Pfizer Inc. agreed to plead guilty under a $2.3 billion federal settlement over unlawful prescription-drug promotions.The company in January disclosed it would pay the $2.3 billion over allegations it had marketed the since-withdrawn anti-inflammatory drug Bextra and possibly other products for medical conditions different than their approved use. Details of the settlement weren't available in January, however.
The final agreement, announced Wednesday, also resolves Justice Department investigations involving alleged past off-label promotional practices concerning Zyvox, Geodon and Lyrica and allegations related to certain payments to health-care professionals Pfizer medicines.
Pfizer Settlement Includes Guilty Plea
Is it anti-semitic to defend Palestinian human rights?
All across Canada and in the United States, there is an organized campaign to suppress criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
The campaign is especially strong on university campuses where many voices have been raised in support of human rights for the Palestinians.
U.S. Companies Cut 298,000 Jobs in August
Companies eliminated more jobs than forecast in August, a private survey indicated today, signaling that employers have yet to gain confidence about a recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930s.
The 298,000 drop followed a revised 360,000 decline the prior month that was smaller than previously estimated, according to figures from ADP Employer Services.
Scientists identify coldest place on earth
The site, known simply as Ridge A, is nearly 14,000 metres high and is located deep within the Antarctic Plateau. It has an average winter temperature of minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 degrees Celsius) and is so remote that it is thought that no human has ever set foot there.A team of American and Australian scientists identified Ridge A from satellite imagery and climate models during an exhaustive search for the best observatory site in the world.
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American Diplomats Advocated "Nuremberg Defense"
Two newly-obtained documents show how American diplomats during the Bush administration worked tenaciously to incorporate what is commonly known as the Nuremberg Defense into a new international convention addressing enforced disappearances.
Sexual predators, deviants, running rampant at US embassy in Kabul
An e-mail from one of the guards described parties on days off, during which guards and their supervisors urinated on themselves and others and ate potato chips and drank vodka from the cracks of buttocks.
“You will see that they have a group of sexual predators, deviants, running rampant over there,” one guard, whose name was withheld, said in an e-mail to POGO, adding, “They are showing poor judgment.”
Mobile phone child safety guidelines ‘to be dropped’
Current advice from the Department of Health had said that research showed mobile phone use “affects brain activity”, although it conceded there were “significant gaps in our scientific knowledge”.
But a draft of a new advisory leaflet for parents now makes clear that precautions need not be taken when it comes to children.
Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
On a superficial level, the shift means that most of those representing the United States in the war will be wearing the scruffy cargo pants, polo shirts, baseball caps and other casual accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.
More fundamentally, the contractors who are a majority of the force in what has become the most important American enterprise abroad are subject to lines of authority that are less clear-cut than they are for their military colleagues.
Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes
Aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali — the leader of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorabak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police officers stuffed them with thousands of ballots.
TVNL Comment: This is the government our kids are dying for. Why? Just asking.
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