Current Events

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) agreed to pay $388 million to settle a suit by investors claiming that the largest U.S. bank had misled them about the safety of $10 billion worth of residential mortgage-backed securities it sold before the financial crisis.

The lawsuit, brought by Fort Worth Employees' Retirement Fund and other investors in offerings made before the 2008 financial crisis, accused JPMorgan of misleading them about the underwriting, appraisals and credit quality of the home loans underlying the certificates.

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Doctors, nurse practitioners and other health care workers who prescribe drugs may be helping to drive the overuse of antibiotics in the United States, new research suggests.

Experts have long warned that using antibiotics for illnesses for which they are useless -- viral infections, for example -- helps foster resistance by germs to these potentially lifesaving drugs.

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The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund awarded nearly $1 billion over the past year to people who were injured in the terrorist attacks or to the relatives of those who died, according to its latest report.

Those awards brought the fund's total payouts to $1.3 billion.

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General Motors is recalling about 686,000 midsize crossover utility vehicles made between 2007 and 2012 because their rear liftgates could fall off and injure people.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website, the vehicles are equipped with power liftgates that are supported by gas struts when they are open. The struts may prematurely wear and the open liftgate may suddenly fall.

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Takata Corp. rejected a U.S. senator’s request to form a compensation fund for victims of rupturing air bags at the center of the largest automotive recall in U.S. history.

The Japanese manufacturer, under widespread scrutiny over defective air bags linked to at least eight deaths and more than 100 injuries, said in a letter to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) that “a national compensation fund is not currently required.”

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New York City reached a settlement with the family of Eric Garner on Monday, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve a wrongful-death claim over his killing by the police on Staten Island last July, the city comptroller and a lawyer for the family said.

The agreement, reached a few days before the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death, headed off one legal battle even as a federal inquiry into the killing and several others at the state and local level remain open and could provide a further accounting of how he died.

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WASHINGTON — Fiat-Chrysler is recalling 88,346 2008-'10 Dodge Challenger coupes in the U.S. to replace defective Takata airbags, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

This is an expansion of an existing recall.

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The Food and Drug Administration warned last week that the risk of heart attack and stroke from widely used painkillers that include Motrin IB, Aleve and Celebrex but not aspirin was greater than it previously had said. But what does that mean for people who take them?

Experts said that the warning reflected the gathering evidence that there was risk even in small amounts of the drug, so-called nonaspirin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or Nsaids, and that everyone taking them should use them sparingly for brief periods. Millions of Americans take them.

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General Motors is recalling about 196,000 Hummer sport utility vehicles because of an electrical problem that resulted in at least two vehicles being destroyed in fires, the automaker said on Wednesday.

An electrical part of the heating and cooling system could overheat and cause a fire inside the dashboard, the automaker said. Three people suffered minor burns.

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DETROIT—Marietta Crabtree dabbed her teary eyes with tissue while she clutched a printout of the words her husband never had a chance to speak against Dr. Farid Fata.

The cancer doctor—who pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud in September after being accused of giving hundreds of patients unnecessary or inappropriate treatments, including chemotherapy—potentially faces life in prison in a federal sentencing hearing that began Monday.

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A federal lawsuit against a manufacturer of laparoscopic power morcellators that was expected to be the first to reach a trial has been settled for an undisclosed amount, an attorney for the plaintiff said Thursday.

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