Savannah port hosts record size cargo ship
Cargo ships calling on the Port of Savannah just keep getting bigger.
The Georgia Ports Authority said the French-owned ship CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt arrived Friday in Savannah. The vessel measures 1,200 feet long and can carry up to 14,400 cargo containers that are 20 feet long apiece.
That means the Theodore Roosevelt roughly has 10 percent more cargo capacity than the COSCO Development, which briefly held the record for largest ship to visit the U.S. East Coast when it docked at Savannah and other ports in May.
Bigger ships are now using the Panama Canal following completion of a major expansion last year.
Honda pays $605 million to settle air bag lawsuits
Honda and some of the people suing the company over faulty Takata air bag inflators have agreed to a $605 million settlement.
The settlement covers owners of 16.5 million Honda cars with the inflators.
Under the deal, Honda gets credit for spending $121 million on rental cars for customers who had to wait for parts. That leaves $484 million. Of that, Honda will spend as much as $199 million finding owners who haven’t had their cars repaired.
The rest goes to attorney fees and to reimburse owners for expenses such as rental cars and lost wages. Owners can make claims that their cars dropped in value. A court-appointed administrator will decide on payment.
The settlement doesn’t cover injury or death claims. It still must be approved by a federal judge.
Factory activity at 6-plus year high
U.S. factories expanded at a brisk pace in August, a likely sign of strength for the U.S. economy as new orders, production and employment all improved.
The Institute for Supply Management said Friday that its manufacturing index rose to its highest level since April 2011, pointing to solid economic growth.
Fourteen of eighteen manufacturing industries surveyed by ISM posted growth in August, including the machinery, petroleum and coal products, and computer and electronic products sectors.
August was “a really strong month,” Timothy Fiore, chair of ISM’s manufacturing business survey committee, said in a telephone interview. He noted that the growth mostly was driven by the top manufacturing sectors.
Couple sues Amazon over eclipse glasses
A South Carolina couple is suing online retailer Amazon over what they claim were faulty pairs of eclipse glasses that resulted in eye injuries, headaches and blurry vision.
In court papers filed in federal court this week, Thomas Corey Payne and Kayla Harris of Charleston said they began experiencing the symptoms after viewing the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21 using glasses purchased on Amazon.
A spokeswoman for the Seattle-based retailer declined to comment on the pending litigation.
On Aug. 10, the retailer began notifying customers via email of a recall of potentially hazardous eclipse glasses that it couldn’t verify as having been manufactured by reputable companies, although it did not reveal the scale of the recall or release a list of affected vendors.
Payne and Harris say they got no such notice. After viewing the once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, they say they started experiencing headaches, dark spots in their lines of vision, changes in perception of color and distorted vision.