CNBC News

A former executive at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and the former head of a start-up mail-order pharmacy were sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday after being convicted of defrauding the drugmaker through a secret kickback scheme. Gary Tanner, 41, the former Valeant executive, and Andrew Davenport, 50, the former chief executive of Philidor Rx Services LLC, were also ordered to forfeit $9.7 million, representing the alleged kickbacks. The sentences were imposed by U.S. District…

James “Whitey” Bulger, the murderous Boston gangster who benefited from a corrupt relationship with the FBI before spending 16 years as one of America’s most wanted men, has died in federal prison. He was 89. Bulger was found unresponsive Tuesday morning at the U.S. penitentiary in West Virginia where he’d just been transferred, and a medical examiner declared him dead shortly afterward, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Authorities did not immediately release a…

Personal items of cosmologist Stephen Hawking are going on auction at Christie’s for nine days starting Wednesday. The online auction, “On the Shoulders of Giants,” will include 22 items from Hawking’s estate. The auction will also offer documents and letters and other items by or associated with Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton. It will include Hawking’s Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, “Properties of expanding universes.” Dated Oct. 15, 1965, it’s signed twice by Hawking,…

General Electric shares fell more than 8 percent in trading Tuesday after multiple Wall Street analysts warned clients that new CEO Larry Culp’s cut to the quarterly dividend may just be the beginning of a slow and difficult process. Along with a dividend cut, the company: took a $22 billion charge in the third quarter related to acquisitions in its power business said the SEC and the DOJ were widening their probes into the company’s…

Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told CNBC on Tuesday that the beverage giant has boosted sales of Diet Coke by tapping into the millennial demographic through targeted marketing and “flavor innovation.” Quincey also touted Diet Coke’s a new “sleek can,” saying it presents a “more modern, more engaging package” to a generation that appeared detached from the product. Earlier this year, Coca-Cola launched the new slim Diet Coke cans along with flavors including ginger lime and…

The U.S. House and Senate races are getting all the money and media coverage, but the most important contests this fall could be between the relatively unknown candidates vying for seats in your local statehouse. That’s because, in most states, those legislatures will soon redraw the congressional district maps that will heavily influence which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade, a process known as gerrymandering. “Both Democrats and Republicans have…

As Republicans try desperately to hold on to their congressional majorities next Tuesday, President Donald Trump has taken a series of explosive last-minute gambits in an attempt to boost GOP candidates. The president’s 11th hour policy proposals — some of which appeared to catch congressional leaders and even White House officials off guard — relate to immigration and taxes, issues he has repeatedly used to try to excite the Republican base. He has floated a…

U.S. consumer confidence rose to an 18-year high in October, driven largely a robust labor market, suggesting strong economic growth could persist in the near term. The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index increased to a reading of 137.9 this month, the highest reading since September 2000, from a downwardly revised 135.3 in September. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the consumer index slipping to a reading of 136.0 this month from the previously…

It’s been one of the biggest themes amid the recent sell-off: should investors rotate out of growth and into value? Value stocks are typically defined by their low multiples and stable fundamentals relative to their so-called growth peers, which are traditionally defined by their outsize growth projections relative to the market. Those companies, however, generally lack some more mature features like paying out dividends. Even as growth stocks like Amazon and Netflix have fallen double…

Up in the choir loft, alone, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers whispered to a 911 dispatcher on his cellphone. Below him, down in the sanctuary, eight of his congregants had been felled by a gunman’s bullets. Up here, though, Myers couldn’t see them — or any of the other horrors going on beyond his hideaway. He could only listen. He waited for another round of semiautomatic gunfire, but all was silent. Then he heard what he feared…