The state of Oklahoma has reached a $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, seen as pivotal in the opioid overdose crisis that has been blamed in part on misleading information the company provided to doctors about the potential for addiction.

Oklahoma sued Purdue Pharma, and its controlling Sackler family, and several other opioid manufacturers in 2017, accusing them of fraudulent marketing practices that led to thousands of overdoses and deaths. State officials have said that since 2009, more Oklahomans have died from opioids than in vehicle crashes. The remaining defendants still face trial.

The Sackler family is responsible for $75 million of the $270 million settlement, according to a person familiar with the agreement.

Rockland County, New York just declared a state of emergency after more than 151 people have been diagnosed with measles. (Remember, most people think of an “outbreak” as lots and lots of sick people but medically speaking, it’s just two people.)

Officials announced that beginning on Wednesday at 12 a.m., “anyone under 18 who has not yet been vaccinated will be barred from public places until they receive the MMR vaccine or until the emergency declaration expires in 30 days.”1

The importance of maintaining an open mind in regards to possible conspiracies or corruption cannot be overstated. Through questioning everything, we can begin to understand some things and through this understanding of some things, we find truths. Some folks, however, take the questioning everything argument a bit further and buy into unscientific and utterly ridiculous theories. One of these theories is that the earth is not round like the myriad of photos taken from space show, but actually flat.

The doubting Thomases simply do not believe Earth is round, despite NASA astronauts testifying to the contrary, who’ve had the privilege of a celestial birds eye view. Flat-earthers believe the government is hiding the truth about the earth being flat. According to the theories, the images from space are doctored ones, and the earth is nothing more than a flat-shaped space ship of sorts.

According to the report, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has requested at least $10 million for its Reactor on a Rocket (ROAR) programme.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency intends to assemble a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system in orbit, Aviation Week reported, citing the Pentagon's 2020 budget.

"The program will initially develop the use of additive manufacturing approaches to print NTP fuel elements… In addition, the program will investigate on-orbit assembly techniques (AM) to safely assemble the individual core element subassemblies into a full demonstration system configuration, and will perform a technology demonstration", the budget document says.

An International scientific mission has come across a massive amount of subglacial water that could significantly impact the predictions of the consequences of climate change, as the studied glacier alone drains an area of Antarctica that contains enough ice to raise the sea level by about seven metres.

An international team of researchers from the Australian Antarctic Program has discovered a network of lakes lying under the ice during their 160-day expedition to the Totten Glacier, the largest in eastern Antarctica. According to glaciologist Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi, the " substantial amount of water" found in these lakes could impact the predicted rise of the sea level.

The dark side of Western medicine has been erased from U.S. history books and from Google search results, along with any trace of truth about the success of natural cures and homeopathic medicine. Any doctors or scientists who attempt to “peer review” natural remedies are stripped of their medical license or research funding by the corrupt American Medical Association (AMA) and Big Pharma. In fact, at least half of all clinical “trials” have never been reported, because when natural cures are proven to work, the results are removed or skewed in favor of chemical medicine. The American healthcare system is set up to profit from illness, and those in charge are making sure that never changes.

Bayer AG and Johnson & Johnson have agreed to settle more than 25,000 U.S. lawsuits over their blockbuster blood thinner Xarelto for a total of $775 million, court documents on Monday showed.

The amount will be shared equally between the two companies that jointly developed the drug. Bayer and J&J do not admit liability under the agreement.

The settlement will resolve all pending U.S. lawsuits over Xarelto, which plaintiffs claimed causes uncontrollable and irreversible bleeding leading to severe injuries and even death among thousands of plaintiffs.

In a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration's legal battle against President Obama's health care law, Justice Department lawyers now say the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down.

Having previously argued, under AG Jeff Sessions, that only the law's pre-existing condition protections should be struck down, DoJ lawyers told a federal appeals court Monday it thinks the whole of ObamaCare is unconstitutional, siding with a Texas district court ruling that found Obamacare unconstitutional.

For the first time ever, astronomers have witnessed the birth of one of Neptune's enormous "Great Dark Spot" storms.

Astronomers were studying Hubble Space Telescope images of a relatively small Neptune maelstrom that formed in 2015 when they noticed bright white clouds forming in a different locale on the ice giant. By 2018, a dark storm as wide as Earth had boiled up in that region, the researchers announced in a study published today (March 25) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Just a day after the Oklahoma State Supreme Court refused to allow more time for a group of opioid manufacturers to get ready for a trial in Cleveland County District Court, Purdue Pharma is expected to announce a settlement Tuesday.

The defendants had asked to delay the May 28 start date. With Monday’s announcement of the Court’s decision, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter claimed a small victory.

The Trump administration is hardening its position against the Affordable Care Act and arguing now that the entire law is unconstitutional, a shift that promises to bring the issue to the forefront of the 2020 election campaign.

The position is a change for the Justice Department after it argued last year that swaths of the 2010 law -- but not all of it -- should be struck down in the case Texas brought against the government. It’s now on appeal after a lower court judge voided the law in a December ruling. The Justice Department now says that President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement should be wiped out.

The first ever all-women spacewalk outside the International Space Station has been put on hold by NASA because one of the female astronauts wanted a smaller suit.

The two astronauts, Christina Koch and Anne McClain, both need medium-sized torso components for their space suits.

While two are available, the second set of protective clothing couldn't be configured in time for the walk, scheduled to take place on Friday.

All 214 walks undertaken since the International Space Station was built in 1998 have been carried out either by two men or a man and woman.

Ms Koch will now perform her duties with Nick Hague - instead of walking with Ms McClain as planned.

House Democrats nixed Republicans’ request for unanimous consent to bring the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to a vote for a twentieth time Monday.

Republican Georgia Rep. Rick Allen made the call for unanimous consent Monday. Numerous Republican representatives have made the same petition to consider the bill.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the GMO experiment in the United States is what’s going on in other nations in comparison to here.

For example, over 30 countries worldwide currently institute some sort of ban on GMO crops, and both Europe and Canada also have banned the bovine growth hormone drug rBGH, which has been the source of great controversy behind the scenes in the United States.

All that controversy reached a breaking point at one local news station in Florida, where two investigative reporters sought out to find the truth about one of Monsanto’s most highly profitable, and highly controversial, products.

The reporters, Steven Wilson and Jane Akre, went to great lengths in order to expose links to cancer and these Monsanto products, crafting a hard-hitting story that could have saved the health of millions of Americans.

United Parcel Service (UPS) is preparing to test a service which will dispatch nurses to vaccinate adults in their homes, according to Reuters.

While UPS did not disclose which vaccines would be used in the project, vaccine manufacturer Merck & Co told Reuters it was exploring a partnership.

The project, previously unreported, shows how UPS is targeting a larger slice of the $85 billion outsourced healthcare logistics market. Deutsche Post’s DHL Group dominates the market, which is expected to grow to $105 billion by 2021. -Reuters

"Over-the-threshold services is where the world is headed," said UPS global healthcare logistics strategy head, Chris Cassidy - who joined the company last year from GlaxoSmithKline.

An incurable, mad-cow-like brain infection nicknamed “zombie deer disease” that causes deer, elk and moose to behave strangely and aggressively has spread through half the US – and some fear it may soon turn up in humans.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) renders its victims uncoordinated, confused and aggressive, while also causing them to lose weight and – eventually – their lives, giving rise to the nickname “zombie deer disease.” Sick animals walk in repetitive patterns and lose all fear of humans, developing a vacant stare.

Like mad cow disease, CWD attacks the brain and spinal cord and is believed to be caused by prions, infectious proteins that travel in bodily fluids and remain contagious for years after leaving the body of their host. Also like mad cow disease, in its early days at least, some scientists have scoffed at the notion it can be transmitted to humans. Others see history repeating itself.

Not all vaccines are safe for all people, at all ages, in all quantities.Full stop! There is no question that scientifically and medically, that statement can be proven with ample evidence. In fact, U.S. taxpayers have compensated the families of vaccine injured children to the tune of $4 billion dollars in the past 30 years.

It’s no secret that the standard American diet is having a terrible effect on human health. What’s is a secret, though, is how the food industry uses science and psychology to create processed food products that are devoid of nutrition, full of chemical additives and colorings, and incredibly addictive.

In fact, the science of how food companies get customers physically, mentally and emotionally hooked on their products reads like a good conspiracy theory. Major food manufacturers know good and well that repeat customers can be made by tricking the mind and body and overriding our natural tendency to seek out healthy, satisfying foods.

Bayer AG has suffered its second major legal defeat after purchasing Monsanto Co. and inheriting its controversial herbicide, RoundUp, the world’s most popular weedkiller. The active ingredient in RoundUp, glyphosate, has been linked to cancer and other health problems, while Bayer and Monsanto, along with the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) have denied any links.

While I cannot think of too many blog topics that, at first blush, sound less exciting than vaccination requirements for your furry clientele, it is truly an important topic with which all groomers should be familiar. At GroomPro POS, we believe in safety, so grab your coffee (or you beverage of choice) and read on because this is an important one.

For customers of the large box store pet shops, signs are up and information is posted on their websites about their vaccination requirements. Rabies is always required for dogs and cats over 16 weeks old. Younger ones are expected to have had two rounds of the puppy starter shots (Parvovirus, Hepatitis, Distemper) or kitten starter shots: (Parvovirus, Herpesvirus-1, Calicivirus). Without proof of these vaccinations, no amount of whimpering or mewing will result in a bath and haircut.

Human appetites are pushing makos and other iconic sharks to the brink of extinction, scientists warned in a new assessment of the apex predator's conservation status.

Seventeen of 58 species evaluated were classified as facing extinction, the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation (IUCN) said late Thursday in an update of the Red List of threatened animals and plants.

"Our results are alarming," said Nicholas Dulvy, who chairs the grouping of 174 experts from 55 countries.

"The sharks that are especially slow-growing, sought-after and unprotected from overfishing tend to be the most threatened."

SpaceX is turning up the heat on its Starship spacecraft project, according to CEO Elon Musk. Literally.

In a series of posts on Twitter this week, Musk unveiled a tantalizing glimpse at a SpaceX test of the hexagonal heat shield tiles that will protect its Starship vehicle as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. SpaceX is developing Starship and its Super Heavy booster for deep-space trips to the moon and Mars.

"Testing Starship heatshield hex tiles," Musk wrote in a post Sunday (March 17). He also posted a short video of nine hex tiles being bombarded by flames.

The deep dark secrets of high fructose corn syrup.

#1. There’s nothing natural about it.

#2. It requires toxic materials to produce

#3. It is overwhelmingly the most used sweetener in America and it’s in everything.

How healthy is it? Not very.

But it sure is cheap and it makes its makers a whole lot of money.

For the second time in a year, a jury has decided that the popular glyphosate weed killer Roundup caused a man’s cancer. The victory could inspire a flood of similar suits in addition to the thousands that Roundup manufacturer Monsanto is already facing, and the firm’s new owner, Bayer, could end up going bankrupt over it.

On Wednesday, the share price of Bayer dropped more than 13 percent following the unanimous decision. Investors were apparently spooked when a jury in a San Francisco federal court concluded that Roundup was a “substantial factor” in the development of Edwin Hardeman’s cancer.

According to his attorneys, the 70-year-old developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma as a result of using Roundup regularly over the course of 26 years to address weeds, overgrowth and poison oak on his property.

Russia has entered a new space competition, according to the head of the country's space agency, Roscosmos. The new “competition” is focused on manned space flight and deep space exploration.

“Now we are entering a new stage of a certain competition with leading space powers, related to future manned programs, including in deep space,” Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said Friday.

United Parcel Service Opens a New Window. Inc wants to get beyond U.S. doorsteps with a new push into healthcare. Opens a New Window.

The world's largest package delivery firm is preparing to test a U.S. service that dispatches nurses to vaccinate adults in their homes, Reuters has learned, as the company and its healthcare clients work to fend off cost pressures and competitive threats from Amazon.com.

More than 97% of the water pumped from the coastal aquifer, in the besieged Gaza Strip, does not meet the water quality standards of the World Health Organization (WHO), leading to the depletion of groundwater reserves, with the groundwater level in the coastal aquifer reaching 19 meters below sea level, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) said on Thursday, in a joint press release, on the occasion of World Water Day.

The joint statement said, “The amount of water extracted from the coastal aquifer for domestic use was 178.7 million cubic meters (MCM) in Gaza Strip in 2017; but this quantity is obtained via unsafe pumping that jeopardizes sustainability of the source knowing that the basin sustainable yield should not exceed 50-60 MCM a year.”

Vaccination was first introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796 and first developed in 1798. This original vaccination has contributed to the elimination of a dreaded disease known as smallpox. Due to the eradication of smallpox, the vaccine is no longer offered because the vaccine in the end was causing more death and injury than the disease. This should be a hint in regards to other vaccines. It is proof that vaccines are not perfect and that they do cause harm.

Beyond this, is the consideration of how serious the condition is that is being vaccinated against. Many younger people probably do not know this but back years ago, parents would intentionally expose their children to illness such as measles, mumps, chicken pox, and rubella. There was rarely any serious illness or death from these exposures.These illnesses were basically a significant risk to adults who had not developed the illness at a younger age.

With more than 1,000 thought to be dead and fears for another 500,000 with 90% of the Mozambique city of Beira destroyed by Cyclone Idai, 2019's extreme weather continues to intensify.

The largest evacuation before a cyclone in Australia's Northern Territory history is underway as Cyclone Trevor takes aim, to make landfall on Saturday.
Already in 2019, Australia has suffered its hottest January ever the wettest February ever the hottest start to Autumn in 30 years the hottest March heatwave in 52 years and now Australia's Northern Territory is set to be battered by the strongest cyclone since 2015.

More than 1000 residents have been evacuated from Groote Eylandt and Numbulwar with another 1000 people being moved out of Borroloola, the McArthur River zinc mine, Robinson River and other communities all along the Gulf of Carpentaria coast to Queensland.

Monsanto is about to face 11,200 more trials over the potential carcinogen in Roundup, which has prompted legislation to limit the chemical’s use

The fight against ecological disaster must include fighting the war machine of the US state, argues Jago Corry

The US military machine knows no bounds regarding world degradation, however much - through its excessive consumption of raw materials and production of countless major oil and pipeline spills - it is now considered to be the world’s biggest industrial polluter.

The US Department of Defence is responsible for huge amounts of devastation to the environment; its use of pollutants such as perchlorate and jet fuels heavily contaminate 19 million acres of occupied land, disrupting local ecologies and toxifying local water sources.

US Spacewalk with astronauts McClain and Hague at the International Space Station.

A fast-developing nor'easter will bring snow, rain and damaging winds as it tracks up the Northeastern seaboard Thursday and Friday, March 21 and 22, 2019. Meanwhile, historic flooding continues across parts of the central U.S. this week, despite dry weather.

Two cold fronts digging into the Eastern half of the U.S. will draw a developing coastal low and surge of Atlantic moisture into eastern North Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic for a soaking rain. This low will track up the Northeastern seaboard Thursday/Friday for locally heavy rain and mountain snow, NWS warns.

Authorities are evacuating about 2,000 people from part of northern Australia ahead of a powerful cyclone expected to hit on Saturday. Evacuees were being moved by air and road on Thursday, from remote mostly indigenous communities on the Northern Territory’s east coast to the territory’s capital, Darwin, AP reported.

Deaths from the synthetic opioid fentanyl skyrocketed more than 1,000% from 2011 to 2016, according to a report released Thursday.

The number of fatalities related to the drug held fairly steady between 2011 and 2012, hovering around 1,600 deaths in both those years. In 2013, the number increased to just over 1,900 fatalities.

Beginning in 2014, though, fentanyl-related deaths began to double each year. In 2014, fentanyl was involved in 4,223 deaths. In 2015, it was 8,251 deaths. And in 2016, fentanyl-related deaths had jumped to 18,335.

The reasoning is that if quantum theory is a universally valid theory capable of making sense of reality, it should be able to describe people using quantum theory. But this turns out to be a thought experiment in the best tradition of quantum bamboozlement. It blows up, providing a nonsensical answer that, taken at face value, removes our last tenuous handholds on the nature of quantum reality.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today it will consider allowing the highly drift-prone pesticide dicamba to be sprayed on up to 90 million acres of corn.

Dicamba is produced by Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer. Drift from dicamba sprayed on cotton and soybean fields has damaged an estimated 5 million acres of crops, trees and backyard gardens over the past three years. That has prompted several states to restrict its use.

“Use of this dangerous, uncontrollable toxin should be banned, not expanded,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “With millions of acres of crops, orchards and natural areas already harmed by this volatile herbicide, Trump’s EPA should reject Monsanto’s self-serving request to dramatically escalate its use.”

Historic flooding could soon deluge parts of several Southern states along the lower Mississippi River, where floodwaters could persist for several weeks, scientists say.

The flood threat in the South will be discussed Thursday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases its 2019 spring outlook.

Experts plan a briefing on their flood forecast at the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have declared states of emergency further north as they reel from a 'bomb cyclone' last week.

A lot of us have been watching Mt. Popocatepetl for a very long time. Could it be possible that we are now on the verge of the most destructive volcanic eruption in the modern history of North America? On Monday night at precisely 9:38 PM, a massive explosion at Mt. Popocatepetl sent a column of volcanic ash nearly a mile into the sky. A “yellow alert warning” has been issued by the authorities, and they are ordering everyone to stay at least 12 kilometers away from the crater. They are stressing that the threat has not passed, and as you will see below, an evacuation plan is in place in case an even larger eruption follows. And if a much larger eruption does follow, the devastation could be off the charts. Mexico City is only 43 miles away from Mt. Popocatepetl, and approximately 25 million people live within a 60 mile radius of the crater.

The two doomed Boeing 737s which crashed under similar conditions lacked optional safety features that the aircraft manufacturer will now make standard, according to the New York Times.

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. -New York Times

Scientists in southwest China's Yunnan province have cloned what they called the "Sherlock Holmes of police dogs" in a program they hope will help cut training times and costs for police dogs, state media reported on Wednesday.

The dog, named Kunxun, was cloned from a police sniffer dog by the Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Company and the Yunnan Agricultural University, with support from the Ministry of Public Security, the state-owned tabloid Global Times reported.

Sinogene is hoping to make it possible to achieve "volume production" of cloned police dogs in order to significantly reduce training times, the company's deputy general manager Zhao Jianping told the Global Times, but he added that cloning costs remain a major obstacle.

More than 900 people were rescued Wednesday in Mozambique and at least 15,000 more await rescue on rooftops and trees a week after Tropical Cyclone Idai devastated three African nations.

"Yesterday, 910 people were rescued by the humanitarian community," said Caroline Haga of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Beira, The Associated Press reported. That included 210 who were rescued by five helicopters and 700 others saved by boats, she added.

"We're hoping to rescue as many as we can today as it is not raining," she said. "Rescue activities will continue until everyone is brought to safety."