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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time on Friday used its authority under a 2009 law to remove cigarettes from stores.The FDA is forcing Jash International to stop selling and distributing its line of Sutra Bidi tobacco products in the U.S., and is giving retailers 30 days to pull the products from shelves. ADVERTISEMENT “Existing inventory may be subject to enforcement action, including seizure, without further notice,” the FDA said in a release. “Companies that continue to sell and distribute these products in the United States may be subject to enforcement actions by the FDA.”The FDA said...

Question: If Obamacare officials cannot prevent accused embezzlers from infiltrating their offices, how can they protect enrollees from grifters, con artists and thieves in the federal health insurance exchange system? Here in my home state, a director of Connect for Health Colorado -- the state-sponsored Obamacare health insurance exchange -- was just put on administrative leave. No, Christa Ann McClure did not go on leave over the chronic problems plaguing the cursed Connect for Health website. She's on leave because she has been indicted for filching funds from her last employer in Montana. No, the guardians of Obamacare didn't smoke...

A group of Democrats are urging Walmart to follow CVS Caremark and discontinue selling tobacco products. The seven Democrats said Walmart, the nation’s biggest retailer, is also the nation’s biggest seller of cigarettes. “We recognize the legality of selling and profiting from tobacco products; however, Walmart’s position as the nation’s largest retailer of any kind puts your company in a unique position to contribute to the health and well-being of all Americans<” the Democrats said in a letter to the company. The letter’s signatories included Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the number two Democrat in the Senate. The letter stats that...

John Podesta, the former Clinton Administration chief of staff who is spearheading President Barack Obama’s aggressive strategy of government-by-regulation, has also been helping United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with an even more ambitious job: setting the stage to radically transform the world’s economic, environmental and social agenda.

Colorado health-exchange director on paid leave DENVER — A director with Colorado's health-care exchange is on paid leave after it was discovered she has been accused of stealing from a nonprofit housing organization she oversaw in Montana. Christa McClure is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act. According to the Denver Post, program spokesman Ben Davis says in her Colorado job, McClure does not have access to any of exchange's finances. The eight-count indictment against McClure was filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January.

Seven Democratic lawmakers are pushing to ban the use of electronic cigarettes on the grounds of the Capitol complex as part of a wider campaign against them. Led by the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin (Ill.), the group called on rulemaking committees in both chambers to include e-cigarettes in the Capitol's existing ban on smoking in public places and near building entrances. "Given preliminary [federal] research finding harmful chemicals present in e-cigarettes, measures should be taken to ensure that the public is equally protected from the potential dangers posed by e-cigarettes and their vapor," the lawmakers wrote Tuesday. Via a...

CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care. The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco by Oct. 1, a move that will cost about $2 billion in annual revenue but won't affect its 2014 earnings forecast. CVS Caremark leaders say removing tobacco will help them grow the company's business of working with doctors, hospitals and other care providers to improve customers' health.

When CVS Caremark Corp. Chief Executive and President Larry Merlo announced that his drugstore chain would stop selling tobacco products , one of the first to respond was the president of the United States. The speed of the president’s statement indicates that CVS’s decision was likely coordinated with the White House. Every day, countless business decisions are made without any comment from the White House. Something unusual was going on. This is troubling. It gives the appearance of preference for those who curry favor with the powerful, and it squeezes out smaller entrants who can supply innovative products and services...

This scam is being reported by Tech Crunch and we wanted to make our readers aware of it.The scam, simplified: They call you, but immediately hang up. You see a missed call. You call back. They charge you for the call, and for each minute they can keep you on the line.According to the BBB, this so-called “One Ring” scam is on the rise.Like many a ruse, this one relies on hitting many, many potential targets at once. The scammer sets up a computer to call thousands of numbers per hour — because for every 99 people who follow their gut...

If you’re moved to click one or both of the following to read the complaint (they’re both the same text) and send an e-mail via that page by clicking where indicated on the red text, I give you my thanks in advance.Mona Gambetta Refuses to Replace Inadvertently Discarded PaymentComplaint 1Rich Dad Poor Dad Owes Me Payment for Copyediting Book Complaint 2

Many health plans are smiling. We've essentially been forced by Congress to buy their catastrophic policies at first-dollar coverage prices. But because many Americans don't remember catastrophic policies or know what real insurance is or how much insurance should cost -- or how low cash-based medical prices could be -- they don't know badly they're being scammed. To be clear, this is not the first act in this Congressional scam. True insurance got more difficult to buy after Congress favored first-dollar health plans with the HMO Act of 1973. Most employers were forced to offer HMO plans. Like the frog...

There's no better way to travel to Davos than on somebody else's Gulfstream. And that's how the Democratic operatives involved in Invest Again thought they were going to fly: They were going to go to Switzerland on a private plane owned by the heirs of the Goodrich tire fortune. They were going to meet with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and with Richard Branson, the Virgin Atlantic founder, who had supposedly pledged $12 million in seed money for their new organization. Invest Again: It was a progressive organizer's dream. People quit good jobs to join the staff. Major Democratic strategy firms­­­—Bully...

For the third year in a row, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is poised to deliver a bold, no-holds-barred, anti-tobacco message to the American public. Starting Monday, the agency will launch the 2014 phase of "Tips From Former Smokers" (Tips), an ambitious annual TV, radio and print campaign. As was the case during its first two incarnations, the upcoming Tips campaign, which will last nine weeks, will feature real people speaking in frank and often frightening terms about the high price paid for a lifetime of exposure to cigarettes. "Over 20 million Americans have died because of...

Red-light cameras are getting the heave-ho in this seaside city. Saying he was following through on a campaign promise, Commissioner William Julian made a motion Wednesday to get rid of the cameras as soon as legally possible.

If you receive a call on your cellphone preceded by just one or two rings, chances are it’s part of the new One Ring phone scam spreading across the U.S. faster than a summer wildfire. Here’s how it works: International scammers have programmed computers to blast out millions of calls to cellphone numbers, ring once or twice, then disconnect. The objective is to make you curious enough to dial that number back. The “gotcha” happens when you return the call. You’ll be charged $19.95 for the international call fee itself and $9 per minute thereafter. “Oftentimes consumers say they hear...

The Wounded Warriors Project, a group that has been called a “legal scam” by veterans, has successfully killed off the all-volunteer Indiana veterans assistance group “Help Indiana Veterans”. Why? Because Dean Graham, the head of Help Indiana Veterans, wrote that Wounded Warriors was a scam because that so-called charitable organization spends but a few pennies on the dollar in grants to fund endeavors to actually benefit wounded servicemen and women, per their IRS Form 990 from 2011.

Binding national targets on renewable energy are expected to be dropped from new EU proposals due to be unveiled on Wednesday. The UK has lobbied hard to have the mandatory 2030 target watered down, saying it would drive up energy bills. The EU executive will also outline a goal on emissions cuts for 2030, set to be 35 or 40% below 1990 levels. But green groups said the proposals lacked ambition and were the acts of a "burnt out" Commission. Seven years ago, the EU set out a three-pronged energy and climate strategy for 2020. Emissions of greenhouse gases were...

(CNSNews.com) - "We're still a country very much addicted to tobacco," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a news conference last Friday, as she urged communities, schools and businesses to "help make the next generation a tobacco-free generation." A transcript of that news conference runs around 8,300 words, but there isn't a single word about the adverse health effects of marijuana smoking -- even as more states jump on the pot-legalization bandwagon. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana smoke is an irritant to the lungs, and "frequent marijuana smokers can have many of the same...

WASHINGTON -- The baffling Bitcoin boom is either an exercise in self-delusion -- a high-tech Ponzi scheme that will come crashing down -- or an imaginative new Internet technology that will ultimately change how millions of people around the world conduct everyday business. There is little middle ground. Called a "digital currency," Bitcoin originated in early 2009 with a software program written by Satoshi Nakamoto. Who is Nakamoto? Good question. It's a pseudonym, and we don't know who's behind it -- whether man or woman; individual or group; American, Japanese, Russian or some other nationality. But what seems clear is...

Just how big a financial opportunity is bitcoin? Recently, Wall Street has been starting to ask that very question, paying more and more attention to the upstart alternative currency. The first analysis by a registered broker dealer which attempted to value bitcoin’s worth was published on 1st December by Wedbush Securities. While Los Angeles-based Wedbush is a respected securities firm, it doesn’t count itself among the first-tier of investment banks, or the ‘bulge bracket’ as its known on Wall Street. The Wedbush research report contained some novel analysis and perspective, but it was also ‘light’ in that it weighed in...