WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PAGE 6A
CRIME
Chancellor's guesthouse broken into Saturday
A thief broke into the Chancellor's guesthouse this weekend and stole cash, according to a KU Office of Public Safety report.
The guesthouse is northeast of the Chancellor's residence, 1532 Lilac Lane, and comprises two apartments.
Maj. Chris Keary, assistant KU police chief, said a visiting professor living on the second floor left at 6 p.m. Saturday and returned around midnight to discover a broken window on the southwest
side of the apartment. Sunday morning, the professor reported the break-in and said $200 and 100 British pounds were missing.
Rachel Salyer
Damage is estimated at $250. Keary said the investigation remains open and anyone with information is asked to call the KU Public Safety Office at (785) 864-5900 or KU Crime Stoppers at (785) 864-8888.
HEALTH
University, DEA partner to collect unused drugs
Students can help prevent drug abuse Wednesday by disposing of their unused prescription drugs at Wescoe Beach or Watkins Memorial Health Center.
The University and the Drug Enforcement Administration partner in these Take Back events each year. According to a University release, the goal is to prevent people from abusing prescription drugs obtained from family and friends.
Students will find a drop-off point for unused prescription drugs at Wescoe Beach between 10 a.m. and noon. Students can also dispose of medicine in a drive-up location in front of Watkins
between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Use of the drop-off points will be free of charge and anonymous, with no questions asked, according to the University.
Last April, the University drop-offs collected 37 pounds of prescription drugs. The DEA has recovered almost 500 tons of pills in the past three Take Back events.
The event will be sponsored by the KU Academy of Student Pharmacists, Peer Health Educators, Student Health Advisory Board, Student Health Services and the Office of Public Safety.
Vikaas Shanker
AGRICULTURE
Mad cow disease found in random sample in U.S.
HANFORD, Calif. — A senior manager with a California rendering company said Tuesday a cow at its Hanford, Calif., transfer station tested positive for mad cow disease.
Dennis Luckey, executive vice president of Baker Commodities in Los Angeles, told The Associated Press the disease was discovered after workers selected the cow for random sampling.
The sample was taken from the dead cow's carcass on April 18 at a hide-removal site. he said.
"This animal happened to be one that we randomly selected," Luckey said.
The company does not yet know which farm the cow came from, but the animal never made it to Baker's rendering plant 50 miles away in Kerman, Calif., Luckey said.
On April 19, a lab at the University of California, Davis reported that its test on the sample was inconclusive, he said.
The sample was then sent on to the Agriculture Department, which confirmed on Tuesday that the cow is the fourth discovered in the United States to test positive for the disease.
Associated Press
BP engineer charged in spill
ENVIRONMENT
I ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Justice Department says the first criminal charges in the Deepwater Horizon disaster have been filed against a former BP engineer who allegedly destroyed evidence. Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas, was arrested on charges of intentionally destroying evidence. He faces two counts of obstruction of justice. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, killing 11 men and spewing 200 million gallons of oil.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — Federal prosecutors brought the first criminal charges Tuesday in the Gulf oil spill, accusing a former BP engineer of deleting more than 300 text messages that indicated the blown-out well was spewing far more crude than the company was telling the public at the time.
Two years and four days after the drilling-rig explosion that set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, Kurt Mix, 50, of Katy, Texas, was arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence.
The U.S. Justice Department made it clear that the investigation is still going on and suggested that more people could be arrested. In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said prosecutors "will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history."
Federal investigators have been looking into the causes of the blowout and the actions of managers, engineers and rig workers at BP and its subcontractors Halliburton and Transocean in the days and hours before the April 20, 2010, explosion.
But the case against Mix focuses only on the aftermath of the blast, when BP scrambled for weeks to plug the leak. Even then, the charges are not really about the disaster by us.
Mix
about an alleged attempt to thwart the investigation into it.
In court papers, the FBI said one of the areas under investigation is whether the oil company intentionally lowballed the amount of crude spewing from the well.
In outlining the charges, the government suggested Mix knew the rate of flow from the busted
well was much greater than the company publicly acknowledged.
Prosecutors also said BP gave the public an optimistic account of its May 2010 efforts to plug the well via a technique called a "top kill," even though the company's internal data and some of the text messages showed the operation was likely to fail.
An accurate flow-rate estimate is necessary to determine how much in penalties BP and its subcontractors could face under the Clean Water Act. In court papers, prosecutors appeared to suggest the company was also worried about the effect of the disaster on its stock price.
The charges came a day before a federal judge was to consider granting preliminary approval of a $7.8 billion civil settlement between BP and a committee of plaintiffs.
ment and added: "BP had clear policies requiring preservation of evidence in this case and has undertaken substantial and ongoing efforts to preserve evidence."
The FBI said in court papers that Mix had been repeatedly notified by BP that instant messages and text messages needed to be preserved.
In a statement, BP said it is cooperating with the Justice Depart-
Mix, who resigned from BP in January, appeared on Tuesday afternoon before a judge in Houston, shackled at his hands and feet, and was released on $100,000 ball. His attorney had no comment afterward. If convicted, Mix could get up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count.
The engineer deleted more than 200 messages sent to a BP supervisor from his iPhone containing information about how much oil was spilling out, then erased 100 more messages to a contractor the following year, prosecutors said. Some of the messages were later
recovered via forensic computer techniques.
Many of the messages had to do with an effort to plug up the well with heavy mud injected under high pressure.
In public statements, the company professed optimism that the top kill would work, giving it a 60 to 70 percent chance of success.
On the day the top kill began, Mix estimated in a text to his supervisor that more than 15,000 barrels of oil per day were spilling three times BP's public estimate of 5,000 barrels and an amount much greater than what BP said the top kill could probably handle.
At the end of the first day, Mix texted his supervisor: "Too much flow rate — over 15,000 and too large an orifice." Despite Mix's findings, BP continued to make public statements that the top kill was proceeding according to plan, prosecutors said.