears to be leaning heavily on sexist assumptions that women simply don't have the agency to be true criminal masterminds, and that all responsibility for that kind of behavior must lay with men. Worse, in both cases, this sexist assumption is being repackaged as a kind of feminism in the #MeToo era.

It's frustrating because it is true that a lot of women in prison for various crimes probably don't deserve to be there because their crimes are a direct reaction to abuse or the result of being coerced by abusive men. But those kinds of crimes, such as drug use or prostitution, are often victimless crimes. In other cases, women are in prison for literally trying to defend themselves against abusive men.

Maxwell, on the other hand, is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein's sexual exploitation, and even participating herself. Holmes is accused of lying to investors about what Theranos medical devices are capable of doing. These are not situations where someone is using drugs to cope with trauma or being forced into sex work. There's a deliberation to their behavior over literal years that simply can't be squared with the idea that they lacked agency and were under some kind of male control.

These kinds of defenses aren't really any kind of feminism, despite the trappings. They owe more to long-standing sexist beliefs that paint women as simply incapable of making any kind of decision, good or bad, and instead assuming all female choice-making is secretly controlled by men. While that stereotype may benefit these two women in their defenses, on the whole, it's very bad for women. The refusal to treat women as legitimate choice-makers, for instance, is used to deny women reproductive rights, job promotions, or even a chance to be political leaders. Allowing that women have the ability to make choices means accepting that sometimes, they make bad ones — or even criminal ones.

Holmes, in particular, has shown an adeptness at manipulating both feminist hopes and sexist stereotypes to get what she wants. She dressed and carried herself in a self-consciously masculine manner when she was allegedly defrauding investors, leaning into sexist assumptions about what "smart" and "capable" look like. Now that it benefits her to look less competent, however, she has adopted a more feminine style of hair and dress. Similarly, Maxwell is accused of using her gender and assumptions about women being "safe" to lure in Epstein's victims.

Both cases definitely underscore feminist arguments about how gender is more of a performance than a biological reality. But both defenses are depending on jurors not getting that, and instead assuming that women are inherently less capable than men.

Will it work?

Time will only tell, but there's good reason for feminists to hope it won't. Women's equality doesn't just mean accepting that women are equal to men in intelligence and competence. It also means accepting that a small percentage of women, like a small percentage of men, use those skills for bad purposes. Feminism is not well-served by the stereotype of women as hapless children who can't be assumed responsible for their own behavior. The trials of Holmes and Maxwell will serve as an interesting test of whether or not this more nuanced view of what women's equality truly means has sunk in with the public.

 CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Holmes interrogated over response to article that exposed Theranos flaws

Founder of blood testing start-up denies she trying to intimidate WSJ journalist

Miles Kruppa

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc, (C) arrives at federal court in California on Tuesday. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

 

Prosecutors interrogated Elizabeth Holmes about her response to the investigative article that pierced her company’s rosy image in 2015 as the Theranos founder took the stand for a fifth day of testimony in her criminal fraud trial.

Ms Holmes said repeatedly on Tuesday she could not recall details about the tactics prosecutors said the blood-testing start-up used to silence whistleblowers. She denied that Theranos tried to intimidate the author of The Wall Street Journal report, John Carreyrou, who has been a frequent fixture in the San Jose federal court where her trial has been taking place.

Responding to questions from assistant US attorney Robert Leach, Ms Holmes said she did not remember the meaning behind text messages that showed she wanted to “get ahead” of the story, which alleged that the company’s proprietary devices did not work as advertised.

Ms Holmes said she wanted to prevent disclosure of the company’s “trade secrets” while admitting that she fumbled the response to the article.

“I think I mishandled the entire process of the Wall Street Journal reporting,” Ms Holmes said.

Ms Holmes faces 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. She has pled not guilty. Investors valued Theranos at $9 billion at the company’s peak before its decline and eventual shut down in 2018.

• Theranos founder accuses former boyfriend and business partner of abuse
• Elizabeth Holmes points fingers at others in Theranos fraud trial
• Elizabeth Holmes describes Theranos’s ‘big idea’ to jurors

Tuesday’s hearing gave prosecutors their first chance to directly interrogate Ms Holmes under oath. They questioned claims that Ms Holmes made about Theranos’ testing abilities, playing a clip on the business news channel CNBC in which she claimed that all the company’s testing offerings could be run on proprietary devices.

Ambitious entrepreneur

Attorneys for Ms Holmes have sought to paint her as an ambitious entrepreneur who failed to deliver on her grand vision. On Tuesday, she admitted that she held ultimate control over decisions at Theranos after being asked whether the “buck stops” with her. “I felt that,” she replied.

Ms Holmes appeared uneasy answering questions about a set of documents Theranos sent to investors and business partners that included the logos of Pfizer and other large pharmaceutical companies.

In previous testimony, Ms Holmes admitted she personally added the logos of Pfizer and Schering-Plough to documents purporting to show their work together. On Tuesday, she testified that she thought the reports were independent due diligence before admitting that they had been prepared by Theranos.

Prosecutors displayed a series of emails between Ms Holmes and Pfizer employees, emphasising that they did not contain any explicit endorsements of Theranos’s technology.

The questioning from prosecutors followed an emotional day of testimony on Monday, when Ms Holmes accused her former boyfriend and business partner Sunny Balwani of abusive behaviour, including repeated forced sex.

“He would get very angry with me and then he would sometimes come upstairs to our bedroom and he would force me to have sex with him when I didn’t want to,” Ms Holmes said. Mr Balwani’s attorneys have previously denied accusations of abuse.

Ms Holmes also said Mr Balwani would berate her for her performance as chief executive and had heavily influenced her leadership style. They lived together from 2005 until Mr Balwani left Theranos in 2016.

Judge Edward Davila has ordered a separate trial for Mr Balwani, who was charged at the same time as Holmes.

Prosecutors said on Tuesday they would probably finish their cross-examination early next week, and an attorney for Ms Holmes said the defence’s case would probably conclude by Friday. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021