Thousands in UK take legal action against Johnson & Johnson over alleged talc cancer link
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Thousands of people are taking legal action against the US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, claiming it knowingly sold baby powder containing asbestos-contaminated talc in the UK, theguardian.com reports.
About 3,000 people have alleged that they or a family member developed forms of ovarian cancer or mesothelioma from using Johnson’s Baby Powder, and are seeking damages at the high court in London.
Lawyers for the group said Johnson & Johnson, along with its current and former subsidiaries Johnson & Johnson Management and Kenvue UK, should all be held liable, according to court documents filed on Thursday by KP Law. It estimates the claims amount to more than £1bn.
The lawyers said J&J "concealed" the risk to the public for decades. The company later replaced talc with corn starch but stopped making and selling talc-based baby powder in the UK and globally only in 2023, three years after it ended sales in the US and Canada.
J&J denies the allegations. A spokesperson for Kenvue, J&J’s former consumer health division that was spun off two years ago and has responsibility for talc-related claims outside the US and Canada, said the talc used in baby powder complied with regulations, did not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.
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One killed in school stabbing in Moscow region
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A student was fatally stabbed by a minor, who also wounded a security guard, at an educational institution in the Moscow region early Tuesday, Xinhua reports.
The incident occurred at the Gorki-2 settlement in the western district of Odintsovsky, the committee said, adding that a criminal case has been initiated, the Russian Investigative Committee said.
The victim was a fourth-grade student, said Ksenia Mishonova, children's rights ombudswoman of the Moscow region.
The attacker has been detained and is being transported to investigative authorities, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
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Two gunmen open fire at Bondi Chanukah event, 12 confirmed dead in mass shooting
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A mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that left at least 12 people dead has been declared a terrorist incident, news.com.au reports.
Naveed Akram is confirmed to be one of the two shooters who opened fire on a Jewish Chanukah event shortly before 7pm on Sunday.
Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said bomb disposal were on-site of a vehicle on Campbell Pde which officers believed contained several improvised explosive devices. Police are also probing whether there was a third offender.
Addressing the media, Mr Lanyon confirmed the incident had been designated a terrorist incident.
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Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $40m to women who said talc to blame for cancer
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A California jury on Friday awarded $40m to two women who said Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer, The Guardian reports.
The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.
Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice-president of litigation, said in a statement the company plans to "immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts".
A spokesperson for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, according to court records. Schultz was diagnosed in 2018. Both women are California residents who say they used J&J’s baby powder after bathing for 40 years. Their treatments for ovarian cancer have involved major surgeries and dozens of rounds of chemotherapy, they testified at the trial.
In closing arguments that Reuters viewed on Courtroom View Network, Andy Birchfield, an attorney for the women, told the jury that Johnson & Johnson knew as far back as the 1960s that its product could cause cancer.
Absolutely they knew, they knew and they were doing everything they could to hide it, to bury the truth about the dangers," Birchfield said.
Allison Brown, an attorney for Johnson & Johnson, said the only people to tell Kent and Schultz that their cancers were caused by talc were their lawyers, as the alleged connection isn’t backed by any major US health authority and there is no study that shows talc can migrate from the outside of the body to the reproductive organs.
They don’t have the evidence in this case, and they hope you don’t mind," Brown told the jury.
J&J is facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using its baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings.
The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.
J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts, most recently in April. The bankruptcies had put most cases on hold. Brown and Kent’s cases are the first to go to trial since the latest Chapter 11 attempt was dismissed.
Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with verdicts as high as $4.69bn awarded to women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company has won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.
The majority of lawsuits involve ovarian cancer claims. Cases alleging talc caused a rare and deadly cancer called mesothelioma make up a smaller portion of the claims J&J is facing. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.
In the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, including one for more than $900m in Los Angeles in October.
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China launches Lijian-1 rocket, sending 9 satellites into orbit
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China on Wednesday launched a Lijian-1, also known as Kinetica-1 Y11, carrier rocket with 9 satellites, including one from the United Arab Emirates, onboard, Xinhua reports.
The rocket blasted off at 12:03 p.m. from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. It successfully sent the satellites into their planned orbits.
The UAE-led satellite, named 813, is designed for observing soil, the climate and the environment.
The launch deployed China's first remote-sensing satellite in the power industry, coded Jixing High-Resolution 07D01.
With a spatial resolution better than 0.5 meters, this satellite enables precise monitoring of the structural conditions of power grid equipment, such as transmission lines and pylons.
The satellite can perform continuous east-west strip observations, covering over 200 kilometers of transmission corridor in a single pass, according to the State Grid Electric Power Engineering Research Institute, one of its designers.
Compared to current satellite systems, this new satellite is expected to enhance surveying precision for transmission projects and line inspections by more than fivefold.
The satellite supports diverse applications, from managing ultra-high voltage (UHV) projects and assessing environmental impacts in transmission networks, to inspecting critical power corridors, issuing disaster warnings and evaluating post-disaster damage.
Also among the launch payload were two remote-sensing satellites dedicated to water resource monitoring, urban management, and digital transformation of a district in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province.
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in northern Japan
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in northern Japan, iz.ru cites the meteorological department.
At the moment, a tsunami threat has been declared.
A few minutes after the earthquake, another strong tremor occurred in the north of the country, which was also felt in Tokyo.
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