Lawyers for BP, and thousands of people affected by the Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill, had been expected, for a long time, to be in a New Orleans courtroom this morning for a civil trial. Instead, they're reviewing a deal to settle the case.
BP estimates it would pay nearly $8 billion in the settlement. In exchange, the company would avoid revisiting, in a courtroom, what led up to the drilling rig explosion that killed 11 men and poured massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
It would be easy not to have known Continental Airlines has been merged with United for two years. That will change Saturday when all operations and branding are combined under just United. Any hiccups could mean delays throughout the airline's system.
When Joan and Izzy Schwartz got married, they spent their wedding night in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. Back then, the room cost $16.80. For their 60th anniversary, the Waldorf will give the couple a room for the same rate they paid in 1952.
Students at London's Kingston University this week unveiled luxury designs made of bio-degradable materials. There are stilettos made from pistachio shells and coffee beans, a wood-chip corset and a top made from orange peel.
And in Michigan, there's a fight going on over one delegate to the Republican National Convention. Rick Santorum's campaign team says its candidate is a victim of, quote, thuggery. They accuse Michigan Republican leaders of engineering an after-the-fact rules change to give Mitt Romney a slim lead in delegates from last Tuesday's state primary.
We have more from Michigan Public Radio's Rick Pluta.
Anthony Shadid, who died Feb. 16, was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times based in Baghdad and Beirut. He won a Pulitzer Prize twice, in 2004 and 2010.
Credit Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Shadid holds his son in front of the family home he spent years renovating in Marjayoun, Lebanon.
Credit Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Shadid stands with wife Nada, son Malik and daughter Laila at his brother's wedding last summer.
The death of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid in Syria on Feb. 16 was a devastating loss for journalism and for the Middle East he did so much to illuminate.
But Shadid's voice is still with us — in the form of the memoir House of Stone, published this week.
Greece has taken almost all the action needed to secure a second bailout from eurozone countries, according to the head of the European currency group. The first loan can now be paid out by March 20, as long as Greece completes a bond swap between Athens and private investors, which should cut the nations privately-held debt in half.
David Greene talks to materials chemist Donald Sadoway from the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Long Beach, Calif. Sadoway is the co-inventor of the liquid metal battery. It's inexpensive, super efficient, sustainable and can provide large scale energy storage.
