The company which owns the crashed cruise ship Costa Concordia has offered passengers on that failed trip an indemnity settlement for their lost luggage, travel expenses and medical costs. According to an MSNBC.com report from Rome, Italy, Costa Cruises is offering passengers aboard that trip a total of $14,460 for “lost baggage and psychological trauma” [...]

The captain of the sunken Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia appeared in court today to answer charges of manslaughter, abandoning a ship and causing a shipwreck. On Wednesday, Francesco Schettino asked to be kept under house arrest rather than be jailed until a trial date is set. Schettino, during a three-hour hearing, pleaded his side [...]

The death toll at the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner off the coast of Italy was updated today to 11 as rescue workers fought worsening weather conditions in an attempt to find any survivors still aboard the vessel that’s half-floating in the Mediterranean Sea. At least another 23 people remained missing at last report, according [...]

Six people have been confirmed dead and another 16 unaccounted for after an Italian-owned cruise ship smashed into rocks of the shores of Tuscany over the weekend. According to UK’s The Guardian, Costa Cruises, of Genoa, Italy, is apologizing for the behavior of the vessel’s captain just before the shit hit the rocks. The collision [...]

Federal prosecutors may be ready to file the first criminal charges in connection with the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010. According to a Wall Street Journal report, felony charges of lying to regulators about the safety of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig prior to [...]

The National Transportation Safety Board recommended yesterday that all states enact bans on driving while talking, texting or surfing the Web on their mobile phones. The federal agency said cell phones should only be used by drivers in emergency situations or if they were factory-installed communication systems. The call for a ban comes at a [...]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed in a memo obtained by Reuters that it is investigating the welds near the lithium-ion battery on the Chevrolet Volt electric car and whether it was responsible for fires following crash tests. According to Reuters, NHTSA said “visible weld changes at key points on the underside” of the [...]

A Japanese maker of baby formula has issued a recall on about 400,000 cans of its product because it tested abnormally high for radioactive cesium. According to The New York Times, Meijii issued the recall on Tuesday after it discovered traces of cesium 134 and 137 in its powdered baby formula. Though the levels were [...]

The head of General Motors told AP in an exclusive interview this week that his company is willing to buy-back its Chevrolet Volt electric car from owners who fear the safety of its lithium-ion batteries. Earlier this week we reported on a federal investigation launched recently to mitigate the safety concerns raised by a series [...]

Federal highway regulators have launched an investigation into the risk of fire posed by the Chevrolet Volt, specifically from its lithium-ion battery. Volt is GM’s first entry into the electric vehicle market and about 6,000 vehicles have been sold by U.S. automobile dealers. Crash tests conducted in May and as recently as earlier this month [...]