Disasters

"Tropical storm Alex became better organized as it slowly moved away from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and forecasters said it could become a hurricane on Monday or Tuesday. Coast Guard officials have said they do not think the storm poses an imminent threat to oil-siphoning efforts at BP Plc's blown-out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico."

"On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman struck down the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. A review of Judge Feldman's 2009 Financial Disclosure Report shows that Feldman is significantly invested in BP, which is on the hook for the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

"BP PLC and other big oil companies based their plans for responding to a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on U.S. government projections that gave very low odds of oil hitting shore, even in the case of a spill much larger than the current one."

"Meet BP's Bob Dudley, the human relief well."

A Seaside, Florida, restauranteur whose business and fishing have been harmed by the BP spill has organized a global protest against more offshoe drilling.

"BP PLC has applied 272,000 gallons of dispersants to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico in the four weeks since U.S. EPA directed the company to stop using the chemicals, except "in rare cases" when other approaches to fighting the ongoing oil leak proved unworkable, according to government records."

After a change in counting methods, the number of Gulf spill response worker illnesses has more than tripled.

"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."