Abbott Laboratories has agreed to voluntarily withdraw its obesity drug Meridia from the U.S. market, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday.

Meridia was approved by the FDA in 1997 but since then has been linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The agency recently requested the market withdrawal after a trial demonstrated a 16 percent increase in the risk of serious heart events in people who took the drug.

"Meridia’s continued availability is not justified when you compare the very modest weight loss that people achieve on this drug to their risk of heart attack or stroke," said John Jenkins, director of the Office of New Drugs in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). "Physicians are advised to stop prescribing Meridia to their patients and patients should stop taking this medication. Patients should talk to their healthcare provider about alternative weight loss and weight-loss maintenance programs."

Federal mine inspectors last week temporarily closed 11 sections of a Massey-owned West Virginia coal mine after discovering serious safety violations there, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced this week.

In surprise inspections conducted at the end of September, mine-safety officials found operators at Massey's Seng Creek Powellton mine were cutting further into the coal seam than was legally permissible.

MSHA inspectors also discovered line curtains — plastic sheets that funnel ventilated air to prevent coal dust and methane gas from accumulating — had been rolled up so they wouldn't impede heavy equipment and slow down the production of coal. 

In one section, MSHA said, "suspended coal dust was so thick it was difficult to determine the proximity of the massive continuous mining machine."

Joseph Main, who heads MSHA, said the findings "only reinforce the need for new legislation to halt these kinds of practices."

Democrats in both chambers of Congress are pushing legislation to bolster the protections for the nation's miners, but the mining industry opposes the changes, saying they would put burdensome new requirements on mining companies at the expense of jobs and the economy.

In that vein, Don Blankenship, Massey's pugnacious CEO, last month blamed stricter MSHA oversight since the UBB blast for lower-than-expected quarterly earnings. 

"Increasingly stringent enforcement actions by MSHA across our operations and throughout the Central Appalachian region have resulted in lost shifts and loss of productivity,” he said in a statement. 

Blankenship, who has also blamed MSHA for the UBB blast, has repeatedly said Massey takes safety seriously and can police itself to ensure miner protection.

In response to last week's findings at Seng Creek, however, the company is singing an entirely different tune. 

"This situation was very frustrating and totally unacceptable," Massey said in a statement. "We appreciate MSHA’s blitz for uncovering conduct that we did not uncover ourselves. We welcome any effort — whether by MSHA, the state or Massey — that uncovers such conduct."

Massey said the supervisor involved had been instructed differently but simply ignored the orders. He has since been fired, Massey said.

A number of former Massy miners have testified, however, that practices like yanking down the line curtains were standard in Massey mines.

"When we got to a section to mine coal, they’d tear down the ventilation curtain," former Massey miner Jeff Harris told lawmakers in April. "The air was so thick you could hardly see in front of you. When an MSHA inspector came to the section, we’d hang the curtain, but as soon as the inspector left, the curtain came down again."

The surprise inspections roughly coincided with the six-month anniversary of the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine, another Massey-owned operation where 29 miners were killed in April. 

Main said the Seng Creek inspections are clear evidence Massey hasn't taken any lessons from the disaster. 

"Rather than learn from this tragedy, there are mine operators that continue the 'catch me if you can' tactics, ignoring basic mining laws, and placing their workers at great risk of injury, illness and mine explosions," Main said. "They know that MSHA cannot be at the mines all the time, and miners pay the ultimate price." 

Joe Miller, the Republican nominee in Alaska's tight Senate race, admitted Thursday that his family received federally subsidized healthcare benefits through programs he considers unconstitutional.

Miller, a father of eight who's running on a platform of fiscal conservatism, said his family received health benefits through Medicaid and Denali Care, Alaska's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is funded primarily with federal dollars, the Anchorage Daily News reported Thursday.

"I have the same sort of struggles in my past that other people have had," Miller said Thursday, according to the Daily News. "There is a proper role for government. The question is, who controls the power, is it at the federal level or the state level? It’s our perspective that the state is the best arbiter, the state is the best point at which we make those decisions."

Miller, a Tea Party candidate who defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) in the August GOP primary, is calling both to privatize the nation's entitlement programs and to shift them under state control. Those programs aren't authorized by the Constitution, he says, and need reforming to rein in federal spending.

"That doesn’t mean we cut off the programs," he said Thursday. "That is ultimately a state decision."

Murkowski doesn't buy it

Miller's statements weren't overlooked by Murkowski, who's running against Miller as a write-in candidate in November's midterms.

“What I find so hypocritical about Miller is he has stated repeatedly his opposition to these programs, stating that they are unconstitutional," Murkowsi said, according to the Daily News. "So if you believe they are unconstitutional then why would you avail yourself of these safety nets? … You either walk the talk, or you don’t."

In fund-raising efforts during the primary, Miller had criticized Murkowski for voting with Democrats in early 2009 to expand the CHIP program. 

On Thursday, Miller said he was being critical of the expansion, not CHIP itself, the Daily News reported.

Defending his decision to accept the government help, Miller said the nation's budget crisis wasn't as severe at the time.

"We’ve also got a federal government today which is in completely different conditions than it used to be," he said, according to the Daily News. "At the time, I don’t know what the deficit was, but it certainly was less than half, I believe, than what it was today." http://bit.ly/cHFCb6

The timing could not be worse for the administration as undecided voters are making up their minds on congressional candidates.

Gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid (D), the son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said it during a debate.

Requiring individuals to buy health insurance does not violate the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Joe Miller, the Republican vying for Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R) seat in Alaska, is declining to reveal what federal assistance (if any) he's received in the past, the Anchorage Daily News reported this week.

Miller, a Tea Party candidate who defeated Murkowski in the GOP primary in August, has said that the federal entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional and should therefore be run by the states.

But asked if Miller's family has benefited from any government-funded programs for low-income folks, his office clammed up.

"I don’t know why we have to answer just broadside questions on, 'Did Joe ever receive…?'" Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto told the Daily News by phone Wednesday. "I mean, do we have to tell? 

"It seems to me that if a specific question comes up, or raised by specific facts, maybe we should have to answer."

Miller, who says his parents receive both Social Security and Medicare benefits, is calling on the privatization of both, for the sake of reining in spending in Washington.

Still, it hasn't prevented him from tapping government subsidies in the past. 

In the 1990s, Miller received more than $7,000 in federal farm subsidies for land he owned in Kansas, the Alaska Dispatch reported last month. 

More recently, the Anchorage Daily News discovered that Miller and his wife got a low-income discount on Alaska hunting and fishing licenses while Miller was earning $70,000 per year as an attorney.

Miller, a father of eight, told The Associated Press last month that the benefits his family has received in the past are "pretty darn irrelevant" to the current Senate race.

Whatever the arguments for contesting the government's ability to force Americans to buy insurance, groundless questions about President Obama's birthplace isn't one of them, a federal judge in Virginia ruled this week.

Judge Henry Hudson on Wednesday denied petitioner Eve Ellingwood's motion to intervene in Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against the health reform law. Ellingwood's motion argues that the "illegally obtained alleged" healthcare law is "illegal and void" because Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Her main exhibit: A tabloid Globe story from August 2010 revealing "shocking proof" that Obama was born in Kenya.

"The most important reason for my request for Intervention is the fact that Barack Obama is an illegal president," Ellingwood argues in her motion. "Therefore, any and all actions which have been made, and/or are proposed to be made by him, are null and void."

Ellingwood is a retired administrative law judge for the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. She was also a quixotic 2008 candidate for Congress who was beaten in the Republican primary for Nevada's 1st congressional district.

In her rambling motion, Ellingwood explains that she "loves all people - Black, jewish, asian, white, native and any and all others" and that "this litigation is being prosecuted to correct extreme wrongs caused by bad people from any of those people."

She goes on to argue Obama has been giving "his staff's cronies in Wall Street" billions of dollars "by lying and calling it stimulus money" and that her "life has been threatened not to tell this story." 

Cuccinelli filed his lawsuit on March 23, the day Obama signed healthcare reform into law. Hudson has decided to allow the lawsuit to go forward.

Democrats are largely shunning the reform law on the stump — even parts they think are winners with the public.