Earth Changes
The worst fears of one conservationist may be coming true.
Admiral Thad Allen said Friday that the cap placed over the leaking well was only collecting oil at a rate of 42,000 gallons a day. Recent estimates put the leak's flow at 500,000 to a million gallons a day.
That figure may have increased by 20 percent after the pipe at the top of the blowout preventer was cut off during BP's latest attempt to staunch the flow.
The downpour, which hit Guangxi Zhuang region on Monday, has affected over 2 million people, causing excessive damage.
At least 15 freshwater reservoirs have been damaged.
South China is annually stormed by torrential rains, often leading to hundreds of deaths.
The victims included a member of the civil defence force and five other people who were swept away by flood waters caused by rainfall from the cyclone, said a statement carried by the official ONA news agency.
Authorities said Phet had weakened in intensity yesterday before heading at wind speeds of up to 120km/h towards Pakistan, where about 60,000 people have been evacuated from the south coast to safer areas.
The Omani authorities had taken several precautionary measures prior to Phet's arrival, evacuating hotels along the east coast and airlifting the residents of Masirah island to safer areas.

The graveyard of crosses was created “in memory of all that is lost. Courtesy of BP and our federal government," according to a nearby sign.
Outside Larose's Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor, the words "God Help Us All" are affixed to life-sized models of an adult wearing a gas mask and a child - and fish - dripping in oil.
Nearby are murals painted by tattoo artist, Bobby Pitre, accompanied by commentary. An Obama image is emblazoned with the words "What Now?" And BP gets called out, too: "You Killed Our Gulf...Our Way of Life!"
The outcome has been predicted to be "catastrophic" as the state has almost 12 hundred kilometers of coastline.
Bill Jones of the Executive Intelligence Review in Washington told Press TV in a interview on Thursday that the result of the spill reaching the golden coast "will be a catastrophe for them" declaring however, that "it was expected after a certain point."
Jones expressed his concern stating that it will "affect the entire economy of Florida" including "fishing and tourism," with the "the long term effects ... yet to see."
Bill described the Obama Administrations reaction to the disaster as "much too slow" adding that the "people are very angry, they have been angry for some time. They are angry at the administration but they are angrier at their Congressmen who have gone along legislation and avoided some of the key problems that were facing them."

Peek-a-boo: A rabbit pops his head up from the drain before scuttling underground
Instead, a rabbit and a stoat are cleverly using an underground network of drains to make it to the other side.
The cute animals scuttle from one side of the road to the other and pop out of drains in order to avoid being hit by traffic.
And a fluffy little owl also uses the same underground network as a home while waiting for its mother to bring food.
Amateur wildlife photographer Paul Bunyard captured the shots while driving on his way to work in Rugby, Warwickshire.
The 38-year-old was able to grab a quick photo of the stoat before it popped back into the drain.
In February 2010 scientists monitoring the seismic readings in the area revealed that the activity had doubled over the last year... and that the rumblings were getting closer to the surface of the Earth. What to do?
Make a super cool HD movie about it!
At least, that's what SyFy is doing. They've decided to shoot a scripted story about the eruption and its effects on the North American continent - and the rest of the world.
In this clip from FYI the science is explained a little better. It seems that a giant plug of solid rock has been holding back the giant magma flow underneath Yellowstone. If it dislodges the plume would destroy everything within 100 square miles and the ash cloud could cause nuclear winter around the globe.
So when the film comes out, just remember... it's only a movie!
On Tuesday, "oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster hit Mississippi shores for the first time," covering about two miles of Petit Bois Island's beach. As ThinkProgress noted, the appearance of oil onshore led Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to shift his upbeat rhetoric about the approaching oil, acknowledging that "this could turn out to be something catastrophic and terrible." But after Barbour visited Petit Bois Island yesterday and saw that the oil that came ashore had "been washed away by storms," he returned to the positive spin, saying, "I don't think the island was hurt one iota." Barbour even downplayed concerns about animals being suffocated by the oil in the ocean, comparing it to humans being covered in toothpaste:
In recent weeks, reporters and photographers for major news organizations around the country have been speaking out about the attempts by BP to prevent them from getting a first-hand look at the Gulf Coast oil spill. A CBS News crew was threatened with arrest when it tried to photograph the spill, and a BP representative in Louisiana told a Mother Jones reporter that she couldn't visit the Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge without a BP escort.
On Monday, journalists from the New York Daily News were also "escorted away from a public beach on Elmer's Island bycops who said they were taking orders from BP." However, they managed to get a covert tour of the Queen Bess barrier island from a BP contractor who is fed up with the oil company's attempt to cover up the disaster:
"There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said.
"The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I'm going to show you what BP never showed the President." [...]
The grasses by the shore were littered with tarred marine life, some dead and others struggling under a thick coating of crude.
"When you see some of the things I've seen, it would make you sick," the contractor said. "No living creature should endure that kind of suffering."