Current Events

To Retha Floyd, 95, taking out a reverse mortgage on her home seemed like a sensible way to pay for needed repairs and preserve the house for her descendants.

But a $5 million class-action lawsuit filed this month alleges that two mortgage companies conspired to defraud Floyd and thousands of other elderly clients — including hundreds in the D.C. area — by charging them for home inspections that were both illegal and unnecessary. The charges were added to their loan amounts, resulting in less equity in the house.
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Investment victims swindled by Bernard Madoff could soon receive their share of a new $247 million repayment to help cover losses from the historic fraud.

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Multiyear, peer-reviewed study found ‘low incidences’ of two types of tumors in male rats exposed to type of radio frequencies commonly emitted by cellphones.

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A little more than one-third of acute care hospitals in the U.S. adhere to best practices to promote appropriate use of antibiotics, according to a new report.

An analysis of more than 4,100 U.S.
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Ford is recalling about 271,000 2013-14 F-150 pickups with 3.5-liter V-6 engines because the brakes may malfunction, the automaker said on Wednesday. The company said it was aware of nine accidents but no injuries.

Ford said the brake master cylinder in the affected trucks could leak fluid, and as a result it was possible that the front brakes’ “effectiveness could be reduced.” The rear brakes, which use a different hydraulic system, would still work, but typically the front brakes provide the most stopping power.
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Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are demanding answers and action to end deadly seat back collapses in vehicles - a problem that would only cost a few dollars to fix, reports CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave.

The threat puts children's lives at risk, like Taylor Warner, who was just 16 months old when her family's Honda Odyssey Minivan was rear-ended at 55 miles an hour. She was in her car seat behind her father Andy, when his seat broke and fell backwards on top of her. Taylor died.

"And it was all because of some stupid car that we thought was the safest thing we could get for our family to protect them," her mother Liz said, sobbing.
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The biggest recall in automotive history grew even larger Monday when Toyota Motor Corp. said it is recalling an additional 1.6 million vehicles to replace potentially faulty front-passenger air bag inflators made by Takata.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has created some online resources to help consumers whose vehicle may have a defective air bag made by Takata.

A total of 17 automakers have recalled upwards of 68 million inflators around the world, including roughly 63 million in the U.
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Kathy Pugh quit her job when her mother got sick from a tainted medication, and now Pugh spends her days helping the once-vibrant 85-year-old get out of bed, shower and dress. If her mom ever were compensated for what she endured, Pugh said she would like to install laminate flooring — which would make it easier to move around in a wheelchair — and maybe buy a handicap van.

Evelyn Bates-March, Pugh’s mother, is one of hundreds of victims of a 2012 outbreak of fungal meningitis that federal investigators traced to a batch of contaminated steroid injections manufactured by the New England Compounding Center. A civil fund of more than $200 million was created after victims sued the compounding center and companies with which it did business. The federal government also has money available to compensate crime victims.
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A federal appeals court last week refused to revive a lawsuit in which a former Pfizer employee alleged the company promoted off-label use of its Lipitor cholesterol pill. In doing so, however, the court also raised a question about the extent to which drug makers may be held responsible for causing federal health programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, to overpay for a medicine.

Here’s the back story: Jesse Polansky, a former Pfizer medical director, contended the drug maker illegally marketed the best-selling pill by ignoring National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines. The guidelines stated the cholesterol-lowering drug should be prescribed only to certain patients, but Pfizer knowingly widened the market, according to his lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2004.

In doing so, he charged that Pfizer violated the False Claims Act.
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Some high-risk women's health devices were approved without proper data, according to a recent study. The findings point to a need for increased oversight from the agency, researchers said.

Scientists at Northwestern University looked at 18 high-risk devices approved by the FDA from 2000 to 2015, including those for menstrual flow reduction, contraception and fetal monitoring. Four of the devices were approved even though they did not show efficacy in clinical trials, according to results published recently in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Six of the devices included in the study were not required to undergo post-market studies to monitor their safety.
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Deane Berg thought she was going to die, and she wanted to know why. She was 49, way too young, she thought, to have advanced cancer in her ovaries.

As she scrolled through websites that listed possible causes of ovarian cancer, one jumped out at her: talcum powder. She did not have risk factors like infertility or endometriosis, but she had dusted baby powder between her legs every day for 30 years.

“I went into the bathroom, I grabbed my Johnson’s Baby Powder and threw it in the wastebasket,” recalled Ms.
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