BP announced the beginning of the end of the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday afternoon, when it announced it was finally able to contain the leak that has commanded headlines since April.

Now there's only the matter of the 94 to 180 millions of oil churning in the Gulf to clean up. Good luck, guys. I don't have much to comment here, other than to say, I'm not going to relax yet. The relief wells are still being drilled, and we still have no clue as to the full impact of the spill on the ecosystem there. The market seems much more forgiving than residents of the Gulf coast, as BP has seen a recent 5 percent bump in share price.

Yet, there is so much more to report this week.

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Explosion in Pennsylvania
When the Deepwater Horizon story first broke broke in April, it wasn't a story about an oil spill; it was a story about an industrial accident that claimed 11 lives. Wednesday, the nation got another scare when 15 people were injured in a blast in one of the nation's largest steel factories when a coke oven exploded.

The U.S. Steel plant in Clairton, Pennsylvania is the largest coke manufacturing plant in the country. For the slow ones out there: that's coke as in the ultra-hot carbonized fuel used to make steel, not the sugar stuff that comes in red aluminum cans, or the illegal powdery that Hollywood actors snort as a meal replacement.

Fortunately, there were no fatalities reported in the incident, so one is led to assume that U.S. Steel takes safety pretty seriously, because it sure sounds like the situation could have been worse.

The Other Oil Spill
Then, there's the OTHER oil spill. Didn't hear about that one? It's not in the Gulf, and this time it's not BP on the hook.  As we speak, officials in Utah are mighty steamed at the Chevron corporation about 800 barrels of oil that leaked into Red Butte Creek in Salt Lake City in early June. The oil has flowed into Utah's Liberty Park Pond as wells as the state's Jordan River.

Cheveron blames the leak on "an electrical arc" that burned a hole in an oil pipeline. Meanwhile Utah's water authorities are throwing the book at Chevron, and claims that if the oil conglomerate doesn't comply with the state's strict cleanup guidelines, it can face fines as high as $25,000 a day.

Quake Watch
Sine the July 7 5.4 magnitude quake in the Borrego Springs area of California, there have been nearly 1,000 smaller aftershocks, six larger than magnitude 3.0. While this isn't a call to panic, it leads a lot of credence to earlier reports that fault lines near the Los Angeles area had increased pressure as the result of the larger earthquake this year, further south in Mexicali.

All of this increased activity has many concerned that a larger quake could hit the Los Angeles area soon, especially near the Whittier Fault Line.


Heat Advisories
If it weren't for BP finally putting the clamp on their leaky well, the story of the week, is the heat. No, not the Miami Heat (enough about Lebron  James).

This week saw the mercury spike as a heat wave moved east across the whole US, prompting the National Weather Service to issue Heat Advisories all across the nation.  With the spike in heat comes a strain on the power grid, heat strokes, and injuries and even death related to the heat, along with increased drownings from people escaping to pools, lakes and oceans. Corn and soybean prices have spiked with the mercury as well, as commodities traders are worried this year's crop might get scorched by a hotter than usual summer.

When the heat starts creeping past the 90's it's a good idea to be mindful of the dangers the sun can pose to us and look for ways to beat it.

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That's all so far for this week. I'd like to thank the people who have so far participated in our Hero Contest, and ask our readers to check out their submissions. For those that haven't heard, we've asked people to nominate heroes in their communities and if any of these nominations lead to us publishing a feature on their nominee, the person submitting will win a new Apple Ipad.

Keep the submission coming, and try your best to beat the heat this summer.