What's going on: BP leak is world's largest accidental oil spill

Also: 6 teens drown in La. river; Congress investigates ethics.

Gerald Herbert / The Associated PressA boat motors through oil sheen from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill at sunset Saturday off East Grand Terre Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast.

From Bloomberg:

BP Plc’s crippled Macondo oil well spewed 4.1 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico during the 87 days before it was capped, a team of scientists said, making it the world’s largest accidental offshore spill.

BP siphoned off an additional 800,000 barrels from when the well exploded on April 20 to when it was capped on July 15, the U.S. government-appointed group said yesterday in its latest estimate of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The Macondo spill exceeds the 3.3 million barrels that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences estimated leaked from Mexico’s Ixtoc-1 well in the Bay of Campeche after a blowout in 1979. The world’s worst spill was in the 1991 Persian Gulf War when retreating Iraqi forces opened oil pumps, causing the release of 6 million barrels, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

» 6 teens drown in sinkhole in Louisiana's Red River [Shreveport Times]

» 45 killed in street violence after Karachi official is assassinated [Los Angeles Times]

» For Congress, a new vigilance in policing ethics cases [The New York Times]