Disasters

"A congressional stampede to pass  oil spill legislation gathered momentum Thursday as a Senate committee voted to impose tougher penalties on water polluters, and lawmakers unveiled a comprehensive bill to strengthen environmental and safety rules on offshore drilling."

"More than two months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Pensacola awoke Wednesday to the largest onslaught of black crude on Florida's coast, as more than nine miles of white shoreline and beaches were soaked with syrupy oil."

"Federal immigration officials have been visiting command centers on the Gulf Coast to check the immigration status of response workers hired by BP and its contractors to clean up the immense oil spill."

One major BP drilling project, three miles off the coast of Alaska, has been exempted from the Obama administration's moratorium on offshore drilling. Regulators are calling it "onshore" because it is built on an artificial island.

"The logistics coordinator onboard the ship that's been siphoning oil from a gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico tells The Associated Press that a cap on top has been reattached and is again capturing some of the crude.

"There are 'large gaps' in data now being gathered on the health of the 34,000 workers cleaning up the largest oil spill in U.S. history and growing concern that BP Plc will fail to publicize problems if they arise." Those concerns came up at an Institute of Medicine hearing Tuesday.

"The scandal-ridden federal Minerals Management Service is gone, at least in name."

"As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday."

Despite public statements of open media access to Gulf response operation by the Coast Guard and BP, local police are still prohibiting photography. They say BP directed them to do it.