London-based DeepMind, owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, focuses heavily on the specifics of using artificial intelligence in health care, and on Monday it released a study showing the progress it’s made in using AI to diagnose eye conditions.

Published in the science journal Nature Medicine, the study reports that DeepMind, in partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, has trained its algorithms to detect over 50 sight-threatening conditions to the same accuracy as expert clinicians. It’s also capable of correctly recommending the most appropriate course of action for patients and prioritize those in most urgent need of care.

In a project that began two years ago, DeepMind trained its machine learning algorithms using thousands of historic and fully anonymized eye scans to identify diseases that could lead to sight loss. According to the study, the system can now do so with 94 percent accuracy, and the hope is that it could eventually be used to transform how eye exams are conducted around the world.

AI is taking on a number of roles within health care more widely. In June, Babylon Health said that it gave its artificial intelligence technology the same test required of would-be general practitioners in Britain and that the AI performed better than humans. In March, researchers found that machine learning can classify heart anatomy on an ultrasound scan better than a human. AI is also being used to help emergency call dispatchers in Europe detect heart attack situations.

Diagnosing eye diseases from ocular scans is a complex and time-consuming for doctors. Also, an aging global population means eye disease is becoming more prevalent, increasing the burden on healthcare systems. That’s providing the opportunity for AI to pitch in.

“The number of eye scans we’re performing is growing at a pace much faster than human experts are able to interpret them,” said Pearse Keane, consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields, in a statement. “There is a risk that this may cause delays in the diagnosis and treatment of sight-threatening diseases, which can be devastating for patients.”

Using AI instead could mean earlier diagnoses for patients and therefore earlier treatment, leading to less deterioration in eyesight down the line. “It gives us the best chance of saving people’s sight,” said Keane.

DeepMind’s AI has been trained using one particular type of eye scanner, but researchers say it’s compatible with any model. Not only does this mean it can be used widely and without hardware restrictions, but that it will remain useful in the future even when equipment is replaced and updated.

The AI can also explain to doctors how it arrived at a particular decision, which will allow the doctors to scrutinize whether it’s made the right call before going ahead with treatment.

Before the AI can be used in hospitals to diagnose real patients it must now go through clinical trials and gain regulatory approval.

Chemical giant Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289m in compensatory and punitive damages to a man who claimed herbicides containing glyphosate had caused his cancer. In a landmark case, a Californian jury found that Monsanto knew its Roundup and RangerPro weedkillers were dangerous and failed to warn consumers. It’s the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging a glyphosate link to cancer.

Monsanto denies that glyphosate causes cancer and says it intends to appeal against the ruling. “The jury got it wrong,” vice-president Scott Partridge said outside the courthouse in San Francisco.

Groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014. His lawyers said he regularly used a form of RangerPro while working at a school in Benicia, California. He is among more than 5,000 similar plaintiffs across the US. The California ruling is likely to lead to hundreds of other claims against Monsanto, which was recently bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG.

Following an eight-week trial, jurors found that the company had acted with “malice” and that its weedkillers contributed “substantially” to Mr Johnson’s terminal illness. Mr Johnson’s lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury’s verdict showed that the evidence against the product was “overwhelming.”

The company disagreed. “Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews – and conclusions by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world – support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr Johnson’s cancer,”

Glyphosate is the world’s most common weedkiller and the science about its safety is still far from settled.

In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency, concluded that it was “probably carcinogenic to humans”. but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to insist that glyphosate is safe when used carefully.

Campaigners question how the EPA assessment was reached, citing evidence of what they say was inappropriate industry involvement in the decision. Some Democrats have even called for a Department of Justice investigation into alleged collusion between government officials and Monsanto.

In California, where a judge recently ruled that coffee must carry a cancer warning, the agriculture industry sued to prevent such a label for glyphosate even though the state lists it as a chemical known to cause cancer.

In Europe the battle over glyphosate has been fierce. French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to ban it despite the resistance of some French lawmakers and the fact that the European Commission recently granted the weedkiller another five-year licence.

The evidence used in the case will likely be used to support industrial injury claims by California workers’ who have had work related exposure to glyphosate and suffer health consequences.

The U.S. Justice Department has joined several whistleblower lawsuits against Indivior Plc and Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC, alleging that the drugmakers improperly marketed the opioid addiction treatment Suboxone.

The Justice Department in filings last week in federal court in Abingdon, Virginia, said it was intervening in four separate whistleblower lawsuits related to the Britain-based companies’ marketing of Suboxone and the related drug Subutex.

According to Reuters, the action came after Indivior, which was spun out of Reckitt in 2014, said last month it was in “advanced discussions” with the Justice Department to resolve an investigation dating back to 2013 related to its marketing practices.

Indivior said it has set aside $438 million to cover legal matters, most of which relates to the investigation. Reckitt has separately reserved 303 million pounds ($390 million) in connection with the investigation.

“We have been cooperating with the DOJ in its investigation for several years, and we remain in advanced discussions about a possible resolution that would render any suit by the department unnecessary,” Indivior said in a statement.

Reckitt spokeswoman Patty O’Hayer said on Wednesday that the company “will be presenting our case to the DOJ in the appropriate channels to defend the actions that we believe that we have taken.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The lawsuits were filed under the False Claims Act, which allows whistleblowers to sue companies on the government’s behalf. The government may intervene in the cases, which is typically a major boost for them.

Among the complaints unsealed on Aug. 2 was one filed by former Reckitt employee Ann Marie Williams.

Her 2013 lawsuit alleged the companies marketed unapproved dosages and uses of Suboxone and Subutex and claimed Reckitt made misleading claims to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to obtain approval for a dissolvable film version of Suboxone.

The lawsuit claimed that as a period of marketing exclusivity granted by the FDA for the tablet form of Suboxone was coming to an end, Reckitt sought U.S. approval of a new patent-protected dissolvable strip version of the drug, which it claimed would be safer and less susceptible to abuse.

But the lawsuit alleges that the film version was inferior to the tablets as it could be more easily diverted for improper purposes and posed an increased risk to children who could accidentally put it in their mouths.

The companies marketed the Suboxone film as “safer” for patients and children than tablets, the lawsuit said.

The case is U.S. ex rel. Williams v. Reckitt Benckiser Inc, et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of Virginia, No. 13-cv-00036.

Illicit use of pharmaceutical fentanyl and its analogues first appeared in the mid-1970s in the medical community and continues in the present.

More than 12 different analogues of fentanyl, all unapproved and clandestinely-produced, have been identified in the U.S. drug traffic. The biological effects of the fentanyl analogues are similar to those of heroin, with the exception that many users report a noticeably less euphoric high associated with the drug and stronger sedative and analgesic effects.

Fentanyl analogues may be hundreds of times more potent than heroin.

Non-medical use of fentanyl by individuals without opiate tolerance can be very dangerous and has resulted in numerous deaths. Even those with opiate tolerances are at high risk for overdoses.

And fentanyl is regularly being smuggled into California.

This month 20 year old Flavio Diego Rivera Davalos, was sentenced to 87 months in custody based on his guilty plea admitting that he smuggled approximately 77 pounds of fentanyl into the United States.

Davalos, who was 19 at the time of the offense, was arrested at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on December 8, 2017 following one of the largest seizures of the deadly opioid along the Southwest border.

According to expert opinions included in court records, 77 pounds of fentanyl would yield 800,000 potentially fatal dosage units and a market value of more than $2 million.

And also this August, Fernando Jesus Peraza, a U.S. citizen living in Tijuana, was arraigned in federal court on charges of importing over 20,000 fentanyl pills in what is believed to be the largest seizure of fentanyl in pill form along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Peraza, who works in San Diego County, was arrested early August 9, at the San Ysidro Port of Entry

Peraza was the driver, registered owner and sole occupant of the vehicle. U.S. Custom Border & Protection officers initially contacted Peraza in preprimary inspection area but was then referred to secondary inspection, where officers found four packages concealed in the passenger side rear quarter panel. The pills tested positive for fentanyl but were designed to resemble M30s, or oxycodone.

Earlier this month, Cristian Araujo Aguirre, 19 of Tijuana, was charged with importing 11,490 fentanyl pills, 61 pounds of methamphetamine and 14 pounds of heroin.

Aguirre was arrested at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on August 1, 2018. Aguirre is currently detained. His next court appearance is on August 31, 2018.

“This is the biggest fentanyl pill seizure we’ve seen along the Southwest Border, and it’s likely a national record,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman.

August is only 9 days old. The “national record” may be broken (again) before the end of the month.

Katherine Williams Dodd, 29, of Napa, has just been appointed by Governor Brown to the California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board.

Dodd has served as deputy legal affairs secretary in the Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. since 2017. She was assistant general manager and corporate secretary at Frog’s Leap Winery from 2016 to 2017.

Dodd was a legislative advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union of California Center for Advocacy and Policy from 2013 to 2016, where she was a legislative assistant from 2010 to 2013.

She earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. She has been admitted to the California State Bar as an attorney since May 27, 2015, slightly more than three years ago.

Dodd is president of the Puertas Abiertas Community Resource Center Board of Directors.

She has no apparent experience in the practice of Workers’ Compensation law, or claims administration. This is the second WCAB appointment by Governor Brown this year of a candidate with virtually no experience in the field.

Earlier this month he appointed Juan Pedro Gaffney, 80, of Sebastopol to the California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board.

Gaffney has been a member of the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board since 2017 and director at Coro Hispano de San Francisco since 1975.

He was director of Hispanic liturgy at Mission Dolores from 1993 to 2008 and was the first artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Gaffney was an associate professor of philosophy at St. Joseph’s College and a lecturer at Saint Mary’s College from 1972 to 1996.

Gaffney is a vice president of the Instituto Pro Música de California. He has been researching, editing, teaching and performing the choral music of Latin America, Spain and Portugal for the past 35 years.

In 1975 he founded the Coro Hispano de San Francisco and Conjunto Nuevo Mundo, and conjointly, the Instituto Pro Música’s Musicological Research Program, through which he has transcribed and/or edited more than 100 works by New World Renaissance and Baroque masters.

Maestro Gaffney also serves as Director of Hispanic Liturgy at the Basilica of Mission San Francisco de Asís.

He also does not have any background in workers’ compensation.

This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $153,689. Dodd is a Democrat, and is Sen. Bill Dodd’s daughter in law. Gaffney is reportedly Brown’s high school classmate.