Current Events

Diabetes drugs containing either of two key compounds can cause heart failure in certain patients, federal drug regulators said Tuesday as they announced new warnings to be added to the labels of nearly a half dozen commonly prescribed medications. Read more

A federal judge in New Orleans has granted final approval to an estimated $20 billion settlement, resolving years of litigation over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Read more.

The Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal from Wal-Mart on Monday challenging a $187.6 million judgment in a class action lawsuit.

In the case, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v Michelle Braun, hourly employees of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club had brought a class action lawsuit against the companies, claiming they failed to compensate them for rest breaks and off-the-clock work as mandated in their policies.Read more . . .

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is recalling nearly 15,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs from the 2015 and 2016 model years. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, approximately eight of those vehicles may suffer from a problem with their brakes that could boost the risk of an accident. No injuries have been reported.Read more . . .

Jacqueline Fox worked in restaurant kitchens and school cafeterias, cleaned people’s houses, watched their kids, raised a son, and took in two foster children. She was careful about her appearance and liked to tend the garden in front of her home in Birmingham, Alabama. She had been treated for high blood pressure, arthritis, and diabetes, but, at 59, she was feeling pretty good. In the spring of 2013, her poodle, Dexter, began acting strangely. He’d jump on her, he’d cry, he’d stay close by all day.

Heparin tainted with unauthorized Chinese-made ingredients may be on the market in the U.S. and the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t moved swiftly enough to prevent it, according to a congressional probe nearly a decade after hundreds of deaths were linked to sullied batches of the blood-thinning drug.

This possible contamination is different from the earlier one, when Chinese producers made crude heparin containing a deadly chemical. They may be using cow and sheep intestines to produce the raw material for heparin that is supposed to be derived only from the intestinal membranes of pigs, according to a letter the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent Tuesday to the FDA.
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For years, Volkswagen ran ads that emphasized how efficient, fun and, above all, clean its diesel cars were. A series of online ads last year featured three sisters debunking old wives’ tales about diesel, including that it was dirty and that it smelled bad.

But in the latest headache for the German automaker — which admitted last year that it had lied about the performance of its diesel technology — those ads have come under regulatory scrutiny. On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against the Volkswagen Group of America, saying the company’s “clean diesel” advertising campaign was deceptive.

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Lending his voice to the fight against a drug scourge that kills 28,000 Americans a year, President Obama told nearly 2,000 policymakers, professionals and parents Tuesday that the nation must provide more treatment for people addicted to opioids and reframe the addiction problem through the lens of public health.

“The most important thing we can do is reduce demand for drugs, and the only way that we reduce demand is by providing treatment and thinking about this as a public health problem and not just a criminal issue,” Obama said during a panel discussion at the 2016 National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit.

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Volkswagen AG, still struggling to reach a deal with U.S. environmental authorities to fix nearly 600,000 tainted diesel-powered cars, could also be facing wider quality issues across a broad range of models in addition to its emissions-cheating scandal.

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Takata Corp., the supplier behind the auto industry’s biggest recall ever, estimated that a comprehensive callback of its airbag inflators would total about 2.7 trillion yen ($24 billion), according to a person familiar with the matter. The shares plunged to a record low.

The worst-case recall scenario would involve 287.
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When American doctors give their patients narcotic painkillers, 99 percent of them hand out prescriptions that exceed the federally recommended three-day dosage limit, new research suggests.

And some doctors exceeded that limit by a lot: Nearly one-quarter gave out month-long dosages, despite the fact that research has shown that a month's use of prescription narcotic painkillers can cause brain changes, the National Safety Council survey found.

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