Oil Slick Spreads to the Marshes
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Live from Studio 7 at CNN World Headquarters, the big stories for Thursday, May 20th. Powerful sea currents threaten to spread the Gulf oil slick. We've been telling you for days now, right? BP spreads its message and denies it is not being straight with the public.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we've been absolutely open.</s>HARRIS: OK. It is "everybody draw Mohammed day." Activists on Facebook want you to doodle for free speech.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Drawing Mohammed does not equal hate.</s>HARRIS: And we meet a controversial author and mother who wants parents to stop all of that hovering. She says take your kid to the park this Saturday and leave them there -- all alone. We'll talk about this one. Good morning, everyone. I'm Tony Harris. Those stories and your comments right here right now in the CNN NEWSROOM. OK, a lot going on this morning but we start with the Dow. Have you been following this, this morning? Another down morning could lead to another down day. Hard to imagine us coming all the way back from this, but it happens. Stephanie Elam is monitoring what's going on with the Dow and we'll be checking in with her over the next two hours. As you can see, the Dow is down 259 points. We've been down as far as 300 points and beyond. Mr. Calderon goes to Congress. Mexican President Felipe Calderon is expected to make his case for immigration reform when he addresses a joint meeting of Congress. His speech set to begin any minute now. You will see highlights live in the NEWSROOM. It is part of our expanded coverage of U.S.-Mexican relations. Mr. Calderon is also expected to tackle the issue of drug violence. We will continue that discussion next hour when National Drug Policy director Gil Kerlikowske joins us live in the CNN NEWSROOM. A full month and counting now since the oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a look at the catastrophic chain of events. Tuesday, April 20th, rescuers rushed to the fiery scene of the off-shore drilling rig about 45 miles off the Louisiana coast. Eleven workers are missing and later presumed dead. Saturday, April 24th, oil is found leaking from the underwater well for the first time. Initial estimates say 1,000 barrels a day. That is later revised to 5,000 barrels or 210,000 gallons a day. Monday, May 17th, BP inserts a mile-long tube into a ruptured pipe capturing about a fifth of the gushing crude and suctioning it up to a tanker ship. CNN's David Mattingly now on that heavy oil washing onshore in Louisiana. David, good to see you. You took a boat trip, I understand, with Governor Jindal yesterday. What did you find?</s>DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tony, what we found was that Governor Jindal has an agenda. He wants the U.S. government to approve and BP to pay for this big project he has in mind to build up offshore islands that have been eroded over the years. He says that's going to be the best defense Louisiana has against this oil slick and to make his point, he took us into the marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi River yesterday. You can see the pictures of what we saw. It was the thickest oil we have seen yet. Oil that was the consistency of thick, chocolate syrup coating a portion of the wetlands there. What was just as disturbing as the oil itself was the location. This is the first time we've seen oil getting past the barrier islands, past the booms and hitting these environmentally sensitive areas. To give you an idea of what this stuff looked like I brought back a bottle of it. There it is just as thick and as black as it could possibly be. Very different from what we've been seeing over the past few weeks. That sheen that's been coming ashore in some places. This was thick, thick, syrupy oil that we saw. I spoke to BP about this this morning, and they say that there are cleanup crews on the scene. They are there to clean up the marsh area as best they can, but the governor was pointing out that these marshes are a whole lot harder to clean than if the oil comes ashore on a sandy or a rocky beach. In a beach like that, you just dig up the sand and replace it. Well, in a marsh you can't do that, and there could be a lot of long- term damage to that marsh that you normally wouldn't normally see on a barrier island.</s>HARRIS: OK. David Mattingly, boy, that's a nasty image. David, thank you. Appreciate it. Got to tell people are actually searching the beaches of the Gulf Coast looking for oil.</s>JESSE FINERAN, HAZMAT, HANCOCK CO., MISSISSIPPI: We've had people call in. They've seen an oily sheen and they've actually seen oil floating on the water that they've seen oozy material.</s>ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: So your job is to verify those calls.</s>FINERAN: Basically to verify the calls, to see if it's -- you know, if something really happened, hey, we want to know.</s>HARRIS: Our Rob Marciano goes along with the emergency management officials on the Mississippi coast at the bottom of the hour. Checking other big stories we're following for you in the CNN NEWSROOM. Three mothers hugged their children in Tehran today for the first time in 10 months. The American women begged the Iranian regime to release them. They say the three actually strayed into Iran while hiking in Iraq. Iran says they're spies.</s>SARAH SHOURD, AMERICAN HIKER DETAINED IN IRAN: His treatment is decent. It's really difficult being alone. Jim and Joshua are in a room together, but I'm alone and that's the most difficult thing for me, but I see them twice a day.</s>HARRIS: Today is "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." Activists started the Facebook campaign to promote free speech. They're angry Comedy Central censored a "South Park" episode featuring an animated Mohammed.</s>AUTUMN MEADOWS, CNN IREPORTER: I am protesting death threats on artists over cartoons. I think that is ridiculous. I don't think people of a certain religion should be telling other people what they can and cannot do that are not that religion.</s>HARRIS: And Pakistan responded to "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" by blocking Facebook and other Web sites. All right, let's take a look at the Dow again. What a steep sell-off to start the day. We are down 252 points. Look at that. That's a bad number. We'll find out what's going on here. Why the sell-off? Why the instability in the markets over the last couple of weeks, really? We'll check in with Stephanie Elam on this story. Once again we are awaiting remarks by Mexican President Felipe Calderon. He is on Capitol Hill to address Congress. We will bring you a portion of his remarks live. I need a bigger monitor so I can pick people out of the room. And a huge tornado races across Oklahoma. Reynolds Wolf is keeping a close eye on storms today -- Doctor.</s>REYNOLDS WOLF, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, hard to believe, isn't it? That video really tells a story. One of possibly six tornados that moved across parts of Kansas and Oklahoma. Round two may come today, but it plays a little bit farther to the southeast. We're going to talk about that coming up in just a few moments. Plus we're going to take a look at your forecast for the Gulf of Mexico. Hope we get a better handle of where that oil slick may be headed next. Back to you, Tony.</s>HARRIS: All right, we're back in a moment. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.