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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
A federal bankruptcy judge gave conditional approval Wednesday to a sweeping, potentially $10 billion plan submitted by OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to settle a mountain of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis that has killed a half-million Americans over the past two decades. Under the settlement, the Sackler family will give up ownership of the company and contribute $4.5 billion. But the Sacklers will be shielded from any future lawsuits over opioids. The drug maker itself will be reorganized into a new company with a board appointed by public officials and will funnel its profits into government-led efforts to prevent and treat addiction. Also, the settlement sets up a compensation fund that will pay some victims of drugs an expected $3,500 to $48,000 each. After an all-day hearing in which he analyzed the plan’s pros and cons for a nonstop 6½ hours, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said he would approve it as long as two relatively small changes were made. If so, he said, he will formally enter the decision on Thursday. ... State and local governments came to support the plan overwhelmingly, if grudgingly in many cases. But nine states and others had opposed it, largely because of the protections granted to the Sackler family. The attorneys general of Connecticut, the District of Columbia and state of Washington immediately announced they will either appeal the ruling or explore the possibility of doing so.
White House officials are outlining plans to build and restore more than 2 million homes, a response to the volcanic rise in housing prices over the past year. Millions of Americans are getting priced out of ownership or stuck spending the bulk of their income on rent.
About one year ago, schools in North Carolina opened for in-person instruction. Some followed a program of strict pandemic protocols – strict mask wearing, distancing and hand-washing – and some did not. A team of Duke University researchers tracked infections in the mask-wearing schools, compared them to community spread at the time, and found “extremely limited” secondary transmission in the 11 school districts that followed the protocols, even as case rates were high in the surrounding community.
Travelers who are fully vaccinated have found their status the key to entering countries, dining indoors, seeing shows and reclaiming some level of normalcy during the pandemic. But with the Biden administration’s announcement that booster shots will be offered widely starting Sept. 20, Americans might be wondering if future travel plans should revolve around an extra jab.
Our new-found and vigorously asserted right not to wear a mask to combat COVID 19 is prompting me to advocacy on another front. I grew up in South Africa, where we drive on the left. And as I talk to others who learned to drive on the left, and would be comfortable doing what comes more naturally to us, I increasingly realize it’s time to claim our “right to go left.”
The delta variant’s transmissibility has led to more people, including children and teens, testing positive for the virus as Labor Day approaches, and health officials are asking people to take safety precautions over the holiday weekend. Earlier this week, six children were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Spokane. ... The numbers, while low, indicate an increase in young people being hospitalized with the virus. During the winter surge, it was often the case that one child or teen would be hospitalized at a time for the virus. Case counts overall are steadily increasing as the three-day weekend approaches, and health officials are asking people to gather safely by going outdoors, wearing masks and limiting the number of people at gatherings.
A Texas ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected went into effect Wednesday, spurring worries in the state of Washington that such restrictive laws could trigger a domino effect on abortion access elsewhere. Early Thursday Eastern time, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the state’s ban can stay in place, meaning Texas doctors who perform an abortion after they detect cardiac activity in a fetus could face a $10,000 lawsuit from any private citizen. With Chief Justice John Roberts joining the three dissenting liberal justices, the Texas ban spurred big-picture questions about ripple effects on abortion access throughout the nation. Though Washington state legislators codified the right to abortion in the state constitution, Vice President of Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho Paul Dillon said the Texas law could have a domino effect on access to reproductive services if the Supreme Court overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.
The federal government expects U.S. mortality rates to be elevated by 15% over pre-pandemic norms in 2021 and not return to normal levels until 2023, according to a report released Tuesday by the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs. The trustees concluded that these elevated mortality rates, along with lower immigration and depressed fertility rates, have had a significant effect on the trust funds supporting both programs in the short term. But the virus’ long-term effects on America’s retirement system and health care system remain unclear as the pandemic appears far from over.
A federal appeals court’s decision allowing a Texas fetal heartbeat law to take effect Wednesday isn’t enough to trigger Idaho’s similar fetal heartbeat law, but backers say it’s a near miss that bodes well for banning nearly all abortions in Idaho. The Idaho law signed by Republican Gov. Brad Little in April contains a trigger mechanism putting it into effect 30 days after a federal appeals court upholds similar legislation in another state. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block enforcement of the Texas law, but the appeals court didn’t rule on its constitutionality, needed to trigger the Idaho law.
Kids are returning to classrooms at the height of the delta surge in the Inland Northwest. Health officials are expecting to see cases in classrooms again, so it’s wise to be prepared to potentially quarantine your child or teen at home at some point in the coming school year.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that it’s “possible” that the U.S. will have to coordinate with the Taliban on any future counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan against Islamic State militants or others.
A Central Texas school district is temporarily closing after two teachers died of COVID-19 in the same week, while parents and legislators in the state continue to clash over mask mandates in classrooms.
A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation’s second-largest state. The court voted 5-4 early Thursday to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others that sought to block enforcement of the law that went into effect Wednesday.
Lights came back on for a fortunate few, some corner stores opened their doors and crews cleared fallen trees and debris from a growing number of roadways Wednesday — small signs of progress amid the monumental task of repairing the damage inflicted by Hurricane Ida. Still, suffering remained widespread three days after Ida battered Louisiana and parts of Mississippi as the fifth-most-powerful hurricane to strike the U.S. Some low-lying communities remained largely underwater. Roughly a million homes and businesses still had no electricity, and health officials said more than 600,000 people lacked running water.
Favorable weather helped firefighters trying to save communities on the south end of Lake Tahoe from an approaching wildfire, but officials warned Wednesday that stiff winds and dry conditions mean that homes in the California-Nevada alpine region are still in danger. ... The Caldor Fire remained roughly 3 miles south of the recently evacuated city of South Lake Tahoe, moving northeast toward the California-Nevada state line, said Henry Herrera, a battalion chief for the agency, which is also known as Cal Fire.
President Joe Biden used his first meeting with a foreign leader since ending the war in Afghanistan to send the message Wednesday that the United States — unburdened of its “forever war” — is determined to become a more reliable ally to its friends, in this case Ukraine. Biden played host to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a long-sought Oval Office meeting and tried to reassure him that his administration remains squarely behind the Eastern European nation.
The United Nations’ stockpiles of food in Afghanistan could run out this month, a senior official warned Wednesday, threatening to add a hunger crisis to the challenges facing the country’s new Taliban rulers as they try to restore stability after decades of war. About one third of the country’s population of 38 million doesn’t know if they will have a meal every day, according to Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief in Afghanistan.
A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation’s second-largest state. The court voted 5-4 early Thursday to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others that sought to block enforcement of the law that went into effect Wednesday.
North Carolina Republicans sent a bill Wednesday to the state’s Democratic governor that would limit how teachers can discuss certain racial concepts in the classroom. The measure aims to prohibit teachers from compelling their students to personally adopt any of 13 beliefs, but does little to nothing to prevent any of the more than 500 alleged cases of “indoctrination” that were included in a task force report that GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson released earlier this month. Even so, Republican leaders insist the bill will hold teachers accountable by shedding light on questionable classroom activities.
America’s major religions and denominations, often divided on other big issues, have united behind the effort to help receive an influx of refugees from Afghanistan following the end of the United States’ longest war and one of the largest airlifts in history. Among those gearing up to help are Jewish refugee resettlement agencies and Islamic groups; conservative and liberal Protestant churches; and prominent Catholic relief organizations, providing everything from food and clothes to legal assistance and housing.
Pope Francis has criticized the West’s two-decade-long involvement in Afghanistan as an outsider’s attempt to impose democracy — although he did it by citing Russian President Vladimir Putin while thinking he was quoting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Asked during a radio interview aired Wednesday about the new political map taking shape in Afghanistan after the United States and its allies withdrew from the Taliban-controlled country following 20 years of war, the pope said he would answer with a quote that he attributed to Merkel, whom he described as “one of the world’s greatest political figures.” “It is necessary to put an end to the irresponsible policy of intervening from outside and building democracy in other countries, ignoring the traditions of the peoples,” the pope said, using his own translation into Spanish. But the words were spoken last month by Putin in the presence of Merkel, during her visit to Moscow.
The Biden administration has extended for one year a Trump-era ban on the use of U.S. passports for travel to North Korea. The ban had first been imposed by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017 after the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who suffered grievous injuries while in North Korean custody. It has been extended annually ever since.
In the nearly two months since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, Haiti has suffered a devastating earthquake and a drenching tropical storm, the twin natural disasters deflecting attention from the man-made one that preceded them. Add the constant worry over deteriorating security at the hands of gangs that by some estimates control territory that’s home to about a fifth of Haiti’s 11 million citizens, and the investigation into Moïse’s killing is fast fading from the public consciousness. Even those still paying attention, demanding accountability and pressuring for a thorough investigation give no chance to the crime’s masterminds being brought to justice in a country where impunity reigns. It doesn’t help that Moïse was despised by a large portion of the population.
Weather disasters are striking the world four to five times more often and causing seven times more damage than in the 1970s, the United Nations weather agency reports. But these disasters are killing far fewer people. In the 1970s and 1980s, they killed an average of about 170 people a day worldwide. In the 2010s, that dropped to about 40 per day, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report Wednesday that looks at more than 11,000 weather disasters in the past half-century.
Redistricting debate begins: Compromises will help committee settle on one commissioner district map
The independent committee redrawing Spokane County’s commissioner districts began discussing map proposals for the first time Tuesday, marking the start of an eight-week compromise process that will determine the future political makeup of the county government’s most powerful elected officials.
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