Current Events

NTSB POUNDS AMTRAK SAFETY CULTURE: Amtrak had a “deficient” safety culture marked by a hyper-focus on following rules and marred by a silent acceptance of workarounds that enabled one of its trains to crash into an active work zone last year near Philadelphia, killing two track workers and injuring dozens, NTSB determined Tuesday. It was altogether a jarring assessment of the company’s safety posture at the time of the collision, with investigators discovering more than two dozen unsafe conditions revealing an inconsistent safety vision across layers of Amtrak’s corporate structure.

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An autopsy confirmed a 12-year NFL veteran had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, just as a brain scan four years before his death had indicated, a breakthrough researchers hope will help in their quest to diagnose the disease in the living.

“Our impression has been (CTE) is a very unique pattern” in the scans, said Julian Bailes, co-director of NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Ill., which has been working with scientists at UCLA to do PET scans of the brains of hundreds of former football players and military members. “This is the first to have that brain specimen correlation.

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The Food and Drug Administration issued a strong warning Tuesday to consumers to stay away from the herbal supplement kratom, saying regulators are aware of 36 deaths linked to products containing the substance.

Consumers are increasingly using the supplement, which comes from a plant in Southeast Asia, for pain, anxiety and depression, as well as symptoms of opioid withdrawal. The herb also is used recreationally because it produces symptoms such as euphoria.  Proponents say it is a safe way to deal with chronic pain and other ailments, and some researchers are exploring its therapeutic potential, including helping people overcome addictions.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) confirmed on Tuesday it has agreed to pay $69 million to settle New Jersey state diesel emissions claims, one of the last major outstanding diesel legal issues the German automaker faced in the United States.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board criticized Amtrak’s safety record at a hearing on Tuesday on a fatal 2016 crash and said the railroad failed to use critical safety equipment that could have prevented the incident.

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Desiree Ford rubbed the pain cream on her skin and immediately wanted to wash it off.
“Whoa ... time for a shower, this lotion is making me feel weird,” she texted a friend.
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It was just before 10 one August morning in 2016 when Keller resident Brian Steinborn discovered his 4-year-old daughter Olivia in bed, her body cold, skin blue and vomit on her face.
He and his wife, Juli Treadwell, had managed only a few hours of sleep the night before.

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Colgate-Palmolive Co. agreed to settle a lawsuit claiming its talcum-powder products caused a Pennsylvania woman to develop mesothelioma, a fatal lung disease tied to asbestos exposure.

New York-based Colgate-Palmolive moved to resolve Carol Schoeniger’s lawsuit to avoid a trial in a New Jersey state court, according to court filings. Financial terms of the deal weren’t made public.

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NEWTOWN, Conn. — In the years since his 6-year-old son, Benjamin, was fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School, David Wheeler has testified before state legislatures, lobbied members of Congress and sat beside his wife, Francine, as she delivered a speech during one of President Obama’s weekly addresses, pleading for changes to the nation’s gun laws.

This week, the families of the victims plan to be in Hartford, listening as lawyers lay out in state Supreme Court their case that the companies that manufactured and sold the military-style assault rifle used by the gunman bear responsibility for the attack in which 26 people, including 20 children, were killed.

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Actor and martial artist Chuck Norris is suing several health-care companies, claiming his wife was poisoned by a chemical used during magnetic resonance imaging scans.

In a lawsuit filed last week in San Francisco Superior Court, Chuck and Gena Norris argued that gadolinium, a metal used as a contrast agent in MRI scans, caused Gena to sustain gadolinium deposition disease, experiencing “multiple, debilitating bouts of pain and burning throughout her body” and suffering long-term damage.

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The first state court trial in a lawsuit alleging blockbuster drug Xarelto causes internal bleeding is set to begin Monday in Philadelphia, following three federal cases in which Xarelto makers Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc and Bayer Pharma AG prevailed.

In the first trial of the roughly 1,400 Xarelto cases pending in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, an Indiana couple will try to convince the jury that the companies acted negligently and failed to warn patients of the drug’s increased gastrointestinal bleeding risk.

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