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Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world’s largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to “catastrophic” errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. “We are very concerned,” they wrote, “that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis.”

Tim Dickinson blogs about all the news that fits, from the Beltway and beyond on the National Affairs blog.

Losses may total $4.3 billion along the 600-mile (966- kilometer) stretch from the Louisiana bayous to Clearwater, Florida, the property-information service estimates.

“It’s just another blow to an already depressed real estate market,” Norm Miller, CoStar’s vice president of analytics, said yesterday in a telephone interview from San Diego. “The best thing you can do if you’re in real estate in this area is bide your time, don’t panic and don’t try to sell in this environment.”

As BP faces more pressure from the government and from its own shareholders unhappy with the company’s falling stock price, it seems to be clamping down on who can talk to reporters.

Despite company statements that anyone on cleanup crews can share their views, ABC’s Matt Gutman reports that’s not necessarily the case. Today during a “World News” Conversation, he saw firsthand how a BP manager took pains to keep workers away from the press.

While preparing for a video chat on his laptop from a public beach in Alabama, Gutman was hassled by the manager of a nearby crew, asking Gutman why he was on the beach.

“You mind if I ask why you’ve set up a camera right here while my guys are working?” the man asked. After Gutman explained that he was a reporter for ABC News, the manager responded, “I find it interesting.”

For Gutman and other journalists along the Gulf, it’s tough to report when so many are barred from talking.

The US Geological Survey says that flow rate could have been reached a capping device was put on the well on 3 June

BP’s chairman has been invited to meet President Barack Obama next week, as concerns grow over the effect of the spill on US-UK ties.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is to speak with Mr Obama at the weekend.

Oil has been leaking into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April and sank off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, killing 11 workers.

She dashed off an e-mail to inform several admirals about the leak that was destined to become the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. In the subject line she typed, “GAME CHANGER.”

After serving 42 days as the coordinator of the U.S. government’s response to the undersea gusher, Landry is now preoccupied with planning for a second potential game-changing event: the Atlantic hurricane season that began June 1. The government forecasts more storms than normal, increasing the risk of delays and complications in a response effort already pockmarked with failures.

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“This adds a new dimension of complexity that nobody anticipated,” said Landry, 53, head of the Coast Guard’s Eighth District, a command that spans 26 states and is located in New Orleans.

A direct hit by a hurricane could spread more widely an oil spill that has already surpassed the Exxon Valdez in volume and was described by President Barack Obama as “the worst environmental disaster of its kind in our nation’s history.”

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A category III hurricane with winds between 111 and 130 miles per hour could blow coastal water as much as 12 feet above normal, according to a Coast Guard hurricane readiness plan.

Such storm surges “may carry oil into the coastline and inland as far as the surge reaches,” according to an information sheet from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which forecasts weather in addition to other duties. NOAA predicts a 70 percent chance that 14 to 23 named storms, including as many as seven major hurricanes, will form in the Atlantic in the next six months. The seasonal average is 11 named storms and two major hurricanes.

While the agency doesn’t predict the likelihood of storms in the Gulf, all active hurricane seasons have produced at least one named storm there. In half the busy hurricane seasons on record, at least one major storm has hit the Gulf in June or July.

Unpredictable Situation

Timing is crucial. BP isn’t slated to finish drilling a relief well aimed at permanently ending the leak until August at the soonest. Oceanographers are loath to predict what might happen if a hurricane hit the spill.

The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma’jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa’ida.

“A military strike of this kind against alleged militants without an attempt to detain them is at the very least unlawful. The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions,” said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

The Yemeni government has said its forces alone carried out the attack on al-Ma’jalah, the site of an alleged al-Qa’ida training camp in al-Mahfad district, Abyan Governorate.

Shortly after the attack some US media reported alleged statements by unnamed US government sources who said that US cruise missiles launched on presidential orders had been fired at two alleged al-Qa’ida sites in Yemen.

“Based on the evidence provided by these photographs, the US government must disclose what role it played in the al-Ma’jalah attack, and all governments involved must show what steps they took to prevent unnecessary deaths and injuries,” said Philip Luther.

The photographs enable the positive identification of damaged missile parts, which appear to be from the payload, mid-body, aft-body and propulsion sections of a BGM-109D Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile.

This type of missile, launched from a warship or submarine, is designed to carry a payload of 166 cluster submunitions (bomblets) which each explode into over 200 sharp steel fragments that can cause injuries up to 150m away. An incendiary material inside the bomblet also spreads fragments of burning zirconium designed to set fire to nearby flammable objects.

Powers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act were used in “error” after the proper authorisations were not given.

In one example, for April 2004, the Met Police wrongly stopped 840 people.

A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.

“We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’ ”

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.

As a sheriff’s deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer’s purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.

No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense — missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. “They have no right to do this to me,” said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. “Not for a stupid credit card.”

It’s not a crime to owe money, and debtors’ prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.

Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect.

Whether a debtor is locked up depends largely on where the person lives, because enforcement is inconsistent from state to state, and even county to county.