In a damning press release, Namaste Technologies (TSXV:N) (OTCQB:NXTTF) has confirmed the firing of CEO Sean Dollinger following an internal investigation into securities fraud. Namaste stock has plunged 21% on the news.

Namaste Stock

In what is considerably troublesome news for the company, Canada’s Namaste Technologies announced it has fired CEO Sean Dollinger effective immediately. 

Aurora Cannabis surged more than 9% to $8.10 a share Monday after announcing that its extraction-technology partner Radient Technologies has received its Standard Processing License from Health Canada. Shares are trading at their highest level since November 7.

Aurora says Radient's proprietary-extraction technology can achieve much higher throughputs than is possible with existing benchmark technologies. It also has the efficiency and ability to preserve the full spectrum of cannabinoids and terpenes found in the source material, the company said.

Chronic pain is the most common reason people give when they enrol in state-approved medical marijuana programs.

That’s followed by stiffness from multiple sclerosis and chemotherapy-related nausea, according to an analysis of 15 states published Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

The study didn’t measure whether marijuana actually helped anyone with their problems, but the patients’ reasons match up with what’s known about the science of marijuana and its chemical components.

“The majority of patients for whom we have data are using cannabis for reasons where the science is the strongest,” said lead author Kevin Boehnke of University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

After the most recent midterm elections it was clear that Americans preferred legalization over the continued prohibition of pot, which should bolster the case for the top marijuana penny stocks.

When residents in California voted for full recreational weed, it boded well not just for marijuana penny stocks, but for electoral momentum in other states and the midterms emphatically proved this point.

In conservative Utah and Missouri, voters approved medical cannabis. But Michigan stood above the rest, becoming the tenth state to legalize recreational marijuana. Significantly, it’s also the first Midwestern state to approve such an initiative.

One of Hamilton's premier craft beer brewers has its sights set on a new frontier: cannabis-infused drinks.

Collective Arts announced Monday that it plans to launch a line of cannabis and hemp-infused drinks in Canada and the U.S.

The group said in a statement the drinks will be sold under a sister company starting in late 2019, "pending anticipated government approvals for cannabis and hemp products."

What a difference a month makes. Following what was generally a rough 2018 for marijuana stocks, the industry collectively soared in January. The Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, a basket of about four dozen pot stocks with varied weightings, skyrocketed by more than 47% last month. That's incredible, no matter how you slice it.

The unlikely combination of freshwater fish and cannabis is producing outsized medical marijuana crops that Green Relief Inc. aims to capitalize on, as the Canadian company plots a stock market listing and global expansion.

In an underground southern Ontario facility surrounded by farmland, Green Relief operates a cutting-edge aquaponic farm, using filtered fish waste to fertilize cannabis plants, which in turn clean the water for the fish.

The company says it is the world's only licensed producer to grow medical marijuana this way, a pesticide-free process that took 2-1/2 years to fine tune. The only signs of this operation, which is built into a hill and insulated by some three feet of dirt and grass, is above-ground ventilation equipment sticking out of the ground.

Did someone say something about a correction in marijuana stocks? Although the fourth quarter of 2018 was a bit rough on cannabis investors, January likely turned that frown upside down, and instilled a high that pot stock shareholders have come to appreciate.

For the month of January, the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, a basket of around four dozen cannabis and cannabis-related securities with varied weightings, gained 48.3%. I'll repeat that for you skimmers: The most widely followed and first publicly traded marijuana ETF gained almost 50% in just one month.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has now put itself in the middle of an interesting international situation. The organization is calling for whole-plant marijuana, as well as cannabis resin, to be removed from Schedule IV - the most restrictive classification of a 1961 drug convention signed by countries from around the world, according to Forbes.

The legal cannabis industry had itself a year to remember in 2018. Although marijuana stocks were a mixed bag, the weed industry gained validation like never before following the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada. Rolling out the red carpet for cannabis will mean billions of dollars in added annual revenue, and it demonstrates that the cannabis industry is in no danger of disappearing.