TV News LIES

A simple reactor that mimics plants by turning sunlight into fuel has been demonstrated in the laboratory, boosting hopes for a large-scale renewable source of liquid fuel. "We have a big energy problem and we have to think big," said Prof Sossina Haile, at the California Institute of Technology, who led the research.

Haile estimates that a rooftop reactor could produce about three gallons of fuel a day. She thinks transport fuels would be the first application of the reactor, if it goes on to commercial use. But she said an equally important use for the renewable fuels would be to store solar energy so it is available at times of peak demand, and overnight.

The US is suing BP and eight other firms for allegedly violating federal safety regulations in connection with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The lawsuit asks that they be held liable without limitation for all clean-up and damage costs.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in April killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil over several months. The oil leak became the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Six oil and gas service companies and a prominent freight-forwarding company agreed to pay about $236 million in criminal and civil penalties in one of the largest corporate bribery cases ever to focus on a single industry, federal authorities said Thursday.

Most of the bribes were paid to circumvent local rules and regulations, allowing the oil service companies to import equipment and vessels into foreign countries, which included Angola, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia and Turkmenistan.

Halliburton Co. used flawed cement in BP Plc's doomed Gulf of Mexico well, which could have contributed to the blowout that sparked the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a White House panel said on Thursday.

Halliburton's shares tumbled as much as 16 percent after the National Oil Spill Commission released a letter detailing the panel's findings, before recovering to close down nearly 8 percent at $31.68 per share on the New York Stock Exchange. BP's U.S.-listed shares closed up 1.3 percent at $40.60 per share.

In papers everywhere we hear arguments such as the one that appeared recently in the Rochester (NY) Business Journal, in an article by economist Raymond J. Keating, under the heading "N.Y. is missing out on economic opportunity."

Keating wrote, "Environmentalists are claiming that hydraulic fracturing threatens groundwater supplies and are using anecdotal evidence to support their claims. Yet years of evidence have demonstrated that the fracking process is safe."

Nuclear watchdog groups say that an internal report by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on fire safety at nuclear plants shows that regulators don't have enough information to know whether its new fire rules will ensure safety.

The NRC, in response, said the new fire plan was the product of years of extensive research, would improve safety and was ready to use. The first plant approved to use the new regulations is Progress Energy's Harris nuclear plant in North Carolina.