Tag: Region US

Why some Republicans see Carlson’s departure as a good thing

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s sudden departure from the cable network is being greeted as good news by Republicans who support U.S. intervention in the war in Ukraine.

Carlson was one of the most prominent critics of U.S. involvement to defend Kyiv against Moscow’s invasion.

“It’s a bad day for Vladimir Putin,” a Senate Republican aide said. “This takes one of the biggest critics of Ukraine war in Republican and conservative circles off the table.”

The aide noted that some GOP senators were also uncomfortable with what they viewed as Carlson’s over-the-top rhetoric opposing vaccine mandates, which divided conservatives during the pandemic.

New York Court Rules State Police Can’t Keep Hiding Its Misconduct Records From The Public

Two decades of misconduct records will be now trickling out of the NYSP’s hands. One assumes it will be a very slow drip, one perhaps interrupted by last-minute admissions the NYSP has, say, destroyed records it was required to retain. A lot can happen over twenty years, but hopefully it won’t take twenty years for records requesters to obtain what they’re entitled to possess.

The Superior Court (basically the first level of state courts in New York) decision [PDF] is short and sweet. It not only directs the NYSP to comply with the law, but draws some other helpful legal conclusions along the way, like this one, which says cop shops can’t withhold information about officers who were investigated for misconduct, but later cleared of wrongdoing.

It is clear that the mere fact that the complaint was determined to be unsubstantiated does not categorically exempt the records from disclosure.

Massachusetts Health Care Company Agrees to Plead Guilty and Pay More Than $2.5 Million for Purchasing Botox That was Packaged and Labeled for Use Only in Foreign Countries

FDA OCI, Greater Boston Behavioral Health, guilty, plea, misbranded, drugs, prescription, Rx, $2.5 million, fines, forfeiture, Botox, foreign, black box, warning, side effects, migraine, treatment, consumer protection,

Companies Doing Business with US Gov – Supreme Court and False Claims Act (FCA) Knowledge Requirements

The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in the appeal of two False Claims Act (FCA) cases from the Seventh Circuit that called into question the level of intent, or scienter, required to establish corporate liability under the FCA for “knowingly” overbilling the government for goods or services.  The Court’s eventual decision may have widespread…… Continue Reading
The post Healthcare Companies and Companies Doing Business with the US Government – Supreme Court Appears Likely to Clarify False Claims Act (FCA) Knowledge Requirements appeared first on Global Investigations & Compliance Review.

Mifepristone: Will a court overturn abortion drug’s approval?

I’m going to write about mifepristone and the legal troubles around it, and I will probably regret doing so. That’s partly because the situation is changing – this dispute is now before the US supreme court, and for better or worse, they will have the last word. But as of this writing, that last word hasn’t been handed down, and…

Iran sanctions: US high court rejects Turkish bank’s immunity claim

The US Supreme Court rejected Wednesday the claim of sovereign immunity by a Turkish bank accused of violating Iran sanctions, in a case that has added tensions to ties between Washington and Ankara.

Halkbank was hit with US criminal charges in 2019 that it took part in a yearlong scheme to launder billions of dollars worth of Iranian oil and natural gas proceeds, violating sanctions on Iran.

The funds were used to buy gold and the transactions were disguised as food and medicine purchases in order to fall under a humanitarian exemption to the sanctions, according to court documents.

As part of the scheme, Halkbank allegedly used front companies to funnel $20 billion to Iran, including $1 billion through the US financial system, the US Justice Department said.

The United States charged the bank with six counts of fraud, money laundering, and sanctions offenses, calling it one of the most serious sanctions-breaking cases it has seen.

Former Physician Julian Omidi Associated with 1-800-GET-THIN Sentenced to 7 Years in Federal Prison for Massive Fraud Against Health Insurers

LOS ANGELES – A former doctor has been sentenced to 84 months in federal prison for scheming to defraud private insurance companies and the Tricare health care program for U.S. military service members by fraudulently submitting nearly $120 million in claims related to the 1-800-GET-THIN Lap-Band surgery business, the Justice Department announced today.

Julian Omidi, 54, of West Hollywood, was sentenced Monday evening by United States District Judge Dolly M. Gee.

Judge Gee also sentenced Surgery Center Management LLC (SCM), an Omidi-controlled Beverly Hills-based company, to five years’ probation. A separate hearing on restitution and forfeiture in this case, along with SCM’s fine, is expected in the coming weeks. 

Charges put focus on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ handling of abuse

A Pennsylvania grand jury in recent months accused nine men with connections to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of child sexual abuse in what some consider the nation’s most comprehensive investigation yet into abuse within the faith.

The sets of charges filed in October and February have fueled speculation the jury may make public more about what it has uncovered from a four-year investigation.

A similar grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests culminated in a lengthy 2018 report that concluded hundreds of priests had abused children in Pennsylvania over seven decades and church officials had covered it up, and more recently a similar report was issued in Maryland.

But documents made public so far include nothing about what critics have long maintained has been a systemic cover-up and mishandling of child molestation within the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

U.S. spied on UN Secretary General

The U.S. allegedly eavesdropped on private conversations between United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and other U.N. officials, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. The classified documents highlight conversations that Guterres had with top U.N. officials and world leaders, including one about how he was angry that he was not allowed to visit the Tigray region of Ethiopia,…

UK, US sanction art dealer with suspected ties to Hezbollah

  LONDON (AP) — A diamond and art dealer was sanctioned Tuesday by the U.K. and U.S. governments for allegedly funding Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. The U.K. Treasury said it froze Nazem Ahmad’s assets in the U.K. because he financed the Iranian-backed Shiite militant organization that has been designated an international terrorist group. Under the sanctions, no one in the…

DOJ: Two Arrested for Operating Illegal Overseas Police Station of the Chinese Government

Defendants Are New York City Residents Who Allegedly Operated the Police Station in Lower Manhattan and Destroyed Evidence When Confronted by the FBI A complaint was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging two defendants in connection with opening and operating an illegal overseas police station, located in lower Manhattan, New York, for a provincial branch of…

Parler’s New Owner Shuts Down Site: ‘No Reasonable Person Believes Twitter For Conservatives Is A Viable Business Model’

  Ah, remember Parler? They were the first of the “alternative” social media companies targeting the Trumpist crowd, in which I pointed out that their whole “we don’t moderate” schtick wasn’t going to work. The company speed ran the content moderation learning curve faster than most. But even from the beginning, the Trumpists who joined admitted it was just no…

National Guardsman Arrested For Leaking Top Secret Ukraine War Documents On Discord

So, we’re just handing out top secret security clearance to everyone, I guess. It was clear from the documents posted to Discord (before spreading everywhere), the person behind them would soon be located.

The folded security briefings were obviously smuggled out of secure rooms in someone’s pocket and then photographed carelessly, in one case on top of a hunting magazine. I mean, that narrows it down to people who still buy stuff printed on physical media, a number that shrinks exponentially by the day.

On top of that, the entry level for the leaked info — much of it related to the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia — was Discord, which no one has considered to be the equivalent of Signal or any other secure site for the dissemination of sensitive material.

Fox Hit With Court Sanctions For Withholding Information In Dominion Libel Lawsuit

It doesn’t look like Fox News is going to get away with badmouthing Dominion Voting Systems for weeks following Donald Trump’s unsurprising loss in the 2020 election. Evidence already handed over to Dominion in its libel lawsuit shows many Fox News executives — as well as anchors and commentators — were aware the claims were false but chose to give…

Abusive Governments (And The Criminals They Employ) Are Going To LOVE The UN’s Cybercrime Treaty

Various treaties and multi-national proposals to combat cybercrime have been around for years. I’m not exaggerating. These have been floating around for more than a decade. (Do you want to feel old? This cybercrime treaty proposal would be old enough to legally obtain a social media account in the United States if it were still viable.)

The UN has been pushing its own version. But its idea of “crime” seems off-base, especially when it’s dealing with a conglomerate of countries with varying free speech protections. The “Cybercrime Treaty” proposed by the UN focuses on things many would consider ugly, distasteful, abhorrent, or even enraging. But it’s not things most people consider to be the sort of “crimes” a unified world front should be addressing — not when there’s plenty of financially or personally damaging cybercrime being performed on the regular.

Turkey tightens restrictions on Russian aircraft

Some of Turkey’s largest airport ground handler firms stopped providing services to western-made aircraft owned by Russian airlines earlier this month, multiple sources told Middle East Eye.  The sources, who are within the aviation industry and are familiar with the issue, said Havas, Turkey’s largest ground service provider, as well as Turkish Ground Services (TGS), stopped serving the US-made Boeing and European Airbus aircraft…