Current Events

A day after issuing a scathing report on safety shortcomings, General Motors announced four more recalls, three of them involving air bags that may not deploy in a crash.

With the latest four, GM has now had 34 recalls so far this year that have involved 13.9 million vehicles in the U.S. CEO Mary Barra is pressing the company to carefully sort through any lingering questions about safety in its vehicles, an outgrowth of the ignition switch recall in Chevrolet Cobalts and other compact cars that are being blamed for 13 deaths.

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Of all the problems haunting General Motors Co. over its handling of defective ignition switches, the one with plaintiffs' lawyers is just beginning.

The company's size and self-confessed failures in an internal report released last week are attracting lawyers who forged some of the biggest civil settlements ever, from the landmark tobacco litigation to the Exxon Valdez disaster to Toyota Motor Corp.'s unintended-acceleration problems.

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A $100 million settlement involving NuvaRing, a birth-control device linked to sometimes-fatal side effects, will stand now that the vast majority of claimants have chosen to opt into the agreement, those involved in the lawsuits said Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel of St. Louis approved the settlement in February, but NuvaRing maker Merck & Co. had the right to abandon the deal if less than 95 percent of eligible claimants opted in.

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The Food and Drug Administration has issued the strongest warning it can about tanning beds. The message it has for parents, don't let your young children use them.

The FDA issued a black-box warning, its strongest warning, saying children under 18 should not use tanning beds because they emit radiation that may cause skin cancer.

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A sweeping internal investigation of General Motors released on Thursday condemned the company for its decade-long failure to fix a deadly safety defect, one that led to “devastating consequences,” including at least 13 deaths.

The report, written by the former United States attorney Anton R. Valukas, set off the dismissal of 15 G.M. employees, including a vice president for regulatory affairs and a senior lawyer responsible for product liability cases, and forced broad changes in how the company handles vehicle safety.

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General Motors on Thursday will release the results of its three-month internal investigation into the events leading up to this year’s recall of 2.6 million small cars with defective ignition switches.

The inquiry, conducted by Anton R. Valukas, a former United States attorney, is expected to name the people and departments within G.M. that he believes were responsible for the long delay leading up to the recall. Mr. Valukas may also recommend personnel changes or other corporate measures.

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California’s portion of the settlement, the largest of any state, is $7.1 million, Kamala Harris, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK), the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, will pay $105 million to settle claims by California, New York and more than 40 other states that it illegally promoted asthma and antidepressant drugs.

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Leann Darrow has been waiting on her General Motors dealership for more than a month to get the defective ignition switch on her 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt replaced. She's been nervous about driving the car, but as of Monday, she was still waiting for an appointment to open.

"They told me they have over 150 vehicles on the waiting list and have received only five ignition switches," said Darrow, 53, of Pittsfield, Mass. "They were unable to tell me where I am on the waiting list ... unbelievable."

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Pfizer Inc. (PFE) agreed to pay $325 million to settle a lawsuit brought by health-care benefit providers who claimed the drugmaker marketed the epilepsy drug Neurontin for unapproved uses.

The settlement, which needs approval from a federal judge in Boston, would end a case over claims that the company’s Parke-Davis unit schemed to market the drug for unapproved conditions as early as 1994.

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Chicago, the third-biggest U.S. city, sued Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and four other drug companies for allegedly pushing consumer use of opioid painkillers, creating addicts and driving up its costs.

“Since 2007, the city has paid for nearly 400,000 claims for opioid prescription fills, costing nearly $9,500,000, and suffered additional damages for the costs of providing and using opiates long-term to treat chronic non-cancer pain,” lawyers for the municipality alleged in a state court complaint filed yesterday in Chicago.

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The Food and Drug Administration has publicly released a huge amount of data on drug side effects that it hopes will lead to new applications and research.

Under its open FDA project, the agency has released more than 3 million reports on adverse drug events and medication errors recorded between 2004 and 2013. These kinds of reports were only available before through lengthy Freedom of Information Act requests.

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