Looks like China’s Health Ministry was a bit off in reporting how many infants were poisoned by melamine-tainted milk last summer.

Chinese officials now admit that 294,000 babies—equivalent to the entire population of Corpus Christi—were stricken. That’s 5 times higher than government officials reported 2 months ago.

The Ministry also revised from 4 to 6 the number of infants that died as a consequence. 

Melamine is a nitrogen-rich byproduct of chemical processes used to make plastics. Early this year, criminals in Hebei province began adding the toxin to watered-down milk and baby formula in order to drive up apparent protein concentrations and increase profit.

In the run-up to last summer’s Olympics, government-controlled Internet portals squelched stories about the growing scandal. After that, the government tried to get in front of the story by detaining officials from complicit companies and replacing the head of its national quality control bureau. 

In October, the Health Ministry announced that 53,000 babies had been sickened.

The toxin causes kidney stones and rarely, kidney failure but there is little that can be done to treat the stones other than rest and vigorous hydration.

Xu Zhiyoung is trying to help families sue dairy companies at the heart of the scandal. The legal scholar told the Washington Post last week that the courts had yet to accept such cases, but he hadn’t given up hope.

“We speak not only for 160 families…but for all the victims who suffered from contaminated milk,” he told the Post. “This is a much bigger voice than one individual case.”

Much bigger indeed.

Right now in Iran, a powerful, tube-like drilling tool is being used to expose new sources of oil, the nation’s economic lifeblood.

The device was developed in America, which seems a bit counterproductive since the US government is pretty sure Iran funnels oil profits to terrorists.

But there’s something else about that driller. It’s powered by a radioactive chemical that could fuel a dirty-bomb big enough to spread radiation across several city blocks, according to experts interviewed by the Boston Globe.

The tool was developed by Schlumberger, a multinational oil services company with development labs in Texas and Connecticut, a CEO in Houston and a corporate registration in the Caribbean.

The actual location is the Netherlands Antilles, that well-known hub of international finance.

US embargoes prevent US companies from transferring just about everything to Iran, but legal loopholes allow multinationals to bypass the sanctions. It’s that simple. In fact no one believes Schlumberger violated any laws.

And the practice isn’t isolated, according to Victor Comras, an international trade specialist. Comras told the Globe that “a number of companies subject to US law have devised structures that allow them to circumvent US regulations.”

As a result, “it is getting harder and harder to make sanctions effective,” Michael Lynch told the Globe. The oil market analyst added, “it has gotten to the point where keeping the technology away from [Iran and other countries under sanctions] is almost impossible.”

Health insurance giant United Healthcare is launching an online consumer health information portal known as myoptumhealth.com.

In doing so it enters a crowded space featuring front-runners like WebMD, Revolution Health and Mayo Clinic, and a host of profitable niche sites.

UHC’s health-and-wellness unit, OptumHealth will operate the site. It will be free and designed for the general public rather than UHC plan members, corporate clients or employees.

Myoptumhealth.com will feature symptom checkers, tools and calculators, health-related search and a secure online personal health record similar to the ones offered by Cerner, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Cleveland Clinic and just about everyone who knows HTML.

Although the health information portal concept is not new, many feel the sector will continue to grow as the Great Economic Crisis of 2008 forces people to pay for care out of pocket and make medical decisions on their own, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Naturally, UHC hopes its site will generate business for its core medical, vision and dental insurance products and its fee-based phone counseling services for chronic disease patients.

The consumer health information market has been active lately. In October, two large online health information companies, Waterfront Media and Revolution Health agreed to a $300 million merger that could vault the new entity ahead of WebMD, the current market leader.

But WebMD is also expanding. The site, which according to comScore had 17.3 million unique visitors in July, recently announced plans to acquire QualityHealth.com for $50 million.

If myoptumhealth.com doesn’t fly out of the box, look for cash-rich UHC to go into acquisition mode to grow its play in this space. Right now, several cool niche players are swimming freely.