Bullock Tries to Get Out of Gulf Ad ...

Celebs team up in PSA for oil spill cleanup

(NEWSER) - Sandra Bullock asks Americans to support the Gulf Coast cleanup in a new public service announcement that premiered on UsMagazine.com . Bullock, along with Dave Matthews, Blake Lively, Lenny Kravitz, Emeril Lagasse, and others urge viewers to sign the petition at RestoretheGulf.com , which asks Congress to secure funding for a long-term plan to clean up the oil spill and protect the affected wetlands. More»

But overall in Louisiana, numbers were about the same

(NEWSER) - The seafood stats are in for the Gulf's 2011 harvest, and though the finger-pointing (at BP and the oil spill, of course) has begun, the numbers paint a complicated picture. Last year was the first full year of fishing since the spill, and some areas definitely saw a depressed catch: In the Barataria estuary, one of the areas hardest hit by oil, the fall season was off by around 7 million pounds of shrimp and about 2.7 million pounds of blue crab. And many fishermen say BP is to blame. "I'm afraid that oil spill has ruined us," one shrimp dock owner tells the AP. More»

Taylor Swift donates $4M to Country Music Hall of Fame

(NEWSER) - Taylor Swift is donating a sizable $4 million to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the largest gift ever donated to the museum by an artist. It will fund the Taylor Swift Education Center, a new classroom and exhibit space opening in 2014, the AP reports. Swift proves that not all celebrities spend their dough on things like $12,000 Chanel bicycles and $18,500 olive trees , and Celebuzz rounds up 14 more who give freely of their money and/or their time. And while some are obvious (hello, George Clooney) many might surprise:

• Sandra Bullock: Has donated $1 million to relief organizations that give aid to those affected by 9/11, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, and the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Japan.
• Ellen DeGeneres: Her pet cause is, ahem, animal rights and rescue organizations, and her pet food line benefits charity.

80K gallons spilled from Louisiana pipeline over weekend

(AP) - Amid reports of eyeless shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico, some good news for BP: There's a new oil spill, and it's not theirs. Rather, Exxon Mobil is cleaning up about 80,000 gallons of oil that spilled from a pipeline in rural Louisiana. The company says the pipeline was shut down Saturday night after a loss of pressure. The spilled oil was discovered yesterday in Pointe Coupee Parish, northwest of Baton Rouge. More»

Kurt Mix the first to be hit with criminal charges

(AP) - The Justice Department said today it filed the first criminal charges in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, accusing a former BP engineer of destroying evidence. Kurt Mix was arrested on two counts of obstruction of justice, and is accused of deleting a string of 200 text messages with a BP supervisor in October 2010 that involved internal BP information about how efforts to cap the well were failing. Mix, 50, of Texas, will make an initial appearance in federal court in Houston this afternoon. More»