Current Events

U.S. automobile recalls surpassed the 60 million mark for the first time in a single year, largely because of the rush to prevent more deaths from defective General Motors Co. (GM) ignition switches and Takata Corp. (7312) air bags.

The tally of 60.5 million through today is almost double the previous annual record of 30.8 million recalled vehicles set in 2004, according to an analysis of data on the website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The number will rise further as recent recalls that have been announced by automakers are recorded in the database.

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Diabetes drugs have been linked to thousands of deaths and hospitalizations over the last decade, an investigation by MedPage Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found — but there is little ability to determine exactly how risky the drugs may be to the public.

That's because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's reporting system provides only a partial view of the potentially dangerous side effects of the dozensof drugs it approves every year.

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A U.S. judge has cleared the way for consumers to sue Target Corp over the retailer's late 2013 data breach that they say compromised their personal financial information.

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Thursday dismissed claims by plaintiffs in certain states but largely denied Target's request to toss the proposed class action lawsuit.

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The federal office responsible for appeals for Medicare coverage has cut in half the waiting time for beneficiaries who are requesting a hearing before a judge.

The progress follows an announcement in January that officials were going to work through a crushing backlog by moving beneficiaries to the front of the line and suspending hearings on cases from hospitals, doctors and other providers for at least two years.

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A co-owner of a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy and its supervising pharmacist were indicted on federal charges Wednesday in connection with a multistate meningitis outbreak that killed dozens of patients who had received tainted steroids from the company in 2012.

Barry J. Cadden, a founder and owner of New England Compounding Center (NECC), and Glenn A. Chin, who oversaw production and personnel in the firm’s “sterile clean rooms,” face 25 charges of second-degree murder in the deaths of patients in seven states, including Maryland and Virginia.

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The massive computer breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment could test laws that require companies to protect their employees' personal and medical information.

Lawyers representing former Sony Pictures employees have separately filed in Los Angeles two lawsuits that seek class-action status, alleging Sony Pictures Entertainment was negligent in the months leading up to the devastating hack. One of the complaints — a 45-page federal lawsuit, which seeks to represent former and current Sony employees — contends that Sony ignored warnings that its computer network was prone to attack.

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Owners of General Motors cars with faulty ignition switches turned to the only judge who can help them, saying it’s wrong to shield the automaker behind bankruptcy law.

In their first formal demand to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber, customers said GM left defective cars on the market long after it knew they were dangerous. The automaker must be made to pay for its “callous cover-up” and the collapse of prices after belated recalls this year, they said today in court papers in Manhattan.

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U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the anti-cancer drug Cyramza (ramucirumab) has been expanded to include aggressive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the agency said Friday.

NSCLC, the most common form of lung cancer, will be diagnosed in an estimated 224,000 Americans this year, and about 159,000 Americans will die from it, the FDA said, citing U.S. National Cancer Institute projections.

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Two new studies have found that far more kids are using electronic cigarettes than previously reported, raising fears that the products could hook another generation on nicotine even as cigarette use is falling.

About 25% of high school students in Connecticut and 29% of teens in Hawaii have used e-cigarettes, according to separate studies. About 18% of the Hawaii teens and 12% of the Connecticut high school students had used e-cigarettes in the past month. Both studies were done in 2013.

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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA) more than doubled its number of vehicles recalled to replace Takata Corp. (7312) air bags, a week after a U.S. regulator criticized the carmaker for failing to take more aggressive action.

Chrysler said it will replace front passenger-side Takata air-bag inflators in 357,933 vehicles, including some models of the Dodge Ram pickup truck and the Chrysler 300 sedan, in a Dec. 10 notice posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website. The company had said Dec. 3 it would add only 149,150 older model Dodge Ram pickups to its recalls.

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For nearly two decades, Takata has struggled to tame an inexpensive but unstable compound thought to play a central role in airbag ruptures that are linked to at least five deaths and dozens of injuries.

As far back as June 1995, a patent application filed by Takata expressed concern over using the compound, saying that it was so vulnerable to temperature changes that its casing, under excessive pressure, “might even blow up,” a review of patent documents by The New York Times found.

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