A BP cleanup crew shovels oil from a beach on May 24, 2010 at Port Fourchon, Louisiana. BP CEO Tony Hayward, who visited the beach, said that BP is doing everything possible to clean up the spill. (John Moore/Getty)
The Feds consider elbowing BP out of the way to try and speed up the oil recovery; looking at radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki's origins; should ugly people get explicit legal protection?; how to clean an oily duck; Minnesota court case for man charged with assisting suicides in online chat rooms; what the 1968 history of the USS Pueblo can teach us about the current tensions between North and South Korea.
Takeaway producer, Noel King, examines al-Awlaki's influence at home; headlines.
We are taking a closer look at the life of radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. In a video released over the weekend by al-Qaida in Yemen, al-Awlaki urged Muslims to take American lives. The cleric has a published discography to rival some rock stars, with over 100 CDs of readings and lectures to his name, not all of them incendiary. al-Awlaki was once known as a popular (and moderate) interpreter of Islamic texts on CD; speculation abounds as to exactly when and why he took a more radical turn.
The Supreme Court delivered a blow to the NFL on Monday, ruling that the organization is an associaton of 32 separate entities. The anti-trust case was brought by American Needle, an apparel maker from Illinois that lost its contract with the NFL when the league entered into an exclusive 10-year, $250 million deal with Reebok to produce its league-branded merchandise.
There are many reasons people can find to dislike big oil companies. They reap huge corporate profits, while gas prices at the pump climb and strain our wallets; oil pollution destroys our natural world; and now the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens everything from wildlife to fisherman. We talk with John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, who says the government is at fault for the companies' bad reputations.
Investigators in India recovered the flight data recorder from the wreckage of the Air India Express aircraft, which crashed over the weekend. The plane, a Boeing 737, overshot the runway at Mangalore airport on Saturday and plunged into a valley, killing 158 people, including the crew. There are eight survivors. A team from the United States National Transportation Safety Board will arrive at the crash site today to help with the investigation. The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder reports from Delhi.
_small_image.jpg "Deborah Rhode, Professor of Law at Stanford University")
Everyone knows that looks matter. But should the law be involved when it comes to discrimination on the basis of appearance? Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode thinks it should. She explains why in a new book about how much we're affected by how people look, "The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law
David Biello, associate editor of environment and energy at Scientific American, describes whether the U.S. could do a better cleanup than BP; headlines.
Oil has now been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for 36 days. BP has taken full responsibility for plugging the leak and cleaning up the water and shores, but some are now saying that after a month of attempts, their time at bat is up, and the federal government should take over operations. According to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the government can federalize the spill and run the cleanup operation, billing BP for the total cost. However, this remedy is meant to be used as a last resort.
Eben Erickson makes his living off of that yellow line that stretches down the middle of the highway. However, this year, his livelihood may be threatened. His company, Road Runner Striping, usually spends spring repainting the stripes. However a shortage of an essential component of road paint that may mean less income for businesses and compromised safety for drivers.
Congress is working to push through a lot of big items this week before Memorial Day Recess, including a jobs bill, tax hikes and war funding. The jobs bill incorporates an extension of unemployment benefits and Cobra health subsidies through the end of the year. The bill also encompasses help to fix Medicare, but only temporarily as there's not quite enough money. Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich explains why this might mean a big fight on the Hill. Todd also examines a war bill, which seeks to get away from deficit spending and find cuts to finance the war. Neither of these bills will pass easily.
A former nurse appears in court in Minnesota this morning charged with two counts of aiding suicide. His weapon? Words. For years, William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, allegedly spent hours in online chat rooms with suicide themes, posing as a young female nurse and befriending vulnerable people contemplating suicide. He encouraged them to end their own lives, gave them tips on how to do it, and entered into suicide pacts with some - pacts police say he never intended to keep. At least two of the people he advised took their own lives – a 32-year-old British man in 2005, and an 18-year-old college student in Canada in 2008. Now Melchert-Dinkel is being charged with their deaths.
Day 36, and oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Volunteers from all over the country are heading to the shores of Louisiana and Mississippi to help in any way they can. A lot of these volunteers are training to save and clean animals that have been affected by the oil, particularly birds, whose oil-soaked feathers prevent them from flying and keeping warm.
In March, a South Korean warship was torpedoed, killing 46 sailors and sinking the vessel. Recent evidence strongly implicates North Korea as the most likely power responsible for the attack, though Pyonyang denies any involvement. Now, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has said his country will boost its defense, sever all trade with North Korea and deny North Korean merchant ships access to their sea lanes. The U.S. has backed the South Korean stance.
But this is not the first time North Korea has taken a hostile maritime policy, nor is this the most explicit act of aggression by Pyongyang.
The Supreme Court ruled that black candidates looking for jobs with the Chicago fire department did not wait too long before filing a lawsuit accusing the city of Chicago of discrimination. The case centers around a 1995 standardized test that the candidates scored too low on for job consideration. Attorney for the plaintiffs, Matthew Piers talks about the victory. He says that the message is that employers need to be careful about how they use standardized tests as they are often discriminatory in their results and rarely predict job performance.
Today's Takeaway: Obesity Among the Homeless, Egyptian Elections, Morgan Stanley in Hot Water, and Have College Students Stopped Studying?
Why Increased Immigration is the Solution for America's Ailing Economy
Is the Private Era in Space Officially Upon Us?
Archer Records Keeps Vinyl and Detroit's Techno Scene Alive
Today's Takeaway: Over 50 and Unemployed, Texting in Class, The Future of Yemen, and Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America
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