Rig owner to give bonuses to charity CHICAGO - Transocean Ltd., owner of the drilling rig that exploded and sank last year in the Gulf of Mexico, said top executives would donate to charity safety bonuses that drew criticism from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
The bonuses, totaling more than $250,000, will be given to the Deepwater Horizon Memorial Fund established by the Switzerland-based company after 11 rig workers died in the April 20 disaster, it said.
CEO Steven Newman and his senior management team drew criticism from Salazar and other government officials after a regulatory filing said the bonuses were justified by Transocean's "best year in safety performance." Transocean's Deepwater Horizon vessel was working on behalf of BP when the blowout occurred, triggering a massive oil spill. - Bloomberg News
SpaceX plans new, powerful rocket WASHINGTON - A high-tech entrepreneur unveiled plans Tuesday to launch the world's most powerful rocket since the Apollo-era Saturn V.
Space Exploration Technology has already sent the first private rocket and capsule into Earth's orbit as a commercial venture. It now plans a rocket that could lift twice as much cargo into orbit as the about-to-be-retired space shuttle.
The first launch is slotted for 2013 from California.
SpaceX's new rocket, called Falcon Heavy, is big enough to send cargo or even people to the moon, an asteroid, or Mars. "This is a rocket of truly huge scale," said SpaceX president Elon Musk, who also founded PayPal. Launches cost about $100 million each.
The Falcon Heavy could put 117,000 pounds into the same orbit as the International Space Station; the shuttle hauls about 54,000 pounds. The old Saturn V could carry more than 400,000 pounds of cargo.
Potential customers for the new rocket are NASA, the military, other governments, and satellite makers. - AP
High court blocks Texas execution HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the first scheduled execution of a Texas death-row inmate using a new drug cocktail, though the proposed lethal mix was not mentioned in the court's decision to reconsider the merits of the condemned man's appeal.
Cleve Foster, 47, was to have been executed hours later for the 2002 slaying of a woman in Fort Worth - the first Texas execution since the state switched to pentobarbital in its three-drug mixture. The sedative has already been used for executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.
The high court agreed to reconsider its January order denying Foster's appeal. His lawyers had raised claims of innocence and poor legal help during his trial and early stages of his appeals. They also have argued that Texas prison officials violated administrative procedures last month when they announced the switch to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental, which is in short supply nationwide. - AP
Elsewhere:
President Obama's aides would recommend he veto a GOP-backed bill that bars the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases tied to global warming, the White House Office of Management and Budget said.
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