May
14
2013
On Jan. 23, 2008, the pharmaceutical company Novartis threw a party at a restaurant on Long Island. The party, which cost $1,250, was ostensibly for doctors to learn about cardiovascular drugs made by the company, with Novartis sales representatives present as well.
But no doctors ever came, according to a whistleblower lawsuit against Novartis that was unsealed last week. Instead, nine sales reps ran up the tab, and the company wrote an honorarium check to Dr. …
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May
14
2013
(Reuters) – Major U.S. retailers, including Gap Inc, declined to endorse an accord on Bangladesh building and fire safety backed by Europe’s two biggest fashion chains, a trans-Atlantic divide that may dilute garment industry reform efforts.
Three weeks after the collapse of a building housing garment factories, which killed more than 1,100 people, Western brands that rely on Bangladesh to produce clothing cheaply disagreed over how best to ensure worker safety.
Gap said it was ready to …
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May
14
2013
Neat fact: If the federal government were to take all of the money it pours into various forms of financial aid each year, it could go ahead and make tuition free, or close to it, for every student at every public college in the country.
Will it ever happen? Ha. Not unless Bernie Sanders somehow leads a Latin American-style coup down Pennsylvania Avenue. But one of the reasons I argued for the idea a couple …
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May
14
2013
Breadwinning makes no sense without caregiving. Someone must transform income into the food, shelter, clothing, nurture, discipline, education, minding, nursing, transportation, and emotional support that creates life outside of the office, permits survival of the race, cares for the ill and disabled, and makes life livable when we can no longer care for ourselves. Yet the United States lags behind almost all other industrialized countries in providing the goods, services, and incentives that make it …
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May
14
2013
Afghan officials say they’ve got video of a man overseeing the torture of Afghan civilians. Exactly who ordered the man to torture is a matter of fierce dispute — and also helps explain this year’s erosion of trust between Washington and Kabul.
Allegedly, there’s a videotape in Afghan government hands showing a man named Zakaria Kandahari presiding over the torture of an Afghan civilian who, along with 15 others, recently disappeared from Wardak Province. According to …
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May
14
2013
(Reuters) – Seven shots rang out at a wedding reception in this sooty city in eastern India, and Suresh Singh, India’s “Coal King”, fell fatally wounded.
He was a wealthy coal trader, a politician and, police say, a crime boss. At the time of the shooting, Singh had 14 criminal charges against him, including one for homicide. His career and murder are emblematic of one of India’s most nagging economic problems: the corruption that cripples …
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May
14
2013
(Reuters) – Vermont is poised to become the third U.S. state to allow doctor-assisted suicide, after its legislature passed a bill allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.
The bill passed late on Monday, and the governor has pledged to sign it into law.
Oregon and Washington state have legalized doctor-assisted suicide in voter referendums.
Vermont’s measure includes a number of safeguards. Both the patient’s primary physician and a consulting doctor must agree the …
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May
14
2013
Almost all of Alaska’s indigenous villages are learning to live with the dramatic changes in the far north: the thinning sea ice, the melting of the frozen sub-soil known as permafrost. But for some villages the consequences of climate change are a direct threat to their existence.
A government report in 2003 found that 86% of all indigenous Alaskan villages – 184 communities – were experiencing consequences from climate change. The most destructive of those effects …
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May
14
2013
Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it’s easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples’ lands. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune, and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride.
With …
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May
14
2013
While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, …
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