A federal judge on Tuesday approved an agreement for BP PLC to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and pay a record $4 billion in criminal penalties for the company's role in the 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Before she ruled, U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance heard testimony from relatives of 11 workers who died when BP's blown-out Macondo well triggered an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and started the spill.
BP agreed in November to plead guilty to charges involving the workers' deaths and for lying to Congress about the size of the spill from its broken well, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil. Much of it ended up in the Gulf and soiled the shorelines of several states. The company could have withdrawn from the agreement if Vance had rejected it.
Neither the Justice Department nor BP presented arguments to the judge before her decision in New Orleans.
Authorities evacuated more than 1,000 people from Indonesia's Mount Rinjani after a sub-volcano began erupting, but...
A new study paints a picture of an Earth that is warmer than it has been...
A top-secret US military project from the cold war and the toxic waste it conceals, thought...
