National briefs: Crews lift key oil spill evidence to the surface
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A crane hoisted a key piece of oil spill evidence to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, giving investigators their first chance to personally scrutinize the blowout preventer, the massive piece of equipment that failed stop the gusher four months ago.
It took 29 1/2 hours to lift the 50-foot, 300-ton blowout preventer from a mile beneath the sea to the surface. The five-story high device breached the water's surface at 6:54 p.m. CDT, and looked largely intact with black stains on the yellow metal.
FBI agents were among the 137 people aboard the Helix Q4000 vessel, taking photos and video of the device. They will escort it back to a NASA facility in Louisiana for analysis.
Crews had been delayed after icelike crystals -- called hydrates -- formed on the blowout preventer. The device couldn't be safely hoisted from the water until the hydrates melted because the hydrates are combustible, said Darin Hilton, the captain of the Helix Q4000.
The April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP PLC's undersea well.
Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.
But they don't know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don't know why the blowout preventer didn't seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to.
-- The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCOCraigslist appears to have surrendered in a legal fight over erotic ads posted on its website, shutting down its adult services section Saturday and replacing it with a black bar that simply says "censored."
The move comes just over a week after a group of state attorneys general said there weren't enough protections against blocking potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution. It's not clear if the closure is permanent, and it appears to only affect ads in the United States.
The listings came under new scrutiny after the jailhouse suicide last month of a former medical student who was awaiting trial in the killing of a masseuse he met through Craigslist. Critics have likened the services to virtual pimping, while Craigslist maintained the site was carrying ads even tamer than those published by some newspapers.
First Published September 5, 2010 12:00 am
