Month: February 2023

Enlarge / Martin Shkreli arrives at Brooklyn Federal Court on the first day of his securities fraud trial in 2017. (credit: Getty | Kevin Hagen)

In an effort to avoid being held in contempt of court, former pharmaceutical executive and convicted fraudster, Martin Shkreli, made an eyebrow-raising argument to a federal judge Friday, stating that his company Druglike, which he previously described as a "drug discovery software platform," was not engaged in drug discovery. As such, he argued he is not in violation of his sweeping lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry.

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission and seven states urged a federal judge in New York to hold Shkreli in contempt for allegedly failing to cooperate with an investigation into whether he violated the ban. The FTC said Shkreli failed to turn over requested documents related to Druglike and sit for an interview on the matter.

In the filing Friday, Shkreli claims that he responded to the FTC's requests "promptly and in good faith." He acknowledged that when the FTC contacted him about the investigation last October he did not have a lawyer and didn't know how to properly respond to the FTC's investigation. But, he continued to categorically deny that Druglike violated his lifetime ban.

Director James Gunn took an unlikely group of fairly obscure misfit characters from Marvel Comics and turned them into lovable unlikely superheroes with 2014's hugely entertaining Guardians of the Galaxy and its 2017 sequel. The Guardians have been through the wringer since then, and this battered-but-unbowed crew still has tough times ahead, judging by the new trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 that dropped during Super Bowl LVII.

(Some spoilers, especially for for prior films in the MCU franchise, below.)

Gunn was initially reluctant to direct another Guardians film after killing off Michael Rooker's Yondu Udonta in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. But his deep love for all the central characters changed his mind, as he felt there would still be many more adventures in store for the team. That said, Gunn hinted that Vol. 3 would effectively conclude "this iteration" of the characters, so it's possible not all the Guardians will make it out alive. There's certainly a tone of elegiac finality permeating the latest trailer, in between the action scenes and clever quips.

Enlarge / Spy balloon mania has taken alien mania to the next level. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Aliens have been having a moment in recent years.

For decades the notion of unidentified flying objects—UFOs—and little green men running around Roswell, New Mexico, remained comfortably confined along the fringes of societal discourse. But no longer. Serious people in the government are taking a serious look at the phenomenon.

The story of why this posture began to change begins about 15 years ago and is long and complex. (This New Yorker article is a good place to start). But the basic gist is that then-Nevada politician Harry Reid, a powerful political figure who at times led the US Senate, began to take it seriously. So he started shoveling money at the Pentagon to study the issue.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andrey Denisyuk)

Multiple Internet service providers have submitted false availability data to the federal government for a map that will be used to determine which parts of the US get access to a $42.45 billion broadband fund. We wrote about Comcast's false coverage claims last week, and this article will detail false or at least questionable coverage claims from SpaceX's Starlink division and the wireless home Internet divisions at Verizon and T-Mobile.

Some false claims are easy to prove by looking at the providers' availability websites. SpaceX claims to serve virtually the whole US on the Federal Communications Commission map but the Starlink website's map shows the service has a waitlist in huge portions of the country.

We heard from two people who successfully challenged Starlink's service claims at their homes, one in Harrietta, Michigan, and another in West Chester, Pennsylvania. We verified on the FCC map that, in both cases, these residents' challenges were upheld because it's not possible to get Starlink service at their addresses yet. But each challenge only corrects the false data for a single address, and Starlink still claims to serve the surrounding residences on the FCC map.