Testifying before a house panel on Thursday, an official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave the following estimate: About three-quarters of the oil that spilled into the Gulf from BP’s ruptured well is still in the environment

BP's $20 billion fund to compensate those hurt by the Gulf oil spill will probably turn down one controversial class of claims: those for mental health problems.

In little-noted testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on July 21, Kenneth Feinberg, the independent "claims czar" who will decide who gets compensated, said the fund was not likely to pay damages for mental illness and distress alleged to be caused by the spill.

When news of the Gulf oil spill first broke, we wondered if previously reported problems at the Minerals Management Service, the agency that regulates offshore drilling, extended to the Gulf.

The Department of the Interior's Office of the Inspector General released a report this morning indicating as much.

Until now, BP hasn't officially updated its 5,000-barrels-a-day estimate of the flow of crude oil into the Gulf. As we've pointed out, the company has said it's too busy trying to stop the spill to measure it. Today, BP made some time to update the public about its effort to siphon up some of the oil that's spewing into the Gulf, announcing that it's now collecting about 5,000 barrels of oil a day through a smaller tube that was inserted into one of two leaks.

A whistleblower filed a lawsuit today to force the federal government to halt operations at another massive BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, alleging that BP never reviewed critical engineering designs for the operation and is therefore risking another catastrophic accident that could "dwarf" the company's Deepwater Horizon spill.

Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world's supply.