Current Events

Anthem Inc., whose $48 billion acquisition of healthcare insurance rival Cigna has run into stiff regulatory headwinds, appears ready to walk away from the deal, The Post has learned.

Anthem Chief Financial Officer John Gallina told a group of 20 analysts earlier that the Indianapolis-based company was working on “remediation plans” that include buying assets from Aetna, two sources at the meeting last week said.

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SEATTLE (AP) -- The physician who used a non-FDA-approved bone cement during a woman's spinal surgery and the company that ran an illegal test market to promote the dangerous product should be held accountable for her death, a lawyer for the woman's daughter told a jury Monday.

Reba Golden was vibrant and healthy when she agreed to let Dr. Jens Chapman operate on her back in 2007, but the surgeon never told Golden or her family that he planned to use a bone cement associated with blood clotting and patient deaths, said attorney Rick Friedman, who represents Cynthia Wilson in a lawsuit against the surgeon, the University of Washington and Synthes Inc.

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Volkswagen will settle its emissions scandal case for $14.7 billion, the largest payout by an automaker to consumers in U.S. history, in an agreement set to be formally announced Tuesday morning, according to two people familiar with the matter.

More than $10 billion of the settlement will go to fix or buy back 475,000 Volkswagens with two-liter diesel engines that were programmed to turn off emissions measurement data outside of laboratory settings, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced.
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The death of 27-year-old Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin has again thrust an auto recall story into the national spotlight.

It has also brought scrutiny to a once-simple function that has grown more complicated in recent years: shifting a vehicle with an automatic transmission into drive or reverse and back to park or neutral.

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Even as the warring parties in Volkswagen's emissions cheating scandal prepare to offer a peace proposal this week, the German automaker’s travails are far from over.

Taking shape after months of negotiations is a broad settlement agreement, expected to exceed $10 billion, involving Volkswagen, the federal government and a half-million car owners. The provisions are expected to offer those owners some financial compensation in addition to fixing or buying back their vehicles.

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German automaker Volkswagen Group is expected to deliver a $10 billion settlement to cover government fines and compensate owners of vehicles fitted with software that cheated emissions standards, according to multiple reports.

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A Texas father has been arrested after leaving his 6-month-old daughter in an overheated car where she may have succumbed to heatstroke. But the young child's death was far from a rare occurrence.

So far this year, at least 16 children have reportedly died from heatstroke after being left in hot cars by their caregivers — more than double the number who perished by this time last year.

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DETROIT — In an era of unprecedented scrutiny of automotive safety, Fiat Chrysler is learning that one celebrity’s death can turn a seemingly routine recall into a corporate crisis.

The death on Sunday of the actor Anton Yelchin, crushed when his Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled backward down his driveway, has lent a new sense of urgency to a recall announced in April. And it has prompted Fiat Chrysler to accelerate its plans to modify gearshifts in 1.1 million vehicles linked to hundreds of rollaway accidents and dozens of injuries.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is defending a decision to accept more than 1,000 patient injury reports from Medtronic in summary form, years after they were supposed to be submitted.

The FDA responded earlier this month to questions from U.S.
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Front-seat passengers in some small sport utility vehicles may not be as well protected as drivers in certain types of crashes, according to recent tests of seven vehicles by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The tests, known as small overlap frontal tests, were similar to the kind that the institute conducts by directing the front-end impact to the driver’s side of the vehicle. But in these latest tests, whose results were released on Thursday, the impact was on the S.U.V.
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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said today it will no longer be using any Takata air bag inflators that use ammonium nitrate without a protective powder as the propellant in any of its vehicles in North America by the end of next week.

Ruptures of those Takata inflators have been tied to ten deaths and more than 100 injuries in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and are part of the largest automotive recall in U.S. history.

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