Spills

The northbound lanes of the 710 Freeway were closed in Bell Gardens on Monday night after a truck carrying liquid asphalt collided with several cars. There were no immediate reports of injuries in the crash, which occurred about 8:30 p.m. CBS-TV Channel 2 reported that the truck dumped 1,500 gallons of liquid asphalt onto the roadway and that it would take some time to clean it up. It's unclear when the freeway will reopen.

WASHINGTON -- BP has accepted criminal responsibility for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a move that it said has put the criminal part of one of the nation's worst environmental disasters in the rear-view mirror. Even if that is true, and the government has insisted that its criminal probe is ongoing, BP's troubles are far from over. On the horizon is a civil case that could cost the company billions of dollars more, as well as continuing concerns by lawmakers about how to safeguard the nation's environment and regulate a key industry.

Oil company BP has agreed to plead guilty to misconduct and negligence charges and pay a record $4.5-billion fine in connection with the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, one of the nation's worst environmental disasters. In an announcement Thursday morning from its London headquarters, BP confirmed that it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve all federal criminal charges and all claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the company stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, the subsequent oil spill and the response.

Laying the blame for the deaths of 11 oil rig workers in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and Gulf of Mexico spill on BP, federal prosecutors announced Thursday that two BP supervisors had been charged with manslaughter and the company would pay a $4-billion criminal fine, the largest in U.S. history. "Those deaths were in fact unnecessary," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in New Orleans, adding that the federal investigation continued into the 2010 disaster and the nation's biggest offshore oil spill.

WASHINGTON - As a dramatic, 24-7 webcast showed oil gushing from BP's blown-out well during the spring and summer of 2010, Rep. Edward J. Markey suspected the oil giant was underestimating the amount of the spill. On Thursday, after BP agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties and fees and plead guilty to criminal misconduct, including lying to Congress to make the spill "appear less catastrophic than it was," the Massachusetts Democrat had this to say: "BP lied to me. And they lied to all Americans.

Oil giant BP and three of its employees were indicted on criminal charges including manslaughter and obstruction of Congress on top of a record $4-billion fine that the company will pay the government for its role in the oil spill disaster that scarred the Gulf of Mexico, officials announced Thursday. Led by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., officials announced the indictments in a televised news conference from New Orleans, where the grand jury has been investigating the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the Louisiana coast.

British oil giant BP can easily afford to pay the $4.5 billion in oil-spill settlement costs announced Thursday, but analysts said a more difficult task may be rebuilding its reputation. BP agreed to the fines and other payments to the federal government and others and pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts related to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers in April 2010. It also agreed to a misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, a misdemeanor count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and a felony count of obstruction of Congress.

BEIRUT - Lebanon's military was out in force Saturday as authorities struggled to maintain order amid outrage about a deadly bombing here that many Lebanese blamed on the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Officials urged calm in an edgy nation where many fear that Friday's bombing, which killed the country's police intelligence chief and seven others, could usher in a new wave of communal violence linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria. Diplomats and others have been warning that Syria's violence could spill over into nearby nations - especially Lebanon, with its volatile sectarian mix and history of civil war - and further destabilize the entire Middle East.

American Airlines aircraft seats that dislodged in flight, temporarily grounding 48 Boeing Co. 757s, had already had been under scrutiny by the carrier for becoming loose more often than on other aircraft. The airline initially blamed incorrectly installed saddle clamps before determining that a buildup of residue from spilled sodas, coffee and juice kept locking pins from remaining in place, David Campbell, American's vice president for safety, security and environmental, said Friday.

Scientists are accusing the BP oil company of using the U.S. courts to attack their calculations of how much oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster. In a paper published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, charge that BP and other corporations damage scientific research when they subpoena documents and correspondence that lead to study conclusions. Richard Camilli, an ocean physicist, engineer and lead author of the paper, claimed that BP was intent on using such correspondence to raise doubts about the spill calculations.