Peanut Butter News

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NEW ORLEANS – Stark differences exist between the oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico and the blast that led to the massive BP spill. Mostly notably, no one was killed and no crude was gushing into the water, but the distinctions don’t end there.

Even though the Mariner Energy-owned platform that erupted in flames Thursday was just 200 miles west of the site of the spill, everything from the structures to the operations to the safety devices were different.

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WASHINGTON — The number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in two decades — decreasing by 8 percent as the sour economy dried up jobs and increased enforcement made it harder to sneak across the border with Mexico, a new study finds.

Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America attempting to cross the southern border of the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which based its report on an analysis of 2009 census data.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — Thousands of people were told to start evacuating a North Carolina island Wednesday morning as Hurricane Earl threatened to sideswipe the East Coast.

The 800 or so year-round residents of Ocracoke Island were told they do not have to go, but Emergency Services Director Lindsey Mooney said officials hoped they would follow about 5,000 tourists ordered to leave for the mainland from 5 a.m.

“I don’t remember the last time there was a mandatory evacuation order for the island,” Hyde County Commissioner Kenneth Collier said.

More evacuations along the Eastern Seaboard could follow, depending on the path taken by the Category 4 storm, which was whipping across the Caribbean with winds of 135 mph.

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LAVEEN, Ariz — Don’t tread on Andy C. McDonel.

This year, Mr. McDonel began flying a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on his roof in this unincorporated area just outside Phoenix. The historic banner — which dates to 1775, when it was hoisted aboard ships during the initial days of the Revolutionary War — has been adopted by the Tea Party movement. But Mr. McDonel said that he had unfurled the flag for its historical significance and nothing else

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Hurricane Earl lashed northern Leeward Islands with heavy rain and strong winds Monday after strengthening into a Category 2 storm. Hotels were shut tightly overnight as tourists sought shelter inside their rooms.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Earl could become a major hurricane Monday night or early Tuesday.

Hurricane warnings were in effect for Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, St. Maarten, Saba, St. Eustatius, the British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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Whooping cough sounds fantastically antiquated, up there with scurvy and St. Vitus Dance – diseases you didn’t think anyone in America got anymore.

But whooping cough, named for the high-pitched “whoop” a person makes when inhaling, has made a comeback, with an incidence rate up by a whopping 2,300 percent since 1976, the year when fear of the vaccine began to take hold and vaccination rates started to plummet. In 1976 there were only about 1,000 reported cases; in 2005, the most recent peak, there were nearly 27,000 reported cases (and likely over 1 million unreported cases), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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(CNN) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested nearly 400 illegal immigrants — including 347 with prior criminal convictions — over a three-day operation throughout the Midwest, the agency announced Friday.

The arrests in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska were part of the agency’s “Cross Check” operations that began in 2009 and are being held across the country.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Johnson and Johnson unit DePuy Orthopaedics, already in hot water with government regulators, issued a global recall Thursday of two hip aid systems after finding that more people than expected suffered pain which required additional surgery.

DePuy, which has sold about 93,000 units of its ASR XL Acetabular System and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System, said recent data received by the company showed an increase in the number of people who have had a second hip replacement surgery, also called a “revision surgery.”

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Eggs from the two Iowa farms at the heart of a salmonella scare could still make it into your shopping basket — but not in the way you’d think.

The producers responsible for a recall of some 550 million potentially tainted eggs have found another outlet for the inventory that just keeps coming: They’ll turn them into liquid eggs used in everything from cookies and cakes to egg substitutes and pet food.

Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the federal Food and Drug Administration, confirmed Wednesday that Wright County Eggs and Hillandale Farms will send ongoing supplies of eggs from laying hens to so-called “breaking plants” to be processed and sold.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — Zemco Industries in Buffalo, New York, has recalled approximately 380,000 pounds of deli meat that may be contaminated with bacteria that can cause a potentially fatal disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.

The products were distributed to Wal-Marts nationwide, according to the USDA’s website.

The meats may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, which was discovered in a retail sample collected by inspectors in Georgia. The USDA has received no reports of illnesses associated with the meats.

Upon learning of the voluntary recall, Wal-Mart immediately told its stores to remove the meat from their shelves, the company said in a statement.

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COPIAPO, Chile – Rescuers are lowering capsules containing rehydration tablets, glucose and oxygen down a long hole to 33 miners who surprised the world by staying alive while trapped a half-mile underground for 2 1/2 weeks.

Raising hopes further Monday, a second bore hole punched into the chamber where the miners are entombed and a third probe was nearing the spot, Mining Minister Laurence Golborne reported.

The hole that reached the miners Sunday will continue to be used to lower supplies, the second will be for communication and the third will provide ventilation, Golborne said.

Their ordeal, however, is far from over.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — Alesaundra Tafoya’s parents have been teaching their daughter about safety in their Northern California community, pointing out such safe havens as fire stations if she ever finds herself in trouble.

They weren’t, however, expecting 3-year-old Alesaundra to call upon those lessons when one of them needed help — but that’s exactly what she did Friday when her father collapsed in their Manteca, California, home.

Frank Tafoya told CNN affiliate KOVR that he “took a mixture of medication I wasn’t supposed to at the time — a bed-time dose — and I guess I collapsed.”