The judge said the DEA was defying the “language and logic” of the law
In a victory for state medical marijuana programs and patients, a federal court in California ruled Monday that federal authorities may not shut down medical pot dispensaries operating within state laws.
Under Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which accompanied last year’s spending bill, the Justice Department can not use federal dollars to interfere with state medical marijuana laws and practices, preventing the DEA from pursuing dispensaries and patients, the court ruled, according to the Washington Post.
The decision follows a leaked Justice Department memo that interpreted the amendment as offering protections limited to the actual states, not the individuals and businesses which deal with the day-to-day implementation of marijuana laws. As a result of the DEA’s continued enforcement, several dispensaries have been closed in California, including one owned by the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, the first licensed medical pot dispensary in the state.
Accused “Goodfellas” mobster Vincent Asaro personally handed off a case stuffed with jewelry from the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist to future Bonanno boss Joey Massino, a witness testified Monday as the first ever trial in the long unsolved crime got underway in Brooklyn federal court.
Veteran mafia snitch Salvatore “Good Lookin’ Sal” Vitale took riveted jurors inside the more than $6 million heist that gained legendary status after its depiction in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film.
“When Joe got in the car he had the case that Vinny gave him,” Vitale testified. “He had it in his lap…He opened up the case and he showed me all kinds of chains and he said ‘this is from the Lufthansa score.’”
Later that day, Vitale went to Massino’s Queens house and was shown a portion of the breathtaking haul.
“All of the jewelry was laid out on the dining room table,” Vitale said, griping that Massino tossed him just one measly necklace as a gift. “He was always a big spender,” Vitale quipped.
Eager to convert the glittering booty into cash, Vitale said he and Massino took a ride to Manhattan shortly after the big JFK score.
“A couple of days later I drove Joey to the diamond district on Canal Street and after I parked we entered into a jewelry store,” Vitale said. “There was a guy there — him and Joe went in the back with the case and I never saw the case again.”
Boston, MABecause so many Zofran birth defects lawsuits have been filed nationwide against GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer, a multidistrict litigation (MDL) has been ordered for all pending and future lawsuits – good news for plaintiffs. And attorneys say that the decision to send Zofran lawsuits to Boston is a “victory” for plaintiffs.
The order to consolidate was issued by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on October 13, 2015. At least 60 plaintiffs nationwide have one thing in common: they are all part of MDL No. 2657, centralized in the District of Massachusetts before US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor.
Zofran lawsuits that were filed in federal court have been consolidated because they have almost the same allegations:
• GSK fraudulently misrepresented Zofran to prescribing physicians about the safety of its anti-nausea drug for pregnant women.
• GSK knew and concealed the drug’s alleged association with serious birth defects, and failed to provide doctors and patients with information regarding this risk.
• GSK marketed the drug to pregnant women off-label, i.e., without FDA approval. (The FDA only approved Zofran to treat post-operative surgery patients, as well as those undergoing certain cancer treatments.)
While each lawsuit in an MDL remains individual, common questions will be raised, i.e., does Zofran cause birth defects and if so, which kinds? Plaintiffs have filed claims alleging Zofran has caused a number of congenital birth defects, including cleft palate, spina bifida and heart defects. A few claims have also been filed alleging hypospadias and even a missing kidney.
Why Boston?
The Panel’s choice is a victory for the families who have sued GSK, according to attorney Michael Monheit, writing in The Legal Examiner (October 15). Monheit said that GSK first proposed a MDL in Federal Court in Pennsylvania, which is close to the drug company’s headquarters. But plaintiffs argued that “few if any Zofran lawsuits had been filed in Pennsylvania” and Boston was a top choice, particularly because Zofran was first linked to a birth defect (cleft palate) by researchers at Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center. And five lawsuits have already been filed in Massachusetts, four of them already assigned to Judge Saylor.
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It sounds like Mexican authorities are getting closer to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the convicted cartel kingpin who disappeared through a hole in the shower floor of his maximum security prison cell in July.
Mexican officials told reporters this week that the fugitive drug lord injured his face and leg while narrowly escaping from security forces that had closed in on Guzman’s mountain hideout in northwest Mexico. Guzman reportedly fled the hideout shortly before soldiers arrived.
Those Mexican officials haven’t revealed how long the soldiers missed Guzman by, how bad his injuries really are, or even how they know he’s injured, probably because they don’t want to reveal how they were able to find him. The New York Times said the hideout was in a place called the Golden Triangle, “a rugged area at the border of Mr. Guzmán’s home state, Sinaloa…”
Of course, who really knows what to believe after this leaked audio from El Chapo’s prison cell showed that it was painfully obvious something was going on from all the drilling sounds the night he escaped, yet guards acted pretty surprised when they checked out his cell later. for full article http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/10/el-chapo-injures-face-escapes-capture
Organized crime is nothing new. Mob gangsters and mafia families have been romanticized as the stuff of legend since the days of Prohibition. Just as the Internet has transformed the way we access information, shop, interact with each other, and conduct business, it has also completely altered the world of organized crime.
Crime is no longer confined to traditional brick and mortars–it’s all online. While the information and payout criminals are looking to attain are a bit different than in decades past, these are still thugs and true criminals. Now, however, they have the shield and anonymity of the Internet to hide behind.
It took a while for organized crime to adapt to cybercrime. I suppose it was a generational issue just as adoption of the Internet and cutting edge technologies are for the rest of society. Entrenched crime bosses probably shunned the Internet in favor of the proven business model they had used for decades. As younger criminals elevated through the ranks to take command, though, they saw the potential for crime on a massive scale with significantly less risk of arrest or physical harm.
It’s also possible that organized crime online is more or less organic—a logical evolution of Internet crime as cybercriminals band together to pool resources. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle—a combination of grassroots cybercrime organizations and traditional mafia operations transforming to embrace the Internet.
