A newspaper says it has obtained an internal audit conducted by BP PLC on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that details severe safety flaws months before the Gulf of Mexico spill. The Sunday Times said in its report that the audit details how the drilling rig, owned by contractor Transocean, did not fully comply with BP's standards.
The report says that seven months ahead of the April explosion, auditors found 390 maintenance tasks that were more than a month overdue on the rig.
Report: BP audit detailed rig's flaws before spill
Displacing the Bedouin
It's hard to understand why Israel is pushing a significant sector of its citizens toward extremism and crime. Twice last week employees of the Israel Lands Administration, with the help of a large police contingent, demolished the homes of around 300 residents in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al-Arakib in the Negev.
Most of them, citizens of the State of Israel, including many children, were left not only without homes, but humiliated, frustrated and shocked. Both times the police were brutal, and neither time did the state offer an alternative, compensation or assistance, either material or psychological, for the people whose village was demolished and world was destroyed. That's how a country treats its citizens.
Eight Palestinian youths and the crime they did not commit
After two years, a case against Palestinian teenagers accused of throwing stones was overturned when the military prosecution backed out. The suspects pleaded innocent all along, saying they'd been in school
Eight Palestinian teenagers were tried in the court of military judge Lt. Col. Menashe Vahnish on November 11, 2008. Referring to a soldier from the Kfir Brigade, Vahnish said, "at this stage, there is no reason to cast any doubt on the witness."
The Unconscious of a Conservative
But it is not just intolerance that is the hallmark of today's conservatives. They have become little more than the sum of their fears and their hatreds. What they fear most is the modern world and its pace of change. For them, the natural order of things is a country run by white, Protestant males.
Today they are confronted with a black man in the White House, a woman as House majority leader, no Protestants on the Supreme Court, gays asserting their rights, and a Muslim immigrant winning the Miss USA crown. It is all too much to bear.
Report finds drug industry funded studies almost always yield good results
A recent study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine has revealed that industry-funded clinical trials -- that is, drug trials funded by pharmaceutical companies -- almost always show positive results for the drugs they test. In contrast, only about half of government-funded studies show the same drugs to be safe and effective
New questions over Dr Kelly's post-mortem after pathologist 'mixed up' two servicemen's remains
The pathologist who carried out the post-mortem on weapons inspector Dr David Kelly is under investigation after 'mixing up' two servicemens' remains.
Dr Nicholas Hunt is at the centre of an official probe after being criticised for making 14 mistakes in his report on the death of Senior Aircraftman Christopher Bridge in Afghanistan.
Now the Disciplinary Committee for Forensic Pathologists (DCFP) has confirmed it is investigating the blunders.
Iraq forces take over from last U.S. combat brigade
The United States handed over control of all combat duties to Iraqi security forces on Saturday in a further sign its withdrawal is on track despite a political impasse in Iraq and a recent rise in violence.
President Barack Obama said last Monday he would stick to his promise to end U.S. combat operations in Iraq by August 31, with security being left in the hands of Iraq's own U.S.-trained army and police.
Guantanamo trial to go ahead
The US supreme court has refused to delay the military trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay. Lawyers for Khadr had sought to have the trial, scheduled for next week, put on hold while they challenged the constitutionality of the military tribunals at the US army base in Cuba.
But the US supreme court said on Friday that it had decided to deny the request. "The application for stay presented to the chief justice and by him referred to the court is denied," the court said in a one-line brief that provided no explanation for the decision.
With well shut, next worry is health of cleanup workers
As BP moves to seal the Deepwater Horizon well permanently, more than 31,000 cleanup workers continue to rely on incomplete and at times misleading information about toxic exposure to the spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Public health officials say they face a daunting challenge: how to inform workers about the possible dangers when studies on the toxic effects of such a large spill have never been done.
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