Current Events

The driller whose floating Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in 2010, causing a massive oil spill, has agreed to settle civil and criminal claims with the federal government for $1.4 billion, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The Deepwater Horizon exploded, burned and sank in April 2010. Eleven men were killed and millions of gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and fouled the shores of coastal states. The well, known as Macondo, was owned by British oil giant BP, which settled its own criminal charges and some of its civil charges in November for $4.5 billion.

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Four major national retailers — Amazon.com, Toys R Us/Babies R Us, Buy Buy Baby and Diapers.com — are voluntarily recalling more than 150,000 Nap Nanny baby recliners after reports of at least five infant deaths.

At the request of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the companies said they were calling back Nap Nanny Generations One and Two, as well as the Chill model of the recliner.

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After an 8-month-old Texas girl swallowed a marble-size toy that expands in water, an Ohio company is recalling the toys, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced last week.

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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in cooperation with Sassy Inc has announced a voluntary recall of about 45 thousand Hug and Tug Puppy toys sold in stores and on line nationwide between July 2012 and October 2012.

The beads inside the clear plastic sphere at the center of the toys can be released and pose a choking hazard to young children.

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Toyota said today it has agreed to settle a class action related to its 2010 recalls for unintended acceleration that is valued at between $1.1 billion and $1.4 billion.

The automaker said it plans to take a $1.1-billion accounting charge to cover the settlement.

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The bullet that struck Larney Johnson while he was playing basketball with friends punctured his kidney before lodging in his spine and immediately paralyzing him.

Paramedics rushed him to California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, where surgeons repaired his kidney. But three years later, he said, doctors made a startling discovery: a surgical sponge had been left behind.

Johnson had to undergo a second operation to remove the sponge before spending six weeks in bed recovering.

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New cases of illness associated with injectable pain medication from the New England Compounding Center continue to appear, more than two months after physicians pulled the steroid from their shelves over reports of contamination.

Although the period of highest risk for death and stroke has long passed, some patients who received doses of methylprednisolone acetate, produced by NECC prior to the product's recall on Sept. 26., are developing localized fungal infections around the site where they were injected, according to state health officials in Tennessee. That state has one of the highest case counts in the nation.

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Tennessee health officials are once again alerting patients who received tainted steroid shots after finding that some have infections at the injection site that could lead to fungal meningitis.

Tennessee Health Commissioner John Dreyzehner said Thursday that since Thanksgiving, officials have identified 22 new cases of these localized infections and one case of meningitis without a localized infection. Two patients with the injection-site infections also showed early signs of meningitis.

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The Organic Spinach and Spring Mix Blend salad makings responsible for an outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 (STEC O157:H7) has sickened 28 and put ten people in hospitals.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta on Monday said most of the cases were in New York State. Of those hospitalized, two developed the kidney-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

CDC said as the outbreak expanded beyond the Empire State, so has the investigation.

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On the cusp of the holiday travel season, Libertyville-based KidCo has agreed to recall about 220,000 portable PeaPod and Pea Pod Plus travel beds to reduce the risk of infant suffocation, government officials said Friday.

An infant or young child can suffocate after rolling between the bed's air mattress and the tent's fabric sides, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Health Canada said in a joint announcement.

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A congressional report on Thursday released details of how federal and state regulators knew nearly a decade ago of serious safety concerns with the pharmacy tied to hundreds of meningitis cases, but failed to act decisively.

Bipartisan staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee concluded in a report that "bureaucratic inertia appears to be what allowed a bad actor to repeatedly risk public health.

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