Absolute Random Nonsense

When Mike Doustdar started as a summer employee making copies at Novo Nordisk—a teenager living in Austria after fleeing unrest in his home country of Iran at 12—he never imagined he would remain at the company for more than 30 years, let alone lead it as CEO. Doustdar now heads the Danish company that makes the popular diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss medication Wegovy, both of which contain the GLP-1 compound semaglutide. In January, Novo Nordisk launched the first GLP-1 pill for weight loss, marking a significant step in making the drugs more convenient and less expensive to take than the injectable forms previously on the market. It’s a critical test.  Doustdar was tapped as CEO last summer in part to restore the company’s presence in the diabetes and obesity space, after ceding ground to competitor Eli Lilly. Lilly’s weight-loss drug Zepbound comes at higher doses and so tends to produce greater weight loss than Wegovy. Novo Nordisk needed a chief executive with resilienc...

One time I was hailing a taxi in New York and this group pulled up in a limo. They called me in and every other word out of their mouths was 'dude'. We ended up going to a bar and we were all sitting around a booth. It was an empty, long bar, and at the end I saw someone with teased-up platinum hair, ivory skin, black nails, jewelry and a little midriff shirt. We were all drawing straws to see who was gonna go up and say hello. Someone else ended up winning and before approaching, poetically said, "Despite the doubt clouding my mind, I fuel the fire of my ambition and kept pushing forward."  

Realtor Mehrad Kabir had parked his car on the 200 block of West Sixth Street  before 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 3. He noticed a man on the street wearing a medical mask and looking at him in a “weird” way, but Kabir was more focussed on finishing his phone call with a friend. When he stepped out of the car a few minutes later, the man in the mask was still there. “And when I turned back, I saw that same guy behind me,” he said. “And at that point, he sprayed directly into my eyes.” The pain was unlike anything he’d ever felt, Kabir said. “I was totally blind,” he said. “My head, my eyes, my mouth were burning to hell.” Fearful that another more serious attack was coming, Kabir was able to get back into his car and close the door. The suspect fled. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that Kabir got out and called for help. A neighbor rushed to his aide and called 911. North Vancouver RCMP members arrived soon after, but unfortunately BC Ambulance Service paramedics were tied ...

In 1984 while on a plane they showed the movie Yentl. Towards the end where she reveals she is a woman I was instructed to keep my head down to avoid seeing the nudity to which I obliged although in an earlier scene where the guys go swimming nude I was allowed to continue watching. Years later I remembered the scene and out of curiosity searched for it online. It was extremely lame with nothing explicit shown. I felt seriously ripped off.  

An Iranian mother-of-two found dead in Galway after having her throat cut has been named locally as Masuma Sohrabi. Gardai are set to launch a murder investigation after the 31-year-old was found dead near the IPAS accommodation where she had been residing in Clifden on Thursday morning. Staff at the Waterloo House IPAS accommodation discovered the woman after being unable to find her. Masuma was found near the river on Waterloo Bridge on the Galway Road with catastrophic neck injuries. A man known to her was arrested near the scene and was taken to hospital for injuries incurred during the horrific incident. Gardai now want to question him on suspicion of murder once he is deemed medically fit. The victim's name was Masuma Sohrabi, and most pals in the IPAS centre knew her simply as ‘Athija’. She was mother to a five year old girl and nine year old boy - both of whom attended a local school in Clifden. Masuma was working in a hotel in the area, locals say, and had come to this cou...

When I had first come to the US I did not know many people. So one night as I was in bed with a magazine I saw an advertisement for a phone sex line. I called it up and began chatting with the phone sex operator. I told her I was 26 (even though I was younger) and that I practiced law. I also gave her a fake name. She also told me things about herself and assured me she wasn't lying. She asked me what I wanted to do and I suggested that we meet up. We realized we were both very different from each other's perceptions. As it turned out she was pregnant.   

A California doctor who billed a whopping $35 million in hospice care to Medicare last year has had her billing license revoked. Dr. Fariba Javaherian is a registered dermatologist, but according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) billing data obtained by The Post, she is associated with 63 hospice facilities across California either as a medical director, attending physician or in some other capacity. The National Provider Identifier (NPI) registered with Dr. Javaherian, a unique 10 digit number given to individual healthcare providers, was used for 1,662 unique patients across the 63 hospice agencies and appeared on more than 6,000 claims that billed $35,816,331. Following The Post’s extensive investigation, CMS revoked Javaherian’s license to bill Medicare.  When asked for comment about Javaherian’s suspension to bill Medicare, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz told The Post, “‘Do no harm’ was ignored, and in its place, was a practice of devastating damage disguis...

One day as Bijan and I sat next to each other in the prayer room, Karimi’s pants, specifically its brand, caught our eye causing us to once again erupt in uncontrollable laughter. Why one would produce pants under the ridiculous brand name of “mama” was beyond us but there we had it right in front of our eyes. We couldn’t wait to be dismissed so we could point it out to others and even Karimi himself. Much to our surprise no one else seemed to even acknowledge our observation and in response to our question of what brand pants Karimi was wearing, some responded, “Lois.” Fed up with the lack of desired reactions, I finally went up to Karimi and asked him what brand his pants were. While he probably did not know where I was heading with this line of questioning, he simply smiled and said, “They are Sadr brand.” Bijan and I followed him around a bit to determine why no one else could see what was so clear to us. It baffled us that not only everyone was reading the brand completely wrong...

Mohammad Rafikian, aka Mo Kian, 54, Queens, New York, was re-sentenced to a term of 16 to 50 years in prison after being tried again and re-convicted of holding himself out as an attorney and a registered investment advisor and then stealing $5 million from seven individuals through fraudulent real estate and capital investment transactions. Rafikian was the chairman and chief executive officer of First Investors Capital Corporation, Astoria, Queens.  He also occasionally worked as a paralegal for the law firm of Marcus & Associates, which maintained an office as a subtenant at Rafikian’s Astoria office.  It was the named partner of this law firm whose identity that Rafikian assumed. Rafikian was convicted in August 2014, of one count of first-degree grand larceny, seven counts of second-degree grand larceny, six counts of second-degree criminal impersonation, three counts of first-degree scheme to defraud and three counts of practicing law without a license following a tw...