BY MATTHEW PERRONE
Updated 4:10 PM PDT, April 9, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The company responsible for a global recall of sleep apnea machines will be barred from resuming production at U.S. facilities until it meets a number of safety requirements, under a long-awaited settlement announced Tuesday by federal officials.

Philips will be required to overhaul its manufacturing and quality control systems and hire independent experts to vet the changes, according to a court order announced by the U.S. Department of Justice. The company must also continue to replace, repair or provide refunds to all U.S. customers who got the defective devices, the department said.

The action is a major step toward resolving one of the biggest medical device recalls in history, which has dragged on for nearly three years.

Most of the devices recalled are continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machines. They force air through a mask to keep mouth and nasal passageways open during sleep. Left untreated, sleep apnea can lead to dangerous drowsiness and increased risk of heart attack.

Oliver Darcy | CNN

Millions of viewers on Monday tuned into special news broadcasts to watch the once-in-a-generation total solar eclipse as it cast a shadow across North America. National news networks deployed anchors and crews along the path of totality from Mazatlán, Mexico, to Indianapolis to Vermont, capturing the awe-inspiring and quasi-religious experience millions felt with live cameras.

But while the pros behind the scenes might have made the coverage look easy, putting on a seamless broadcast was not without challenges.

We spoke with the leaders of CNN’s celestial coverage, who offered insights into how the network deployed teams and resources to track the eclipse as it swept across the US. Below is a Q&A, lightly edited for length and clarity.

By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist

Donald Trump does not speak from conviction. He does not speak from belief or at least any belief other than self-obsession. He certainly does not speak from anything we might recognize as reason; when he’s holding forth from a podium, even the most careful students of Trump the rhetorician will struggle to find the light of complex thought.

You should think of Trump instead as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another, in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. He will say anything if it’s what he feels an audience wants to hear or if it moves him one step closer to a personal or political goal.

Trump’s fundamental disinterest in the truth value of his words is the only context that matters for his comments on abortion Monday morning. In a direct-to-camera statement on Truth Social, the former president told his audience that he does not support a national ban on abortion. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,” Trump said. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state.”

It should be said that this position is itself a strikingly conservative departure from mainstream thinking. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support legal abortion in most or all cases — the constitutional status quo under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. To leave abortion rights up to the states is, as we’ve seen since the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to give state legislatures broad discretion to restrict and limit the bodily autonomy of anyone within their borders.

By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist

Donald Trump does not speak from conviction. He does not speak from belief or at least any belief other than self-obsession. He certainly does not speak from anything we might recognize as reason; when he’s holding forth from a podium, even the most careful students of Trump the rhetorician will struggle to find the light of complex thought.

You should think of Trump instead as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another, in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. He will say anything if it’s what he feels an audience wants to hear or if it moves him one step closer to a personal or political goal.

Trump’s fundamental disinterest in the truth value of his words is the only context that matters for his comments on abortion Monday morning. In a direct-to-camera statement on Truth Social, the former president told his audience that he does not support a national ban on abortion. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,” Trump said. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state.”

It should be said that this position is itself a strikingly conservative departure from mainstream thinking. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support legal abortion in most or all cases — the constitutional status quo under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. To leave abortion rights up to the states is, as we’ve seen since the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to give state legislatures broad discretion to restrict and limit the bodily autonomy of anyone within their borders.