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Share this page Alaskan Eskimos say oil drilling threatens way of life Indigenous Eskimos living on the edge of the Arctic Ocean fear new oil drilling could destroy their unique way of life, but many Alaskans believe the Arctic's energy reserves could be economically and politically important. The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani visited the Arctic town of Barrow during a traditional spring whale-hunting festival.
The town of Barrow on Alaska's northernmost tip is one of the most remote places on earth. No roads cross the Arctic tundra to get here, and the nearest city – Fairbanks – is 90 minutes away by air.
It's a place of extremes: in winter it stays dark for more than two months, but now, midnight looks like midday as townsfolk hurl children one by one into the air on a mat made of seal skin.
The blanket toss is part of Naluqatak, a spring festival held in Eskimo villages across Alaska's Arctic north slope. Most people in Barrow are at least part-native and hundreds have turned out, many in traditionally-made coats of animal fur, to celebrate another catch: whale.
Twice a year Eskimo communities like this hunt whale. It's legal and not commercial, and for thousands of years people in the Alaskan Arctic have depended on the meat.
Major environmental groups don't condone the hunting but tolerate it as an intrinsic part of a subsistence culture.
It's not really subsistence any more, but tribal elders say chicken or steak bought in a shop is not enough – their bodies crave whale blubber.
At the spring whaling festival, everyone rejoices and shares in the harvest.
Local meats are cooked and served, including caribou stew and goose soup. But the main attraction is boiled whale meat, including the giant mammals' organs.
Dismembered parts of a bowhead whale are on display, laid out on a wooden pallet in the middle of a makeshift arena by the Arctic shore. It is cut into brick-sized chunks and distributed.
People will savour its meat through the long frozen winter.
But many here worry the whales will bypass Barrow's waters if offshore oil exploration goes ahead, and they have filed lawsuits to stop it.
Oil company Shell has spent billions of dollars to lease tracts of seabed from the US government and drilling should have started by now.
But the Obama administration stepped in and called a temporary halt after the BP oil spill thousands of miles away in the Gulf of Mexico.The delay effectively puts back Shell's plans till next year but the company says it will be back.
“The Gulf of Mexico may have been a wake-up call for some but not for Shell,” says Pete Slaiby, vice-president of Shell Alaska.
“We would not have put the money down on these leases had we not felt we could go in and drill these leases safely.”
Earlier this year, before the order to postpone, Shell reassured the US government it could work safely in Arctic waters.
It said it would be drilling at a depth of 150ft (46m), not 5,000ft as in the case of BP's leaking well, making it easier to deal with a blowout.
Shell also pointed out the cold Arctic waters would render any spilled oil more viscous, so it would not spread as far. (The converse is that the warm waters and sunshine in the Gulf of Mexico help break down oil.)
And the company said it would position state-of-the-art vessels by the drill site so it could respond to a spill within an hour.
Critics argue no response plan can predict the rapidly-changing conditions of the Arctic and say response vessels may be useless if a spill happens when the sea is choked with ice, as it is much of the year.Nevertheless, the majority of Alaskans favour offshore drilling in the Arctic – the state derives 90% of its revenue from oil and gas.
Even though the waters are controlled by the federal government, many, including some among the indigenous people, believe Alaska's Arctic Ocean reserves will bring jobs and could help reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.
But in Barrow and other Eskimo towns, most don't want to risk contaminating the Arctic waters.
“The ocean is our garden,” one woman here said. “It's where we get our food from. Not just the whale but the seal and walrus as well, and all the other stuff.”
A woman handing out whale meat said: “If you look at the Gulf of Mexico, they were cutting corners. If they do that here they'll be cutting our livelihood. We can't have that.”

Source:BBC

A US appeals court has granted bail to the media tycoon Conrad Black pending an appeal against his fraud conviction.
Black has served more than two years of a 78-month sentence handed down in July 2007 for fraud and obstructing justice.
The British peer and three other former executives of Hollinger International were found to have diverted 6.1m (4m) due to the company for their benefit.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that their convictions partly relied on a law that was too broad in its scope.
Federal prosecutors had applied part of the federal mail and wire fraud statute, which allows for the conviction of business leaders if they are found to have deprived people of “the intangible right of honest services”.
But the Supreme Court ruled that the law should only be applied to incidents of bribery and kickback schemes, and left it up to a lower court to decide whether the conviction should be overturned.
Black once ran the world's third largest media empire, whose newspaper titles included the UK's Daily Telegraph and the Chicago Sun-Times.
He has vigorously protested his innocence from the beginning.

Source:BBC

Seepages on the sea floor near the leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well may be unrelated to the well itself, the government's incident commander says.
Adm Thad Allen said there were concerns over three areas of “anomaly” during monitoring for a pressure test on the well.
The well has been capped to see if the flow of oil can be stopped without provoking leaks in the sea bed.
If the test fails, the well will be re-opened and oil will flow out again.
Adm Allen outlined the three areas of concern.
Some seepage, 3km (1.9 miles) from the well head, had caused concern.
But Adm Allen said it was not believed that the leak on the sea floor was anything to do with the integrity test.
Oil and gas leaks can happen naturally, and it may have been impossible, while the oil was still gushing out of the well, for nearby natural seepage to be detected.
Another area of concern is nearer to the well head, a few hundred metres away. And the third cause for concern is bubbles of gas and small quantities of oil coming from a section of the cap.
This may not be “consequential”, Adm Allen said.
The incident commander has also discussed the possibility of using the new cap on the well to carry out another so-called “top kill” procedure – pumping in mud and then cement to stop the flow of oil.
He has asked BP to investigate whether this would be possible.
The current pressure test on the well will continue for another 24 hours into Tuesday.

Source:BBC

UK Prime Minister David Cameron will not meet four US senators to discuss allegations BP lobbied for the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Senators from New York and New Jersey wanted to meet Mr Cameron over the early release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer.
But the British embassy said Mr Cameron had a full schedule on his US trip and the senators could meet the ambassador.
The 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 killed 270 people, mostly Americans.
The Libyan Megrahi was released by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill in August last year on health grounds and was said to have as little as three months to live.
It has since been reported that he may live for as long as 10 years.
The new Conservative UK government has said the decision was a “mistake”.
BP has admitted lobbying the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya, but denied specifically discussing Megrahi.

Source:BBC

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the US must stop using “cowboy logic” if it wants dialogue with Iran over its nuclear programme.
He said he was for negotiations, but that imposing sanctions would not make his country change course.
Following on from recent UN sanctions, Washington has imposed its toughest ever measures on Tehran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
The US and major European powers say Iran is trying to build nuclear arms.
Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.
“We are for negotiations, but to do so you have to sit down like a good boy,” Mr Ahmadinejad said, referring to the US in a speech broadcast live on state television.
“They adopt a resolution to force a dialogue, but this cowboy logic has no place in Iran.”
Mr Ahmadinejad added that the US's real concern was not that Iran may make a bomb, but its rise as a regional power.

Source:BBC

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has arrived in South Korea for a visit, seen as a show of support amid a row with North Korea over the sinking of a warship.
Mr Gates is expected to finalise joint military exercises with Seoul, in a display of strength to Pyongyang.
He will be joined in Seoul by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday for high-level security talks.
The warship incident has raised tensions on the Korean peninsula.
The Cheonan, a South Korean navy vessel, went down on 26 March near the disputed inter-Korean maritime border. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed.
International investigators say a North Korean torpedo sank the ship – but Pyongyang rejects this and says it wants its own investigation.
A UN Security Council statement condemned the attack without assigning blame.
The US promised to hold joint exercises with South Korea in the aftermath of the attack.
Officials said details of a series of military drills would be finalised between Mr Gates and his South Korean counterpart when they meet in Seoul on Tuesday.
A Pentagon spokesman said last week that the exercises would be “a show of force to the North Koreans… [sending] a very strong message of deterrence”.
A US aircraft carrier, the George Washington, is due to arrive in the South Korean port of Pusan on Wednesday. Three other US destroyers are due in South Korean ports on the same day.
China has expressed concern over possible exercises in the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean peninsula.
But US officials say the drills will take place in international waters both there and in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in the coming months.

Source:BBC

Most shipping at the port of Montreal has stopped amid a dispute over pay and conditions.
Traffic halted when shippers locked out 850 dock workers after talks to resolve the dispute broke down.
“No boats are coming in, no boats are being unloaded, no boats are going out,” a spokesman for the shipping companies said.
Some workers have been without contracts since late 2008. Shippers accuse workers of “pressure tactics”.
Gilles Corriveau, a spokesman for the Maritime Employers Association, told Canadian media that the union had slowed the unloading of ships to protest cuts in pay to longshoremen who are on call but not at port, one of the main issues in the dispute.
He told the Montreal Gazette that ships had been rerouted to New York and Norfolk, Virginia.
The longshoremen's union have scheduled a news conference for later on Monday.
The port is a major shipping hub for trade between north America's industrial heartland and European and Mediterranean ports.

Source:BBC

Oil and gas drilling company Halliburton has announced a big jump in profits despite its involvement in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
The Texas-based company said profits for the last three months rose by 83% compared with last year.
Halliburton's share price rose as much as 5% in early trading on Wall Street.
It said the US suspension of deepwater drilling is expected to hit profits, but land-based oil and gas operations remained profitable.
Halliburton was in charge of sealing BP's Macondo oil well before it exploded in April.
Following the suspension of drilling in the region, the company has started moving people and equipment out of the gulf.
The performance beat most analysts expectations, with net income totalling 480m (315m) for the three-month period between April and June.
Revenues was also up 26% to 3.49bn.

Source:BBC

Delta Air Lines has reported its best quarterly results for a decade as the airline industry continues to recover from the global downturn.
Net profit for the three months to the end of June came in at 467m (306m), compared with a loss of 257m for the same period a year earlier.
Revenue was 8.2bn compared with 7bn a year ago.
The airline said it expected revenue to continue to grow as the global economy continued to recover.
“Delta's profit this quarter is our best result in a decade and proof that our plan has positioned us well as the economy begins its recovery,” said Richard Anderson, Delta's chief executive.
The return to profit was achieved despite a rise in operating expenses over the quarter of 317m, partly due to higher fuel costs.
Passenger revenue increased by 19%, or 1.1bn, while cargo revenue rose by 22%, or 38m.
Mr Anderson also said the airline would be sharing its improved fortunes with its employees with a 90m profit sharing scheme.
Global airlines suffered greatly during the downturn, when passenger numbers fell dramatically. They are now benefiting as business and leisure travellers return to the skies.

Source:BBC

Nokia Siemens Networks plans to take over some of rival US mobile phone giant Motorola's network operations in a 1.2bn (784m) deal.
The purchase will give it second place in the huge North American market.
Nokia Siemens Networks is a 50-50 joint venture between Finland's Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the world, and Germany's Siemens.
The tie-up has struggled to make a profit. Its main competitors are Ericsson and China's Huawei.
The Motorola deal will help the venture overtake Huawei.
Nokia Siemens' revenues from North America fell by 9% in the first quarter of this year to 153m euros (198.5m; 129m).
The company says the deal is “expected to significantly strengthen Nokia Siemens Networks' presence globally, particularly in the United States and Japan”.
The deal should be completed – without the need for extra fund-raising – by the end of this year.

Source:BBC

Secret US intelligence gathering has grown so much since 9/11 no-one knows its exact cost, nor how many people are involved, the Washington Post reports.
It says nearly 2,000 private companies and 1,270 government agencies are involved in counter-terror work at 10,000 locations across the country.
The report, , follows a two-year investigation by the paper.

Share this page BP can keep oil cap closed for another day, says Allen The US official in charge of the Gulf of Mexico oil clean-up, retired Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen, says he has authorised BP to keep the cap on its damaged well shut for another 24 hours.
The firm has pledged to monitor the sea floor for signs of a new leak closely.
Earlier, Adm Allen said that if methane was found to be seeping, this might mean oil was also leaking.
BP has been conducting key pressure tests on the well after installing a cap to stop the oil flow last week.
Adm Allen ordered BP to submit a plan to reopen the well in case oil is still leaking. This would allow the crude to be funnelled to the surface.
But BP says it would take three days to start this process.
If the cap is reopened, the daily leakage of tens of thousands of barrels of oil could resume.
In a statement released on Monday, Adm Allen said a federal science team held a conference call with BP representatives on Sunday night.
He said the scientists received the answers they wanted about how BP was monitoring the seabed in case of any new leaks.
The well began leaking oil into the Gulf after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on 20 April, killing 11 workers.
BP had hoped the cap could stay in place until relief wells stopped the leak for good.
But with pressure readings from within the well lower than expected, scientists had raised concerns that oil could be leaking into the surrounding undersea bedrock.
And in a letter to BP chief managing director Bob Dudley, Adm Allen said: “Given the current observations… including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance…
“I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the wellhead be confirmed.”
The flow of oil from the well was shut off by the cap on Thursday and testing has continued since then.
Work on both of the relief wells designed to close off the well permanently is currently suspended because of the testing.
The Gulf of Mexico spill has been described as the worst environmental disaster the US has seen.
The spill has affected hundreds of miles of Gulf coastline, with serious economic damage as tourists have avoided Gulf Coast beaches and fishing grounds have remained closed.
BP has put the costs of dealing with the disaster at more than 3.95bn (2.6bn).
It has already paid out more than 200m to 32,000 claimants. The company is evaluating a further 17,000 for payment and is seeking more information on 61,000 other claims.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is to meet Mr Obama in Washington on Tuesday, and BP – formerly British Petroleum – is expected to be a key topic of discussion.
In June, BP placed a cap, known as an LMRP cap, over the top of the Deepwater Horizon well so oil could be collected at the surface. However, this continued to leak oil and has now been replaced with a better fitting device.
When engineers removed the LMRP cap on 10 July, oil began to freely flow from the top of the blowout preventer once more. However, the Q4000 containment system continued to take some oil to the surface.
Engineers then bolted on a new capping stack onto the blowout preventer (BOP). This allowed them to conduct a series of tests to see if the flow of oil could be stopped using the newly installed equipment.
During the test the three ram capping stack has been closed and all sub-sea containment systems collecting the oil temporarily suspended, effectively blocking the flow of oil from the well.
Once the tests have been successfully completed, BP will resume collecting oil. The Helix Producer ship was recently connected to the BOP to provide another collection route in addition to the Q4000 rig.

Source:BBC

This is standard fare for a visit by a head of government. The meetings usually last less than an hour, and are attended by six to eight aides of the leader's choosing on each side.
But it's the bells and whistles that count: If a leader is ushered in and out of an Oval Office meeting without so much as a handshake photo, they know they're in the bad books.
Coffee will be served at Oval Office meetings, but some leaders are treated to lunch in the White House.
Many participate in a small press conference and photo opportunity seated in chairs in the Oval Office, a tradition often attributed to President Franklin D Roosevelt who was virtually wheelchair-bound after a battle with polio – a fact he did not like to draw public attention to.Holding a joint press conference with the president in the ornate East Room (or, weather permitting, in the famed Rose Garden) elevates a visitor's status.
Heads of government in the UK and Australia – who, Gordon Brown notwithstanding, are often granted in East Room press conferences – like to tout these affairs as evidence of their “special relationship” with the US.
Leaders usually take several questions, alternating between foreign and local reporters.
The East Room affair must be offered by the US, but insiders say that if it isn't, foreign officials will often politely encourage an invitation.The State Dinner is the crowning jewel of White House hospitality, but can only be offered to those invited to the US for an official state visit by a head of state.
For the UK, that means only the Queen, not the prime minister, can be the honouree at such a dinner.
State Dinners involve much pomp and circumstance, including honour guards, a receiving line and, of course, fabulous fashion. State visits often also include welcoming ceremonies, a 21 gun salute and an invitation to address Congress.
Mr Obama's first state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last November was marred by the presence of now-infamous gate crashers, DC socialites Michaele and Tareq Salahi.Camp David is the Presidential retreat, and many presidents use it to as a way to build personal relationships with foreign leaders outside of the demands of Washington protocol.
President George W Bush for example, found state dinners to be unproductive, preferring to interact with favoured leaders at his ranch in Texas or Camp David.
Mr Bush even once took Japan's President Koizumi, an Elvis Presley fanatic, on a trip to the rock star's Graceland Estate in Memphis, Tennessee. (They flew on Air Force One of course, yet another tool in the president's charm armoury.)
Unlike Mr Bush, Mr Clinton didn't have a family property and found that his allergies kicked in at Camp David.
Mr Clinton preferred ceremonial dinners and conferences like APEC, where he could indulge his wonkish tendencies and also his proclivity for schmoozing and gossiping with his peers.
Mr Obama has spent several weekends with his family at Camp David, but has yet to take a foreign leader there. Meeting with some foreign leaders can put the president in an awkward position. Case in point: the Dalai Lama.
Treating the Dalai Lama as a political leader aggravates China. To get around this, President Clinton's staff would engineer a meeting with the vice president or first lady, and then have Mr Clinton “spontaneously” drop in.
President George W Bush opted to meet with the Dalai Lama in the residence, rather than the Oval Office, emphasizing the Tibetan's status as a religious rather than political leader.
After initially declining to meet him, Mr Obama received the Dalai Lama at the White House in February.
Presidents occasionally stage more casual photo ops to foster the impression of budding friendship.
Mr Obama, for example, recently took his new pal President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia to one of his favourite local joints – Ray's Hell Burger – for cheeseburgers and fries. And of course, the cameras followed.
A happy spouse can make for a happy leader, so the First Lady's office may prepare a programme for the spouse of a particularly important dignitary.
Programmes might involve lunches, visits to schools and galleries or even tree planting.
Situated across from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, Blair House is the official guest residence of the president.
Usually reserved for heads of state, guests must be invited to stay there by the president.
Excellent security and proximity to the White House are some of the advantages of Blair House.

Source:BBC

Landing military contracts has become much tougher in recent months, however, with both the US and European governments cutting spending wherever they can.
Nevertheless, global military spending remains at a historically high level, having risen 50% since 2000, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
The US increased military spending by 63% between 2000 and 2009, Sipri found.
EADS is eager to grow its share of the US pie, gunning for revenues of 10bn (6.5bn) in the US, up from 1.2bn currently.
A contract central to this strategy is currently up for grabs.
After years of wrangling, EADS and Boeing have both just put in their latest bids to build an aerial refuelling tanker for US fighter jets.
“I think we have a good chance to win this,” Mr Gallois said, insisting that its plane was not only the best, it had also been developed already and hence all the development risks had been absorbed by others.
He also vowed to compete aggressively on price, though stressed that although the 35bn contract was attractive and could be worth even more over time, it was not essential to its US strategy.
“We are not ready to lose money to win this contract,” he said.
Boeing is equally optimistic.

Source:BBC

When Nina Khrushcheva heard the news of a Russian spy network being unearthed in the United States, she immediately realised she knew one of the men accused of being a foreign agent.
“When the story broke,” she told BBC World Service, “there was a name, Richard Murphy, floated and I immediately thought of that person.”
Richard Murphy was one of 10 people arrested in the US and was charged with spying for Russia.
According to Ms Khrushcheva – the great-granddaughter of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – Richard Murphy was a student at The New School in New York, where she taught media and culture. She was his academic adviser.
“For three years, every semester he would come talk to me about his courses,” she said.
What puzzled her about his identity at the time, she said, was the fact that despite having a very Irish name, he came across as a Russian.
“You know when you meet your countryman even if this countryman speaks a different language and pretends not to be your countryman,” she said.
“I came out of KGB, gulag culture,” she said, adding that she had a tendency of not taking things at face value.
But she found it surprisingly easy to spot Russian characteristics in Richard Murphy: “He was a little dour I must say. He was not always happy, which is a bit Russian because you know misery is what we do best.”
She said she was intrigued by the fact that despite being a “Russian”, Richard Murphy never tried to have a conversation with her in their native language. And she felt relieved that, unlike many other Russians, he didn't express any interest in her family history.
“To a certain extent I appreciated he was not prying into my Russianness, and I felt that it wasn't my business to pry into his.”
She concluded that Mr Murphy was perhaps a “self-hating Russian” who didn't want to talk about his own past or her family background.The New School has confirmed to the BBC that a student named Richard Murphy did graduate in May 2005 with an MA in International Affairs.
Following his arrest, news reports portrayed him as a stay-at-home dad looking after two children while his wife Cynthia concentrated on a high-flying career in the city.
Prosecutors accused both the husband and wife of using false identities, including the use of fake birth certificates. The couple, along with the others, were later swapped for four people held in custody in Russia, accused of spying for the US.
According to Ms Khrushcheva the person in charge of creating Mr Murphy's profile simply failed to do the job.
“His cover was so badly designed,” she said, adding that she would have been able to find out his intentions very quickly had she decided to ask him some straight questions.
Although she was baffled by Mr Murphy's behaviour, she did not confront him about his identity and did not discuss the mater with the authorities.
“I don't regret that, because it wasn't my job, it wasn't my business,” she said. “There's a lot of privacy laws in America and you know we have to respect that.”
She said it also had something to do with the American way of living where the society encouraged migrants to blend in rather than stand out in a crowd.
She certainly felt the pressure herself since arriving in the US in 1991 for higher studies: “For example, I never speak Russian in the street on the phone.
“If I need to call somebody and I have to speak Russian, I would do it from the privacy of my own home,” she said, adding that migrants like her, who carry a burdensome last name, often worked hard to achieve a certain level of anonymity.
“I don't want people in the street to judge me and know that I am a Russian. You know it's none of anybody's business.”

Source:BBC

Shares in BP have fallen sharply on the London stock market amid fears oil may again be leaking in the Gulf of Mexico.
At one point in London trading, BP was down 5%, before standing 2.42% behind.
The official in charge of the clean-up, Thad Allen, said if a substance leaking from the seabed was found to be methane this may mean oil was also leaking.
In the event seepage is confirmed, he has ordered BP to submit a plan to reopen the capped well to allow oil to be funnelled to the surface.
But BP said it would take three days to start this process.
Despite Monday's fall, the shares have come a long way back from the recent low of 296p reached in the depths of despair about the damage being done to BP by the spill when the financial markets even went so far as to contemplate bankruptcy for the company.
Since then, the price has been rising, partly because of progress made in tackling the spill, but also on hopes that significant investments may be forthcoming – perhaps even to the extent of a full-scale takeover.
BP has put the costs of dealing with the disaster at over 3.95bn (2.6bn).
It has already paid out more than 200m to 32,000 claimants. The company is evaluating a further 17,000 for payment and is seeking more information on 61,000 other claims.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron is to meet President Obama in Washington on Tuesday, and BP – formerly British Petroleum – is expected to be a key topic of discussion.

Source:BBC

Share this page US orders BP to provide oil well cap release plan The US government has ordered BP to submit a plan for reopening its capped well in the Gulf of Mexico amid concerns that oil may be seeping out.
The US official in charge of cleaning up the oil spill, Thad Allen, said the plan would have to be implemented as soon as possible if this was confirmed.
He also referred to “undetermined anomalies at the well head”.
Once the cap was released, oil would once again be funnelled to the surface.
However, BP has said it will take three days to start this process, during which time oil would be released into the sea.
The well began leaking oil into the Gulf after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on 20 April, killing 11 workers, and capsized two days later.
BP had hoped the cap could stay in place until relief wells stop the leak for good.
But in a letter to BP chief managing director Bob Dudley, Admiral Allen said: “Given the current observations… including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance…
“I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.”
The BP well has caused the worst oil spill in US history, leading to an economic and environmental disaster in five states along the Gulf Coast, hitting President Barack Obama's popularity and straining traditionally close ties with Britain.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is to meet Mr Obama in Washington on Tuesday, and the row over BP – formerly British Petroleum – is expected to be a key topic of discussion.

Source:BBC

Traditional flu jabs could be rendered obsolete by a hi-tech skin patch which delivers vaccines painlessly, say US researchers.
The patch has hundreds of microscopic needles which dissolve into the skin.
Tests in mice show the technology may even produce a better immune response than a conventional jab.
Writing in Nature Medicine, the team of researchers said the patch could one day enable people to vaccinate themselves.
Each patch, developed by researchers at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, contains 100 “microneedles” which are just 0.65mm in length.
They are designed to penetrate the outer layers of skin, dissolving on contact.
To test the technology, the researchers loaded the needles with an influenza vaccine.
One group of mice received the influenza vaccine using traditional hypodermic needles and another group were vaccinated with the patch.
Patches that had no vaccine on them were applied to a third group of mice.
Three months down the line the team found the patch appeared to produce a more effective immune response in mice, then infected with the flu virus, than a standard vaccination.
If proven to be effective in further trials, the patch would mean an end to the need for medical training to deliver vaccines and turn vaccination into a painless procedure that people could do themselves.
It could also simplify large-scale vaccination during a pandemic, the researchers said.
Although the study only looked at flu vaccine, it is hoped the technology could be useful for other immunisations and would not cost any more than using a needle.
“We envision people getting the patch in the mail or at a pharmacy and then self-administering it at home,” said Sean Sullivan, the study lead from Georgia Tech.
“Because the microneedles on the patch dissolve away into the skin, there would be no dangerous sharp needles left over.”
Co-author, Professor Richard Compans from Emory University Medical School, said the vaccine does not have to penetrate deeply because there are immune cells present just below the surface of the skin.
“We hope there could be some studies in humans within the next couple of years,” he said.

Source:BBC