Plaintiff says company’s bid to exit bankruptcy omits US government plan to seize $225m that should go to victims

Plaintiff says company’s bid to exit bankruptcy omits US government plan to seize $225m that should go to victims
A New York bankruptcy judge approved a disclosure statement last week laying out Purdue Pharma’s proposed reorganization plan – despite an objection alleging the disclosure omits information about the US government’s plan to seize Purdue money that could be used to compensate prescription opioid victims under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act instead.
It’s been five years since Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy in a New Jersey federal court, including for unlawfully dispensing opioid products without a legitimate medical purpose. In a press release at the time, the Department of Justice emphasized that the convictions were part of a strategy to defeat the opioid crisis.
But the plea agreement did not include restitution for opioid victims, reasoning that it would not be “administratively feasible” to distribute the funds. Since then, opioid victims have been unable to seek settlements from Purdue, as the company’s 2019 bankruptcy filing stayed civil lawsuits against the company, and will likely instead be settled in bankruptcy court as part of the reorganization plan.
President calls intelligence ‘inconclusive’ while defence secretary describes harm to facilities as ‘moderate to severe’

Donald Trump and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian programme had been set back by only a few months.
Department of Justice official Emil Bove once served President Donald Trump as a criminal defense lawyer. Trump has nominated him to a federal appeals court.

KEY POINTS
A fired Department of Justice lawyer says that top DOJ official Emil Bove told department attorneys to consider telling judges “f---k you” and ignore any court order barring the Trump administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
Donald Trump has nominated Bove as a federal circuit court appeals judge.
Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dick Durbin, an Ilinois Democrat, urged his Republican colleagues not to “turn a blind eye to the dire consequences of confirming” Bove to a lifetime position as a circuit court judge.
The U.S. EV maker has sustained brand and reputational damage in part due to CEO Elon Musk's incendiary rhetoric and political activity.

KEY POINTS
Tesla new car sales in Europe fell 27.9% year-on-year. in May.
The U.S. EV maker has sustained brand and reputational damage in part due to CEO Elon Musk’s incendiary rhetoric and political activity.
Chinese manufacturers, meanwhile, maintained their strong momentum in Europe’s new car market last month.
One of Doge’s best-known workers Edward Coristine, 19, quits a month after his former boss Elon Musk’s departure

One of DOGE’s best-known workers Edward Coristine, 19, quits a month after his former boss Elon Musk’s departure
19-year-old Edward Coristine, has resigned from the US government, a White House official said on Tuesday, a month after the acrimonious departure of his former boss Elon Musk.
Last month, Reuters reported that Coristine was one of two Doge associates promoting the use of AI across the federal bureaucracy. Media outlets, including Wired which first reported his departure, revealed that Coristine had been active in a chat room popular with hackers and previously had been fired from a job following an alleged data leak.
In March, Reuters reported that Coristine had provided tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent.
Jacky Jhaj, a convicted paedophile, has staged several elaborate productions involving children and young people since he was released from prison.

The British paedophile charged in connection with organising a "mock wedding" to a child in Disneyland Paris is Jacky Jhaj, who was found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016, the BBC understands.
Jhaj, 39, has been charged in connection with organising the fake ceremony on Saturday, in which a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was due to feature as his bride.
He was arrested when police were called on Saturday morning by an actor who said he had been hired by Jhaj to play the father of the bride.
The BBC has previously investigated how Jhaj was able to hire hundreds of children to act as his fawning fans at a fake film premiere in London's Leicester Square in 2023.
Canada believes US President Donald Trump is no longer interested in turning it into the 51st state, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday.

Canada believes Donald Trump is no longer interested in turning it into the 51st state, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday.
Asked by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on the sidelines of the NATO meeting in the Netherlands whether Trump is still saying he wants to annex Canada, Carney replied, “No, he is not.”
“He admires Canada,” Carney told Amanpour. “I think it’s fair to say, maybe for a period of time (he) coveted Canada.”
U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly deteriorated in June as households increasingly worried about job availability, another indication that labor market conditions were softening against the backdrop of rising economic uncertainty because of the Trump administration's tariffs.
The ebb in confidence reported by the Conference Board on Tuesday was across all age cohorts and nearly all income groups. It was also across the political spectrum, with the largest decline among Republicans.
Consumers remained pre-occupied with the import duties and were mostly undecided on big-ticket purchases. There was a decline in the share expecting their incomes to increase, though perceptions of the current financial situation remained solid.
A review on the use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines slated to be presented on Thursday to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's outside vaccine committee cites a study that does not exist, the scientist listed as the study's author said.
The report, called "Thimerosal as a Vaccine Preservative" published on the CDC website on Tuesday, is to be presented by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense.
It makes reference to a study called "Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain," published in the journal Neurotoxicology in 2008, and co-authored by UC Davis Professor Emeritus Robert Berman.
But according to Berman, "it's not making reference to a study I published or carried out."
Two U.S. appeals court judges appointed by Donald Trump told lawmakers on Tuesday that they viewed calls to impeach judges over their rulings as inappropriate and that the judiciary needed more resources to bolster security for members of the bench.
U.S. Circuit Judges Amy St. Eve and Michael Scudder appeared before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee on behalf of the U.S. Judicial Conference for a hearing examining the courts' finances and cybersecurity.
But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle used the rare appearance before Congress by two sitting members of the judiciary to prod them about the fallout from a wave of court rulings blocking Trump's immigration and cost-cutting agenda.
China's auto industry has inflated car sales for years through a burgeoning government-backed grey market that registers new cars right off the assembly line and then ships them overseas as "used" vehicles.
These so-called "zero-mileage" cars have never been driven but they are being exported as used to markets like Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East, allowing Chinese automakers to show growth and to dispose of cars that it would be difficult to sell domestically, according to a Reuters review of government documents and interviews with five auto dealers and car traders.
"This is the outcome of an almost-four-year price war that has made companies desperate to book any sales possible," said Tu Le, Michigan-based founder of consultancy Sino Auto Insights.
Persistent health inequalities, disruption caused by Covid-19, and soaring levels of misinformation and hesitancy are behind fall, say study’s authors

Decline blamed on health inequalities, COVID disruption and soaring levels of misinformation and hesitancy
Millions of children worldwide are at risk of lethal diseases because vaccine coverage has stalled or reversed amid persistent health inequalities and soaring levels of misinformation and hesitancy, the largest study of its kind has found.
Major progress in rolling out jabs to billions of children in all corners of the globe over the last five decades has prevented the deaths of 154 million children, according to an analysis published in the Lancet.
But since 2010, progress has stalled or reversed in many countries. Measles vaccination rates have fallen in 100 of 204 countries, while coverage for at least one dose against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio or tuberculosis has declined in 21 of 36 high-income countries – including France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
The reversal, further exacerbated by the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, has left millions of children vulnerable to preventable diseases and death, the authors of the study led by the University of Washington in Seattle said.
Findings by Defense Intelligence Agency suggest Trump’s declaration that sites were ‘obliterated’ may be overstated

Findings by Defense Intelligence Agency suggest Trump’s declaration that sites were ‘obliterated’ may be overstated
An initial classified US assessment of Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend says they did not destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.
The report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency – the intelligence arm of the Pentagon – concluded key components of the nuclear program, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted within months.
The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
Mads Mikkelsen, 21, claims he was pressured into granting access to his phone at Newark Airport. Agents then uncovered a popular meme of the vice president.
A Norwegian tourist has accused American authorities of denying him entry into the U.S. because he had a popular meme of JD Vance saved on his phone.
Mads Mikkelsen, 21, told his hometown newspaper Nordlys that he was subjected to “abuse of power and harassment” by officials at Newark Liberty International Airport.
Mikkelsen claims that immigration officials stopped him for questioning and quizzed him “about drug trafficking, terrorist plots, and right-wing extremism,” all of which he said was “totally without reason.” He says he was placed in a holding cell.
A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.
A plan to sell more than 2 million acres of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.
Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.
Sotomayor sharply criticized the majority for "rewarding lawlessness" by permitting the Trump administration to resume so-called "third-country" deportations.

As the conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with the Trump administration and stayed a district court's preliminary injunction pending appeal, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor sharply criticized the majority for "clos[ing] its eyes" and "rewarding lawlessness" by permitting the government to resume so-called "third-country" deportations.
The court needed five justices to grant the stay, and the nine-member court accomplished that without the help of the dissenting Sotomayor and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
As recently as early June, immigration lawyers opposing the Trump administration's stay application urged the high court not to lose sight of the government's "own choices — to violate the district court's orders" by moving to "deport two groups of class members to Libya and South Sudan" even after U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued the injunction in April.
For social justice activist Glenn Harris, President Donald Trump’s statement on Juneteenth, arguing there are “too many nonworking holidays in America” costing the country “billions of dollars” was no surprise.

For social justice activist Glenn Harris, Donald Trump’s statement on Juneteenth, arguing there are “too many nonworking holidays in America” costing the country “billions of dollars,” was no surprise.
Harris said the comments coming on the federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States were consistent with Trump’s most recent policies and practices working against people of color.
“In many ways it’s just a continuation of this administration’s attempt to erase the civil rights, free speech and literally the history of Black and brown people,” said Harris, who is president of Race Forward.
Vice-president said the bombing was a ‘success’, but reports suggest the stockpile was probably moved elsewhere

JD Vance has suggested Iran’s estimated 400kg (882lb) stockpile of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, remains intact despite the recent US bombing campaign against Iran.
On Monday, the vice-president told Fox News that the location of the uranium “is not the question before us”, and said the relevant question was: “Can Iran enrich the uranium to weapons-grade level and can they convert that fuel into a nuclear weapon?”
The Iranian stockpile of uranium was believed to have been located mainly at Isfahan, which houses a conversion facility that turns uranium into the form that can be fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
Federal agencies are rehiring and ordering back from leave some of the employees who were laid off in the weeks after President Donald Trump took office as they scramble to fill critical gaps in services left by the Department of Government Efficiency-led effort to shrink the federal workforce.

Federal agencies are rehiring and ordering back from leave some of the employees who were laid off in the weeks after Donald Trump took office as they scramble to fill critical gaps in services left by the DOGE-led effort to shrink the federal workforce.
The Trump administration’s quiet backtracking from the firings and voluntary retirements — which are also paired with new hires to fill vacancies those departures created — come as federal agencies are still implementing their “reduction-in-force” plans as part of a push for spending cuts.
Experts warned that even though the Trump administration has backtracked on some of its efforts to shrink the federal workforce, the rapid rehirings are a warning sign that it has lost more capacities and expertise that could prove critical — and difficult to replace — in the months and years ahead.
Since the invasion of Ukraine prompted Helsinki to join NATO two years ago, tensions reminiscent of the Cold War have resurfaced along the forested 1,340-km frontier, Europe’s longest with Russia.