Saw stalls efforts to plug oil spill

The British Petroleum (BP) oil slick drifted perilously close to the Florida Panhandle's famousu00a0beaches yesterday, as a risky gambit to contain the leak by shearing off the well pipe ran into trouble a mile under the sea after the diamond-tipped saw got stuck.

Crews freed the blade from the pipe and were hoping to finish the cut later in the day. The plan was to fit a cap on the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. "I don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It's about how fine we can make it," saidu00a0 Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis.