Even more bad news for the oil-soaked Gulf: Citing overall weather patterns and computer models, AccuWeather says the odds are rising for a tropical cyclone formation in the western Atlantic Basin this week or early next week, likening weather patterns in the region to a "tropical brew that is ready to boil over."

AccuWeather is tracking a wave, drifting westward through the central Caribbean, saying it is "bound to cause trouble."

"These models go so far as to spin up the first tropical storm of the Atlantic season," AccuWeather says. "At least one of these models develops a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico between the 28th and 30th."

For the record, the first name on the 2010 list in the Atlantic is "Alex."

— Alex Johnson

UPDATE 2:12 p.m. ET: Bill Salvin, a spokesman for BP, says the company doesn't know when it will be able to replace the cap. "We're doing it as quickly as possible," he tells The Associated Press.

BP says an unexplained "discharge of liquids" is responsible for its decision to remove a containment cap. Oil and gas are gushing unconstrained through the lower marine riser package while the company analyzes the liquid, but the separate choke line in the failed blowout preventer is still operating, it says.

Adm. Thad Allen, the federal official in charge of the recovery effort, says the choke line is capturing about 10,000 barrels a day. So if the government's estimated flow rate of 60,000 barrels a day is accurate, the uncapped flow is gushing at the rate of 50,000 barrels a day.

NBC's Pete Williams reports that after vowing to seek an appeal quickly, Obama administration officials now say the Justice Department will refrain from any legal action in response to yesterday's court order temporarily blocking the Interior Department's moratorium on offshore drilling:

The plan now is for the government to seek a new moratorium, doing so in a way that avoids some of the legal problems identified by the judge who issued yesterday's injunction. For example, the judge chided the Interior Department for claiming that a panel of outside experts had endorsed the moratorium issued in late May, when, in fact, they favored something less sweeping.

Once the Interior Department issues its new moratorium, the government fully expects another legal challenge and very likely another court order blocking it. But on the second round, with a modified moratorium, the Justice Department believes it would be on firmer ground to seek an appeal.

A boat captain who was working on the oil spill response died of a gunshot wound early Wednesday, the Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register is reporting.

"I'm very sorry to announce the death this morning of a captain in the vessel of opportunity program at Fort Morgan, Alabama," the newspaper quoted U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Chuck Diorio as saying.

Diorio said the Gulf Shores Police Department was investigating the death.

Another worker involved in the oil spill response also has died, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Wednesday. No other details were immediately available, but the Coast Guard said it did not appear the death was work related.

The Coast Guard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Images from BP well suggest dramatic increase in oil flow. Watch the BP's live stream of the oil leak below:

LONDON - British financial insiders are touting former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the next chairman of beleaguered energy giant BP, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Wednesday.

"Anyone who watched chief executive Tony Hayward struggle to find a voice while being skewered by Congress last week would have realized the company needs to step up its debating skills by about 1,000%," said writer and financial columnist Matthew Lynn.

Executives' gaffes have defined BP's reaction in the wake of the April 20 rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The company has become an object of hate in parts of the United States and endured scathing criticism from politicians and the public as a whole.

BP's reputation is not the only thing to have taken a beating — its shares have lost 50 percent of their value since the Deepwater Horizon spill began.

Tony Blair, who led the country for 10 years and is popular in the United States, could help repair the BP's public image, Lynn said.

"This is essentially a political crisis, so why not a politician?" he said.

Traders are betting that Blair will replace BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, the Mirror reported.

Since stepping down in June, 2007, Blair has acted as peace envoy to the Middle East and taken-up directorships on the boards of several companies.

--Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com

Msnbc.com's JoNel Aleccia reports from New Orleans:

Volunteers flocking to the Gulf of Mexico to help clean up tainted seas and shoreline — including some 17,000 members of the National Guard — may be among those at highest risk for potential health problems, scientists said today.

That's because ad-hoc workers may not have consistent training or monitoring to limit front-line exposure to chemicals, heat, accidents, stress — even wildlife — that could pose a threat, said experts gathered for a meeting on oil spill health effects.

"Some of these guys have never been in a swamp, and they don't recognize there are poisonous snakes there. You don't want them coming back later as another injured party," said Paul J. Lioy, an expert on 9/11 toxic exposures and a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J.

Lioy and others urged better monitoring of all those associated with the spill clean-up, including more than 25,000 volunteers who have signed up so far, according to the Deepwater Horizon joint operations center.

Last week, President Barack Obama promised the services of the National Guard. Before that, images of oil-soaked birds and shorelines spurred thousands of people to reach out to dozens of wildlife groups and other agencies arranging crews to help. Most have been kept away from the heavy lifting of clean-up, but some could be exposed to fumes, tar and other contaminants that have caused mild symptoms among some workers. In addition, they could face other hazards affecting workers and community members, said Dr. Howard Osofsky, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans.

Osofsky, who has studied mental health effects of hurricanes and other disasters, said he expects "good-hearted" volunteers to show up with difficult side effects.

"We'll see heat exhaustion, we'll see medical problems, we'll see psychological stress," he said, including the stress of helping people who had barely begun to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

UPDATE 1:05 p.m.: Reuters has released details of its Ipsos poll. It indicates that 56 percent of Americans believe offshore drilling is still necessary. Looked at another way, it says, "69 percent have not changed their views on drilling despite the spill."

_____

A new round of polls this week show that even after nine weeks, Americans still haven't reached much of a consensus on the Gulf oil spill, except that BP is bad.

A Gallup daily tracking report released last night show the public is still just about split on President Obama's handling of the response, with 44 percent approving his performance. That's basically unchanged from early June.

A New York Times/CBS poll out today indicates that 49 percent of Americans oppose increasing offshore oil drilling, while 42 percent approve. But Reuters says it's about to report a poll it conducted with Ipsos North America that shows "a majority of Americans" still support offshore drilling on the U.S. coastline.

Reuters gives no numbers yet, so we don't know how far apart the Ipsos and NYT/CBS polls are.

One thing nearly everyone agrees on: Blame BP. Only 16 percent approve of BP's handling of the spill in the Gallup poll; it's in single digits in the Ipsos poll.

We'll post details of the Ipsos poll once it and Reuters release the data.

— Alex Johnson

Msnbc.com's JoNel Aleccia reports from New Orleans:

Even as scientists meet here to examine the potential health effects of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, surveillance systems show only mild impacts on people so far, judging by the number of reports.

With more than 33,000 workers and volunteers deployed to the spill, there have been 143 reports of oil-related illnesses logged by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals as of this week. That includes 108 spill workers and 35 members of the public. Twenty people — 17 workers and three community members — were briefly hospitalized for complaints usually related to strong oil odors. Everybody felt better once they left the smelly area though, said Lisa Faust, a spokeswoman for the health department.

So far, 357 oil exposure complaints have been reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. People who suspect spill-related problems should call 1-800-222-1222

But health officials say that reports of headaches, nausea, sore throat and dizziness may only be the immediate short-term effects of the spill. To track potentially serious and long-term effects, such as the development of cancer or other illnesses, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has launched the most robust monitoring system of oil spill workers to date. As of last week, 14,664 workers had volunteered to be part of a long-term tracking system.

What that may reveal about future health problems is the big question for top researchers gathered by the Institute of Medicine over the next two days.

No one expects to come away with concrete answers, just a better understanding of what this massive environmental disaster might mean for the people caught in its path, said Nancy E. Adler, a scientist at the University of California at San Francisco who helped organize the meeting.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the organizing committee for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, says BP is a "partner to stay" despite the Gulf oil spill, The Associated Press reports.

BP has been a top-tier sponsor of the London Olympics since 2008 in a deal valued at about $58 million — powerful incentive for what are being touted as the greenest games ever.

In-house corporate magazines are supposed to make the company look good, but The Wall Street Journal is asking whether Planet BP, the oil company's organ, is smoking something:

[I]n Planet BP — a BP online, in-house magazine — a "BP reporter" dispatched to Louisiana managed to paint an even rosier picture of the disaster. "There is no reason to hate BP," one local seafood entrepreneur is quoted as saying, as the region relies on the oil industry for work.

Indeed, the April 20 spill on the Deepwater Horizon is being reinvented in Planet BP as a strike of luck.

"Much of the region's [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams," another report says. Indeed, one tourist official in a local town makes it clear that "BP has always been a very great partner of ours here…We have always valued the business that BP sent us."

Fortunately the articles — on which BP declined to comment — don't go as far as praising that new treat: seasonal shrimps in (crude) oil.

We now have video of BP Chief of Staff Steve Westwell getting heckled at the World National Oil Companies Congress this morning in London.

With the crippled Deepwater Horizon rig looming behind him, NBC's Kerry Sanders broadcast his report live on TODAY from the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Doing so was no easy feat.

NBC had to charter a 230-foot vessel named the "Sky Falgout" to carry the crew and a massive satellite truck on an 11-hour voyage to the site of the accident.

"Our goal is to do things that no one else has been able to do," Sanders said on TODAY. "That is to go out to the site of where Deepwater Horizon was and broadcast live to show people what is going on moment by moment."

Watch the following video as Sanders points out the surface activities to try and shut off the well spewing oil thousands of feet below.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board says it will investigate the cause of the oil spill disaster using the same investigators who examined BP's safety practices after the 2005 explosion that killed 15 people at the company's Texas City, Texas, refinery.

"All of us share your hope that every possible lesson will be learned from this accident so that nothing similar ever occurs again," CSB Chairman John Bresland says in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The letter was dated Friday but didn't come to light until today.

"The investigation should include an examination of key technical factors, the safety cultures involved, and the effectiveness of relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards," Bresland writes.

The CSB is a quasi-independent, jumping into chemical accident cases in much the same way the National Transportation Safety Board can intervene after plane crashes.

The full letter is here as a PDF file.

A federal judge says he will rule by tomorrow on Diamond Offshore Drilling's request for an injunction halting enforcement of the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans reports.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal filed an amicus brief in support of the motion:

Inasmuch as the State of Louisiana was completely ignored by defendants in the establishment of this moratorium for alleged safety reasons, the question arises whether that failure renders Defendants' action invalid.

President Obama imposed the ban last month as the scope of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico became apparent. But Diamond, the largest U.S. offshore drilling contractor, depending on how to measure that, says the ban exceeds Obama's authority.

It was bound to happen, given the increasing desperation of out-of-work fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Coast Guard on Sunday seized about 30,000 pounds of shrimp from two boats that were fishing about 35 miles south of Louisiana's Terrebonne Bay -- an area closed to fishing because of the BP oil spill, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Monday.

Coast Guard officials boarded the vessels Lady Monica and La Borrachita after receiving a tip that they were shrimping in closed waters. The vessels were cited for fisheries violations and the shrimp were dumped back into the sea, it said.

"The Coast Guard is committed to ensuring a robust law enforcement presence in the restricted fishing area," Lt. Cmdr. Carmen DeGeorge, chief of the Eighth Coast Guard District law enforcement branch, told the newspaper. "We will continue to dedicate assets to the restricted area to ensure integrity of the Gulf of Mexico seafood."

-- Mike Brunker

Hollywood star Kevin Costner debuted Friday in his supporting role as a Gulf oil-spill fighter.

News agencies reported on the actor's premiere staged at the docks in the oil industry supply port of Port Fourchon in southern Louisiana as BP began deploying 32 of his "dream" machines to separate oil from water. Costner's backdrop was an oil-finding barge with his machines mounted on the deck.

"At its core, my dream, this machine, was designed ... to give us a fighting chance to fight back the oil that's got us by the throat," Costner told reporters.

"When you are in a fight, anybody knows you go to confront it right where it is. You don't wait for it to come to your door," the actor said.

Costner's company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, signed a contract with BP to provide 32 units expected to work in the next 60 days.

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles would not disclose financial details.

Costner said each machine, called a V20, can separate 210,000 gallons of oily water a day.

Costner, best-known for such films as "Dances with Wolves" and "Waterworld," stressed he was no overnight oil spill sensation. He has been trying to employ the technology designed by his company for the past 17 years, and has invested more than $20 million of his own money in its development.

The technology was developed two decades ago by a researcher at the Idaho National Laboratory by scientist David Meikrantz, who initially sought to use the machines to separate the components of nuclear substances.

In 1993, INL licensed the technology to Ocean Therapy Solutions, a company owned by Costner.

New York state's pension fund, one of the largest in the country, is considering suing BP PLC for its management of the well in the Gulf, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The New York State Common Retirement Fund, with $132.6 billion in assets, owns 17.5 million BP shares through index funds.

"We've been looking at all our options that we have available, including potential litigation," Robert Whalen, a spokesman for the fund, told the Journal. "We want to make sure if there was negligence or recklessness that we are made whole appropriately," he added.

BP had no immediate comment.

BP's shares have fallen nearly 50 percent since the April 20 explosion that triggered the oil leak. The stock is widely held by pension funds.