World AM News Briefs For Tuesday, 27 August 2019
Howdy Australia!! - A big pharmaceutical company is ordered to pay a hefty price for America's prescription drug crisis - How can Leo do more than the US, France, or UK? Easily, it turns out - The rainforest burns and Bolsonaro is insulting people's wives - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
A judge in Oklahoma ordered the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to pay more than US$572 Million (that's around AU$845 Million) for its role in the opioid drug crisis that killed more than 6,000 people in that state alone over the decades. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter claimed in court that J&J pushed doctors to write more and more prescriptions while downplaying the risk of addiction. "The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma, it must be abated immediately," Judge Thad Balkman said in court Monday. "For this reason, I'm entering an abatement plan that consists of costs totaling $572,102,028 to immediately remediate the nuisance." Johnson & Johnson is expected to appeal, but the case could be cited as precedent for nearly 2,000 pending opioid cases before a federal judge in Ohio.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio's Earth Alliance charity is committing US$5 Million to help combat and recover from the fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Leaders at the G7 meeting in France also said they would send $20 Million to the cause - and if the math is bothering you, you're not alone. It means that the guy from "Titanic" is doing more for the rainforest than the individual efforts of the seven wealthiest nations in the world. G7 leaders are still offering more help, but Brazil's far-right government has yet to accept it.
Donald Trump praised the "unity" and "cooperation" after the G7 summit broke up on Monday, although he didn't seem to be a part of it at all. Trump was a no show at a meeting on dealing with the undeniable reality Global Warming, claiming that he sent an aide because he was having bi-lateral sessions with the leaders of Germany and India. That was a blatant lie, as the meeting photos clearly show the American chair unoccupied, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in attendance. At a news conference later, Trump called himself an environmentalist while bragging about the wealth of the US petrochemical industry, which he said he wouldn't risk for "dreams and windmills".
Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro seems to be dithering instead of doing anything about the Brazilian Amazon Wildfires. But somehow he managed to find time to lob a sexist and ageist insult at French President Emmanuel Macron's wife. Macron had criticized Bolsonaro for lying to him about his commitment to preserving the "lungs of the earth". Bolsonaro responded with a social media post that compared the appearance of his 37-year old wife to 66-year-old French First Lady Brigitte Macron. "Do not humiliate the man hahahah," Bolsonaro wrote. Macron on Monday replied, "It's sad, it's sad first of all for him and for Brazilians," adding, "Brazilian women are probably feeling ashamed of their president."
More than 80,000 wildfires have burned in the Brazilian Rainforest this year, and 9,000 of them are still burning. Environmentalists have blamed Bolsonaro's allies in the ranching, agriculture, and mining industries for the fires. Brazil's rainforest is responsible for as much as 20 percent of the world's oxygen, but Bolsonaro is a climate change denier who wants to open that land to development. "The destruction of the Amazon rainforest is rapidly releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, destroying an ecosystem that absorbs millions of tons of carbon emissions every year and is one of the planet’s best defenses against the climate crisis," according to DiCaprio's Earth Alliance.