Current Events

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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The death of the actor Anton Yelchin, killed when his Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled backward down a driveway and crushed him against a mailbox pillar last weekend, has cast a public spotlight on a problem with some models of Jeeps and other Fiat Chrysler vehicles.

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The 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee that rolled backward down a driveway and killed the actor Anton Yelchin early Sunday was a model that Fiat Chrysler has recalled for a gearshift issue that has confused drivers, leading them to accidentally leave the car in neutral when they think it is safely in park.

Los Angeles Police investigators and the carmaker said on Monday that it was too soon to determine the cause of the accident. But Mr.
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About $6.5 billion will go to car owners and $3.5 billion to the U.S. government and California regulators, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deal isn’t public yet.
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The US Supreme Court Thursday handed a partial victory to a Massachusetts family who sued the country’s largest owner of psychiatric hospitals over the death of their daughter. But the justices sent the case back to a lower court for further review.

Both sides seemed to find something to like in the complex decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas. And lawyers and organizations who had been following the case disagreed about the ultimate meaning of the decision, which was unanimous.

The question at hand was whether Universal Health Services, a Fortune 500 company that owns the Arbour psychiatric facilities in Massachusetts, violated the law when it allegedly permitted an unsupervised nurse practitioner to prescribe medication to 19-year-old Yarushka Rivera.
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ALBANY - A bill to help victims of medical malpractice died for a second straight year in the state Legislature.

The Senate and Assembly ended their legislative sessions in the wee hours of Saturday morning without taking up Lavern's Law, which would start the window to bring medical malpractice cases when an error is discovered by the patient, not when the mistake occurred as is current law.

The Republicans that control the Senate recently discussed the issue at length but couldn't come to a consensus, a GOP official said.

The measure had a strong backe in Senate GOP Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco.

But it was strongly opposed by the deep-pocketed medical establishment, which has argued that many of the states that have similar measures in place also have caps on pain and suffering awards and limits on total damages.
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Nissan's (7201.T) Infiniti luxury brand will recall roughly 60,000 vehicles globally, a spokesman for the brand said on Thursday, as the steering system key to the Q50 sedan's autonomous driving capabilities could malfunction.

The recall will affect cars in all markets where the Q50 is sold, including China and North America, spokesman Stefan Weinmann said in a written statement.

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With or without eyes in the back of their heads, drivers keep hitting things.

Despite the growing prevalence of back-up cameras, federal data shows that this technology hasn't significantly cut down on cars backing into people and causing them harm. That research on so-called "back-over incidents" comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration moves to make back-up cameras standard and presses automakers to add a bevy of new technologies -- from automatic braking to lane collision warnings -- to even entry-level cars to reduce accidents on the road.

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The complaint was filed this week in  Georgia’s Northern District Court.

Plaintiffs in the case, Gabrial Nassar Cure and Dr.
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For two years, a group of families in Newtown, Conn., quietly laid the groundwork for a legal case against the maker and sellers of the assault rifle that on Dec. 14, 2012, claimed 26 lives — and shattered their own — in less than five minutes.

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was carried out with an AR-15, a military-style assault rifle that has surfaced in recent mass shootings, like Aurora, Colo., and San Bernardino, Calif.
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Congress can fight antibiotic resistance by funding programs to curb unnecessary prescriptions, speeding up the drug development process and improving testing to determine whether a patient has a virus or a bacterial infection, federal government health experts said Tuesday.

They spoke at a hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on the U.S. public health response to antibiotic resistance.

In fiscal 2016, Congress allocated more than $830 million to address antibiotic resistance and the White House has requested $1.
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