Current Events

Add another several hundred vehicles to the more than 23 million involved in the Takata air bag defect recall.

General Motors is recalling 395 certain 2015 Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Camaro, Equinox, Malibu, and GMC Terrain vehicles. The vehicles have front seat-mounted side impact air bags that may rupture when deployed, causing possible serious injury or death, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says.

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BERLIN — Reacting to pressure from German regulators, Volkswagen on Thursday recalled its entire fleet of rigged diesel cars in Europe, as the carmaker scrambles to come up with a remedy for its emissions cheating.

While a broad recall has been expected, the move reflects the difficulty that Volkswagen faces in fixing the 11 million vehicles worldwide that contain a so-called defeat device, which effectively lowered emissions for testing purposes. The company is indicating that the repairs may stretch beyond the end of 2016.

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MILWAUKEE — A jury late Tuesday awarded more than $5 million in damages to two police officers who were severely wounded with a pistol that a local gun shop sold to a straw buyer in 2009.

Deliberating only nine hours after a two-week trial in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, the jury of eight women and four men decided the unusual lawsuit here in favor of the plaintiffs. Gun-control advocates hoped the verdict would encourage more victims and lawyers to sue what they say is a small minority of gun stores that make questionable sales.

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Dietary supplements send at least 23,000 Americans a year to the emergency room and cause at least 2,000 to be hospitalized, according to a study published online Wednesday.

The true number of ER visits caused by dietary supplements – which include vitamins, minerals, herbs and other products – could be much larger than the study's estimates because many patients don't mention their supplement use when visiting the doctor, according to the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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The "herbal Viagra" former basketball star Lamar Odom was said to have taken before he was found unresponsive at a brothel Tuesday afternoon has drawn ire from health experts for years.

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Women who sought permanent sterilization through a contraceptive implant called Essure were 10 times as more likely to be back for surgery within a year than women who had their tubes tied, according to a new study of 52,326 women sterilized in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers in New York State from 2005 to 2013.

The findings add to growing concerns about the device, which has been on the market for over a decade. Thousands of women who claim they have been hurt by it have urged the Food and Drug Administration to warn the public about potential complications and pull the device from the market.

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MILWAUKEE — A jury late Tuesday awarded more than $5 million in damages to two police officers who were severely wounded with a pistol that a local gun shop sold to a straw buyer in 2009.

Deliberating only nine hours after a two-week trial in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, the jury of eight women and four men decided the unusual lawsuit here in favor of the plaintiffs. Gun-control advocates hoped the verdict would encourage more victims and lawyers to sue what they say is a small minority of gun stores that make questionable sales.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Delaware judge on Friday said Boston Scientific should only have to pay $10 million to a woman originally awarded $100 million by a jury who found she was injured by transvaginal mesh, a device that is the subject of thousands of lawsuits.

Judge Mary Johnston in New Castle County, Delaware, said that the damages awarded to plaintiff Deborah Barba in May – the largest ever in a trial involving transvaginal mesh - were “grossly disproportionate to the injuries suffered and shock the court’s conscience and sense of justice.”

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HALTERN AM SEE, Germany — Weeks before he was supposed to fly to Barcelona, Spain, for a student exchange program with his 10th-grade Spanish class, Steffen Strang realized that he would miss a home game of the soccer team he followed religiously. Maybe, he told his mother, he should stay home.

The response Dagmar Strang gave to her 16-year-old son has echoed in her head since March 24, the day he was supposed to have returned on a Germanwings flight bound for Düsseldorf.

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Even as Volkswagen struggles to deal with its diesel emissions scandal, new data raise questions about whether the automaker has properly reported death and injury claims to U.S. regulators over the past decade.

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California owners of Volkswagen diesel cars caught up in the emissions-test rigging scandal might have a shot at getting the German automaker to buy back the vehicles.

A Seattle law firm filed a class action lawsuit against Volkswagen in Los Angeles federal court Monday demanding an immediate buyback under California emissions laws.

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