The news at a glance

Lawsuits: BP and U.S. face off over Gulf spill

BP is back in court, “with billions of dollars in penalties at stake,” said Clifford Krauss in The New York Times. The British oil giant last week began the second phase of a civil trial involving the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill that killed 11 workers and fouled miles of beaches. The central issue is how much oil was spilled. “The government will argue that a total 4.2 million barrels of oil was discharged into the sea over 87 days,” while BP says it was 2.45 million barrels. BP could have to pay fines of as much as $4,300 a barrel if it is “found to have been grossly negligent.”

BP could face $18 billion in penalties, said Tom Fowler in The Wall Street Journal, but “the company says it believes the total will be closer to $3.5 billion.” BP has already spent more than $42 billion in cleanup costs, criminal settlements, environmental restoration, and restitution to residents and businesses. In determining negligence, government lawyers will argue that BP “ignored warnings about preparing for a catastrophic accident” and lied about the leak’s spill rate. The company is expected to say its measures “were in line with the industry’s best practices at the time.”

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Airlines: Ryanair slapped with labor fine

Ryanair will pay $12 million in damages for breaking French labor laws, said Hugh Carnegy in the Financial Times. A French court ordered the fine after the Irish airline was found to have used Irish contracts to set up a base in Marignane, France, from 2006 to 2010. “The move enabled Ryanair to avoid paying France’s high social security charges and other taxes on labor,” leading the court to “convict the airline of ‘concealed employment.’”

Tech: Microsoft investors want Gates out

Three top investors in Microsoft are calling on co-founder Bill Gates to step down as chairman, said Nadia Damouni and Bill Rigby in Reuters.com. While the firm’s outgoing CEO, Steve Ballmer, “has been under pressure for years to improve the company’s performance and share price, this appears to be the first time that major shareholders are taking aim at Gates.” The investors say that Gates’s role “effectively blocks the adoption of new strategies and would limit the power of a new chief executive to make substantial changes.” Gates, the company’s largest individual shareholder, owns about 4.5 percent of the $277 billion company.

Housing: FHA needs $1.7 billion bailout

The Federal Housing Administration is underwater, said Jim Puzzanghera in the Los Angeles Times. The agency said last week that it needs approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer money “to stabilize its long-term finances” and “ensure it has sufficient reserves to cover anticipated losses on the loans it backs.” While the agency isn’t having problems paying claims now, it is legally required to have enough reserves to pay off all claims over the next 30 years.

Insurance: Slashing hours over Obamacare

Some workers may be taking a hit for Obamacare, said Karen McVeigh in The Guardian (U.K.). Companies such as Forever 21, Home Depot, SeaWorld, and Trader Joe’s have cut back on workers’ hours or slashed health-care coverage. The companies deny that the measures are linked to the Affordable Care Act, but the cuts help them “avoid a mandate” to offer health care for employees who work 30 hours a week or more. “The trend has caused fears among low-paid workers living on the breadline that they will be hit twice—by having their hours and thus earnings cut and by having to pay more for health care.”