Year: 2019

A committee guiding OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy has suggested other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacy chains use Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits seeking to hold the drug industry accountable for the national opioid crisis. The committee of unsecured creditors said in a letter sent Sunday to the parties and obtained by The Associated Press that the country “is in the grips of a crisis that must be addressed, and that doing so may require creative approaches.” It’s calling for all the companies to put money into a fund in exchange for having all their lawsuits resolved. The committee includes victims of the opioid crisis plus a medical center, a health insurer, a prescription benefit management company, the manufacturer of an addiction treatment drug and a pension insurer. It says that the concept may not be feasible but invited further discussion. It does not give a size of contributions from the company. Opioid Settlement Talks Broaden Ahead of 1st Federal Trial Under the proposal, the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson would pay a total of $18 billion over 18 years The same committee has been aggressive in Purdue’s bankruptcy, saying it would support pausing litigation against members of the Sackler family who own Purdue in exchange for a $200 million fund from the company to help fight the opioid crisis. Paul Hanly, a lead lawyer for local governments in the lawsuits, said in a text message Sunday evening that he’d heard about the mass settlement idea, …

 The still popular former mayor of Baltimore and brother of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Thomas D’Alesandro III, died Sunday at 90. The family said he had been suffering from complications from a stroke. Pelosi, who is leading a congressional delegation in Jordan, issued a statement calling her brother “the finest public servant I have ever known…a leader of dignity, compassion, and extraordinary courage.” D’Alesandro was known around Baltimore as “Young Tommy,” because his father, “Big Tommy,” was also mayor and a U.S. congressman. “Young Tommy” was president of the Baltimore City Council and was elected mayor in 1967, leading Baltimore through four of the most tumultuous years in the city’s history. His challenges included a number of labor strikes that paralyzed city services, the push for urban renewal, and the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 from which Baltimore has never fully recovered. D’Alesandro was also the first Baltimore mayor to appoint African-Americans to important city positions. After deciding not to run for a second term in 1971, D’Alesandro went into private law practice and could still be seen dining in Italian restaurants and attending Baltimore Oriole baseball games until just before his death.   …

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who rose from poverty and pledged to champion democracy, fight entrenched corruption and modernize the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, was sworn in Sunday for his second and final five-year term with a pledge to take bolder actions. Army troops and police, along with armored vehicles, firetrucks and ambulances, were deployed across Jakarta, the vast capital, and major roads were closed in a departure from the more relaxed atmosphere of the popular Widodo’s 2014 inauguration. An Oct. 10 knife attack by an Islamic militant couple that wounded the country’s security minister set off a security crackdown. Known for his down-to-earth style, Widodo, 58, opted for an austere ceremony at the heavily guarded Parliament without the festive parade that transported him after his inauguration five years ago on a horse-drawn carriage in downtown Jakarta, where he was then cheered on by thousands of waving supporters. On his way to the ceremony Sunday, Widodo got out of his convoy with some of his security escorts and shook the hands of supporters, who yelled his name, waved Indonesia’s red-and-white flag and called him “bapak,” or father. After taking his oath before the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in front of hundreds of lawmakers and foreign dignitaries in the heavily guarded Parliament, Widodo laid out ambitious targets to help Indonesia join the ranks of the world’s developed nations by the time it marks a century of independence in 2045. He said in his inauguration speech that he expects poverty – …

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a group of American lawmakers on a surprise visit to Jordan to discuss “the deepening crisis” in Syria amid a shaky U.S.-brokered cease-fire.   The visit came after bipartisan criticism in Washington has slammed President Donald Trump for his decision to withdraw the bulk of U.S. troops from northern Syria — clearing the way for Turkey’s wide-ranging offensive against the Kurdish groups, who had been key U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group.   Turkey agreed on Thursday to suspend its offensive for five days, demanding the Kurdish forces withdraw from a designated strip of the border about 30 kilometers deep (19 miles).     Pelosi, along with the nine-member Congressional delegation, met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the capital of Amman late Saturday for talks focusing on security and “regional stability,” according to a statement from her office.   Jordan is a key U.S. ally in the region and has been greatly affected by the eight-year-long civil war in neighboring Syria. Jordanian officials say the kingdom hosts some 1 million Syrians who have fled the fighting.    “With the deepening crisis in Syria after Turkey’s incursion, our delegation has engaged in vital discussions about the impact to regional stability, increased flow of refugees, and the dangerous opening that has been provided to ISIS, Iran and Russia,” said the statement, using the Islamic State group’s acronym.   Jordan’s state news agency Petra said Abdullah stressed the importance of safeguarding Syria’s territorial integrity …

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan amid efforts to restart peace talks with the Taliban. “The aim is to still get a peace agreement at some point, a political agreement, that is the best way forward,” Esper told reporters traveling with him Sunday. Last month, President Donald Trump abruptly called off yearlong U.S.-Taliban talks just when the two adversaries had come close to signing a peace agreement that could have ended the 18-year-old Afghan war, America’s longest overseas military intervention.   Trump declared the peace process process “dead,” citing continued insurgent deadly attacks on Afghan civilians and American troops in Afghanistan.       …

Brussels officials on Sunday pressed on with plans to ratify the divorce deal as European leaders considered Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s reluctant request for a Brexit delay. Ambassadors and senior officials from the other 27 member states met Sunday after British MPs forced Johnson to send EU Council president Donald Tusk a late request to postpone the withdrawal. “The EU is keeping all options open and has therefore initiated the ratification process so that it can be handed over to the European Parliament on Monday,” an EU diplomat told AFP. “The EU will probably pursue this strategy until there is clarity on the British side,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. FILE – European Council President Donald Tusk speaks during a media conference at an EU summit in Brussels, July 2, 2019. Tusk will spend a “few days” canvassing member state leaders, and diplomats said this would mean the British parliament will have to vote on Brexit again before hearing their decision on the October 31 departure. “It was a very short and normal meeting of the EU ambassadors to launch the next steps of the EU ratification of the agreement,” EU negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters after Sunday’s talks. Diplomats told AFP the ambassadors’ meeting lasted only 15 minutes and had dealt simply with EU ratification, although a participant said they had “taken note” of Johnson’s letter. Asked whether he thought EU leaders would grant a delay, Barnier said: “President Tusk will consult in the next days.” Previous …

Thousands of Rohingya living in Bangladesh refugee camps have agreed to move to an island in the Bay of Bengal, officials said Sunday, despite fears the site is prone to flooding. Dhaka has long wanted to move 100,000 refugees to the muddy silt islet, saying it would take pressure off the overcrowded border camps where almost a million Rohingya live. Some 740,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in August 2017 in the face of a military crackdown, joining 200,000 refugees already in makeshift tent settlements at Cox’s Bazar. Relocations begin soon Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner, Mahbub Alam, said officials overseeing the relocation would be posted to Bhashan Char island in the next few days. Approximately 6,000-7,000 refugees have  expressed their willingness to be relocated to Bhashan Char, Alam told AFP from Cox’s Bazar, adding that “the number is rising.” He did not say when the refugees would be moved, but a senior Navy officer involved in building facilities on the island said it could start by December, with some 500 refugees sent daily. Bangladesh had been planning since last year to relocate Rohingya to the desolate flood-prone site, which is an hour by boat from the mainland. Rights groups have warned the island, which emerged from the sea only about two decades ago, might not be able to withstand violent storms during the annual monsoon season. In the past half-century, powerful cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Meghna river estuary where the island is located. Rohingya leaders would be taken …

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) confirmed Saturday it had delayed the planned release of preliminary results of the Sept. 28 presidential polls.    The commission’s chief, Hawa Alam Nuristani, made the widely anticipated announcement at a late evening news conference in Kabul on the day the commission was supposed to officially deliver first results.    Nuristani apologized to Afghans for not being able to meet the deadline, but she defended the decision to delay the results, saying it would “further ensure the transparency of the [electoral] process” and restore the people’s confidence in it.    The chief election commissioner promised to release preliminary results as soon as possible but did not say exactly when that would happen.    Two senior IEC members, while speaking to VOA on Friday, predicted results would be delayed by at least one week.  Problems from the start   Election officials said they had from the outset faced issues in collecting and transferring massive amounts of data to the main IEC computer server from biometric devices used to record voter fingerprints and pictures. A time-consuming exercise of identifying fraudulent votes was cited as another major factor for the slow data entry.    The fourth Afghan presidential election was already under scrutiny for a record-low turnout of about 26 percent and allegations of fraud. The final turnout was expected to drop further as the IEC was expected to disqualify an estimated 700,000 of the 2.7 million votes cast last month for not meeting anti-fraud rules.    FILE – Independent Election Commission workers carry ballot boxes to be taken to a counting center in Kabul, …

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters clashed with Kurdish-led forces in several parts of northeastern Syria on Saturday, with some crossing the border from Turkey to attack a village, a war monitor said. Both sides blamed each other for fighting that has rattled the U.S.-brokered cease-fire. Nearly two days into the five-day halt in fighting, the two sides were still trading fire around the key border town of Ras al-Ayn. There has also been no sign of a withdrawal of Kurdish-led forces from positions along the Syrian-Turkish border as called for under the agreement, reached between Turkey and the United States. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said it was “completely abiding” by the accord and that it was in “instantaneous coordination” with Washington to ensure the continuity of calm. The ministry accused Kurdish-led fighters of carrying out 14 “attacks and harassments” the past 36 hours, most in the town of Ras al-Ayn, which is besieged by allied fighters before the cease-fire. It said the Syrian Kurdish fighters used mortars, rockets, anti-aircraft and anti-tank heavy machine guns. Turkey also said Saturday said it has recaptured 41 suspected Islamic State members who had fled a detention camp amid the chaos caused by the fighting earlier this week. Syrian Locals Grieve as Turkey-Syria Cease-Fire Collapses ‘We have already paid with too many lives,’ those affected by the fighting say The Kurds, meanwhile, appealed to Vice President Mike Pence to enforce the deal saying Turkey has failed to abide by its provisions and has continued the siege of Ras …

Washington is drowning in red ink again, yet the mounting fiscal problem is prompting collective yawns from the Trump Administration and Democrats alike. It wasn’t so long ago that an announcement that the United States annual budget deficit was approaching $1 trillion — in a time of record low unemployment and steady economic growth, no less — would have set off alarm bells in the nation’s capital and sent politicians running to the television cameras to demand action to rein in federal spending. But a recent report from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic analysis that shows the deficit ballooning to a seven-year high of $984 billion in fiscal 2019 was greeted with near silence from U.S. lawmakers, the administration and other policy makers. Instead, as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, Republicans and Democrats are promoting ambitious new spending and tax relief measures that would add many trillions of dollars to the cumulative federal debt – the sum total of past deficits — which is now approaching a staggering $23 trillion. After forcing a $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress in 2017 and demanding sharp increases in military spending, both of which have contributed to a 48% increase in the federal deficit since he took office, President Trump and others in his administration have floated the idea of further tax reductions heading into 2020. FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order relieving qualified disabled veterans of federally held student loan debt at the AMVETS (American …

Environmental rights groups are calling on Laos to cancel the latest hydro-electric dam it has approved for construction across the Mekong River, warning of dire consequences for the millions of people who rely on the waterway for a living. A six-month “prior consultation process” for the Luang Prabang dam began on October 8, giving Laos’ partners in the Mekong River Commission (MRC) — Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam — a chance to review the project plans and raise concerns. But the rights groups say the farming and fishing communities expected to be hit hardest by such dams have been let down by the consultations for previously approved projects, and they expect no different this time. The Luang Prabang dam is the fifth mainstream Mekong dam Laos will have put through the consultation process, and with 1,460 megawatts of generating capacity, it will be the biggest thus far. The first, the Xayaburi, is due to start producing electricity at the end of the month. “For the past four prior consultation processes that we have experienced, we’ve seen big loopholes and the exclusion of affected communities in the process,” said Pianporn Deetes, Thailand campaign director for International Rivers, which advocates for sustainable river management. “This consultation process, for me personally, I’m seeing it as just a rubber stamp to get the project approval,” she told VOA. MRC members cannot veto each other’s plans for the Mekong during the consultations, only complain and make requests. Responding to concerns about the Xayaburi, the Lao government …

The State Department has completed its internal investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private email and found violations by 38 people, some of whom may face disciplinary action. The investigation, launched more than three years ago, determined that those 38 people were “culpable” in 91 cases of sending classified information that ended up in Clinton’s personal email, according to a letter sent to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley this week and released Friday. The 38 are current and former State Department officials but were not identified. Although the report identified violations, it said investigators had found “no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.” However, it also made clear that Clinton’s use of the private email had increased the vulnerability of classified information. The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment to a Clinton representative. The investigation covered 33,000 emails that Clinton turned over for review after her use of the private email account became public. The department said it found a total of 588 violations involving information then or now deemed to be classified but could not assign fault in 497 cases. For current and former officials, culpability means the violations will be noted in their files and will be considered when they apply for or go to renew security clearances. For current officials, there could also be some kind of disciplinary action. But it was not immediately clear what that would be. The report concluded “that the use of a private email system …

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he thought a trade deal between the United States and China would be signed by the time the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings take place in Chile on Nov. 16-17.  Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will provide Beijing’s perspective on the progress of the talks in a speech Saturday, according to a tweet from the editor in chief of the Global Times, a tabloid published under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper. “I think it will get signed quite easily, hopefully by the summit in Chile, where [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] and I will both be,” Trump told reporters at the White House, without providing details.  “We’re working with China very well,” Trump also said.  The White House has announced that China agreed to buy up to $50 billion worth of U.S. farm products annually, as part of the first phase of a trade deal, although China seems slow to follow through.  The phase-one deal was unveiled at the White House last week during a visit by Liu as part of a bid to end a tit-for-tat trade war between Beijing and Washington that has roiled markets and hammered global growth.   U.S. officials said a second phase of negotiations could address thornier issues such as forced technology transfer and nonfinancial services issues.  …

The United States is imposing new sanctions on Cuba over its human rights record and its support for Venezuela’s government, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday. In a statement, the department said it will restrict Cuba’s access to commercial aircraft by revoking existing licenses for aircraft leases to Cuban state-owned airlines and denying future applications for aircraft leases. The United States will also expand sanctions to include more foreign goods containing U.S. content and impose additional restrictions on exports to the Cuban government, the statement said. “This action by the Commerce Department sends another clear message to the Cuban regime” that they must immediately cease their destructive behavior at home and abroad,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in the statement. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez responded in a post on Twitter, denouncing the move as “additional economic blockade measures evidencing moral bankruptcy of an internationally isolated policy promoted by a corrupted government.” FILE – Jose Daniel Ferrer, who leads the Patriotic Union of Cuba, the country’s largest dissident group, holds a T-shirt with the writing “God, Fatherland, Freedom” in Palmarito de Cauto, Cuba, March 25, 2012. In a separate statement, the U.S. State Department criticized Cuba for its detention of dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer, calling on Havana to disclose his whereabouts, treat him humanely and release him without condition. Ferrer, a prominent figure who leads the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), was detained in Santiago de Cuba Oct. 1 after a police raid on his home, which is also …

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will not turn over documents to congressional Democrats who had subpoenaed them concerning his role in Ukraine as part of their impeachment probe into President Donald Trump, according to U.S. media reports Friday. Three U.S. House of Representatives committees subpoenaed Perry on Oct. 10 for any role he played in Trump’s push to pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his political rival, former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and his son.   …

Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. Turkish forces trigger humanitarian upheaval As Turkey’s military targets northern Syria after the United States said it was withdrawing its troops, refugees are left wondering what this means for them. The United Nations warned this week that hundreds of thousands of civilians are in danger in northeastern Syria. Doctors Without Borders announced it would shutter its operations in the area, and aid groups say getting help to those in need is increasingly unsustainable. And at one housing camp, where Islamic State families fled as the extremist group’s territory dwindled, hostility is high and security is weakened after many of the Kurdish guards left for the front lines.  Produce truck concealing migrants leads to arrests Border agents in the southern U.S. state of Arizona found dozens of people stashed among boxes of produce in a refrigerated truck this week. Two people are facing human-smuggling charges, and the migrants now face deportation. The U.S. government is pursuing an increasing number of cases involving smuggling charges, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday. Ecuador closes border with Venezuela, stranding refugees Venezuelans are stuck after the Ecuadorian government imposed new rules barring people from entering the country without a visa. But many …

Since House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump last month, public support for the probe to potentially remove Trump from office has grown to 52 percent. The slim majority of support reflects sharp divisions among Americans over Trump and politics. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from voters around the United States. …

Every October, for the past 48 years, hot air balloons have been filling the skies over Albuquerque, New Mexico, giving spectators both on and off the ground a visual feast of rare beauty. VOA’s Julie Taboh visited the southwestern state’s largest city to see how a modest launch of 13 balloons almost five decades ago has evolved into the largest ballooning event in the world.   …

Official Washington finds itself consumed by the twin crises of impeachment and Syria this week.  President Donald Trump is trying to fend off congressional Democrats moving toward impeachment, even as he faces a fierce backlash from some Republicans over his decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria. Trump is used to weathering political storms, but this one is particularly intense, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.   …