—With hurricane-whipped waves pushing more oil onto the Gulf of Mexico‘s once-white beaches, the government pinned its latest cleanup hopes Wednesday on a huge new piece of equipment: the world‘s largest oil-skimming vessel.The Taiwanese-flagged former tanker named the “A Whale” is the length of three football fields and stands 10 stories high. Officials hope it will be able to suck up as much as 21 million gallons of oil-fouled water per day.—An Interior Department official says the government is expected soon to issue more permits for drilling in shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The decision would not affect the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed in the aftermath of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While drilling in shallow waters was not part of the moratorium, there has been confusion about whether new permits will be approved for shallow water leases. —EPA officials say their first round of testing on chemicals used to break apart the oil in the Gulf of Mexico shows all the available dispersants are generally equally toxic. Paul Anastas, EPA’s assistant administrator for research and development, says that the testing also showed the chemicals are far less toxic than oil. He said none of the chemicals had dangerous effects on the sea life tested. —An effort to save thousands of sea turtle hatchlings from dying in the oily Gulf of Mexico will begin in the coming weeks in a desperate attempt to keep an entire generation of threatened species from vanishing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the plan that calls for the collection of some 70,000 turtle eggs in up to 800 nests buried on beaches across the Florida Panhandle and Alabama. It’s never been done before on a such a massive scale, but experts say that doing nothing could lead to unprecedented deaths.—-Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected].