A federal judge on Monday dismissed one of the two counts in the indictment of a former BP executive who was charged with concealing information from Congress about the amount of oil that was leaking from the company's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt cited two reasons for dismissing the obstruction of Congress charge against David Rainey, who was BP's vice president of exploration for the Gulf. First, Engelhardt said the indictment failed to allege that Rainey knew of the pending congressional investigation he was charged with obstructing.

"Because it is an essential element of this crime that the defendant knew of this inquiry and investigation, the indictment must allege such knowledge. It does not," the judge wrote in his 44-page ruling. "Even construing the allegations strongly in the government's favor, it is simply impossible to ascertain from the indictment whether this essential element was presented to and found by the grand jury."

Here's more news on Top Chef's decision to head to New Orleans for its eleventh season. The Times-Picayune reports that Louisiana and the city of New Orleans tourism offices are giving Bravo $375,000 to sponsor the recently announced Top Chef: New Orleans. The Louisiana Office of Tourism will contribute $200,000 while the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation will contribute $175,000.

More surprising than the amount of money the government is spending to get Tom, Padma, and the cheftestapants in town is how the government got it in the first place. Instead of taxpayer funds, Louisiana's $200,000 sponsorship will be drawn from a recovery fund that oil giant BP set up after 2010's Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It's unclear at this time how Top Chef is a part of "state and local response costs and claims, and natural resource damages and related costs."

How much have other cities paid to get Top Chef?

In exchange for the money, Louisiana is getting its own season of Top Chef and guaranteed exposure for cities outside of New Orleans. A government official told the Times-Picayune that "We negotiated some things into that agreement [with Top Chef], the biggest part of which was at least two of the challenges will take place outside of the New Orleans area, to showcase other parts of the state." Was the early announcement one of the "some things" Louisiana negotiated into the contract?

In 2011, BP America's foundation made grants of $14.2 million to U.S.-based nonprofits and just short of $6 million to overseas charities. The foundation's 990 indicated three grants to Alabama-based organizations (two United Ways, one Red Cross), one in Mississippi (United Way), and none in Louisiana or Florida, the four states hardest hit by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion (killing 11 workers) and subsequent oil spill in 2010.

In comparison, there were 12 BP Foundation grants to Alaskan organizations. But the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred not in Alaska, but in the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of Louisiana, becoming the biggest oil spill in U.S. history and perhaps the nation's worst environmental disaster ever. BP's disaster slammed the Gulf Coast economy, still reeling at that point from Hurricane Katrina, with impacts on marine wildlife, fishing, tourism, and public health. Putting a dollar figure to the economic impact of the oil spill is all but impossible. However, BP is going to be shelling out loads of money to Gulf Area nonprofits-and plenty of other entities-for a very long time as a result of the devastation it caused to the entire Gulf Coast economy, enveloping nonprofits and their revenues in its wake. You can add a couple of zeroes to whatever moneys BP was used to distributing to nonprofits through its corporate foundation, however, as the costs to BP under this settlement formula are going to reach well into the billions.

Why? In past settlements of corporate wrongdoing or negligence, a fund would be created and an administrator would examine each claim on its merits to determine whether the claimant suffered injury due to the corporation's behavior. The new BP settlement, replacing the slow-moving fund that had been slogging along with payments, is different. If your nonprofit entity existed in the region of impact sufficiently long enough prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and if it can demonstrate that it suffered losses, you get compensation as per a court-ordered formula regardless of the degree, if any, to which BP caused those losses. Moreover, it's not a first-come, first-served capped fund. There is no cap on BP's liabilities under this settlement.

BP Plc has been hit by over 2,200 new lawsuits seeking payback for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill in the past few weeks as individuals, companies and government bodies rushed to stake their claim before their right to do so expired.

The British oil company, whose deepwater Macondo well ruptured on April 20, 2010, killing 11 men and spilling crude into the sea for weeks, revealed the number of new claims made since March 6 in its first-quarter results on Tuesday.