Poor Mojo's Newswire

The 6-3 decision upheld $6.7 million in damages to a musician from Vermont who lost an arm to gangrene after being injected in 2000 with an anti-nausea drug manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

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"Congress did not intend FDA oversight to be the exclusive means of ensuring drug safety and effectiveness," Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion.

Noting that the federal agency "has limited resources to monitor the 11,000 drugs on the market," Stevens said Congress in more than 70 years of regulating pharmaceuticals has never barred damage suits against drugmakers. Despite FDA oversight, he said, "the manufacturer bears responsibility for the content of its label."

Footage from a nearby bar’s video surveillance camera shows the two officers helping the woman into her building on Dec. 7 and returning twice during the next two hours, according to the bar owner, who provided the video to investigators.

The officers have been placed on modified duty and have had to turn in their guns and badges while investigators from the Police Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office look into the accusations of rape and another accusation of drug possession, the police said. No arrests have been made, the police said.

With the Web’s advertising engine stalling just as newspapers are under pressure, some publishers are second-guessing their liberal attitude toward free content.

“A lot of news organizations are saying, ‘We’re not willing to accept the tiny fraction of a penny that we get from the page views that these links are sending in,’ ” said Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. “They think they need to defend their turf more aggressively.”

Copyright infringement lawsuits directed at bloggers and other online publishers seem to be on the rise.

In the past 20 years, longtime residents like Smith and some newcomers to the housing complex have seen foul-smelling chemicals oozing up in their backyards, cataloged their health problems and weathered major cleanups.

"We're like a Katrina without the flood," Smith said.

But their pleas to be relocated have not succeeded, leaving Smith and dozens of other residents feeling stuck. Despite assurances from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control that the chemicals buried beneath their buildings and playgrounds no longer threaten their health, they don't feel well and want to start anew elsewhere.