Current Events

Washington — The General Motors Co. ignition switch compensation fund said Monday that two more death claims were approved last week, hiking the total to 111.

The fund run by lawyer Ken Feinberg said it has also approved 12 new injury claims, bringing the total number of approved claims for injuries to 220. Of that total, 12 are for serious injuries and 179 are for less severe injuries.

GM is paying at least $1 million in each death claim and has set aside $550 million to pay claims.

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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles admitted in a filing this week that it missed deadlines to notify customers in five separate safety recalls, which could mean a hefty fine from safety regulators in the U.S.

Back on May 18, the U.S. Department of Transportation sent FCA a special order demanding the company provide information on its recent recall performance.

The automaker confirmed in an 18-page document sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday that it exceeded the legal 60-day limit of notifying owners of new recalls in five recent campaigns, according to USA Today.

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Robin Miller, a 62-year-old oncologist in Atlanta with bladder cancer, was scheduled to receive a potentially lifesaving drug in December. But her doctor’s office called shortly before the appointment to say: “Sorry, we don’t have any. We can’t give it to you,” according to Dr. Miller.

The disruption was due to a global shortage of the drug, BCG, which arose after manufacturing problems at two of the few global suppliers. Without the drug, Dr. Miller feared her cancer would come back and she would have to have her bladder removed, a step she called “barbaric.”

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About half the replacement air-bag kits that Takata Corp. shipped to automakers last month have inflators made by competitors, including some with a different chemical than the one linked to explosions that have killed six people.

That portion is expected to reach 70 percent by the end of the year, Takata said in a statement on Monday. The Tokyo-based company has been relying on competitors to help it replace defective air bags in about 34 million vehicles, the largest auto-safety recall in U.S. history.

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The U.S. Justice Department has issued a subpoena seeking information from Olympus on the manufacturing and sales of a specialized medical scope linked to a recent series of deadly superbug outbreaks at hospitals across the country.

Olympus is the largest manufacturer of duodenoscopes, which have been linked to infections in scores of patients, typically with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as CRE, which has mortality rates of 40% or higher. In a public report issued this month on its latest financial results, the company noted that it had received a subpoena in March from the Justice Department seeking "information relating to duodenoscopes that Olympus manufactures and sells."

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Former Rep. Steve LaTourette, who’s severely ill with pancreatic cancer, is planning to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against the federal government, accusing Capitol Hill doctors of failing to provide him with information that could have led to an earlier diagnosis.

The Ohio Republican, who was diagnosed last year, filed administrative claims against the government for what he says was negligent care from the Office of the Attending Physician of the U.S. Congress, which oversees lawmakers’ primary care. The filing is the first step toward a lawsuit.

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Boston Scientific Corp. must pay $100 million to a Delaware woman who blamed the company’s vaginal-mesh inserts for leaving her in constant pain and unable to have sex, in the first verdict after the company agreed to begin settling cases over the devices, and the biggest yet.

A state-court jury in Delaware found Thursday that Boston Scientific’s Pinnacle and Advantage Fit inserts, built to buttress sagging organs and treat incontinence in women, were defectively designed and company executives hid the flaws from Deborah Barba.

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Thieves hacked into an Internal Revenue Service online service and gained access to information from more than 100,000 taxpayer accounts, the agency said Tuesday.

The criminals used personal data obtained from other sources, including Social Security numbers, street addresses and dates of birth, to get into the IRS "Get Transcript" service. The service has been temporarily shut down.

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A House Energy and Commerce panel will hold a June 2 hearing on the record-setting recall of nearly 34 million vehicles with potentially defective Takata air bags by 11 automakers.

The subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade will hold a hearing, its first in nearly six months on the issue of exploding air bags linked to at least six deaths and more than 100 injuries. It will come two weeks after Japanese air bag manufacturer Takata, under heavy pressure from the Obama administration, agreed to declare 33.8 million vehicles defective.

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The federal government on Tuesday unveiled a long-awaited regulatory package that sets national standards for managed care under Medicaid, marking the biggest changes to the growing program in more than a decade.

The nearly 700-page rule, described by some groups as an “uber rule,” contains instructions about what state Medicaid programs must do when hiring private health plans to handle long-term care for the elderly and disabled – also known as managed care.

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A little-noticed ruling by three federal judges may have tipped the scales in favor of the tobacco industry’s bid to put decades of smoker lawsuits behind it.

The appeals court panel in Atlanta said individual smokers, already blocked from suing as a group, must each prove the cigarettes they used were defective, rather than relying on an earlier jury’s findings. That decision adds time, expense and uncertainty to their cases.

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