Laboratory analysis on Tuesday confirmed that tar balls found washed ashore on beaches in Galveston, Texas, over the weekend originated from the BP’s Macondo well, which is gushing out millions of gallons of oil per day 50 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana.

Oil has now washed ashore in all the Gulf states—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—in a 550-mile stretch, about equivalent to the length of Great Britain from its northern to southern tips.

Tar balls and oil sheen have also been discovered in Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, the estuary located directly to the north of New Orleans. Since the large saltwater lake is connected by only a thin strait to the Gulf, the arrival of the tar balls suggests that the oil and its toxic effects will increasingly penetrate into inland areas.

On Monday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded its ban on Gulf fishing to more than 81,000 square miles, about a third of all federal waters in the Gulf. The ban already includes most of the region’s richest fishing areas, effectively shutting down one of the coast’s largest industries.

BP’s efforts to collect the oil, meanwhile, are floundering.

The oil industry is the beneficiary of extraordinary tax breaks and financial incentives, a Sunday report by the New York Times reveals. The report underscores the federal government’s role as guarantor of oil industry profits.

“Capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent,” according to the article, “significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.”

Indeed, for many oil companies, returns on capital investments are typically higher after taxes because the numerous write-offs and incentives granted to them are more than enough to make up for the taxes they owe on those investments.

As revealed in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee last month, BP was able to write off 70 percent of the rent it paid for the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, saving the company $225,000 per day since the lease went into effect.

The Obama administration has intensified its cover-up of the BP oil disaster. On July 1 it issued an order barring the public and the news media from coming within 65 feet of clean-up operations without permission from the Coast Guard. The transparent aim of the order, which purports to protect the safety of clean-up workers, is to prevent the population from viewing the devastation wrought by the BP oil blowout.

The gag order states that that anyone not authorized by the Coast Guard “must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.” The wording—“oil spill response operations”—could be construed as covering the entire affected region, which stretches from the Mississippi Delta to the Florida Panhandle.

Journalists who “willfully” defy the White House order could be prosecuted as Class D felons and face up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine. Exceptions to the ban will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans.

In defending the order, Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen stated that the measure aims to protect clean-up workers, but he failed to cite a single incident of safety being compromised by “unauthorized personnel.”

This video, the last in a WSWS series, features interviews with residents and visitors of the Gulf of Mexico. Leanne Odonnel of Moorseville, North Carolina, expresses her shock at finding a beach covered in tarballs. Patricia Landry and Pamela Odom, who lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina, share their grief at having to relocate if a hurricane brings oil inland.

In a rapid turnaround, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) and negotiators for 14 Minneapolis-St. Paul hospitals arrived at a tentative pact on June 30 and July 1 that for the moment heads off an open-ended strike by 12,800 nurses that was scheduled to begin July 6.

The agreement, reached behind the backs of membership, is a betrayal of nurses’ central demand for staffing levels that ensure patient safety and employment for nurses.

Just one day earlier, the two sides broke off negotiations declaring positions unbridgeable. The hospitals refused to budge on their own demands for deep concessions, while refusing to concede to nurses’ key contract issue of ensuring the welfare of patients by increasing nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

After the breakdown a federal mediator called union officials and hospital management together, unbeknownst to nurses. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, three negotiators from each side met for seven hours on June 30. The following day, the MNA’s 60-member bargaining team met to discuss the revised offer and after seven hours agreed to recommend the tentative pact to members.

This video, the fourth in a series, explores the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Experts say the disaster is likely to wipe out whole species, and may put an end to fishing and shrimping in the gulf for decades.

Photo credits: BBC World Service; Robin Walker (robinwalkerphoto.com), Gulf Restoration Network; Kris Krüg Photo credit: Kris Krüg

A mine electrician was crushed by coal-hauling equipment at a Massey Energy-owned mine in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, Thursday morning. The death brings US coal mining fatalities to 40 so far this year, 32 of them in West Virginia and 31 at Massey sites.

The July 1 accident occurred at the Pocahontas Mine, a small underground operation in southern West Virginia run by Massey subsidiary White Buck Coal Company. Few details have been released as of this writing, but statements from the state’s Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training report the electrician, a 60-year-old resident of the village of Charmco, was run over by a shuttle car transporting coal.

The Pocahontas mine is a relatively small operation, reportedly employing between 60 and 80 miners. In 2009, the mine recorded production of 84,239 tons, a small fraction of the approximately 40 million tons Massey produces every year from the Appalachian coalfields. Its accident rate was almost double the national average last year.

Production is up this year, however, with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) reporting first quarter extraction of 56,338 tons—nearly triple the 2009 level on an annualized basis.

For 75 days now, crude oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. While BP and the US government have done everything possible to downplay and obscure the amount of oil that has spilled out, estimates range as high as 150,000,000 to 200,000,000 gallons. The consequences will be incalculable.

The BP spill is one of the worst ecological catastrophes in history, and yet now it barely makes the front pages of the newspapers in the US or rates prominent coverage on television news programs. There is a natural nervousness in the media and the political establishment, as the ongoing horror story indicts a huge conglomerate and the political interests in Washington that protect it.

It seems clear that the announcement June 16 that BP would create a $20 billion fund, followed the next day by Chief Executive Tony Hayward’s appearance before Congress, was meant to signal the end of the officially-sponsored chastisement of the company, and the US media has responded accordingly. As Reuters commented July 1: “The British energy giant drew harsh criticism earlier in the crisis, but some of the political heat has cooled since President Barack Obama pressured the company to set up a $20 billion fund for damages and lawmakers hammered BP executives at congressional hearings.”

Kenneth Feinberg, appointed by the Obama administration to oversee distribution of a BP-financed escrow account for victims of the Gulf oil spill, has made clear that there will be sharp limitations on those who can receive compensation.

Among those not entitled to compensation from the $20 billion fund, according to Feinberg, are fishermen who operated on a cash basis and tourism and home owners “not directly affected” by the oil spill. These sweeping exclusions will likely bar the majority of the spill’s victims from any compensation.

These statements confirm that the main purpose of the escrow fund, known as the Independent Claims Facility, is to shield BP from costs associated with the spill, protect it from lawsuits, and guarantee its continued profitability. Feinberg, who was appointed to his new post with the support of BP, noted in a recent interview that the fund was a “really helpful sign if you’re an investor.”

Feinberg’s statements also concretize the meaning of repeated references by BP and Obama that all “legitimate” claims will be met by the fund. The aim is to restrict as much as possible the definition of “legitimate,” while placing the burden of proof on the victims of the spill.

US telecommunications giant Verizon plans to eliminate 12,000 jobs through buyouts this Friday in one of the largest such operations the company has carried out in years. The job destruction is targeted primarily at workers in Verizon’s northeastern territory, from Virginia to Massachusetts.

The action is a continuation of Verizon’s drive to cut costs in its landline business, as revenues from that sphere continue to fall, despite the introduction of its fiber-optic Internet and cable television services.

The company, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have been negotiating severance packages for several months in an effort to entice workers to leave. The package includes a $50,000 bonus plus $2,200 for every year of service up to 40 years. This means that the workers with the most seniority would receive a $138,000 severance package.