Supreme Court rejects appeal from ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

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Supreme Court rejects appeal from ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

2024-10-08 00:30 Last Updated At：00:40

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Martin Shkreli, who was once dubbed “Pharma Bro” after jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug.

Shkreli appealed an order to return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped after monopolizing the market for the medication and drastically increasing its price. His lawyers argued that the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is typical, and there were no noted dissents.

Prosecutors, though, said the company had agreed in a settlement to pay $40 million, and because Shkreli masterminded the scheme he should bear responsibility for repaying profits.

Shkreli was also ordered to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” the unreleased work that has been called the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group put a single copy of the album up for auction in 2015, on the condition that it not be put to commercial use.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions of dollars in two failed hedge funds he operated. Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later Vyera — when it raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights to the decades-old drug in 2015. It treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.

He defended the decision as capitalism at work, saying insurance and other programs ensured that people who need Daraprim would ultimately get it. But the move sparked outrage, from the medical community to Congress.

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court's Monday decision was disappointing, but also said the high court could yet overturn a lower court decision that made the $64 million penalty order possible even though Shkreli hadn't personally gotten the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he said.

Shkreli was released from prison in 2022 after serving much of a seven-year sentence.

A 9-year-old is among 5 killed in the Christmas market attack in Germany

2024-12-21 23:42 Last Updated At：23:50

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — A 9-year-old was among the five people killed in the Christmas market attack in the German city of Magdeburg, an official said Saturday.

City official Ronni Krug said he didn’t have further information on the adults who were killed. He said there were a total of 205 victims, including the five dead. He said that 41 people were seriously or very seriously injured.

Prosecutor Horst Nopens said the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor, is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm. He is currently being questioned.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby said some 80 patients were brought to Magdeburg’s university hospital on Friday night.

“We managed to stabilize most of them, but many are still in intensive care, and some are also in critical condition,” Elenbaby told The Associated Press as he dashed into the hospital cafeteria to buy himself a cola.

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Moulson reported from Berlin and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.