North Korea today threatened a "physical response" to planned military exercises by the US and South Korea this weekend, as tensions on the Korean peninsula dominated a regional security forum in Hanoi.

The regime did not specify what that response might be, but said it interpreted the launch on Sunday of four days of naval and air drills in the Sea of Japan as another sign of US "hostility".

"It is a threat to the Korean peninsula and the region of Asia as a whole," a North Korea spokesman, Ri Tong-il, told reporters at the Asean regional forum.

Ri said the drills harked back to 19th-century gunboat diplomacy and violated North Korea's sovereignty. "And [our] position is clear: there will be physical response to the threat imposed by the United States militarily," he said.

Operation Invincible Spirit will involve 8,000 US and South Korean troops, 200 aircraft and 20 ships, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS George Washington.

The meeting in Hanoi has quickly become the stage for a war of words between the north and the US, although there has been no direct contact between the countries' delegates.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said "isolated and belligerent" North Korea would have to end its "campaign of provocative, dangerous behaviour" if it wanted better relations with the US and the rest of Asia.

North Korea has pulled out of six-party talks on its nuclear programme and is blamed for the March sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean navy vessel, in which 46 sailors died.

The regime denies carrying out the attack and has unleashed a wave of belligerent rhetoric in response to what it calls US aggression.

On Wednesday, Clinton unveiled new sanctions designed to deny luxury goods to North Korean elites and strangle funding for Pyongyang's nuclear programme. The north says it will not return to nuclear negotiations unless the sanctions are lifted.

Today, Clinton urged Asian nations to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear ambitions by enforcing strict UN sanctions imposed after the regime's second nuclear test last year.

"One measure of the strength of a community of nations is how it responds to threats to its members, neighbours and region," Clinton said.

A South Korean newspaper said the new US sanctions would target 200 North Korean-held foreign bank accounts thought to be connected with illegal activities such as nuclear weapons development, drug trafficking and counterfeiting.

"Even before the Cheonan incident, the US was tracking around 200 North Korean bank accounts in banks in China, Russia and even eastern Europe and Africa that are believed to be involved in the development of weapons of mass destruction and the export of drugs, counterfeit money, fake cigarettes and weapons," the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted a diplomatic source as saying.

The paper said the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, is believed to hold a US$4bn slush fund in secret accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

North Korea also rejected South Korean demands to apologise for the sinking of the Cheonan.

"We cannot accept such a claim because they try to use it to shift (their) responsibility on to us," Ri said. He repeated North Korea's position that the cause of the sinking remains unclear and insisted that it be allowed to conduct a joint investigation with the south.

"South Korean authorities bear the responsibility for causing tension ... South Korea is the one who must apologise," he said.

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A painting by a graffiti artist was among the official gifts to Barack Obama from David Cameron on his first trip to Washington as prime minister.

The work, Twenty First Century City, is by Ben Eine, said to be one of the PM's wife Samantha's favourite artists.

The 39-year-old artist recently sprayed the entire alphabet on shop shutters in a London street.

Mr Obama continued the art theme by presenting the Camerons with a signed lithograph by pop artist Ed Ruscha.

The piece, Column with Speed Lines, was chosen for its red, white and blue colours matching the British and American flags.
Beer bet

Writing on his website, Ben Eine said it had been a "weird day" because "David Cameron has given one of my paintings to President Obama in an art swap".

The artist, who has worked with Banksy, began his career by "tagging" his name on buildings and trains around east London, examples of which are featured on his website under the heading "vandalism".

In recent years he has been asked to decorate shutters in cities as far afield as Tokyo and New York.

Other gifts from the Camerons to the Obamas included two pairs of Hunter Wellington boots, one in pink and one in purple, for the first family's two daughters.

For Michelle Obama, there were candles made by London-based perfumer Miller Harris.
David Cameron and Barack Obama Mr Cameron and Mr Obama swapped jokes at a White House news conference

Mr Cameron's six-year-old daughter Nancy was given a silver charm necklace, and his son Elwen, four, was a given a DC United football shirt.

Samantha Cameron, who is expecting a child in September, received a gift basket including a baby blanket.

When Mr Cameron met President Obama at the G8 summit in Tokyo last month, they exchanged bottles of beer, following a bet on England's World Cup clash with the US, which ended in a 1-1 draw.
Classic DVDs

The US president presented Mr Cameron with a bottle of Goose Island 312 from his home city of Chicago, while Mr Cameron gave Obama a bottle of Hobgoblin, made by the Wychwood brewery in his Oxfordshire constituency.

Swapping notes on the beers at a White House news conference on Tuesday, Mr Obama said the British bitter was excellent but confessed: "I did drink it cold."

Mr Cameron joked that the American beer "was obviously very effective" because he had ended up cheering on Germany against Argentina while drinking it, "something that's a big admission for a British person".

Mr Obama was criticised for lack of thought when he presented previous prime minister Gordon Brown with a set of 25 DVDs of classic American films, when Mr Brown visited Washington.

Mr Brown gave the US president a pen holder made from the timbers of a Victorian anti-slavery ship.

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The U.S. said it will intensify sanctions against North Korea for sinking a South Korean warship, targeting members of Kim Jong Il’s regime and the foreign banks that help sustain the country’s weapons industry.

“These measures are not directed at the people of North Korea, who have suffered too long due to the misguided and malign priorities of their government,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a press briefing in Seoul today. “They are directed at the destabilizing, illicit, and provocative policies pursued by that government.”

Clinton’s sanctions announcement may raise tensions as she heads to Hanoi for a meeting on region security that includes her counterparts from North Korea and China. North Korea, whose economy has been battered by existing trade restrictions, has threatened to retaliate against any punitive actions over an incident it denies any part in.

“The measures seem to be aimed at what would hurt North Korea the most: its cash line,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul-based Dongguk University. “It remains to be seen how far the U.S. is willing to push it through, as it wouldn’t want a total collapse in dialogue.”

The U.S. has learned lessons from existing sanctions that will help make the new measures more effective, an administration official traveling with Clinton, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters. Diplomats involved in illegal activities, such as money laundering and counterfeiting, would be targeted, a second official said.

Economic Impact

UN sanctions imposed on North Korea over its defiance of an international ban on missile tests caused the country’s international commerce to shrink 9.7 percent last year, according to Seoul-based trade agency, Kotra. North Korea doesn’t release its own trade figures.

“We have made clear that there is a path open to the DPRK to achieve the security and international respect it seeks,” Clinton said, using the initials of the formal name for North Korea. “If North Korea chooses that path, sanctions will be lifted, energy and other economic assistance will be provided, its relationship with the U.S. will be normalized.”

Continued threats against South Korea and military provocation would only lead to further punishment for the North Korean regime, Clinton said.

The sinking of the Cheonan has prompted the U.S. and South Korea to showcase their military and political alliance. The two countries yesterday said they will conduct joint naval and air exercises off South Korea’s east coast next week.

Show of Force

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were among senior defense officials who were also in South Korea for what Clinton described as “a real show of solidarity” and to mark the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean war.

The 97,000-ton aircraft carrier USS George Washington and three of destroyers arrived in the country today.

In a joint statement after the talks, the U.S. and South Korea urged North Korea to acknowledge that it was behind the attack. The North has said that the evidence of its involvement in the sinking was cooked up as an excuse for the U.S. to wage a “war of aggression.”

Containing China

The U.S. drills mask a hidden aim to “pressurize and contain other big powers by force of arms in the region,” the state-run Korea Central News Agency said today.

China, North Korea’s biggest economic partner, said it is “firmly opposed” to foreign military activities off its coastal water that affect the nation’s security interests, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website today.

China has refused to join in international condemnation of North Korea, saying that it has no independent evidence of the North’s role in the ship sinking.

In addition to the U.S., North Korea and China, foreign ministers from South Korea, Japan and Russia will also be in the Vietnamese capital tomorrow to attend Asia’s biggest security forum. Those countries form the so-called six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Southeast Asian countries will push North Korea to rejoin the talks, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said. This week’s meeting of 26 countries and the European Union will be the first to bring together senior envoys from all the six- party participants since the Cheonan sinking.

Asean Seeks Role

“The meeting later this week can provide the necessary political ambiance for things to happen,” Natalegawa said in an interview in Hanoi late yesterday. “We must ensure that we do not allow the situation to regress and develop in such a way that there could be a danger to the peace and stability of northeast Asia.”

Clinton and Gates made an unprecedented joint trip to the armed border dividing the Korean peninsula earlier today, before meeting their counterparts in Seoul this afternoon.

Clinton said that as she looked across the line that divided North from South “it struck me that although it may be a thin line, these two countries are worlds apart.”

In the South, there are leaders of the country “who care about its people,” she said. “The North has not only stagnated in isolation but the people of the North have suffered for so many years.”

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is either holding his cards close to the vest or he is waiting to be dealt a hand.

Regardless, the Nevada Democrat's decision to remain silent on what will be in the climate and energy bill he hopes to take to the floor soon has his own party holding its breath.

"We are now waiting for Harry," Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told reporters on the way into yesterday's caucus lunches, where many had expected Reid to finally get specific about the details of his legislative plan.

But Democrats left the lunch with no better handle on what Reid has in mind for his legislation, including whether it will include a controversial plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

"Literally, there was some discussion right at the end for five minutes," Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said of the meeting. "All these other issues took on a life of their own, expanded and left us with relatively little time to talk about energy issues."

Upon leaving yesterday's meeting, Reid's message was a familiar one to those tracking the Senate climate debate.

"We're going to make a decision in the near future," Reid told reporters. He said that Democrats would meet again tomorrow to discuss energy and climate but still he cautioned that the topic would be only one of "a number of things" on the agenda.

Reid said last week that the four-part plan he was working on would directly address carbon dioxide emissions from electric utilities, but he appears to be keeping his distance from the ongoing negotiations between the industry and Lieberman and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on that issue.

"I know almost nothing about it," Reid said regarding a morning meeting between Kerry, Lieberman and industry representatives.

Reid's evasiveness appears to be frustrating some in his own caucus.

"I assume he's got to make a decision this week because we're about to run out of time," said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who added that he had stopped working with colleagues on legislative proposals for the bill because of the uncertainty.

"I'm not working with anyone," Bingaman said. "I'm waiting for Senator Reid to tell us what he's planning to do."

Lieberman was more gentle in his remarks but nonetheless appeared agitated with the tight time frame that Reid has imposed on the negotiations.

"These are big and important issues regarding energy independence, pollution reduction, job creation," he said. "That requires some time, so I hope that we are not going to force ourselves to be constrained by an artificial schedule."

Lieberman suggested that given everything that still remains in flux, the Senate might be better dealing with energy and climate legislation in a lame-duck session after the November elections. But he conceded that was not his decision to make.

"The schedule is Senator Reid's setting, not mine," Lieberman said.

With Reid aiming to bring a bill to the floor sometime next week, many observers expect him to unveil its specifics this week.

A handful of aides for several key Democrats gathered outside of today's meeting hoping to learn what those details were but, like everyone else, they left Reid's brief press conference still in the dark.

"I'm waiting to find out just like you guys," one aide told reporters.

Republicans, meanwhile, are also questioning Reid's slow pace of play and some are wondering aloud if he is bluffing.

"He's waiting until we have, like, two or three days to tackle a subject that usually takes seven or eight weeks," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). "So that makes it very difficult."

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), once targeted by Democrats as a possible 60th vote for their climate efforts, was even more pessimistic about Reid's chances of rounding up the votes to pass a bill that directly addresses carbon emissions.

"Anybody that has been in the Senate for any period of time knows there is no way, no way, that an energy bill is going to be done between now and the election and now and the end of this year," Voinovich said.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the sole Republican who has indicated that she is open to the idea of a utility-only cap, said yesterday that she, too, is eager to hear what Reid's plans are.

"I just don't know what they are going to decide, whether or not they can even bring up an energy piece between now and August," Snowe said. "It might be less likely, given the limited time we have and the remaining items on our agenda."

Reid's relative silence and the growing frustration among some in his caucus are a sharp departure in tone from where the party was a month ago.

Reid and other party leaders left a policy lunch late last month with what they hailed as a renewed sense of unity around efforts to boost clean energy and curb greenhouse gas emissions. They called that meeting "inspirational," "powerful" and even "thrilling."

"Whatever form it takes, we're going to move forward," Reid said at the time of Democrats' climate and energy agenda.

But those words were not on Democrats' lips yesterday.

"Everyone has to understand, you can focus all the attention on us, and I appreciate you doing that, but we're still trying to find a Republican, or two or three to help with energy," Reid said.

But even if they do find a couple of Republicans to break with their own party's leadership, Democrats would still need to keep their caucus mostly united, something that is proving difficult. In the past week alone, they have learned that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and newly sworn in Sen. Carte Goodwin (D-W.Va.) will not support any of the current carbon-capping proposals on the table.

"It's one of those ironies where some people won't vote for a bill that doesn't begin to address carbon, and some people won't vote for a bill that does address carbon even in a modest way," Carper said.

Utility sector demands

Lieberman and Kerry held their latest round of talks with representatives from the utility sector early yesterday, and the pair have a long way to go toward winning industry support, Lieberman said.

Lieberman said he and Kerry may need until the fall to strike a deal with the utility sector, something that is seen as a prerequisite for the plan to cap emissions from power plants to win the needed 60 votes to avoid a Republican filibuster.

"I know there is a certain awkwardness in a lame-duck session, but these are big and important issues," Lieberman said.

Reid declined to answer questions about exactly when he would unveil a bill and when it would reach the floor. But according to Carper, who spoke with Reid yesterday morning, the top Senate Democrat is not keen on a lame-duck debate.

"My sense is that he's willing to set aside a couple of weeks to work on energy policy during this work period, but maybe not later," Carper said.

But Lieberman said such a time frame will make it difficult, if not impossible, to win over the utility sector.

"They want to work with us to see if they can negotiate an agreement on a utility-only bill, but as far as they are concerned, they can't do it in 10 days," Lieberman said. "So they pleaded for more time, so I think that is something we should consider."

Lieberman said that utilities would rather see a larger cap like the one he and Kerry proposed earlier this year, but that the industry is open to a carbon limit on just its sector in exchange for industry-friendly emissions allowances and relief from several existing Clean Air Act rules. But Lieberman cautioned that he and Kerry had yet to commit to any of the demands and were discussing them as part of the bargaining process.

"These are all topics of negotiation," the senator said. "That is what we are supposed to be doing here."

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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today he is reconsidering his department's decision to fire a Georgia official in wake of new details about her controversial speech to the NAACP.

Vilsack said in a statement early Wednesday morning that he will "conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts" about his decision to ask Shirley Sherrod to resign. Washington's apparent reversal came hours after a video of Sherrod's full speech was released, and the director of rural development in Georgia was defended by the white couple at the center of the controversy.

The full, uncut video of a federal agricultural official's NAACP speech purporting racial scheming, told a different story than the barely-three-minute snippet that cost Sherrod her job.

Despite admitting in the edited version of the taping that she once withheld help to the couple on the basis of race, Sherrod was defended Tuesday by the wife of a white Georgia farmer.

Sherrod, "kept us out of bankruptcy," said Eloise Spooner, 82, of Iron City in southwest Georgia. Spooner, in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, added she considers Sherrod a "friend for life." She and her husband, Roger Spooner, approached Sherrod for help in 1986 when Sherrod worked for a nonprofit that assisted farmers.

Sherrod, who is African-American, was asked to resign Monday night by a USDA official after videotaped comments she made in March at a local NAACP banquet surfaced on the Web. Recounting her dealings with the Spooners, Sherrod said she didn't help them as much as she could because of their race.

But a review of the entire 43-minute, 15-second speech -- released Tuesday on the NAACP Web site -- showed that Sherrod was giving a cautionary tale about the evils of racial separation.

"When I made that commitment (at age 17 years old to remain in Georgia and help people), I was making that commitment to black people, and to black people only," Sherrod said nearly 15 minutes into the recording, just seconds before the segment that brought her trouble. "But you know, God will ... put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle was really about poor people."

Next, Sherrod would say the words that eventually led to her losing her job.

"[The white farmer] was trying to show me he was superior to me," she said, recalling the day some 24 years ago. "I knew what he was doing, but he had to come to me for help."

Eloise Spooner said as far as she's concerned Sherrod worked tirelessly to help the couple hold onto their land as they faced bankruptcy.

Spooner said she spoke to Sherrod by phone Tuesday morning after the story hit cable news.

"She's very sad about it," Spooner said. "She told me she was so glad we talked. I just can't believe this is happening to her."

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issued a statement Tuesday saying the controversy made Sherrod's position as a rural development director, a job she was appointed to last March, untenable. But Vilsack said Wednesday that after learning more about what Sherrod actually said, he would reconsider.

Vilsack said in a statement early Wednesday morning that he will "conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts" about his decision to ask Sherrod to resign.

The NAACP, which had released a statement Monday critical of Sherrod, backtracked Tuesday, saying it was "snookered" by Andrew Breitbart, whose Web site biggovernment.com released the edited video. Breitbart did not respond to a request seeking comment.

"Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans," NAACP President Ben Jealous said in a statement. "The tape of Ms. Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP banquet was deliberately edited to create a false impression of racial bias, and to create a controversy where none existed. This just shows the lengths to which extremist elements will go to discredit legitimate opposition."

In the video, Sherrod told the crowd at the NAACP banquet in Douglas, Ga., that she didn't do everything she could to help a white farmer whom she said was condescending when he came to her for aid.

"What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," Sherrod said on the video, recorded "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough."

Sherrod, in her first interview after the clip surfaced, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the video was selectively edited.

While she soon admitted as she told her story that she referred the Spooners to a white lawyer so "his own kind would help him," she followed that admission with a revelation that was omitted from the two-minute, 36-second excerpt of the speech posted by Breitbart's group.

Sherrod told the crowd that she discovered the white lawyer she had referred the Spooners to took their money for six months, but did nothing to help them.

"This lawyer told them, ‘ya'll are getting old ... why don't you just let go of the farm,'" she said. "I could not believe he said that to them."

Sherrod said she'd learned her lesson.

"It's about the poor," Sherrod said, just over 20 minutes into the speech. "It made me see it really was about those who have, versus those who don't ... black, white or Hispanic.

"It made me realize that I needed to work to help poor people ... those who don't have access the way others have."

She said the incident helped her get beyond issues of race.

"And I went on to work with many more white farmers," she said. "The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't."

Sherrod accused the USDA of cowering to right-wing media.

"They were just looking at what the Tea Party and what Fox (News) said, and thought it was too [politically] dangerous for them," Sherrod said of her former employer.

The Sherrod video surfaced a week after the NAACP issued a resolution calling some elements of the National Tea Party racist for comments allegedly made against President Obama and African-American congressmen during the health care debate.

Sherrod said it wouldn't have made any sense for her to espouse racist comments before the NAACP audience.

"There were some white people there. The mayor [of Douglas] was there," Sherrod recalled. "Why would I do something racist if they were there?"

Douglas Mayor Jackie Wilson told the AJC she introduced speakers at the banquet but left before Sherrod's speech.

Wilson said she did not hear of any controversy in the weeks following the banquet, adding she was shocked to learn of Sherrod's resignation.

"She's not someone I know extremely well, but I respected her and thought she was doing a good job. And she seemed to be a fair person," said Wilson. "I just hate that this kind of thing happened in Douglas."

Eloise Spooner said she'll stand up for her friend.

"She helped us and we're going to help them," she said.

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The 5,600 vessels taking part in the oil spill operation on the Gulf of Mexico make up the largest fleet assembled since the Allied invasion of Normandy, according to the Coast Guard.

Hordes of helicopters, bulldozers, Army trucks, ATVs, barges, dredges, airboats, workboats, cleanup crews, media, scientists and volunteers have descended on the beaches, blue waters and golden marshes of the Gulf Coast.

That's a lot of propellers, anchors, tires, and feet for a fragile ecosystem to take, and a tough truth is emerging: In many places, the oil cleanup itself is causing environmental damage.

Part of that is inevitable — the oil has to get cleaned up somehow, and BP and the government will be subject to second-guessing no matter what.

"Absolutely nothing you do to respond to an oil spill is without impacts of its own," said Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11, and oil began gushing into the Gulf, federal, state and BP officials say they have been guided in their response by picking the less damaging cleanup method.

Still, environmentalists and veterans of other spills say the torrent of untested cleanup methods rushed into practice by panicked officials and unqualified experts is wreaking havoc and, at least in spots, may be unnecessary.

"The more you disperse (with chemicals), the more you bring in these big machines, the more you bring in inexperienced people and the more sand berms you build, the less chance you have of letting Mother Nature and skimmers and booms do the job," said Mike Brewer of Buras, La., who ran an oil spill response company and is working on the BP cleanup.

For starters, the EPA allowed BP PLC to spray a chemical dispersant, a product called Corexit, to break up oil right as it came out of BP's broken well nearly a mile below the surface. The idea is to save shorelines from being clobbered with vast waves of crude.

In practice, the use of dispersants that had never been tested that far beneath the surface has made the oil much more difficult to track than it would have been in a single, massive slick. And environmentalists and marine biologists still aren't convinced the chemicals are safe for sea life.

The EPA halted underwater spraying while it tested samples collected by BP, then allowed it to resume once the results came back to the agency's satisfaction. Further tests are ongoing, and crews quit spraying dispersant once the well was contained this week, Jackson said.

"Basically, we conducted uncontrolled experiments in the open ocean — that does not seem like a good idea to me," said John Hocevar, the oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA.

Jackson said there was little evidence that the chemical dispersants had caused damage and called their effects "relatively mild."

Eager to be seen as taking charge, Gov. Bobby Jindal began building a series of untested sand islands and other barriers along the Louisiana coast, making construction of these berms a personal crusade. In theory, sand berms and jetties will stop the oil from entering sensitive estuaries.

But berms and jetties interrupt shrimp and fish migrations as well as tidal flows; the work can even undermine what little is left of Louisiana's gooey and sediment-layered shoreline.

"None of the coastal scientists have signed onto this thing," said Leonard Bahr, a former adviser to both Republican and Democratic governors in Louisiana on coastal restoration issues.

Fishermen and locals, however, almost unanimously agree with Jindal's unorthodox barrier plans.

"We know these (berms) stop the oil. It worked on Fourchon Beach," said Windell Curole, a levee manager in south Lafourche Parish, an area long struggling with erosion. "The people that are pushing for these things are more invested in it than the scientists."

In a move that put its compensation costs toward curtailing the spill's environmental effects, BP hired truckloads of inexperienced oil spill responders — shrimpers, unemployed workers, college students, and migrant workers. The manpower is essential, but their footprint can be huge, especially if they're not used to watching their step.

"It was like the Wild West there for a while, and it still is to some degree," said Drew Wheelan, a wildlife biologist with the American Bird Association Inc., a conservation group.

Wheelan said cleanup crews trampled on numerous nesting bird colonies, including at least one batch of least tern eggs he saw. Wilson's plovers and endangered black skimmers on Louisiana's Grand Isle and East Grand Terre islands were threatened by intensive beach cleanups.

"The whole entire area in the past two weeks has been completely crisscrossed by tire tracks. The entire cleanup there has been entirely sickening," Wheelan said recently of East Grand Terre. "There are tire tracks from the low tide line all the way up into the dune vegetation. Not an inch of that frontal beach has been spared from traffic."

Out on the Gulf, BP brought in a super-sized skimmer from Taiwan — the "A Whale" — capable of sucking up 20 million gallons of water a day, aiming to corral huge quantities of oiled water at once. Like some of the other methods, it had never been tested and scientists worried that it could cause serious damage.

"It will suck in a lot of biology," said James Cowan, a Louisiana State University fisheries scientist.

Coast Guard officials questioned its effectiveness, noting that it would be better for attacking a single huge slick than for the countless smaller pools that the dispersant helped create. Authorities announced last week that the massive ship was dropping out of the spill operation.

Forrest Travirca has seen the cleanup's side effects up close as a land manager for the Wisner estate, a public land trust that includes Fourchon Beach and a large marsh area that has seen some of the heaviest oil so far.

On an airboat cruise through marsh, signs of the messy cleanup jumped out. Reddish-brown and sticky tar coated the blades of marsh grass behind a beach lined with sand baskets brought in by Army dump trucks. Absorbent boom lay washed up against shorelines. Crews had staked down shade tents every few hundred yards.

Almost as soon as he stepped onto the sand, Travirca saw something he didn't like: Two ATV tracks meandering carefree across the sands. Someone with the cleanup had strayed from designated traffic corridors.

"This really upsets me," Travirca said, standing over the fresh set of tracks. "They're not supposed to be driving back here. They've got to drive along the front of the beach. Birds nest back here."

He walked a few paces away and pointed out another set of ATV tracks he discovered a few days before. "This track here was inches from a tern nest with eggs."

At least now, more than three months after the spill, the cleanup is becoming more organized.

In the beginning, he said, the beach "looked like the autobahn."

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