No charges in Prince death after two-year probe
AFP/File / BERTRAND GUAYLate pop icon Prince -- shown here performing in France in 2011 -- believed he was taking Vicodin, but in fact was taking fentanyl before his death, prosecutors say
Two years after pop icon Prince died of an overdose, prosecutors said Thursday they would not file any criminal charges and announced a settlement with a US doctor who prescribed powerful painkillers for the star.
A prosecutor in Prince's home state of Minnesota said it remained unclear how the Purple One obtained counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, an intense opioid, that ultimately killed him.
"The bottom line is we simply do not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime related to Prince's death," Mark Metz, the attorney of Carver County, home to Prince's Paisley Park estate, told reporters.
After searches, Metz said that Prince had bottles of pills marked with common commercial pain relief labels such as Bayer and Aleve and that the singer thought he was taking Vicodin -- but was in fact taking the more potent fentanyl instead.
Metz acknowledged that someone gave Prince the counterfeit pills, saying: "There is no doubt that the actions of individuals around Prince will be criticized, questions and judged in the days and weeks to come."
But he added: "Suspicions and innuendo are categorically insufficient to support any criminal charges."
Prince died on April 21, 2016 at age 57 -- stunning fans and bandmates who recall the singer as an outward model of health who rarely drank alcohol, ate a vegetarian diet and would kick out musicians who abused drugs from his studio.
But the pop star -- so versatile he could literally play guitar blind-folded behind his back -- secretly suffered from pain stemming from a hip operation.
In his death, Prince became the most famous face of the epidemic of painkiller abuse in the United States.
Last year, more than 42,000 people died and 2.1 million others abused opioids around the country, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
- Doctor reaches settlement -
Moments before the announcement, federal prosecutors said that they had reached a settlement with Minnesota doctor Michael Schulenberg.
The physician had given pills to Prince by making out prescriptions to Kirk Johnson, a longtime associate of the artist who managed Paisley Park.
But Metz said that the motivation was more to protect Prince's privacy and that there was no evidence that Schulenberg gave the star fentanyl.
Schulenberg agreed to pay $30,000 to the federal government and undergo supervision, including allowing the US Drug Enforcement Administration to inspect the logs of the medications he is prescribing.
Prosecutors had alleged that Schulenberg violated the Controlled Substance Act, which regulates the use of medical drugs. Under the settlement, however, Schulenberg does not acknowledge any liability.
US Attorney Greg Brooker, the top federal prosecutor for Minnesota, vowed to pursue other doctors for prescription abuse.
"Doctors are trusted medical professionals and, in the midst of our opioid crisis, they must be part of the solution," he said in a statement Thursday.
"We are committed to using every available tool to stem the tide of opioid abuse."
US, Russian nuclear shift as dangerous as NKorean threat: campaigners
NTB Scanpix/AFP/File / Audun BRAASTADBeatrice Fihn, who heads the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, hailed an upcoming summit between the United States and North Korean in what Washington hopes will persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions
A recent shift in nuclear weapons policies in the United States and Russia, involving upgrades, modernisation and growing arsenals is as dangerous as North Korea's nuclear threat, campaigners warned Thursday.
Beatrice Fihn, who heads the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), hailed an upcoming summit between the United States and North Korean in what Washington hopes will persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
But she said there needed to be more focus on the dangers posed by the United States and other traditional nuclear-armed states, which have recently engaged in "dangerous escalatory activities."
"The new nuclear policies from the United States and Russia that increase the arsenals and create new types of more usable nuclear weapons, these are very dangerous changes," she told journalists in Geneva.
"I think they are equally dangerous as North Korea's nuclear threats," she said.
Five of the world's nine nuclear-armed states -- Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States -- are parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which will be the subject of a preliminary review in Geneva next week.
But Fihn said they were clearly not respecting their commitments under the treaty, and were all engaged in modernising their arsenals and making nuclear weapons a more central part of their defence strategies.
- 'Weapons of mass-destruction' -
Washington for instance recently decided to upgrade its nuclear weapons arsenal and to complement massive "strategic" bombs with smaller "tactical" weapons, in a move Fihn said would make them easier to use.
She also decried the threatening rhetoric from US President Donald Trump and other leaders of nuclear-armed states.
"We are now seeing some of these states making explicit threats to use weapons of mass-destruction to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians."
Fihn said she welcomed the announcement that Trump would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong UN within the next two months.
"I think that it is encouraging to see diplomacy rather than threats," she said.
But she cautioned that it was unclear what kind of concessions North Korea would be willing to make.
"I am wondering what the United States will bring to the table in this sort of negotiation," she said, warning it would be "very hard" to convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme as Washington and others continue to ramp up their arsenals.
She also suggested that Trump's threats to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal could "send a very worrying message to a country like North Korea."
"Why would you make a deal with a country like the United States who doesn't seem to be interested in finding solutions that work for two parties?" she asked.
ICAN won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.
On Thursday, Fihn accused the nuclear weapons states of using "very serious threats" to pressure countries not to ratify the treaty, including threatening to cancel aid.
The treaty, which since it was voted through last July has been signed by 58 countries and ratified by seven, needs 50 ratifications before it can enter into force.
Tens of thousands rally in France against Macron reforms
Tens of thousands of striking rail workers, angry public sector staff and students rallied across France on Thursday against President Emmanuel Macron in what trade unions hoped would underline resistance nationwide to his reform efforts.
Under sunny skies, thousands marched, chanted and carried anti-Macron banners in Paris as well as other cities such as Lyon and Marseille, but the scale of the protests appeared below expectations.
Around 15,000 rallied in Paris, according to a count by crowd consultancy Occurence, while police estimated the number at 11,500. The hard-left CGT union, the main organiser, put the crowd at 50,000.
"We're here for public services. We're ready to continue the whole summer, even into September and October," Helene Tricre, a 25-year-old ticket inspector working for the SNCF railway, told AFP at the Paris rally.
The overwhelmingly peaceful march was marred by occasional clashes between police and far-left groups, many of them hooded and masked, who were seen smashing several shop windows.
Rail workers were also carrying out their fourth wave of stoppages this month, although the number of strikers was down sharply from the beginning of April.
Only one in three high-speed TGV trains was running, but this was higher than three weeks ago when only one in eight went ahead.
Staff at the debt-laden SNCF, a bastion of hard-left trade unionism, are striking every two days out of five against plans by Macron to remove job-for-life guarantees and pension privileges for new recruits.
"It's a critical moment for Emmanuel Macron's presidency," Stephane Zumsteeg, a public opinion expert from the Ipsos polling group, told AFP.
"Either he shows his ability to reform or he fails, and then it's difficult to know what he will able to do for the rest of his term."
- Standing firm? -
The CGT union had called for various groups angered by Macron's one-year presidency -- students, public sector employees, pensioners, rail workers -- to come together to resist the 40-year-old centrist.
Some left-wingers are even hoping for a re-run of the huge May 1968 demonstrations by workers and students that shook France half a century ago.
But Macron has vowed to stand firm, claiming a solid mandate from his election last year in which he swept away the traditional parties that governed France for decades.
"I'm doing what I said I would," he told a television interviewer last week.
Opinion polls suggest France remains deeply divided about his leadership, despite a sharp fall in unemployment and a pick-up in investment thanks to his business-friendly approach since taking power.
An Elabe survey showed Friday that 52 percent of respondents felt his election has proven "a bad thing".
Another survey, released Wednesday, found 58 percent were unhappy with his presidency.
"People who generally have a good financial and professional situation support Macron, but among those who aren't so well off, it's much less," said Vincent Thibault, a researcher at Elabe.
"He's really a president facing two Frances," he said.
- 'Not much sympathy' -
Leftwing critics accuse Macron of trying to break up public services, citing his pledge to cut 120,000 public sector jobs over his five-year term.
The government points to France's mounting debt, equivalent to nearly 100 percent of GDP, as well as stubborn deficits since the 1970s.
AFP / Christophe SIMONA series of polls suggested that public opinion backs Macron on the rail reforms
Various groups have staged strikes and demonstrations against Macron over the past year, including a series of mass protests that have drawn hundreds of thousands onto the streets.
Thursday's protests included many students who have blocked access to four of the country's 70 universities, angered by plans to make admissions more selective.
Protesters at the Nanterre university near Paris, a cradle of the May '68 protests, voted Thursday to maintain their shutdown until May 2.
Even Paris's prestigious Sciences Po college -- Macron's alma mater -- remained partially blocked after students staged a sit-in Wednesday against the president's "dictatorship".
Despite his difficulties, Macron may take heart from divisions in the labour movement as well as public opinion surveys, which do not show sentiment swinging behind the CGT and the protesters.
The more moderate CFDT -- France's largest union in terms of membership -- rejected the CGT's call to join Thursday's protests as well as a combined march for the traditional Labour Day show of strength on May 1.
"I think the public doesn't understand the different demands, and there doesn't seem to be as much sympathy for the unions as we've seen in the past," said Zumsteeg.
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