Disasters

The ban on deepwater petroleum drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is being challenged by a Louisiana oil services company that claims the federal government has not shown justification for the shutdown.
BP: More oil-collecting help converging on Gulf
Help is on the way to bolster the work being done to contain the crude spewing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, including a tanker from the North Sea that will provide an important assist, the point man for the government's response to the disaster said Wednesday.
Oil spill facts seem as cloudy as stricken waters
The cap over a broken BP wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is collecting more gushing crude day by day, but that's about the extent of the details known as authorities try to pinpoint how much oil is escaping, where it's going and what harm it will cause.
Lessons learned from the oil spill
Watch it on TV or follow it on the Internet, and the Gulf oil spill seems both surreal and far away. But essayist Peter Smith says the lessons of the spill apply right here in Minnesota.
In sensitive marshes on the Louisiana coast, oil thick as pancake batter suffocates grasses and traps pelicans. Blobs of tar the size of dimes or dinner plates dot the white sands of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Little seems amiss in Mississippi except a shortage of tourists, but an oily sheen glides atop the sea west of Tampa.
A large natural gas line in north Texas erupted Monday after utility workers accidentally hit the line, sending a column of fire into the air and leaving one worker missing hours after the blast, officials said.