Arizona Files Novel Lawsuit in Supreme Court Over Opioid Crisis

Saying the opioid crisis requires bold measures, the state of Arizona filed an audacious lawsuit in the Supreme Court on Wednesday asking the justices to order members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, to return what the state said were billions of dollars looted from the company.

“We want the Supreme Court to make sure that we hold accountable those individuals who are responsible for this epidemic,” said Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s attorney general. “We allege that the Sacklers have siphoned billions of dollars from Purdue in recent years. They did this while knowing the company was facing massive financial liabilities.”

Lawsuits making similar claims have been brought in several state courts. What distinguishes the new suit is that it was filed directly in the Supreme Court, which almost never hears cases until after lower courts have considered them. read more »

Capital One data breach: Amazon Web Services is backbone for Netflix, NASA and others

You may not realize this, but Amazon is more than just the world's largest e-tailer and distributor of popular products like the Fire TV streaming stick and Echo talking speakers.

Via its Amazon Web Services division, the company provides the data backbone for industry (Avis, Samsung, GE), the government (Department of Defense, NASA, the state of Arizona), financial institutions (Liberty Mutual and Capital One) and more.

So when Capital One disclosed this week that its servers had been hacked by a former Amazon employee affecting more than 100 million customers and compromising information such as Social Security numbers, credit scores and credit card transaction data, attention turned to Amazon. read more »

The Roots of Boeing’s 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight

In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board.

Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017.

More than a dozen current and former employees at the F.A.A. and Boeing who spoke with The New York Times described a broken regulatory process that effectively neutered the oversight authority of the agency. read more »

New York attorney general demands documents on insulin pricing from its three Big Pharma makers

Drug prices in general and insulin pricing in particular have surged in recent years, trebling since the early 2000s

A single vial costs nearly $1,500

The New York AG has now joined dozens of states investigating the companies

The AG subpoenaed Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, requesting documents on their pricing schemes for insulin. read more »

Korean Fat Leonard? Feds probe new US Navy corruption case in Asia

The Justice Department has filed corruption charges against the head of a Busan, Korea,-based husbanding services provider in a case with unmistakable echoes of the Fat Leonard scandal that has rocked the Navy since the investigation was revealed in 2013.

Sung-Yol “David” Kim, head of DK Marine Service, has been charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of bribery, according to documents filed with the Eastern District of Michigan.

The news that another husbanding services provider in Asia is at the center of a federal corruption case is a hammer-blow to the Navy, which has been struggling for years as dozens of its officers, including several senior leaders, have come under scrutiny for their dealings with Glenn Defense Marine Asia and its gregarious, corpulent chief executive Leonard “Fat Leonard” Francis. read more »