Risk

WASHINGTON - In a scathing report, Senate investigators said JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s huge trading losses last year were caused by high-risk market bets that bank executives failed to catch despite numerous red flags. The 307-page, bipartisan report released Thursday said the bank tried to hide the $6.2 billion of losses in the so-called London Whale trades from regulators and the public. The report went on to criticize JPMorgan's federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for failing to discover and properly investigate the trades.

Boeing Co. said its planned fixes for the issues with its lithium-ion battery systems on the 787 Dreamliner passenger jet removes any related risk of a fire breaking out.   Speaking to reporters from Tokyo, Boeing officials addressed concerns about its new flagship jet, which has been grounded worldwide since Jan. 16 after two incidents within two weeks involving the battery systems. FULL COVERAGE: Boeing's troubled Dreamliner Boeing's plan to fix to the 787 battery system involves insulating and spacing out parts, reducing charging levels so the battery cannot be overcharged and enclosing the lithium-ion batteries in stainless-steel cases so very little oxygen can get at them.

The big screen's most formidable mama's boy is coming to TV. Norman Bates, the deranged character of "Psycho" fame, is proving movie stars aren't the only ones hunkering down to the small screen - some of cinema's fictional personas are also making the move. "Bates Motel" is a sort-of prequel to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 standard set to roll out Monday on A&E. The new series, from Carlton Cuse ("Lost") and Kerry Ehrin ("Friday Night Lights"), tracks the notorious psychopath during his adolescent years in the present day. (Cue the violin screeches.)

These days, thanks to advances in treatment and detection, millions of women survive breast cancer.   But surviving the disease doesn't necessarily mean the entire battle is over, a population-based study of breast cancer survivors in Sweden and Denmark, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine , seems to suggest. Assessing a total of 2,168 women whose breast cancer was treated with radiation therapy between 1958 and 2001, a team of researchers found that women's chances of having a major coronary event - a heart attack, bypass surgery or heart disease death - rose in proportion with the radiation dose they received, even at the lower doses of radiation delivered in newer treatments.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday warned that the widely prescribed antibiotic azithromycin -- marketed as Zithromax and Zmax -- may cause potentially fatal changes in the heart rhythm of people who are taking medications to treat existing heart arrhythmia or who have a slower-than normal heart beat or magnesium or potassium deficiencies. Patients with a prolonged QT interval, a heart rhythm irregularity that is a risk factor for ventricular arrhythmias, also should avoid use of the antibiotic, the FDA warned . Azithromycin, one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics, is used to treat bacterial infections such as ear infections in children, urinary infections, bronchitis, pneumonia and chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease.

California school districts are slowly emerging from financial crisis, with the number in danger of running out of cash dropping by one-third over last year, state education officials announced Monday. "I can say with growing confidence that the worst of California's school funding crisis is behind us," state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said in a statement. The number of school districts that won't or may not meet their financial obligations this year and the two subsequent years dropped to 124 from 188 last May, according to the report released by the state Department of Education.

SACRAMENTO -- Though California is dominated by Democrats, the state is poised to once again be a key battleground in determining which party controls the House of Representatives in 2014. Democrats picked up four seats in the state in 2012, buoyed by newly drawn districts and President Obama's landslide in the state. However, Republicans are hoping to win back some of those seats in 2014, taking advantage of typically smaller and more conservative voter turnout in a non-presidential year.

CALI, Colombia - Union organizer Juan Carlos Perez saw two gunmen in front of his house and tried to escape though the back door. But he was killed minutes later - in front of half a dozen horrified co-workers - when the assassins caught up to him at a rural bus stop. They then nonchalantly drove away on their motorbikes, witnesses of the Jan. 28 slaying said. Perez, a 30-year-old sugar cane cutter, had been fighting for better working conditions for 1,000 workers at La Cabana sugar mill in Guachene, south of Cali, a facility with a history of labor unrest.

The 9.0-magnitude Tohoku-Oki earthquake and resulting tsunami that triggered a meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has resulted in only a small increase in lifetime cancer risks for people living nearby, and an even smaller risk for populations outside of Japan, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. The uptick in disease resulting from radiation released by the crippled plant is "likely to remain below detectable levels," the study authors concluded in their 166-page report released Thursday.

The 9.0-magnitude Tohoku-Oki earthquake and resulting tsunami that triggered a meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station has resulted in only a small increase in lifetime cancer risks for people living nearby, and an even smaller risk for populations outside of Japan, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. The uptick in disease resulting from radiation released by the wrecked plant is “likely to remain below detectable levels,” the study authors concluded in their 166-page report, released Thursday.