AP News in Brief 02-26-20

Sanders faces attacks in Democrats’ debate-stage clash

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Democrats unleashed a roaring assault against Bernie Sanders’ electability and seized on Mike Bloomberg’s past with women in the workplace in a raucous debate Tuesday night that tested the strength of the two men leading their party’s presidential nomination fight.

Sanders, his status as the Democratic front-runner undeniable, faced the brunt of the attacks for much of the night.

Pete Buttigieg, mired among the moderates fighting to emerge as the chief Sanders’ alternative, seized on Sanders’ self-described democratic socialism and his recent comments expressing admiration for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s push for education.

“I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s,” Buttigieg declared.

Sanders lashed back throughout the night, pointing to polls that showed him beating the Republican president and noting all the recent attention he’s gotten: “I’m hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight. I wonder why?”

Generic drugmakers sold most opioids during overdose crisis

Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals doled out lavish perks for top U.S. employees who hit or beat sales goals for prescription opioids and other drugs: six-figure bonuses and a chance to snag a coveted “President’s Club” award, which could mean vacations to Hawaii, the Caribbean or Mexico.

The company placed that same staff in charge of reporting any sales of its painkillers that appeared to be suspicious, including to distributors or pharmacies requesting extreme volumes of its most potent formulas. Asked during a federal court deposition last year whether she believed it was appropriate to put incentive-motivated sales staff in charge of calling out questionable sales, Karen Harper, who oversaw Mallinckrodt’s suspicious order monitoring system, said yes.

In fact, as the nation’s opioid overdose crisis began to explode, not a single order with the company between August 2008 and October 2010 rose from the level of “peculiar” to “suspicious,” the category that would have triggered a report to authorities, according to Harper’s deposition.

From wire sources

The court documents reveal a company culture that allowed Mallinckrodt to become one of the giants of the prescription opioid market at a time when overdoses were claiming tens of thousands of American lives. The company, based in Great Britain, announced a tentative $1.6 billion settlement Tuesday with state and local governments in the U.S. If finalized, the deal would end lawsuits nationwide over the company’s role in the epidemic.

Purdue Pharma has been the poster child for the U.S. opioid crisis, mostly because of aggressive marketing of its signature painkiller, OxyContin. Lesser known is the role of generic opioid manufacturers like Mallinckrodt that produced the vast majority of painkillers during the height of the overdose epidemic. While they may not have been sending sales representatives to encourage prescribing like Purdue, they were filling more and more orders for the drugs — so many that Mallinckrodt couldn’t always produce enough to fill them all.

___

While India seems to love Trump, the reality isn’t so simple

Looking out over the world’s largest cricket stadium, the seats jammed with more than 100,000 people, India’s prime minister heaped praise on his American visitor.

“The leadership of President Trump has served humanity,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday, highlighting Trump’s fight against terrorism and calling his 36-hour visit to India a watershed in India-U.S. relations.

The crowds cheered. Trump beamed.

“The ties between India and the U.S. are no longer just any other partnership,” Modi said. “It is a far greater and closer relationship.”

India, it seems, loves Donald Trump. It seemed obvious from the thousands who turned out to wave as his motorcade snaked through the city of Ahmedabad, and from the tens of thousands who filled the city’s new stadium. It seemed obvious from the hug that Modi gave Trump after he descended from Air Force One, and from the hundreds of billboards proclaiming Trump’s visit.

___

Church shooter Dylann Roof staged death row hunger strike

WASHINGTON — White supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof staged a hunger strike this month while on federal death row, alleging in letters to The Associated Press that he’s been “targeted by staff,” “verbally harassed and abused without cause” and “treated disproportionately harsh.”

The 25-year-old Roof, who killed nine black church members during a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, told the AP in a letter dated Feb. 13 that the staff at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, feel justified in their conduct “since I am hated by the general public.”

A person familiar with the matter said Roof had been on a hunger strike but was no longer on one, as of this week. The person couldn’t immediately provide specific details about the length of the hunger strike or whether medical staff needed to intervene. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Roof wrote in his letter to the AP that he went on the hunger strike to protest the treatment he received from a Bureau of Prisons disciplinary hearing officer over earlier complaints that he was refused access to the law library and access to a copy machine to file legal papers.

Roof’s Feb. 13 letter indicated he was already “several days” into a hunger strike, and he wrote in a follow-up letter that the protest ended a day later after corrections officers forcibly tried to take his blood and insert an IV into his arm, causing him to briefly pass out.

___

Disney CEO Bob Iger steps down in surprise announcement

NEW YORK — Disney CEO Bob Iger, who steered the company’s absorption of Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel and Fox’s entertainment businesses and the launch of a Netflix challenger, is stepping down immediately, the company said in a surprise announcement Tuesday.

The Walt Disney Co. named as his replacement Bob Chapek, most recently chairman of Disney’s parks, experiences and products business.

“Did not see this coming — Wowza,” tweeted LightShed media analyst Rich Greenfield.

Iger will remain executive chairman through the end of his contract on Dec. 31, 2021. Besides leading the board, Iger said he will spend more time on Disney’s creative endeavors, including the ESPN sports network, the newly acquired Fox studios and the Hulu and Disney Plus streaming services. He said he could not do that while running Disney on a day-to-day basis.

“It was not accelerated for any particular reason other than I felt the need was now to make this change,” Iger said on a conference call with reporters and analysts.

___

Placido Domingo apology prompts new accuser to step forward

SAN FRANCISCO — The words “I am truly sorry” have not been uttered often in the #MeToo era. So when soprano Luz del Alba Rubio woke up Tuesday to see an apology from opera superstar Placido Domingo, she was in shock.

“I felt like we have conquered Goliath. Now we don’t have to be scared to speak out,” said Rubio, who stepped forward Tuesday to add her voice to the women accusing the legendary tenor of sexual harassment and abuse of power.

Domingo’s statement came after the U.S. union that represents much of the opera world said its investigators found the opera star and former general director at Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera had behaved inappropriately over the course of two decades.

“I have taken time over the last several months to reflect on the allegations that various colleagues of mine have made against me,” Domingo said in a statement issued in connection with the findings. “I respect that these women finally felt comfortable enough to speak out, and I want them to know that I am truly sorry for the hurt that I caused them. I accept full responsibility for my actions, and I have grown from this experience.”

The words marked a stunning reversal from the opera superstar’s initial statements, tinged with disbelief at the accusations reported last year by The Associated Press that he sexually harassed multiple women.

___

‘A world of hurt’: 39 states to investigate Juul’s marketing

HARTFORD, Conn. — A coalition of 39 states will look into the marketing and sales of vaping products by Juul Labs, including whether the company targeted youths and made misleading claims about nicotine content in its devices, officials announced Tuesday.

Attorneys general from Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, Oregon and Texas said they will lead the multi-state investigation into San Francisco-based Juul, which also is facing lawsuits by teenagers and others who say they became addicted to the company’s vaping products.

The state officials said they also will investigate the company’s claims about the risk, safety and effectiveness of its vaping products as smoking cessation devices.

“I will not prejudge where this investigation will lead,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement, “but we will follow every fact and are prepared to take strong action in conjunction with states across the nation to protect public health.”

Juul released a statement saying it has halted television, print and digital advertising and eliminated most flavors in response to concerns by government officials and others.