• Amer Hilabi / AFP - Getty Images

    A Saudi youth sits next to his sport utility vehicle lifted with stones and bricks in the tourist area of al-Habla, Saudi Arabia on July 12, 2012. Young Saudi males gather in al-Habla for a summer camp to escape the Gulf heat and spend time mounting their cars with rocks for display.

    Saudi youth escape heat and mount vehicles

    .

  • Tar balls wash ashore on Gulf Coast following Tropical Storm Lee

    Jay Reeves / AP

    Brandon Franklin picks up a tar ball washed in by Tropical Storm Lee from amid shells at Gulf Shores, Ala., on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011. Franklin, coastal plans manager for the city, said the tar balls are suspected of being pieces of submerged tar mats left over from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials said Tuesday that they plan to test the black and brown globs to find out if they're related to last year's oil spill.

    Jay Reeves / AP

    Tar balls washed in by Tropical Storm Lee are amid shells on the beach at Gulf Shores, Ala., on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011. City officials suspect the tar balls are left over from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Officials said Tuesday that they plan to test the black and brown globs to find out if they're related to last year's oil spill.

    Full story.

    Slideshow: World’s thirst for oil

    Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

    Around the globe countries are drilling for it, distributing it, trading it and looking for ways to run their economies with replacements for it.

    Launch slideshow

  • Matt Davis / AFP - Getty Images

    Carpenter Clarence Barthel walks alone on the beach of Pass Christian, Mississippi on Wednesday, August 4. The beach has been cleaned up remarkably in the wake of the BP oil spill, but tourists are yet to return. As BP kills the oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico, some coast residents can no longer smell the stench of oil or even see much oil on their sandy beaches, but that doesn't mean tourists are likely to return any time soon. Barthel saw no reason to interrupt his visits to the town during the disaster, but says the environment on the beach has improved markedly over the last two weeks. BP cleanup crews were combing the beach for tar balls and bulldozing away oil-soaked sand a few weeks ago, said Barthel, who said he had seen very few tar balls after a couple of hours of walking up and down the beach.

    Where's the oil? (And how do you make a picture of what's not there?)

    The news from the Gulf seems to be getting better: The 'static kill' procedure appears to be have stopped the leak, at least for now. And, as far as the oil already in the Gulf of Mexico goes, the federal government says "that nearly three-quarters of the spilled oil — more than 152 million gallons — has been collected at the well by a temporary containment cap, been cleaned up or chemically dispersed, or naturally deteriorated, evaporated or dissolved."

    That claim, however, is very controversial. Anne Thompson, NBC's environmental affairs correspondent, has a full report on the controversy, including some very skeptical reactions from fishermen, in this video from NBC Nightly News.

    Whether the feds are right about the spilled oil or not, it's great to see Pass Christian looking pretty good in this picture--and certainly a lot better than Orange Beach, Alabama looked on June 26, in an earlier Photoblog post. Given the degree of uncertainty in the news, though, the question mark at the end of this headline seems necessary. We're not really sure what the picture means in the larger context of this story, even if we know exactly where and when it was taken. It's just too complicated of a story right now to try to show in one image.

    Along those lines, our newsroom is hoping that the first stage of this national nightmare is coming to an end, and anticipating an announcement by the federal government that the static kill (or, failing that, a relief well) has worked to permanently cap the leak. As we hope for resolution, we're also planning: how can we present this news visually on our cover, if and when it happens? We could put up a live video stream of BP's "spillcam," but it isn't really showing useful information these days. We could put up a picture of a press conference, but why bother, really? We could put up a picture like this one from Pass Christian, with the right headline. We're considering a number of other options, though in the end we'll probably do what we usually do: quickly look at all available recent images as news is breaking, pick our best immediate option, and then improve it as new pictures and news are available. Publishing news on the Internet is almost always improvisational.

    Nonetheless, we plan for foreseeable contingencies, and we love it when our readers tell us what they think. So, if you have any ideas to help us in our planning process, we'd love to hear them in the comment thread.

  • Charles Dharapak / AP

    President Barack Obama and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist walk along Casino Beach on Pensacola Beach, Fla., Tuesday, June 15, as he visited the Gulf Coast region affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spil

    Where's the oil?

    Wondering why Obama never seems to visit an oil covered beach when he goes to the gulf. Would you like to see him get his hands dirty?

  • Eric Gay / AP

    In this Monday, June 7, photo, APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La..

    Swimming in oil

    This is commitment. Read about Matthews' swim here: http://bit.ly/bm5VJP and check out a video of his adventure here: http://bit.ly/aVvpRD