Current Events

Report alleges VW pulled its latest Polo TDI ‘Bluemotion’ due to particularly big discrepancy over emissions.

Volkswagen AG’s VLKAY 4.68% top executives knew a year ago that some of the company’s cars were markedly less fuel efficient than had been officially stated, Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag reported, without specifying its sources.

VW in early November revealed that it had understated the level of carbon dioxide emissions and fuel usage in around 800,000 cars sold mainly in Europe.

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League physicians sought to discredit Bennet Omalu’s autopsy study showing widespread brain damage in former Steelers star Mike Webster

In 2002, a Pittsburgh neuropathologist named Bennet Omalu, a native of Nigeria, examined the body of 50-year-old former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster. At the end of his life, Webster had suffered a steep mental decline, becoming violent, depressed and forgetful and pushed to increasingly desperate lengths to battle chronic pain. In Webster’s brain, Dr. Omalu, who holds multiple advanced degrees and certifications from top American medical schools, discovered what would mark a turning point in the evolution of thinking about the effects of head injuries in professional football. The following excerpt is from “Concussion” published this week by Random House, and is based on the author’s interviews and other research. Laskas’s reporting is the focus of a forthcoming movie by the same name.

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The E. coli outbreak traced to Costco chicken salads appears to have been caused by vegetables in the salad, rather than the chicken itself, according to company officials.

Tests performed by the Food and Drug Administration and Montana health officials traced the E. coli to an onion and celery mix, rather than the rotisserie chicken itself, Craig Wilson, Costco's vice president of food safety and quality assurance, told USA TODAY. Health officials are performing additional tests to confirm this link.

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Wheelchair users have a significantly higher risk of being killed in car collisions than other pedestrians, according to recent research.

The study, published in the online journal BMJ Open, found that those in wheelchairs are three times more likely to die in road traffic collisions than the rest of the population and most of these deaths occur at intersections. The research also showed that men in wheelchairs are five times more likely than women in wheelchairs to die in these accidents.

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The US Food and Drug Administration issued another warning Friday about failures in artery-clearing tools made by Boston Scientific Corp. that resulted in one patient dying.

A patient died in September, four days after a wire piece broke off one of the components and perforated a vessel, according to an FDA report. Two other patients were also injured when the parts broke during operations.

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Costco Wholesale Corp.’s rotisserie chicken salad was linked to an E. coli outbreak in seven states that has sickened at least 19 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The outbreak has sent five people to the hospital, with two developing hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure, the CDC said in a statement Tuesday. There have been no deaths reported, the agency said.

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WASHINGTON — Inaccurate and unreliable medical tests are prompting abortions, promoting unnecessary surgeries, putting tens of thousands of people on unneeded drugs and raising medical costs, the Food and Drug Administration has concluded.

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As a whistleblower lawsuit against Paris-based Sanofi (SNY) steams ahead, ex-paralegal Diane Ponte alleges that Sanofi lawyers destroyed documents rather than provide them in other legal cases.

Ponte has accused Sanofi, among other things, of shifting $34 million in kickbacks and “incentive payments” to doctors and pharmacies to influence them to prescribe its diabetes drugs. Ponte claims she uncovered the kickbacks in March 2013 while reviewing nine contracts while she was working at the company’s New Jersey headquarters. The nine contracts totaled $34 million.

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About 12% of drugs doctors prescribe are for uses other than those approved by regulators, a recent study found. So-called off-label prescribing significantly raises the rate of negative side effects, the research showed.

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NEW YORK -- Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Excederin, Ritalin and other popular drugs, agreed to pay $370 million for providing kickbacks to pharmacies to push its drugs on patients.

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Consumer advocates and antitrust experts are urging state regulators to closely examine the proposed mergers of major health insurance companies, saying they threaten to leave consumers with fewer choices and higher prices.

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