County Closes 7-Year-Old's Lemonade Stand

County chair: 7-year-old is free to open shop

(NEWSER) - The top elected official of the Oregon county that closed a 7-year-old girl's lemonade stand says he's sorry inspectors soured her business, and she won't be asked to produce a $120 permit next time. Running a lemonade stand "is a classic, iconic American kid thing to do," and he used to run lemonade stands himself, Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen told the Oregonian . More»

US must get a handle on public health crisis

(NEWSER) - A widespread vice has a negative effect on Americans' health, and it's up to the government to do something about it. That approach worked for tobacco, David Lazarus writes for the LA Times , and it can work for obesity, too. "The answer seems obvious," he argues. "If we want to protect ourselves from a deadly epidemic of heart disease, diabetes and other ailments, just as we've taken steps to protect ourselves from an epidemic of lung cancer, we need to act." More»

(AP) - Congress struck the US government's strongest anti-smoking blow in decades today with a Senate vote to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in cigarettes, drastically curtail ads, and ban candied tobacco products aimed at young people. Cigarette foes say the changes could cut into the 400,000 deaths every year caused by smoking and reduce the $100 billion in annual health-care costs linked to tobacco. More»

Public meetings are rare, and dissent isn't disclosed

(NEWSER) - The Federal Reserve has been busily rewriting the rules of the financial system for years now, and it's been doing almost all of it behind closed doors. The Fed has held 47 votes on new regulations since Dodd-Frank was passed in July 2010, and only two of those were at public meetings; in the rest, votes were cast via email, and the details of those votes disclosed to the public only last week when the Wall Street Journal requested them. The Journal notes that while the closed meetings are legal, they do represent a sea change: In the 1980s and 1990s, the Fed held as many as 31 public meetings annually. More»

Product deemed unsafe was still sold overseas, derivative sold in US

(NEWSER) - Johnson & Johnson continued to sell an ill-designed artificial hip overseas even after the FDA deemed it unsafe—and used a regulatory loophole to sell a related model with the same design issue in the US, the New York Times reports. The FDA sent Johnson & Johnson a non-approval letter on the implants, which were marketed under the name ASR, in August 2009. But Johnson & Johnson never disclosed that letter, instead announcing in November 2009 that it would phase out the ASR over declining sales. More»