The victims of Larry Nassar ― the convicted sexual abuser of U.S. gymnasts who will spend the rest of his life in prison ― settled hundreds of lawsuits against Michigan State University on Wednesday.
The victims ― with more than 300 of them identified ― will receive portions of a $500 million settlement, The Lansing State Journal reported.
“Michigan State has shown leadership by its willingness to begin closing this dark chapter,” Jamie White, one of the attorneys suing MSU, told the publication. “The victims of Nassar can never be made whole but this is a step in the right direction.”
Nassar, 54, pleaded guilty to sex crimes on Nov. 22, admitting that he sexually assaulted young girls under the guise of medical treatment when he was a doctor.
“I’ve just signed your death warrant,” Michigan Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina told Nassar during his January sentencing of 40 to 175 years in prison.
In January 2017, President Donald Trump accused the pharmaceutical industry of “getting away with murder” with high price increases, and promised to do something about it. He’s set to share his plan to do so Friday.
The amount Americans spend on prescription drugs has nearly doubled since the 1990s, a 2017 government investigation found, meaning the United States spends the most of any high-income nation. List prices rose 6% over the past 12 months alone, according to the prescription website GoodRx. Medicare drug prices soared 10 times the rate of inflation.
.
Americans didn’t always spend the most. In the 1980s, several countries spent equally, but US spending grew faster in the 1990s, according to a 2017 analysis from the Commonwealth Fund. This was partially because several expensive specialty drugs came to market, and because drug companies that set the price in the United States, unlike in Europe, which has price controls.
On the road to the property where seven people from the same family were killed on Friday in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades, a small makeshift sign says, “Church open for prayer.”
In a community so small and tight-knit that some farms have just the first names of their owners painted on the driveway gates, it’s a small, silent reference to a trauma that the entire area is still struggling to grasp.
But there are other indications: the police vehicles blocking roads; and the community center in nearby Margaret River offering counseling with television news cameras clustering outside.
.
The police investigating the deaths of seven members of a family in a suspected murder-suicide in Osmington, a quiet rural area 13 miles outside the town of Margaret River, Australia.
The U.S. just pulled funding from one of the only on-the-ground groups saving lives after airstrikes in Syria.
About a third of the funding for Syria Civil Defence, known popularly as the White Helmets, came from the U.S., with the rest coming from the U.K., Germany, and other governments. Until very recently, the group had a positive relationship with the U.S., which has provided the group about $33 million in funds since 2013. But now, at the president’s request, the State Department has pulled funding.
In March, the group’s leaders even had a visit with the U.S. State Department. The meeting had gone well, one of the group’s leaders told CBS News: “Our meetings in March were very positive,” Raed Al Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, said. “There were no suggestions whatsoever about stopping support.” Less than two months later, their funding is now under review at the State Department.
.
Trump just pulled funding for Syrian “White Helmets”
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) on Friday signed a law that would effectively ban abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, the nation’s strictest abortion legislation to date, setting up a legal battle with Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The Republican-controlled state legislature passed the legislation, known as the “fetal heartbeat” bill, earlier this week, part of a wave of GOP-backed abortion restrictions introduced at the state level in recent years.
The law requires women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound, banning the procedure if a fetal heartbeat is detected — typically at about six weeks into a pregnancy. It includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Medical professionals say that the law is far too stringent, as some women do not even know they are pregnant at six weeks.
“There are a few options for treating your depression,” I say to the patient. “But I think this medication may help.”
The patient starts laughing. “That’s pretty funny, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My dog takes the same pill!”
The interface between pets and mental-health care has been a hot-button issue in recent years. The evidence that therapy animals can help treat people with psychiatric issues is patchy, yet emotional-support animals seem to be everywhere, perhaps most noticeably on planes. The Internet was in an uproar not long ago over reports that a traveler attempted to bring an emotional-support peacock onto a flight.
Our Milky Way galaxy contains tens of billions of potentially habitable planets, but we have no idea whether we’re alone. For now Earth is the only world known to harbor life, and among all the living things on our planet we assume Homo sapiens is the only species ever to have developed advanced technology.
But maybe that’s assuming too much.
In a mind-bending new paper entitled “The Silurian Hypothesis” — a reference to an ancient race of brainy reptiles featured in the British science fiction show “Doctor Who” — scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of Rochester take a critical look at the scientific evidence that ours is the only advanced civilization ever to have existed on our planet.
“Do we really know we were the first technological species on Earth?” asks Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rochester and a co-author of the paper. “We’ve had an industrial society for only about 300 years, but there’s been complex life on land for nearly 400 million years.”
.
Monolith on Lifeless Planetbestdesigns / Getty Images/iStockphoto
With summer around the corner, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts are warning — beware the bugs!
A new report from the agency reveals that diseases transmitted through the bites of blood-feeding ticks, mosquitoes, and fleas are a “growing public health problem” in the United States.
.
Reported cases of what are called vector-borne diseases have more than tripled nationwide, growing from 27,388 cases reported in 2004 to a whopping 96,075 cases reported in 2016, according to the new Vital Signs report published by the CDC on Tuesday.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is well and appearing on ‘Dancing with the stars’ at 71 (photo below).
Click link below picture
.
As a six-time NBA Champion, 19-time All-Star, six-time Most Valuable Player and the league’s all-time leading scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is regarded as one of the greatest professional basketball players of all time. He is familiar with the concepts of discipline and overcoming adversity, but not only because of his athletic career.
In 2008, Abdul-Jabbar was diagnosed with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) after experiencing hot flashes and sweats. He was treated with two targeted therapies — tyrosine kinase inhibitors: Gleevec (imatinib) and Tasigna (nilotinib). Last year, Abdul-Jabbar underwent a quadruple coronary bypass surgery on his 68th birthday but recovered fully. Today, he is a spokesperson for Novartis, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures both drugs that allowed him to survive cancer.
In March 2016, Abdul-Jabbar was asked to speak at the 20th Annual International Congress on Hematologic Malignancies®: Focus on Leukemias, Lymphomas and Myeloma, a meeting of over 125 oncologists and other oncology professionals. At the meeting, Abdul-Jabbar spoke with Heal about surviving CML, his role as an advocate and his advice to patients and survivors.
.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, partnered with Lindsay Arnold, begins competition on the live season premiere of “Dancing with the Stars: Athletes” on April 30. ABC/Craig Sjodin
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Larry Nassar
Most expensive drugs
Trump just pulled funding for Syrian “White Helmets”
.
.
(iStock)
James' World 2 