Public

A billion-dollar BP oil rig named Thunder Horse almost sunk in the Gulf after a 2005 hurricane. "The problems at Thunder Horse were not an anomaly, but a warning that BP was taking too many risks and cutting corners in pursuit of growth and profits, according to analysts, competitors and former employees. Despite a catalog of crises and near misses in recent years, BP has been chronically unable or unwilling to learn from its mistakes, an examination of its record shows."

"The waters in Puget Sound's main basin are acidifying as fast as those along the Washington Coast, where wild oysters have not reproduced since 2005."

"The latest skirmish in the decades-long scientific battle over the health risks of the most toxic form of dioxin is heating up."

Mainstream news media have given far less coverage to the five major panels that have debunked the "climategate" stolen-email flap kicked up by the fossil-fuel blogosphere than they did to the original charges now proven false.

The co-chairmen of a presidential commission probing the BP oil spill did not ask any probing questions of the one BP exec to testify at the panel's first hearing Monday.

"The Coast Guard has modified a policy on safety zones around boom deployed on oiled coastlines, a policy news organizations had said unnecessarily restricted coverage of the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and efforts to clean it up."

"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar  issued revised rules on Monday for a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil  drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, replacing an earlier one that had been declared invalid by federal courts."

"In perhaps the most significant development since BP's runaway well began spewing oil in the Gulf of Mexico 85 days ago, crews placed a tight-fitting cap over the leak Monday evening designed to give the company its greatest chance so far at stopping the flow of oil into the sea."