Current Events

The Food and Drug Administration has found hidden drug ingredients, potentially harmful to human health, in more than a dozen products shipped from abroad.

All 14 items in question have either been promoted for weight loss or sexual enhancement. The FDA said they were intercepted and identified during routine examinations of international mail shipments in recent months.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a recall of more than 9,000 additional trailers because of a defect with the Bendix SR-5 spring brakes that the manufacturer believes could affect up to 194,410 trailers in total. The updated recall includes some 2016 Manac flatbed trailers, 2017-2018 Manac van trailers, 2014-2016 Polar Tanks, 2014-2016 Heil trailers and 2004-2016 Hyundai Translead chassis, containers and trailers. A recall last month for the same defect impacted more than 30,000 Brenner, Cheetah, Fontaine, Great Dane, Hackney, Kidron, Transcraft, Utility, Vermeer, Wabash National and Wilson trailers.

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Some 100 Million cars made by Volkswagen are vulnerable to a key cloning attack that could allow thieves to unlock the doors of most popular cars remotely through a wireless signal, according to new research.

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Another Chinese drugmaker has been written up by the FDA for manufacturing products with essentially no protections in place to assure they are safe and effective.

The most recent letter posted is for Concept Products, a Tianjin, China company that the FDA inspected over several days in August 2015. In the letter released this week, the FDA said the company did not test every batch of products shipped to see if they met specifications for the usual things like the identity and strength of the API.

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The judge's decision to allow the cases to proceed could also have wider implications for all device makers. In other news related to women's health, Colorado's Health Department finds that a Colorado Springs hospital did not properly disinfect vaginal ultrasound probes as well as other equipment.

Modern Healthcare: Essure Court Ruling In California Could Bring More Lawsuits

A California state court has cleared the path for nearly a dozen lawsuits to proceed that alleged that pharmaceutical company Bayer's permanent birth control device, Essure, seriously injured patients. The ruling could have major implications for device manufacturers who, like Bayer, argue that federal regulation of their products means they shouldn't be accountable for injuries. (Whitman, 8/9)

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 Amtrak has started settling lawsuits with victims of last year's deadly derailment in Philadelphia, and lawyers involved in the process say a strict confidentiality provision prevents them and their clients from talking about how they're doing or how much money they've received.

The railroad reached the first settlements last week, quietly resolving cases brought by two women who suffered head and other injuries in the May 2015 wreck, court records show.

Dozens of other lawsuits are still pending.
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A California state court has cleared the path for nearly a dozen lawsuits to proceed that alleged that pharmaceutical company Bayer's permanent birth control device, Essure, seriously injured patients. The ruling could have major implications for device manufacturers who, like Bayer, argue that federal regulation of their products means they shouldn't be accountable for injuries.

Bayer sought to have the cases thrown out on three separate grounds, but on each of them, Judge Winifred Y. Smith of the Superior Court in Alameda County sided with the plaintiffs. The rulings, filed Aug.
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The smoking-cessation drug Chantix has now played a crucial role in a second violent crime. On Monday, a Maryland man was found not criminally responsible for shooting his wife in the neck in their home in 2014 because he was found to be suffering from “involuntary intoxication” due to Chantix. His wife survived.

Last year, an Army soldier, who brutally stabbed another soldier to death in 2008, won a new hearing because the judge in his original trial refused to let him put on an involuntary intoxication defense. The soldier claimed that he was so neurologically disturbed by Chantix that he was not aware of what he was doing.
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Drinking water supplies serving more than six million Americans contain unsafe levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked to potentially serious health problems, according to a new study from Harvard University researchers.

The chemicals — known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs — have been used for decades in a range of industrial and commercial products, including non-stick coatings on pans, food wrappers, water-repellent clothing and firefighting foam. Long-term exposure has been linked to increased risks of kidney cancer, thyroid problems, high cholesterol and hormone disruption, among other issues.

“Virtually all Americans are exposed to these compounds,” said Xindi Hu, the study’s lead author. “They never break down.
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On 9/11, Rupa Bhattacharyya was in an office near the White House watching TV as the second plane smashed into the World Trade Center. She walked nine miles home — too afraid to use the subway.

Now Bhattacharyya, the new special master of the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, says she’s eager to dole out money to brave first responders who ran to Ground Zero after the Twin Towers fell, and others caught in the dust.

Influential U.S. magazine Consumer Reports urged the Justice Department to hike compensation to 475,000 owners of polluting Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) diesel vehicles and allow owners who opt for a fix to reconsider.

In comments filed on Friday on the proposed agreement, the magazine said the buyback offer undervalues retail prices and urged the use of values that "would lead to buyback offers for consumers that would be at least several hundred dollars higher.