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Johnson & Johnson announced on Tuesday that it is adding $1 billion to its contribution to the all-in settlement deal struck last year that would resolve opioid lawsuits against the company. The settlement is part of the $48 billion framework that four states announced one year ago in which Johnson & Johnson and four other companies agreed to provide $22 billion in cash and $26 billion worth of a generic opioid addiction treatment, product distribution and data tracking measures. (Williams, 10/13)

Wright, like most marijuana growers nationwide, doesn’t have crop insurance. Because federal law defines marijuana as an illegal, dangerous drug, neither federal agencies nor conventional banks and major insurance companies will work with marijuana businesses even if they are legal under state law. Producers and industry supporters now are pushing for changes to federal relief law and seeking state disaster aid. (Quinton, 10/14)

At the peak of the Covid-19 wave that swept through New York City in the spring, with hospitals overwhelmed and more than 700 new virus deaths being reported each day, researchers there scrambled to build artificial intelligence models that could help doctors get a handle on the crisis. Now, results are coming in on how well those models work. The data suggest that these tools may hold promise to help to combat an expected resurgence of cases this winter, though they are far from perfect at predicting a patient’s trajectory. (Robbins, 10/14)

A federal judge in California on Tuesday denied bids by Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes and former top executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani to dismiss the criminal charges they face in connection with the disgraced blood-testing startup. Ms. Holmes, 36 years old, is set to go to trial March 9 on charges she and Mr. Balwani defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and deceived patients by lying about the reliability of Theranos blood tests. Mr. Balwani will face trial separately at a later date. (Davis O'Brien, 10/13)