Eideard

Johnson & Johnson will pay more than $1 billion to the U.S. and most states to resolve a civil investigation into marketing of the antipsychotic Risperdal, according to people familiar with the matter.

J&J, the world’s largest health products company, reached an accord last week with the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, according to the people, who weren’t authorized to speak about the matter. It doesn’t resolve negotiations over a possible criminal plea, they said…

J&J, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, disclosed in August that it reached an agreement to settle a misdemeanor criminal charge related to Risperdal marketing. The company is in negotiations to pay about $400 million more to settle this portion of the investigation, one of the people said…

A majority of U.S. states will join the settlement, the people said. Which ones will accept the final agreement hasn’t been determined, they said. Each state can decide whether to join the federal government’s settlement or pursue its own case.

Typically, states with cases in court continue to pursue their own. Texas alone is asking for more than $1 billion in a case that goes to trial next week. Risperdal, which was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1993, later became J&J’s best-selling drug…

The FDA approved Risperdal in 1993 for psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. That market is limited, and Janssen sought to sell Risperdal for bipolar disorder, dementia, mood and anxiety disorders and other unapproved uses, according to documents in the lawsuit by the state of Louisiana.

Hundreds of Janssen salespeople sold to doctors, nursing homes, Veteran’s Administration facilities and jails, the records show. Marketers gave doctors materials about studies of unapproved uses for Risperdal. Janssen sponsored clinical trials of the drug’s effect on other illnesses…

“The ultimate resolution of the above criminal and these civil matters is not expected to have a material adverse effect on the company’s financial position,” J&J officials said in the filing.

Of course it won’t. Johnson and Johnson – in 2010 – had $62 billion in revenue, gross profit of $42.8 billion, and net income after taxes of $13.3 billion.

They spent $6.7 million on lobbying.

Chinese municipal contest: guess which cooking oil is counterfeit?
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

China has detained more than 2,000 people, seized tonnes of tainted products and closed more than 5,000 companies in a five-month crackdown on food safety problems, but the road ahead remains tough, state media said on Monday.

“Our recent campaign has achieved notable success. But this is just a beginning,” an unnamed official from the cabinet’s food safety task force told Xinhua news agency.

“The campaign should not be given an excessively high appraisal. We cannot lower our guard or rest up, and must be aware of the complex, long-term nature of the food safety problem and remain on high alert,” the official added…

China has struggled to rein in health safety violations in the unruly and vast food sector despite harsh punishments and repeated vows to deal with the problem.

Since July, Chinese courts have sentenced at least a dozen people to jail, including one person who received a suspended death sentence, for their roles in producing or selling pork tainted with toxic chemicals.

In the latest scandal, authorities detained 32 people for making and selling tonnes of cooking oil dredged from gutters and repackaged for sale as new.

Overdue.

I believe the Chinese government is aware of the task. Especially if they intend to grow their international commerce in foodstuffs. But, like anything else involving human beings and corruption, sometimes you need more than good intentions to resolve corruption. Like a lot of people with badges!

A policeman flung into the air by a criminal driving a stolen car incredibly gets up and chases the offender on foot.

Pc Dan Pascoe used his Taser stun gun to stop Lee Adamson escaping before collapsing from his injuries.

Dramatic video footage shows the officer being thrown violently to the ground after his police car was rammed by a blue BMW driven by Adamson on July 3.

Police set up a road block on a slip road of the M25 at junction 11, near Chertsey in Surrey, to stop the stolen vehicle. Pc Pascoe had just got out of the parked patrol car when the BMW ploughed into the back of it at speed, sending the officer flying.

Amazingly, the policeman rolled, got up and brushed himself off before running after Adamson, who had abandoned the stolen car.

His fellow officers arrested the criminal on suspicion of vehicle theft and other driving offences.

Throw away the fracking key on Adamson. And give PC Pascoe a vote of thanks and whatever perks he might wish for.

As much as we complain about incompetent cops and their bureaucratic bosses – the best of the breed are out there making our lives safer and better because of their bravery.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A suspected leader of the Juarez drug cartel told authorities he had ordered the deaths of about 1,500 people.

Federal police detailed accusations against Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, known as “El Diego,” a day after authorities announced his capture. He was one of the country’s most wanted criminals, with officials offering a reward of 15 million pesos for his arrest…

Acosta is accused of being a leader of the drug gang known as La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, Mexican authorities have said. Eduardo Pequeno told reporters that Acosta “said he ordered the killings of about 1,500 people, mostly in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua’s capital…”

Pequeno…accused Acosta of having connections with some of the border city’s most notorious violence over the past two years, including the 2010 killing of a state prosecutor, a car bombing outside a police station and a massacre at a house party that killed 15 people — most of them students with no ties to organized crime…

The northwestern Mexican state of Chihuahua, which contains the namesake capital city as well as Juarez, has been a hotbed for drug-related violence.

Mexico’s revolutions against foreign rule, against elitist class rule are a dim footnote in history except on celebration days. The ruling PRN instituted a system of strict corruption and payoffs, police departments founded on bribery and kickbacks – that ran on and on for decades. There are no surprises remaining about the depths into which the Mexican government descended into over time.

So, we’re all surprised when it’s difficult to turn things around. When dozens and hundreds are murdered with no more diligence than required by any slaughterhouse – we gasp. But, still, how much help have we offered from our world-class intelligence services when a thug like this has stayed alive on the streets, killing so many for so long?

Well, not really, not now

News International announced on Thursday that it is closing the News of the World after this Sunday’s edition, with no end in sight to the political and commercial fallout from the phone-hacking scandal after 72 hours of mounting crisis.

Sunday’s edition of the paper will be the last, News International chairman James Murdoch told News of the World staff on Thursday afternoon.

Murdoch told employees at the 167-year-old title: “The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed to when it came to itself”…

It is the first national newspaper to close since Rupert Murdoch shut News International mid-market tabloid Today in 1995.

The News of the World was Rupert Murdoch’s first UK newspaper acquisition in 1968 and its profits helped him build his publishing and broadcasting empire in this country and the US.

A spokesman for the company would not comment on whether News International will continue to publish a tabloid title on a Sunday. I imagine they will.

Murdoch told staff some of them would be leaving the company and said that was a matter of regret. He paid tribute to their “good work”.

There will be no adverts in Sunday’s edition and any money already received will be donated to good causes…

Labour MP Tom Watson, who has been highlighting the phone-hacking scandal at the paper for two years, said: “Rupert Murdoch did not close the News of the World. It is the revulsion of families up and down the land as to what they got up to. It was going to lose all its readers and it had no advertisers left. They had no choice.”

RTFA for the details. More and more of the truly dirty details are still coming out – which is an essential part of the decision by the Murdochs – Daddy Rupert and James – to bail before the tsunami crushes them altogether.

Israeli settlements built on land stolen by force of arms

The United States vetoed Friday a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have declared Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that while the United States agrees about “the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, we think it unwise for this council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians.”

Excuse me while I get me Wellies. This much bullshit demands rubber boots.

The veto is the first to be used under the Obama administration.

Ambassador Riyad Mansour, the permanent observer of Palestine to the United Nations, objected to the veto in a statement following the vote.

“The proper message that should have been sent by the Security Council to Israel, the occupying power, is that its contempt of international law and the international community will no longer be tolerated,” he said. “We fear, however, that the message sent today may be one that only encourages further Israeli intransigence and impunity. This must be remedied.”

Israel praised the veto…

I used a major American media source – CNN – so our regular readers outside the United States could have a look at mainstream American media proving why we don’t need an official US news agency. The Voice of America is still out there being the parrot it always has been; but, the point is they’re not needed for internal consumption.

Hardly any significant American news source would offend traditional US foreign policy by being critical of Israel.

Israeli border guards demonstrate their respect for civil dissent
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it.

The organisation called the blockade “collective punishment“, a crime under international law. It described Gaza as a territory plagued by frequent power cuts, a ruined economy, and a collapsed health care system…

“Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza’s health care system has reached an all-time low…”

Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, the head of the ICRC’s Middle East operations, told Al Jazeera that the organisation – which traditionally remains neutral – was reluctant to publicly criticise the blockade. But she said three years of quiet efforts to ease the embargo did not result in any progress.

“The result has not been what we expected, and we thought that after three years the situation was dire enough, serious enough, to speak out publicly to try to break this closure of Gaza,” she said…

In Luxembourg on Monday, foreign ministers from the European Union condemned the Gaza blockade as “unacceptable and counterproductive,” and called for immediate and unconditional opening of crossings for humanitarian aid…

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, released its own report on Monday documenting dire conditions in the Palestinian territories. The group noted that 95 per cent of Gaza’s factories have closed, that 98 per cent of residents suffer from blackouts, and that 93 per cent of Gaza’s water is polluted…

Meanwhile, Congress and the White House works to maintain a special relationship founded in guilt from 3 or 4 generations ago.

If the U.S. government, today, lived up to the standards it admits to selling out – when 20 million Jews and Slavs, Eastern Europeans and Russians were being slaughtered by Nazi Germany – unconditional support of the Israeli government would come an immediate halt.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Calling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico the “greatest environmental disaster of its kind,” President Barack Obama vowed to prosecute those responsible.

“If our laws were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice ,” Obama said.

The president delivered those words as Attorney General Eric Holder announced a federal investigation into whether criminal or civil laws were violated in connection with the spill…

Holder last month dispatched Justice Department lawyers to the spill region to explore whether laws had been broken. Investigators have directed BP and other companies to preserve documents related to the disaster. Although government officials would not say who was being targeted in the criminal investigation, the probe could center on actions by well owner BP and rig owner Transocean…

And no one mentions Halliburton. They were performing the cementing prior to turning the well over to production. They were the outfit performing the same function on the drilling platform that exploded into fire in similar fashion off the coast of Australia, last year.

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An internet firm linked to many of the internet’s criminal gangs has been shut down.

The US Federal Trade Commission said Belize-based 3FN aided gangs that ran botnets, carried out phishing attacks and traded in images of child abuse.

The servers and net hardware of 3FN have been seized and are due to be sold off as the firm is dismantled.

The operators of 3FN must also pay back $1.08 million they are reputed to have made by hosting criminal sites…

It was involved in distributing spyware, viruses and trojans, had a hand in many phishing schemes and helped gangs sell illegal images. It also acted as a discussion forum for many spammers.

In particular, said the FTC, the net firm worked with fraudsters who run botnets and helped them steal data by seeding hijacked computers with keyloggers. It maintained a library of more than 4500 malicious programs that could pilfer data from hijacked PCs.

In June last year, the FTC used an injunction to cut 3FN off from other hosting providers and sever its connections to the net.

Now the FTC has gone a step further and won a court order that will see the company stop trading and its hardware confiscated. The FBI has been ordered to carry out the shut down and seizure operation.

Overdue.

Looks like your average friendly neighborhood messiah to me

Israeli police say they have arrested the leader of an alleged polygamist cult and accused him of enslavement, rape and incest.

Goel Ratzon is believed to have been living in Tel Aviv with 17 women with whom he had up to 40 children.

Police launched an undercover investigation in June 2009 after complaints from some of the women.

Mr Ratzon, aged 60, denies the allegations, saying the women were with him voluntarily…

Mr Ratzon’s lawyer, Shlomzion Gabai, told the Associated Press that “he may be different, but he’s not a criminal”.

Police said in a statement: “The evidence shows the suspect controlled his women with a firm hand, including their possessions and their money.”

It said Mr Ratzon had written a “rule book” for women who he had kept in “conditions of slavery”.

“He would dictate what they could and could not do, limit their movements and impose sanctions and various punishments, including the use of violence if they refused to obey,” the statement added…

He may not be a criminal but he certainly is a loonybird.