Tag: corruption

AstraZeneca to be exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries

AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.

With 25 companies testing their vaccine candidates on humans and getting ready to immunise hundred millions of people once the products are shown to work, the question of who pays for any claims for damages in case of side effects has been a tricky point in supply negotiations.

“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” Ruud Dobber, a member of Astra’s senior executive team, told Reuters.

“In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest,” he said, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.

Dobber would not name the countries.

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Tennessee lawmaker used federal funds to pay for wedding, lavish lifestyle, feds say

A Tennessee state senator was charged with swindling $600,000 in federal funds to pay for her wedding and finance a lavish lifestyle, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

From 2015 to 2019, state Sen. Katrina Robinson is accused of stealing the money that was granted to The Healthcare Institute — a company she directed, according to prosecutors.

In addition to covering her wedding costs, Robinson, a Democrat from a Memphis district elected in 2018, is charged with using the funds to pay for her honeymoon and pay legal fees for her divorce, the feds charge.

With the stolen money the lawmaker also paid for her daughter’s 2016 Jeep Renegade, home improvements, a $500 Louis Vuitton handbag and invested in a snow cone business run by her children, prosecutors and the FBI said.

Robinson was charged with theft, embezzlement and wire fraud.

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Pedophile Councilman, Who Worked at a Children’s Home, Walks Free Despite Videos of Child Rape

On a regular basis, members of government — a government we are told exists to protect society from chaos — are caught preying on society’s most vulnerable. From heads of state to low level cops, child abusers are rife within all the ranks. All too often, when these child abusers are caught, despite overwhelming and often horrifying evidence, they walk free because of their politically connected status. This is exactly what happened with city councilman Roger Spackman.

Spackman was caught with over one million child porn images — including of 12-year-old girls being raped — and he walked free this week. On top of his position in the City Council, this vile member of the government also worked at a secure children’s home at the time he started collecting the enormous hoard of images.

According to authorities, Spackman was part of an underground internet network called The Other Place. In 2017, a police investigation found Spackman in possession of over one million images and videos at his home on a whopping 68 different electronic devices.

Judge Peter Johnson, of the Exeter Crown Court in England, where Spackman lives, noted that this was ‘an astonishing number’ of images and videos. Despite the judge admitting to the utterly shocking nature of Spackman’s crimes, he let him walk free.

Johnson sentenced Spackman to prison for ten months, however, that sentence was suspended. Instead, Spackman walked out of the courtroom a free man with just 40 days of rehab for possessing the “huge number of images.”

Not only is the system refusing to put this child predator away for a long time like he deserves, they actually praised his work in government while doing it.

The judge told the court that Spackman was a man of good character working hard in public service as a councilor in Exeter before his “fall from grace which has been dramatic.” He then went on to call Spackman the victim and blame the possession on images on the people who sent them to him, not Spackman.

The judge said Spackman had been abused as a child and played the role of an abused child in this forum. Apparently, this is what Spackman used as his defense — and it worked.

“He likes to pretend he is a young girl who will be abused. He will pretend to be a young girl,” the pedophile’s attorney, Barry White said.

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The false hope of Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest

With the July 2 arrest and indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Jeffrey Epstein, the victims of their child sex-trafficking ring are once again being led to believe that the truth about the network of high-profile abusers and protectors will finally be revealed.

One victim, Maria Farmer, first reported Epstein’s crimes to the FBI in the 1990s, but her reports were ignored. Maria is currently battling two forms of cancer. The arrest of Maxwell has given her renewed hope. “When you wait a quarter of a century for something, it’s pretty exciting when it happens,” she told the Daily Beast through happy tears. “I really feel hopeful that . . . maybe they’ll go down the list of coconspirators.” Another victim, Jennifer Araoz, said, “Maxwell was the center of that sex trafficking ring.” Her arrest “means some justice for survivors can exist.” Courtney Wild said that the arrest of Maxwell “gives me more confidence in our system.”

In a previous column, I described how the federal government has covered up for Epstein and Maxwell and their coconspirators. Back in 2005, more than 30 child victims, some as young as 14 when they were recruited to become sex slaves for Epstein and his guests, were tricked into cooperating with the FBI, based on the promise that the U.S. attorney’s office in south Florida intended to prosecute the Epstein-Maxwell child sex ring. Instead, the lead prosecutor on the case, Alexander Acosta, double-crossed the victims and entered into a secret and illegal deal to grant immunity to Epstein and all his “potential coconspirators.” Acosta later explained that he cut the nonprosecution deal with Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

The problem for the victims is that a deep dive into the Epstein-Maxwell network would implicate not just powerful men like Bill Clinton, who took at least 26 trips on Epstein’s private jet—nicknamed the Lolita Express—but also untouchable U.S. intelligence officials like Michael Hayden, who was CIA director in 2007 when Acosta was told to “leave [Epstein] alone.”

Thus, the government has gone to great lengths to avoid any detailed investigations into the criminal enterprise. Then in November 2018, a reporter from the Miami Herald embarrassed the government by identifying about 80 victims of the sex ring and by telling the story of how the victims were double-crossed by Acosta’s office in 2007. In response to this series in the Herald, federal agents arrested Epstein last summer and charged him under the same indictment that had been drafted and shelved a decade before.

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