The judge overseeing Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy said Monday that some members of the Sackler family who own the OxyContin maker face a “substantial risk” of liability and could be on the hook for “huge amounts of money” over claims the company fueled the opioid epidemic. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, made the remark during closing arguments in a trial over Purdue’s proposed reorganization plan. Drain said he believes some Sacklers face liability, but that “the question is where you draw the line.” Under the deal, which Purdue said …

Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in the United States, has died in Minnesota. He was 38.His family said the Ukrainian-born Vovkovinskiy died of heart disease on Friday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. His mother, Svetlana Vovkovinska, an ICU nurse at Mayo, initially posted about his death on Facebook.Vovkovinskiy came to the Mayo Clinic in 1989 as a child seeking treatment. A tumor pressing against his pituitary gland caused it to secrete abnormal levels of growth hormone. He grew to become the tallest man in the U.S. at 2 meters, …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.  “The public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards of safety effectiveness and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement Monday.The vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioTech was approved for emergency use last December.  More than 200 million doses have been administered in the U.S. and hundreds of millions more worldwide.Information from AP and Reuters was used in this report. …

Scores of firefighters backed by water-dropping aircraft battled a forest fire that broke out early Monday on the southern part of Greece’s Evia island, less than two weeks after an inferno decimated its northern part.   The fire was burning near the village of Fygia where two neighborhoods have been evacuated and was moving toward the coastal tourist village of Marmari, where authorities were preparing boats to evacuate people if needed, according to Athens News Agency.   Forty-six firefighters were battling flames fanned by high winds — assisted by 20 fire engines, three water-dropping airplanes and two helicopters, the …

Parts of the northeastern United States braced for more heavy rains and the potential for flooding Monday as the storm that made landfall as Tropical Storm Henri slowly moved across the region. The bulk of the rain overnight was located over New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The National Hurricane Center expects the center of the storm, now downgraded to a tropical depression, to drift a short distance to the east during the day Monday before eventually making it back out over the Atlantic Ocean by Tuesday morning. Forecasters said total rainfall amounts across much of the …