Tougher safety standards for cribs

Tougher safety standards for cribs

WASHINGTON

It’s one of the biggest purchases for soon-to-be parents: a crib for baby. Beginning today, a new generation of cribs, designed to be safer, will be the only ones approved for sale — in stores, online and even at neighborhood yard sales.

Ushering in one of the most significant changes in child safety in decades, the rule taking effect this week bans the manufacture, sale and resale of drop-side cribs. Drop-sides have a side rail that can be raised and lowered to allow parents to more easily place or lift a baby, but they have been blamed in the deaths of several dozen children.

Wildfire shuts Los Alamos lab

LOS ALAMOS, N.M.

Thousands of residents calmly fled Monday from the mesa-top town that’s home to the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, ahead of an approaching wildfire that sent up towering plumes of smoke, rained down ash and sparked a spot fire on lab property where scientists 50 years ago conducted underground tests of radioactive explosives.

Los Alamos National Laboratory officials said that the spot fire soon was contained and no contamination was released. They also assured that radioactive materials stored in various spots elsewhere on the sprawling lab were safe from flames.

The wildfire, which began Sunday, had destroyed 30 structures south and west of Los Alamos by early Monday and forced the closure of the lab while stirring memories of a devastating blaze in May 2000 that destroyed hundreds of buildings.

Sprouts linked to 20 salmonella cases

WASHINGTON

The Food and Drug Administration is issuing a rare warning to consumers, asking diners to avoid Evergreen Produce brand alfalfa sprouts or spicy sprouts because they may be linked to 20 cases of salmonella poisoning.

The Idaho-based company has not recalled the sprouts though the FDA says they are possibly linked to illnesses in Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota and Washington state. Nadine Scharf, who identified herself as the co-owner of the company, said Monday that the company has stopped producing the alfalfa and spicy sprouts but is not planning to recall them from store shelves.

Official: Top banker flees Afghanistan

KABUL

Afghanistan’s top banker, who is alleged to have played a role in the failure of the nation’s largest private lender, has fled the country, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said Monday.

Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar said Abdul Qadir Fitrat had not notified the Afghan government of his resignation. But he said that Fitrat was named in a report sent Monday to the Afghan attorney general’s office as someone possibly responsible for the failure of Kabul Bank.

Fitrat told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from a Northern Virginia hotel that he left the country because his life had been threatened and that the Karzai government was refusing to prosecute those allegedly involved in fraudulent loans.

Bachmann launches White House bid

WATERLOO, Iowa

Republican Michele Bachmann officially launched her White House bid Monday, casting herself as hard-charging conservative capable of carrying the party into the 2012 election over a crowded field of GOP rivals so far treading lightly around the tea-party favorite.

In the yard of a historic mansion in Waterloo, the three-term Minnesota congresswoman insisted the nation can’t afford another four years of President Barack Obama and railed against debt, joblessness and the president’s health-care law.

Associated Press