The nation's scientific establishment has issued a blunt warning that the risks posed by climate change are "pressing" and demand substantial action, reports The New York Times. The warning came in a report by the National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences. It offered no specific recommendations [...]
Federal investigators are looking into whether Google has been posting ads of illegal pharmacies, and the web giant has set aside $500 million for "a potential resolution" of a federal investigation, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing obtained by The New York Times. As the Times reports, the [...]
Federal authorities say that the deployment of inexperienced air traffic controllers at some of the nation's busiest airports may explain the soaring number of near-collisions in American skies last year. As the Associated Press reports, the Department of Transportation, which oversees air traffic through the Federal Aviation Administration, testified before [...]
Amid the crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi reactor, the threat that earthquakes and tsunamis pose to nuclear safety is drawing lots of attention. But many experts say that a much more pressing concern, and a much more likely source of a domestic disaster, is fire. As the Center for Public [...]
Bedbugs typically are thought of as a disgusting nuisance rather than a clear and present health danger, but a Canadian research team has discovered that they can carry potentially hazardous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As LiveScience reports, the researchers detected so-called superbugs in bedbugs extracted from three hospital patients in Vancouver. The [...]
As Japan struggles to deal with the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the government is pulling back from plans to increase the nation's reliance on nuclear power. As the Associated Press reports, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced on Tuesday that Japan will drop the plan it announced last [...]
Amid growing reports of serious health complications, federal authorities have ordered manufacturers of a type of artificial hip to conduct follow-up safety studies of the devices. As The New York Times reports, the action by the Food and Drug Administration applies to 21 manufacturers of "metal-on-metal" hips. For the agency [...]
Children rushed to the hospital after a knock on the noggin may wind up receiving a CT scan that they don't need, exposing them to unnecessary doses of radiation. As HealthDay News reports, that issue is raised by a study in the journal Pediatrics that reviewed more than 40,000 emergency [...]
Federal product safety regulators are warning that parents immediately should stop using certain clip-on, tabletop chairs for infants and toddlers, and they say that the company that sells the items has refused to carry out a product recall acceptable to the agency. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that some [...]
Autism and related conditions might be far more widespread than previously thought. As the Los Angeles Times reports, a groundbreaking study of South Korean children found that 2.6 percent -- one out of every 38 kids -- suffer from from autism spectrum disorders, which can range from severe autism to [...]
Despite an unprecedented effort to crack down on threats to the safety of the food supply, contamination scandals abound in China. As The New York Times reports, ever since melamine-tainted milk sickened about 300,000 infants and killed at least six in 2008, China's government has worked to modernize its regulatory [...]
The Government Accountability Office has no bone to pick with the way the nation's school meals program inspects ground beef for food-borne illnesses. In a new report, the GAO says that the U.S. Department of Agriculture actually calls for the raw meat for school children to be tested more thoroughly [...]
Despite widespread concerns about the potential influence of drug and medical device company money on doctors, societies that represent specialists continue to take in lots of Big Pharma cash. As ProPublica reports, the Heart Rhythm Society provides a leading illustration of the practice. It pulls in millions off of its [...]
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has called for the closing of a controversial nuclear plant about 120 miles southwest of Tokyo until improvements are made to protect the facility and the surrounding region against the risk of an earthquake and tsunami. As Agence France-Presse reports, the Japanese government wants the [...]
Barely a year after the nation's deadliest coal mining accident in four decades, the industry is calling for relaxing federal regulatory procedures to exempt mines with good safety records from routine workplace inspections. As the The Charleston Gazette reports, a representative from the National Mining Assn. suggested the idea at [...]