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Numerous discussions going...the Firefighting abilities of the Coast Guard and manpads in Afghanistan...but this subthread is news specific to investigation:

Criminal probe of oil spill to focus on 3 firms and their ties to regulators

A team of federal investigators known as the "BP squad" is assembling in New Orleans to conduct a wide-ranging criminal probe that will focus on at least three companies and examine whether their cozy relations with federal regulators contributed to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to law enforcement and other sources.

The squad at the FBI offices includes investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal agencies, the sources said. In addition to BP, the firms at the center of the inquiry are Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig to BP, and engineering giant Halliburton, which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded April 20, sources said.

While it was known that investigators are examining potential violations of environmental laws, it is now clear that they are also looking into whether company officials made false statements to regulators, obstructed justice or falsified test results for devices such as the rig's failed blowout preventer. It is unclear whether any such evidence has surfaced.

And this subthread gets into the well killing:

ThorsHammer on July 28, 2010 - 12:54pm

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Can someone explain this? I was under the impression that for a proper bottom kill, there needed to be somewhere up-pipe for the stuff in the well-bore to go. Not only opening the valves on the new BOP, but maybe even some "sucking" by connections to the new BOP to "encourage" the oil to move up and out. Then the injecta at the bottom would have somewhere to go up-pipe as far as they wanted. So now if they do the top kill first - how is that supposed to work?

Posted these video links earlier today, but wanted to post them to one of the official BP Drum threads. Yesterday BP lowered a collar and attached it to the top of a drill pipe casing assembly in the ground near the Macondo. The process took about 1/2 hour and was very interesting to watch. Here are the links to the pulling procedure and the Oil Drum thread discussion of the process..

Pulling a Pipe Assembly from Ground Part 1 (8 minutes)

Pulling a Pipe Assembly from Ground Part 2 (8 minutes)

Pulling a Pipe Assembly from Ground Part 3 (8 minutes)

Pulling a Pipe Assembly from Ground Part 4 (3 minutes)

Oil Drum Pipe Pulling Discussions

First question is what is the white plaster material on the outside of the casing ? Is that the drill cement ?

Second question is why on earth would they pull a couple of hundred feet of drill casing assembly out of the ground in an area where they are also running sonar soundings looking for leaks ? Would think that if they really are concerned about sea floor leaks, they would not intentionally make a hole in the ground a couple of hundred feet deep. Something is not quite right about this procedure.