Oil Spill Snarls Mississippi

An oil spill stretching nearly 100 miles along the Mississippi is causing river traffic to pile up, AP reports. Dozens of vessels are stuck in New Orleans waiting to head upriver. Others are waiting to carry cargos of grain downriver from the heartland. Officials say it will be days before traffic is moving again, and weeks before the huge spill is cleaned up.

America's worst spill in nearly a decade happened Wednesday when a collision split open a barge, sending  nearly 400,000 gallons of industrial fuel into the river. Only a small fraction has been cleaned up so far, but hundreds of workers are scrambling to put down containment booms to stop the oil from spreading further along the fast-flowing river.
 
(More Mississippi River stories.)