California court rules that company made misleading and potentially harmful statements in hundreds of thousands of ads
A California appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that Johnson & Johnson must pay penalties to the state for deceptively marketing pelvic mesh implants for women.
Johnson & Johnson had appealed in 2020 after superior court judge Eddie Sturgeon assessed the $344m in penalties against the US pharmaceutical company’s subsidiary, Ethicon.
Continue reading...GlaxoSmithKline’s £1.5bn Sierra Oncology deal comes after pressure from Elliott to boost its pipeline
The UK drug company GlaxoSmithKline has agreed a £1.5bn deal to buy a US cancer treatment developer, Sierra Oncology, as it tries to fend off pressure from the activist shareholder Elliott Management.
The deal will give Britain’s second-largest pharmaceutical company access to California-based Sierra Oncology’s momelotinib, a drug being tested on anaemic patients with a type of bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis. GSK said the drug had “significant growth potential” and it expected sales to start next year, with one analyst predicting it could generate peak annual sales of about $1.7bn (£1.3bn).
Continue reading...Papini will plead guilty to lying to authorities and mail fraud over 2016 incident that led to three-week search
Sherri Papini, the northern California woman charged last month with faking her kidnapping in 2016, accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors on Tuesday and acknowledged she had made up the story that prompted a frantic search and international headlines.
Her defense attorney William Portanova said his client would plead guilty to charges of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud.
Continue reading...A judge also granted a restraining order to the pair accused of terrorizing students who ‘provoked extreme fear and anxiety’
A pair of YouTubers are facing a lawsuit and a restraining order after allegedly filming themselves disrupting classes at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles and uploading footage of the staged pranks online.
The University of Southern California sued Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai over the incidents, USC Annenberg Media reported last week. A judge granted a restraining order banning Kanevsky and Bai, who are not USC students, from campus after university attorneys said the pranks had terrorized “students to the point where they are running out of lecture halls for fear of their lives”.
Continue reading...Bryson Galaz was six years old when ball hit his head, causing brain damage, during warmup at Angel Stadium in Anaheim
The family of a boy who suffered a fractured skull and brain damage after being hit with a baseball during the warmup for a Los Angeles Angels game has sued the Angels, claiming negligence on the team’s part.
In 2019, Bryson Galaz, who was then six years old, was walking with his father in the first row of Angel Stadium, where players were mingling with fans more than an hour and half prior to the game, the lawsuit said. Bryson was struck on the side of his head when Keynan Middleton, an Angels pitcher who was warming up on the field, threw a ball at a teammate who missed the catch.
Continue reading...James Jackson, 19, one of the three suspects accused in connection with shooting of Ryan Fischer, who was walking artist’s bulldogs
The 19-year-old man arrested over the shooting of Lady Gaga’s dog-walker last year was released from jail in California earlier this week – by mistake, the authorities have said.
James Jackson, 19, Jaylin White, 19, and Lafayette Whaley, 27, were charged after the incident last February, accused of attempted murder, second-degree robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery in connection with the shooting of Ryan Fischer, who was walking the music artist’s French bulldogs.
Continue reading...Three people have been arrested since the early Sunday violence unfolded but the motive is still unknown
Police have said at least five people fired weapons in a weekend shooting in Sacramento, California, that killed six people and injured a dozen others and prompted calls for lawmakers to address the scourge of gun violence in the US.
Officials said on Wednesday that while the motive was still unknown, investigators think “ gang violence is at the center of this tragedy” and that “gangs and gang violence are inseparable from the events that drove these shootings”.
Continue reading...Smiley Martin, 27, brother of first suspect Dandrae Martin, facing gun-related charges but neither brother charged with homicide
Police in Sacramento arrested a second person in connection with Sunday’s mass shooting in a bustling stretch of California’s capitol. Six people were killed in the shooting and at least 12 were injured.
On Tuesday the department announced Smiley Martin, who was also injured in the shooting, would be booked in Sacramento’s county jail once his medical care is complete. Martin, 27, is facing charges of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of a machine gun. His brother Dandrae Martin, 26, was arrested on Monday and charged with assault and illegal firearm possession offenses.
Continue reading...Police say they have received more than 100 videos or photos from the scene and have executed three search warrants
Police in the California state capital have made an arrest in connection with Sunday’s mass shooting that left six people dead and at least a dozen others injured. In the hours after the bloodshed, police say they have received more than 100 videos or photos from the scene and executed search warrants on three homes.
They identified a 26-year-old man as one of the individuals arrested in connection to the shooting, in a press release. He has been charged with assault and illegal firearm possession offenses.
Continue reading...Police in California ask for help in identifying those responsible for gunfire that broke out after ‘large fight’
Police in Sacramento, California, are hunting for at least two suspects after six people were killed and 10 others injured during a shooting in the city’s downtown early Sunday morning.
Kathy Lester, chief of the Sacramento police department, said at a news conference that police were patrolling the area at about 2am after hearing gunfire. When they arrived at the scene, she said, they found a crowd gathered on the street and six people dead.
Continue reading...She began working with the National Park Service at 84 to reveal ‘untold stories’ of Black people’s efforts during the second world war
Betty Reid Soskin, the National Park Service’s oldest active ranger, has retired at the age of 100.
Soskin, who worked at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front national historical park in Richmond, California, spent her last day as she had for the last decade and a half: sharing her experiences and those of other women who worked on the home front in the second world war.
Continue reading...Autopsy determined the man suffered a crushed skull as well as injuries to a large vein and died within minutes
A bodyboarder was attacked by a great white shark in central California on Christmas Eve and died within minutes, official reports have concluded.
Tomas Butterfield, 42, was bitten in the head, chest and shoulder in the Morro Bay attack and died from “complications of multiple penetrating blunt force traumatic injuries,” according to a coroner’s report, the Tribune of San Luis Obispo County reported on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Trio file lawsuit against homeland security department, alleging questions about faith were in violation of constitutional rights
Three Muslim Americans filed a lawsuit this week alleging that US border officers questioned them about their religious beliefs in violation of their constitutional rights when they returned from international travel.
The men involved in the lawsuit claim that US border officers at land crossings and international airports peppered them with questions about whether they were Muslim and attended a mosque and how often they prayed.
Continue reading...Jose Manuel Perez from California allegedly smuggled reptiles, including baby crocodiles and Mexican beaded lizards, since 2016
A Southern California man is accused of smuggling more than 1,700 reptiles – including baby crocodiles and Mexican beaded lizards – into the US since 2016, authorities said Thursday.
Jose Manuel Perez, also known as “Julio Rodriguez”, was taken into custody on 25 February at the San Ysidro border crossing with Mexico.
Continue reading...Los Angeles city council unanimously bestowed the designation to the 123-year-old site where many movie legends are buried
The Hollywood Forever cemetery, the final resting place of stars such as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Burt Reynolds, is now a historic-cultural monument.
The Los Angeles city council unanimously voted this week to grant the designation to the 123-year-old cemetery, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999. An architectural historian who prepared a report on the cemetery for the city found it “exemplifies significant contributions to the broad cultural, economic or social history”.
Continue reading...The 35-year-old petitioned last month to end legal arrangement that has given her mother control of her estate and personal affairs
A judge terminated Amanda Bynes’ conservatorship on Tuesday, ending the legal arrangement that has given the former actor’s mother control of her estate and personal affairs for nearly a decade.
The 35-year-old filed a petition last month, with support from her mother and psychiatrist, to end the conservatorship she was placed under in 2013 after she was forcibly hospitalized on a psychiatric hold.
Continue reading...Prosecutors portray ex-executive as accomplice in a health scam while defense paints picture of well-meaning businessman
The specter of Elizabeth Holmes loomed over the opening day of a trial that will determine whether Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former romantic and business partner at Theranos, was also her partner in crime.
Tuesday marked the opening of a case slated to begin last week, which was delayed by a Covid-19 exposure.
Continue reading...He had entered the stormwater system intentionally and became stuck for two days before being rescued uninjured, but dehydrated
A man who was trapped 15ft (4.5m) underground for two days in a San Francisco Bay area storm pipe the width of a large pizza was rescued in an effort that lasted hours and involved at least 50 firefighters, police officers and rescue personnel, officials said Monday.
Officials freed the man from the 16in (40cm) pipe around 9.30pm on Sunday, said Steve Hill, spokesperson for the Contra Costa county fire protection district.
Continue reading...Matthew Muller guilty of rape and false imprisonment in intricate attack which authorities first dismissed – to their cost – as staged
A man who sexually assaulted a northern California woman who was kidnapped from her home in what police initially thought was a hoax was sentenced on Friday to 31 years in state prison.
Matthew Muller, already serving a 40-year sentence for federal crimes, was sentenced in Solano county superior court after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape of Denise Huskins, who was dragged from her Vallejo home in 2015, the county district attorney’s office said.
Continue reading...Newly released clip from two years ago shows Edward Bronstein being forced to a mat with at least five officers holding him down
A southern California man died nearly two years ago as he screamed “I can’t breathe” while multiple officers restrained him as they tried to take a blood sample, according to records and a video.
Edward Bronstein, 38, was taken into custody by California highway patrol (CHP) officers on 31 March 2020 following a traffic stop. Bronstein died less than two months before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis as he, too, repeatedly told officers “I can’t breathe.”
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