CBS’ CEO Leslie Moonves will remain in his position at the media company as the board of directors launches an investigation into allegations that he sexually assaulted several women over decades. According to CBS, there have been no misconduct claims or settlements against Moonves during his twenty-four years at the network. The investigation began after the New Yorker published a detailed report that included the accounts of six women who claim Moonves thwarted their acting careers after rejecting his verbal or physical advances. Some of the alleged assaults date back to the 1980s through the 2000s. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two said Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All six accusers said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result.
One of his accusers, writer Janet Jones alleges that in the spring of 1985, she had to shove Moonves off her after he forcibly kissed her at a work meeting. Producer Mike Marvin had helped broker a meeting between her and Moonves, who at the time was a vice-president at Twentieth Century Fox. The late afternoon appointment was Jones’s first pitch meeting in Hollywood. Producer Mike Marvin said that he confronted Moonves about what happened at the meeting at a gathering, saying, “Whatever happened, that girl was upset.” Marvin said Moonves became furious and the two had a screaming match over it. Not long afterward, Jones received a call from Moonves, who began shouting at her and threatening her career.
Another one of his accusers, Emmy Award-winning actress and writer Illeana Douglas, said Moonves forcibly held her down and violently kissed her. Douglas was introduced to Moonves in 1996 while she was meeting with networks, looking for a deal to write and perform for television. Moonves, who was then the president of CBS Entertainment, seemed to take a personal interest in her. “What happened to me was a sexual assault, and then I was fired for not participating.” lleana Douglas said of the incident.
Emmy-award winning writer and television producer Dinah Kirgo described meeting Moonves to discuss a potential television deal before he joined CBS. Kirgo said the meeting “went really well” but was surprised when Moonves, who was married to Nancy Wiesenfeld at the time, asked to meet her privately over dinner. “I’m not actually sure what I said in response, but he said, ‘Look, you’re really expensive and I need to know you’re worth it,’ ” she recalled. Kirgo said she made an allusion to Moonves’ wife, and her feelings about a one-on-one dinner between the two. “And the conversation ended, and he went from being very friendly to being really cold.” That was the last Kirgo heard from Moonves.
In a statement, Moonves said, “Throughout my time at CBS, we have promoted a culture of respect and opportunity for all employees, and have consistently found success elevating women to top executive positions across our company. I recognize that there were times decades ago when I may have made some women uncomfortable by making advances. Those were mistakes, and I regret them immensely. But I always understood and respected—and abided by the principle—that ‘no’ means ‘no,’ and I have never misused my position to harm or hinder anyone’s career. This is a time when we all are appropriately focused on how we help improve our society, and we at CBS are committed to being part of the solution.”
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Aid groups say the toll from the collapse of a billion-dollar hydroelectric dam in Lao’s is far higher than the official figure of 27 dead and 131 missing. Despite a government ban on foreign media covering the disaster, the BBC reports the death toll could be closer to 300. Another 3,000 people are still stranded in homes surrounded by floodwaters and over 6,000 people have been displaced. The dam collapse occurred around 8 p.m. on July 23rd and caused immediate flash flooding through the villages of Yai Thae, Hinlad, Ban Mai, Thasengchan, Tha Hin, and Samong, all in Sanamxay district. Homes, roads and bridges were swept away.
The disaster has revived the debate about plans by the Laos government to boost the economy by building dozens of dams to export hydroelectricity to neighboring countries. The South Korean company that is the main builder of the hydroelectric project has admitted that it knew the dam was deteriorating a day before it failed but the reason for the collapse remains unclear. There are conflicting reports on when damages to the dam were first noticed, raising more questions on whether the order to evacuate villagers from their homes should have been issued earlier. The portion of the dam that collapsed was reported to be a saddle dam—its official name was “Saddle ‘D’, an auxiliary structure used to hold water beyond what is held by the main dam”.
Emergency teams in southern Laos are continuing to search for survivors following the collapse of a dam, which released five billion cubic meters of water. As floodwaters in began to recede, official sources said eight bodies had been recovered, while an official has suggested more than 1,100 people may still be unaccounted for. Homes were swept away and farmland submerged when an auxiliary dam at the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy hydroelectric project collapsed.
An overwhelming amount of mud left behind is hampering search operations. Some areas are inaccessible by boat, with helicopter flights being the only way to reach some communities. Rescue efforts are further complicated by the fact that the area is densely forested with no mobile-phone coverage. Roads that previously existed were washed away in the floods and thousands of people who fled their homes are packed into makeshift shelters.
Officials in northern Cambodia have ordered the evacuation of 25,000 people downriver of the collapsed dam, due to heavy flooding and rising water levels. The Prime Minister of Laos, Thongloun Sisoulith, suspended his immediate meetings and travelled in person to the site. Sisoulith also called in both the police and the army, declaring the area a disaster zone. The local government requested emergency aid from neighboring communities. The neighboring countries of China, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have offered to provide any assistance needed by Laos.
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Satellite images show North Korea has taken the first steps toward its commitment to nuclear disarmament. Images show they have begun dismantling a missile-engine test site, fulfilling one of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s promises during the historic summit in Singapore in June. The site is believed to play a role in North Korea’s development of liquid-fuel engines, although it’s unclear how much the site’s facilities were still being used.
Images published by a leading think-tank on North Korea show activity at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, located among dense forest and hills close the northern border with China. Workers are believed to be dismantling a building used to assemble space-launch vehicles and a nearby rocket engine test stand used to develop liquid-fuel engines for ballistic missiles and space-launch vehicles, the 38 North think-tank said.
The work started at some point in the past two weeks, after the last visit to North Korea by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. White House officials have stated that the trip made by Pompeo to Pyongyang went “as bad as it could have”. Jenny Town, the managing editor of 38 North, which is based at the Stimson Center in Washington DC, said the work at Sohae could be an important move to keep negotiations going. “Since these facilities are believed to have played an important role in the development of technologies for the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile program, these efforts represent a significant confidence-building measure on the part of North Korea,” 38 North said in a report.
South Korean officials have also said they detected dismantlement activities at the site, though didn’t specify the exact nature of the activities. The South Korean foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, at a briefing in London, said its reports suggested North Korea was preparing for disarmament in return for a lifting of economic sanctions. The satellite image analysis leaves it unclear whether North Korea planned to demolish the entire Sohae site, which has been vital to its space program. Other important facilities such as fuel bunkers, a main assembly building and the gantry tower appear untouched.
Senior US officials called on Mr Kim to act on his promise to give up his nuclear weapons and said the world, including China and Russia, must continue to enforce sanctions until he does so. The US State Department issued an advisory together with the departments of Treasury and Homeland Security alerting businesses to North Korea’s sanctions-evasion tactics. It said they should “implement effective due diligence policies, procedures, and internal controls to ensure compliance with applicable legal requirements across their entire supply chains.”
While the images are encouraging, experts urge caution until the North completely abandons the area. “If North Korea goes further and dismantle the entire Sohae site, that would meaningfully reduce the country’s long-range missile capability by eliminating a facility where it could fire multiple ICBMs in succession,” said Lee Choon Geun, a missile expert at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute. He added, however, that while the first steps in dismantling the site are important, in reality, Pyongyang is giving up little as it appears the country is content with the current long-range weapons in its possession.
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Violent protests erupted in Chicago after police officers shot and killed a 37-year-old African-American man on the South Side of Chicago. Harith Augustus was a well-known barber and the father of a 5-year-old daughter. Hundreds took to the streets to protest his killing. Protesters and police clashed with protestors throwing rocks and bottles, some filled with urine at officers. Four people were arrested, several officers were treated for minor injuries and two patrol cars were damaged.
The day after the protests, police released a 30 second clip with no sound of an officer’s body-cam footage. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said it was the quickest he had ever ordered such video released and that he hoped to dispel rumors Harith Augustus, 37, was unarmed. He also said he hoped making the 30-second clip public would prevent another violent confrontation between residents and officers. “The community needs some answers and they need them now, we can’t have another night like last night.” Mr Johnson told reporters. He said Mr Augustus’s family was in favor of releasing the video for the same reason.
The edited clip of body camera video shows at least three officers approaching Augustus as he is talking to another officer outside a store in the city’s South Shore neighborhood. The first officer points at his waistband and Augustus backs away while reaching into his back pocket. As Augustus pulls his wallet from his pocket, three officers try to grab his arms. Augustus tries to get away, backing into a police cruiser as his shirt flies up, showing the gun. The footage pauses and zooms in on the weapon, which police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said was done to ensure a semi-automatic handgun in its holster and two bullet magazines tucked into Mr Augustus’s waist could be seen clearly.
Augustus then runs into the street as a police SUV drives up. He spins away from the SUV and darts between the SUV and the police cruiser as he reaches towards his waist. At that point, an officer opens fire, hitting Augustus multiple times. Augustus did not fire his weapon and the footage does not show him pulling the gun out of its holster. Police also released a 50-second, slow-motion clip showing Augustus reaching towards his waist. It was not clear if he was going for the weapon but it does appear he was grabbing for something at his waist.
Records show Augustus had a legal permit to carry a firearm and no recent arrest history. Augustus was known in the Grand Crossing neighborhood as “Snoop” — worked at a barbershop and had a five-year-old daughter. A police spokesman said more videos will be released within 60 days but declined to say how many different angles exist or whether any of the officers’ cameras captured audio.
While the snippet of video released seems to have calmed some tensions, some pointed out that Augustus, a quiet man with only a few minor arrests from years ago, appeared to be trying to show the officers some sort of identification during the street stop, possible his firearm permit. Experts on use of force have focused on how Augustus tried to evade arrest, twisting away from officers and fleeing into the street with his right hand hovering near his holstered gun. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the city agency that investigates police-involved shootings, will try to determine if the officers followed policy and if any training issues need to be addressed.
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On July 19th, seventeen people died after a Missouri duck boat capsized and sunk on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri. The boat, with 31 people aboard, sank around 7pm Thursday evening after it left for a ride on the lake that was hit by a thunderstorm generating near-hurricane strength winds. Witnesses captured video of two of the Ride the Ducks vessels being tossed around by waves as they struggled to make it back to land, only one made it back safely. One video shows water from the waves entering the craft before it capsized (rolled over onto its side) and then sank below the waves. It is believed the boat sunk in 40 feet of water, rolling as it sank, before landing on its wheels in 80-feet-deep lake water.
Duck boats are amphibious vehicles equipped with wheels and propellers that can be driven on roadways or on water. With a push of a lever, the vehicle can switch from being wheel-driven to relying instead on the rear-mounted propeller. Originally built to transport troops during WWII, they are now popular in many tourist areas with large bodies of water. The 17 victims in the tragedy ranged in age from 1 to 76 years with nine victims from the same family. None of the victims were wearing life jackets when found. There were life jackets on the boat but passengers weren’t required to wear them.
The National Transportation Safety Board recorded wind readings of 73 mph which were estimated to cause waves that rose to around 4 feet, with a possibility of 6-foot crests. An investigation into the cause of the tragedy and why the Ride the Ducks boat entered the lake despite severe thunderstorm warnings for the area. Branson is about 200 miles from Kansas City, and is considered a major family vacation destination. The town was under a severe thunderstorm warning issued about half an hour before the boat capsized.
Tia Coleman and 10 of her relatives were on a family vacation from Indiana. Her husband, her three children and five other members of her family died in the accident. Their names were: Angela, 45; Arya, 1; Belinda, 69; Ervin, 76; Evan, 7; Glenn, 40; Horace, 70; Maxwell, 2; and Reece, 9. Only Tia and her 13 year old nephew Donovan survived when the boat sank. The other victims included the driver of the duck boat, Robert Williams, 73; Steve Smith, a retired teacher from Osceola, Arkansas, and his teenage son, Lance; William and Janice Bright, a married couple from Higginsville, Missouri; William Asher and his partner, Rosemarie Hamann from Missouri; and Leslie Dennison from Illinois.
Tia Coleman, one of the 14 survivors, said passengers were told there was a storm coming before the trip and that they would alter their route to tour the lake before the storm hit. During an emotional interview from her hospital bed she said that the captain mentioned the life jackets before they went on the lake but said, “you won’t need them so we didn’t grab them, nobody did.”
She described the amphibious vessel being hit by waves and taking on some water. She said that immediately after a large wave went over the vessel, they were plunged under water where she couldn’t see or hear anything but felt her head hitting the top of the craft. Passengers were unable to make an immediate escape as the craft sank because the sides of the craft are windows with a canopy top. Once the canopy top gave way, some were able to swim to the surface as the craft continued to sink in the murky later water.
Vacationers and employees of a nearby dining showboat immediately began throwing life preservers, and life rafts into the water. Others jumped in and pulled people out of the water. Several people nearby with medical training tried unsuccessfully to revive unresponsive victims. Rescuers searched late into the night for survivors before calling it off due to poor visibility. The searching resumed the next morning until the remaining victims were found.
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A 3-year-old child refugee from Ethiopia attacked at her birthday party by a knife-wielding man has died of her injuries. Ruya Kadir died at a trauma center in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she was flown for treatment. Police said five other children and three adults were wounded in the stabbing attack. Police have arrested a 30-year-old man from Los Angeles who had been staying in the same apartment building. Seven of the other eight victims remain in the hospital, many with serious or critical injuries, and one child was treated and released. The wounded children ranged in age from 4 to 12 years old.
The suspect, Timothy Kinner, 30, was initially charged with nine counts of aggravated battery, and six counts of injury to a child. Kinner was arraigned in Ada County Court in Boise when a judge informed him that the charges had been amended and that he’s now facing one count of first-degree murder. Kinner has an extensive criminal record spanning multiple states and has spent time in prison for previous violent offenses. If convicted, Kinner could be eligible for the death penalty under Idaho law. Ada County Prosecutor Jan Bennetts said her office has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty, saying those “high-level decisions” are made only after all the facts are in.
Boise Police Chief Bill Bones said during an emotional news conference that the suspect’s motive was “vengeance” for being asked to leave an apartment in the complex due to his behavior. Bones said Kinner had been invited to stay for a few days at the apartment of a renter who had shown him compassion but was asked to leave on Friday due to his disruptive behavior. According to Police Chief Bones, Kinner returned to the apartment where he had been a guest on Saturday and found nobody home. Around 8:45 p.m. Kinner went a few doors down to where the party was going on and allegedly stormed the apartment, stabbing the people with a folding knife.
Zine Mutlack, the 8 year old boy who was treated and released from the hospital said he first saw Kinner hiding near the party. “Then he popped up and I was in front of my aunt,” Zine said. “He just came to me and stabbed me in my belly. Then he went to her, made her fall on the ground, then he stabbed her lots of times and I heard her yelling.” In the chaos that followed, Zine said his mother was stabbed in the neck and his father told him to run home and call the police. “I said, ‘Somebody is stabbing people in the apartment,'” Zine said. “They said they were already on their way.”
The attack took place at an apartment complex that is home to refugee families. Kinner is not a refugee but he temporarily lived at the complex until he was asked to leave the day before his attack. The chief said the victims were all refugees from Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia who had escaped violence in their homelands only to be confronted with it in America. The victims were placed in Boise as part of the refugee resettlement program. International Rescue Committee CEO David Miliband said his group settled Ruya and her mother in Boise from Ethiopia in December 2015. Her father is in Turkey.
Monday evening, around 1,500 people turned out at a vigil honoring members of refugee families targeted in the stabbing. People wept, sang and shouted their support for the refugee community, and many brought bouquets of white flowers intended to symbolize peace. By the end of the rally, hundreds of bouquets filled dozens of baskets on the steps of Boise’s City Hall.
A 3-year-old child refugee from Ethiopia attacked at her birthday party by a knife-wielding man has died of her injuries. Ruya Kadir died at a trauma center in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she was flown for treatment. Police said five other children and three adults were wounded in the stabbing attack. Police have arrested a 30-year-old man from Los Angeles who had been staying in the same apartment building. Seven of the other eight victims remain in the hospital, many with serious or critical injuries, and one child was treated and released. The wounded children ranged in age from 4 to 12 years old.
The suspect, Timothy Kinner, 30, was initially charged with nine counts of aggravated battery, and six counts of injury to a child. Kinner was arraigned in Ada County Court in Boise when a judge informed him that the charges had been amended and that he’s now facing one count of first-degree murder. Kinner has an extensive criminal record spanning multiple states and has spent time in prison for previous violent offenses. If convicted, Kinner could be eligible for the death penalty under Idaho law. Ada County Prosecutor Jan Bennetts said her office has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty, saying those “high-level decisions” are made only after all the facts are in.
Boise Police Chief Bill Bones said during an emotional news conference that the suspect’s motive was “vengeance” for being asked to leave an apartment in the complex due to his behavior. Bones said Kinner had been invited to stay for a few days at the apartment of a renter who had shown him compassion but was asked to leave on Friday due to his disruptive behavior. According to Police Chief Bones, Kinner returned to the apartment where he had been a guest on Saturday and found nobody home. Around 8:45 p.m. Kinner went a few doors down to where the party was going on and allegedly stormed the apartment, stabbing the people with a folding knife.
Zine Mutlack, the 8 year old boy who was treated and released from the hospital said he first saw Kinner hiding near the party. “Then he popped up and I was in front of my aunt,” Zine said. “He just came to me and stabbed me in my belly. Then he went to her, made her fall on the ground, then he stabbed her lots of times and I heard her yelling.” In the chaos that followed, Zine said his mother was stabbed in the neck and his father told him to run home and call the police. “I said, ‘Somebody is stabbing people in the apartment,'” Zine said. “They said they were already on their way.”
The attack took place at an apartment complex that is home to refugee families. Kinner is not a refugee but he temporarily lived at the complex until he was asked to leave the day before his attack. The chief said the victims were all refugees from Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia who had escaped violence in their homelands only to be confronted with it in America. The victims were placed in Boise as part of the refugee resettlement program. International Rescue Committee CEO David Miliband said his group settled Ruya and her mother in Boise from Ethiopia in December 2015. Her father is in Turkey.
Monday evening, around 1,500 people turned out at a vigil honoring members of refugee families targeted in the stabbing. People wept, sang and shouted their support for the refugee community, and many brought bouquets of white flowers intended to symbolize peace. By the end of the rally, hundreds of bouquets filled dozens of baskets on the steps of Boise’s City Hall.
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Accused NSA whistleblower Reality Winner has pled guilty to retaining and transmitting a document to a news organization after reaching a deal with the U.S. government to serve a 5-year prison sentence. Winner had faced up to 10 years in prison on charges she violated the Espionage Act by leaking a top-secret document to The Intercept about Russian interference in the 2016 election. She’s been imprisoned for the last year at the Lincoln County Jail in Georgia.
Winner, a former Air Force linguist, was arrested last June and accused of sharing a classified report about Russian interference in the 2016 election with the news media. Ms. Winner, who was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 2016, was working as a contractor for the National Security Agency when she obtained a copy of a report that described hacks by a Russian intelligence service against local election officials and a company that sold software related to voter registration.
The Intercept, an online news outlet that a prosecutor said Ms. Winner admired, published a copy of the top secret report shortly before Ms. Winner’s arrest was made public. The report described two cyberattacks by Russia’s military intelligence unit, the G.R.U. — one in August against a company that sells voter-registration-related software and another, a few days before the election, against 122 local election officials.
An F.B.I. affidavit made public after her arrest last year said there was a visible crease mark on the file, a scan of which The Intercept had provided to the government while trying to authenticate it. That prompted investigators to surmise it was a printout. Audit trails showed six people had printed copies, but only one — Ms. Winner — had used a work computer to send emails to The Intercept.
A search warrant application said she had found the report by plugging keywords into the N.S.A.’s system that fell outside her normal work duties. Computer security experts noted that the printer appeared to leave barely visible microdots on the printout identifying the serial number of the printer and the date and time of the printing: 6:20 a.m. on May 9, 2017.
The Justice Department prosecuted Ms. Winner under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that criminalizes the unauthorized disclosure of national-security secrets that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary. Her decision to plead guilty to one felony count allows the government to avoid a complex trial that had been scheduled for October.
Winner is the second person known to have reached a plea agreement in a leak prosecution case under the current administration. Former F.B.I. agent, Terry J. Albury, pled guilty in April, but prosecutors in that case have hinted that they will ask that he serve 46 to 57 months in prison. The Justice Department has recently filed charges in at least two other leak-related cases. James Wolfe, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staff member, was arrested and charged with lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with reporters, including a Times reporter with whom he had a personal relationship and whose phone records the department secretly seized, during a leak investigation. In another case, Joshua A. Schulte, a former C.I.A. software engineer, was charged with violating the Espionage Act and other laws based on accusations that he sent a stolen archive of documents and electronic tools related to the agency’s hacking operations to WikiLeaks, which called them the Vault 7 leak.
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Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Antwon Rose, a 17-year-old unarmed African-American high school senior who was shot and killed on June 19th by an East Pittsburgh police officer. Rose was shot in the back as he was trying to flee a traffic stop by Police Officer Michael Rosfeld. Officer Rosfeld came upon Antwon and another teenager, Zaijuan Hester, when he stopped a car they were riding in that had been seen leaving a drive-by shooting in the nearby town of North Braddock. Zaijuan, 17, was charged in connection with that shooting.
Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have charged Officer Michael Rosfeld with criminal homicide for the fatal shooting. The charge against Officer Rosfeld capped days of protests in the Pittsburgh area, and came two days after the funeral for Antwon at Woodland Hills Intermediate School, in Swissvale, Pa., where he was a rising senior. Allegheny County district attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., said that Officer Rosfeld had failed basic police procedures in the moments before Antwon was shot, gave statements to investigators that were contradicted by witnesses and had a troubling employment history with other police departments. Zappala said he’d ask a jury to consider first-degree murder charges against Rosfeld, though the charge of criminal homicide opens the door for a possible conviction on lesser charges—including involuntary manslaughter. Rosfeld surrendered to authorities and was released after posting $250,000 bail.
Officer Rosfeld pulled over the Chevrolet Cruze that matched the description of a vehicle seen near an earlier drive-by shooting in North Braddock, in which a 22-year-old man was struck in the abdomen. Without waiting for backup, Officer Rosfeld approached the driver’s side of the car and had the driver step out. As he was placing the driver in handcuffs, Antwon, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, and Zaijuan, who was in the back seat, jumped out. Witnesses said Antwon flashed his hands in the air, showing that they were empty, and then turned to run away.
A video of the encounter posted on Facebook shows the teenagers running from police vehicles as three shots are fired, and Antwon falling to the ground. Witnesses told the police that they heard Officer Rosfeld fire three shots — all of which hit Antwon. One struck the right side of his face, another hit his right elbow and a third, which was the fatal wound, hit his back and then struck a lung and his heart, an autopsy found.
Officer Rosfeld initially told investigators that Antwon had turned his hand toward him and was holding “something dark,” and that he thought it was a gun. Yet when he was asked again about what had transpired, Officer Rosfeld said he did not see a gun. According to the criminal complaint, “When confronted with this inconsistency, Rosfeld stated he saw something in the passenger’s hand but was not sure what it was.” “Officer Rosfeld stated that he was not certain if the individual who had his arm pointed at him was still pointing at him when he fired.”
An empty 9 millimeter magazine, which fit into a 9 millimeter pistol recovered under the car’s front passenger seat, was found in Antwon’s front right pocket. The pistol had been reported missing in Monroeville, Pa., that same day.
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Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against 16 top executives of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the popular drug OxyContin, claiming they misled doctors, patients and the public about the dangers posed by the opioid-based painkiller. Attorney General Maura Healey said “Their strategy was simple: The more drugs they sold, the more money they made—and the more people died. We found that Purdue engaged in a multibillion-dollar enterprise to mislead us about their drugs. Purdue pushed prescribers to give higher doses to keep patients on drugs for longer periods of time, without regard to the very real increased risk of addiction, overdose and death.” Texas, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee have filed similar lawsuits in state courts against the drug maker, whose headquarters are in Stamford, Connecticut.
The Texas’ lawsuit accuses Purdue Pharma, the privately held manufacterer of OxyContin, of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by aggressively selling its products “when it knew their drugs were potentially dangerous and that its use had a high likelihood of leading to addiction,” state Attorney General Ken Paxton said. “As Purdue got rich from sales of its opioids, Texans and others across the nation were swept up in a public health crisis that led to tens of thousands of deaths each year due to opioid overdoses,” Paxton said.
State officials in Arizona, Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia, — sued various pain-killer manufacturers and distributors for their roles in helping the opioid epidemic grow. In 2007, Purdue Pharma did not admit wrongdoing when it paid $19.5 million to settle lawsuits with 26 states and the District of Columbia after being accused of aggressively marketing OxyContin to doctors while downplaying the risk of addiction. Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas were part of that agreement while Florida and North Dakota were not.
Opioids were the cause of nearly 42,250 deaths in 2016, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research suggests that since heroin and opioid painkillers, (including prescription ones) act similarly in the brain. Opioid painkillers are often referred to by some doctors as “heroin lite” and taking one (even “as directed”) can increase one’s susceptibility to becoming hooked on the other. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50, with opioids as the number-one driver.
Deaths from opioids (including fentynals) have been rising sharply for years with an estimated 100 drug overdoses a day across the country. Experts say the epidemic could kill nearly half a million people across America over the next decade as the crisis of addiction and overdose accelerates.
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The off-duty FBI agent who accidentally shot a man while doing a back flip on the dance floor of a Denver bar has been charged. Chase Bishop, 29, whose gun went flying out of his holster at Mile High Spirits bar in Denver, was charged with second-degree assault. The incident was captured in a viral video with many outraged that he had not been charged by the Denver Police. Police had initially released Bishop to an FBI supervisor while awaiting toxicology results before deciding whether to charge him.
A spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office said Bishop turned himself in after a warrant for his arrest was issued on Tuesday. He was being held in Downtown Detention Center in Denver but jail records say Bishop posted a $1000 bond and was released. Additional charges could be filed based on the results of a blood alcohol content test, which has not yet been received, authorities have said. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said the assault charge was filed before that report comes back “because sufficient evidence has been presented to file it. If an additional charge needs to be filed after further evidence is received, we can file those charges then.” Results from the BAC test are expected within a week.
The incident happened at 12:45am on June 2. Bishop’s gun discharged and struck fellow patron Tom Reddington in the leg. Bishop immediately picked up the weapon but accidentally squeezed off a single round. He then placed the gun in his waistband and walked off the dance floor with his hands in the air, the video shows. Reddington said “We sat down at one of those picnic tables — I heard a loud bang and I thought some idiot set off a firecracker. Then I looked down at my leg and see some brown residue… All of a sudden from the knee down it became completely red. Then it clicked that I’ve been shot.” Reddington told “Good Morning America” that he asked for someone to call 911 before blacking out. A security guard and fellow club-goers applied a tourniquet to his leg. “I soaked through several blankets, several towels, a few gauze pads,” Reddington said. Reddington is expected to fully recover.
Though Bishop offered no assistance to Reddington on the night of the shooting, his attorney said his client would like to meet with the man who was injured and is praying for his recovery. Attorney David Goddard asked that Bishop be allowed to travel because he lives and works in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors did not object, and Denver County Court Judge Andrea Eddy gave Bishop permission to travel. Chase Bishop, 29, made his first appearance in a Denver courtroomon Wednesday, where a judge issued a standard protection order stating that he must have zero contact and stay at least 100 yards away from the victim, Tom Reddington.
Bishop did not enter a plea and declined to answer any questions as he left the courthouse. The FBI field office in Denver declined to comment on the incident “to preserve the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” said Amy Sanders, a spokeswoman. Sanders said the field office would fully cooperate with Denver police and prosecutors “as this matter proceeds through the judicial process.”
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