The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein
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Rhode Island is a national trendsetter when it comes to schemes for stealing public sector pensions and funnelling the spoils to Wall Street, Matt Taibbi reports.
Thanks to Carol in DC for the tip.
[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]
…and Now Find Yourself Sitting at Home on Furlough With Plenty of Time to Ask About.
[Photo credit: Pandabrand, Creative Commons.
Hillman Prize-winner Alison Young exposes another dodgy dietary supplement for USA Today:
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A Mexican dietary supplement called Reumofan has gained a loyal following in the United States as a “100% natural” treatment for arthritis and joint pain. It’s supposedly made by a company called Riger Natural from ingredients such as shark cartilage, white willow and glucosamine, or so the labels say.
But consumers who buy Reumofan products are risking dangerous side effects and trusting their lives to a company that uses fake addresses, lies about the ingredients in its products and may not even exist, a USA TODAY investigation has found.
The newspaper set out to find Riger Natural and the people responsible for producing and selling the supplement, searching corporation records and visiting addresses in Mexico where it had been listed on the Web as having a lab. Those addresses are fake and there’s no evidence the company ever had facilities in the locations. Some Mexican retailers who once distributed the product say their contacts have simply disappeared. Even Mexican health authorities have been unable to track down the company.
Riger Natural? As in Riger Mortis? Reumofan is marketed as a dietary supplement but some of these pills contain potentially toxic prescription drugs and the FDA has received reports linking the pills to bleeding, strokes, and death.
[Photo credit: U.S. FDA.]
The Best of the Week’s News
Of the thirty-three Colorado prisoners who committed murder on parole, half had spent time in solitary confinement, the Denver Post reports:
The Colorado prison system is struggling to manage prisoners like Bassett — a fact laid bare when police say a parolee released directly from his solitary cell to the streets rang the doorbell at former Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements’ home in March and assassinated him.
Clements, ironically, had been pushing Colorado to reduce the number of prisoners in solitary as well as the number released straight to parole. The percentage of the prison population in solitary has dropped from 7 percent to 4 percent since 2011 — though that’s still double the national average — and the share of those in segregation who went straight to parole decreased from 48 percent to 23 percent. But it remains a problem many in the public are unaware of, and one with dangerous consequences.
Is solitary making prisoners more violent, or are the most violent prisoners most likely to find themselves in administrative segregation? Probably both. Worryingly, the Post found that there are no safeguards in place to make sure that prisoners who are released directly from solitary into the community receive extra supervision.
[Photo credit: Bohemian Dolls, Creative Commons.]
Migrant workers in Qatar are literally being worked to death as the Gulf State prepares to host the World Cup in 2022:
Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.
This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022. [Guardian]
According to documents obtained by the Guardian from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, workers are alleging wage theft, forced labor, and brutal living and working conditions. Some say they were denied free drinking water while toiling in the dessert heat. Many report having their passports confiscated. Some say they are forced to beg in the streets for food after work because their wages are being withheld. At least forty-four Nepalese workers died between early June and early August, mostly from heart attacks and workplace activists, according to embassy statistics. Thirty Nepalese workers sought refuge in their embassy in Doha.
[Photo credit: Fatboyke, Creative Commons.]
Garment workers in Bangladesh, galvanized by a series of deadly accidents and police brutality, are demanding a three-fold increase in their wages:
Workers are demanding an almost threefold increase to their monthly salaries – from the current 3,000 takas ($38) to 8,114 takas ($100). Factory owners recently offered a 20 percent pay rise to employees.
Workers rejected the offer, calling it “inhuman and humiliating.” Employees then resorted to vandalism, blocking major roads, damaging vehicles, hurling stones at factories, and burning furniture taken from nearby buildings.
One worker, Laizu Akhter, also called for the body of a co-worker purported to be missing to be returned to his family, AP reported. “Our major demand from them is to return the dead body. We demand their punishment. Additionally, we demand an increase of our monthly wages,” she said. [AFP]
Strikers closed over 100 factories. Dozens of strikers were injured in clashes with police.
[Photo credit: Rajiv Ashrafi, Creative Commons. Shows a Shabag protest in Bangladesh, not a labor protest.]
Rachel Monroe investigates the crumbling federal public defender system for Al Jazeera America. As Sam Stein reported in his Sidney-winning coverage of sequestration, the federal public defender system is rapidly become a casualty of the across-the-board budget cuts imposed by Congress in the name of deficit reduction. The constitutional rights of defendants are suffering as a result.
[Photo credit: Sal Falko, Creative Commons.]
The Best of the Week’s News
[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]
