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VW CEO says he's 'endlessly sorry' for tarnishing brand

BERLIN (AP) — Volkswagen AG’s emissions scandal crisis escalated Tuesday as the company issued a profit warning, set aside billions to cover the fallout and saw its shares take another battering. The CEO of the world’s top-selling carmaker declared he was “endlessly sorry” that the company had squandered worldwide trust in its brand.

Obama, in prison documentary: U.S. legal system has been 'unjust'

The United States has too long ignored the effect of high incarceration rates on minority and poor communities, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a TV documentary featuring an unprecedented presidential visit to a prison. “They then get involved in the criminal justice system, and it just churns, and everybody thinks that’s normal,” the president told the nonviolent drug offenders at the medium-security El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma. Obama

Senate to sidestep abortion fight in funding bill

Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate, hoping to avert an Oct. 1 government shutdown when federal funding runs out at the end of the current fiscal year, are likely to advance a stop-gap spending bill that abandons attempts to halt funding for Planned Parenthood, Senator John Cornyn said on Tuesday. “Given the president’s opposition and Democrats’ opposition, at some point I anticipate there will be a clean CR,” Cornyn, the

Democrats block defense spending bill in Senate

Democrats blocked the fiscal 2016 defense spending bill in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, amid a fierce fight with Republicans over tax and spending policy days before a potential Oct. 1 government shutdown. The vote was 54-42, largely along party lines with Republicans voting yes and Democrats no. It meant the appropriations measure failed to achieve the 60-vote majority needed to advance to final passage in the 100-member Senate. Congressional

Exclusive: Americans overpaying hugely for cancer drugs – academic study

Americans are paying way over the odds for some modern cancer drugs, with pharmaceutical companies charging up to 600 times what the medicines cost to make, according to an independent academic study. The United States also pays more than double the price charged in Europe for these drugs – so-called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), a potent class of cancer pills with fewer side effects than chemotherapy.     The analysis by pharmacologist