Current Events

When you buy a BMW i3 electric vehicle, you have the option to include a range-extending gas motor. The REx, as it's known in car-geek parlance, is a 34-horsepower, two-cylinder engine that provides juice to the battery to boost range from about 80 miles to somewhere around 150. But in certain conditions, engaging the REx can get...
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An outbreak of a life-threatening illness that has been linked to foods packaged by a processing plant in Washington State has prompted a large-scale voluntary recall of frozen fruits and vegetables marketed under 42 brand names.

The scale of the recall reflects the severity of the outbreak of the illness, listeria, and of concerns about how the contaminated food might have “trickled down” into other products, said Brittany Behm, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The processing plant, CRF Frozen Foods in Pasco, Wash., has voluntarily recalled more than 350 frozen foods — including carrots, onions, peaches and strawberries — that were sold in all 50 states and Canada. The recall began on April 23, with 11 frozen vegetables, but was significantly expanded on May 2.
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Taking pregabalin (Lyrica) during pregnancy may be associated with a higher risk of major birth defects, researchers found.

In a prospective, nonrandomized study, women who took pregabalin while pregnant were more likely to have babies with major birth defects (6.0%) compared with women who did not take the drug (2.1%; odds ratio 3.0, P=0.
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For the many folks concerned about cyberthieves hacking emails and stealing personal information from online accounts, here comes another worry:

A cyberattack on your car – while you’re driving.

That’s one of the threats outlined in a report on “Vehicle Cybersecurity” by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
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Another big name has surfaced in the tsunami of Flint water lawsuits: the NAACP,  which is suing several state officials and two engineering firms, alleging they poisoned a city with toxic drinking water by failing to detect that something was wrong, pretending a problem didn't exist and ignoring numerous red flags.

"Just the color of Flint's water should have led any reasonable engineer to the conclusion that Flint's pipes were dangerously corroded," the 103-page lawsuit states.

The NAACP announced the lawsuit today,  though it was filed on March 31 in U.S. District Court, where at least two dozen other Flint-related lawsuits are pending.
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New research presented this week at the American Thoracic Society’s annual meeting suggests that the ongoing opioid crisis is making waves across the country’s intensive care units (ICU) every bit as much as it is inside people’s homes.

The authors analyzed hospital admissions from 2011 to 2015 for adults over the age of 18 in a nationwide healthcare system, Vizient, Inc. Out of 272 hospitals, there were 17.6 million admissions throughout the study period, with 41,369 related to an opioid overdose. While that figure may seem miniscule in the grand scheme of things, the rate of opioid-related admissions has steadily increased 42 percent since 2009.
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