US Business

Israeli generic drug maker Teva has reached an agreement in principle to pay $4.25 billion over 13 years to settle a series of court cases over its role in the US opioid epidemic.

If the deal is finalized, Teva would become the latest major company to reach a settlement over the crisis which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and ravaged communities across the country.

Teva reached the potential agreement on the terms of a “nationwide opioids settlement” with a working group of state attorneys general and lawyers for Native American tribes and other plaintiffs, the company said in its second-quarter financial results.

“Teva will pay up to $4.25 billion (including the already settled cases) plus approximately $100 million for the tribes, spread over 13 years,” it said.

The overall figure includes up to $1.2 billion in the generic version of Narcan, which can reverse opioid overdoses.

The deal will include “no admission of wrongdoing,” but “it remains in our best interest to put these cases behind us,” the company added.

Teva has already gone through several opioid-related lawsuits and reached agreements with some states.

The opioid crisis, which has caused more than 500,000 deaths over 20 years in the United States, has triggered a flurry of lawsuits from victims as well as cities, counties and states impacted by the fallout.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health, have agreed to pay out $24.5 billion over several years to end more than 3,000 lawsuits.

Purdue Pharma, considered by many to be a major driver of the crisis because of its aggressive promotion of its pain killer OxyContin, filed for bankruptcy in September 2019 as it faced a flood of legal action.

Microsoft on Tuesday said that its earnings in the recently ended quarter fell shy of expectations as personal computer sales suffered from production holdups in China and sagging demand.

The US technology giant reported profit of $16.7 billion on revenue of $51.9 billion, topping the same quarter a year earlier but missing market forecasts.

The earnings stumble was due mostly to foreign exchange rates and shutdowns of personal computer factories in China, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

Microsoft said that the strong US dollar made its offerings more costly in foreign markets, hurting sales.

“The most important core business; cloud and commercial bookings was relatively rock solid despite fears,” Ives said.

“The core DNA of the Microsoft growth story is cloud and core Azure growth which was healthy this quarter and appears to have momentum into 2023 despite economic headwinds.”

Microsoft shares were up some 4 percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures.

“In a dynamic environment we saw strong demand, took share, and increased customer commitment to our cloud platform,” said Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood.

Shutdowns at computer production facilities in China in May, and a deteriorating market for personal computers, cost Microsoft some $300 million in revenue it would have made from Windows operating systems bought to power the machines, the earnings report indicated.

The personal computer market had been in steady decline prior to the pandemic, as people turned to smartphones or tablets.

A massive shift to shopping, working, socializing and playing from home reignited demand for desktop computing power, but it remains to be seen whether that appetite will remain post-pandemic.

Ad revenue at Microsoft’s online news, search, and career social network LinkedIn suffered due to companies cutting marketing budgets due to broad economic woes, the company said.

The tech veteran based in the US state of Washington also logged $126 million in operating expenses related to scaling back its operations in Russia because of that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Microsoft saw consumers spend less on Xbox videogame content in the quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, in a possible sign that many are out playing in the real world more as pandemic restrictions ease.

However, Microsoft’s cloud, business and productivity offerings continued to thrive.

“We see real opportunity to help every customer in every industry use digital technology to overcome today’s challenges and emerge stronger,” said Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella.

The Federal Reserve is set to announce another big interest rate increase on Wednesday, the fourth this year, in its ongoing battle to tamp down price pressures that have been squeezing American families.

US central bankers are hoping that their aggressive stance will start to cool red-hot inflation that topped nine percent in June, the highest in more than 40 years, without derailing the world’s largest economy.

President Joe Biden is paying the political cost for surging prices, which he blames mostly on Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has sent global food and energy prices soaring. 

Biden insists the American economy will avoid a recession, but even as his approval ratings have cratered, he has supported the Fed in its battle to quell inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell and others have made it clear they are willing to risk a downturn and will keep raising interest rates until they see clear evidence inflation is moving back towards the two percent goal.

The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee is widely expected to announce another three-quarter-point increase in the benchmark borrowing rate at the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting at 1800 GMT.

From zero at the start of the year, the Fed has raised the policy lending rate to a range of 1.5 to 1.75 percent, which has pushed mortgage rates higher and slowed housing sales for five straight months.

Economists say this has been the most aggressive Fed tightening cycle since the 1980s, when stagflation — a wage-price spiral and stagnant growth — crippled the US economy.

The challenge for policymakers is to quell inflation before it becomes dangerously entrenched, but without sending the world’s largest economy into a recession that would reverberate around the globe.

While prices have continued to rise, with home prices hitting a new record, there are signs the pace of the increases has begun to slow, which may allow the central bank to ease up on its rate increases.

Global oil prices are trending down, with the US benchmark WTI falling to below $95 a barrel from its peak of more than $123 in March, and gasoline prices at the pump have fallen 69 cents from the record of just over $5 a gallon in mid-June.

– Recession risk –

Meanwhile, the job market has remained strong, consumer demand has not fallen dramatically, and surveys show inflation expectations in the months ahead have started to trend lower.

Policymakers want to engineer a “soft landing,” taming inflation without causing a downturn, but economists warn they face an increasingly narrow path to success and it would be easy to overshoot by being too aggressive.

“The Fed is now stuck between a rock and a hard place, with no easy way out without the economy feeling pain,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said in an analysis, noting that “Powell has started to underscore that reality by admitting a recession could occur.”

In fact, it is rare that the central bank moves so decidedly without causing a downturn, and there are signs of concern among Fed policymakers.

Kansas City Fed President Esther George dissented at the June meeting, saying she preferred a smaller half-point rate hike and warning that going too fast could be “unsettling” and raise recession fears.

GDP in the first quarter contracted 1.6 percent, and the first reading on the April-June period is due out Thursday. Though the consensus forecast calls for modest growth, many economists expect a downturn. 

Two quarters of negative growth are generally considered a recession, although that is not the official criteria.

But Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he was prepared to move even faster, with an unheard-of full point increase if inflation continued to accelerate.

Swonk said the Fed “is in uncharted waters,” so “uncertainty and disagreement about the course of rate hikes is a natural consequence.”

Donald Trump returned to Washington on Tuesday for the first time since leaving the White House 18 months ago, delivering a fiery speech sprinkled with strong hints he may run for president again in 2024.

The 76-year-old Trump stopped short of declaring his candidacy, but laid out what he believed should be the priorities for the “next Republican president.”

“I always say I ran the first time and I won, then I ran a second time and I did much better,” Trump said. “We may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.

“I look forward to laying out many more details in the weeks and months to come.”

Several hours before Trump took the stage at the right-wing America First Policy Institute, his former vice president, Mike Pence, who is also considering a White House run in 2024, addressed a different conservative audience in Washington.

Speaking at the Young America’s Foundation conference, Pence said Americans must look to the future not the past and played down differences with Trump.

“Elections are about the future,” Pence said. “I came today not to look backwards but to look forward.

“I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues,” he said. “But we may differ on focus.”

Trump’s 90-minute address to the conservative America First Policy Institute echoed many of the themes of his victorious 2016 campaign, including illegal immigration and crime.

Trump repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election and denounced the House committee investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters as the work of “political hacks and thugs.”

“If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed at home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately,” he said. “But that’s not what I will do. I can’t do that.

“They really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you,” he said.

“And I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he added, prompting chants from the crowd of “Four more years!”

– ‘Cesspool of crime’ –

Trump lashed out repeatedly at Democratic President Joe Biden, blaming him for the country’s ills.

“We are a nation in decline,” he said. “We are a failing nation.”

“Inflation is the highest in 49 years,” Trump said “Gas prices have reached the highest in the history of our country.”

He accused Biden of allowing an “invasion” by millions of migrants crossing the southern border.

“The next Republican president must immediately implement every aspect of the Trump agenda that achieved the most secure border in history,” he said.

Trump said the United States “is now a cesspool of crime.”

“We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable,” he said. “Democrat-run cities are setting all-time murder records.”

He accused Biden of having “surrendered in Afghanistan,” and allowing Russia to invade Ukraine.

“It would never ever, ever have happened if I was your commander-in-chief,” he said.

Since taking his last Air Force One flight from Washington to Florida on January 20 last year, Trump has remained the country’s most polarizing figure, continuing his unprecedented campaign to sow doubts about his 2020 election loss to Biden.

For weeks, Washington has been riveted by hearings in Congress about the January 6 storming of the Capitol by a Trump mob and his attempts to overturn the election.

With Biden’s approval rating currently below 40 percent and Democrats forecasted to lose control of Congress in November midterm elections, Trump is apparently bullish that he could ride the Republican wave all the way to the White House in 2024.

On the Democratic side, fury at Trump is also providing energy in the run-up to the midterms.

The House committee hearings have laid out evidence that Trump oversaw nothing less than an attempt to break US democracy, first through trying to rig electoral procedures behind the scenes and finally in encouraging a mob to attack legislators certifying his loss.

In an interview with NBC broadcast Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland did not rule out legal action against Trump.

“We pursue justice without fear or favor. We intend to hold everyone — anyone — who is criminally responsible for events surrounding January 6, or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable,” he said.

Biden — facing chatter that at 79 he is too old to be thinking about seeking a second term in 2024 — pushed back hard against Trump’s criticism.

“Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think inciting a mob that attacks a police officer is ‘respect for the law,'” Biden tweeted.

 “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop — or pro-democracy, or pro-American.”

The family of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Tuesday pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken to demand accountability from Israel but the US administration balked at calls to open its own probe.

The top US diplomat invited relatives of the veteran Al Jazeera reporter, who was killed on May 11 as she covered an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, for a meeting in Washington after they unsuccessfully tried to see President Joe Biden on his visit to the region earlier this month.

“We are continuing to call for accountability and for justice for Shireen,” Lina Abu Akleh, the journalist’s 27-year-old niece, told AFP outside the State Department after nearly an hour-long meeting with Blinken.

“If there is no accountability for Shireen’s murder, then this in a way gives a green light for other governments to kill American citizens,” she said.

Lina Abu Akleh, who was joined by the slain journalist’s brother, said that Blinken acknowledged the family’s concerns about a lack of transparency and promised “to establish a better channel of communication.”

But she said he “did not commit to anything” on the family’s calls for an independent US investigation into the death of the leading Palestinian journalist, who also held US citizenship.

The United States on July 4 released a statement saying Abu Akleh was likely shot by Israeli fire but that there was no evidence her killing was intentional, and that the bullet was too damaged for a conclusive finding.

The family demanded a retraction of the statement, which was based in part on US reviews of the separate Israeli and Palestinian probes.

– ‘Accountability’ –

Blinken, in a tweet after the meeting, said that Abu Akleh’s “fearless journalism earned her the respect of audiences around the world.”

“I expressed my deepest condolences and commitment to pursue accountability for her tragic killing,” Blinken said.

But asked about the family’s demands for a fresh US probe, State Department spokesman Ned Price pointed to the July 4 statement.

“We believe that by publishing the findings, it speaks to our commitment to pursuing an investigation that is credible, an investigation that’s thorough and, importantly, an investigation that culminates in accountability,” Price told reporters.

He said that the Israeli Defense Forces have “the ability to implement processes and procedures to avoid non-combatant casualties” and “to see to it that something like this cannot happen again.”

Israel has angrily rejected suggestions it deliberately targeted a journalist. It initially said that Palestinian fire could have killed Abu Akleh, who was wearing a vest that clearly identified her as a reporter, before backtracking.

Israel says it is still probing her death, leading some Palestinians to allege a stalling tactic.

Blinken has publicly criticized Israel for using force at her funeral, when police grabbed Palestinian flags and pallbearers struggled not to drop her casket.

The family is also meeting US lawmakers who have been pressing for the FBI or other US agencies to launch an investigation into her death.

“If we allow Shireen’s killing to be swept under the rug, we send a message that the lives of US citizens abroad don’t matter, that the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation don’t matter, and that the most courageous journalists in the world, those who cover the human impact of armed conflict and violence, are expendable,” Shireen’s brother Tony Abu Akleh said in a statement before the meetings.