In a preliminary ruling on the opioid crisis, a California court ruled in favour of four pharmaceutical companies. According to the judge, it is not certain that the companies caused a health crisis by misleading the addictive effects of their opiates. This is the first time that a claim has been denied by US governments in an opiate case. Governments, …
The United States wants to show at the international climate summit COP26 that it is once again taking the lead in tackling climate change. Climate Representative John Kerry said the goal is” to have significantly increased international ambition by leaving Glasgow”, so that the world is better able to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. Kerry …
The US mining industry has won a sensitive victory in a legal battle over EPA’s power to control CO2 emissions from power plants. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering an appeal by a group of companies and American states, including coal-producing West Virginia. With their legal resistance, States and companies such as Nacco Industries and Westmoreland Mining Holdings are trying …
The top brass general Mark Milley, is concerned about a test with a hypersonic missile that China has recently carried out. In an interview with Bloomberg he speaks of “almost a Sputnik moment”. He refers to the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957. That led to the arms race in the Cold War. Financial Times …
On Saturday, the United States arrested a couple who allegedly tried to sell data on nuclear-powered submarines to foreign countries, the US Department of Justice reports on Sunday. Instead of a foreign spy, the couple did business with an American undercover agent of the FBI for almost a year. The couple consists of a 45-year-old nuclear engineer, and a 42-year-old …
French president Emmanuel Macron wants to settle the conflict with the United States over, among other things, the cancelled sale of French submarines to Australia at the end of this month when he meets President Joe Biden at a G20 meeting in Rome. “I think that is the appropriate opportunity to look at how we can restore the ties,” said …
Oksana Markarova has gone a long way before being appointed by Volodymyr Zelensky as Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States. She was the finance minister in Poroshenko administration. She is rumoured to be the controller of the Akordbank, which is frequently accused of laundering money. She isn’t important enough to take the place in an infamous Pandora papers, but …
Facebook disabled a number of security measures during last year’s US presidential election, a whistleblower claims in the US current affairs program 60 Minutes on Sunday. According to her, it allowed the Capitol in Washington to be stormed. The whistleblower is Frances Haugen, who, according to her LinkedIn profile, has worked as a product manager at Facebook for more than …
A US Federal Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that Biden’s government can continue to deport migrant families caught crossing the border between the US and Mexico. The deportations are carried out on the basis of an executive order issued at the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The order, known as Title 42, was issued in March 2020 by the …
Hundreds of thousands of American civil servants are threatened with temporary unemployment on Thursday night if a political budget agreement is not reached. In the meantime, a catastrophic default is also imminent. The US budget year ends at midnight on Thursday. As there is no new budgetary agreement yet, public funding threatens to stop. Such a ‘government shutdown’ closes non-essential …
