Current Events

JPMorgan Chase is close to an agreement to pay federal authorities about $2 billion to resolve investigations into whether the bank failed to alert the government to Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, a person familiar with the talks said Thursday.

The deal would include a deferred-prosecution agreement that would give the Justice Department the right to pursue criminal charges against JPMorgan if the bank fails to live up to the settlement, according to the person familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly so spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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A small army of 50 federal railroad investigators will spend the next two months conducting a head-to-toe safety review on the Metro-North Railroad in the wake of the line’s devastating Dec. 1 derailment, officials announced today.

Starting Monday, the Federal Railroad Administration will launch “Operation Deep Dive,” it’s first ever intensive passenger railroad safety review that will examin the Dec. 1 incident and three other disturbing Metro-North mishaps that have occurred since May, officials said.

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JPMorgan Chase and federal authorities are nearing settlements over the bank’s ties to Bernard L. Madoff, striking tentative deals that would involve roughly $2 billion in penalties and a rare criminal action. The government will use a sizable portion of the money to compensate Mr. Madoff’s victims.

The settlements, which are coming together on the anniversary of Mr. Madoff’s arrest at his Manhattan penthouse five years ago on Wednesday, would fault the bank for turning a blind eye to his huge Ponzi scheme, according to people briefed on the case who were not authorized to speak publicly.

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The cancer and liver toxicity risks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) and AstraZeneca Plc (AZN)’s diabetes medicine may outweigh any benefit the drug has on the heart, U.S. regulators said.

The pill, potentially the second to reach the market in a new class of diabetes drugs, has cardiovascular benefit including lower blood pressure and weight loss. Food and Drug Administration staff members were wary that the heart benefits were enough to balance an increased risk of bladder cancer and indications of liver damage, according to a report posted today ahead of a Dec. 12 meeting of advisers to the agency.

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(Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc said on Monday that it was prepared to pay $27.7 million to settle lawsuits by hundreds of people who sued the company over allegations that its osteoporosis drug Fosamax caused bones in the jaw to deteriorate.

Lawyers for Merck and plaintiffs disclosed the proposed settlement at a court hearing in New York to resolve 1,140 lawsuits pending in federal and state courts. Any settlement would need to be approved by a judge.

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The U.S. Supreme Court left intact a $142 million award against Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and let two similar suits go forward with claims that the drugmaker defrauded insurers by illegally marketing its Neurontin epilepsy drug.

The justices without comment today rejected Pfizer’s appeal, letting stand three connected federal appeals court decisions. The cases are part of the fallout from a 2004 guilty plea by Pfizer’s Warner-Lambert unit to charges that it promoted Neurontin for unapproved “off-label’” uses.

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Chrysler is recalling 5,663 cars with all-wheel drive (or 4x4), an 8-speed transmission and a V-6 engine. Affected models are the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Ram 1500 pickup.

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Support is growing for the federal government to stand firm on a 2015 deadline for new rail safety systems to be installed following a fatal commuter train derailment in New York City that experts say could have been prevented with the technology.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), a primary sponsor of the mandate, urged colleagues Thursday not to relax the deadline by which commuter railroads and many freight railroads must deploy "positive train control," or PTC—networks of signals and onboard computers designed to slow or stop trains before accidents occur. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) made a similar appeal after Sunday's crash.

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Johnson & Johnson officials destroyed or misplaced documents related to its vaginal-mesh implants and should be barred from relying on some defenses in planned trials over the devices, patients’ lawyers said.

Officials of J&J’s Ethicon unit, which made the company’s Gynecare Prolift implant, lost or disposed of potentially hundreds of thousands of documents over a decade even though they were ordered by executives to preserve them, attorneys for women who blame the devices for their injuries said in a court filing in West Virginia Dec. 2.

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When a Metro-North train jumped the tracks in the Bronx on Sunday morning, killing four people and injuring more than 70, it was going 82 miles per hour, on a 30 m.p.h. curve. Why it hit that horrific speed — whether because the engineer was sleeping, distracted or incapacitated, or because of some catastrophic mechanical failure — is a question for the National Transportation Safety Board, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs Metro-North, and criminal investigators and prosecutors.

The question for the rest of us is why that train — and thousands of other trains in commuter and freight railroads across the country — had no automated system to slow or stop it when it ran out of control.

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This is your heart on an energy drink, and it’s contracting significantly faster than it was before you opened that can full of liquid stimulant.