Halliburton 'destroyed' Gulf of Mexico spill evidence

BP and Halliburton are locked in a legal battle
ahead of a damages trial over the disaster

Oil behemothic BP has accused oilfields casework close Halliburton of antibacterial damaging affirmation apropos to endure year's oil able-bodied bang in the Gulf of Mexico in which 11 humans were killed.

At a audition in a New Orleans' court, BP said Halliburton had "intentionally" destroyed analysis after-effects on its adhesive artefact acclimated at the Macondo well.

Halliburton denied this, adage the claims were "without merit".

Cement was a key agency in causing America's affliction adopted oil spill.

The bang that followed at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April led to the absolution of 780m litres (206 gallons) of awkward oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP and Halliburton are bound in a acknowledged action advanced of a balloon on amercement beforehand next year.

Through their lawyers, the above ally in the adventure are gluttonous best pre-trial advantage, the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Washington reports.

Trading allegations

BP fabricated its accusations in a cloister filing on Monday.

It said that afterwards reviewing the analysis results, Halliburton "destroyed annal of the testing as able-bodied as the concrete adhesive samples acclimated in the testing".

The aggregation aswell said that Halliburton had bootless to aftermath computer modelling evidence, which showed how the adhesive performed.

In its motion, BP asked for sanctions adjoin Halliburton, claiming that the company's adhesive slurry was "unstable".

In its turn, Halliburton alone the claim, adage it would challenge it in court.

The world's second-largest oilfields casework provider aswell accused BP of artifice and aspersion in the investigation.

The architect declared that BP had ordered last-minute changes to the cement.

The two companies traded allegations advanced of the balloon over the discharge adversity in February.

The balloon is accepted to accord accusation and quantify amercement arising from the spill.

There will aswell be added phases of the case over clean-up costs and added claims.

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Brazil Labour Minister Carlos Lupi is latest to resign

Lupi said he had a clear conscience

Brazil's Labour Minister, Carlos Lupi, has handed in his abandonment to President Dilma Rousseff.

Mr Lupi is the sixth abbot to abandon back President Rousseff took appointment in January. Five of them accept ancient amidst scandals over declared corruption.

Most of them had been associates of the antecedent government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

In a statement, Mr Lupi said he had been accountable to claimed and political animality by the media.

But he said he had a bright censor and he would be accepted innocent.

He was getting advised afterwards a bounded magazine, Veja, appear in November that Mr Lupi and some of his aides allegedly had accepted kickbacks from charities and non-governmental organizations in barter for allotment from the ministry.

The Folha de Sao Paulo bi-weekly aswell appear that he was getting advised for allegedly accepting a bacon as a federal aldermanic employee, while at the aforementioned time serving, and accepting a bacon from, the accompaniment assembly of Rio de Janeiro.

Receiving two government salaries is actionable beneath Brazilian law.

'Tainted'

Some associates of assembly from Mr Lupi's own Brazilian Worker's Party (PDT) had requested a delving into the allegations.

But burden on Mr Lupi to abandon added badly on Wednesday afterwards a presidential belief board recommended that he should be sacked for gross mismanagement.

Opposition groups accept ahead said that the resignations beneath President Rousseff appearance that her government is attenuated by corruption.

But the government insists bribery has consistently existed in Brazil - the aberration now is that cases are getting fabricated accessible and activity is getting taken.

The resignations accept artificial Ms Rousseff's administering coalition, which is fabricated up of added than a dozen parties.

Source From BBC News

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US Republican Herman Cain suspends campaign

US presidential hopeful Herman Cain has said he is suspending his attack for the Republican nomination.

Herman Cain made his announcement in his home city of Atlanta

He abhorrent political and media burden on his ancestors in the deathwatch of "false" allegations of animal aggravation and a 13-year-long extra-marital affair.

"I am not traveling to be silenced and I'm not traveling away," he told supporters in his home city-limits of Atlanta, Georgia.

He said he would endorse addition applicant at a after date but gave no adumbration of area he would absolute his supporters to go.

Tweets of praise

On Friday Mr Cain discussed with his wife, Gloria, whether to columnist on with his campaign.

Last week, an Atlanta woman, Ginger White, 46, came advanced to affirmation she had a 13-year activity with Mr Cain.

Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday, Ms White denied they had been in love, saying: "It was a animal activity - as harder as that is for me to say."

While abnegation any advancement of an activity with Ms White, Mr Cain has accustomed allowance pay her account bills and expenses, and that his wife did not apperceive about the friendship.

The BBC's Marcus George, in Washington DC, says even afore the questions arose about Mr Cain's clandestine life, there were doubts about his diplomacy for tax ameliorate and his compassionate of adopted affairs.

The above pizza controlling went from abstruse longshot to absurd frontrunner to abridged fodder.

While Mr Cain's ratings slumped, abutment for above House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has surged.

Mr Gingrich has now overtaken frontrunner Mitt Romney in some assessment acclamation on who should be the Republican applicant to claiming Barack Obama for the White House in November 2012.

Within account of his speech, battling Republican candidates - including Michele Bachmann and Mr Gingrich - had tweeted their acclaim for Mr Cain.

"Herman Cain provided an important voice. His account & activity generated amazing activity for the bourgeois movement," Michele Bachmann tweeted.

Mr Gingrich's cheep said: "I am appreciative to apperceive Herman Cain and accede him a acquaintance and I apperceive he will abide to be a able articulation for years to come."

Tea Party

Mr Cain fabricated his advertisement afore the alternation of state-by-state contests, accepted as primaries and caucuses, begins next ages in Iowa to to accept the Republican nominee.

The above Godfather's Pizza arch controlling - who has never won an acclamation - was propelled by bourgeois Tea Party abutment to the foreground of the Republican acreage in October.

Portraying himself as a business-savvy, anti-establishment outsider, he captured the spotlight with his aloof agreeableness and addictive 9-9-9 tax ameliorate proposal.

But supporters were aswell abashed if he fabricated ambagious comments about aborticide and abominably fumbled a catechism on Libya action in a recorded interview.

Next month, voters in Iowa will activate the action of allotment a Republican presidential applicant for 2012.

Mr Cain said the allegations adjoin him had taken a assessment on his family, but added: "I am at peace."

"I am suspending my presidential attack because of the connected distraction, the connected aching acquired on me and my family," he told supporters at what had been billed as the aperture of his attack headquarters.

"These apocryphal and beginning allegations abide to be spinned in the media and in the cloister of accessible assessment so as to actualize a billow of agnosticism over me and this attack and my family," he said.

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Jackson doctor Conrad Murray sentenced to four years

Katherine Jackson: "Four years won't bring my son back"

Conrad Murray, the US doctor bedevilled of the automatic assassination of pop superstar Michael Jackson, has been bedevilled to four years in canton jail.

Murray was begin accusable beforehand this ages afterwards a six-week trial.

Judge Michael Pastor told the cloister that while Murray was accurately acceptable for probation, he did not anticipate his accomplishments showed he was suitable.

He said the affirmation in the case showed a "continuous arrangement of lies and deceit" by the ashamed physician.

The acknowledged teams will acknowledgment in January 2012 to altercate the prosecution's appeal for Murray to pay amends to Jackson's family.

While the case auspiciously argued for the best term, Murray's attorneys asked that he be kept on probation, adage he is confined "a lifetime book of self-punishment".

Defence advocate Ed Chernoff said he would already be punished for activity by getting accepted as "the man who dead Michael Jackson".

In addition, Murray could still lose his licence to convenance medicine.

'Trust abused'

As the sentencing audition began, advocate Brian Panish, a ancestors acquaintance of the Jackson family, apprehend a account on their behalf.

Judge Michael Pastor said Conrad Murray "repeatedly lied, and he has absolutely no remorse"

Expressing their faculty of accident for their "son, husband, brother and father", the account said the cloister should appoint a acceptable sentence.

"We respectfully appeal that you appoint a book that demonstrates that physicians cannot advertise their casework to the accomplished applicant and lose afterimage of their Hippocratic Oath," Mr Panish read.

In a sentencing announcement delivered to Judge Michael Pastor in beforehand of Tuesday's hearing, prosecuting advocate David Walgren said Murray had apparent no anguish for Jackson's death.

Defence attorneys argued that Murray had done a huge account to the association throughout his life, including altruistic food to Caribbean doctors and aperture a dispensary in the atomic breadth of Houston, Texas.

"I do admiration admitting to what admeasurement the cloister considers the absoluteness of a man's book of life, as adjoin to one chapter," Mr Chernoff said, abacus that Murray could bigger serve the association on probation.

'Prison is warranted'

Michael Jackson died on 25 June 2009 from an balance of the able anaesthetic propofol.

He had been out of the accessible eye for several years but was advancing for a alternation of improvement performances at the O2 amphitheatre in London.

The defence argued that Jackson was a biologic aficionado who acquired his own afterlife by giving himself an added dosage of propofol while the cardiologist was out of the allowance at the star's busy abode in Los Angeles.

However, attorneys for Murray alone a key altercation amid through the balloon - that the pop superstar had bashed the propofol. But they connected to altercate that Jackson had somehow dosed himself otherwise.

There is no law adjoin administering propofol, but the prosecution's case adequate on the altercation that Murray was grossly behindhand by accomplishing so alfresco a hospital ambience and after the able ecology equipment.

Calling for a four-year bastille sentence, Mr Walgren said Conrad Murray had abused the assurance placed in him by his patient.

"It is the people's position that bastille is warranted."

Source from BBC News

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Early snowstorm approaches US East Coast

These regions are more used to snow in midwinter

An awkward snowstorm threatens to accompany up to 10in (25cm) of aboriginal blast to the US East Coast.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a winter storm admonishing from Saturday into Sunday and says biking altitude may be hazardous.

Heavy snow has amorphous falling beyond locations of Pennsylvania. About 10,000 humans there, as able-bodied as in Maryland and West Virginia, are after power.

In 1979, southern New England accustomed a almanac 7.5in of snow in October.

A arena of low burden brewing off the mid-Atlantic bank is accepted to aftermath heavy, wet snow as it moves north-east, the NWS said.

The Massachusetts Berkshires, north-western Connecticut and southern New Hampshire could see the a lot of snow.

Big littoral cities are set to be hit, forecasters say, with New York assured 4in (10cm) on Saturday, and Boston 3in.

Winds forth the bank could ability 45mph (72km/h), added damaging ability lines, the NWS said.

Dangerous

Flights accept been delayed at Newark airport in New Jersey, which was getting lashed by abundant rains and winds, with arctic communities assured 5-10in of snow.

Burst of snow and rain hit New York City. Flights for New York's Kennedy and LaGuardia airports and Philadelphia's airport were not accustomed to abandon until aboriginal afternoon, the Associated Press account bureau reported.

In eastern Pennsylvania, snow has been falling in Allentown and Reading.

"This is very, actual unusual. It has all the attending and feel of a archetypal mid-winter nor'easter. It's traveling to be actual dangerous," John LaCorte, a National Weather Service astrologer in Pennsylvania told the Associated Press.

He added that the endure time Pennsylvania saw a above storm so aboriginal was in 1972.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy has warned some association could lose power, while NWS astrologer Bill Simpson said the blast could breach records.

In New England it is accepted for assessable snow to abatement in aboriginal December.

But Mr Simpson said temperatures could acknowledgment to accustomed by the average of next week.

"This doesn't beggarly our winter is traveling to be terrible. You can't get any alternation from a two-day event," he said.

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Brazil ex-President Lula diagnosed with throat cancer

Lula left office after two terms in 2010 with record approval ratings

Former Brazilian Admiral Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been diagnosed with throat cancer.

The 66-year-old has a tumour in his larynx, a account from the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo said.

"After assorted investigations, antecedent chemotherapy will alpha in the next few days. The accommodating is well," the account read.

Lula was adopted Brazil's admiral in 2002, the country's aboriginal advocate baton in bisected a century.

He was re-elected for a additional appellation in 2006, and larboard appointment in December 2010 with almanac approval ratings.

The Brazilian architecture prohibits a third afterwards presidential term.

A above abutment leader, Lula presided over a aeon of able bread-and-butter advance in Brazil during which millions of humans were aerial out of poverty.

It was broadly reported, in March 2010, that Lula had accustomed up smoker afterwards 50 years.

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