Transocean Ltd. will pay $1.4 billion in civil and criminal penalties and fines for its role in the 2010 oil spill that pumped nearly 5 billion barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on January 3. The settlement “brings us one significant step closer to justice for the human, environmental and economic devastation wrought by the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said.
TARGETED KILLINGS
A federal judge declined to order the Obama administration to divulge its legal rationale for the targeted killings of suspected terrorists, including American citizens, without trial. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusions a secret,” U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon wrote.
