BP oil spill: leak found in rig weeks before blast
The Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded causing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, had suffered a leak in the weeks leading up to the blast, an employee has claimed.
Published: 7:20AM BST 21 Jun 2010
Tyrone Benton told the BBC that he identified a leak in the rig’s safety equipment weeks before the explosion.
He claimed that the leak was not fixed at the time. Instead, the faulty device was shut down, forcing the rig to rely on a second one.
“We saw a leak on the pod, so by seeing the leak we informed the company men,” Mr Benton said. “They have a control room where they could turn off that pod and turn on the other one, so that they don’t have to stop production.”
The pods control the blowout preventer, the most important piece of safety equipment on the rig, and contain both electronics and hydraulics. This is where Mr Benton said the problem was found.
The Periodic Table: Top of the charts
Created 150 years ago, the Periodic Table is a triumph of form and function. Now this design classic has been updated for the 21st century – and opened up to a new audience.
By John Emsley and Rob Sharp Monday, 21 June 2010
It’s a vital part of chemistry teachers’ educational repertoire, as much as a scorched Bunsen burner or a sackful of safety goggles. With its array of digits and chemical abbreviations, it appears everywhere, from pencil cases to posters – and even inspired a book of short stories, The Periodic Table by Primo Levi (named by the Royal Institute as the best science book ever).Whether you love chemistry or not, the modern periodic table, first successfully mapped out by Russian academic Dimitri Mendeleyev in 1869, occupies a coveted space in science-lovers’ psyches.
USA
BP, Transocean tap a well of Washington lobbyists and consultants
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 21, 2010
Companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are hiring a bevy of high-priced Washington lobbyists and consultants to help them weather the crisis, as investigations heat up and calls for policy changes intensify.BP, which has garnered the bulk of public attention and contempt for the spill, has assembled a formidable team of Democrats for its Washington lobbying and public-relations offensive. There is Tony Podesta, who heads one of the District’s leading lobbying firms; Jamie Gorelick, a top Justice Department official in the Clinton administration now at the law firm WilmerHale; Hilary Rosen, a former recording-industry lobbyist who heads the Washington office of the Brunswick Group, a public-relations consultancy; and Michael S. Berman of the Duberstein Group, who was a longtime aide to former vice president Walter F. Mondale before becoming a lobbyist.
Red light camera pact would need exemption from Arizona boycott
LAPD seeks to extend its agreement with American Traffic Solutions. A new contract with another Arizona-based firm is also in consideration.
By Rich Connell, Los Angeles Times
June 21, 2010 | 12:51 a.m.
Two much-debated City Hall issues are expected to converge this week when the Los Angeles Police Department’s red light camera program moves to the front of the line for an exemption from the city’s contracting boycott of Arizona over that state’s new immigration enforcement law.On Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to consider – and appears likely to approve – an exception to the boycott allowing a 10-month extension of a multimillion-dollar agreement with Scottsdale-based American Traffic Solutions.
<
Europe
Poland rejects Jaroslaw Kaczynski as exit polls give Bronislaw Komorowski lead in presidential election
Contest fought in shadow of air accident at Smolensk in April in which Kaczynski’s twin brother died
Ian Traynor, Europe editor
The Guardian, Monday 21 June 2010
Poland’s recent national tragedy produced an election yesterday in which the former prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, failed to make a comeback by succeeding his late twin brother as president, two months after the latter was killed in an air crash along with many others of the Polish elite.According to various exit polls for TV stations, the frontrunner, Bronislaw Komorowski of the governing Civic Platform party, won a lead of between 5 and 12 points over Kaczynski, although the contest goes to a second round on 4 July, as Komorowski did not get the 50% needed to win outright.
Russia cuts off gas supply to Belarus over unpaid bill
Russia reduced natural gas supplies to Belarus on Monday after Minsk failed to settle arrears, brandishing again the country’s energy clout and raising the spectre of supply disruption to Europe.
Published: 7:40AM BST 21 Jun 2010
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, told the chief of Russian gas giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, to close the tap on Russian gas supplies after Belarus failed to settle nearly £200 million dollars (£134m) in debt.
Belarus transports about 20 per cent of Russia’s western-bound gas exports but Gazprom has insisted the cut would not affect its European clients.
“The debt has not been paid,” Mr Miller said.
“From 10am Moscow time (6am GMT) on June 21, 2010, we are introducing a regime of limiting supplies of Russian gas to Belarus by 15 per cent of the planned daily volume.”
Middle East
Iran bans two UN nuclear inspectors from country
Iran has banned two UN nuclear inspectors from entering the country risking further anger from the West over its nuclear programme.
Published: 8:33AM BST 21 Jun 2010
Iran said the inspectors were banned because they disclosed to the media the contents of a “false” report on the country’s disputed nuclear program before the UN nuclear watchdog reviewed it.
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, had been informed of the decision to ban the inspectors, whom he did not identify.
The ban is the latest twist in Iran’s deepening tussle with the Vienna-based IAEA and the West over its nuclear program. The United States and Israel say Iran’s program is geared toward making nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, insisting that it is for peaceful purposes only.
Asia
China’s housing boom spells trouble for boyfriends
Many women won’t marry a man who doesn’t own a home. This recent shift, along with soaring real estate prices, has created a woefully frustrated class of bachelors.
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times
June 21, 2010
Reporting from Beijing – Mike Zhang considered himself serious boyfriend material. He knew what to order at an Italian restaurant. He could mix a tasty margarita. And he always volunteered to carry his girlfriend’s handbag.Then came the deal breaker. Zhang, a 28-year-old language tutor and interpreter, couldn’t afford an apartment in the capital’s scorching property market.
Rather than waste any more time, his girlfriend of more than two years dumped him.
Ink Gushes in Japan’s Media Landscape
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: June 20, 2010
TOKYO – For years, the online newspaper JanJan News mounted a scrappy challenge to Japan’s blandly conformist press, offering articles written by readers who took on taboo subjects like whaling and the media’s collusion with the government. But the site never attracted enough readers or advertising and was finally forced to shut down most of its operations three months ago.
JanJan was the last of four online newspapers offering reader-generated articles that were started with great fanfare here, but they have all closed or had to scale back their operations in the past two years.And it is not just the so-called citizen journalism sites that have failed here. No online journalism of any kind has yet posed a significant challenge to Japan’s monolithic but sclerotic news media.
Africa
A Draft of the Past Remains on Tap in Egypt
ALEXANDRIA JOURNAL
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: June 20, 2010
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt – These two women were veiled, true. They are religious, too, or at least as religious as their community expects them to be. But do not tell them they cannot stop into Sheik Ali’s bar and sit at a table and eat fried calamari and laugh over a glass of juice while surrounded by men drinking beer and whiskey.
]The women, Nelly Rafat, 52, and Magda el-Gindy, 52, are childhood friends who believe that while their religion prohibits alcohol, people are free to make their own choices. That is not the typical view here these days. But they sit, eat and enjoy, guilt-free amid the smoke-filled ambience of a hole-in-the-wall bar.
Rights group calls to halt Zimbabwe diamond trade
AP Monday, 21 June 2010
A leading international human rights group called on the global diamond industry’s oversight body today to remove Zimbabwe from its ranks because of alleged illicit trading and abuses in its diamond fields.The New York-based Human Rights Watch said its researchers have found evidence of forced labor, torture, beatings and harassment by troops in the Marange diamond field in eastern Zimbabwe.
The group wants Zimbabwe to be suspended from the Kimberley Process – the global body responsible for ending the trade of so-called “blood diamonds” that fund fighting across Africa.
Zimbabwe denies the allegations.
Latin America
Juan Manuel Santos wins Colombia presidential election
Social National Unity party candidate gains easy win over former Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogota
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 June 2010 07.43 BST
Colombia has elected the former defence minister Juan Manuel Santos as president in succession to Alvaro Uribe.The result of the election, announced yesterday, gave Social National Unity party candidate Santos an easy win over Antanas Mockus, a former mayor of Bogota who had promised change.
Santos, who vowed to continue hardline security policies, won by a landslide with 69% of the vote. Mockus, a quirky former maths and philosophy professor who ran on promises of changing Colombia’s corrupt political culture, gained 27.5%.