Today's Globe: nurses union, health bill, school closing, medical marijuana, RI hospitals, lung repair, device maker charges, vaccine technology

Unionized nurses in Massachusetts are moving toward affiliating with their counterparts in California and more than 20 other states to create the largest nurses union in US history, a 150,000-member powerhouse that would lobby lawmakers for higher staffing levels and an overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

House Democrats reached agreement yesterday on key elements of a health care bill that would vastly alter America’s medical landscape, requiring virtually universal sign-ups and establishing a new government-run insurance option for millions.

An East Longmeadow elementary school has been closed for the rest of the week after about a fifth of its students came down with flulike symptoms (fifth item).

New Hampshire fell two votes short yesterday of becoming the 14th state to legalize marijuana use by severely ill people after the state Senate failed to override Governor John Lynch’s veto.

Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch has approved a new affiliation between Roger Williams Medical Center and St. Joseph’s Health Services.

Call it a genetic patch job for worn lungs: Canadian researchers took donated lungs deemed too damaged to transplant and repaired them with outside-the-body gene therapy.

A federal grand jury indicted Hopkinton medical device maker Stryker Biotech and several key employees yesterday on charges that they illegally marketed a surgical device and covered up the misconduct.

"Beneath all of the anger and frustration surrounding the current flu vaccine supply problem is a simple fact - as we gear up to fight a new flu strain in our first pandemic winter in 40 years, we employ a really old technology to make flu vaccines," Tom Lyons, a health communications consultant and a former director of public health strategy and communication for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, writes on the opinion page. "The nation needs to find a better option."