Tag Archives: Washington

Washington state sues OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma

Kentucky accuses Endo of contributing to opioid epidemic

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – Washington state on Thursday sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP, becoming the latest state or local government to file a lawsuit seeking to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for a national opioid addiction epidemic.

The city of Seattle also filed a separate lawsuit against Purdue as well as units of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Johnson & Johnson, Endo International Plc and Allergan plc.

The lawsuit by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson accused Purdue of deceptive marketing of OxyContin and convincing doctors and the public that its drugs had a low-risk of addiction and were effective for treating chronic pain.

He said he would be seeking to force Purdue to pay a “significant” sum for engaging in marketing practices that downplayed the addictiveness of its drugs, allowing it to earn billions of dollars while fuelling the opioid crisis.

“I don’t know how executives at Purdue sleep at night,” Ferguson told reporters.

Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue said in a statement it was “deeply troubled” by the opioid crisis and that its U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved products account for just 2 percent of all opioid prescriptions.

“We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense,” Purdue said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in over 33,000 deaths in 2015, the latest year for which data is available. The death rate has continued rising, according to estimates.

The lawsuits followed a wave of cases against opioid manufacturers and distributors by Louisiana, West Virginia, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as well as several cities and counties.

Purdue and three executives pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin, which is used to relieve pain, and agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million to resolve a U.S. Justice Department probe.

That year, the privately held company also reached a $19.5 million settlement with 26 states and the District of Columbia. It had agreed in 2015 to pay $24 million to resolve a lawsuit by Kentucky.

In filing his lawsuit in King County Superior Court in Seattle on Thursday, Ferguson said he was breaking off from an ongoing multi-state probe by various attorneys general into companies that manufacture and distribute opioids.

While Ferguson said looked forward to seeing its results, “we felt we had a case ready to go.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Susan Thomas and Tom Brown)

Students protest U.S. Attorney General speech at Georgetown

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at a news conference to address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Students and faculty at Georgetown Law School gathered on Tuesday to protest that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was delivering an address about the right of free speech on college campuses to an invitation-only audience without giving critics of the Trump administration an opportunity to ask questions.

Several dozen protesters stood on the front steps of the school, some with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize that they felt their views were censored from the event. Some held signs denouncing racism, censorship and U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind “DACA,” the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that shields immigrants who were brought to the United State as children.

Taking turns with a bullhorn, students and some faculty members accused the school of shutting them out from attending the speech and asking questions.

In his address, Sessions focused on concerns about whether the rights of speakers on college campuses were being trampled by student protesters who find their views offensive.

Sessions complained that protesters were silencing speakers. He also said the department plans to file a brief in a college free speech case this week.

Protesters “are now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that insufficiently conform with their views,” he said.

One protester, third-year law student Charlotte Berschback, complained on the sidelines of the protest that invitations to the Sessions speech had been withdrawn from students who had RSVPed and had initially been told they would have a seat.

“We pay a ton of tuition,” she said. “We should have a role in deciding who comes to our school.” She added that liberal students had been excluded from attending the Sessions event and that the school should have used a lottery process to let students attend.

Sessions cited concerns about multiple incidents at college campuses around the country, including the University of California at Berkeley and Middlebury College in Vermont.

Sessions mentioned recent violent protests at Berkeley. He said the school “was reportedly forced to spend more than $600,000 and have an overwhelming police presence simply to prove that the mob was not in control of the campus.”

The Justice Department later said it was also filing a brief on behalf of students at Georgia Gwinnett College who are challenging a school policy that requires them to use “free speech zones” to express their views.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by David Gregorio)

Student opens fire at Washington state school, killing classmate

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – A student carrying two guns opened fire at his high school near Spokane, Washington on Wednesday, killing one classmate and injuring three others before he was apprehended by a staff member, the local sheriff said.

The slain student was trying to convince the shooter, whose first gun had jammed, not to carry out the morning rampage when he was shot dead, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told reporters.

The gunman then fired on three other students in a second-floor hallway of Freeman High School in Rockford, Washington, Knezovich said. The surviving victims, who were in their mid-teens, were listed in stable condition, a local hospital said.

Knezovich declined to identify the suspect or discuss what may have motivated the gun violence in detail but said: “It sounds like a case of a bullying-type of situation.”

He said that a member of the staff at Freeman who he described as “very courageous” was able to capture the gunman before police officers arrived on scene to take him into custody. He was being held at Spokane County juvenile jail.

“Fortunately that one (gun) jammed. This would have been a lot worse if it didn’t,” Knezovich said. “These are senseless, tragic events that really don’t need to happen and I don’t really understand them.”

“But we need to figure out what’s gone wrong with our society that our children decide that they need to take weapons to deal with the issues that they’re facing,” he said.

A freshman who witnessed the shooting told local KREM-TV that the shooter, a classmate since elementary school, stalked the hallway with a pistol and second gun, appearing calm as he fired at his victims and the ceiling.

The girl said that the suspect was an “outgoing” boy who she would not have thought capable of such violence. But she said other students had told her that he had made an ominous post about his intentions on a social media account.

Following the shooting at the school of 327 students, some parents abandoned their cars stuck in traffic and walked up to a mile to reach their children, KHQ-TV reported.

“This morning’s shooting at Freeman High School is heartbreaking. All Washingtonians are thinking of the victims and their families,” Governor Jay Inslee said on Twitter.

The United States has had an average of 52 school shooting incidents a year since a gunman killed 26 young children and educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group founded in response to that massacre.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Derek Caney and Gina Cherulus in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

One dead, three wounded in Washington state school shooting

police sirens

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – One child was killed and three people wounded at a shooting on Wednesday at a high school near Spokane, Washington before a suspect was taken into custody, the local fire chief said.

It was not immediately clear if the slain victim was a student at Freeman High School in Rockford, Washington, Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer told reporters at a news conference.

Schaeffer said he did not know if the suspect was a student at the school or what may have motivated the gun violence. None of the wounded victims were identified.

The fire chief described a chaotic scene at the school, with the sounds of bullets echoing through the halls prompting fears that there was more than one shooter.

Local television stations showed the school surrounded by police and fire vehicles, parents running the scene. Some parents got out of their cars and walked up to a mile rather than wait in traffic, KHQ-TV reported.

The high school has 327 students, according to U.S. News.

Three victims were in stable condition at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and Children’s Hospital in Spokane, said spokeswoman Nicole Stewart.

A Twitter user named Christina identified herself as a junior at the high school and said she had been evacuated following at least four shots. She tweeted a picture of anxious-looking students sitting on the floor in a classroom.

“This morning’s shooting at Freeman High School is heartbreaking. All Washingtonians are thinking of the victims and their families,” Governor Jay Inslee said on Twitter.

Spokane placed all schools in the district on lockdown at about 10:30 a.m. PDT (1730 GMT), following the shooting, but an hour later said on Twitter that it had been lifted.

The United States has had an average of 52 school shooting incidents a year since a gunman killed 26 young children and educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group founded in response to that massacre.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Derek Caney and Gina Cherulus in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Subdued by Harvey, Congress reconvenes facing fiscal tests

Church Volunteers work to remove Hurricane Harvey flood damage from a home in Houston, Texas, U.S. September 2, 2017.

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas, but could bring some fiscal order to Washington where Republicans and Democrats will need to put political differences aside in order to approve spending to repair the damage from flooding in and around Houston.

Lawmakers returning to Washington after a month-long break are expected to swiftly agree to an initial request for nearly $8 billion in disaster aid. More requests will follow from the Trump administration, with the fractious Republicans who control the House of Representatives and the Senate determined to look capable of governing in a crisis.

Some estimates say Harvey could cost U.S. taxpayers almost as much as the total federal aid outlay of more than $110 billion for 2005’s record-setting Hurricane Katrina.

That sobering cost and the urgent needs of Harvey’s victims have helped to calm a fiscal storm that had threatened to engulf Congress and President Donald Trump ahead of Oct. 1. The rancor revolves around the deadline for lawmakers to approve a temporary spending measure to keep the government from shutting down, as well as the need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

“There’s reason to hope that in the wake of the tragedy in Texas … there will be a renewed sense of community and common purpose that can help get things done,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who once worked as spokesman for former House Speaker John Boehner.

Before Harvey, Trump had threatened to veto such spending and trigger a shutdown if Congress refused to fund his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. He has dropped his threat, the Washington Post reported on Friday, making a shutdown less likely.

As of the Labor Day holiday weekend, approval by Congress was widely anticipated in late September of a stopgap bill, or continuing resolution, to continue current spending levels for two to three more months.

The need to help Hurricane Harvey victims “creates another reason as to why you’d want to keep the government open,” Republican Senator Roy Blunt said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

 

FRESH START WITH TRUMP

With much of Washington distracted by tensions with North Korea over its nuclear program, Congress must also raise the federal debt ceiling by the end of September or early October to stave off an unprecedented U.S. government debt default, which would shake global markets.

The debt ceiling caps how much money the U.S. government can borrow, and some conservatives are loath to raise it without spending reforms. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said Congress should act quickly to increase the debt limit, otherwise relief funding for hurricane-ravaged areas of Texas might be delayed.

“Without raising the debt limit, I am not comfortable that we will get money to Texas this month to rebuild,” Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday.

Blunt, a junior member of Senate Republican leadership, said it was possible lawmakers could tie legislation raising the debt ceiling to measures providing financial aid for recovery from Harvey. “That’s one way to do it,” he said on Meet the Press.

Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines said Friday he would prefer to see spending reforms attached to the borrowing ceiling. “We need to do something to reduce the debt.”

Senior Republicans were warning Trump not to anger Democrats by carrying through with his threat to curtail the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for immigrant children, which Democrats widely support. Democratic votes will likely be needed to both raise the debt ceiling and prevent a shutdown.

Trump might have listened to them. Sources said on Sunday that he has decided to scrap the program that shields the young immigrants from deportation, but he will give Congress six months to craft a bill to replace it.

With his tendency to send conflicting policy signals and attack fellow Republicans, Trump may present the biggest uncertainty as Congress gets back to work.

The four top Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House are set to hold a rare bipartisan meeting with Trump on Wednesday to chart a path forward for the multiple fiscal issues.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who will attend the meetings, spent much of August feuding with Trump, who attacked the Kentuckian repeatedly on Twitter.

One Republican strategist said the Senate leader would not dwell on those tensions. “Basically every Republican senator is looking to put whatever nonsense happened on Twitter in August in the rear view mirror and focus on all the important work that needs to get done in September,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and campaign manager for McConnell.

 

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and Chris Sanders; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Mary Milliken)

 

Anti-racism activists to march from Charlottesville to Washington

Participants of "Charlottesville to D.C: The March to Confront White Supremacy" begin a ten-day trek to the nation's capital from Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Julia Rendleman

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Anti-racism activists will begin a 10-day march on Monday from Charlottesville to Washington to protest against a far-right rally in the Virginia city and what they called President Donald Trump’s reluctance to condemn its white nationalist organizers.

The “March to Confront White Supremacy” is the latest demonstration following the Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, when one woman was killed after a man drove a car into a crowd of anti-racism counterprotesters.

Trump received fierce criticism from across the political spectrum after he first blamed “many sides” for the violence. Under pressure, he later condemned neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, but that did little to appease his opponents.

March organizers said that about 200 people will begin walking on Monday evening from Charlottesville, a liberal-leaning college town that is home to the University of Virginia. That number is expected to rise as the march nears its end in Washington on Sept. 6.

“What we’re trying to do is unite the country,” one of the organizers, Cassius Rudolph of People’s Consortium for Human and Civil Rights, said. “We’re standing up to confront white supremacy.”

Other organizers include the Women’s March, which oversaw a massive anti-Trump demonstration in Washington in January, and the Movement for Black Lives, Rudolph said.

The march will begin at Emancipation Park, which was the focus of the Aug. 12 rally called by white nationalists to protest against the city’s plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

There were hours of clashes in the streets and a 32-year-old local woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when a car crashed into a group of counterprotesters. The alleged driver, 20-year-old Ohio man James Fields Jr., faces multiple charges including murder.

Charlottesville police charged two men over the weekend in connection with an Aug. 12 assault. Daniel Borden, 18, is in custody in Cincinnati, police said in a statement, while Alex Ramos, 33, is at large.

A third man, Richard Preston, 52, was charged with firing a weapon during the rally and is being held in Towson, Maryland, the police statement said.

 

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Alistair Bell)

 

Netanyahu: Iran building missile production sites in Syria, Lebanon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) gestures as he delivers a joint statement with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Jerusalem August 28,

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran is building sites to produce precision-guided missiles in Syria and Lebanon, with the aim of using them against Israel.

At the start of a meeting in Jerusalem with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Netanyahu accused Iran of turning Syria into a “base of military entrenchment as part of its declared goal to eradicate Israel.”

“It is also building sites to produce precision-guided missiles towards that end, in both Syria and in Lebanon. This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the U.N. should not accept,” Netanyahu said.

Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy, has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s staunchest backer and has provided militia fighters to help him in Syria’s civil war.

There was no immediate comment from Iran.

Israel has pointed to Tehran’s steadily increasing influence in the region during the six-year-old Syrian conflict, whether via its own Revolutionary Guard forces or Shi’ite Muslim proxies, especially Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu, in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Israel was prepared to act unilaterally to prevent an expanded Iranian military presence in Syria.

Russia, also an Assad ally, is seen as holding the balance of power in achieving a deal on Syria’s future. Israel fears an eventual Assad victory could leave Iran with a permanent garrison in Syria, extending a threat posed from neighboring Lebanon by Hezbollah.

Netanyahu accused Iran of building the production sites two weeks after an Israeli television report showed satellite images it said were of a facility Tehran was constructing in northwest Syria to manufacture long-range rockets.

The Channel 2 News report said the images were of a site near the Mediterranean coastal town of Baniyas and were taken by an Israeli satellite.

In parallel to lobbying Moscow, Israel has been trying to persuade Washington that Iran and its guerrilla partners, not Islamic State, pose the greater common threat in the region.

 

(Additional reporting and editing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

 

Canadian pastor escaped execution due to foreign citizenship

Pastor Hyeon Soo Lim speaks at the Light Presbyterian Church in Mississauga.

TORONTO (Reuters) – A Canadian pastor whom North Korea released this month after two years of imprisonment escaped execution and torture during his captivity because of his nationality, he told CBC News in his first interview since his return.

Hyeon Soo Lim, the pastor from Toronto, said in an interview broadcast on Saturday that he was never harmed and that he would not hesitate to go back to North Korea if the country allowed him. A transcript of the interview was posted on the Canadian public broadcaster’s website.

“If I’m just Korean, maybe they kill me,” Lim said. “I’m Canadian so they cannot, because they cannot kill the foreigners.”

Lim, formerly the senior pastor at one of Canada’s largest churches, had disappeared on a mission to North Korea in early 2015. He was sentenced to hard labor for life in December 2015 on charges of attempting to overthrow the Pyongyang regime.

He said North Korea treated him well despite forcing him to dig holes and break coal by hand all day in a labor camp.

Lim told CBC News that he was “coached and coerced” into confessing that he traveled under the guise of humanitarian work as part of a “subversive plot” to overthrow the government and set up a religious state.

North Korea let him go on humanitarian grounds. The announcement came during heightened tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, although authorities have not said there was any connection between his release and efforts to defuse the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Lim said he felt no anger at the Kim Jong Un regime for sentencing him to prison.

“No, I thanked North Korea,” he said. “I forgive them.”

 

(Reporting by Denny Thomas; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

 

Burundi teenage robotics team goes missing after U.S. contest: police

Members of a teenage robotics team from the African nation of Burundi, who were reported missing after taking part in an international competition, are seen in pictures released by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., U.S. July 20, 2017. Metropolitan Police Department/Handout via REUTERS

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Six teenagers from a Burundi robotics team have been reported missing after an international competition in Washington and two of them were seen entering Canada, police said on Thursday.

The four males and two females were last seen late on Tuesday afternoon when the robotics contest ended at the FIRST Global Challenge, police said. Authorities issued missing persons photographs of the six on Wednesday.

Two of the Burundians – Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, and 16-year-old Don Ingabire – were spotted crossing the United States border into Canada, District of Columbia police spokeswoman Margarita Mikhaylova said.

“We don’t have any indication of foul play and we’re continuing to investigate this case,” she said. Police said they did not have information about how they were spotted or the nature of the border crossing.

Canada’s Border Services Agency said it could neither confirm nor deny that the pair entered Canada.

Teams of teenage students from more than 150 countries took part in the competition, which was designed to encourage careers in math and technology. An all-girl squad from Afghanistan drew worldwide media attention when President Donald Trump intervened after they were denied U.S. visas.

Burundi has long been plagued by civil war and other violence. Fighting has killed at least 700 people and forced 400,000 from their homes since April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he would run for a third term in office.

The Burundi Embassy in Washington said by email that it did not know about the robotics contest or if a Burundian team was attending.

Competition organizer FIRST Global said in a statement that its president, Joe Sestak, made the first call to police about the missing competitors. The non-profit group learned on Tuesday night that the Burundi team’s adult mentor had been unable to find them, it said.

The keys to the students’ rooms at Trinity Washington University were left in the mentor’s bag and their clothes had been taken from the rooms, the organization said.

“The security of the students is of paramount importance to FIRST Global,” the statement said. It added that FIRST Global had provided safe transport to university dormitories and students were always supposed to be under the supervision of their mentor.

The other missing Burundians were named as Nice Munezero, 17; Kevin Sabumukiza, 17; Richard Irakoze, 18; and Aristide Irambona, 18. Police said the students had one-year visas.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Additional reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Grant McCool)

China-bound flight returns to Seattle after passenger assaults crew member

By Eric M. Johnson

SEATTLE (Reuters) – A Delta Air Lines flight bound for Beijing returned to Seattle on Thursday after a passenger assaulted a flight attendant in the first-class cabin before being subdued by other travelers, a Seattle-Tacoma International Airport spokesman said.

The flight attendant and a passenger were sent to an area hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening after the Boeing 767-300 landed safely shortly after 7 p.m., airport spokesman Perry Cooper said.

A 23-year-old male passenger, from Florida, was arrested by Port of Seattle police on suspicion of assaulting a member of the flight crew and was transferred to federal detention, a Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman said by e-mail.

Delta flight 129 departed Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at around 5:30 p.m., but headed back to Seattle roughly 45 minutes into the flight, Cooper said.

Cooper said the man assaulted a flight attendant in the first-class cabin, but said he had no further details about the incident.

The FBI, which was assisting local police with the investigation, interviewed passengers and had no information to suggest the incident was a threat to national security, said Ayn Dietrich, an agency spokeswoman.

The suspect was due to make to an initial appearance in federal court in Seattle on Friday afternoon, Dietrich said.

Cooper said multiple passengers intervened to help subdue the suspect during the in-flight disturbance. The pilot decided to turn back and call for police, fire, and medical personnel to meet the plane.

Lorie Dankers, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said there was no security breach at the airport, south of Seattle.

Delta spokeswoman Liz Savadelis said by e-mail that the passenger was restrained onboard and then removed from the flight by law enforcement without further incident after the plane landed in Seattle.

The flight was scheduled to re-depart for Beijing later in the evening, Savadelis said.

Media reports that the plane was escorted back to Seattle by military jets were inaccurate, she added.

The Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel)