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Destin Fire Control District and the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office responded to a possible HAZMAT call Friday morning about a strange device floating in the waters behind Jetty East Condominiums. The device, which had “U.S. Navy” written on it in marker, was in fact a GPS drifter. The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., is working with the University of Miami to study the effects of Emerald Coast waters after the 2010 BP oil spill. A phone number on the side of the device helped clear up the confusion. "We deployed the GPS devices from Beasley Park in the surf...

For microscopic animals living in the Gulf, even worse than the toxic oil released during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster may be the very oil dispersants used to clean it up, a new study finds. More than 2 million gallons (7.5 million liters) of oil dispersants called Corexit 9527A and 9500A were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in an effort to prevent oil from reaching shore and to help it degrade more quickly. However, when oil and Corexit are combined, the mixture becomes up to 52 times more toxic than oil alone, according to a study published online this...

Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine isn’t pulling any punches with his quotes as the frontman dropped some heavy thoughts on fans during a recent show in Singapore During the August 7 performance, the heavy metal singer/guitarist went on a rant telling audience members, "Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban so he's staging all of these murders,” The Huffington Post reported.

A trio of senators have won their request for an investigation into Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s inspector general regarding a potential cover-up of documents that led to the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil spill. Sens. David Vitter (R-La.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency in a May 24 letter to investigate the Interior Department’s Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall, whom they say “failed to ensure an independent, impartial and complete investigation into the Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium and...

An investigator for the Interior Department’s Inspector General claims the White House hindered an investigation into a report on the BP oil spill by blocking access to a key official and email records, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is reporting. The investigator was trying to determine whether the White House intentionally edited the report to create the false impression that outside experts supported the administration's call for a moratorium on offshore drilling. The White House had said the editing was a mistake, and the Inspector General’s final report concluded it was. But the investigator, in a series of emails obtained by...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal magistrate refused Wednesday to order the White House to provide BP PLC with emails by a former top adviser to President Barack Obama about the administration's response to last summer's massive Gulf oil spill. A lawyer for the oil giant had argued that emails by Carol Browner, Obama's former adviser on energy and climate matters, and three other officials in the Executive Office of the President could shed light on the White House's role in estimating the rate of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the company's blown-out well. But U.S. Magistrate...

GULFPORT -- Federal representatives were working Thursday to take possession of samples from the 71 dolphins dead on the Mississippi and Alabama coasts this year, 53 of them stillborn or immature babies. The hundreds of samples have been stored at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies since mid-January when the animals started dying in unusually high numbers. Most of the unusual deaths came well before the normal birthing season. NOAA Fisheries was working Thursday, with the help of IMMS staff, identifying the samples, sorting them into batches for transportation and packing them in ice chests, said IMMS Director Moby Solangi.

When the BP oil well blew out earlier this year, the 4 million barrels that flowed into the sea didn't simply vanish. There's growing evidence that a good portion of it sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where some of it remains. To get to the sea floor a few miles from the blown-out Macondo well, we clamber into a titanium-hulled submarine named Alvin and are gently hoisted off the deck of its mother ship, the Atlantis, into a surprisingly blue and inviting Gulf of Mexico. Mike Skowronski is our pilot. As we descend, the water turns...

federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories about its actions in the Gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, which was keenly sensitive to comparisons between its response and former President George W. Bush's much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina. also spent $10,000 for just over three minutes of video showing a routine offshore rig inspection for news organizations but couldn't say whether any ran the footage. And it awarded a $216,625 no-bid contract for a survey of seabirds to an environmental group that has criticized what it calls the...

The U.S. government paid an expert $18,000 to assess whether news stories about the Gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, it was revealed today. And it awarded a $216,625 no-bid contract for a survey of seabirds to an environmental group that has criticised what it calls the 'extreme anti-conservation record' of Sarah Palin. The contracts were among hundreds revealed by The Associated Press as the government provided the first glimpse of federal spending since the disaster in April.

Seaswarm, an autonomous, solar-powered skimmer, may be the answer to less expensive and more efficient methods for cleaning up future oil spills. The robot prototype promises to absorb 20 times its weight in oil. Created by researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, Seaswarm employs a conveyor belt of absorbent, nanowire mesh. The specially deigned mesh can suck up oil on the water’s surface and then process and dispose of the oil it’s collected. The Seaswarm can continue to absorb more of the spill while the robot autonomously navigates and cleans the ocean for weeks on end. Researchers claim that 5,000...

NEW ORLEANS -- Five years after he documented the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, Spike Lee returned to New Orleans with his new movie showing the city's agonizing efforts to return to normal. The premiere Tuesday included hours one and four of the HBO documentary, "If God Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise." "The first hour was very, very emotional," said Sharon Starks, 53, who said she had a purse full of tissues after seeing the first Lee film on the hurricane. "But the second hour I was just angry. It was about the BP oil spill and I just felt...

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation agreed to consolidate the litigation over the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in federal court in New Orleans before Judge Carl J. Barbier. "Upon careful consideration, we have settled upon the Eastern District of Louisiana as the most appropriate district for this litigation. Without discounting the spill's effects on other states, if there is a geographic and psychological 'center of gravity' in this docket, then the Eastern District of Louisiana is closest to it," the panel ruled.

Reporting from Washington — When he ran for president, Barack Obama attacked the George W. Bush administration for putting political concerns ahead of science on such issues as climate change and public health. And during his first weeks in the White House, President Obama ordered his advisors to develop rules to "guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch." Many government scientists hailed the president's pronouncement. But a year and a half later, no such rules have been issued. Now scientists charge that the Obama administration is not doing enough to reverse a culture that they contend allowed officials to interfere...

Listening to the local news radio station this morning, there was a story about Galveston finding tar balls in the surf offshore. Something seemed vaguely odd about how it was described, but couldn't put my finger on it at the time. The tarballs were described as roughly the size of ping-pong balls. Hmm. Then I forgot about it. Until just now, the golfing thing hit me. Some liberal at CBS radio made a deliberate decision (not) to use the most likely description of that size. "Golf ball" sized.. Trying to remember the last time I ever heard the term "ping-pong...

obama claims to have been in charge from day one... see what blocking the construction of berms because of possible environmental damage, not making an exception in the jones act, not allowing skimmers due to the fact the discharged sea water isn't 100% oil free, is allowing to to occur offshore, and not being reported by the media.

NEW ORLEANS, LA –– New blogger Stuart H. Smith, a New Orleans-based attorney representing Gulf Coast fishermen, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and an array of major commercial interests, announced the launch of his backroom, no-punches-pulled blog focused exclusively on the spill (www.oilspillaction.com). Smith, a much-loathed legal heavy-weight in the world of Big Oil, is well known for his role as lead counsel in an oilfield radiation case that delivered a verdict of more than $1 billion against ExxonMobil....

This idea is very simple..... 1. Get a massive commercial construction dumpster 2. Turn it upside down, cut a hole in the center and attach a massive pipe 3. Lower it over the oil leak 4. A boat is at the surface waiting to capture the oil

By Robert Palmer Thank God Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to be intimidated by the Coast Guard. Sixteen barges were stationary for 24 hours. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that was working until the Coast Guard shut the operation down because they couldn’t confirm there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board. A Coast Guard representative told ABC News today that it shares the same goal as the governor. But the coast guard, the media, BP and Obama don’t seem...