UN states agree historic global deal to manage migration crisis

First international pact on movements of people reached between 164 nations, despite US-led objections



 Moroccan foreign affairs minister Nasser Bourita (centre) speaks at the UN Migration Conference in Marrakech, where the first global pact on migration was formally adopted. Photograph: Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images

Karen McVeigh @karenmcveigh1-Mon 10 Dec 2018

The first ever international deal on the migration crisis was signed on Monday by a majority of UN states, despite vociferous objections led by the United States.

The historic, non-binding global pact seeking to better manage migration was approved by delegates from 164 nations following 18 months of debate and negotiation. German chancellor Angela Merkel hailed it as an “important day”.

The UN’s global compact on safe, orderly and regular migration, signed in Marrakech, is aimed at coordinating action on migration around the world. It was rejected by President Donald Trump a year ago. Since then Austria, which holds the EU presidency, has pulled out of the process, along with Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Slovakia and the Dominican Republic.

Merkel, who welcomed hundreds of thousand of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan into her country, received a standing ovation on Monday after an impassioned speech in which she said the UN was founded after the second world war and spoke of the “incredible suffering on humankind” wrought by the Nazi regime.

The compact, she said, is about “nothing less than the foundation of our international cooperation”.
The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, said the pact was being misused by some political parties to spread disinformation. Michel, whose coalition government split over his support for the pact, said in Marrakech that the text had sparked “lively debate” in Europe but was being exploited by political parties “to spread lies and mistruth”. He insisted that signing the compact would place “my country … on the right side of history”.

Critics argue the accord could challenge national sovereignty and say they fear an influx of migrants. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Monday it was a myth that the agreement infringed on the sovereignty of member states.

Six countries, among them Israel and Bulgaria, are debating whether to quit the deal, a UN spokesman said after the pact was adopted. Thirty out of the 193 UN countries that agreed on the pact did not attend the conference.

Marta Foresti, director of the human mobility initiative at the Overseas Development Institute, described the accord as “very significant” and “remarkable”, given the current political landscape.

In Europe, legitimate fears of migrants coming into countries have been hijacked by far right groups and in the US, Trump has not only pulled out of the compact, but made strong efforts to convince others to do so. On Friday, the US described the pact as “an effort by the United Nations to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of states”.

Foresti said the accord’s status as not legally binding did not mean it would not work. The Paris climate change agreement, she said, was a hybrid of legally and non-legally binding.

She said: “Over the last few years we have seen just how badly governments all over the world have failed to put in place policies that protect the lives of migrants and allay public concerns over messy and incoherent approaches to border management.

“The global compact for migration will help governments work together to better manage migration and ensure that people making cross-border journeys can do so in a legal, orderly and safe way.”
The idea of the agreement was to create a political platform for states to cooperate, she said.

The global pact lays out 23 objectives to open up legal migration and discourage illegal border crossings, as the number of people living outside their country of birth globally has surged to more than 250 million.

Unicef described the pact as a “historic achievement” for children and states alike.

Laurence Chandy, of Unicef, said: “Today, more than 100 countries still have policies of migration detention for children. Imagine if alternatives to migration detention for children were adopted globally, and the number of detained children fell from a million today to zero. Imagine if we could close the gap in access to education and health for migrant children so that such inequities did not exist.”

Why an immediate ban on new fossil fuel development is necessary

Over 90 percent of all fuels used in the automotive sector comes from gasoline & diesel fuels. Source: Shutterstock

By Policy Forum | 10th December 2018

LAST WEEK, thousands of Australian school children abandoned school to protest for strong, immediate climate action.

This week, thousands of global climate negotiators and their staff have begun the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Katowice, Poland.

Can the school kids count on COP24 to avert the climate crisis?

If history is any guide, no.

SEE ALSO: Here’s why global carbon emissions will hit record highs in 2018

A UN press release from an earlier COP summit quotes Angela Merkel: “According to current scientific knowledge, the existing commitments will not solve the climate change problem.”

Her quote is from the very first 1995 COP in Berlin and is a reminder that very little has changed. Emission reduction commitments considered in 1995 to be insufficient to avoid dangerous climate change have still not yet been met, a quarter of a century later.

The arc of IPCC reports: more risks, less time

Beginning in 1990, five major Assessment Reports have been produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which advises the UNFCCC.

Each IPCC report identified carbon dioxide (CO2) as the most important greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, and human combustion of fossil fuels as the dominant cause of its increase in the atmosphere.

Each report successively provided more evidence of human-induced climate change, more risks, and a growing mismatch between the trajectory of human greenhouse gas emissions and the paths that would be necessary to limit the risks.

Ten years ago, the IPCC concluded that in order to keep the average global temperature rise between 2.0 and 2.4 degrees Celsius at the end of the century, global emissions would need to peak between the years 2000 and 2015, falling rapidly thereafter, and thereby holding atmospheric CO2 concentration between 350 and 400 parts per million (ppm).

SEE ALSO: Can Vietnam achieve its vision of a ‘green transformation’?

And yet, at the end of 2018, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and the targeted CO2 stabilisation range has been exceeded, with average yearly concentrations now 405 ppm or higher.

Not only has the atmospheric concentration of CO2 continued to rise over the last 25 years, but the rate at which it is increasing is itself still increasing.

According to data compiled by the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) over the past 50 years, the rate at which atmospheric CO2 is increasing has grown by a factor of about 250 percent.

Source: Earth System Research Laboratory/Policy Forum

The world has probably already missed the 1.5 degrees Celsius target

In October, the IPCC released a confronting special report indicating that any pathway with a reasonable chance of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius requires far-reaching transitions in energy, agriculture, transport and industrial sectors at a scale that is unprecedented in human history.

According to the report, in order to have at least a two-thirds chance of meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, the world’s ‘carbon budget’ from the beginning of 2018 onward is only 155 GtC (billion tonnes of carbon).

The world’s ‘carbon budget’ from the beginning of 2018 onward is only 155 GtC. Source: Shutterstock

Accounting for the approximately 10 GtC emitted by human activities throughout 2018, this leaves a budget of only 145 GtC for the future.

The uncertainties surrounding the carbon budget are similar in size to the remaining budget itself, meaning that the budget could already be spent or it could be more than doubled.

SEE ALSO: Air pollution can take a decade off your life expectancy

One type of uncertainty – carbon feedbacks in the Earth System – operate in only one direction: they reduce the remaining budget. Permafrost thaw was the only carbon cycle feedback included in the IPCC 1.5 degrees report, which would reduce the carbon budget by about 30 GtC.

However, a more complete range of carbon feedbacks result in a budget reduction of 170 GtC, leaving the 1.5 degrees carbon budget in deficit by 25 GtC. Consequently, it is quite possible that by 2015 humanity had already consumed its 1.5 degrees budget.

A similar analysis indicates that the situation is not much better for the 2 degrees Paris target. When the most recent carbon feedback results are included, the remaining 2 degrees carbon budget will be expended by about 2030, at current rates of greenhouse gas emissions.

Don’t feed the elephant

The simple, ignored, fact is that we cannot decrease greenhouse gas emissions by continuing to increase them, most notably by developing still more reliance on fossil fuels.

This is the elephant in the room.

A first and necessary step to limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius is a complete ban on any new fossil fuel development, anywhere on the planet, effectively immediately.

Current fossil fuel reserves already being exploited contain more than enough carbon to consume the remaining carbon budget for the 2 degrees Paris target.

We already have the means to take this step.

Renewably sourced energy for homes, industry and transport are already yielding economic, social and employment benefits compared to fossil-fuel energy. Their uptake is accelerating and costs are dropping exponentially.

A man fits a solar panel to a building rooftop. Source: Shutterstock

Simultaneously, a focus away from the private good toward the broader public good can support a just and planned transition for the less privileged and for workers in the fossil fuel industry.

SEE ALSO: Vietnam’s first Goldman Prize winner pushes for energy conservation

Leadership and courage from nation-states will be required – yes – but also from subnational governments, cities, businesses, communities and individuals, regardless of the reluctance of others.

Our next actions will shape the future of the Earth and its inhabitants for centuries – potentially millennia. A massive U-turn must be executed in the spectrum of human activities, technologies, values and governance systems that lie behind the unrelenting increase of greenhouse gas concentrations.

The climate has tipping points beyond which lies an irreversible path to a new state. To prevent that outcome, the crossing of a social tipping point is now required to place us irreversibly onto a safer climate path without fossil fuels.

Perhaps those activist Australian school children illustrate that society is moving toward the tipping point to a safer climate – regardless, or even in spite of, outcomes from the Katowice climate summit.

This piece by Penny D Sackett, physicist, astronomer and Australia’s former Chief Scientist, and Will Steffen, Emeritus Professor with the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, was first published at Policy Forum, Asia and the Pacific’s platform for public policy analysis and opinion. 

Climate change creates mutant fugu, a deadly Japanese delicacy

Mari Saito-DECEMBER 10, 2018

SHIMONOSEKI, JAPAN (Reuters) - The road, hemmed in on one side by empty warehouses and the other by a concrete seawall, ends abruptly in a desolate parking lot. Men step out of their cars and into the darkness, then slip behind the sliding doors of a warehouse. Inside, they huddle under floodlights and wait. A clock on the wall ticks to ten past three in the morning.

“Ready? Ready? Ready?” shouts a man whose arm is covered to the elbow by a black nylon bag. One by one, the men step forward and their hands disappear into the bag.

And so begins a surreal auction in this port city in southwestern Japan. The buyers grip the dealer’s hand, and after a few seconds of secret gesturing felt only by the auctioneer, he yells out the winning bid.

“13,000!” Thirteen thousand yen, or $114, a kilo.

The furtive bidding, a relic of a time when fish traders wore kimonos whose sleeves obscured their hands as they signaled their bids, is part of the insular world of Japanese pufferfish, or fugu, a fish best known for its ability to kill a person in as little as a few hours.

Although deaths are extremely rare, the whiff of danger associated with the fish’s poison is a significant element of the delicacy’s enduring allure in Japanese culture. A kilogram fetches as much as 30,000 yen at the market here, and in the December holiday season, when fugu is particularly popular, a luxury fishmonger in Tokyo can sell up to $88,000 worth of the fish on any given day.

News of poisonings elicits fevered national coverage. When a supermarket in western Japan accidentally sold five packets of the fish without its poisonous liver removed in January, the town used its missile alert system to warn residents.

And now, climate change is adding a new element of risk: Fishermen are discovering an unprecedented number of hybrid species in their catch as seas surrounding the archipelago – particularly off the northeastern coast – see some of the fastest rates of warming in the world.

With pufferfish heading north to seek cooler waters, sibling species of the fish have begun to inter-breed, triggering a sudden increase in the number of hybrid fish. Hybrids are no more dangerous than your average lethal pufferfish. The problem is that they can be hard to distinguish from established species. To avoid accidental poisonings, Japan prohibits their sale and distribution. With the rise of these unclassifiable hybrids, fishermen and fish traders are having to discard a sizable share of their catch.

Kaniya, a seafood-processing company here in Shimonoseki, is one of many in the industry frustrated by the government’s rule to discard such hybrids, considering that most subspecies of pufferfish frequently found in Japan’s northeastern waters have poison in the same organs and can be safely eaten if handled correctly.

Giant statue of a pufferfish is displayed at Karato fish market in Shimonoseki, southern Japan November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mari Saito

“But we have to follow the rules, because if there’s any problems it leads to hysteria,” says Naoto Itou, the gruff patriarch of the company.

Out of 50 or so species of pufferfish found around Japan, 22 of them are approved as edible by the government. Chefs and fish butchers handling pufferfish are specially trained and licensed to remove its liver and reproductive organs, which contain tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin. Confusingly, the location of the deadly neurotoxin differs in certain types of pufferfish; it can sometimes be found in its skin or muscle, as well as its reproductive organs.

Every morning at 8 a.m., Kaniya receives boxes of pufferfish from fishermen in northern Japan. By 9, an experienced fish handler is at his post in an apron and hairnet, sorting as many as seven or eight different groupings of pufferfish at a metal counter.

His bare hands moving quickly, the man picks up one slippery fish after another, holding it up for several seconds, examining its fins and checking for prickles. He pauses on one, turns it to the side, traces its back with his finger, then throws it into the discard pile.

The entire process has a hazmat feel: Workers in latex gloves, white masks and plastic aprons gut the fish and take away the toxic parts and dump them into a lock box. The waste is then collected and incinerated.

Asked why he would continue handling such inherently dangerous fish despite all the headaches surrounding hybrids, Itou points to two of his salesmen hovering nearby, fielding calls from buyers.
“Isn’t it a blessing to be able to handle something customers love and want so much? There aren’t many other fish out there like this.”

SWEEPING IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The rise in hybrid species is yet another example of the sweeping impact of climate change on marine creatures, which have undergone a mass migration as water temperatures increase.

Hiroshi Takahashi, an associate professor at the National Fisheries University, first noticed the increase in hybrid pufferfish six years ago. He started receiving calls from a scientific facility on the northeastern coast of Japan’s main island that had buckets of pufferfish it couldn’t identify. In the fall of 2012, nearly 40 percent pufferfish caught in the area were unidentifiable, compared to less than 1 percent studied previously.

“It wasn’t one out of a thousand as it had been in the past; this was on a completely different scale,” he says. To an untrained eye, hybrids are barely discernible. Even veterans in the industry say it’s nearly impossible to tell apart “quarters,” or second-generation offspring of hybrid fish. At the end of June, more than 20 percent of pufferfish caught in a single day off the Pacific coast of Miyagi prefecture, 460 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, were hybrids.

Genetic tests found that the unidentifiable pufferfish were a hybrid of Takifugu stictonotus and Takifugu snyderi. Although they’re close relatives, the T. stictonotus usually swim around the Sea of Japan and the T. snyderi in the Pacific Ocean. Takahashi believes that the T. stictonotus escaped their gradually warming habitat by riding the Tsushima current north and crossing the strait just below Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido to emerge in the Pacific Ocean. There, they bred with their sibling species and multiplied. The resulting hybrid, which has fine spots and yellow-white fins, could pass for either one of its parent species.

 Slideshow (20 Images)

A division of Japan’s health ministry in charge of food safety said it began collecting information about the reported increase in hybrid pufferfish in September. Each prefecture has its own tests for issuing licenses to chefs and others, and an industry group has pushed the government to standardize those tests.

Before dawn on a recent weekday, dozens of hobby fishermen throng a deserted dock in the Ohara port, a two-hour drive from Tokyo, to get a chance to catch the creature. They return on the Shikishima-maru around noon, sunburnt and tipsy, carrying white buckets filled with pufferfish.

While the anglers smoke cigarettes and hunch over noodles, Yoko Yamamoto grabs a knife and sits down on a low plastic stool. She works quickly, first striking the fish’s spinal cord, then peeling back its skin to remove its poisonous outer layer. Her son, who captained the boat, then takes over and slashes the fish to its gills to remove its liver and intestines as a moored fishing boat with pastel pink bench seats blasts “Bohemian Rhapsody” from its speakers.

We have to go a bit further now to find them,” says Yukio Yamamoto, 49, crouching next to his mother. “You see all kinds of hybrids now; it’s been this way for the past few years.”

Toshiharu Enomoto, a 71-year-old hobby fisherman, walks over after his lunch and ties a knot in a plastic bag filled with ice and a few pufferfish. Laughing, he talks about the little thrill of the poison. “Some people like it when they feel a bit of tingling on their lips,” he says.

The Japanese have eaten the fish for thousands of years. After it was outlawed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a samurai general who unified Japan in the 16th century, peasants continued to eat it in secret and died in droves. The ban on fugu was finally lifted after World War II following years of petitioning by avid fans.

Despite its deadly nature, the fish has an almost comical face and, with its puffed cheeks and open mouth, looks as though it’s perpetually surprised to be so sought after for special occasions.

In Tokyo, high-end restaurants serving pufferfish rely on Otsubo Suisan, a luxury wholesaler at the Toyosu fish market. At the company’s wide stall, Koichi Kushida taps his smartwatch and answers calls on his silver Sony Bluetooth. In the span of an hour, the 34-year-old sells thousands of dollars worth of pufferfish.

“It’s tasty, isn’t it? It’s a luxury and has class; that definitely attracts people,” he says, deftly packing an airtight bag of gutted pufferfish into a golden box. With more hybrids appearing on the market, Kushida personally checks all the fish himself.

“When we hand it to our customers, we have to be sure it’s absolutely safe,” he says. “We can’t have any problems.”

Investigation of generic ‘cartel’ expands to 300 drugs

Workers check pharmaceutical products during the production process at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries factory in Petah Tikva, Israel. In a court filing, Teva said allegations of a price-fixing conspiracy “conclusory and devoid of any facts.” (Ahikam Seri/Bloomberg News)

By Christopher Rowland-December 9 at 7:33 PM

Executives at more than a dozen generic-drug companies had a form of shorthand to describe how they conducted business, insider lingo worked out over steak dinners, cocktail receptions and rounds of golf.

The “sandbox,” according to investigators, was the market for generic prescription drugs, where everyone was expected to play nice.

“Fair share” described dividing up the sales pie to ensure that each company reaped continued profits. “Trashing the market” was used when a competitor ignored these unwritten rules and sold drugs for less than agreed-upon prices.

[Hospitals are fed up with drug companies, so they’re starting their own]

The terminology reflected more than just the clubbiness of a powerful industry, according to authorities and several lawsuits. Officials from multiple states say these practices were central to illegal price-fixing schemes of massive proportion.

The lawsuit and related cases picked up steam last month when a federal judge ruled that more than 1 million emails, cellphone texts and other documents cited as evidence could be shared among all plaintiffs.


Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on June 20 discussed his department's proposals to reduce drug prices. (Washington Post Live)

What started as an antitrust lawsuit brought by states over just two drugs in 2016 has exploded into an investigation of alleged price-fixing involving at least 16 companies and 300 drugs, Joseph Nielsen, an assistant attorney general and antitrust investigator in Connecticut who has been a leading force in the probe, said in an interview. His comments in an interview with The Washington Post represent the first public disclosure of the dramatically expanded scale of the investigation.

The unfolding case is rattling an industry that is portrayed in Washington as the white knight of American health care.

“This is most likely the largest cartel in the history of the United States,” Nielsen said. He cited the volume of drugs in the schemes, that they took place on American soil and the “total number of companies involved, and individuals.”

The alleged victims were American health-care consumers and taxpayers, who foot the bills for overcharges on common antibiotics, blood-pressure medications, arthritis treatments, anxiety pills and more, authorities say. The costs flowed throughout the system, hitting hospitals, pharmacists and health insurance companies. They hit consumers who lack prescription drug coverage and even those with insurance, because many plans have high deductibles and gaps on prescription drug benefits.
[Trump unveils plan to trim Medicare drug payments.]

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, testifying on Capitol Hill in 2016, faced public scrutiny for her company raising the price of its EpiPen by about 500 percent. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

In just one instance of extraordinary cost spikes, the price of a decades-old drug to ease asthma symptoms, albuterol, sold by generic manufacturers Mylan and Sun, jumped more than 3,400 percent, from 13 cents a tablet to more than $4.70. The example is documented in a lawsuit brought against the generic industry by grocery chains including Kroger.

“Everyone is paying the price,” Nielsen said. He offered a single word to explain the behavior: “Greed.”

While precise estimates of alleged overcharges have not been released, generic-industry sales were about $104 billion in 2017. Excessive billings of even a small fraction of annual sales over several years would equal billions of dollars in added costs to consumers, according to investigators.
Generic manufacturers reject the accusations. They contend officials lack evidence of a conspiracy and have failed to prove anti-competitive behavior.

Among the 16 companies accused are some of the biggest names in generic manufacturing: Mylan, Teva and Dr. Reddy’s. Mylan denied wrongdoing in an emailed statement. Sun, Teva and Dr. Reddy’s did not respond to requests for comment. In a court filing, Teva said allegations of a price-fixing conspiracy “are entirely conclusory and devoid of any facts.”

But investigators say voluminous documentation they have collected, much of it under seal and not available to the public, shows the industry to be riddled with price-fixing schemes. The plaintiffs now include 47 states. The investigators expect to unveil new details and add more defendants in coming months, which will put more pressure on executives to consider settlements.

Two former executives of one company, Heritage Pharmaceuticals, have pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges and are cooperating with the Justice Department in a parallel criminal case. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The alleged collusion transformed a cutthroat, highly competitive business into one where sudden, coordinated price spikes on identical generic drugs became almost routine. Competing executives were so chummy they had an alphabetical rotation for who picked up the tab at their regular dinners, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case remains under investigation.

Annual trade conferences and “Girls Night Out” cocktail meetings were other prime opportunities to swap sensitive information about markets and prices, according to court documents.

“It’s particularly ironic since the whole idea of generic drugs was we would get a lower price,” said Henry Waxman, the Democratic former California congressman who co-wrote the 1984 law establishing the Food and Drug Administration’s rules for generics. “If generic versions are higher than need be through rigged systems, that undercuts the whole idea.”

Generics account for 90 percent of the prescriptions written in the United States but just 23 percent of costs, according to the industry trade group, the Association for Accessible Medicines.

And generic drugs do act as a check on soaring drug bills fueled by brand-name manufacturers. In the Medicare prescription-drug program, according to a government study, prices on a benchmark set of older generic drugs dropped 14 percent between 2010 to 2015.

But for some generic manufacturers, the anti-competitive agreements drove up prices on most, if not all, of the products they sold, according to the states.

Officials say they have documented price increases of up to 2,000 percent. Throughout 2013 and 2014, soaring generic prices sparked consternation at drugstores and among state and federal lawmakers. Independent pharmacists said they were dismayed to learn of the price-fixing allegations.
“There’s old, old drugs that have been around a long time, and all of a sudden their price has increased by hundreds of percent and we don’t know why,” said J.D. Fain, owner of Pieratt’s Pharmacy in Giddings, Tex., a small town an hour drive east of Austin.

Unlike the brand-name drug industry, which gets years of patent exclusivity for novel drugs, generic companies operate in a market that was designed to save consumers and taxpayers large sums through aggressive competition. When the FDA grants approval for a generic product, the first company in the door gets six months of exclusive rights to market the drug. The price discount from the brand-name product is relatively small, say 10 percent.

Prices plunge as much as 50 percent once a second generic enters the market, the FDA has estimated. And by the time six or seven generic companies are competing on a particular drug, the price has declined 75 percent.

Rigging the market has turned that model upside down for some drugs, state officials say.

“It makes me angry,” said Eric Belldina, an operator of pharmacies in Masontown and Morgantown in West Virginia. “Most people think when their prices go up it’s because of a raw-ingredient shortage, not thinking the companies are sitting down, saying, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’ ”

The states’ lawsuit contains particularly pointed allegations against Mylan and its president, Rajiv Malik, who is personally named as a defendant. Mylan faced public scrutiny in 2016 for raising the price of its EpiPen, to treat allergic reactions, by about 500 percent.

Although the EpiPen was not a generic product at the time, the outcry from physicians, patient groups and members of Congress drew negative attention to the second-largest generic manufacturer.

While traveling in the United Kingdom in 2013, Malik took a phone call from an executive of a competing firm, Heritage, the states say in their lawsuit. Heritage had won FDA approval to market a version of the antibiotic doxycycline called Doxy DR, which is used to treat acne and a long list of infections.

That would put it in direct competition with Mylan for sales of the drug.

During the transatlantic phone call, Malik and the Heritage executive, Jeff Glazer, agreed to divide up the sandbox, the U.S. market for sales of Doxy DR, according to the lawsuit by states and similar complaints by independent pharmacies and grocery-store chains.

During subsequent conversations, according to the complaints, Mylan agreed not to sell Doxy DR to CVS and the wholesaler McKesson — sales volume worth about 30 percent of the U.S. market for the drug. As part of the alleged deal, Heritage agreed not to set a low price.

Without a reduction in price, U.S. consumers ended up the biggest losers in the deal.

Mylan said it has no evidence its executives did anything wrong. “We have been investigating these allegations thoroughly and have found no evidence of price fixing on the part of Mylan or its employees,” the company said in a statement. “Mylan has deep faith in the integrity of its president, Rajiv Malik, and stands behind him fully.”

Heritage did not return repeated phone messages seeking comment. Glazer and another Heritage executive, Jason Malek, pleaded guilty in 2017 to federal charges of conspiring to rig prices and stifle competition. The terms of their plea agreements said they are cooperating with a Justice Department criminal probe.

A drug to treat bone issues related to cancer, zoledronic acid, was the subject of another alleged price-fixing scheme, this time between Heritage and Dr. Reddy’s. Heritage became the first generic manufacturer of the drug in the spring of 2013, but Dr. Reddy’s was close behind. Executives at the companies cut deals so each got a “fair share” of the market, while also conspiring to fix an inflated price, the complaints said.

Dr. Reddy’s, which did not respond to requests for comment, wound up with about 60 percent of the market and Heritage claimed 40 percent, according to the states’ lawsuit.

Investigators cited evidence that executives knew they were acting illegally. As the discussions with Dr. Reddy’s took place, according to the complaints, a Heritage executive “sent a text message to his entire sales team reminding them not to put their pricing discussions with competitors in writing.”
Mysterious price spikes continue to roil pharmacies and patient groups occasionally, though widespread price collusion was curtailed after authorities issued subpoenas in recent years, said Michael Cole, a Connecticut assistant attorney general actively involved in the case. But many drugs remain at artificially inflated prices.

“There have not been rollbacks in the price increases,” he said. “We’re still paying.”

Transplanted organs gave patients cancer

Tom Tyreman died in February from cancer

10 December 2018

The family of a man who died after receiving a liver transplant from a donor with undetected cancer has called for more thorough tests.

Tom Tyreman, 63, from Stockton, initially recovered after the operation at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital a year ago, but died of cancer in February.

There was later found to be a small cancerous tumour in the donor organ that was not picked up by screening.

The hospital said the "tragic outcome" could not have been anticipated.

NHS Blood and Transplant Service said it does everything it can to make sure all donated organs are suitable, but because of the sudden and speedy nature of organ donation it was not normally possible to screen a donor in advance.

Pauline Hunt, 49, from Kilmarnock, has also developed cancer after receiving a kidney from the same donor; a woman who died from a blood clot.

Mr Tyreman's sister Jane Bird said "stringent tests" are needed

Mr Tyreman's sister, Jane Bird, said hospital staff needed to be "more upfront" about what could potentially go wrong.

"We were told that he could develop cancer further down the line because his immune system was so suppressed, which we accepted", she said.

"But we were never told that potentially he could get it from the donated organ.

"I think there need to be more stringent tests. It's just unacceptable in this day and age that more vigorous tests cannot be done."

Mr Tyreman's family spoke out after Mrs Hunt described herself as "basically under a death sentence".

She said: "Nobody should be fighting somebody else's cancer."

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An NHS Blood and Transplant spokesman said the medical history of potential donors is "carefully checked" and if an abnormality is found a biopsy is carried out.

But "in very rare cases it's possible the donor has a small tumour which can't be picked up by the tests performed in the limited time available prior to transplant".

"This means the transmission of an undiagnosed cancer is a risk, though thankfully it's extremely rare."

The Freeman Hospital said an investigation was under way.

Sri Lankan soldiers practise riot drill against protestors at Mullaitivu base

181208 mock riot mulli (1).jpg

The Sri Lankan military carried out an exercise where troops dispersed protestors, at the army’s Battalion Training School (BTS) at Puthukkuddiyirippu last month.

 09 December 2018

Soldiers, carrying rifles and dressed in riot gear, were seen carrying out exercises against a mock protest group who were holding placards.

The exercise saw the troops march towards the protestors, carrying a sign which warns that “if you cross the white line we will shoot you”.

The latest exercise comes amidst political turmoil in Colombo and as several Tamil protests continue in the North-East. Recent years have seen a rise in Tamil protest, including locals who have called for the release of military occupied land and families of the disappeared calling for action on enforced disappearances.

The Sri Lankan military continues to station tens of thousands of soldiers across the North-East, with the Mullaitivu district alone seeing as much as 1 soldier for every two civilians according to a report published by the Jaffna-based think tank, the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Reasearch.

Related Articles: 

04 October 2017 : One Sri Lankan soldier for every two civilians in Mullaitivu – ACPR/PEARL report

A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IS NOT A DISPUTE BETWEEN MONKS – KISHALI PINTO JAYAWARDENE.

Cartoon:  Courtesy of The Morning.

09/12/2018

President Maithripala Sirisena’s implied criticism of the Sri Lankan judiciary when speaking at the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) convention this Tuesday, referencing himself as the Mahanayake (seniormost prelate) of a Nikaya (chapter) being educated by the head monk of a village temple invokes strong and unequivocal condemnation in no uncertain terms.

What is in issue here however is at its very core, the constitutional separation of powers involving checks and balances between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and must be understood as such. Assuredly this is not a dispute between monks of whatever rank or seniority as the case may. Illustrations of this nature cannot be justified as being addressed to a political audience as the President may strive to explain.

Recognising ominous undertones

On the contrary, there are familiarly ominous undertones that reflect executive coercion which all Presidents have trifled with in the past. From JR Jayawardene to Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa, this was the one besetting and common sin that all political executives have been guilty of, without exception.Threats and intimidation of the judiciary ranged from the houses of judges being stoned, to Parliament being used as a forum to cast aspersions on individual judges and worthy judicial officers being disregarded for promotions because they happened to give decisions that angered politicians. It is hoped that Maithripala Sirisena will not add his name to this less than illustrious list.

Not so long ago, the President of the International Commission of Jurists and formerly Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Human Rights in Cambodia and Justice of the High Court of Australia, Michael Kirby described a judge without independence as‘a charade wrapped in a farce inside an oppression.’ Sri Lankans had reason enough to recall this crackling description during the past decade and a half when the integrity of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka was politically eroded from within the most fiendish manner possible by individuals sitting in the Office of Chief Justice.

Nevertheless, one significant achievement of the coalition Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration from 2015 to its unhappy ending earlier this year was to allow the judicial institution to draw a breath and slowly set about redeeming itself from the tormented ghosts of the past. This, the judges on the whole are doing with distinction. A few days ago, it was reported that the Kurunegala Chief Magistrate had ordered the police to remove political posters in support of various politicians and political parties in Kurunegala. These assertions of judicial strength are to be applauded in a background where judicial timidity is more often the norm. Today, we see a welcome resurgence of a public preoccupation with issues of constitutional justice and effectively working the Constitution in this regard.

Undermining the judiciary must be resisted

In the nineties, rights focused interventions into governance became a matter of course though the assumption of judicial authority in Sri Lanka.However, as authoritative pronouncements reining in the executive were delivered by the Court, tensions exacerbated between the executive and the judiciary. The list of infamies committed by enraged politicians was long, including installing favourites as Chief Justices, And the consequences to Sri Lanka’s judicial systems were incalculable.
While across the Palk Straits, Indian judges and lawyers worked the transformation of formal legal systems to living law, this country faltered. The movement of a dedicated constituency believing in the law through socially conscious lawyers and public interest groups together with an investigative press and an interested public stopped in its tracks.What the country suffered thereafter was irreparable. We do not want to return to that tortured past ever again.

Therefore thinly disguised Presidential statements that seek to undermine that process must be met with determined civil resistance, learning from the past when the silence of good men and women resulted in the subversion of the Court and the citizens being left with no recourse when their rights were violated.

This constitutional doctrine of separation of powers stands threatened in other fundamental ways as well. When the President says that, even if all two hundred and twenty five members of parliament ask him to appoint RanilWickremesinghe as the Prime Minister, he will not do so, that is a direct clash between the executive and the legislature, no more and no less. Needless to say, this goes beyond the political agendas and personal animosities of the three men at the vortex of Sri Lanka’s constitutional crisis, President Sirisena, Prime Minister RanilWickremesinghe and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

A tragedy of no small proportions

As history may perhaps record with some compassion, it is a tragedy of no small proportions that presidential candidate MaithripalaSirisena who came into national political prominence in the election campaign four years ago showcasing an entirely different persona to the arrogance and macho images of his predecessors could have unpleasantly metamorphosized in such a short period of time to what the country sees now on the political stage.

There is also a thinly disguised class bias in the political chaos that has unfolded before us. On the one hand, the President labels Ranil Wickremesinghe as a non-respecter of ‘our culture and traditional values’ as he did again this week at the Sugathadasa Stadium. His or rather, the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s supporters giggle on the steps of the Supreme Court saying that Wickremesinghe and his lawyers are only adept at reading the English texts of the Constitution. On the other hand, Wickremesinghe’s frenzied and outraged supporters lash out at the President with impunity, resorting to rude name-calling that is traceable to the President’s rural roots. Both these characterizations are equally unfortunate.

Long decades after colonial rule, it is a pathetic indictment on this country and the people that divisions and divides based on ‘traditional values’ or cultural norms (often more Victorian in origin rather than indigenous) and insults based on familiarity or not as the case may be, with a colonial and alien language should form the basis of national political debate. There is something far more wrong in Sri Lanka, the political culture and indeed, society itself than the text of a Constitution over which lawyers are quarreling.

That much is certain.

-Sunday Times

The Present Political Imbroglio... Some random thoughts

2018-12-10

he present Constitutional imbroglio has given rise to a spate of constitutional opinions being expressed by legal experts some genuine others spurious. Democracy is said to be, endangered and  the  Sovereignty of the people is much spoken of. One wonders what the ‘People’ in the so called peripheries,  i.e. in the northern and eastern parts of the country and in the rural hinterland make of this. Do these constitutional controversies have the  surreal quality of an Alice in wonderland experience for them, and do they have any part to play are some questions which come to mind. 

"The recent  political imbroglio  is also interesting for what it has perhaps inadvertently thrown up. Unexpectedly it has energized the UNP and given it greater unity"

The constitutional imbroglio largely revolves around the  interpretation of the 19A It must be kept in mind that the principles of statutory interpretation  prescribe that  it is  not only the words but also the intent of the legislature in framing the legislation that has to be looked at. The Amendment was brought in  to curb the President’s powers under the 1978 Constitution and not to increase them.  The 2015 presidential election was also fought and won on this basis. So the general public is rightly confounded  by the unfortunate turn of events. A subjective interpretation of the words in Article 42 (4) of the constitution namely’ the President shall appoint as PM the member of Parliament who in the Presidents opinion is most likely to command the confidence of parliament’. It would seem that the only way of getting back to firm ground and having a legitimate government in place is, to revert to the pre-October 26 position.

• "The constitutional imbroglio largely revolves around the  interpretation of the 19A

• 19A was brought into curb the President’s powers under the 1978 Constitution

• Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, showed remarkable courage in spite of the melee witnessed in parliament"

 It is clear after the Local Government Elections that the people are not happy with the Government as it has not delivered on its promises made in the Presidential and Parliamentary elections of  2015, so a Parliamentary election is what in all probability the people would want. Rather than have to wait for another one and a half years, Parliamentary elections should be held sooner than later, once a legitimate  Government is established, in accordance with  the upcoming judgements of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. In a democracy the people’s wishes must be given effect to.  President Sirisena who is more suited to gauge the feelings of the common man than others in the previous national Government has, .though  in a muddled way brought this matter to the fore. As a man  from the farming community  he understood the aspirations and tribulations of the rural people and showed sympathy for the villagers and farmers of the Northern province whose lands had been taken over by the military and worked towards handing them back to the rightful owners. Hence he had the goodwill of the Tamil people. Unfortunately this has been largely dissipated by the recent turn of events. 

"The President who is more suited to gauge the feelings of the common man than others in the previous Govt. has, though  in a muddled way brought this matter to the fore. "

The recent  political imbroglio  is also interesting for what it has perhaps inadvertently thrown up. Unexpectedly it has energized the UNP and given it greater unity. PM Ranil Wickremesinghe  of pre October 26 has shown great inner strength and character in the face of adversity, so it could be said  “ sweet are the uses of Adversity”. Other personalities too, such as the Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, have shown remarkable courage and we cannot leave out the Policemen, who protected the mace during the melee in Parliament. The people too have shown political maturity as there has been no disorder or outbreaks of violence  and the bureaucracy  have gone on with their administrative duties unfazed by the political convulsions. The Police and Army have maintained strict neutrality in the best traditions. So all in all we have something to be proud of. The only persons who have come out badly are the politicians who created the imbroglio and the Parliamentarians who vandalised the Parliament’s chamber and attacked the Speaker, Police and other members. Hopefully they will be given a fitting answer by the people at the general elections which hopefully will come in the not too distant future.