Federal trial over Gulf oil spill to resume

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The trial resumes Monday for the federal litigation spawned by BP's massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with a focus on the company's response to the deadly disaster.

At the start of the trial's second phase, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is expected to hear two hours of opening statements from lawyers for BP and for Gulf Coast residents and businesses who claim the spill cost them money.

The second phase is divided into two segments: The first segment will explore the methods BP employed to cap the well. The second is designed to help Barbier determine how much oil spilled into the Gulf from BP's blown-out well.

The first phase ended in April after Barbier heard eight weeks of testimony about the causes of the blowout.

BP insists it was properly prepared to respond to the disaster, but plaintiffs' attorneys will argue the London-based global oil company could have capped the well much sooner if it hadn't ignored decades of warnings about the risks of a deep-water blowout.

The plaintiffs' lawyers, who are teaming up with attorneys for the five Gulf states and two of BP's contractors for the second phase of the trial, also claim BP repeatedly lied to federal officials and withheld information about the volume of oil that was flowing from the well.

"It should pay the price for its choices. BP should be held accountable for the lengthy delay caused by its fraud," they wrote in a pretrial court filing.

BP maintains its spill preparations complied with every government requirement and met industry standards. But the April 20, 2010, blowout of its Macondo well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and 50 miles off the Louisiana coast presented "unforeseen challenges," the company's attorneys wrote.

"With these uncertain and unique conditions, one overarching principle governed the team's work: 'Don't make it worse,'" they wrote, saying BP deserved "recognition, not condemnation" for its spill response efforts.

The second phase is scheduled to last 16 days over four weeks. The last three weeks will focus on the question of how much oil spilled into the Gulf.

Under the Clean Water Act, a polluter can be forced to pay a maximum of either $1,100 or $4,300 per barrel of spilled oil. The higher maximum applies if the company is found grossly negligent, as the government argues BP should be. But the penalties can be assessed at amounts lower than those caps. Congress passed a law dictating that 80 percent of the Clean Water Act penalties paid by BP must be divided among the Gulf states.

Judge Barbier has outlined a rigid schedule for attorneys to present their arguments and evidence — and a court reporter will use a chess clock to keep track of time.

The judge set no strict time limits during the trial's first phase, which ended on April 17 after the judge heard eight weeks of testimony about the complex chain of mistakes and failures that caused the blowout.

The first phase featured testimony from high-ranking company executives and rig workers who described their harrowing brush with death after an explosion on the rig Deepwater Horizon killed 11 of their colleagues. The second phase will consist almost entirely of technical testimony by dueling experts in several scientific disciplines.

The Justice Department's experts estimate 4.2 million barrels, or 176 million gallons, spilled into the Gulf. BP has urged Barbier to use an estimate of 2.45 million barrels, or nearly 103 million gallons, in calculating any Clean Water Act fines. Both sides agree that 810,000 barrels, or 34 million gallons, escaped the well but was captured before it could pollute the Gulf.

Government experts believe the oil was flowing from the well at a higher rate shortly after the blowout than it was when the well was sealed with a capping stack, which was equipped with a pressure gauge. BP's experts concluded that flow rates increased over time, due in part to the erosion of steel rams on the rig's blowout preventer.

For the first phase, lawyers for Gulf Coast residents and businesses and for the Gulf states were adversaries with Deepwater Horizon owner Transocean Ltd. and cement contractor Halliburton. But they are aligned against BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a minority owner of the Macondo well, for the second phase.

Barbier ultimately could decide how much more money BP and its contractors owe for their roles in the deadly disaster. A "penalty phase" for the trial has not been scheduled yet.

Transocean and Halliburton argue that their share of responsibility should be reduced as a result of BP's alleged misconduct in planning for and responding to the spill.

In May 2010, BP tried in vain to use the "top kill" method to stop the flow of oil by pumping mud and other material into the blowout preventer. Plaintiffs' lawyers claim BP knew the strategy was doomed to fail based on higher flow rate estimates that the company didn't share with federal officials at the time.

"These lies and omissions delayed the capping of the well," they wrote.

A capping stack ultimately sealed the well on July 15, 2010. BP said the device was specifically built for the "unique challenges" of the Macondo blowout.

"Neither (federal) regulations nor industry standards required a capping device when responding to a deep-water blowout, and no deep-water blowout had been secured with such a device previously," company attorneys wrote.

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Jury set to resume work on abortion deaths verdict

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia jury is set to return to weigh murder charges against a doctor charged with killing five people, including a patient and four viable babies allegedly born alive.

Kermit Gosnell, 72, faces the death penalty if convicted of killing babies at his clinic, where authorities say he routinely performed illegal, late-term abortions. A string of former clinic employees testified over the past two months, telling jurors that Gosnell cut live babies in the back of the neck to ensure they were dead.

Four of them have pleaded guilty to murder charges for the babies they say they killed, or for helping sedate a 41-year-old patient who died of an overdose. They accused Gosnell of killing two of the four babies, but he could be convicted in all four deaths if the jury deems him an accomplice or conspirator.

"He has to share the specific intent to kill," Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart explained as he instructed jurors, who began deliberating for about two hours Tuesday.

Under Pennsylvania law, Minehart explained to jurors, for babies to be born alive, they must be expelled or removed from the mother and show one of the following signs of life: brain activity, breathing, the definitive movement of a muscle or the pulsing of the umbilical cord.

Gosnell also is charged in the patient's 2009 death. By that point, state officials had not inspected Gosnell's clinic since the early 1990s, prosecutors said.

Former clinic employee Eileen O'Neill, 56, of Phoenixville, is also on trial, charged with six counts of theft for allegedly billing as a doctor when she was not licensed. O'Neill's lawyer has argued that O'Neill worked under Gosnell's supervision. The jury, asking its first question barely an hour into deliberations, had Minehart repeat that charge, suggesting they may be starting with O'Neill's case.

The defense argues that Gosnell helped desperate women who had no medical care and nowhere else to turn.

"He provided those desperate young girls with relief. He gave them a solution to their problems," defense lawyer Jack McMahon said in closing arguments Monday.

Gosnell faces 258 counts in all, including four first-degree murder counts, which could bring the death penalty.

Other charges against him include one count each of infanticide and racketeering, 24 counts of performing third-trimester abortions and 227 counts of failing to counsel patients a day in advance.

Gosnell performed thousands of abortions over a 30-year career, and authorities say he got rich doing so by charging nearly $3,000 cash from mostly poor women and teens for illegal, late-term abortions.

McMahon argued that prosecutors who blasted the clinic as a filthy, flea-infested "house of horrors" in a 2011 grand jury report sensationalized the case to make headlines.

"This isn't a perfect place by any stretch of the imagination — but it isn't what they say it is," McMahon argued.

Cameron called Gosnell's operation an assembly line for a stream of poor, mostly minority women and teens, including Karnamaya Mongar, who came from Virginia for an abortion after she was turned away at three other clinics, starting when she was 15 weeks pregnant. Gosnell is charged with third-degree murder in her overdose death.

The doctor sat calmly at the defense table, as he has throughout the often graphic six-week trial.

Gosnell did not testify but might take the stand if he is convicted and the trial moves to the penalty phase.

The jury resumes its deliberations on Wednesday.

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Pakistan, U.S. agree to resume joint intel ops: Foreign Ministry (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan and the United States have agreed to resume joint intelligence operations against Islamist militants, the Pakistani foreign ministry said on Friday, in a first step toward rebuilding trust between the two countries.

The announcement came a week after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed Pakistan's civilian and military leaders to take decisive steps against militant groups operating in the country after the discovery of Osama bin Laden in a garrison town.

"There will be joint operations. These could be intelligence sharing," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua told Reuters.

Asked whether Pakistan would allow U.S. troops to conduct operations along with their Pakistani counterparts, she said she would not go into details.

However, she added: "Obviously the question of sovereignty is supreme to us and everything will be done through consultations."

A U.S. official traveling with Clinton during her visit to Islamabad last week suggested at the time there could be special operations to attack militants in Pakistan, seen as a threat to not just foreign forces in Afghanistan, but also Western interests elsewhere.

Bin Laden's discovery and killing by American special forces in a garrison town just 50 km (30 miles) from the capital Islamabad on May 2 raised fresh doubts about Pakistan's reliability as a U.S. partner against militancy.

Joint intelligence operations between Pakistan and the United States since 2001 have led to the arrest of several key al Qaeda and Taliban figures in Pakistan.

However, such operations had been frozen since January following the arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis for shooting to death two Pakistanis. Davis was finally released after the paying of monetary compensation to the heirs of slain people under an Islamic law prevalent in Pakistan.

A Pakistan analyst said resumption of joint operations was a "step in the right direction" but both uneasy allies need to do a lot more to mitigate their mistrust.

"It shows they are trying to restore their confidence in each other and trying to get the best possible results through a joint approach rather then pursuing individual approaches," said Talat Masood, a security analyst and a retired general.

"(But) mistrust won't go away right away. ... We have to wait and see how this is implemented."

Washington sees Islamabad as a critical ally in its efforts to stabilize war-ravaged Afghanistan but their relations have always been shrouded in mistrust and suspicions.

In a sign of continuing difficulties in ties, Pakistan has asked the United States to halve the presence of military trainers, numbering around 130, stationed in the country.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters in Washington on Thursday that there would be a significant cutback in the number of U.S. trainers, but it was "not going to zero."

(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Sanjeev Miglani)

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Sony may resume U.S.-based online games on Tuesday: report (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Corp is considering resuming its U.S.-based online games service on Tuesday, following a massive security breach last month, Kyodo news agency said on Friday.

The consumer electronics giant was forced to close down its PlayStation games network and its PC-based online gaming network after discovering that hackers had accessed personal details on more than 100 million user accounts last month.

Sony spokeswoman Yoshiko Uchiyama declined to confirm the report, saying only that the company was still targeting the end of May for restoration of all services worldwide.

The company has been gradually restoring access, starting with its PlayStation network in the United States, after it fell victim to one of the biggest cyber attacks ever. Sony has since come under fire for lax security and for not disclosing the breach sooner.

Shares in Sony closed up 0.3 percent on Friday at 2,221 yen against a 0.1 percent dip in the benchmark Nikkei average.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds and Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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Sony to resume network services after hacker attacks (AFP)

TOKYO (AFP) – Sony said it would start Sunday a "phased restoration" of network services that came under hacker attacks in one of the biggest data breaches since the advent of the Internet.

The cyber attacks in recent weeks involved the theft of personal data that include names, passwords and addresses from more than 100 million accounts on its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.

Sony has said it cannot rule out that millions of credit card numbers may have been compromised.

The entertainment and electronics giant said it would resume PlayStation Network and Qriocity services in phases, with full restoration expected by the end of the month.

"The phased restoration will be on a country-by-country basis beginning in the Americas, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Middle East," the Sony group said in a statement. Services in other areas would follow.

"Working closely with several respected outside security firms, the company has implemented new and additional security measures that strengthen safeguards against unauthorised activity, and provide consumers with greater protection of their personal information," Sony said.

Sony shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services on April 20 after a cyber attack on the company's data centre in San Diego.

"We are taking aggressive action at all levels to address the concerns that were raised by this incident, and are making consumer data protection a full-time, company-wide commitment," said Kazuo Hirai, Sony executive deputy president.

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Syria protests expected to resume

(CNN) -- Syria was braced for another day of unrest with pro-reform protesters expected to take to the streets across the country after Friday prayers.

Syrian security forces began pulling out of the restive southwestern town of Daraa a day earlier, after a mission to "restore security and calm," state TV reported. Government troops have been battling protesters over the past month and a half.

The human rights group Amnesty International says more than 500 people were killed during the clashes and thousands more were rounded up for questioning.

"Scores were arrested and huge amounts of up-to-date weapons and ammunition in several places were confiscated, which helped bring back the sense of safety to the residents of the city," a Syrian military source told the SANA news agency about the Daraa mission.

But the international activist group Avaaz said there was little sign of a Syrian withdrawal from Daraa, and warned that remaining Syrian armored units still pose a threat to demonstrators.

Syrian soldiers were gathered on the edges of Banias, a city on Syria's northwest coast, according to a witness who spoke to CNN Thursday.

"The army has deployed more than 30 tanks around Banias and 40 armored vehicles," said Anas Al Shaghri, a 23-year-old Syrian economics student. "We are told that the Syrian army will enter the city just like they did in Daraa any minute."

Citizen protesters are posted at checkpoints leading into Banias in an effort to keep the Syrian military out of the city, Al Shaghri said. "We just carry batons and telephones to film whenever the government thugs and armed security forces attack."

The Syrian military warned the protesters that "if we don't pull out the checkpoints the security forces will break into the city," he said.

But Al Shaghri said the protesters "are not terrorists, nor armed. We are simple a people longing for freedom."

At least 16 people have been arrested and detained in the city over the past three days, he said.

The announcement of the pullout from Daraa came a day after Syrian security forces arrested two people outside the University of Damascus as student demonstrators rallied for the release of political detainees, eyewitnesses told CNN. Army convoys and tanks rolled into the capital city, setting up what the witnesses described as a base in the central square.

"The army knows they cannot pressure the economic situation too much in Damascus. Everyone is trying to go about their work, school and their businesses," one eyewitness activist told CNN.

Amnesty International said it has received firsthand reports of torture and other ill treatment from detainees held in Syria, as a wave of arrests of anti-government protesters intensified over the weekend.

The organization said "widespread, arbitrary arrests" had taken place in towns across the country in recent days. At least 499 people were detained Sunday during house-to-house raids in Daraa, a key location for pro-reform protests, the group said, adding that most were being held at unknown locations without access to lawyers or their families.

The rights group also said it had the names of 54 people killed last Friday, which brought to 542 the number of people killed during a month and a half of protests in Syria. Amnesty International stated in a report that the high number of deaths can be attributed to the tactics used by Syrian security forces.

And in a statement released Thursday, Avaaz said more than 400 people -- including members of prominent families who took part in recent protests -- have been rounded up in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani. The group said 38 of those arrested were released Wednesday "and sent home with instructions to spread the word in their communities of their arrest and torture, as a warning to anyone involved in anti-government activism."

Another 300-plus arrests have been made in Sakba, another Damascus suburb, Avaaz said. CNN could not independently corroborate those reports.

Avaaz said more protests are expected across Syria after Friday prayers.

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Deliberations resume next week in Barry Bonds perjury trial

Barry Bonds is charged with lying under oath when he testified about his steroids use in 2003. STORY HIGHLIGHTSBonds' trainer is ordered freed two weeks after he refused to testifyThe jury was given the Bonds perjury case to decide Thursday afternoonThe baseball legend faces three perjury counts and an obstruction of justice chargeThe charges stem from a federal probe of athletes' steroid useRELATED TOPICSBarry BondsDrugs in SportsPerjury San Francisco (CNN) -- Jurors deciding Barry Bonds' fate asked to listen again to the testimony of a key prosecution witness Friday before they recessed deliberations for the weekend in the baseball legend's perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

The judge will read the transcript of Kathy Hoskins' testimony Monday morning when the jury returns for their second day of deliberations.

Bonds, 46, allegedly lied to a federal grand jury about knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs and about being injected by anyone but his doctors.

The three perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice could each carry a 10-year prison sentence upon conviction. A fourth perjury charge was dropped by prosecutors Wednesday.

Jurors earlier Friday were allowed to hear again two segments of a conversation secretly recorded in the San Francisco Giants' locker room by Bond's former assistant, also a key government witness.

The trial began last month in a San Francisco federal courthouse less than two miles from the ballpark where Bonds broke Hank Aaron's major league home run record in August 2007.

Bonds' former trainer was freed Friday from the prison where he's been held since he refused to testify the trial two weeks ago.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found Anderson in contempt of court on the first day of trial testimony when his lawyer informed her that he would not take the stand to answer questions about Bonds' steroid use.

It was the third time Anderson chose jail time over testimony. He was sent to prison for several weeks twice before when he refused to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Bonds.

The absence of the trainer's testimony hampered the government's case against Bonds, who is charged with lying under oath when he testified about his steroids use in 2003 before the grand jury that was investigating an alleged sports doping scandal involving Anderson of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative.

A prosecutor argued Thursday that Bonds lied because he knew the truth about his steroids use would "tinge his accomplishments" and hurt his career.

"His secret was so powerful that he couldn't admit it, wouldn't admit it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow said in his closing arguments.

Bonds' defense lawyer, during his closing arguments Thursday, asked jurors to acquit him because of a technical oversight by prosecutors -- an argument the government quickly rebutted.

The judge's instructions to the jury say Bonds can found be found guilty only if his lies could have affected the grand jury's decisions and that Bonds knew it, defense lawyer Allen Ruby said.

But none of the 25 prosecution witnesses presented evidence about what decisions the grand jury made or what they might have made, Ruby said. "Who told us about the grand jury at all?"

The Internal Revenue Service agent who started the federal investigation into the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs testified that Bonds' false testimony affected his work, but Agent Jeff Novitzky was not part of the grand jury, Ruby said.

"I know that this is a little technical," Ruby said. "I don't apologize for that. Every word of the law matters."

The judge also instructed jurors to rely only what they heard from witnesses in the trial and not use their prior knowledge of the grand jury process, he said.

"The government is trusting you to do what you are forbidden to do, and fill in the gaps," Ruby said.

Prosecutor Matthew Parrella, in his rebuttal, said Novitzky's investigation and the grand jury probe were "one and the same."

The jury can also read the indictments the grand jury issued in 2004 and the grand jury transcript in which "the issues are fleshed out," Parrella said.

Ruby told jurors that Bonds acknowledged to the grand jury that he used the substances known as "the clear and the cream," but at the time of his testimony, even investigators didn't know what was in them.

Bonds told the grand jury he thought Anderson was giving him flaxseed oil, Ruby said.

Nedrow, in his closing, said it was "implausible" that Bonds would take drugs "and really not know what they were."

A urine sample given by Bonds in the summer of 2003, just months before his grand jury testimony, tested positive for anabolic steroids, he said. The defense argued there was another sample taken weeks earlier that tested negative for the drugs.

Defense lawyer Cristina Arguedas, in her part of closing arguments, accused prosecutors of ignoring crimes by witnesses in exchange for their testimony against Bonds.

"They will forgive it if that person will say something bad about Barry Bonds," Arguedas said.

Bonds' former girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, testified for the prosecution that she witnessed physical and emotional changes in Bonds that the government argued were indications of steroids use.

Bell testified during the trial that she had committed perjury when she told the same grand jury in 2003 that she had not noticed Bonds' shrunken testicles.

Bell also admitted she had committed mortgage fraud by lying on a home loan application, Arguedas said.

During court testimony last month, Bonds' childhood friend Steve Hoskins, who worked for a decade as his assistant, said he tried to persuade Bonds to stop using anabolic steroids in 2000 and 2003.

Bonds' defense lawyer argued that Hoskins' cooperation with the government was motivated by bitterness over Bonds firing him and by a desire for protection from prosecution for allegedly stealing money from Bonds.

Prosecutors played an audio recording that Hoskins secretly made in the San Francisco Giants locker room of a conversation with Anderson about the hazards of steroid usage.

Bonds' defense attorney suggested that Hoskins made the recording only after Bonds dismissed him in March 2003.

Hoskins acknowledged that he leaked the details of the recording to investigative reporter Lance Williams, who included it in his book about the scandal, "Game of Shadows."

While he never witnessed Bonds being injected with anabolic steroids, Hoskins said he saw Bonds and Anderson emerge from a bedroom with a syringe during spring training in 2000.

Bonds complained to him that year that steroid injections "were making his butt sore," Hoskins said.

In his 21-year major league career, Bonds also set the record for most home runs in a single season in 2001, when he hit 73. He did not officially retire after he was indicted, but he never played another game.

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