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GULF ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE, FL - If you're going to the Gulf Islands National Seashore this weekend... You might want to leave the shovel and sand pale at home. The fed says B-P workers can't dig more than 6 inches in the sand to look for oil.... and as Channel 3's Dan Thomas found out... You can't dig at all. Dan Thomas/dthomas@weartv.com: "We had come out here to the National Park to show you just what exactly is in the sand, lower than 6 inches. We wanted to use the shovel and give you a look but apparently, that's illegal."...

GAINESVILLE, Florida — The small Florida church that has sparked global outrage with its plan to hold a Koran-burning event had its website pulled from the Internet on Thursday by its host. Dan Goodgame, a spokesman for the San Antonio, Texas-based web hosting firm Rackspace, told AFP the evangelical Dove World Outreach Center church had, "violated the Offensive Content section of its Acceptable Use policy." The policy forbids content or links to material that is "excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence, or contains harassing content or hate speech; and creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a...

Leaked U.S. Intel documents listed the names and villages of Afghan collaborators—and the Taliban is starting to retaliate. After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days...

The British ex-husband of alleged spy Anna Chapman has disclosed a series of emails she sent him weeks before her arrest, describing her regrets over the life she had chosen. Mrs Chapman, 28, told Alex Chapman she had “suffered a lot” because of her decision to put her career ahead of a chance to start a family with him. But she said she was determined to make her new life in America work, adding: “It’s never too late to be happy and succeed.” Mrs Chapman, who was arrested in the US last weekend as part of an 11-strong suspected spying...

Anna Chapman is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian with an IQ of 162, a diplomat father and a taste for the high life. She also has a romantic streak, having married her British boyfriend within a few months of meeting him. With such attributes it is hardly surprising that she has been called a real-life Bond girl. Anna Kushchenko, to use her maiden name, was born in the industrial southern Russian city of Volgograd, then Stalingrad, to a maths teacher mother, Irene, and a diplomat father, Vasily. She does not appear to have had an especially gilded youth, having suffered from...

Mel Gibson was caught on tape spewing a vile, hate-filled racist rant and RadarOnline.com has exclusively obtained the audio proof. snip WARNING: This audio contains graphic and racist language. It has been left unedited so that the full impact of Mel’s rant can be heard.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been designated the lead state agency for responding to potential impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill along Florida’s shoreline. This website will serve as the primary location for updates and information on response actions and impacts to the state of Florida. On Tuesday, April 20, 2010 an offshore oil drilling platform, Deepwater Horizon, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana. The rig, owned by Transocean Ltd, was under contract to BP. Submerged at the bottom of the Gulf, the rig continues to discharge in the range of 35,000 to 60,000...

Close to where I live there was a huge American Flag and now it is gone but the pole is still standing. There was nothing wrong with it and it was in really good shape etc so there was no reason to take it down. Has anyone else noticed anything like this around where you are?

The late CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite is named in a just-released FBI document from 1986 as being targeted in a Soviet “active measures” campaign against President Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy. Cronkite is named as a possible member of a U.S. delegation that would sign a pro-Soviet “People’s Peace Treaty.” Cronkite, once known as “the most trusted man in television news” because of his influence during the time when three network news programs dominated the national dissemination of news and information, bears a great deal of responsibility for the American military defeat in Vietnam and the communist conquest of...

A rescue effort has been launched in hope of finding Abby Sunderland, 16, who set off her emergency beacon locating devices from the southern Indian Ocean early this morning. Sunderland, who had been attempting to sail around the world alone, endured multiple knockdowns in 60-knot winds Thursday before conditions briefly abated. snip Abby is hundreds of miles from land. The nearest ship was about 400 miles away. The rescue effort is being coordinated by the French-controlled Reunion Islands and Australia. Sunderland had been sailing in 50- to 60-foot seas and it was dark when the EPIRB devices were activated. snip...

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of oil that’s seeping up from the seabed… which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced… underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we’re facing.

In their most tenacious effort to control the ‘spin’ on the worst oil spill disaster in the history, BP has purchased top internet search engine words so they can re-direct people away from real news on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. BP spokesman Toby Odone confirmed to ABC News that the oil giant had in fact bought internet search terms. So now when someone searches the words ‘oil spill’, on the internet, the top link will re-direct them to BP’s official company website.

Boeing's X-51 WaveRider has made aviation history by completing the longest ever supersonic* combustion ramjet-powered flight. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flew for almost three and a half minutes in the skies off the southern California coast on Wednesday, reaching an altitude of about 70,000 feet and hitting hypersonic (Mach 5) speeds. The X-51 WaveRider scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is being developed for the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The goal of the program is to create a free-flying, scramjet-powered vehicle capable of operating continuously on...

That has far eclipsed the 11 millions gallons released during the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska's coast in 1989. But there is no camera to capture what happens in the rest of the vast Gulf, which sprawls across 600,000 square miles and reaches more than 14,000 feet at its deepest point. Every night, the denizens of the deep make forays to shallower depths to eat — and be eaten by — other fish, according to marine scientists who describe it as the largest migration on earth. In turn, several species closest to the surface — including red snapper, shrimp and...

NEW ORLEANS – Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. snip David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school, says the thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet. He says it's more than 6 miles wide.

Efforts to contain the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill will reach a crucial moment today, when engineers for BP hope to learn if a high-risk attempt to plug the leaking oil well with heavy mud has been successful. BP executives expressed cautious optimism over the attempted "top kill", which involves pumping thousands of gallons of mud and chemicals into the ruptured Macondo exploration well. However, BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, said it would be 24 hours before engineers would know if the operation, which started at 1pm (1800 GMT) last night, would work. snip BP's latest attempt to control...

The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents. The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave...

Folks I guess it is no secret to the Freepers that this evil thing out there has scared the s*** out of me from day one.

Jason Anderson was just a few hours away from heading to a new job. The Texas father of two had packed up his locker – making sure to take all of his family photos – and would have been on the first helicopter off the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig the morning of April 21, on his way to being the senior toolpusher on the Discovery Spirit. But the helicopter never came. During Anderson’s last shift on the Deepwater Horizon, a well blew out, exploding and killing 11 workers, including Anderson, 35. National attention for the past month has focused...

GRAND ISLE, La. -- Waves of heavy crude oil pushed ashore at barrier islands in southern Louisiana on Saturday, ruining some of this state's only beaches and, more importantly, threatening the fragile ecosystem of Louisiana's wetlands. Workers in knee-high rubber boots and hard hats shoveled polluted black sand and gobs of oil into plastic bags on the beaches of Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge near Grand Isle, La., while the Louisiana National Guard raced to finish the construction of barriers made of sand and rock to protect miles of marshes. Meanwhile, residents lashed out at public officials and BP representatives at...