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It urged anyone who spotted the balls not to handle them and to contact authorities. Besides the acids and bacteria, the balls also contained volcanic rock pumice. The first batch of debris in October were at first mistakenly called "tar balls" but were later found to contain everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs. Sydney Water has reported that its water treatment plants are operating normally and that there were no known issues with waste systems in the city.

NAVARRE, Fla. -- British Petroleum says its latest fix is working to stop the oil leak, but it doesn't look like it. More oil is spewing out and more tar balls are washing ashore on Florida beaches. Now, people are frustrated crews are standing around instead of cleaning them up. Crews are working for only five minutes at a time to clean up the tar balls, because it's so hot to work on the beach. They have to follow federal rules and take lots of breaks.

As seas churned by Hurricane Alex thwarted skimming boats, wide strips of gooey oil stained miles of Baldwin County's beaches Thursday on the cusp of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Following an afternoon reconnaissance flight, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach employees reported that oil of some sort -- be it sheen, tarballs or orange globs -- struck all 32 miles of Baldwin's beaches, and streams of oil were spotted as far north as Wolf Bay in Orange Beach. The post-flight report also noted heavy sheen and streams of weathered oil moving into Mobile Bay off the tip of the...

"Oil cleanup workers line Louisiana 1 in Grand Isle on Friday as the motorcade of President Barack Obama passes." In today's mailbag: Subject: Message From Grand Isle, Louisiana I witnessed something yesterday I wanted to share with my friends. It was disappointing, to say the least, but not at all surprising. I was in Grand Isle yesterday when we were visited by our president. Our street has about a dozen camps, one permanent resident on it; and yesterday we had a fair crowd of people. The first incident that was brought to my attention was four bus loads of,...

Here is video of President Obama yesterday, touring a beach in Louisiana to see the impact of the Gulf Oil Spill. In this clip, Obama lectures the press on “tarballs,” picking one up and talking about how teams can be brought in to pick up the tarballs and dispose of them. But rather than disposing of it, Obama just throws it back down on the beach!

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean.