Current Events

TUESDAY, Dec. 19, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday called for tougher warnings and "additional research" into a dye commonly used with standard MRIs.

The dye -- a "contrast agent" -- contains a metal called gadolinium.
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(Reuters) - Lawyers for General Motors (GM.N) on Monday urged a federal bankruptcy judge in Manhattan to throw out a settlement that would require the company to pay $1 billion to car owners suing over faulty ignition switches.

The carmaker made its argument on the first day of a scheduled three-day bench trial before Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
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It was just a few minutes after 2 a.m. when Dennis Fegan awoke with a start. He got up from his bed and went to the laundry room, where he kept a calendar to record his seizures, and made a vertical mark on July 2, 2006. By late morning, when his parents found him and frantically called an ambulance, there were a dozen vertical marks on the date.
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A Bergen County jury returned a $15 million verdict Thursday against Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon in a suit over alleged defects in its Prolift pelvic repair product.

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A group of Democratic state attorneys general told President Donald Trump they’re prepared to take matters into their own hands if the administration fails to enforce consumer-protection laws.

Trump’s choice of budget director Mick Mulvaney as acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Mulvaney has mocked, suggests the consumer watchdog may be less-than-zealous under his watch, 17 attorneys general wrote Tuesday in a letter to the president. The group, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his California counterpart, Xavier Becerra, said they’ll pick up wherever Mulvaney leaves off.

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More than 200 people became sick and five were hospitalized in Australia after an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness aboard a cruise ship earlier this month.

Symptoms were reported by 209 guests among the 5,796 people aboard Ovation of the Seas ship, according to Royal Caribbean International cruise line spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez. The ship returned to Sydney on Dec. 7 at the end of a 14-night cruise that departed Singapore on Nov. 23.
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Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. is among the deadliest manufacturers in the nation for workers - resulting in deaths of five workers since 2015 - and the company’s safety lapses have also contributed to deaths of motorists on the road, a six-month investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Tires involved in three fatal accidents were manufactured in Goodyear plants in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Danville, Virginia, where intense production demands and leaks in the roof during storms have endangered both workers and consumers, Reveal’s investigation found.

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After doing nearly 28 years for a crime he didn't commit, Bernard Young says he's not angry or bitter - though he's still got a score to settle with the City of Detroit and the police officer he claims wronged him.

On Wednesday,  the 59-year-old man whose hair turned gray in the prison system sued the City of Detroit and Sgt. Shelley Foy, claiming they are both responsible for letting him serve 27 years and 179 days in prison for molestation when they knew another man had committed the crime.

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Living within half a mile of a hydraulic fracturing site carries a serious risk for pregnant women, a new study has found. The drilling technique, also known as fracking, injects high-pressure water laced with chemicals into underground rock to release natural gas.

Women who lived within that distance to fracking operations in Pennsylvania were 25 percent more likely to give birth to low-weight infants than were mothers who lived more than two miles beyond the sites.

The five-year study of more than 1.1 million births in the state between 2004 and 2013, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, also found lower birth weights, although not as low, in infants whose mothers lived between half a mile and two miles from a fracking site.
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An Oklahoma judge has denied a bid by drugmakers including Purdue Pharma LP and Johnson & Johnson to dismiss a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general claiming the companies deceptively marketed opioid painkillers.

Cleveland County Judge Thad Balkman in Norman, Oklahoma on Tuesday largely rejected the arguments put forth by Purdue, J&J, Allergan PLC and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd to duck a lawsuit Attorney General Mike Hunter filed in June.

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Years after suing drug giant Merck & Co. for serious injuries allegedly caused by osteoporosis drug Fosamax, more than 500 plaintiffs will have to wait to hear the U.S. Solicitor General's take on their case, and the outcome could reverberate across the pharmaceutical industry.

That's because Merck's bid at the U.
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