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  • The US sanctioned Chinese companies to fight illicit fentanyl. But the drug’s ingredients keep coming | CNN

    The US sanctioned Chinese companies to fight illicit fentanyl. But the drug’s ingredients keep coming | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The seller, who went by the name Linda Wang, was curt when asked if she sold a chemical often used to create fentanyl.

    “That’s banned,” Wang replied, before quickly providing an alternative: “CAS79099 powder is best. U can have a try.” 

    After more than a week of back and forth, she seemed impatient. “Ok. 79099 powder in USA warehouse now…if you need. Pls order asap,” she wrote in a text message exchange.

    The interaction is part of a CNN investigation that explored whether US-sanctioned chemical companies in China are evading Washington DC’s crackdown on illicitly made fentanyl – finding at least one China-based company that had links to a sanctioned entity, and a seller eager to ship potential ingredients for the lethal drug.

    More than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, and two-thirds of the fatalities involved synthetic opioids – much of it believed from illicitly made fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

    The drug can be 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine – and pharmaceutical grade versions of it can be prescribed by doctors for severe pain. But illegally manufactured fentanyl has turbocharged the US’s opioid overdose crisis in the last decade, according to data from the CDC.

    Controlling the illegal trade of the drug has turned into a geopolitical headache for the Biden administration, as China’s vast chemicals market – which supplies the world with raw materials for everything from perfume to explosives– is also a major pipeline of the building blocks of fentanyl, known as fentanyl precursors, according to US officials. 

    Further complicating the fight against fentanyl is the sheer variety of precursors that can be used to make fentanyl and other illicit drugs. Most such precursors also have legitimate uses – including for medical research – and are perfectly legal to sell, making up part of the booming transnational trade.

    China has strict anti-drug policies domestically, but critics in the US say it is not doing enough to help monitor or regulate purchases from buyers aiming to use Chinese-made ingredients to manufacture illegal drugs overseas.

    In 2019, Beijing stepped up its crack down on the production and sale of finished fentanyl and its variants, but US-China anti-drug cooperation has since stalled amid disagreements on trade, human rights, the Covid-19 outbreak and Taiwan. Hopes that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would bring up fentanyl during a planned visit to Beijing died in early February, when Blinken postponed his trip after a surveillance balloon from China floated over the continental US. 

    As the opioid crisis topped the domestic agenda in 2021, the US sanctioned four companies in China accused of exporting fentanyl or fentanyl precursor chemicals. Online commercial records suggest ties between one of those sanctioned companies, Hebei Atun Trading Co., Ltd., and another China-based company called Shanxi Naipu Import and Export Co., Ltd., that continues to sell fentanyl precursors legally.

    According to official public records in China, Hebei Atun Trading Co., Ltd., began liquidating in June 2021 and was formally dissolved in August that year. Shanxi Naipu Import and Export Co., Ltd. was registered in the same period, according to official records, and it shares a number of key things in common with Hebei Atun.

    For example, Hebei Atun’s still-active Facebook page once linked to a now-defunct website of Shanxi Naipu – which is where CNN found Wang’s phone number.

    The two companies’ websites are registered to the same email address, and at one time appeared to share an IP address. Today, Shanxi Naipu’s websites appear to be carbon copies of Hebei Atun’s since-deleted page – with the same navigation tabs, email address and stock photo of a pipette dropping amber-colored liquid into a cell tray. The Russian and Portuguese versions of the site list “Hebei Atun Trading Co. Ltd.” as their copyright holder.

    One post on a Shanxi Naipu website was titled, “Hebei ATUN Trading Co., Ltd. Wishes you a Happy New Year!” (sic). It has since been deleted. 

    When presented with CNN’s findings, Shanxi Naipu denied ties to Hebei Atun, saying, “we are not related at all.” In statements emailed to CNN, Shanxi Naipu said it had purchased the sanctioned company’s Facebook account, email and cell phone number in order to “attract internet traffic.”

    Shanxi Naipu also denied selling the fentanyl precursor that Wang offered by text, and stressed that everything they sell is legal, and said that they were taking steps to stop the repercussions from the apparent links to Hebei Atun.

    “To prevent further impact from Hebei Atun, we have immediately removed relevant promotional websites and platforms,” the company said in an emailed statement.”

    Logan Pauley, a China analyst who tracks criminal and drug networks, told CNN, “It’s easy on the Chinese side to start a new company to copy and paste the same text that you’re posting on social media or you’re posting on a trade website, and then just to recreate the same operation over and over again.”

    And Gary Hufbauer, trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former US treasury official, likens it to a game of cat-and-mouse. While the US government can add an entity to its sanctions list “overnight,” said Hufbauer, there may not be the resources in the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces sanctions, to keep tabs on new companies that may leverage sanctioned companies’ branding or operations. 

    In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for the US Treasury said it “had not hesitated” to go after “bad actors” – citing the four sanctioned Chinese companies – and would continue to sanction companies and individuals involved in the drug trade.

    “Treasury continues to monitor the effects of our designations,” they said. “If additional information becomes available that can assist sanctions compliance efforts, when appropriate, we provide that information to industry and/or the public.”

    Asked if Beijing was knowingly lax in its efforts to stem the flow of precursor chemicals from its country, the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out that most were not controlled substances, in a lengthy statement that also questioned US efforts to treat addiction and demand for opioids.

    “China has always strictly controlled precursor chemicals in accordance with international conventions and domestic laws. The US side’s so-called ‘fentanyl precursors,’ a small number of them are listed substances by the United Nations, and China has always been resolute in implementing the listed measures. But most of the rest are common chemicals that are not listed by the United Nations, China or even the United States itself,” it said in a written statement to CNN.

    “Government departments do not have the right or the possibility to regulate non-listed chemicals and common commodities,” it added.

    The ministry statement went on to highlight China’s harsh domestic penalties on drug trade and consumption. “The Chinese people deeply resent drugs. the Opium War was the beginning of China’s modern history of humiliation. The Chinese government has always cracked down on drug crime, and China is a no-go area for international drug dealers.”

     Such unregulated precursors, like the one offered by Wang, are not illegal to sell but can be used in the manufacture of illicit substances like fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine.

    Several precursors used to create fentanyl have been put under international control since 2017, but a savvy chemical engineer can combine legal precursors further up the synthesis chain to make similar compounds.

    “What we have seen illicit chemists doing now is that certain components of the synthesis are now … harder for them to purchase, so what they’re doing now is they’re buying compounds that are structurally very, very similar,” Alexandra Evans, a forensic chemist with the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences, told CNN from her lab in the US capital.

    Or they can create fentanyl analogues, substitutes that are chemically similar to fentanyl and which has made the crisis more deadly in recent years. One fentanyl analogue was found to be 10,000 times stronger than morphine, according to a 2021 US government report.

    Controlling the stream of chemicals has turned into a deadly game of whack-a-mole – where manufacturers are able to use a variety of precursors to synthesize fentanyl and its analogues faster than either can be identified, banned, or regulated. 

    Many of the building blocks to fentanyl have benign purposes and are legal to buy, but a menu Wang sent of Shanxi Naipu’s chemical products for sale appeared designed to support illegal drug manufacture, according to a synthetic chemist who analyzed the list for CNN. 

    It was “obviously a list curated to help people create illicit drugs,” Lyle Isaacs, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, told CNN of the more than 25 chemical compounds on the menu. 

    At least three compounds on the list could be made into fentanyl, he said. One of the compounds, CAS 79099-07-3, also known as 1-Boc-4-piperidone, was what Wang offered to sell CNN; the other two compounds also have legitimate uses and can be found, for example, in academic laboratories researching future medicines, Isaacs said. 

    Still more compounds on the list appeared to be building blocks for meth, ecstasy, ketamine, and the cutting of cocaine, as well as over-the-counter drugs like paracetamol, a common pain medication that can also be used to cut heroin and other narcotics, he added. 

    Asked about the list, Shanxi Naipu reiterated in its statement to CNN that all products on it are legal in China, stating: “We are not professional chemists but just a trading company. Even though we don’t have an intimate knowledge of the composition and use of thousands of chemicals, we have always strictly ensured the legality of our products!”

    Attempts to contact Wang through the company for comment were not successful, and the company said in its statement that she no longer works for them.

    There are measures that responsible chemical sellers can take to avoid their products being used for illegal drugs.

    Identity checks are a hallmark of reputable sellers, said a former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official. The source spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. To sell non-listed chemicals, a good-faith seller would normally ask a buyer about the intended use of the compound, and whether the buyer had the backing of a company or institution, such as a research organization or university.  

    American buyers of regulated chemicals require licenses from the DEA, depending on how hazardous they are. Reputable sellers may also ask for tax identifications even for chemicals that are not controlled, like precursor materials, the source said.

    At no point in the conversation was Wang aware, nor did she ask for the identities of the CNN reporters speaking to her or what CNN planned on using it for. She even offered a “door to door” precursor delivery service via warehouses in the US or Mexico – locations that CNN has been unable to verify.

    In its statement to CNN, Shanxi Naipu denied that it had warehouses in either country.

    The small quantity of precursor needed to manufacture fentanyl ultimately makes shipments destined for illicit ends hard to catch at the border, points out Martin Raithelhuber, an illicit synthetic drugs expert at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

    “You have hundreds of thousands of tonnes (of chemicals in a shipment), and you are looking for a few kilograms, which are sufficient to produce a supply of millions of doses (of fentanyl),” he said. 

    Since China banned the production of fentanyl and related substances in 2019, Mexican criminal organizations have largely taken control of the drug’s production and sale, smuggling finished fentanyl to consumers in the US, according to a 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service.

    Mexico is now the source of “the vast majority” of meth, heroin and illicit fentanyl seized in the US, according to the US International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released in March 2023. “In 2022, the United States identified Mexico as the sole significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States,” it reads.

    “Criminal elements, mostly in the People’s Republic of China, ship precursor chemicals to Mexico, where they are used to produce illicit fentanyl,” Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year. 

    “The only limit on how much fentanyl they can make is the amount of precursor chemicals they can get,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram told CNN in early March.

    The Biden administration has taken aim at these groups and in February sanctioned a network of Sinaloa Cartel members and associated entities for their involvement in the fentanyl and methamphetamine trade. 

    Mexico’s law enforcement has also fought the trade, seizing and impounding hundreds of kilos of fentanyl precursors and pills – including a cache of over a million potential fentanyl pills in the Mexican border city of Tijuana on March 13.

    Ultimately, tackling fentanyl requires close coordination between the US, Mexico, and China. Even if countries like Mexico had the best national control measures, international cooperation is needed to understand “which flows are the ones we need to watch or [be] worried about,” Raithelhuber said.

    Former DEA official Matthew Donahue told CNN he would like to see Mexico do more, including cracking down on properties and other assets of those involved in the drug trade.

    But as the US pressures other governments to help slow the flow of illicit fentanyl, relations between the three countries have turned into a three-way blame game.

    Following the kidnapping of four Americans in a Mexican border town by cartel members in early March, US Republicans called for the US military to be allowed to fight cartels and destroy drug labs in Mexico – something Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called “an offense to the people of Mexico.” 

    “We are not a protectorate of the United States or a colony of the United States. Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country. We don’t take orders from anyone,” López Obrador said at a news conference on March 9. 

    Washington has also called on Beijing to do more, with the latest US INCSR report describing China’s oversight functions as “poorly staffed and under-resourced to oversee its massive chemical industry.” Though it acknowledges Beijing’s harsh penalties for drug trafficking, the report laments ineffective controls on shipment labeling, customer vetting and pill-making equipment.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement to CNN emphasizes its “stringent” control of listed chemicals that could be used for drug-making and argues that Beijing has “improved” several “regulatory mechanisms such as end-user verification, leakage monitoring, and source backtracking, and has strengthened management of more than 200,000 chemical companies.”

    Both China and Mexico have called on the US to do some soul-searching about demand for illicit fentanyl.

    “US legislators and the authorities there are not doing their job because they are not addressing the causes (of addiction); there are no care programs for young people in the US,” López-Obrador said last week.

    “Using China as a scapegoat will not solve the drug crisis in the United States … ,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s statement to CNN read. “We advise the US side to reflect on itself, stop shifting blame, strengthen domestic prescription drug control, enhance publicity on the dangers of drugs, and take practical measures to reduce domestic drug demand.”

    Prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone – which have a similar chemical structure to heroin and fentanyl – were major contributors to the early opioid crisis in the US. Pharmaceutical giants, notably Purdue Pharma, downplayed the potentially addictive properties of the drugs and incentivized US doctors to prescribe the painkillers. But prescribing was curtailed as overdoses from prescription opioids climbed and now waves of heroin and illicit fentanyl took over, making the crisis far more deadly. 

    Amid the recriminations, fentanyl products continue to pour through US borders and Americans continue to die. 

    To raise awareness of the human toll, the US Drug Enforcement Administration last year created “The Faces of Fentanyl” exhibit at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia where families can submit a photo of a loved one lost to the fentanyl crisis. So far more than 5,000 photos have been submitted.

    “We can’t be desensitized” to the number of lives lost to drug overdoses,” Donahue, the former DEA official, said. “The pain and suffering that these families are going through. That has got to mean something.” 

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  • Netanyahu is backed into a corner. Here’s what he may do next | CNN

    Netanyahu is backed into a corner. Here’s what he may do next | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision to delay a controversial plan to weaken the country’s judiciary on Monday, he invoked the biblical story of the Judgement of Solomon, where the king had to rule between two women, both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered that the child be cut in two, and the woman who protested the ruling was determined to be the real mother.

    Before Netanyahu spoke, supporters of the judicial overhaul had gathered in the streets following calls from right-wing politicians to come out, allowing the prime minister to make his address as protesters from both sides rallied simultaneously for the first time in weeks.

    “Even today, both sides in the national dispute claim love for the baby – love for our country,” said Netanyahu. “I am aware of the enormous tension that is building up between the two camps, between the two parts of the people, and I am attentive to the desire of many citizens to relieve this tension.”

    The timing of the address was likely intentional and was meant to give Netanyahu’s much-delayed speech a favorable backdrop – two competing camps demonstrating their love for the country, said Aviv Bushinsky, a former media adviser for Netanyahu who served the prime minister for nine years.

    Netanyahu’s strategy has always been based on last-minute decisions, Bushinsky said, which sometimes makes it difficult to predict his next move.

    Other analysts say the prime minister’s strategy brings uncertainty to Israel’s future.

    “He is playing the game,” said Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “You can never know what will happen, and that’s the problem … There is no certainty in Israel, in the Israeli system, and I am not sure that he’s not happy about this.”

    Bushinsky says that if it was up to Netanyahu he would have pumped the brakes on the judicial overhaul a long time ago, as it wasn’t one of the main leadership goals declared at the start of his sixth term as prime minister.

    He’s standing by it because the survival of his coalition depends on it. But now, analysts say he’s backed into a corner between appeasing protesters and keeping his government intact.

    Before Netanyahu announced the delay, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party broke the news, noting that part of the delay agreement was to establish a National Guard. That caused alarm, with some speculating on social media that Ben Gvir, who has an extremist past, was being allowed to set up his own militia.

    Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Tuesday that putting Ben Gvir in charge of the National Guard is “the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

    Ben Gvir was quick to address the concerns about the new body. “Let’s put things straight: no private army and no militias,” he said in a statement published on his Telegram page.

    Bushinsky downplayed the significance of the National Guard, saying it is “a comfort prize” for Ben Gvir – “a prize for the losers.”

    The prime minister is now faced with very few options, analysts say. If he sides with his coalition and votes on the overhaul, crippling protests and strikes would resume. If he pulls the brakes, his coalition could collapse.

    The only wiggle room the Israeli leader has, analysts say, is if negotiators reach a moderated judicial overhaul plan bill over the Knesset’s recess period, which ends April 30, and where concessions to his right-wing coalition members need not be too extreme.

    Netanyahu may also be hoping for the reform bill to be shelved for the time being.

    “I think Netanyahu will try to run away from this thing, hoping that things will gradually ease,” said Bushinsky, noting that the ministers who had threatened to resign should the bill not advance have all remained in their posts.

    Analysts say, however, that what could once again unite the fragmented country and have the public rally behind the government is a potential security threat, either from neighboring countries or through conflict with the Palestinians.

    A security crisis would reorient the government’s attention, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, whether it arises from conflict with the Palestinians, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon or others.

    “Some thought that if there was a security crisis, then Netanyahu would be saved by the bell,” said Bushinsky.

    Palestinians are watching the process with unease amid fears that they will pay the price of Netanyahu’s concessions to right-wing coalition members with a history of anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

    “We are seeing that Palestinians are once again paying the price for Israel’s electoral choices,” said Buttu. “There may be calm in the streets of Tel Aviv … but for Palestinians, the reality remains the same.”

    How Netanyahu will act remains uncertain, and not everyone is optimistic that the recess period will yield any kind of consensus or moderation in his position.

    “I have not detected any indication that tells me that the prime minister is actually entering into the negotiations with a keen interest in achieving consensus … including comprises on core aspects of the judicial overhaul,” said Plesner.

    Plesner notes, however, that Netanyahu and his Likud party emerged “politically injured” from the last few months, losing not only legitimacy and support in the eyes of the Israeli people, but also in the eyes of his own Likud voters.

    “(It was) a dramatic erosion of their political power and political posture,” he said.

    Biden, Netanyahu trade barbs over plan to weaken courts; Israel rejects US ‘pressure’

    Israel’s embattled prime minister escalated a rare public dispute with US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, rejecting “pressure” from the White House after Biden criticized Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken Israel’s judiciary. Biden said on Tuesday that he won’t invite Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term,” and issued an unusually stinging rebuke of the Israeli leader’s proposed judicial overhaul. Netanyahu responded late on Tuesday, saying, “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

    • Background: The prime minister finally paused the legislation on Monday after a general strike and mass protests threw Israel into chaos, but he said he planned to return to the effort in the next legislative term. Critics say Netanyahu is pushing through the changes because of his own ongoing corruption trial, which he denies.
    • Why it matters: The back and forth thrust into public view a simmering diplomatic dispute that has mostly been kept private over the past several weeks. Biden and other US officials had sought to quietly dissuade Netanyahu from moving ahead with his proposed reforms without creating the appearance of a rift. But now the divide appears to be opening between the two men, who have known each other for decades.

    Riyadh joins Shanghai Cooperation Organization as ties with Beijing grow

    Saudi Arabia’s cabinet approved on Wednesday a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as Riyadh builds a long-term partnership with China despite US security concerns, Reuters reported. Saudi Arabia has approved a memorandum on granting the kingdom the status of a dialog partner in the SCO, state news agency SPA said.

    • Background: Formed in 2001 by Russia, China and former Soviet states in Central Asia, the body has been expanded to include India and Pakistan, with a view to playing a bigger role as counterweight to Western influence in the region. The SCO is a political and security union of countries spanning much of Eurasia. Iran also signed documents for full membership last year. Countries belonging to the organization plan to hold a joint “counter-terrorism exercise” in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region in August.
    • Why it matters: Riyadh’s growing ties with Beijing have raised security concerns in Washington, its traditional ally. Washington says Chinese attempts to exert influence around the world will not change US policy toward the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have voiced concern about what they see as a withdrawal from the region by the United States, its main security guarantor, and have moved to diversify partners. Washington says it will stay an active partner in the region.

    US sanctions Syrian leader Assad’s cousins, others over drug trade

    The US on Tuesday imposed new sanctions against six people, including two cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for their role in the production or export of captagon, a dangerous amphetamine, Reuters cited the Treasury Department as saying. The Treasury said trade in captagon was estimated to be a billion-dollar enterprise and the sanctions highlight the role of Lebanese drug traffickers and the Assad family dominance of captagon trafficking, which helped fund the Syrian government.

    • Background: Regional officials say the Iranian-backed Hezbollah as well as Syrian armed groups linked to the Damascus government are behind the surging trade of captagon, smuggled either through Jordan to the south or Lebanon to the west. Assad’s government denies involvement in drug-making and smuggling and says it is stepping up its campaign to curb the lucrative trade. Hezbollah denies the accusations.
    • Why it matters: There is a thriving market for captagon in the Gulf, and United Nations and Western anti-narcotics drug officials say Syria, shattered by a decade of civil war, has become the region’s main production site for a multibillion-dollar drug trade that also exports to Europe.

    Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco will acquire a 10% stake in China’s Rongsheng Petrochemical in a strategic deal worth $3.6 billion that would significantly expand its presence in China.

    Amena Bakr, deputy bureau chief at Energy Intelligence, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about what this means for Saudi-Chinese cooperation.

    She said Saudi interest is in the East as the kingdom does not like “policy that interferes with their internal affairs,” a mantra that China holds sacred.

    Watch the full interview here.

    A Ramadan TV show is in hot water for its offensive depiction of Iraqi women, drawing condemnation from politicians in both Kuwait and Iraq.

    The series, “London Class,” is produced by the Saudi state-backed media conglomerate MBC group and depicts Iraqi women working as maids for Kuwaiti women and being accused of theft.

    The show follows a group of Arab medicine students at a London university in the 1980s. Much of the anger from Iraqis is directed at Kuwait.

    The Kuwaiti Ministry of Information has however said the show has nothing to do with the country and was not shown on any platform there, according to Arabic media.

    One Baghdad-based Twitter user condemned what he said was a repeated “stream of hatred and malice from Kuwaiti shows towards our people.”

    The show was written by Kuwaiti writer Heba Hamada and directed by Egyptian Mohamed Bakir. Hamada responded to the criticism in an Instagram post, saying: “Iraq is the mother of civilization, and all Arabs lean on its shoulder.”

    Mustafa Jabbar Sanad, a member of parliament in Iraq, accused the show of “erasing the value of well-known Iraqi talents … to distort the image of the Iraqi people as a whole, not just women.”

    Hamada was the subject of criticism in 2019 because of a similar show she wrote called “Cairo Class,” which caused strife between Kuwaitis and Egyptians due its portrayal of Egypt. That show is being aired on Netflix.

    The question of honor, particularly that of Iraqi women, has long been a sensitive issue in Kuwaiti-Iraqi relations. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had accused Kuwait of insulting his country’s women, citing it as a reason for his invasion of the country in 1990.

    In a 2004 court hearing in Iraq, the former president decried being held accountable for the invasion.

    “How could Saddam be tried over Kuwait that said it will reduce Iraqi women to 10-dinar prostitutes?” he asked, referring to himself. “He (Hussein) defended Iraq’s honor and revived its historical rights over those dogs,” Saddam said, referring to the Kuwaitis.

    Iraq made its final reparation payment for that invasion last year, having paid the Gulf nation a total of $52.4 billion.

    By Dalya Al Masri

    A shepherd walks with his goats as trucks move rubble at Samandag, in Turkey's Hatay province on Tuesday, after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6 killed more than 50,000 in southeastern Turkey and nearly 6,000 over the border in Syria.

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  • Former UGA football star Jalen Carter sentenced to probation in crash that killed teammate and team staffer | CNN

    Former UGA football star Jalen Carter sentenced to probation in crash that killed teammate and team staffer | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Former University of Georgia football standout Jalen Carter was sentenced to probation on Thursday for his role in the January crash that killed his teammate and a team staffer.

    The crash happened hours after the Bulldogs’ national championship victory parade.

    Carter entered pleas of no contest Thursday to charges of racing and reckless driving, according to his attorney, Kim Stephens.

    Carter was then sentenced to 12 months of probation, a $1,000 fine and 50 hours of community service and completion of a state-approved defensive driving course, the attorney said.

    “Mr. Carter is happy and relieved to get this matter behind him, so now he can do what he needs to do for the NFL draft,” the lawyer said.

    “He continues to grieve for the loss of his friends,” Stephens added.

    Athens-Clarke County Solicitor General Will Fleenor confirmed the sentence and said Carter’s privilege to drive in Georgia has been suspended for 120 days.

    Fleenor, in a statement, acknowledged questions about the severity of the charges and “whether more serious offenses occurred.” He said law enforcement officers evaluated the appropriateness of more serious charges.

    “However, after consultation with the District Attorney’s Office, the Solicitor’s Office, and the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council, based on the evidence and applicable laws in this case, it was determined that the appropriate charges were the two traffic offenses that were resolved in court this morning,” the statement said.

    Carter has been projected as a top pick in the NFL draft next month.

    CNN has reached out to Athens Solicitor’s Office for comment.

    Carter’s teammate Devin Willock and football team staff member Chandler LeCroy were killed in the January 15 crash, which happened hours after the team participated in a parade through campus to celebrate its second consecutive national title.

    Carter turned himself in at the Athens-Clarke County Jail earlier this month on charges of reckless driving and racing.

    LeCroy was driving a Ford SUV near the campus with Willock and two other members of the football program also in the vehicle, police said. The SUV was traveling “about 104 miles per hour” before it veered off the road and slammed into two power poles and several trees, Athens-Clarke County police said.

    Authorities said Carter was driving a separate vehicle and he and LeCroy appeared to be racing.

    Police said “both vehicles switched between lanes, drove in the center turn lane, drove in opposite lanes of travel, overtook other motorists, and drove at high rates of speed, in an apparent attempt to outdistance each other.”

    Toxicology results show LeCroy, who was driving a university vehicle not authorized for use at the time of the crash, had a blood alcohol concentration of .197 – more than twice the legal limit in Georgia, police said.

    Willock was ejected and died at the scene and LeCroy died at a local hospital. The two other passengers in the vehicle were injured, officials said.

    Carter was a key part of Georgia’s vaunted defense that allowed the fewest rushing yards per game (77.1) in 2022 and was named to several All-America teams.

    More than four months before the fatal crash, Carter had been issued three traffic citations – including one for speeding at nearly twice the legal limit, according to documents and body camera video obtained by CNN from the Athens-Clarke County Police Department.

    On September 22, Carter was stopped for speeding. An officer is heard on body camera footage telling him that he was “reckless,” and issued three traffic tickets

    One ticket showed Carter was driving at 89 mph in a 45 mph zone. A second ticket cited him for having “material affixed” to his car which “obstructs vision.” A third citation was for an illegal windshield tint.

    Bodycam video from the stop showed Carter in the driver’s seat of a Black Jeep. The officer held up a radar gun showing a speed of 89 mph, according to the video.

    Carter is seen on video, expressionless, as the officer named two other UGA athletes who he said he had recently stopped.

    “Y’all need to slow down dude,” the officer is heard telling Carter, who didn’t respond.

    “Look I don’t know if y’all need to send out a text or something to other teammates, but slow down,” the officer said, adding, “That was reckless.”

    “When you’re around your teammates, tell them to slow down,” the officer said.

    The officer then tested the tint on Carter’s vehicle – which he said is illegal in the state of Georgia. “The front windshield can’t have nothing on it. No material on it whatsoever, OK?”

    “Your break is you’re not going to jail. That’s your break. Because that would make all kinds of news, alright?” the officer is heard telling Carter in the footage.

    The player smiled nervously. “You’re getting a ticket for speeding,” the officer said.

    The officer added, “Slow down OK. That’s all I ask.”

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  • US sues Rite Aid for missing opioid red flags | CNN Business

    US sues Rite Aid for missing opioid red flags | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Monday filed a lawsuit against Rite Aid for allegedly violating the Controlled Substances Act, alleging that the company “knowingly filled unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances.”

    In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Department of Justice is “using every tool at our disposal” to hold Rite Aid accountable for contributing to the opioid epidemic.

    Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said “Rite Aid’s pharmacists repeatedly filled prescriptions for controlled substances with obvious red flags, and Rite Aid intentionally deleted internal notes about suspicious prescribers. These practices opened the floodgates for millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Rite Aid’s stores.”

    In the complaint, The Justice department alleges that from May 2014 to June 2019, Rite Aid filled thousands of unlawful combinations of prescriptions known as “the trinity” which included prescriptions for “excessive quantities of opioids, such as oxycodone and fentanyl.”

    Rite Aid pharmacists were accused of ignoring obvious signs of misuse and intentionally deleting some pharmacists’ internal warnings about suspicious prescribers, such as “cash only pill mill???”

    “These practices opened the floodgates for millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Rite Aid’s stores,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said.

    The Justice Department said the prescriptions, who were issued illegally, “lacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not for a medically accepted indication, or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.”

    Rite Aid is one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains, with more than 2,330 stores in 17 US states. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The Justice Department accused Rite Aid of violating the federal False Claims Act by submitting false prescription claims to government health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

    It joined a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2019 by two pharmacists and a pharmacy technician from Rite Aid stores in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and West Virginia.

    The Justice Department occasionally joins whistleblower cases it considers stronger.

    It has also sued Walmart and drug distributor AmerisourceBergen Corp over their alleged roles in the nation’s opioid crisis.

    More than 500,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States from 1999 to 2020, including more than 90,000 in 2020 alone, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Bodies of 2 Mexico kidnapping victims expected to be returned to the US for further autopsies, source says | CNN

    Bodies of 2 Mexico kidnapping victims expected to be returned to the US for further autopsies, source says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The bodies of two Americans killed in an armed kidnapping in Mexico are expected to be returned to the US on Thursday, a source from the Mexico Attorney General’s Office tells CNN, after two survivors of the attack returned to the US for treatment at a hospital.

    The remains of Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown likely will be transported to a funeral home in Brownsville, Texas, a US official familiar with the investigation said. The repatriation would come two days after the bodies were discovered alongside their two surviving friends in a house around the Mexican city of Matamoros.

    Autopsies were completed Wednesday morning in Mexico, an official from the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office told CNN, though Mexican authorities have not released causes of death. Second autopsies will be performed in the US, the US official said.

    CNN has reached out to the US State Department about the repatriation of remains.

    The deceased were part of a group of four friends from South Carolina who had driven Friday into Matamoros so one of them, Latavia Washington McGee, could undergo a medical procedure, two family members told CNN. But their trip was violently interrupted when unidentified gunmen fired on their van, then loaded the Americans into a vehicle and drove them away, the FBI said.

    An innocent Mexican bystander was also killed by a stray bullet almost a block and a half from where the Americans were kidnapped, according to Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal.

    Survivor Eric Williams was shot three times in the legs, his wife Michele Williams told CNN. When he and McGee were discovered alive Tuesday, Williams was taken to a hospital in Texas for surgery, she said.

    Washington McGee was also taken to the hospital, her mother, Barbara Burgess, told CNN, though Mexican authorities said she was uninjured.

    “She watched them die,” Burgess said, recounting what Washington McGee told her about the kidnapping. “They were driving through and a van came up and hit them, and that’s when they started shooting at the car, shooting inside the van. … She said the others tried to run and they got shot at the same time.”

    Washington McGee and Brown are cousins who were raised together as closely as siblings, Burgess said.

    “He was a good person, and I miss him,” Burgess said of Brown. “I loved him. (There’s) nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

    Investigators believe the group was targeted by a Mexican cartel who mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, a US official familiar with the investigation told CNN on Monday, and the kidnapping has renewed attention to efforts by US and Mexican officials to combat organized crime in Mexico.

    During a Wednesday news briefing held by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a government-sponsored fact-checking agency claimed reports of the Americans being mistaken for Haitian drug traffickers are false. The president said “adversaries” in Mexico and the US are attempting to make a “scandal” of the case.

    CNN has reached out to investigators in the US and Mexico, as well as the fact-checking agency.

    Mexican authorities are still investigating the kidnapping. One person, identified as 24-year-old Jose “N,” was detained when the Americans were found Tuesday, according to Villarreal, though officials would not confirm whether he is connected to a criminal organization.

    The kidnapping of the four friends on Friday spurred a days-long investigation by local and federal Mexican officials, who say they were in almost-constant contact with US authorities until the two survivors and the victims’ bodies were finally discovered.

    The four friends had booked a hotel in Brownsville, Texas, and were planning to drive to a doctor’s office in Matamoros on Friday for Washington McGee to undergo a medical procedure, a close friend who did not want to be identified told CNN.

    matamoros mexico kidnapping scene

    Video shows Americans kidnapped in Mexico being loaded into pickup truck

    At about 9:18 a.m. Friday, the group crossed into Matamoros, Villarreal said. But on their way to the clinic, the group became lost and were struggling to contact the doctor’s office for directions due to a poor phone signal, the close friend said.

    Suddenly, another vehicle collided into the group’s van and gunmen began shooting at the group, sending some of the friends running, according to Burgess, who recounted her daughter’s experience. “They all got shot at the same time,” she said.

    A video obtained by CNN shows Washington McGee being shoved onto the bed of a white pickup truck by a group of armed men, who then begin dragging at least two other limp bodies into the truck. Burgess, when asked about the video, said her daughter was treated “like trash.”

    The Americans were then taken from the scene in the vehicle, according to an FBI account of the kidnapping.

    Over the next few days, the groups was moved to several different locations to “create confusion and avoid rescue efforts,” Villarreal said.

    Meanwhile, Mexican investigators were searching for the missing group, sifting through surveillance footage and processing the vehicles and ballistics found at the scene, officials said.

    After noticing the Americans’ van had North Carolina license plates, Mexican authorities reached out to US officials, who were able to run the plates, according to Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica. They were also able to identify the gunmen’s truck, he said.

    “Several searches” were then initiated across multiple agencies, and the group was ultimately found in a “wooden house” in or near Matamoros on Tuesday morning, Villarreal said.

    Though US law enforcement were not involved in the search on the ground, federal and local agencies in Mexico were cooperating in the effort and a joint task force was created to communicate with US officials, Barrios Mojica said.

    The fatal kidnapping – and the possibility it was carried out by a cartel – has brought increased attention to ongoing efforts by US and Mexican officials to curb cartel activity that is a primary driver of the fentanyl trade between the countries.

    A US delegation traveled to Mexico this week to “discuss our governments’ ongoing cooperation in combating illicit fentanyl,” a national security council spokesman told CNN Wednesday.

    The visit comes as fentanyl – a potent synthetic opioid – fuels a record number of overdose deaths in the US, with Mexico being the “dominant source” of the drug in the US, according to a government report released last year.

    The delegation plans to address the kidnapping and discuss a “fundamental strategy to attack the cartels,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday.

    President Joe Biden promised “strong penalties to crack down on fentanyl trafficking” in his State of the Union address last month. His administration has since sanctioned several cartel members and associated groups for their participation in the drug trade.

    López Obrador said there was “good cooperation” underway between the two countries on anti-drug efforts, but resisted calls from some Republican lawmakers in the US to designate cartels as terrorist organizations, saying it would infringe on Mexican sovereignty.

    “We do not get involved in seeing what the gangs in the United States that distribute fentanyl are doing or how the drug is distributed in the United States,” López Obrador said at his daily news conference in Mexico City.

    Ongoing talks between the US and Mexico are “working in a coordinated manner with respect to sovereignty,” he said.

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  • Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

    Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.

    And that’s not all. Here is a fact check of 13 false claims from the conference, which continues on Saturday.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Republican Party has a duty to protect children. Listing supposed threats to children, she said, “Now whether it’s like Zelensky saying he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine…” Later in her speech, she said, “I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelensky: you’d better leave your hands off of our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there.”

    Facts First: Greene’s claim is false. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t say he wants American sons and daughters to fight or die for Ukraine. The false claim, which was debunked by CNN and others earlier in the week, is based on a viral video that clipped Zelensky’s comments out of context.

    19-second video of Zelensky goes viral. See what was edited out

    In reality, Zelensky predicted at a press conference in late February that if Ukraine loses the war against Russia because it does not receive sufficient support from elsewhere, Russia will proceed to enter North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries in the Baltics (a region made up of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that the US will be obligated to send troops to defend. Under the treaty that governs NATO, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and Zelensky didn’t say Americans should fight there.

    Greene is one of the people who shared the out-of-context video on Twitter this week. You can read a full fact-check, with Zelensky’s complete quote, here.

    Right-wing commentator and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon criticized right-wing cable channel Fox at length for, he argued, being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Among other things, Bannon claimed that, on the night of the election in November 2020, “Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition and not Donald J. Trump, of which our nation has never recovered.” Later, he said Trump is running again after “having it stolen, in broad daylight, of which they [Fox] participate in.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. On election night in 2020, Fox accurately projected that Biden had won the state of Arizona. This projection did not change the outcome of the election; all of the votes are counted regardless of what media outlets have projected, and the counting showed that Biden won Arizona, and the election, fair and square. The 2020 election was not “stolen” from Trump.

    NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND - MARCH 03: Former White House chief strategist for the Trump Administration Steve Bannon speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. The annual conservative conference entered its second day of speakers including congressional members, media personalities and members of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Donald Trump will address the event on Saturday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC

    Fox, like other major media outlets, did not project that Biden had won the presidency until four days later. Fox personalities went on to repeatedly promote lies that the election was stolen from Trump – even as they privately dismissed and mocked these false claims, according to court filings from a voting technology company that is suing Fox for defamation.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Biden, “on day one,” made “three key changes” to immigration policy. Jordan said one of those changes was this: “We’re not going to deport anyone who come.” He proceeded to argue that people knowing “we’re not going to get deported” was a reason they decided to migrate to the US under Biden.

    Facts First: Jordan inaccurately described the 100-day deportation pause that Biden attempted to impose immediately after he took office on January 20, 2021. The policy did not say the US wouldn’t deport “anyone who comes.” It explicitly did not apply to anyone who arrived in the country after the end of October 2020, meaning people who arrived under the Biden administration or in the last months of the Trump administration could still be deported.

    Biden did say during the 2020 Democratic primary that “no one, no one will be deported at all” in his first 100 days as president. But Jordan claimed that this was the policy Biden actually implemented on his first day in office; Biden’s actual first-day policy was considerably narrower.

    Biden’s attempted 100-day pause also did not apply to people who engaged in or were suspected of terrorism or espionage, were seen to pose a national security risk, had waived their right to remain in the US, or whom the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined the law required to be removed.

    The pause was supposed to be in effect while the Department of Homeland Security conducted a review of immigration enforcement practices, but it was blocked by a federal judge shortly after it was announced.

    Rep. Ralph Norman strongly suggested the FBI had tipped off the media to its August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort in Florida for government documents in the former president’s possession – while concealing its subsequent document searches of properties connected to Biden.

    Norman said: “When I saw the raid at Mar-a-Lago – you know, the cameras, the FBI – and compare that to when they found Biden’s, all of the documents he had, where was the media, where was the FBI? They kept it quiet early on, didn’t let it out. The job of the next president is going to be getting rid of the insiders that are undermining this government, and you’ve gotta clean house.”

    Facts First: Norman’s narrative is false. The FBI did not tip off the media to its search of Mar-a-Lago; CNN reported the next day that the search “happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all.” Rather, media outlets belatedly sent cameras to Mar-a-Lago because Peter Schorsch, publisher of the website Florida Politics, learned of the search from non-FBI sources and tweeted about it either after it was over or as it was just concluding, and because Trump himself made a public statement less than 20 minutes later confirming that a search had occurred. Schorsch told CNN on Thursday: “I can, unequivocally, state that the FBI was not one of my two sources which alerted me to the raid.”

    Brian Stelter, then CNN’s chief media correspondent, wrote in his article the day after the search: “By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.”

    It’s true that the public didn’t find out until late January about the FBI’s November search of Biden’s former think tank office in Washington, which was conducted with the consent of Biden’s legal team. But the belated presence of journalists at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the Trump search in August is not evidence of a double standard.

    And it’s worth noting that media cameras were on the scene when Biden’s beach home in Delaware was searched by the FBI in February. News outlets had set up a media “pool” to make sure any search there was recorded.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former college and high school football coach, said, “Going into thousands of kids’ homes and talking to parents every year recruiting, half the kids in this country – I’m not talking about race, I’m just talking about – half the kids in this country have one or no parent. And it’s because of the attack on faith. People are losing faith because, for some reason, because the attack [on] God.”

    Facts First: Tuberville’s claim that half of American children don’t have two parents is incorrect. Official figures from the Census Bureau show that, in 2021, about 70% of US children under the age of 18 lived with two parents and about 65% lived with two married parents.

    About 22% of children lived with only a mother, about 5% with only a father, and about 3% with no parent. But the Census Bureau has explained that even children who are listed as living with only one parent may have a second parent; children are listed as living with only one parent if, for example, one parent is deployed overseas with the military or if their divorced parents share custody of them.

    It is true that the percentage of US children living in households with two parents has been declining for decades. Still, Tuberville’s statistic significantly exaggerated the current situation. His spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that the senator was speaking “anecdotally” from his personal experience meeting with families as a football coach.

    Tuberville claimed that today’s children are being “indoctrinated” in schools by “woke” ideology and critical race theory. He then said, “We don’t teach reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. You know, half the kids in this country, when they graduate – think about this: half the kids in this country, when they graduate, can’t read their diploma.”

    Facts First: This is false. While many Americans do struggle with reading, there is no basis for the claim that “half” of high school graduates can’t read a basic document like a diploma. “Mr. Tuberville does not know what he’s talking about at all,” said Patricia Edwards, a Michigan State University professor of language and literacy who is a past president of the International Literacy Association and the Literacy Research Association. Edwards said there is “no evidence” to support Tuberville’s claim. She also said that people who can’t read at all are highly unlikely to finish high school and that “sometimes politicians embellish information.”

    Tuberville could have accurately said that a significant number of American teenagers and adults have reading trouble, though there is no apparent basis for connecting these struggles with supposed “woke” indoctrination. The organization ProLiteracy pointed CNN to 2017 data that found 23% of Americans age 16 to 65 have “low” literacy skills in English. That’s not “half,” as ProLiteracy pointed out, and it includes people who didn’t graduate from high school and people who are able to read basic text but struggle with more complex literacy tasks.

    The Tuberville spokesperson said the senator was speaking informally after having been briefed on other statistics about Americans’ struggles with reading, like a report that half of adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed of Biden: “The president of the United States stood in front of Independence Hall, called half the country fascists.”

    Facts First: This is not true. Biden did not denounce even close to “half the country” in this 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He made clear that he was speaking about a minority of Republicans.

    In the speech, in which he never used the word “fascists,” Biden warned that “MAGA Republicans” like Trump are “extreme,” “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.” But he also emphasized that “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.” In other words, he made clear that he was talking about far less than half of Americans.

    Trump earned fewer than 75 million votes in 2020 in a country of more than 258 million adults, so even a hypothetical criticism of every single Trump voter would not amount to criticism of “half the country.”

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed that “average citizens need to just at some point be willing to acknowledge and accept that every single facet of the federal government is weaponized against every single one of us.” Perry said moments later, “The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. The federal government has not told people that they can’t buy a gas stove or must buy an electric vehicle.

    The Biden administration has tried to encourage and incentivize the adoption of electric vehicles, but it has not tried to forbid the manufacture or purchase of traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Biden has set a goal of electric vehicles making up half of all new vehicles sold in the US by 2030.

    There was a January controversy about a Biden appointee to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., saying that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and that “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the commission as a whole has not shown support for a ban, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a January press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman claimed that Biden had just laughed at a mother who lost two sons to fentanyl.

    “I don’t know whether y’all saw, I just saw it this morning: Biden laughing at the mother who had two sons – to die, and he’s basically laughing and saying the fentanyl came from the previous administration. Who cares where it came from? The fact is it’s here,” Norman said.

    Facts First: Norman’s claim is false. Biden did not laugh at the mother who lost her sons to fentanyl, the anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling; in a somber tone, he called her “a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl.” Rather, he proceeded to laugh about how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had baselessly blamed the Biden administration for the young men’s deaths even though the tragedy happened in mid-2020, during the Trump administration. You can watch the video of Biden’s remarks here.

    Kiessling has demanded an apology from Biden. She is entitled to her criticism of Biden’s remarks and his chuckle – but the video clearly shows Norman was wrong when he claimed Biden was “laughing at the mother.”

    Rep. Kat Cammack told a story about the first hearing of the new Republican-led House select subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government. Cammack claimed she had asked a Democratic witness at this February hearing about his “incredibly vitriolic” Twitter feed in which, she claimed, he not only repeatedly criticized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh but even went “so far as to encourage people to harass this Supreme Court justice.”

    Facts First: This story is false. The witness Cammack questioned in this February exchange at the subcommittee, former Obama administration deputy assistant attorney general Elliot Williams, did not encourage people to harass Kavanaugh. In fact, it’s not even true that Cammack accused him at the February hearing of having encouraged people to harass Kavanaugh. Rather, at the hearing, she merely claimed that Williams had tweeted numerous critical tweets about Kavanaugh but had been “unusually quiet” on Twitter after an alleged assassination attempt against the justice. Clearly, not tweeting about the incident is not the same thing as encouraging harassment.

    Williams, now a CNN legal analyst (he appeared at the subcommittee hearing in his personal capacity), said in a Thursday email that he had “no idea” what Cammack was looking at on his innocuous Twitter feed. He said: “I used to prosecute violent crimes, and clerked for two federal judges. Any suggestion that I’ve ever encouraged harassment of anyone – and particularly any official of the United States – is insulting and not based in reality.”

    Cammack’s spokesperson responded helpfully on Thursday to CNN’s initial queries about the story Cammack told at CPAC, explaining that she was referring to her February exchange with Williams. But the spokesperson stopped responding after CNN asked if Cammack was accurately describing this exchange with Williams and if they had any evidence of Williams actually having encouraged the harassment of Kavanaugh.

    Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana boasted about the state of the country “when Republicans were in charge.” Among other claims about Trump’s tenure, he said that “in four years,” Republicans “delivered 3.5% unemployment” and “created 8 million new jobs.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate in two ways. First, the economic numbers for the full “four years” of Trump’s tenure are much worse than these numbers Kennedy cited; Kennedy was actually referring to Trump’s first three years while ignoring the fourth, which was marred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, there weren’t “8 million new jobs” created even in Trump’s first three years.

    Kennedy could have correctly said there was a 3.5% unemployment rate after three years of the Trump administration, but not after four. The unemployment rate skyrocketed early in Trump’s fourth year, on account of the pandemic, before coming down again, and it was 6.3% when Trump left office in early 2021. (It fell to 3.4% this January under Biden, better than in any month under Trump.)

    And while the economy added about 6.7 million jobs under Trump before the pandemic-related crash of March and April 2020, that’s not the “8 million jobs” Kennedy claimed – and the economy ended up shedding millions of jobs in Trump’s fourth year. Over the full four years of Trump’s tenure, the economy netted a loss of about 2.7 million jobs.

    Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his 2020 campaign, claimed that the last time a CPAC crowd was gathered at this venue in Maryland, in February 2020, “We had the lowest unemployment in American history.” After making other boasts about Donald Trump’s presidency, she said, “But how quickly it all changed.” She added, “Under Joe Biden, America is crumbling.”

    Facts First: Lara Trump’s claim about February 2020 having “the lowest unemployment in American history” is false. The unemployment rate was 3.5% at the time – tied for the lowest since 1969, but not the all-time lowest on record, which was 2.5% in 1953. And while Lara Trump didn’t make an explicit claim about unemployment under Biden, it’s not true that things are worse today on this measure; again, the most recent unemployment rate, 3.4% for January 2023, is better than the rate at the time of CPAC’s 2020 conference or at any other time during Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Multiple speakers at CPAC decried the high number of fentanyl overdose deaths. But some of the speakers inflated that number while attacking Biden’s immigration policy.

    Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, claimed that “in the last 12 months in America, deaths by fentanyl poisoning totaled 110,000 Americans.” He blamed “Biden’s open border” for these deaths.

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed: “Meanwhile over on this side of the border, where there isn’t anybody, they’re running this fentanyl in; it’s killing 100,000 Americans – over 100,000 Americans – a year.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that there are more than 100,000 fentanyl deaths per year. That is the total number of deaths from all drug overdoses in the US; there were 106,699 such deaths in 2021. But the number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, is smaller – 70,601 in 2021.

    Fentanyl-related overdoses are clearly a major problem for the country and by far the biggest single contributor to the broader overdose problem. Nonetheless, claims of “110,000” and “over 100,000” fentanyl deaths per year are significant exaggerations. And while the number of overdose deaths and fentanyl-related deaths increased under Biden in 2021, it was also troubling under Trump in 2020 – 91,799 total overdose deaths and 56,516 for synthetic opioids other than methadone.

    It’s also worth noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled in by US citizens through legal ports of entry rather than by migrants sneaking past other parts of the border. Contrary to frequent Republican claims, the border is not “open”; border officers have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl under Biden.

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  • Colombia plans to send 70 ‘cocaine hippos’ to India and Mexico, governor says | CNN

    Colombia plans to send 70 ‘cocaine hippos’ to India and Mexico, governor says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Colombia plans to fly dozens of its “cocaine hippos” – the descendents of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar’s private menagerie – to new homes in India and Mexico in a bid to control their booming population, according to the local governor.

    There are now between 130 and 160 of the hippos, according to the Colombian government, and they have spread out far beyond Escobar’s former ranch of Hacienda Napoles, where they began as a population of just one male and three females.

    The original hippos were part of a collection of exotic animals Escobar had amassed in the 1980s at his ranch about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Medellín. After his death in 1993, authorities relocated most of the other animals, but not the hippos – because they were too difficult to transport.

    But they have since begun to reproduce rapidly, extending their reach along the Magdalena River basin, and they now pose an environmental challenge and are concerning nearby residents, authorities say.

    A study in the journal Nature warned their numbers could balloon to 1,500 within two decades.

    Previously, authorities have tried to control their population using castrations and “shots” of contraceptive darts. But the contraceptive drives have had limited success.

    Now there’s a plan to transfer 70 of the hippos to natural sanctuaries in India and Mexico, the governor of Antioquia province, where Hacienda Napoles is located, said in a Tweet.

    A total of 70 hippos, a mix of males and females, are expected to be moved – with 60 going to India and 10 to Mexico.

    The technical term for this operation is “translocating,” governor Aníbal Gaviria explained in an interview with the Colombian outlet Blu Radio, as it would involve moving the hippos from one country that was not their native habitat to another that was also not their natural habitat.

    The goal was “to take them to countries where these institutions have the capacity to receive them, and to (home) them properly and to control their reproduction,” Gaviria said.

    Sending the hippos back to their native land of Africa was “not allowed,” Gaviria said.

    Sending the hippos back to Africa risked doing more harm than good, for both the hippos themselves and the local ecosystem, María Ángela Echeverry, professor of Biology at the Javeriana University, previously explained to CNN.

    “Every time we move animals or plants from one place to the other, we also move their pathogens, their bacteria and their viruses. And we could be bringing new diseases to Africa, not just for the hippos that are out there in the wild, but new diseases for the entire African ecosystem that hasn’t evolved with that type of disease,” Echeverry said.

    Aside from reducing the number of hippos in Colombia, authorities are hoping to learn how to manage the remaining population, which are recognized as a potential tourist attraction.

    The hippos will be flown in purpose-built boxes, Gaviria said in the radio interview, and will not be sedated at first.

    But “emergency sedation” is possible if one of the animals is overcome by nerves during the flight, he added.

    The translocation could be completed by the first half of this year if necessary permits are expedited, especially from the Colombian Agricultural Institute, Gaviria said.

    Hippos are seen by some as an invasive species that can pose a danger to local ecosystems and sometimes even to humans.

    Research has highlighted the negative effects hippo waste can have on oxygen levels in bodies of water, which can affect fish and ultimately humans.

    Nature magazine cited a 2019 paper that found lakes where hippos were present had more cyanobacteria, which are associated with toxic algae. These blooms can reduce water quality and cause mass fish deaths, affecting local fishing communities.

    Hippos can also pose a threat to agriculture and to people’s safety, according to a Biological Conservation study published in 2021. Hippos can eat or damage crops and engage in aggressive interactions with humans.

    “Hippos live in herds, they are quite aggressive. They are very territorial and are plant eaters in general,” said Professor Echeverry.

    While the “cocaine hippos” are not native to Colombia, the local terrain is thought to be favorable for their reproduction, since it has shallow water sources and a large concentration of food.

    Until now, Colombia has not been able to solve a problem that – in the words of Gaviria to Blu Radio – “got out of control.”

    Whether the latest efforts will succeed where birth control efforts failed remains to be seen.

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  • More than 4.5 million fentanyl pills, 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine seized in Arizona investigation, DEA says | CNN

    More than 4.5 million fentanyl pills, 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine seized in Arizona investigation, DEA says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Arizona authorities targeting the Sinaloa drug cartel have seized narcotics estimated to be worth more than $13 million, including more than 4.5 million fentanyl pills, 3,100 pounds of methamphetamine and large quantities of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl powder, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

    In a news release, the agency said the seizure was the culmination of a three-year-long investigation during which 150 people had so far been charged.

    “The fentanyl seized represents more than 30 million potentially lethal doses,” the DEA said, announcing the seizure in partnership with the Tempe Police Department and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.

    Authorities displayed some of the recovered narcotics at a joint news conference Thursday, attended by CNN affiliate KNXV.

    “The sample you see here today is staggering. There are over 4.5 million fentanyl pills, over 140 pounds of fentanyl powder, over 135 kilos of cocaine, over 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine, 35 kilos of heroin, 49 firearms and over $2 million in cash,” Interim Tempe Police Chief Josie Montenegro told reporters.

    Montenegro said the substances recovered “would be poisoning members of our community, including our youth and vulnerable population,” had the seizures not been made.

    “In addition, the dangers and crimes associated with illegal drugs would be plaguing our community,” Montenegro added.

    According to authorities, “numerous” people were taken into custody in the bust. At this time, authorities do not plan on releasing the names of those involved because it is a continuing investigation, according to Montenegro.

    Phoenix DEA Special Agent in Charge Cheri Oz said investigators are “laser-focused” on the Sinaloa cartel.

    “I want to be crystal clear, the drugs in this room and the drugs that are flooding Arizona every single day are sourced primarily by one evil as the Sinaloa drug cartel,” she said at the news conference. “We are laser-focused on the Sinaloa drug cartel and we will defeat them. We will not stop.”

    Oz also praised the efforts of DEA agents and other officers over the last three years. “Their hard work and tenacity is responsible for removing these deadly drugs before they poisoned our family, our friends and our neighborhoods,” she said.

    The country is struggling with a decades-long opioid epidemic in which fentanyl has become the most commonly used drug involved in overdoses.

    Pharmaceutical fentanyl is a synthetic opioid intended to help patients manage severe pain. It is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and typically prescribed in the form of skin patches or lozenges. But most recent cases of fentanyl-related harm, overdose, and death in the United States are linked to illegally made fentanyl, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Deaths involving synthetic opioids increased by 22% in 2021, according to CDC data, and in 2022, there were about 181,806 nonfatal opioid overdoses recorded in the United States.

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  • Murder of Vermont woman solved after more than 50 years using DNA found on a cigarette and the victim’s clothing | CNN

    Murder of Vermont woman solved after more than 50 years using DNA found on a cigarette and the victim’s clothing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    More than 50 years after Rita Curran’s roommate found her strangled to death in her room, police in Vermont say they have identified the killer using DNA found on a cigarette butt and Curran’s clothing.

    Investigators identified William DeRoos, a man who lived in Curran’s Burlington apartment building, as the person responsible with the help of advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy, police in Vermont’s most populous city announced Tuesday.

    DeRoos died of a drug overdose in San Francisco in 1986, police said. The case is now closed.

    On the night of the July 1971 killing, DeRoos, who lived with his wife two floors above Curran, had a fight with his spouse and left their apartment to “cool down,” according to a Burlington police investigation report.

    Curran, 24, was later found dead, severely beaten after apparently having put up a “vicious struggle,” a detective wrote at the time. Investigators are now “unanimously certain” DeRoos was responsible, the report released Tuesday says.

    But when investigators questioned DeRoos and his wife the next morning, the couple said they had been together all night and didn’t hear or see anything. After police left, DeRoos told his wife if they were questioned again, she should not admit that he had left the apartment “or they would go after him” because he had a criminal history, police said during a news conference Tuesday.

    A break in the case finally came in 2014 when a DNA profile was extracted from a cigarette butt that had been found next to Curran’s body, Detective Lt. James Trieb said at the news conference. Though the profile was submitted to a national criminal database for DNA, he said, no matches were made. That meant the person with that DNA likely never had genetic material entered into the database, possibly because the person didn’t have a felony conviction.

    In 2019, Trieb reopened the case and decided to take a new approach.

    Instead of having a single detective work the cold case alone – the department’s usual strategy – he treated the crime as if it had just been committed, bringing in a team of detectives and expert technicians to review and discuss it, his investigation report says.

    The team began retesting evidence, Trieb said, and decided to analyze the cigarette DNA using genetic genealogy – a process that uses DNA databases for genealogy research to identify possible family members of the person whose DNA is unmatched.

    An outside genetic genealogy expert then concluded that the cigarette DNA had strong connections to relatives of DeRoos, both on the paternal and maternal sides.

    “She was certain that it was William DeRoos” who put his DNA on the cigarette, the police report says.

    cnn world rugby bryan habana dnafit rugby spc_00013322.jpg

    Why your DNA may be solving cold cases

    Investigators then found a living half-brother of DeRoos who was willing to provide a DNA sample, and that sample bolstered the conclusion that the cigarette DNA belonged to DeRoos, the report says.

    Finally, investigators found that DNA left on Curran’s ripped house coat also matched the DNA on the cigarette butt, the report reads. Investigators re-interviewed his then-wife, who admitted that she had lied about DeRoos’ alibi.

    At the news conference, acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said the day was “filled with mixed emotions.”

    “Ultimately, those emotions are ones of relief, of pride for me (and) for this department, but mostly of gratitude to a family that has been through an incredible ordeal for more than half a century,” he said.

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  • Genaro García Luna, former Mexican public security secretary, convicted in US of taking bribes from drug cartels | CNN

    Genaro García Luna, former Mexican public security secretary, convicted in US of taking bribes from drug cartels | CNN

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public security secretary and architect of its deadly and protracted war on drugs, was found guilty in federal court in New York on Tuesday of taking bribes from the drug cartels he had sworn to combat, the US Attorney’s Office said.

    The former Secretary of Public Security in Mexico, who served from 2006 to 2012, was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn on five counts of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, including international cocaine distribution conspiracy, conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, conspiracy to import cocaine and making false statements, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.

    He is the highest-ranking current or former Mexican official ever tried in the United States.

    His trial before US District Judge Brian M. Cogan, who also oversaw the trial of former Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, lasted four weeks. The Court of the Eastern District of New York jury announced the verdict after 15 days of hearings and having heard the testimony of 27 witnesses.

    García Luna, 54, pleaded not guilty to all charges and can appeal the ruling.

    He will be sentenced June 27. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years’ in prison and a maximum of life behind bars.

    “Garcia Luna, who once stood at the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live the rest of his days having been revealed as a traitor to his country and to the honest members of law enforcement who risked their lives to dismantle drug cartels,” Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.

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  • WADA appeals case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva to Court of Arbitration for Sport | CNN

    WADA appeals case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva to Court of Arbitration for Sport | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The protracted doping saga involving Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva entered another phase on Tuesday as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

    Last month, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) effectively cleared Valieva of wrongdoing, saying that the 16-year-old had violated anti-doping rules but bore no “fault or negligence” for the transgression.

    But WADA believes such a conclusion is “wrong” and has now exercised its right to appeal the ruling.

    Valieva was suspended by RUSADA the day after she guided the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) to victory in the figure skating team event at last year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, where she also became the first woman in history to land a quadruple jump at the Games.

    However, it came to light during the course of the Olympics that Valieva had tested positive for the heart medication trimetazidine – which can enhance endurance – in December 2021.

    Valieva has not publicly explained the positive test results.

    The ROC placed first in the team event in Beijing ahead of the USA in second, Japan in third and Canada in fourth, but no medal ceremony was held as a result of the doping controversy.

    In a statement on Tuesday, WADA said it is seeking a four-year period of ineligibility for Valieva and disqualification of her results from the date of the sample collection on December 25, 2021.

    “As it has sought to do throughout this process, WADA will continue to push for this matter to proceed without further undue delay,” the statement added.

    “Given the case is now pending before CAS, WADA can make no further comment at this time.”

    CNN has contacted RUSADA and the International Olympic Committee for comment.

    Valieva was cleared to compete in the women’s singles event at the Winter Olympics but ultimately placed fourth after falling and stumbling several times during the competition.

    Travis Tygart, the CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), said on Tuesday that the decision to appeal Valieva’s case to CAS “had to be done in order to restore some confidence in the global anti-doping system.”

    He added: “Let’s hope the hearing is expedited and open to the public so that the athletes whose dreams are hanging in the balance can believe in the final outcome, whatever it may be, and that some justice can be salvaged soon.”

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  • East Palestine residents worry rashes, headaches and other symptoms may be tied to chemicals from train crash | CNN

    East Palestine residents worry rashes, headaches and other symptoms may be tied to chemicals from train crash | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Some residents of East Palestine, Ohio, say they have developed rashes, sore throats, nausea and headaches after returning to their homes this week, and they’re worried these new symptoms are related to chemicals released after a train derailment two weeks ago.

    The February 3 incident caused a massive fire and prompted officials to evacuate hundreds of people who lived near the site because of fears that a hazardous, highly flammable material might ignite. To prevent a potentially deadly explosion, toxic vinyl chloride gas was vented and burned, releasing a plume of black smoke over the town for days.

    Other chemicals of concern at the site include phosgene and hydrogen chloride, which are released when vinyl chloride breaks down; butyl acrylate; ethylene glycol monobutyl ether acetate; and 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. All these chemicals can change when they break down or react with other things in the environment, creating a stew of potential toxins.

    Residents were given the all-clear to return to their homes February 8 after air monitoring in East Palestine did not detect any elevated chemicals of concern.

    Officials say further testing of indoor air in about 500 homes has also not shown any hazards. Tests of tap water from the municipal system didn’t show any chemicals at levels that would pose a health hazard, although officials are still testing water from rivers, streams and residential wells in the area.

    These test results have failed to reassure some residents, who say something is making them sick – even if officials can’t find it.

    “When we went back on the 10th, that’s when we decided that we couldn’t raise our kids here,” Amanda Greathouse said. There was a terrible, lingering smell that “reminded me of hair perming solution.”

    Greathouse said she was back in their house, about a block from the crash site, for 30 minutes when she developed a rash and nausea.

    “When we left, I had a rash on my skin on my arm, and my eyes were burning for a few days after that,” said Greathouse, who has two preschool-age children.

    She and her husband have returned to their home only twice since the derailment, to pick up paperwork and clothing.

    “The chemical smell was so strong that it made me nauseous,” Greathouse said. “I just wanted to quickly pick up what I needed and leave. I only took a few pieces of clothes because even the clothes smelled like chemicals, and I’m afraid to put them on my kids.”

    She says she’s also kept her children out of preschool since the derailment. Even though her son’s teacher has promised her that students are using only bottled water, she’s worried about other types of contamination.

    “I don’t want to take my son out of the preschool they’re in because I really like the teachers he has, but I’m still scared. Some teachers have even expressed their concerns about the air quality,” Greathouse said.

    “We are very fortunate that we rent our home. Didn’t think I would ever say that. I feel awful for my landlord, but I just can’t risk my family’s health.”

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said a request for medical experts from the US Department of Health and Human Services has been granted, and officials should be arriving early next week to help prop up a clinic for patients.

    “We know the science indicates that this water is safe, the air is safe. But we also know very understandably that residents of East Palestine are concerned,” he said Friday.

    DeWine said he plans to set up a clinic where HHS officials and others will answer questions, evaluate symptoms and provide medical expertise.

    The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also says it expects to have a team on site Monday, according to a CDC spokesperson who requested that they not be named because they weren’t authorized to share the details. The team will conduct an Assessment of Chemical Exposure investigation, which surveys the impact of a chemical release on people and the community.

    The volatile organic compounds released by the controlled explosion can cause symptoms similar to those reported by some East Palestine residents, including headache, sore throat, and nose and eye irritation, but experts say it’s extremely difficult to connect chemical exposures to health effects.

    “That is a major challenge,” says Erin Haynes, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the University of Kentucky.

    “The community is now exposed to a mixture of numerous petroleum-based volatile organic compounds, so it may not just be one, it could be the mixture of them,” Haynes said.

    Haynes, who has experience investigating toxic exposures in communities, says she is seeking approval from her university’s Institutional Review Board to start a study in East Palestine to help give residents more information on their chemical exposures in air, water and soil.

    “They need all the help they can get,” she said. “This is a major emergency. This is a major disaster. They need all the assistance that we all can provide.

    “The evidence of a toxic exposure could very well be the rashes,” she said.

    Audrey DeSanzo would like some answers, too.

    “How safe is it, really?” said DeSanzo, who lives about half a mile from the derailment with her two grade-school-age children. “It’s not in all these people’s heads that are getting rashes, that are having the conjunctivitis, the pinkeye, from chemicals.”

    “You have a sore throat when you’re staying here. It smells out here.”

    After the derailment, DeSanzo evacuated with her kids just over the state line in Pennsylvania, where her uncle had an empty duplex. They slept on the floor and the couch.

    When she came home this week, DeSanzo says, she aired out her house, changed the furnace filter and washed their sheets and clothes. Even so, she says, they all recently went to a local immediate care clinic because her kids were coughing, and “our throats were raw.”

    Tests for strep throat were negative. The doctor prescribed cough medicine for the kids and told DeSanzo that the chemicals were probably to blame.

    The doctor said she had seen a number of East Palestine residents with similar symptoms, DeSanzo said, and advised them to call poison control and go to the local hospital for a blood test. She hasn’t gotten the blood test yet.

    Debbie Pietrzak, a spokesperson for Salem Regional Medical Center, which runs the clinic DeSanzo went to, confirmed that it has treated a small number of residents with symptoms like sore throats and respiratory problems. The hospital’s emergency room has seen fewer than 10 patients from East Palestine, she said.

    “Our facilities and primary care providers stand ready to help anyone who is seeking medical attention, and we are working closely with the County’s Health Department and other local, state and federal agencies, which are monitoring the situation,” Pietrzak said in an email.

    Natalie Rine, a pharmacist who directs the Central Ohio Poison Center, said the state’s poison control centers are getting calls from East Palestine residents, too. Experts who staff the help lines are trained in toxicology and can help if chemicals are a health concern.

    DeSanzo says she wants to leave but can’t afford to. Her mortgage is about $400 a month, less than half of those of other homes she’s found in the area that are farther from the accident site.

    “I make $14 an hour. Where am I supposed to go?” she said. “I don’t want to be here now with with my kids.”

    Ayla and Tyler Antoniazzi and their two daughters have been living in East Palestine since April. After the train crash, they weren’t sure about moving out, Ayla says, but they’re now considering it.

    The Antoniazzis returned to their house less than a mile from the accident site the day after the evacuation notice was lifted.

    “Before bringing my kids back home, I washed all the linen and a bunch of clothes, cleaned surfaces and aired the house out,” Ayla said. “But the next day when they woke up, they weren’t themselves. My oldest had a rash on her face. The youngest did too but not as bad. The 2-year-old was holding her eye and complaining that her eye was hurting. She was very lethargic, so I took them back to my parents’ home.”

    Ayla says her daughters are staying with her parents in Leetonia, about 20 minutes west of East Palestine, until the couple is able to make sure their home is safe.

    The kids’ symptoms got better in Leetonia, she said, but one got another rash when she returned to school in East Palestine on February 13.

    Ayla Antoniazzi's 4-year-old daughter developed a rash after going back to school in East Palestine.

    “I did allow my 4-year-old to return to preschool, which is in the East Palestine Elementary School. She went back for two days and developed another rash on her hands and started complaining of itching, so I pulled her back out,” Ayla said.

    Ayla has scheduled a medical appointment with her daughters for next week to discuss their symptoms and testing options, she said.

    That’s the right thing to do, says Dr. Kari Nadeau, an allergist and chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health.

    Nadeau says rashes, sore throat, and headaches can be clinical signs of a chemical sensitivity.

    “There are people that are highly sensitive to chemicals and can feel it before necessarily a monitor can pick it up,” Nadeau said. “There’s not a great diagnostic pathway for chemical sensitivities. A lot of it is based off clinical symptoms, including rashes.”

    Nadeau and other environmental health experts advise people who are having symptoms to see a health care provider, primarily for medical care but also so their case can be documented.

    “So that if there is a cluster, or if there’s a group of people that all of a sudden have complained about a rash or given symptoms, that really helps doctors come together with institutions like the CDC and do a little bit more fact-finding,” she said.

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  • ‘Does that mean that I am a suspect?’ Footage shows investigator asking Alex Murdaugh if he killed his wife and son | CNN

    ‘Does that mean that I am a suspect?’ Footage shows investigator asking Alex Murdaugh if he killed his wife and son | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: The HBO docuseries “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty” chronicles the family’s influence in South Carolina. It airs on CNN Sunday, February 19, at 8 p.m. ET.



    CNN
     — 

    The jury in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial saw footage Wednesday from a crucial interview he had with state investigators where he was asked for the first time if he killed his wife and son.

    The interview on August 11, 2021, was the third Murdaugh had with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which was investigating the murders of his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and grown son, Paul Murdaugh, two months earlier, according to testimony Wednesday by SLED agent Lt. David Owen.

    The interview was about to end when Owen told Murdaugh he had “a few more questions.”

    “Did you kill Maggie?” Owen asked, according to the footage played in court.

    “No,” Murdaugh said. “Did I kill my wife? No, David.”

    “Do you know who did?”

    “No, I do not know who did,” Murdaugh said.

    “Did you kill Paul?”

    “No, I did not kill Paul,” Murdaugh said.

    “Do you know who did?”

    “No, sir, I do not know who did,” Murdaugh said. “Do you think I killed Maggie?”

    “I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen said.

    “I understand that. And you think I killed Paul?”

    “I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen said again. “And I don’t have anything that points to anybody else at this time.”

    “So does that mean that I am a suspect?”

    Owen told Murdaugh he was “still in this,” adding, “I have to put my beliefs aside, and go with the facts.”

    Owen’s testimony Wednesday comes as the state nears the end of its case, in which prosecutors contend Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from a mountain of alleged financial crimes he had committed and to stave off a “day of reckoning” when those crimes might come to light.

    The defense maintains Murdaugh – who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings – was a loving father and husband who called 911 the night of the killings after he found his wife and son shot at the family’s estate in Islandton, South Carolina, a property known as Moselle.

    At the time of the August 11, 2021, interview, Murdaugh was “the only known suspect” in the murders, Owen testified Wednesday.

    The case was transferred that same day from the local solicitor to the Attorney General’s Office, which has been prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s long ties with the local solicitor: Three generations of Murdaughs served as the 14th Circuit Solicitor over about 87 years.

    Murdaugh’s statements during the August 2021 interview were voluntary, Owen testified Wednesday. Murdaugh wanted to ask SLED agents questions about the investigation, Owen said, and the agent told him he wanted to ask Murdaugh some questions, too. Murdaugh indicated he was comfortable answering the agents’ questions.

    Murdaugh claimed to law enforcement he last saw Maggie and Paul earlier in the evening of the murders. They ate dinner together before Murdaugh took a nap and then drove to Almeda to visit his mother. He discovered the bodies of his wife and son, he said, when he returned home and called 911 at 10:07 p.m.

    The footage played in court Wednesday showed SLED agents confronting Murdaugh about evidence that appeared to contradict his earlier statements to law enforcement.

    It was the first time, Owen testified, that Murdaugh was confronted with the fact that Paul’s friend, Rogan Gibson, said he heard Murdaugh’s voice in the background of a phone call he had with Paul that night, shortly before the murders took place.

    “You were heard in the background, and that was prior to 9 p.m. … Was it you?” Owen asked Murdaugh, per the footage shown in court Tuesday.

    “At nine o’clock? No, sir,” Murdaugh said, “not if my times are right.”

    “Who do you think it could have been?”

    “I have no idea.”

    “And Rogan’s been around your family for pretty much all his life,” Owen said, something Murdaugh agreed with. “And he recognizes your voice, and you have a distinct voice. Can you think of anybody else that has a voice similar to yours that he may have misinterpreted?”

    “No, sir.”

    Months later, investigators discovered a video on Paul’s phone that he filmed immediately after that call, at 8:44 p.m. in the area of the family’s dog kennels, near where the bodies were found. Multiple witnesses at trial have identified Murdaugh’s voice, along with Maggie’s and Paul’s, in that video, contradicting Murdaugh’s statements to investigators he had not gone to the kennels before finding the bodies.

    The footage played Wednesday also showed the agents confront Murdaugh about another piece of footage filmed by Paul the night of the killings: A Snapchat video showing Murdaugh looking at a sapling on the family’s property. In it, Murdaugh is seen wearing pants and a blue shirt. But later, he was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt.

    “There’s a video on Paul’s phone of you and him on the farm that night. You’re wearing khaki pants and a dress shirt … When I met you that night, you were in shorts and a T-shirt,” Owen said. “At what point in the evening did you change clothes?”

    “I’m not sure,” Murdaugh said. “What time of day was that? I would have thought I would have already changed.”

    Testimony in recent days similarly undermined statements Murdaugh made to SLED during the August 2021 interview – namely, that Maggie decided to go to Moselle the night of the killings because she was worried about him and his father, whose health was deteriorating.

    Two witnesses disagree: On Tuesday, Maggie’s sister testified it was Murdaugh who wanted Maggie to come to Moselle. Maggie was staying in the family’s Edisto Beach property and did not want to go to Islandton, Marian Proctor said, recalling a conversation they had the day of the murders.

    Proctor encouraged Maggie to go, she said, breaking down in court.

    Blanca Simpson, a family housekeeper, similarly testified last week that Maggie told her the day of the murders that Alex had asked both Maggie and Paul to come to Moselle that night.

    During cross-examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin noted that investigators had the Snapchat video in July, but did not ask Murdaugh about the whereabouts of the blue shirt and pants he was seen wearing in that footage. Owen testified that he never asked Murdaugh for those clothes.

    “And the reason you didn’t, (was because) you weren’t concerned about those clothes. Your investigation had been focused since early June on the T-shirt he was wearing, the shorts he was wearing and shoes he was wearing at the time he called 911,” Griffin said.

    “Yes,” Owen replied.

    Owen testified that he had told a county grand jury that an expert found multiple particles of blood spatter on the front of the T-shirt, and it was sent to a lab for testing. The test, however, found no blood on the shirt.

    “Y’all completely overlooked the fact that when you did a HemaTrace test to confirm whether there’s blood, it came up negative. Wasn’t that overlooked?” asked Griffin.

    “I had never seen that report,” responded Owen, who admitted he did not see it until November 2022, just months before the trial began.

    “Whoever killed Maggie and Paul would likely have biological material on them from the blasts that killed the two victims, right?,” Griffin asked Owen.

    “They would have some, yes,” Owen answered.

    Griffin established that Murdaugh’s mother’s property in Almeda was not searched until months after the killings, in September 2021. No weapons were found on that property, Owen testified.

    Owen also testified that nearby waterways and the route from Moselle to Almeda was “driven several times,” but not walked over.

    At one point Wednesday, Judge Clifton Newman ruled against allowing testimony about a roadside shooting that injured Murdaugh in September 2021. Authorities have alleged that Murdaugh arranged for another man, Curtis Edward Smith, to shoot him so his surviving son could obtain millions of dollars in life insurance.

    But the judge later Wednesday decided to allow that testimony after Smith was brought up during Owen’s cross-examination.

    Griffin seemed to suggest the killings could have been related to a money dispute with a drug gang, telling the court that Murdaugh was buying $50,000 worth of drugs each week from Smith. Owen agreed, testifying that he has been told the same.

    Griffin said Smith owed a lot of money to a drug gang, and Owen testified that he was told the gang was not worried about the money because it knew it was going to get paid.

    Owen testified that Smith was brought into the investigation on September 4, 2021, the day of the roadside incident. Before that, Murdaugh had never mentioned his involvement with Smith in relation to Maggie’s and Paul’s killings, according to Owen.

    “Prior to that day, had Alex Murdaugh ever mentioned to you Curtis Edward Smith or anyone else that might have been involved in his son’s or his wife’s murder?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.

    “No, sir,” responded Owen.

    Asked if a cell phone analysis had been performed to see if any of the drug gang members were in the area the night of the killings, Owen said drug gang members typically use burner phones, and he didn’t have their phone numbers. But state investigators performed an analysis around Moselle and had identified only first responders as coming to the scene, Owen said.

    The defense attorney also asked Owen if any DNA analysis had been done to match a small amount of unknown male DNA found under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernail. Owen said no.

    The drug investigation is ongoing, Owen testified.

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  • 6 North Carolina officers are on administrative leave after man dies in police custody | CNN

    6 North Carolina officers are on administrative leave after man dies in police custody | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Six Raleigh, North Carolina, police officers are on administrative leave and an investigation is underway after a man died in their custody last month, according to statements and newly released videos from the Raleigh Police Department.

    Darryl Tyree Williams, 32, died in a Raleigh hospital in the early hours of January 17 after a scuffle with police during which he was tased multiple times by police officers and arrested.

    The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is conducting an independent criminal investigation and will present its findings to the Wake County District Attorney, Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson said in a memo to City Manager Marchell Adams-David several days after Williams’ death.

    A Wake County judge authorized Friday’s release of footage from the officers’ body cameras, as well as area surveillance footage and patrol vehicle dash camera videos connected to the incident.

    According to the memo and body camera footage, officers were conducting “proactive patrols” of businesses in an area that police said has a history of criminal violations, at roughly 1:55 a.m.

    In the video, officers J.T. Thomas and C.D. Robinson are seen pulling into the parking lot before approaching a vehicle and speaking to its occupants.

    Robinson then walks across the parking lot to another vehicle occupied by two people, including Williams, who was in the driver’s seat.

    The officer then opens the passenger door and questions what the occupants are doing before asking Williams and the passenger to exit the vehicle. According to the memo, Robinson allegedly saw an open container of alcohol and marijuana in the car.

    In the video, Williams and the unidentified passenger can be heard repeatedly asking Robinson why they were being removed from the car.

    “What’s going on?” Williams asked several times as Robinson positioned him against his car to conduct a full body search.

    “Keep both of your hands on the car. If you can’t listen to my instructions, I’m going to put you in handcuffs,” Robinson says in the video. “I’m not trying to put you in handcuffs.”

    By that point – about a minute into the encounter – Robinson had not told Williams why he was being searched.

    Moments later, Robinson is seen pulling a folded dollar bill out of Williams’ side pocket, and indicates in the video he has detected a white powdery substance folded into the bill.

    According to the memo, Robinson decided to arrest Williams for possession of a controlled substance, based upon his findings at the scene.

    Williams is heard asking “why” and “what’s going on” as Robinson attempts to place him in handcuffs. Another officer attempts to help Robinson and Thomas detain Williams, as they yell at him to “get on the ground” while another officer calls for back-up.

    Robinson then deployed his taser, which contacted Williams as he attempted to flee, while the other officers continue to yell at him to put his hands behind his back.

    Another taser was deployed but did not make contact, according to police.

    After a physical scuffle, Williams tried to escape the officers again but lost his balance and fell while attempting to run across the parking lot.

    A taser was deployed again at this point, which police said also did not contact Williams.

    An officer is heard yelling at Williams to “get on the f***king ground” while officers appeared to put their body weight on top of him to prevent the man from getting up.

    Robinson and Thomas deployed two separate tasers in “drive stun mode” which both contacted Williams in about a 50-second time span, police said.

    According to the memo, the taser deployed by Thomas contacted Williams’ side while Robinson’s taser contacted the left side of Williams’ back.

    Williams appeared to be audibly and visibly in distress as the officers continued yelling at him to stay on the ground with his hands behind his back, the video shows.

    “Put your hands behind your back or you’re gonna get tased,” one of the officers said.

    At this point, Williams is heard saying he has “heart problems” as he begged for officers to stop.

    An officer then counted down from three before deploying his taser again.

    Williams is then heard screaming and seen wriggling underneath the officers who were still yelling at him to put his hands behind his back.

    At that point, officers put Williams in handcuffs as an “unintended Taser activation” is heard but did not make contact, according to police.

    Robinson is heard telling the other officers to pat down Williams as officers attempt to reposition him into a “recovery” position.

    Another officer is heard telling Williams to “relax.”

    Police then requested EMS response at 2:02 a.m., which is in accordance with policy, the memo said.

    Moments later, an officer is heard asking if Williams is “still good” and if he’s “still breathing.”

    An officer is heard saying he doesn’t feel Williams’ pulse as other officers attempted to wake him.

    “He’s breathing,” one officer is heard saying. “He’s good.”

    Officers then removed the taser probes from Williams’ body before asking again if he was breathing.

    Officers did not detect a pulse and began performing CPR on Williams.

    They then made another call to dispatch requesting expedited EMS response at 2:06 a.m.

    Raleigh Fire Department responders then arrived on scene and took over performing CPR, according to the video.

    The video footage ends before the ambulance arrived on scene.

    It’s unclear if police were able to locate the passenger of the vehicle, who appeared to flee the scene.

    “Mr. Williams was transported by EMS to a local hospital where he was later pronounced deceased at 3:01 a.m. The cause of Mr. Williams’ death, including toxicology results, will be part of the ongoing investigations,” according to the memo.

    Police recovered two firearms, marijuana and suspected controlled substances from Williams’ vehicle, the memo reads.

    Officers Robinson, Thomas, D.L. Aquino, J.R. Scott, D.L. Grande and B.L. Ramge have been placed on administrative leave, according to the memo.

    In a statement to CNN, Dawn Blagrove, the executive director of Emancipate NC, a legal advocacy group representing Williams’ family, said the family “demands undelayed justice.”

    “That’s what his mother wants the world to know. Justice, not just for Darryl Tyree Williams but, for all the victims of state sanctioned violence across the nation,” Blagrove said.

    “Now is the time for the city of Raleigh and all of America to reckon with the trauma and harm that policing causes to Black, Brown and marginalized communities,” Blagrove told CNN.

    CNN has reached out to the Raleigh Police Department, the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation, and the Wake County Medical Examiner’s Office on Saturday.

    The Raleigh Police Protective Association, which represents two of the officers involved in the incident, told CNN in a statement its “prayers and thoughts are with the Williams family,” and that it has reviewed the video of the “tragic incident.”

    “At this point we could not determine any criminal actions or policy violations of the officers involved. We respect the process and recognize this incident is currently under investigation by the SBI,” RPPA Vice President Rick Armstrong said in the Saturday statement.

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  • After recent student fentanyl overdoses in Texas community, court documents reveal drug supplier lived blocks away from schools | CNN

    After recent student fentanyl overdoses in Texas community, court documents reveal drug supplier lived blocks away from schools | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Parents across the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District (CFBISD), located in a Dallas, Texas, suburb, are reeling following a string fentanyl overdoses by nine students who attend schools in the district.

    The students, who range in age from 13 to 17 and are not identified by name in court documents, overdosed between September 18, 2022 and February 1, 2023. Three of the students died, and one of the students, a 14-year-old girl, overdosed twice, according to a statement by the US Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas.

    Law enforcement officers traced the drugs the students overdosed on to a house within walking distance from a middle school and a high school, court documents say.

    “First with all the school shootings, now this with drugs,” Lupe Rebadan, who has two children, as well as nieces and nephews, attending schools in the district told CNN. “Our kids are not safe at school… When is this all going to stop?”

    Luis Eduardo Navarette and Magaly Mejia Cano have been charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, according to the US Attorney’s Office.

    “To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors – naive middle and high school students – is to shatter futures. These defendants’ alleged actions are simply despicable,” US Attorney Leigha Simonton said in the statement.

    The complaint illuminates a network of drug dealers and users, most of them teenagers who attend R.L. Turner High School, Dan Long Middle School and Dewitt Perry Middle School, and traced the proliferation of fentanyl tainted “M30” pills to Navarette and Cano’s residence.

    International drug trafficking organizations often produce M30 pills by mixing highly addictive fentanyl with acetaminophen “and other binder type substances and pressed into various tablets/pills,” says an affidavit by a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer included in the criminal complaint.

    Many fake pills are made to look like prescription opioids such as oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet), hydrocodone (Vicodin), and alprazolam (Xanax); or stimulants like amphetamines (Adderall),” according to the DEA’s “One Pill Can Kill” website.

    Criminal organizations, according to the DEA officer’s affidavit, sell M30 pills for $1 to $2 dollars per pill when the purchasers buy in bulk amounts. Those are later sold to “street level dealers” for $3 to $5 per pill, and later sold to consumers for $10 per pill.

    Law enforcement tracked multiple teenagers engaging in “hand-to-hand transactions” with Navarette and Cano outside of their house, which is approximately five blocks from R.L. Turner High School and two blocks from DeWitt Perry Middle School, the court documents reveal.

    On January 12, a Carrollton Street Crimes Unit detective observed a 16-year-old obtain M30 pills from Navarette and Cano’s residence.

    The teenager appeared to crush and snort a pill on their front porch, “possibly package” the drugs, then walk toward the high school, where he was enrolled, according to the complaint.

    The school was notified by law enforcement, and later that day a school resource officer located the teenager in a bathroom making a “snorting sound” and appearing intoxicated.

    Navarette and Cano made their initial appearances in court on Monday, Erin Dooley of the US Attorney’s Office in Northern Texas told CNN. Naverette waived his right to a detention hearing and was ordered detained pending trial, and Cano had her detention hearing on Friday, she added. Attorneys for Navarette and Cano haven’t responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

    Days after the complaint outlining the 10 overdoses became available to the public, CFBISD released a statement expressing sorrow and concern over “the loss of young lives.”

    The district explained how it has educated the community about the threat from fentanyl over the past several months.

    “We will continue to work cooperatively with local law enforcement agencies to address this issue and to maximize safety on our campuses in every way possible. We believe if we work together as a community, we can avoid these tragedies,” the district said.

    The district said Narcan, or naloxone, an emergency drug used to treat fentanyl overdoses, had been obtained for all district facilities in October and random canine searches were being conducted on secondary campuses.

    Drug awareness presentations for parents will also resume this year, according to the district.

    “The fentanyl crisis is claiming far too many young Texans,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted Wednesday. Abbott launched the #OnePillKills campaign in October 2022 to “combat the growing national fentanyl crisis plaguing Texas.”

    In the first week of school in 2022, four students died from “fentanyl poisoning, or suspected poisoning” in Hays County Independent School District (HCISD), located in a suburb of Austin. This prompted the district to create “Fighting Fentanyl,” an informational campaign warning students and faculty about the deadly drug.

    Tim Savoy, the chief communication officer at HCISD, noted that the district has spent tens of millions of dollars for preventative measures against school shootings and Covid-19, two issues that have affected schools nationwide. The fentanyl crisis on school campuses deserves the same level of concern and response, he said.

    “This is a threat. We’re losing students, too. And so we made the decision that we have to get this equal attention and resources and do what we can,” Savoy told CNN.

    Despite the district’s awareness-raising campaign, an email from the superintendent on January 9 informed parents of “three more suspected accidental fentanyl poisonings” and one death in which fentanyl may have been to blame.

    “Our students are dying from this, and we have to do what we can,” Savoy said. “This is not just something that you’re seeing elsewhere. This is really happening in our community.”

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, median monthly overdose deaths among 10- to 19-year-olds across the United States involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl surged 182% from December 2019 to December 2021.

    Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to fentanyl exposure due to the “proliferation of counterfeit pills resembling prescription drugs containing IMFs (illicitly manufactured fentanyls), and the ease of purchasing pills through social media,” according to the CDC.

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  • What to know about the lawsuit aiming to ban medication abortion drug mifepristone | CNN Politics

    What to know about the lawsuit aiming to ban medication abortion drug mifepristone | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge may rule later this month on a lawsuit seeking to block the use of medication abortion nationwide, in the biggest abortion-related case since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

    The lawsuit, filed in November by anti-abortion advocates against the US Food and Drug Administration, targets the agency’s 20-year-old approval of mifepristone, the first drug in the medication abortion process

    Medication abortion, which now makes up a majority of abortions obtained in the US, has become a particularly acute flashpoint in the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade.

    US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, has extended the briefing deadline in the case until February 24.

    Reproductive rights advocates say that if Kacsmaryk sides with the plaintiffs, “it would eliminate the most commonly used method of abortion care,” according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

    Here’s what to know about the lawsuit:

    The lawsuit, filed last year by a coalition of anti-abortion national medical associations under the umbrella of the “Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine” and several doctors, is seeking a number of actions by the court, chief among them a preliminary and permanent injunction ordering the FDA “to withdraw mifepristone and misoprostol as FDA-approved chemical abortion drugs and to withdraw defendants’ actions to deregulate these chemical abortion drugs.”

    “After two decades of engaging the FDA to no avail, plaintiffs now ask this court to do what the FDA was and is legally required to do: protect women and girls by holding unlawful, setting aside, and vacating the FDA’s actions to approve chemical abortion drugs and eviscerate crucial safeguards for those who undergo this dangerous drug regimen,” the complaint reads.

    The FDA responded to the lawsuit last month by asking the judge to deny the motion for a preliminary injunction, arguing that issuing one in the matter “would upend the status quo and the reliance interests of patients and doctors who depend on mifepristone, as well as businesses involved with mifepristone distribution.”

    The agency also says a ruling against it would set a dangerous precedent.

    “More generally, if longstanding FDA drug approvals were so easily enjoined, even decades after being issued, pharmaceutical companies would be unable to confidently rely on FDA approval decisions to develop the pharmaceutical-drug infrastructure that Americans depend on to treat a variety of health conditions,” the FDA wrote.

    “A preliminary injunction would interfere with Congress’s decision to entrust FDA with responsibility to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs. In discharging this role, FDA applies its technical expertise to make complex scientific determinations about drugs’ safety and efficacy, and these determinations are entitled to substantial deference.”

    Danco, which makes mifepristone, also made a similar request to the FDA’s in a court filing, stressing that the lawsuit could decimate the company’s business.

    “Danco is a small pharmaceutical company. It sells one drug: Mifeprex,” lawyers for the company wrote in court papers. “Entering the mandatory preliminary injunction plaintiffs seek would force FDA to withdraw approval for Danco’s only product, effectively shuttering Danco’s business.”

    “Congress entrusts decision-making like this with the FDA. And they’re coming in trying to overrule that, saying this medication is unsafe because women bleed. Well, that’s part of having an abortion. It’s also part of having a pregnancy,” said Ryan Brown, an attorney representing Danco in the case. “The bottom line being that they just want to do away with abortion across the board and for any reason.”

    Kacsmaryk was appointed to the court in 2017 by then-President Trump and was confirmed by a 52-46 vote in 2019.

    Since then, he’s helped make Texas a legal graveyard for policies of President Joe Biden’s administration, presiding over 95% of the civil cases brought in Amarillo, Texas.

    In December, Kacsmaryk put on hold the Biden administration’s most recent attempt to end the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program. And he has overseen Texas cases challenging vaccine mandates, the gender identity guidance issued by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the administration’s limits on the use of Covid-19 relief funds for tax cuts.

    Before joining the court, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit religious liberty legal group, where he worked mainly on “religious liberty litigation in federal courts and amicus briefs in the US Supreme Court,” according to his White House biography.

    The case is being closely watched by a number of interested parties, including Republican and Democratic state attorneys general. On Friday, two different multi-state coalitions filed amicus briefs with the court urging them to act one way or another in the matter.

    A coalition of 22 Democratic attorneys general urged Kacsmaryk to deny the motion for a preliminary injunction, writing in court papers that “annulling – or even merely limiting – any of the FDA’s actions relating to medication abortion would result in an even more drastic reduction in abortion access across the entire nation, worsening already dire outcomes, deepening entrenched disparities in access to health care, and placing a potentially unbearable strain on the health care system as a whole.”

    And a coalition of 22 Republican attorneys general asked the court to issue the preliminary injunction, arguing the FDA exceeded its authority when it approved the medication.

    “State laws on chemical abortion thus account for the public interests at issue – and they do so with the benefit of democratic legitimacy (and legal authority). The FDA’s actions can make no such claim. By obstructing the judgments of elected representatives, the agency has undermined the public interest,” they wrote.

    Abortion rights advocates have sounded the alarm on the case, stressing that a ruling by Kacsmaryk in favor of the plaintiffs would affect every corner of the country since the lawsuit is targeting a federal agency.

    “If FDA approval of mifepristone is revoked, 64.5 million women of reproductive age in the US would lose access to medication abortion care, an exponential increase in harm overnight,” NARAL said in a statement on Friday, pointing to internal research.

    “This research reveals the high stakes of this lawsuit, and we can only expect the worst from this Trump-appointed federal judge. Americans want access to abortion, but anti-choice bad actors are dead set on restricting reproductive freedom by any means possible,” said Angela Vasquez-Giroux, the group’s vice president of communications and research.

    And activists are mobilizing in Texas around the issue, with the Women’s March planning to hold a rally at the federal courthouse in Amarillo, Texas, on Saturday.

    “We’ve said it before: the fight for reproductive rights now lies in the states, and legal challenges like these are just the latest example of how our fight is bigger than Roe,” said Rachel Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March.

    On Thursday, Kacsmaryk told the plaintiffs that they had until February 24 to respond to a recent filing by the Danco, writing in an order that following the deadline, “briefing will then be closed on the matter, absent any ‘exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.’”

    On Friday, the plaintiffs in the case submitted one response to the FDA’s filing. But the deadline extension means that after the plaintiffs submit a separate response to Danco, the case is ripe for judgment since all required briefings will have been filed.

    Kacsmaryk can rule at any time after that, though he could also call for a hearing, or ask for additional responses as well.

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  • The dark side of the sports betting boom | CNN Business

    The dark side of the sports betting boom | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The sports gambling gold rush is coming at a high cost.

    In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on commercial sports betting in most of the country. Thirty-three states have made sports gambling legal in the wake of the decision. Now, on Super Bowl Sunday, a record 50.4 million US adults are expected to bet on the game.

    The booming sports betting industry, lawmakers and even the professional sports leagues themselves are making it easier, faster and more tempting for people to bet on games — and develop gambling problems, say gambling researchers and addiction specialists.

    A flood of advertising, technology that allows for one-click betting at home, and nearly unlimited betting options during games have collided. There’s been a spike in inquiries to state gambling-addiction hotlines, states say.

    In the past five years, there has been an explosion of online sports betting apps from companies like DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars. These apps are often replacing illegal betting venues. At the same time, they also attract an influx of new gamblers who had never set foot in a casino or would have known how to place a bet with a bookie.

    During the Super Bowl, there will be an onslaught of advertisements — most starring celebrity sponsors and athletes — meant to encourage new sign-ups and grab market share. DraftKings will air a commercial featuring Kevin Hart and David Ortiz, while Rob Gronkowski will attempt a field goal kick live in a FanDuel ad. (Any customer who places a Super Bowl bet of five dollars or more on FanDuel will win a share of $10 million in “free bets” if Gronkowski makes it.)

    Hear why FanDuel CEO thinks this Super Bowl will be biggest day in company’s history

    Sports teams and leagues were once fiercely opposed to gambling on the games. Now, they’ve partnered with sportsbooks.

    These days, gamblers can also do much more than wager on the outcome of a game. There are options to bet in-game on every quarter, player, and event.

    Resources for gambling addiction programs have long been thin in the United States and have been stretched further by the current wave of sports betting. In 2020, there were 5.7 million Americans with a gambling disorder, according to a nationwide survey by the National Association of Administrators for Disordered Gambling Services.

    Focus on gambling disorders has historically been minimal in the United States, said Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist and the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program.

    This is in part because people with gambling disorders have been viewed as foolish or lacking willpower, he said. “We equate the ability to hold onto money and win money with success and equate losing with greed.”

    There is also sparse federal oversight of the gambling industry, and there are currently no federal funds designated for problem gambling treatment or research, unlike federal funding for alcohol, tobacco and drug addiction programs.

    DraftKings is one of the most popular sports betting apps.

    A patchwork of state legislation, lack of robust consumer protections in many states, and limited advertising restrictions are adding to the problems.

    “Many states naively or some other way went about legalizing sports betting without adequately estimating the costs on problem gambling resources,” said John Holden, an associate professor of management at Oklahoma State University who studies sports gambling regulation.

    “There is more that state lawmakers can do within the confines of commercial speech restrictions,” including authorizing extra funding to go after false and misleading advertising, Holden said.

    Betting on sports can be a way for some people to develop, maintain or accelerate gambling disorders.

    There are several features of sports betting that make it different from other forms of gambling and can lead to addictive behavior.

    Many sports bettors tend to perceive their wages on games are safer and more informed by their own expertise and skills than luck, researchers say. This may give them a false illusion of control.

    Additionally, live betting within games reduces the delay between risk and reward, and it’s increasing the speed and frequency of wagers, experts say.

    “I got caught up in a lot of the live betting,” said one 24-year-old man with a gambling disorder who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity. He started betting on sports seven years ago through a bookie, but upped his wagers once he started using apps.

    During football games, he would bet on the outcome of drives and which team would score the next touchdown. As he lost more during a game, he would try again to to win it back on the next play.

    “You see the way the game is going and you think you know,” he said. “It’s not like back in the day with a bookie betting on who wins.”

    He said he lost $100,000 on sports gambling, including money from student loans. He’s currently in recovery at Beit T’Shuvah, in Los Angeles, which provides inpatient and outpatient services for people struggling with gambling disorders.

    Casey Clark, the senior vice president at the American Gaming Association, a trade group for the gambling industry, said that the legalization of sports betting has moved the black market of sports gambling into regulated marketplaces, benefiting states.

    The gambling industry and sports betting operators work with regulators, professional sports leagues, media companies and advocates to set standards, provide gambling education for consumers and fund recovery efforts for people seeking treatment, Clark said.

    “We’ve had a really fast escalation and movement towards giving American consumers access to the legal market that they clearly want. And so we have to continue to evolve that marketplace,” he said.

    Advocates for people with gambling disorders say demand for help and treatment services has grown alongside the rapid expansion of legalized sports betting.

    Inquires to the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey’s help hotline about sports gambling have increased 60% since it became legal in the state in 2018, said Felicia Grondin, the organization’s executive director.

    Grondin feels helpless against the constant barrage of advertising encouraging betting on games.

    An advertisement for DraftKings is shown on the scoreboard during the game between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park on July 7, 2019 in Detroit, Michigan.

    “We consider it to be predatory advertising because it’s incessant and it glamorizes gambling,” she said.

    Clark from the American Gaming Association said the group has created a responsible marketing code to set industry-wide advertising standards.

    But self-enforcement by the industry cannot make up for robust oversight from regulators, said Keith Whyte, the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

    “Self-regulation tends to dumb itself down to the lowest common denominator, not the highest,” he said. “Some operators are definitely taking advantage of weak regulatory environments in some states.”

    Every state where gambling is legal has a regulatory body that oversees it.

    But few have “really done more than the minimal amount to increase funding of problem gambling treatment,” said Holden. The sports gambling industry is most similar to financial markets, he said, but financial markets are much more regulated than banks.

    Most states require that sports betting ads disclose the minimum legal age to gamble and responsible gambling messages, such as problem gambling hotlines. Those messages are brief and usually run at the very end.

    DraftKings' Super Bowl ad with Kevin Hart, David Ortiz and Emmitt Smith.

    Regulators are wary of how tightly they can curtail messages in gambling advertising without running afoul of First Amendment protections on commercial speech.

    “A lot of state regulators have big First Amendment fears,” Holden said. “No one wants to fund litigation or lose a Supreme Court case over gambling.”

    In most states, the legal age for sports betting is 21 years old. But ads during games, in stadiums, and with star athlete sponsors normalizes sports betting for kids and teenagers, critics say. The United Kingdom last year banned top athletes and celebrities from appearing in ads endorsing or promoting gambling to try to curb underage gambling. That’s unlikely to happen in the United States.

    Additionally, researchers are troubled by the incentives and promotions some sports betting apps often provide to users, such as sign-up and referral bonuses, promo codes and bonus bets. One 2017 study of people with gambling addictions found that messages with an offer of risk-free kind of bonuses had a high impact.

    The Ohio Casino Control Commission in January fined DraftKings, Caesars and BetMGM $150,000 each for advertising promotions or bonuses as “free” or “risk-free” when, in fact, users were required to lose money or risk their own money to obtain the promotion.

    “I got more incentive to gamble with these apps that give you free play and match your deposit,” said the former sports bettor in Los Angeles currently in recovery. He enlisted friends to sign up to get referral fees, and looked at these enticements as free money. “I’d have to be an idiot to pass this up.”

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  • Elizabeth Banks knows risk of new movie ‘Cocaine Bear’ could come back and bite her | CNN

    Elizabeth Banks knows risk of new movie ‘Cocaine Bear’ could come back and bite her | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    With her bonkers new movie “Cocaine Bear,” Elizabeth Banks knew she wanted “to make something muscular and masculine.”

    In a new interview with Variety published on Wednesday, Banks – who directed and coproduced the film about a drug-fueled bear on a killing rampage – shared how difficult it was to convince some Hollywood power players that a woman could helm such a movie.

    “I wanted to break down some of the mythology around what kinds of movies women are interested in making,” Banks said. “For some bizarre reason, there are still executives in Hollywood who are like, ‘I don’t know if women can do technical stuff.’ There are literally people who are like, ‘Women don’t like math.’ It just persists.”

    She acknowledged that the new movie – which is based on a true story from the 1980s about a drug drop gone wrong that resulted in a bear ingesting cocaine – is “a ginormous risk,” adding that it “could be a career ender for me.”

    Part of the trepidation is the lackluster box office performance of original comedies, which has caused the industry to cool around the genre.

    But Banks is hopeful that the sheer zaniness of the concept – plus the bloody horror aspect of a cocaine-addled bear ripping people to shreds – will get people in the movie theater.

    “I love gore. I grew up on ‘Evil Dead,’” Banks told Variety. “The gore is part of the fun of the ride.”

    “Cocaine Bear” is set for release on February 24.

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  • Tracking the opioid crisis: Inside the DEA’s secret lab | CNN

    Tracking the opioid crisis: Inside the DEA’s secret lab | CNN

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    Watch CNN Films’ “American Pain” at 9 p.m. ET Sunday, February 5.



    CNN
     — 

    Sitting among the warehouses of Dulles, Virginia, is one of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s forensic labs. It’s one of eight across the country where scientists analyze illegal drugs and try to stay ahead of what’s driving deadly overdoses.

    Starting in the late 1990s with overprescribing of prescription narcotics, the opioid epidemic has continued to plague the United States for decades. What has changed is the type of drugs that have killed more than half a million people during the past 20 years.

    CNN was granted rare access to the secret lab where the DEA tests seized illicit drugs to understand what’s coming next.

    “The market is constantly changing, so we are trying to do everything we can from a science base to keep up with that,” Scott Oulton, deputy assistant administrator of the DEA’s Office of Forensic Sciences, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

    Holding a white bag of fentanyl precursor powder – one of the chemicals used to make the opioid – Oulton explained that the illicitly made painkiller continues to be a dominant presence in the drugs officials are finding.

    “This kilogram can be converted into fentanyl to make approximately 800 grams,” he said. “So it doesn’t take that much material, it’s fairly cheap, it’s inexpensive to obtain.”

    Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the United States, and it’s often found in combination with other illicit drugs, including cocaine and heroin. But increasingly, fentanyl is showing up in illicit pills disguised as common prescription drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone, even Adderall.

    Users buying drugs on the street that look like prescription pills may end up with a highly potent, potentially deadly drug they never intended to take.

    “Over 99% of what we see are fake. They contain fentanyl,” Oulton says of the pills that the agency is seizing.

    The 800 grams of fentanyl that Oulton held could be turned into 400,000 to 500,000 potentially lethal pills.

    As more and more of these lethal pills circulate, the opioid epidemic is reaching more of the population.

    Deena Loudon of Olney, Maryland, is among those living with its effects.

    “I truly love sharing Matthew with the world,” Loudon says as she flips through pictures of her son.

    One of her favorite memories is Matthew playing hockey – what Loudon calls his happy place.

    Matthew Loudon's mom says he turned to drugs after struggling with anxiety.

    But she also recalls his struggles with anxiety, which led him to turn to drugs. He started dabbling in them in the 10th grade. By the following year, his grades began to fall, and he couldn’t keep them high enough to stay in hockey.

    “He was using Xanax to help self-medicate himself and I think to help get rid of some of that angst so he could live somewhat of a normal life,” Loudon said.

    Matthew was always honest, almost to a fault, Loudon says. “He told me he tried everything. Like everything. Heroin, meth, crack, you name it, cocaine, whatever – until I guess he found what made him feel the best, and it was Xanax.”

    And as much as a mother can worry, Loudon says, Matthew always tried to reassure her. “I know what I’m doing,” he would tell her.

    She had heard about fentanyl showing up in pills in their area.

    “But you don’t ever think it’s going to happen to you,” Loudon said.

    She said they even had a conversation about fentanyl the day before he died. “I was sort of naive, wanting to stick my head in the sand and thinking ‘I bet he does know what he’s doing.’ ”

    On November 3, 2020, she found 21-year-old Matthew on the floor of their basement.

    Matthew’s autopsy report lists his cause of death as fentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl intoxication.

    “I don’t say he overdosed. I say he died from fentanyl poisoning. … Truthfully, like, at the end of the day, to me, he was murdered, right? Because he asked for one thing. They gave him something different. And it took his life.”

    For a parent, she said, the hardest thing is burying their child. It’s a pain she speaks out about in hopes of keeping other families safe.

    “It’s Russian roulette,” she warns them. “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

    The number of pills the DEA has seized skyrocketed in just three years, from 2.2 million in 2019 to 50.6 million in 2022.

    The sheer volume of pills has been one of the biggest challenges for the DEA’s lab, Oulton says. As the fentanyl threat continues to grow, the Virginia facility is expanding to accommodate the analysis needed.

    The lab can test for something as simple as the presence of fentanyl, but something called the purity of the pill also offers important insight. This means how much fentanyl is actually in one of these illicit pills.

    “Lately, we’ve been seeing a purity increase over the last year, where we used to say roughly four out of the 10 seizures that we were receiving would contain a lethal dose of greater than 2 milligrams. As of October last year, we started reporting that we’ve seen an uptick. Now we’re saying that six out of 10 of the seizures that we’re receiving contain over 2 milligrams,” Oulton said.

    He says they’re finding an average of 2.3 milligrams of fentanyl in each pill.

    Two milligrams may be the cutoff for what is considered lethal, but Oulton says that doesn’t necessarily mean a pill with 1.99 milligrams of fentanyl can’t be deadly.

    “One pill can kill” is his warning.

    “The message I would like to send out is, don’t take it,” he said. “Don’t take the chance. It’s not worth your life.”

    Oulton says he and his team are constantly finding new and different drugs and substances in pills – things they’ve never seen before.

    One machine in the lab is almost the equivalent of an MRI in a medical office, showing the structure and detail of a pill.

    “We will do what we call structural elucidation to determine that this is a different version of a fentanyl that’s got a new compound and molecule that’s been added to it,” Oulton said.

    They’ve seen “hundreds and hundreds of unique combinations,” he said.

    “We’ll see one that contains fentanyl, one with fentanyl and xylazine, one with fentanyl and caffeine, one with fentanyl and acetaminophen, and you don’t know what you’re getting.”

    Xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, poses a unique problem. It’s not an opioid, so even when it’s mixed with fentanyl, drugs designed to reverse an opioid overdose may not work.

    Narcan or naloxone, one of the more common overdose-reversing drugs, has become increasingly necessary as the prevalence and potency of illicit drugs increases. About 1.2 million doses of naloxone were dispensed by retail pharmacies in 2021, according to data published by the American Medical Association – nearly nine times more than were dispensed five years earlier.

    Oulton wants to be clear: The problem Isn’t with pills prescribed by your doctor and dispensed by a pharmacy – it’s the pills on the illicit market.

    Those, Matthew’s mother warns, are easy to get.

    “The first pills [Matthew] got was in high school. And it was just flipping out, floating around, and it was easy for him to get his hands on,” she said.

    Loudon’s message for parents now: Keep your eyes open.

    “Just be mindful of what your children are doing. You just just have to keep your eyes open. And even sometimes, when you keep your eyes open, you can miss some of the warning signs, but I think a parent knows their child best, so just keep talking.”

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  • Most US adults support banning sales of all tobacco products, CDC survey says | CNN

    Most US adults support banning sales of all tobacco products, CDC survey says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    More than half of US adults support ending the sale of all tobacco products, according to a new study led by researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and nearly two-thirds said they support banning menthol cigarette sales.

    The poll, published Thursday in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, included 6,455 US adults surveyed in 2021 – before the US Food and Drug Administration proposed a ban on menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

    Although cigarette smoking has declined in recent decades, it remains the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death in the US, where an estimated 30.8 million adults currently smoke.

    Support for proposals to ban tobacco sales was lower among current tobacco users, according to the survey. More than a third of current smokers supported banning menthol cigarette sales, and more than a quarter supported banning all tobacco sales.

    The FDA is still considering its proposed ban on menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

    “The proposed rules would help prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers and help adult smokers quit,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement when the proposal was announced. “Additionally, the proposed rules represent an important step to advance health equity by significantly reducing tobacco-related health disparities.”

    In the new study, researchers reported widespread support for a menthol ban across demographic groups.

    “Our findings are generally consistent with previous research showing support for menthol cigarette sales prohibitions, including among population groups historically targeted by unjust marketing practices and with a high prevalence of menthol cigarette use (eg, non-Hispanic Black adults),” they wrote in the study.

    Experts say menthol – the last flavor allowed in cigarettes – makes smoking easier to start and harder to quit. The additive can mask the harshness and irritation of tobacco, making cigarettes more appealing to young people and those who have never used tobacco products. It also enhances the effect of nicotine in the brain, making tobacco products even more addictive.

    Research has shown that tobacco products, especially those with menthol, are disproportionately marketed to youth, racial and ethnic minorities, lower-income people and those who identify as LGBTQ+, all of whom are more likely to use these products and develop tobacco-related health problems.

    “The science is clear: Menthol cigarettes have an adverse impact on public health and have no public health benefits as compared to non-menthol cigarettes,” American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said in a statement last year. “They increase the likelihood and degree of addiction among youth smokers, elevating the number of premature deaths from tobacco use. Their removal from the market would have enormous benefits for public health in this country.”

    One study published in 2021 estimated that a menthol cigarette ban in the US would result in a 15% reduction in smoking as early as 2026 and up to 650,000 lives saved within 40 years.

    Many parts of the country have started moving in this direction. As of February 2022, at least 145 US communities prohibit the sale of menthol cigarettes and other flavored products. Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, California, were the first cities to prohibit all tobacco sales.

    The study authors say public support can continue to be an influential factor in the acceleration of policy adoption.

    “These findings can inform federal, state, and local efforts to prohibit all tobacco product sales, including menthol cigarettes, reduce tobacco use and tobacco-related disparities, and advance health equity.”

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