Seven of 91 banks fail European stress tests

Officials hoping to reassure markets about losses from crisis

LONDON — Seven of 91 European banks failed stress tests aimed at measuring their strength in case the continent's government debt crisis takes a turn for the worse, regulators said Friday. European Union officials hope the results will reassure markets worried about hidden bank losses from the crisis.

The EU said the tests were tough and showed their banking system was resilient enough to weather a slower economy and more turbulence on financial markets.
The Committee of European Banking Supervisors said the seven banks would see their capital positions fall below levels deemed sufficient if there is a steep fall in the price of government bonds many of them hold, a worst-case scenario dubbed a "sovereign shock."
Germany's already-nationalized lender Hypo Real Estate Holding AG failed the strength test, but that had been widely expected. Five unlisted Spanish savings banks failed too, their finances battered by the collapse of a property boom: Diada, Unnim, Espiga, Banca Civica, and Cajasur, which was bailed out by the Bank of Spain in May.
Greece's ATE bank failed too and confirmed that it would go ahead with a capital raising exercise.
In total the seven banks have to raise €3.5 billion to shore up their finances, CEBS said.
Policymakers around Europe hailed the process as confirmation that Europe's banking system is in good health despite a government debt crisis and the deepest recession since World War II
The European Union said the results "confirm the overall resilience" of the continent's banking system.
Christine Lagarde, France's finance minister, said the tests were "tough" and "very comprehensive and as a result I would suggest that those results should be very credible and should raise the confidence in European banks."
Investors are still poring over the results to see what to make of it all. Fears had been that the scenarios would not be tough enough to reassure markets, and the euro was trading around 0.5 percent lower at $1.2819.

The winners and losers in Europe’s stress tests

A look at how the results will impact global markets, economies and currencies, with Win Thin, Brown Brothers Harriman; Jack Caffrey, JP Morgan Private Bank and CNBC's Simon Hobbs.

Video: Stressful Enough or Not?

Giovanni Carosio, Committee of European Banking Supervisors; Vitor Constancio, European Central Bank; and CNBC's Simon Hobbs.

Stifled by Soundbites

The Sherrod brouhaha is distressing evidence of why we can’t have an honest public discourse about race.

by Ellis CoseJuly 23, 2010

United States Department of Agriculture / AP

Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod is at the center of a racially tinged firestorm.

Taken on its merits and in context, it was a beautiful tale of redemption and reconciliation: a story of one woman’s journey from anger to compassion. But in the end, it became something infinitely less lovely: a sign of the stupidity of soundbite culture, of the pitfalls of racial hypersensitivity, and, perhaps most sadly, of the difficulty—indeed, maybe even the impossibility—of having (in this society, at this moment) a truly honest public discourse about race.

The woman at the center of the storm, Shirley Sherrod, was an unsung Department of Agriculture employee until a clip posted on a conservative Web site seemed to show her admitting bias against whites. Conservative talk-show hosts bayed for blood; Sherrod was forced to resign. (The matter was deemed so urgent that she was ordered to pull to the side of the road and compose the resignation letter on her BlackBerry.) Then, when the full-length video of her speech revealed that instead of discriminating against a white couple, she had gone out of her way to help save their farm, Sherrod was swamped with apologies, was offered a new job at the USDA, and received a seven-minute phone call from President Obama.

The American public, meanwhile, was left to wonder what the moral of this tale really is. For starters, it’s about the idiocy that can follow when ideology replaces journalistic integrity. Real journalists draw conclusions from facts. The ideologues who attacked Sherrod forced facts to fit their preconceived notions.

But this state of affairs in the U.S. media has broader and more insidious repercussions, as Charles Ogletree, one of Obama’s professors at Harvard Law School, makes clear in a new book. The Presumption of Guilt is an exhaustive account of the events that led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, who initially was suspected of breaking into a home that turned out to be his. After Obama criticized the Cambridge, Mass., police for acting “stupidly,” conservative talkers exploded in rage, accusing the president of being a racist himself. The ensuing controversy threatened to derail Obama’s health-care package. The White House tamped it down with a silly “beer summit” between Gates and the arresting cop. What could have been an interesting discussion about police authority and race in America was reduced to a narrative about two men who might have been friends had they only shared a Bud Lite.

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That incident demonstrated how difficult it is for this nation’s first black president in particular to talk about race. With conservative pundits and activists predisposed to accuse him of catering to blacks, it seems better that Obama keep his mouth shut—and for members of his administration to go out of their way to show they have zero tolerance for bias from any quarter, black or white.

Conservatives would be suspicious of any Democratic president. But Obama’s race seems to complicate things—particularly among certain groups. A New York Times/CBS poll of Tea Party supporters found that 73 percent believed Obama did not “understand the needs and problems” of people like themselves; 75 percent thought he rejected “the values most Americans try to live by.” And a majority thought “too much has been made” of problems facing blacks. “What is really bothering these people is a sense that their position in the society is threatened, that they are going to be worse off tomorrow then they are today,” says Cesar Perales, president of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. That anxiety, he believes, is rooted not just in America’s economic troubles but in its demographic transformation: “Large numbers of Latinos, particularly darker-skinned Latinos, [are] coming into the country…[And] having a black president makes it worse because that is evidence to [many] Americans that their world has changed,” Given such fears, any sympathy Obama shows toward minorities is likely to be widely misconstrued.

In the long run, I believe Obama’s presidency will have a powerful and positive impact on race relations. The presence of a thoughtful, competent black man at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation cannot help but change attitudes for the better. The irony is that in this area, as in no other, he is barred from using his eloquence. For him to speak honestly, in ways that really could contribute to intergroup understanding, means risking the wrath of the right. Despite his platinum tongue, Obama’s most important contribution to race relations will almost certainly have to be in what he is, not in what he says.

Why Obama should give another race speech

By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III

4:08 PM on 07/22/2010

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the extending unemployment insurance, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 19, 2010.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod incident various news sources are trying to contextualize the numerous apologies and mea culpas by taking this travesty out of context. The Seattle Times wrote, "When it became clear that Shirley Sherrod's comments had been taken out of context, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized ..." even Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly apologized and stated, "I owe Ms. Sherrod an apology for not doing my homework...and for not putting her remarks into proper context."
What conservative operative Andrew Breitbart did to Ms. Sherrod was intentional, malicious, and borderline criminal. He did not accidentally omit a word or two or place extra emphasis on the wrong syllable resulting in the failure to clarify the meaning of an event. In an attempt to shift the focus away from the NAACP's justified condemnation of the "extremist elements within the Tea Party" Breitbart manufactured and posted a video that intentionally misrepresented Ms. Sherrod's presentation in order to further a larger agenda.
In order to defend the indefensible actions of some in the Tea Party, Breitbart had to create a scenario that would show the NAACP as being racist. He told NBC's Mara Schiavocampo "We have an NAACP-sanctioned event in which the speaker is talking in a racist narrative, in which the audience, when she refers a white farmer to a white lawyer... and when she talks about not giving him the full weight of what she could do with her position, the audience cheers in this video. That to me is the standard of showing that racism existed in that room." That's not out of context; Breitbart is out of his mind!
WATCH RACHEL MADDOW'S COVERAGE OF THE MEDIA AND RACE:

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In his famous March 18, 2008 speech on race in Philadelphia, then Senator Obama said American's must "...march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America." He was correct then and based on the events of the past few days President Obama needs to speak again. This time not about the comments of Rev. Wright but the actions of the conservative right and their media operatives who's "comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all."
On August 10, 2008 The New York Times published an article by Matt Bai entitled Is Obama the End of Black Politics? The premise of the article was that in 2008, 60 years after Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party over the issue of integrating the armed forces and 45 years after Dr. King's "I Have a Dream Speech" the Democratic party was poised to deliver its nomination for the nation's highest office to an African-American, and this some how signaled the end of black politics. Others have talked about a post-racial America. The events of the past few days clearly indicate that race related issues and racism are alive, well, and living in America.
What Breitbart, Tom Tancredo, Sarah Palin, and so many others on the extreme right are playing to is fear. There references may be subtle, their language may be coded but their message is clear. It's an irrational sense that being "pro-black" is "anti-White", "pro-me" is "anti-you." This irrational fear manifests itself as irrational behavior as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) were spat upon and called ni**er and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) was called a fa**ot by members of the Tea Party.
The events of the past few days seem to be a rallying cry for some on the right. This irrational sense and fear has manifested itself in Rep. Michele Bachmann 's (R-MN) new 35-member Tea Party caucus. According to the Boston Herald.com, Bachmann said the caucus will be a "receptacle" for an anti-tax, small-government movement representing "mainstream American people who have decided to get up off the couch because they want to take their country back."
Receptacle is right.
President Obama and the nation would be well served to meet these issues head on. Senator Obama was correct when he stated, as Americans we are facing "problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all." Now that's what I call the proper context!

Should President Obama speak out about the issue of race?

Question on race

• Yes. TheGrio is right -- he must take the reins on this for the country's sake.
• No. Newsweek is right -- the political and cultural risks are too high.
• I don't know. I've got to do some more soul-searching on this.

Rare photo of slave children found

Accompanying document details sale of one child for $1,150

by NICOLE NORFLEET

updated 6/10/2010 4:40:00 PM ET

RALEIGH, N.C. — A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.

Art historians believe it's an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.
The photo, which may have been taken in the early 1860s, was a testament to a dark part of American history, said Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery's photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution.
"It's a very difficult and poignant piece of American history," he said. "What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history."
In April, the photo was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150, not a small sum in 1854.
'This shocked me'
New York collector Keya Morgan said he paid $30,000 for the photo album including the photo of the young boys and several family pictures and $20,000 for the sale document. Morgan said the deceased owner of the home where the photo was found was thought to be a descendant of John.
A portrait of slave children is rare, Morgan said.

An undated rare photo provided by Keya Morgan, found in a North Carolina attic, depicts two slave children, art historians say. In April, the photo was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150 in 1854. The picture was purchased for $30,000 by collector Keya Morgan.

"I buy stuff all the time, but this shocked me," he said.
What makes the picture an even more compelling find is that several art experts said it was created by the photography studio of Mathew Brady, a famous 19th-century photographer known for his portraits of historical figures such as President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Stapp said the photo was probably not taken by Brady himself but by Timothy O'Sullivan, one of Brady's apprentices. O'Sullivan took a multitude of photos depicting the carnage of the Civil War.

AP

This 1854 document details the sale of a slave named "John" provides some insight into the horrors of the slave trade, says collector Keya Morgan.

In 1862, O'Sullivan famously photographed a group of some of the first slaves liberated after Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
Such photos were circulated in the North by abolitionists to garner support for the Union during the Civil War, said Harold Holzer, an author of several books about Lincoln. Holzer works as an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Most of the photos depicted adult slaves who had been beaten or whipped, he said.
The photo of the two boys is more subtle, Holzer said, which may be why it wasn't widely circulated and remained unpublished for so long.
"To me, it's such a moving and astonishing picture," he said.
Ron Soodalter, an author and member of the board of directors at the Abraham Lincoln Institute in Washington, D.C., said the photo depicts the reality of slavery.
"I think this picture shows that the institution of slavery didn't pick or choose," said Soodalter, who has written several books on historic and modern slavery. "This was a generic horror. It victimized the old, the young."
For now, Morgan said, he is keeping the photo in his personal collection, but he said he has had an inquiry to sell the photo to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He said he is considering participating in the creation of a video documentary about John.
"This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him," Morgan said. "He doesn't even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I've never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children."

Rousing support for S.C. slave cabin preservation – by sleeping

Joe McGill aims to give slaves 'a voice for what they endured'

by Bruce Smith

updated 7 minutes ago

Bruce Smith / AP

Joe McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has been spending nights sleeping in slave cabins in the state as an attempt to give voice to the slaves who once slept there and bring attention to the need to preserve the structures.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — When Joe McGill spreads his sleeping bag on the floor of a slave cabin, he knows that spending the night there will conjure the specter of slavery.

"If I were a firm believer in ghosts and spirits and things of that nature, I don't think I could do this," said McGill, a preservationist who is working to preserve buildings that are part of a past that many prefer to forget.
One night he heard dogs in the distance — a sound that recalled the search for runaways during slavery. He awoke on Mother's Day morning in a cabin thinking of children being sold from their mothers. Then he walked to the black graveyard on a plantation near Charleston.
"I thought, this is why I'm doing this — for those people in those graves to give them a voice for what they endured," said McGill, 48.
McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will spend Saturday night in a cabin at Hobcaw Barony near the coastal community of Georgetown.
It will be the fifth night this year that he has slept on a cabin floor, trying to attract attention to the need to preserve the structures and the history they hold.
McGill, who is black, is also a re-enactor with the 54th Massachusetts, the black Union regiment that fought at Battery Wagner on Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. He said spending the night in the cabins helps him connect with his ancestors.
He first slept in a cabin at Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston a decade ago as part of a program for The History Channel entitled "The Unfinished Civil War" which focused on the dispute over the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina Statehouse.

1. 
   
   Preserving historic slave cabins
   

   

   Bruce Smith / AP

   National Trust for Historic Preservation
   South Carolina Historic Preservation Office

He returned to the cabin project this year, meeting reporters wherever he goes to draw attention to the buildings. He said preserving the cabins requires local efforts and his goal is to encourage people to save the ones that are left.
The cabins where McGill has stayed — such as those at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens near Charleston — have already been restored. But many others have been neglected.

McGill started in May with a list from the state Historic Preservation Office showing cabins at about 30 sites. He feels his effort is already helping because since he started the sleep-ins, three more cabins have been identified.
McGill plans to sleep later this summer in a cabin in Anderson, in upstate South Carolina, and this fall in cabins in Alabama.
There once were thousands of slave cabins in South Carolina, mainly near the coast in the state's largest plantations.
Many have not survived because they were modestly constructed of wood or because people didn't want a connection with a dark chapter of history, he said.
"When it comes to slave cabins, you are talking about a part of history that some folks would rather forget," said McGill.
"I come from a chain of thought that to know is better," he said, adding that just as a plantation house tells a story, so, too, does a modest cabin.
Andy Chandler, who helps administer the National Register of Historic Places for the Historic Preservation Office, said there are no firm figures on how many cabins are still standing in the state.
There are about 1,300 register listings in South Carolina and some may include sites with cabins. But, he said, since some sites have been on the register for decades, some of the cabins may not be there any more. And people who recommend sites for inclusion on the registry don't always see slave cabins as worth mentioning.
"In the preservation field we have always considered them significant," he said. "But the historic preservation community is a limited part of our larger community."

Zealots and Fake Journalism: The Shirley Sherrod Case

 Zealots and Fake Journalism: The Shirley Sherrod Case 

The Sherrod controversy "was a ginned-up, fabricated story,” The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel explains on The Today Show. “And this country can’t afford this kind of fake journalism.”



“Are we gonna be a media system which is vetting and holding standards or are we going to be bullied as a country by a right-wing media, which peddles fears and slanders," asks Nation Editor and Publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel. The Today Show's Matt Lauer says that media bias has been happening for years. "This is not about media bias," she replies. "It’s about the mainstream media with a few exceptions." To put the media in its place, the White House should institute procedures and “get a spine,” as vanden Heuvel says. "It is feeding the zealots of our system by not standing tall and confronting the forces of hate and fear in a country that has a lot of economic pain.”
Lauer thinks that if you say the word "race" or "racism," it immediately elicits fear in people, which makes them do unreasonable things because they are worried about being associated with those words. Vanden Heuvel says that there are media organizations doing good things like the Atlantic Journal-Constitution and CNN, while FOX News hasn't retracted their story at all. "This was a ginned-up, fabricated story,” she explains. “And this country can’t afford this kind of fake journalism.”
—Melanie Breault

There's a Beautiful Story Hidden in the Sherrod Mess

Nation in the News

 
Up until a few days ago, most of the nation didn't know who Shirley Sherrod was, but for people who have made a life and a career out of studying civil rights, like Nation columnist Melissa Harris-Lacewell, that name was no news to them. Shirley Sherrod is the wife of Charles Sherrod, a foundational member of the Civil Rights Movement and one of the founders of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Lacewell explains that Sherrod “was not just a bureaucrat working away in Georgia; this is a woman who is part of a family that has made real contributions to advancing the conversation on race in America.”

• 

click to view

There's a Beautiful Story Hidden in the Sherrod Mess

And even though right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart only showed a short excerpt of Shirley Sherrod's NAACP banquet speech and the administration rushed to judgment, Harris-Lacewell told Morning Joe that some good could come out of this scenario. She says that a national conversation on race is a bad idea, but a national classroom on race should be considered. Embedded under all of this mess is a beautiful story of Sherrod, the Spooner Family and interracial cooperation around issues of justice, Harris-Lacewell says. “The real narrative that Ms. Sherrod was telling is the narrative of someone who’s father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, who developed prejudices and yet found a way through her advocacy and work to be a true advocate for this white farm family.”

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All Aboard ! A WHALE Lands on Deck

(July 21) -- A South African couple have a whale of a story to tell after a whale apparently leaped out of the water and landed on their yacht.

Photos show the massive creature breaching over and plopped on Paloma Werner and Ralph Mothes' 32-foot-boat.

"We'd spotted it about 100 meters away and thought that was the end of it," Werner, 50, said, according to the New York Daily News. "We were very lucky to get through it, as the sheer weight of the thing was huge." 

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No one was hurt in Sunday's reported encounter off Cape Town, but officials in South Africa are investigating reports that Werner and Mothes may have antagonized the endangered Southern right whale, according to theCape Argus Independent'sonline edition.

Alan Boyd, the Department of Environmental Affairs manager for marine-protected areas and protected marine species, told the publication that some witnesses said Werner and Mothes had approached the creature, which is illegal. But Werner says that's not what happened.

"The whale approached us," Werner said in an email to AOL News today. She said she thought the whale would go under the boat. 

"He was just having fun," she said, according to the Daily News. "They have very poor eyesight, and obviously if they're breaching, visibility is very poor. The whale did not intend to attack us."

According to the paper, photographs of the encounter were taken by tourists from Botswana.

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The Whale and the Sailboat

A 10-meter-long Southern right whale breached in Granger Bay off Cape Town in South Africa on Sunday and landed on a yacht, breaking the steel mast and leaving blubber behind before sailing away. The boat belongs to Paloma Werner and her partner, Ralph Mothes, of Cape Town Sailing Academy. No one was hurt in the incident.

The Whale and the Sailboat

The 32-foot-boat sustained significant damage after the whale inadvertently belly flopped on top of it. Mothes told the Cape Argus Independent that he is working on the repairs and that he hopes the Cape Town Sailing Academy can continue to operate.

The Whale and the Sailboat

The whale returns to the deep after his out-of-water adventure. Alan Boyd, the Department of Environmental Affairs manager for marine-protected areas and protected marine species, told the Cape Argus Independent that witnesses claim they saw Werner and Mothes approach the whale, which is illegal. Officials are investigating.

The Whale and the Sailboat

Werner and Mothes say the whale approached the yacht, seen here on its return to dock. Mothes estimates that it will take three weeks to get The Intrepid back in ship-shape.

The Whale and the Sailboat

"The good news is that we are all OK, the whale is feeling somewhat bruised but otherwise unhurt," the couple said in a statement released on the sailing academy's website. "Both Paloma and I are indeed lucky to be alive."

The Whale and the Sailboat

Mothes, 59, told the Independent that the boat's mast was severely damaged and that he was working to make repairs so their Cape Town Sailing Academy could continue to operate.

"We weren't insured, but I don't think it would have been covered anyway. It would probably be considered an act of God," he said.

A statement on the academy's website recounted the biblical-sounding tale.

"The good news is that we are all OK, the whale is feeling somewhat bruised but otherwise unhurt," the couple wrote. "Both Paloma and I are indeed lucky to be alive." They said the boat should be up and running again in about three weeks.

---

 

Army Discharges 'Don't Ask' Critic Who Told

 

Lauren FrayerContributor

Updated: 2 hours 1 minute ago

(July 23) -- One of the most prominent voices against the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, who came out on national TV last year and was arrested in March for handcuffing himself to the White House fence, has now been discharged from the Army because he is gay. 

Lt. Dan Choi is a 2003 West Point graduate who is fluent in Arabic and served two tours in Iraq as an infantry platoon leader. Since returning from deployment, he's become one of the most vocal critics of the military's policy that bars anyone from serving in uniform if they are openly gay. 

Choi, 29, revealed his sexual orientation publicly for the first time last year on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," prompting the Army to begin proceedings to discharge him. But his case had been in limbo since then, and Choi hoped to stay in the military long enough to see "DADT" repealed. 

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President Barack Obama is pushing the military to overturn the policy, and the Pentagon is conducting a review that's expected to last until the end of the year. A bill to abolish "don't ask, don't tell" is also being debated in Congress.

But the policy change hasn't come quick enough for Choi, who received a phone call from his New York Army National Guard commander on Thursday, informing him that he has been honorably discharged from the military. (See official discharge document here.) 

"He was very supportive and said, 'I know this was something you didn't want to hear,'" Choi said, recounting the phone call in a Newsweek interview. Choi said his commander told him that "change was in the air," referring to how the military's policies are under review. 

But Choi told the Orange County Register, his hometown California newspaper, that he found the Army's decision "infuriating and painful." 

"It's very painful news to know you're getting fired just for who you are," Choi said. "'Of course we expected it. You don't go into battle like this, you don't start a journey like this, without fully knowing what lays ahead."

He said the military would allow him to stay in service only if he denied his previous statements about being gay. 

"All you can do is say, 'That's not me,' or that I was lying, or say that I said that at the time, but I apologize and I'm not gay," Choi told the Register. "The first thing I said was, 'I'm gay, and I have a boyfriend, not a girlfriend.' You don't get into trouble for lying, only for telling the truth."

Choi had been training monthly with his National Guard unit since February, preparing for a possible deployment to Afghanistan. 

In March, he was arrested along with another Army captain, for handcuffing themselves to the White House fence while in uniform, to protest the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. They claimed to be following an order from Obama to challenge what he has called an outdated and unfair policy, and asked the president publicly to testify at a hearing on their behalf. Obama didn't get involved, but the civil disobedience charges against Choi and the other soldier were later dropped.

Choi grew up in California but now lives in New York City, where he founded KnightsOut.org, a group of West Point graduates who support the rights of gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual soldiers to serve openly in the U.S. military. The group estimates that there are 65,000 gays still closeted in the military.

News of Choi's discharge comes as a federal judge in California is scheduled to hear closing arguments today in a case brought by the pro-gay Log Cabin Republicans challenging the constitutionality of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, according to The Washington Post.

July 4th Gulf Oil Spill-Current Map, Live Video, Landfall

Gulf oil spill updated July 4

July 4th Oil Slick

Where The Oil Has Made Landfall

How they have tried to stop the Leak

BY MID-JULYADDING MORE CAPACITY

By mid-July, BP expects to have a total of four vessels on site to collect and process oil and gas. The Q4000 will be replaced by another vessel, Toisa Pisces, which will be connected to one of two floating risers that can be disconnected in the event of a hurricane

JUNE 16-CAPTURING MORE OIL

A second containment system has begun siphoning oil and gas from the leaking well. BP estimates the system will carry 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day to the surface, supplementing the roughly 15,000 barrels collected daily by a containment cap on top of the blowout preventer.
Using equipment originally put in place to inject heavy drilling mud during the failed “top kill” procedure last month, the new system extracts oil and gas directly from the blowout preventer, passes it through a manifold on the seafloor and pipes it up to the Q4000 surface vessel.
The Q4000 has no storage capacity and will burn the oil and gas.
Source: BP

JUNE 4—-BEGINNING TO CAPTURE SOME OIL

A cap placed over the upper portion of the leaking well was funneling some oil and gas to a surface ship, though oil continued to billow from under the lip and through four open vents on top of the device. Methanol is being pumped into the cap to prevent the formation of icy hydrates that could block the mile-long pipe rising from the cap. Engineers hope to capture more oil by progressively closing the cap vents.
Source: BP

MAY 31—-ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO CAP THE WELL

After the failure of the top kill operation, BP began a new operation to cap the well. The damaged pipe will be cut from the blowout preventer, and a dome will be lowered over it to catch the spewing oil.

MAY 26—–THE TOP KILL AND JUNK SHOT

BP tried two more operations, called the “junk shot” and the “top kill,” to stop the gushing oil. In the “top kill,” heavy drilling liquid is pumped into the well until the weight of the liquid overcomes the pressure of the rising oil. The “junk shot” involves injecting objects like golf balls to clog the blowout preventer, the stack of valves at the top of the well.

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