There was a deadly ferry accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Wednesday (7/28).

The accident happened on the Kasai River in the western province of Bandundu. As many as 140 passengers may have died, and most reports put the confirmed death toll so far at about 80.

It should come as no surprise that DRC officials are being quoted saying the vessel was very overloaded. Bad weather and the river's low level may also have contributed to the sinking.

Despite Pyongyang's aggressive rhetoric against ongoing U.S./South Korea joint military exercises on both sides of the Korean Peninsula, the U.S.-led United Nations Command met with North Korean military officials Friday (7/30) for a third round of talks over the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan.

The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday (7/29) said that it could take 10-12 days to seal the "orphaned" wellhead that has been spewing a mixture of oil and natural gas into Louisiana's Barataria Bay since Tuesday when a barge ran into it.

A company called Wild Well Control Inc. has been designated as the prime contractor to secure the wellhead.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency reports that severe flooding in China has washed at least 3,000 chemical-filled barrels, from two storage facilities, into the Songhua River in the city of Jilin. Another 4,000 swept into the same river are reported to be empty.

Workers are frantically working to retrieve the barrels while residents are said to be filling up on bottled water.

A barge collided with an "orphaned" oil wellhead in Louisiana's Bayou St. Denis near the Barataria Waterway Tuesday morning. The accident has left oil and natural gas leaking into the water. In a statement today (7/28), the U.S. Coast Guard said a sheen is covering more than six-square miles.

More than 800,000 gallons of oil have leaked from a pipeline and entered a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan. The leak was detected and the pipeline was shutdown Monday (7/26) morning, but it might have been spewing oil since Sunday. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm declared the incident a disaster on Tuesday (7/28) as the oil made its way into the Kalamazoo.

An investigation has been launched to figure out what caused the pipeline leak.

Something happened to the Japanese oil tanker M Star as it passed through the strategic Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman last night. While CNN and others are reporting that the U.S. Fifth Fleet and Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism say there was an explosion onboard, officials in Oman and Iran claim that a wave caused by an earthquake struck the vessel.

A quick scan of USGS-recorded earthquake data shows no sign of an earthquake in the region last night.

If it was an explosion Japanese officials say there is a possibility it was an "outside attack". We'll see. The ship was headed to Fujairah in the UAE for inspection.