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Big Pharma spends a small fortune every year buying politicians to make sure we can’t import prescription drugs from Canada, but they’re more than happy to sell us contaminated medications from countries with weak manufacturing controls and exploitable labor that ensure high profit margins.

A toxic compound that doesn’t belong anywhere near medicine known as NDMA was first discovered in some blood pressure medications in 2018, and the FDA issued an alert and wrote a complaint letter to the raw materials supplier to Big Pharma companies. It turns out the meds follow the very common pattern of being made in India with raw ingredients coming from China. And they are sold by big companies for obscenely high prices to U.S. consumers.

More recently, NDMA contamination provoked a nationwide recall of the popular anti-heartburn medication Zantac and all its generic versions.

And now the world’s most widely prescribed drug of all, which is used to treat and prevent Type 2 diabetes called metformin, is contaminated with NDMA.

NDMA (N-Nitrosodimethylamine) is, according to the World Health Organization, produced by “the […]

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Amsterdam

The city of Amsterdam is taking over the debts of its young adults as part of a drive to liberate people who are struggling to get into work or education.

A growth in borrowing among young Dutch adults – a trend echoed elsewhere in Europe, including the UK – is said to be standing in the way of them joining the marketplace or completing higher education courses.

Under the city’s trial project, a municipal credit bank will negotiate with creditors to buy out the debts. Those on the scheme will then be issued with a loan to repay according to their means.

The creditors will be given €750 as an incentive to pass the debt on to the municipality’s bank. The young people will have more of the debt cancelled if they successfully engage in training or an educational programme.

“Debts cause a lot of stress. And in the case of young people, debts often determine their future,” said Amsterdam’s deputy mayor, Marjolein Moorman. “The majority of these young people started out in arrears […]

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Nearly all toddlers, and the majority of babies, eat too much added sugar in the US, study says

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The Trump administration was sued by 14 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City on Friday over its proposal to tighten work requirements for SNAP recipients.
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Calling the Trump administration’s attempt to gut the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program “unlawful” as well as “cruel,” 15 state attorneys general as well as the city of New York filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Agriculture Department over its new requirements for the program, a month after the new rules were finalized.

The revamped rules pertain to work requirements, and threaten to kick an estimated 688,000 people off the program, commonly called SNAP or “food stamps.”

The plaintiffs filed their suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the rules, which are set to go into effect in April, will have reverberating effects on not just Americans’ ability to feed their families but their overall financial stability.

“The federal government’s latest assault on vulnerable individuals is cruel to its core,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “Denying access to […]

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