National (U.S.)

News media and activists for weeks have reported how federal and local officials have barred them from reporting the Gulf oil spill story from public beaches -- even though they have a legal right to be there. Now Mother Jones' Mac McClelland quotes the Terrebonn Parish Sheriff's office saying some 40 of the deputies enforcing BP'S illegal ban are being paid to work in uniform for BP during their off-duty hours.

Louisian Gov. Bobby Jindal has vetoed Republican-sponsored state legislation that would have made public all records from his office related to the BP Gulf oil spill.

A Pew Charitable Trusts workshop in the Netherlands Antilles in 2002 was supposed to be to train scientists in how to deal with the media. But did it amount to a junket that helped spin stories in a way that put out Pew's message on depleted fisheries?

"You'd think that more than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists would know what, if any, long-term health dangers face the thousands of workers needed to clean up the Gulf of Mexico spill. You'd be wrong."

"Louisiana's fishing industry is getting slammed by the BP spill. So why does it still support offshore drilling?"

"California pesticide regulators plan to approve a new agricultural chemical called methyl iodide for the state's coastal strawberry fields, allowing levels of exposure that the state's own experts say will put farmworkers and bystanders at risk."