Woman gets chemo only to find out she never had cancer

RHerlinda Garcia said she became a "whole different person" after her doctor told her she had stage IV breast cancer. The 54-year-old mother of four had gone through a procedure to remove a tumor from her left breast when she got the grim diagnosis.

"When you're told you have stage IV terminal cancer, that's it," she said to CBS affiliate KHOU in Houston. "I put trust in the doctor."

She underwent a grueling eight rounds of chemotherapy over seven months. Then she went to another doctor to treat her anxiety, and he gave her some shocking news: She never had cancer in the first place. One of the nation's top hospitals, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, performed additional tests and confirmed that her original diagnosis was false.

"I was happy, but at the same time, I had that anger. The damage had been done," she said.

Medical mistakes this extreme are, fortunately, rare. "In 33 years in medicine, I've never heard of a case like this," said CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook. Read more >>

Chase denies hacking in vanishing balances

Chase Bank experienced technical difficulties for over an hour Monday night, worrying customers who logged into their accounts and saw their balance at $0 or were unable to get any access to them at all.

A spokesman for the bank said it was strictly an internal technical issue and customers' accounts were not in danger.

"The problems are an issue with the checking account portion of chase.com, nothing to do with mortgage or credit banking. We have a technology problem regarding customers balance information that we are working to resolve," the spokesman to CBS News. "It has nothing to do with cyber threats or hacks. It is an internal issue. We are very sorry to our customers for the inconvenience."

Within two hours, the bank tweeted that the issue was resolved. Customers reported seeing their balances once again.

Still, hundreds of Chase users expressed their frustration on Twitter and Facebook. Many reported seeing their account balances listed as "$0" on mobile devices, while others said they got a "System Unavail" message when logged into the bank's website on their computers. Read more >>

Majority of US in a Drought

U.S. drought grows to cover widest area since 1956

The drought gripping the United States is the widest since 1956, according to new data released Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fifty-five percent of the continental U.S. was in a moderate to extreme drought by the end of June, NOAA's National Climactic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said in its monthly State of the Climate drought report. That's the largest percentage since December 1956, when 58 percent of the country was covered by drought.

Last week, a government report said 2011's record drought in Texas was made "roughly 20 times more likely" because of man-made climate change, specifically meaning warming that comes from greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

The study, requested by NOAA, looked at 50 years of weather data in Texas and concluded that man-made warming had to be a factor in the drought. Read more>>

BP Bows to Pressure for Oil Leak Livestream

CBS
Hours after hearing a demand from a congressional chairman, BP announced the oil company would provide a live broadcast of the oil spill from a government website.

“This may be BP’s footage, but it’s America’s ocean," Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman who made the demand, said in a statement. "Now anyone will be able to see the real-time effects the BP spill is having on our ocean."

The chairman of a congressional subcommittee called on BP to release live video feeds of the oil gushing from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

Earlier Wednesday, Markey demanded the broadcast so independent scientists could more accurately calculate the flow rate. He questioned why such data wasn't readily being made public.

"BP thinks it's their ocean," Markey said while chairing a House Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

Markey didn't stop with BP, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. He blasted the Coast Guard for what he described as letting BP call the shots.

Coast Guard officials were on a boat with BP contractors who stopped CBS News cameras from viewing an oily beach, and the Coast Guard - which is in charge of the investigation - admits it's had access to live video since Day One but wouldn't let Congress or the public see it, Attkisson reports.

Markey said there was "no excuse for withholding live video for 23 days."

Markey's demand came after BP released some video footage of the leak after other pressure from Congress. BP uses several remotely controlled submersibles to record video of the leak site 24 hours a day, according to a statement the subcommittee released.

“Congress and the American public have the right to know what is happening in real time, so that they can understand and react to the situation as it develops," Markey said in a statement.

Two professors at the hearing supported Markey. Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, said uncompressed video from BP will help more accurately measure the leak. Otherwise it will be difficult to engineer appropriate solutions, Wereley said.

Wereley estimates the leak lets 70,000 barrels a day into the Gulf, much higher than the BP's estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

Frank Muller-Karger, a University of South Florida professor of biological oceanography, told committee members an on-land system such as satellites are needed for measuring weather to know what is going on below the ocean surface.

Government agencies have set up a task force to focus on how much oil is spilling, but BP America President Lamar McKay said under questioning at the hearing that officials still don't know which estimates are correct.

"It's theoretically possible," that the larger estimates are accurate, he said. "But I don't think anyone who's been working on this thinks it's that high."