2010-08-28 CNN
CARL AZUZ, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz. This is CNN Student News, bringing the world to your classroom. You know a dog can bark, but have you ever heard one tweet? That story's coming up. First, though, we're heading to the coast.
First Up: Oil Disaster Claims
AZUZ: The U.S. Gulf Coast, and we're looking at claims related to the oil spill there. BP, the company that owns the well that the oil leaked out of, is responsible for the costs of the spill. It's set up a $20 billion dollar account to pay people or companies that were affected. An example might be a business that processed Gulf shrimp. So far, BP has paid out about $400 million in claims. It's going to keep paying for them, but BP won't process any more claims. It's turned that job over to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, or GCCF.
So What?
AZUZ: So, a different group is handling the claims. So what? Well, the GCCF is independent, so it will decide which claims are eligible, not BP, not the government. The head of the agency says that when eligible claims come in, his goal is to get checks out to individuals within 2 days, out to businesses within 7 days. Filing a claim doesn't automatically prevent someone from suing to try to get more help or money in damages. But the GCCF director says he plans to be more generous than the courts in figuring out payment amounts.
Egg Recall
AZUZ: Next up today: eggs. We've been talking about this recall of more than half a billion eggs. And we know some of you might be worried about the eggs in your fridge. Well, here's how you can check. Every carton of eggs has a code number on it, kinda like this one you see right there. Now, you can check that against the Egg Safety Center's web site. It has a complete list of the recalled eggs. Meantime, the head of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, tells us about the steps that the agency is taking.
MARGARET HAMBURG, FDA COMMISSIONER: Well, we're continuing to investigate to make sure that we fully understand the source of the contamination and, of course, as we do that we're going forward with the recall. And as you say, we've recalled more than a half a billion eggs so far. It's the largest such egg recall in recent history. We may have to continue with some smaller subrecalls, but we think that we are getting to a very important point of control of what's going on.