U.S. officials say BP oil well in Gulf of Mexico has finally been plugged

Finally, there's some good news from the Gulf of Mexico. After a nearly five-month nightmare of uncertainty, the U.S. Interior Department has confirmed that the BP oil well that spewed millions of gallons of crude oil into coastal waters has been permanently plugged, according to the Cable News Network (CNN). The largest oil spill in U.S. history devastated one of the richest fishing and tourism regions in the United States, and years of even more uncertainty remain over whether Gulf wildlife and the area's fishing industry will ever recover. "We can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead," said former Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the U.S. response to the disaster. The spill began April 20 with an explosion on the BP-leased oil rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers. BP, the international oil company formerly known as British Petroleum, has agreed to pay the costs of capping the well, cleaning up the environment and compensating the thousands of people and businesses whose livelihood depended on the Gulf. BP put up $20 billion to compensate individuals and companies in the region at the request of U.S. officials, but the final cost of the spill and resulting damage has been estimated at $32 billion. Of course, the economic cost of the disaster is not the only cost to the United States. The spill exposed gaping holes in U.S. regulation of offshore drilling, the effects of which will likely reverberate in the industry for decades. Investigations into the cause of the disaster and the federal government's response are ongoing by members of Congress and at least two U.S. agencies, and lawsuits seeking damages are likely to be in court for years.

Coast Guard admits Sept. 11 training exercise was a bad idea

For anyone who still thinks it impossible that the U.S. military was caught napping on the fateful day that terrorists crashed jumbo jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 comes news of an internal U.S. Coast Guard investigation that found that scheduling a training exercise on the Potomac River on the anniversary of that attack was a mistake. Gee, you think? False reports of gunfire near the Pentagon, where President Barack Obama was attending a memorial ceremony, prompted FBI agents to rush the scene and caused the grounding of 17 flights at nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the New York Times said, citing a report yesterday by the Associated Press. CNN and Fox News reported the shots on television after hearing about them on a police radio, even though no shots were actually fired, the Times said. Instead, the exercise raised unnecessary fears that Washington had again come under attack on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the report found. The Coast Guard said it did not know that Obama was in the vicinity and would not have conducted the drill if it had known, and promised to use more-secure communications in the future. Of course, the biggest question has to be why the Coast Guard didn't figure any of this out before. Like the incident in April when an airplane painted to look like Air Force One caused panic in New York City when it flew dangerously close to skyscrapers in a publicity exercise without notifying local authorities, federal authorities display stupidity at best or contempt for the citizenry at worst when they pull such stunts. If it's only stupidity, it certainly seems a likely explanation for what happened, or failed to happen, on the real Sept. 11.

Duh! United States will post guards on ships sailing off Somalia

After months of piracy off the coast of Somalia that included the seizure of a U.S.-flagged merchant ship and its captain taken hostage, the United States has decided it's time to require guards to accompany the vessels. The U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday that it will require guards on merchant ships sailing off Somalia and require owners of the vessels to develop anti-piracy security plans, the Reuters international news service reported. How long could it have taken to figure this one out? The new rules will allow shipowners to decide whether to use armed or unarmed guards, Reuters said, citing remarks by Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson at a maritime security meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "We expect to see additional security on U.S.-flagged vessels that transit these waters," Watson said, according to Reuters. "It can involve the use of firearms. We are looking for things that work but that don't make the situation worse." Those "things" include what to do about countries that, like the United States, don't allow armed vessels to enter their ports and how to help shipping companies that will be impacted by higher insurance costs as a result of the introduction of weapons on their vessels, Reuters said. "We're not interested in putting ships out of business," said Watson, the Coast Guard's director of prevention policy. The new directive was signed Monday by Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, Reuters said. Some shipowners expressed concern that with weapons aboard, misunderstanding between sailors could escalate into gunfights, Reuters said, since fishermen from some countries fire rifles into the air to warn other vessels away from their nets. U.S.-flagged ships that carry military cargo already are armed, Watson said.