The verb needed in both cases was defused (Today 27 June 2011). Both diffuse and defuse are commonly confused, almost certainly because they are near-homophones.
Defuse (/ˌdiːˈfjuːz/) means ‘to stop a possibly dangerous or difficult situation from developing, especially by making people less angry or nervous’ (Oxford Advanced Learner’s), and is clearly the meaning intended here.
Diffuse (/dɪˈfjuːz/), on the other hand, means ‘to spread something or become spread widely in all directions’.
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