Shareholders of Pain Therapeutics, Inc. are reminded of the securities class action lawsuit filed against PTIE and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in the United States District Court, Western District of Texas, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased PTIE securities during the period from February 3, 2011 through June 23, 2011.

If you are a shareholder who purchased PTIE securities during the Class Period, you have until January 31, 2012 to ask the Court to appoint you as lead plaintiff for the class. A copy of the complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Rachelle R. Boyle at rrboyle@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, x350. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address and telephone number.

The Complaint alleges that, during the Class Period, PTIE made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material facts about a new drug, REMOXY. Specifically, PTIE failed to disclose that REMOXY was not approvable by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration due to chemistry, manufacturing, and control deficiencies that caused inconsistent results during laboratory tests.

www.pomerantzlaw.com.

Court records indicate a man plans to plead guilty to federal weapons and methamphetamine charges in south Mississippi.

The indictment in U.S. District Court in Gulfport says Anthony Justin Necaise, who also goes by Anthony Joseph Necaise, was a felon in possession of a firearm in coastal Harrison County on June 9, 2008. He's charged with making meth the same day. A change of plea hearing is set for Jan. 3.

The government also is seeking the forfeiture of three .22 caliber rifles, a 410 gauge shotgun and ammunition.

Emmanuelle Maria's breasts were burning and globules of silicone gel were protruding into her armpits. Her implants had exploded inside her. Yet her doctors, she says, told her nothing was wrong.

Now, she wants the French government to tell 30,000 women to get their implants removed — at the state's expense — to call attention to their risks and save others from potential pain and indignity.

Prompted by calls from implant wearers and leading doctors, French health authorities are considering a drastic and unprecedented move: recommending mass surgery to rid the country of a type of breast implant that investigators say was secretly made with cheap industrial silicone whose medical dangers remain unclear.

Governments around Europe are hanging on France's decision Friday. Tens of thousands more women in Britain, Italy, Spain and other European nations are walking around with the same pre-filled implants, made by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP.

Health officials from several European countries held a conference call Wednesday to discuss the implants, Portugal's Director-General of Health, Dr. Francisco Jorge, told The Associated Press. European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said no decisions were made, but France informed the others of the situation.

A state Supreme Court justice known for opinions written in rhyme has done it again, producing six pages of verse Thursday in the case of whether the maker of a forged check also had committed insurance fraud.

Justice J. Michael Eakin, writing for a 4-2 majority, concluded in six-line stanzas that a man's attempt to deposit a forged check appearing to be from State Farm didn't constitute insurance fraud.

"Sentenced on the other crimes, he surely won't go free, but we find he can't be guilty of this final felony," Eakin wrote. "Convictions for the forgery and theft are approbated -- the sentence for insurance fraud, however, is vacated. The case must be remanded for resentencing, we find, so the trial judge may impose the result he originally had in mind."

A dissenting three-page opinion by Justice Thomas G. Saylor didn't rhyme.

Eakin was first elected to the high court in 2001 after earning a reputation as the "rhyming judge" by issuing some opinions entirely in verse while sitting on an intermediate state appellate court in the late 1990s. Two former state Supreme Court justices, Stephen A. Zappala and the late Ralph J. Cappy, had expressed concern in the past that the practice could reflect poorly on the court.

The National Wildlife Federation filed a motion in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, asking a judge to stop the U.S. government from issuing any more flood insurance policies for new development in flood-prone areas around the Puget Sound until it changes its flood plain plans to consider the impact on endangered species like salmon and orcas.

The motion for a preliminary injunction is the latest move in a decades-long fight to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay more attention to endangered species, said Jan Hasselman, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental law firm that filed a motion in Seattle, on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation.

The environmental group won a lawsuit in 2004 that found FEMA did not create its flood plain management standards with the Endangered Species Act in mind. Hasselman said the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2008 issued a plan for changing the flood standards, setting various deadlines, the last of which recently passed.

As he works to rev up his conservative base in Iowa with just two weeks to go until the state's caucuses, Newt Gingrich is launching a full-throated assault on a reliable GOP target: judges.

There is little love for the judicial branch among the Republicans seeking the White House. But Gingrich's ridicule has been, by far, the sharpest and the loudest. And it's taken a central role as his campaign struggles to stay atop polls in Iowa, a state where irate social conservatives ousted three judges who legalized same-sex marriage.

"I commend the people of Iowa for sending a strong signal that when judges overreach that they can find a new job," Gingrich told about 200 supporters who turned out to hear him speak in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday.

Gingrich has suggested that judges who issue what he termed "radical" rulings out of step with mainstream American values should be subpoenaed before Congress to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment. As president, he said, he'd consider dispatching U.S. marshals to round up judges who refuse to show voluntarily. In extreme cases, whole courts could be eliminated.

In the final debate before voters weigh in at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Gingrich called the courts "grotesquely dictatorial." He cast the fight in stark religious terms reminiscent of the culture wars, in which a secular, legal elite was encroaching on religious liberties.

The targets of Gingrich's strongest derision: the West Coast's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a perennial punching bag for the right, and a federal judge in Texas who banned prayer in a public school.