Kenneth R. Feinberg, appointed by President Barack Obama as the Independent Administrator of the Gulf Claims Facility for the $20 billion BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill compensation fund, on Friday, Aug. 20, 2010, announced emergency protocols for claims against the fund. Feinberg is seen here speaking at the Economics Club in Washington, Monday, July 19, 2010. … Read ahead
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The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is overshadowing another catastrophe that’s also unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico this summer: The oxygen dissolved in the Gulf waters is disappearing. In some places, the oxygen is getting so scarce that fish and other … 
What started as a fatal explosion about 65 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico became the nation’s largest oil spill. Marshes in Louisiana are covered in thick goo. Beaches in Alabama have been soiled and Mississippi sands have been marred by tarballs. The effects on the ecosystem are fearful, and not fully known. Fishermen and others whose paychecks depend on the water are out of work. The tourism industry, which impacts finances for the state and region, has tanked. And many wonder just when things will get back to normal, or if they ever will. On the 100th day of the spill, here’s a day-by-day report: Day 1, April 20 : At about 10 p.m., the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, almost due south of the Alabama-Mississippi line, explodes in the Gulf of Mexico. Day 2, April 21 : Work continues through the night to try to extinguish the enormous fire. Seventeen people are injured, 11 missing. U.S. Coast Guard members from Mobile aid in the search and rescue. … 
BPs Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the coast of Louisiana and the company-led assault to contain it isnt limited to the water. A less obvious twist to the nations worst environmental disaster is drifting on the winds, suggesting tar balls arent all Texas will see of the crisis. And while the oil must surrender to the shore, bad air knows no boundaries. Its the same from New Iberia, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Florida, said Wilma Subra, hailed by CNN as another Erin Brockovitch and by the Guardian UK newspaper this week as possibly BP CEO … 
Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and began spewing tens of millions of gallons of raw crude into the Gulf of Mexico, Dave Rauschkolb was just some guy with an improbablesome might even call it loopydream. A surfer and the owner of three restaurants in Seaside, Florida, Rauschkolb had almost single-handedly organized 10,000 people to gather on 90 Florida beaches and join hands one Saturday in February to protest an offshore-oil-drilling bill that was making its way through the State Legislature. He’d called the event Hands Across the Sand. In April, after President Obama announced that he would open up vast new expanses of America’s seawaters to offshore drilling, Rauschkolb heard from a woman in Virginia and a man in New Jersey who wanted to hold similar events on their beaches. He offered to help. Then the BP oil spill happened, and Rauschkolb had an idea. What if he took Hands Across the Sand national? He envisioned throngs of Americans joining hands on beaches all over the United States and, before long, he wasn’t the only one dreaming big. … 
Gulf of Mexico, which has already leaked millions of gallons of crude about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The authorities involved in the cleanup of the fallen Deepwater Horizon oil rig have been burning oil on the surface of the gulf and using chemical dispersants around the leak. Could New Orleans possibly be smelling that, from more than 100 miles away? Many say yes. But the mystery odor, which is stronger on some days in some areas than others, is hard for residents to describe. “It’s chemical, and I’m trying not to think about it,” said Raymond Dillon, a karate teacher. Diana Mecera, a restaurant worker who lives in the French Quarter, said, “It’s a kind of a sewage smell.” Her co-worker, Lauren Graham, a waitress, put it this way: “It’s more like being at a gas station.” Steven Payne, who owns a men’s store and lives in the Marigny area, said: “It is very distinctly oil. When I smelled it for the first time, I was walking my dog along the Mississippi River levee.” Some people who do not notice anything in particular about the scent of the city these days have suggested that their fellow New Orleanians are perhaps a bit overly sensitive. “It’s paranoia,” said Lee Washington of New Orleans East. “I sit outside every day, and if I smelled oil, I’d say so.” And that is part of the problem: it is too subjective, said Jeff J. Dauzat, a scientist with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. “You try to tell someone you don’t smell it,” he said, “and they say, ‘You’re crazy!’ But the only thing that can overcome emotion is fact.” And the facts say the air is safe. More than 800 air samples are being tested every day by the state’s scientists, the federal …