Environment

The Interior Department is reviewing more than $700 million dollars in bids to drill in the western Gulf of Mexico. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the major bids in the first sale since the BP oil spill last year, and then visited a business still reeling from the spill.

The Interior Department has conducted the first sale of leases on drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP spill last year. It comes after environmental groups failed to block the sale.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar traveled to New Orleans to announce bids on leases for the western Gulf off Texas. He says deepwater drilling is now safer than it was before the BP well exploded, spilling more than 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.

The worst is over in Utah, where winds that topped 100 mph Thursday toppled trucks trees and power lines.

And things should be calmer in Southern California too, where "freakishly powerful winds" on Thursday stunned people and left behind shredded rooftops and "yards littered with downed trees," as the Los Angeles Times says.

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming