McKinsey agrees to $78M settlement
Consulting company McKinsey and Co. has agreed to pay $78 million to settle claims from insurers and health care funds that its work with drug companies helped fuel an opioid addiction crisis.
The agreement was revealed late Friday in documents filed in federal court in San Francisco. It still must be approved by a judge.
Under the agreement, McKinsey would establish a fund to reimburse insurers, private benefit plans and others for some or all of their prescription opioid costs.
The insurers argued that McKinsey worked with Purdue Pharma — the maker of OxyContin — to create and employ aggressive marketing and sales tactics to overcome doctors' reservations about the highly addictive drugs. Insurers said it forced them to pay for prescription opioids rather than safer, nonaddictive and lower-cost drugs, including over-thecounter pain medicine. They also had to pay for the opioid addiction treatment that followed.
Boeing warns airlines on potential loose bolts
Boeing is warning Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and other major carriers about “a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system” in its 737 Max jets.
Southwest, American, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines confirmed inspections will be done on the 737 Max jets that they fly. Boeing's alert comes after an international operator discovered a bolt with a missing nut while performing routine maintenance on a mechanism in a jet's rudder-control linkage.
“The issue identified on the particular airplane has been remedied,” Boeing said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending operators inspect their 737 Max airplanes and inform us of any findings.”
Boeing also alerted the Federal Aviation Administration, the nation's air safety regulatory agency.
Southwest had 206 Max jets among its 817 aircraft. Fort Worth-based American just received its 59th Max jet. Alaska has 65 of the jets in its fleet.
— Tribune News Services
Shelling of Russian city Belgorod kills 21
Shelling in the center of the Russian border city of Belgorod killed 21 people, including two children, and wounded 108 others Saturday, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said. Russian officials accused Kyiv of carrying out the attack, which took place the day after an 18-hour aerial bombardment across Ukraine killed at least 39 civilians.
Images of Belgorod on social media showed burning cars and plumes of black smoke rising among damaged buildings as air raid sirens sounded. One strike hit close to a public ice rink in the very heart of the city, which lies 25 miles north of the Ukrainian border and 415 miles south of Moscow.
Though previous attacks have hit the city, they have rarely taken place in daylight and have claimed fewer lives. Speaking on social media Saturday, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov described the consequences of the strike as the worst the city had faced since Moscow began its fullscale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.
Repatriation flights to restart amid pressure MEXICO CITY » Mexico and Venezuela announced Saturday that they have restarted repatriation flights of Venezuelans migrants in Mexico, the latest move by countries in the region to take on a flood of people traveling north to the United States.
The move comes as authorities say at least 10,000 migrants a day have been arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border, many of them asylum-seekers. It also comes as a migrant caravan of thousands of people from across the region — largely Venezuelans — has trekked through southern Mexico this past week.
The repatriation flights are part of an agreement made between regional leaders during a summit in Mexico in October that aimed to seek solutions for migration levels that show few signs of slowing down.
Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Relations said the two countries began repatriations with a flight Friday and a second Saturday in an effort to “strengthen their cooperation on migration issues.”
Air raids in Syria kill 6 Iran-backed militants BAGHDAD » Three overnight airstrikes on eastern Syria near a strategic border crossing with Iraq killed six Iranbacked militants Saturday, two members of Iraqi militia groups said.
The strikes on the border region of Boukamal came hours after an umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militants known as the Islamic Resistance claimed an attack on a U.S. military base in northern Iraq's city of Irbil.
The group has conducted over a hundred attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq and eastern Syria since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.
Four of the militants killed were from Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group, and the other two were Syrian, the militia group members said. Two more were injured, they added.
Meanwhile, an activist collective that covers news in the area, Deir Ezzor 24, said the airstrikes hit two militant posts and a weapons warehouse that it says was recently stocked with rocket launchers and munitions.