Oil company and US state embroiled in war of words over the clean-up operations after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster
BP and one of the US Gulf states most affected by pollution from the Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010 have become embroiled in an acrimonious slanging match over the oil company's clean-up record.
A senior BP executive has accused the leaders of Louisiana of "political grandstanding" and making "patently false assertions" about the environmental record of the group since the oil spill in 2010.
The move comes after BP failed again to convince a judge it could limit compensation payments on the grounds of fraud and remains mired in a criminal case with the US department of justice over Macondo.
Geoff Morrell, BP's vice president of US communications, specifically responding to comments made earlier by Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor and his top coastal official, Garret Graves, at a meeting of the Gulf Coast restoration council said: "Their political grandstanding contains patently false assertions, defies the demonstrated record of environmental recovery that has occurred across the Gulf, and defames the massive efforts of tens of thousands of people to foster prompt recovery and restoration."
But the outburst, which compares with the relatively sober comments made by BP in the past, triggered an immediate response from Graves, showing neither side is in the mood for compromise.
"BP is not a victim of this disaster. No matter what they say or do, the families of the deceased and the citizens of the Gulf are the victims and we are going to fight to hold BP accountable for their actions. BP's campaign to portray themselves as the victim is shameless," said Graves in a response emailed to The Associated Press.
"For BP executives to try to call our concerns 'grandstanding' is laughable," Graves said. "They caused the worst oil spill in our nation's history, are doing the worst cleanup in our nation's history and we should sit idle and let them continue?"
During the restoration council meeting, Jindal had said BP had focused too much on its image and needs to turn its attention to covering restoration costs. He argued the oil company needed to stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their public relations campaign "telling us how great they are and start proving it by addressing their Clean Water Act and Natural Resources Damage liabilities now".
But Morrell said overall to date BP had spent more than $26bn (£16bn) on response, cleanup and claims adding: "Repeated assertions that we have spent more money on advertising than this are grossly in error and seem purposefully intended to mislead the public.".
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak before the National Rifle Association on Friday, but audience members won't be allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms during his speech.
As NPR reports, the United States Secret Service is "taking control of the hall during Trump's speech and is prohibiting attendees from having firearms, firearms accessories and knives."
In addition to these weapons, attendees will also be barred from having "ammunition, laser pointers, pepper spray, toy guns, backpacks," among other items.
And to ensure that the NRA members won't be carrying heat during the speech, everyone in attendance will be searched with a magnetometer designed to detect hidden firearms.
Trump's speech at the NRA convention in Houston, Texas, comes in the wake of the mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two adult teachers dead.
Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth. After sweeping by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, it is now almost 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth in interstellar space. Both Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, carry little pieces of humanity in the form of their Golden Records. These messages in a bottle include spoken greetings in 55 languages, sounds and images from nature, an album of recordings and images from numerous cultures, and a written message of welcome from Jimmy Carter, who was U.S. president when the spacecraft left Earth in 1977.
Each Voyager spacecraft carries a Golden Record containing two hours of sounds, music and greetings from around the world. Carl Sagan and other scientists assumed that any civilization advanced enough to detect and capture the record in space could figure out how to play it.
The Golden Records were built to last a billion years in the environment of space, but in a recent analysis of the paths and perils these explorers may face, astronomers calculated that they could exist for trillions of years without coming remotely close to any stars.
Having spent my career in the field of religion and science, I’ve thought a lot about how spiritual ideas intersect with technological achievements. The incredible longevity of the Voyager spacecraft presents a uniquely tangible entry point into exploring ideas of immortality.
For many people, immortality is the everlasting existence of a soul or spirit that follows death. It can also mean the continuation of one’s legacy in memory and records. With its Golden Record, each Voyager provides such a legacy, but only if it is discovered and appreciated by an alien civilization in the distant future.
Many religions espouse some form of life after death.
Religious beliefs about immortality are numerous and diverse. Most religions foresee a postmortem career for a personal soul or spirit, and these range from everlasting residence among the stars to reincarnation.
The ideal eternal life for many Christians and Muslims is to abide forever in God’s presence in heaven or paradise. Judaism’s teachings about what happens after death are less clear. In the Hebrew Bible, the dead are mere “shades” in a darkened place called Sheol. Some rabbinical authorities give credence to the resurrection of the righteous and even to the eternal status of souls.
Jimmy Carter, whose message and autograph are immortalized in the Golden Records, is a progressive Southern Baptist and a living example of religious hope for immortality. Now battling brain cancer and approaching centenarian status, he has thought about dying. Following his diagnosis, Carter concluded in a sermon: “It didn’t matter to me whether I died or lived. … My Christian faith includes complete confidence in life after death. So I’m going to live again after I die.”
It is plausible to conclude that the potential of an alien witnessing the Golden Record and becoming aware of Carter’s identity billions of years in the future would offer only marginal additional consolation for him. Carter’s knowledge in his ultimate destiny is a measure of his deep faith in the immortality of his soul. In this sense, he likely represents people of numerous faiths.
Secular immortality
For people who are secular or nonreligious there is little solace to be found in an appeal to the continuing existence of a soul or spirit following one’s death. Carl Sagan, who came up with the idea for the Golden Records and led their development, wrote of the afterlife: “I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than just wishful thinking.” He was more saddened by thoughts of missing important life experiences – like seeing his children grow up – than fearful about the expected annihilation of his conscious self with the death of his brain.
With Voyagers 1 and 2 estimated to exist for more than a trillion years, they are about as immortal as it gets for human artifacts. Even before the Sun’s expected demise when it runs out of fuel in about 5 billion years, all living species, mountains, seas and forests will have long been obliterated. It will be as if we and all the marvelous and extravagant beauty of planet Earth never existed – a devastating thought to me.
Voyager 1’s path, in white, has taken the craft well past the orbits of the outer planets into interstellar space, where aliens may someday come across the relic of humanity.
But in the distant future, the two Voyager spacecraft will still be floating in space, awaiting discovery by an advanced alien civilization for whom the messages on the Golden Records were intended. Only those records will likely remain as testimony and legacy of Earth, a kind of objective immortality.
Religious and spiritual people can find solace in the belief that God or an afterlife waits for them after death. For the secular, hoping that someone or something will remember humanity, any wakeful and appreciative aliens will have to do.
Donald Trump intends to run for president again, but allies expect him to face a bevy of Republican challengers -- and advisers are hoping he doesn't throw his MAGA hat in the ring.
The former president has been quizzing advisers and visitors at Mar-A-Lago about his potential GOP challengers for 2024, and advisers have repeatedly pressed him not to announce his campaign before November's midterm election, which Republican strategists fear would rally Democratic voters and boost President Joe Biden's approval rating, reported the Washington Post.
“I think there is a very real and growing sense — albeit in hushed tones, private conversations, and rarely publicly but more publicly now than ever before — of people saying maybe not that he’s a paper tiger, but that his power is greatly diminished,” said one person close to Trump. “Privately, no one around Trump — and when I say no one, I mean no one, other than the handful of people who wouldn’t have any professional existence without him — wants him to run again.”
“I looked at the polls, and I’m ahead by 60 or 70 points,” the former president recently told the Post, boasting that he had "made" many of them.
The former president is fixated on former vice president Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but Republican strategists believe he will face a crowded GOP field -- although he'll start out as the favorite.
“It isn’t going to be a clear field for him," said one GOP strategist who recently met with Trump. "There’s a lot of people who want to go against him. If he runs, Pompeo, Pence and Chris Christie all will consider running against him. Who knows what DeSantis will do? These guys are out there working, they are hitting every donor they can find, they want to run.”
