New York Times: The federal government declared BP’s Macondo oil well dead on Sunday, nearly five months after it blew out of control, unleashing an environmental calamity in the Gulf of Mexico. “We can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead,” Adm. Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard officer who leads the federal spill response, said in a statement. The well, he said, “poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico.” Crews aboard the Development Driller III rig …