Here are some developments in BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the largest offshore oil disaster in U.S. history.

Top Developments
• The tide of lawsuits unleashed by BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico breaks into federal courtroom in Idaho Thursday where judges heard arguments from lawyers on how piles of spill-related lawsuits should be merged
• BP's rivals are counting the cost of a ban on offshore drilling.
• BP pushed ahead with plans to sell assets in Vietnam, Colombia and Venezuela, as it scrambles to hive off $30 billion of assets to pay to clean up the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Politics/Policy
• A U.S. senator from Florida called for a congressional inquiry into BP plan to use losses from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to reap $10 billion in tax benefits.
• Norway's decades-old political consensus on offshore drilling is under attack in the wake of the BP oil spill, just as it covets new riches in the Arctic.
• Republicans and some moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday began picking apart a new energy bill that they complained goes too far in holding oil companies responsible for accidents like the massive Gulf of Mexico spill.
• Several U.S. government agencies are preparing a criminal probe of at least three companies involved in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, though it could take more than a year before any charges are filed, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
• BP said U.S. markets regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice had launched a probe into market trading connected to the oil giant's Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Environment
• It could be years before some Gulf of Mexico beaches recover fully from BP massive oil spill and are declared free of toxic pollutants, including heavy metals, that can make people sick, a leading environmental advocacy group said on Wednesday.
• The BP oil spill is the latest in a series of environmental insults to the U.S. Gulf Coast, from wetlands eradication to flood control measures that have starved marshes of new sediment deposits.

Market Impact/Companies
• Deepwater driller Pride International gave a weak third-quarter outlook as it expects the U.S. Gulf of Mexico
drilling moratorium and regulatory checks to lead to additional downtime, sending its shares down as much as 9%.
• Heightened caution following the BP oil spill is prompting oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico to shut more production faster as storms threaten, exacerbating energy price volatility this hurricane season.
• BP is in talks with India's Reliance Industries and Essar Group to sell its African retail assets that could be worth as much as $500 million, four sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
• Water treatment services company Nalco Holding Co said it raised its full-year outlook mainly on the back of strong second-quarter results, driven by dispersant sales to help in the
clean-up of the BP oil spill.

Capture/Containment/Cleanup
• 100 days into BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Wednesday he was confident a relief well preceded by a so-called "static kill" would plug the leak for good.
• Hundreds of contractors and thousands of workers are swarming over the U.S. Gulf Coast, hoping to cash in on the country's worst oil spill.

Special Reports
• Bob Dudley is not one to wear his disappointment on his sleeve. Even as a kid, Dudley, who BP said this week would replace the much-ridiculed Tony Hayward in October, "was completely unflappable," remembers Charles Brent, Dudley's hometown friend in southern Mississippi in the 1960s.
• Irv Mendelssohn, a wetland ecology expert who has been watching oil's impact on plants for three decades, offers a cautiously optimistic prognosis for the recovery of Louisiana's marsh grasses from BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.