Disasters

"Scientists on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico are finding a substantial layer of oily sediment stretching for dozens of miles in all directions. Their discovery suggests that a lot of oil from the Deepwater Horizon didn't simply evaporate or dissipate into the water — it has settled to the seafloor."

"U.S. Department of Agriculture experts found growing sanitary problems including bugs and overflowing trash earlier this year on the Iowa farm at the center of the national egg recall, but didn't notify health authorities, according to government documents and officials."

"BP spent months this summer trying to contain the gusher of oil  on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Now the company is trying to contain the legal and financial fallout from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, and on Wednesday it released the results of an internal investigation that mostly pointed fingers at other companies."

The wildfire near Boulder, Colo., is still burning, with some 135 homes destroyed, making it the worst in Colorado history. Four people are missing. Meanwhile, as the reverse-911 phone system meant to notify people of evacuation failed to work properly, social media like Twitter emerged as the connection-of-choice in the tech-savvy community.

BP plans to release today its internal investigation of its own role, and any possible wrongdoing or errors by its own officials, in the Deepwater Horizon blowout disaster. Even though some key BP decisionmakers are not talking to federal investigators -- claiming ill health or the Fifth Amendment -- documents describing what they are alleged to have told BP are coming to light. BP would be legally and financially liable for whatever it finds in its self-investigation.

Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate as a wildfire near Boulder, Colorado, rages on.

"BP wants the federal government to meet its demand for continued access to oil and gas leases in the United States. If the oil giant can't keep drilling here, its promise to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster might go unfulfilled—or so the company claims."

"In May, the company pledged $500 million for critical oil spill science. Then politics and parochialism got in the way."

"Oxygen levels fell significantly in deep-sea areas of the Gulf of Mexico contaminated by oil plumes from the BP spill. But although researchers found a 20% decline in dissolved oxygen, the drop was not steep enough to create biological 'dead zones' that some scientists feared might form in the wake of the BP disaster." Those were the findings of a government study.