Current Events

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Delaware judge on Friday said Boston Scientific should only have to pay $10 million to a woman originally awarded $100 million by a jury who found she was injured by transvaginal mesh, a device that is the subject of thousands of lawsuits.

Judge Mary Johnston in New Castle County, Delaware, said that the damages awarded to plaintiff Deborah Barba in May – the largest ever in a trial involving transvaginal mesh - were “grossly disproportionate to the injuries suffered and shock the court’s conscience and sense of justice.”

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HALTERN AM SEE, Germany — Weeks before he was supposed to fly to Barcelona, Spain, for a student exchange program with his 10th-grade Spanish class, Steffen Strang realized that he would miss a home game of the soccer team he followed religiously. Maybe, he told his mother, he should stay home.

The response Dagmar Strang gave to her 16-year-old son has echoed in her head since March 24, the day he was supposed to have returned on a Germanwings flight bound for Düsseldorf.

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Even as Volkswagen struggles to deal with its diesel emissions scandal, new data raise questions about whether the automaker has properly reported death and injury claims to U.S. regulators over the past decade.

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California owners of Volkswagen diesel cars caught up in the emissions-test rigging scandal might have a shot at getting the German automaker to buy back the vehicles.

A Seattle law firm filed a class action lawsuit against Volkswagen in Los Angeles federal court Monday demanding an immediate buyback under California emissions laws.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans buying new cars these days are baffled by a torrent of new safety technology.

Some features will automatically turn a car back into its lane if it begins to drift, or hit the brakes if sensors detect that it's about to rear-end someone else. There are lane-change and blind-spot monitors, drowsiness alerts and cars that can park themselves. Technologies once limited to high-end models like adaptive cruise control, tire-pressure indicators and rear-view cameras have become more common.

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BP will have 15 years to make payments under the more than $20 billion settlement reached over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a timeline that may have raised a few eyebrows when details of the deal were released Monday (Oct. 5). But experts say the slow payout could benefit Louisiana and other coastal states.

State officials have largely praised the settlement reached between BP, the federal government and five Gulf Coast states in July and formally filed in court Monday. Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said the agreement is the fastest way for funds to make their way to areas hit hardest by the oil disaster.

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Monday announced a final settlement with the oil giant BP of $20.8 billion for its role in the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, raising the total from the initial $18.7 billion settlement announced in July.

At either amount, it is the largest environmental settlement — and the largest civil settlement with any single entity — in the nation’s history.

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A keyless ignition is that push button in your car that starts the engine instead of turning a key. It’s a feature that’s standard equipment on many new vehicles, but consumer safety advocates say keyless ignitions could pose a danger if you walk away with the fob and forget to turn off the car.

Noah Kushlefsky is an attorney who has represented several families whose loved ones have died from carbon monoxide poisoning after the key fob was removed and the car was left running. "When you're disassociated from the car by removal of the mechanical key, it's an easy step to forget" Kushlefsky said. "It's a senseless situation that should never occur and should never have occurred."

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The Food and Drug Administration, hoping to prevent future outbreaks of deadly bacterial infections at U.S. hospitals, on Monday ordered makers of specialized medical scopes to undertake new studies of how the devices are cleaned.

The agency ordered a trio of manufacturers to conduct real-world evaluations on how well health care workers are cleaning and disinfecting the devices and what more might be done to prevent the spread of life-threatening infections.

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Doctors have discovered a potential problem involving implanted heart valves that hundreds of thousands of people have received - they don't always open and close properly, possibly because a blood clot has formed that could raise the risk of stroke.

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West Virginia may be the first U.S. state to sue Volkswagen AG for deceiving car buyers after the Environmental Protection Agency said last month that the company had installed software to hide that its diesel engines exceeded pollution standards.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey seeks restitution for Volkswagen customers, who he says paid as much as $6,855 extra for cars with the clean diesel engines, plus $5,000 in civil penalties per violation of West Virginia’s consumer protection law.

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