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Earlier this month, Texas-based Alcon Laboratories announced a voluntary recall of its Systane Free LIQUID GEL lubricant eye drops, citing possible mold contamination. According to a release posted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the recall is “in response to 11 consumer reports citing the presence of foreign material.”

The company said that the development of an infection is considered “unlikely” and that none of the reports included any incidents of fungal infections. “Alcon is absolutely committed to providing the highest level of quality eye care products,” said Kevin Buehler, Alcon’s U.S. senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “We took this voluntary action even though it is unlikely that eye infections would occur as a result of this issue.”
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For the thousands of ill smokers who are seeking damages against the tobacco industry, Thursday’s decision by the Florida Supreme Court was a mixed bag. On one hand, the justices agreed with an appellate court’s decision to reverse the $145 billion in punitive damages awarded in 2000 in a landmark class-action suit against cigarette makers. The court also decided to decertify the class, saying that the remaining issues “are highly individualized and do not lend themselves to class action treatment.”

However, the 4-2 decision also delivered some promising news for the petitioners: Sick smokers will still be allowed to bring individual claims against the cigarette makers. In their decision, the justices said that “the class should be decertified without prejudice to the class members filing individual claims within one year of the issuance of our mandate.”
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In a rather bizarre turn, the New York Times ran what they called a “redacted version” of an opinion piece written about Iran by two former government officials. According to an accompanying commentary by the original piece’s authors, portions of their opinion were “blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions.”

The writers are Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, and Hillary Mann, a former Foreign Service officer who participated in U.S. discussions with Iran from 2001 to 2003. They claim that CIA officials had said “they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.” The Times published a censored version of the original piece, blacking out the parts that the government deemed sensitive.
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