In brief: FAA chief on leave after DUI arrest

WASHINGTON – FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt was placed on a leave of absence Monday as Department of Transportation officials decide how to handle Babbitt’s weekend arrest on charges of drunken driving in suburban northern Virginia.

DOT officials are in “discussions with legal counsel about Administrator Babbitt’s employment status,” said a statement released by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s office Monday afternoon.

Babbitt, 65, was charged with driving while intoxicated after a patrol officer spotted him driving on the wrong side of the street and pulled him over about 10:30 p.m. Saturday in Fairfax City, Va., police in the Washington, D.C., suburb said.

Babbitt, who lives in nearby Reston, Va., was the only occupant in the vehicle, the statement said. Police said he cooperated and was released on his own recognizance.

Grenades not part of plot, says TSA

NEWARK, N.J. – The Transportation Security Administration said its inspector found five inert grenades in a passenger’s checked bag at Newark Liberty Airport. But the agency does not believe they were part of any terror plot.

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein says the explosives were found in a bag of a Brussels-bound passenger Sunday.

The agency says it’s not clear why she was traveling with the weapons and that she surrendered them.

Waterfall victim’s body identified

FRESNO, Calif. – Officials on Monday identified a body found in the Merced River as one of three young people swept over a waterfall last summer in Yosemite National Park.

Meanwhile, searchers found another body that could be the last missing hiker from the July accident that traumatized dozens of people using one of the park’s most popular trails.

The body of Ninos Yacoub, 27, was found on Nov. 29, trapped under house-sized boulders that became visible after the river receded.

On Saturday, rangers searching the same area located another body that family members believe is that of 21-year-old Ramina Badal.

BP: Halliburton destroyed evidence

NEW ORLEANS – BP in a high-stakes court filing on Monday accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence about the quality of its cement slurry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the nation’s worst offshore oil spill.

BP accused Halliburton of having intentionally destroyed evidence about possible problems with its cement slurry poured into the deep-sea Macondo well off the Louisiana coast.

Also in the documents filed in a New Orleans federal court, BP accused Halliburton of failing to produce incriminating computer modeling evidence.

BP asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to penalize Halliburton and order a court-sponsored computer forensic team to recover the missing modeling results.