Friday News Updates: Oil Spill, Stock Drop and Financial Reform Bill

After Senate passage, what’s next for financial reform bill?

On a barely bipartisan 59-to-39 vote, the Senate on Thursday approved the most sweeping overhaul of financial-industry oversight since the New Deal era. Next: negotiations with the House, final passage expected by July 4, and a reprise of the main themes of the debate in partisan ads for the fall midterm elections.

Stocks Drop on Growth Concern, Treasuries Jump; Euro Pares Gain

May 21 (Bloomberg) — Stocks fell for a seventh day and 30- year Treasury yields dropped to their lowest level of the year on concern Europe’s debt crisis will slow the economic expansion and stricter financial rules will reduce bank profits. The euro pared gains and oil tumbled.

The MSCI World Index of developed-nation shares retreated 1.2 percent at 9:35 a.m. in New York, heading for a nine-month low on a closing basis. The S&P 500 slid 1.1 percent to 1,059.5, below its weakest level during the May 6 crash, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below 10,000. The euro rose 0.4 percent to $1.2538, after climbing as high as $1.2672. The 30- year Treasury yield dropped to 4.02 percent.

BP denies covering up extent of oil spill

LONDON, May 21 (Reuters) – BP Plc (BP.L) said some third-party estimates of how much oil is gushing out of a leaking well on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico were inaccurate and it denied a cover-up.

BP has been estimating that the leak was flowing at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day, but some scientists and the U.S. government have questioned that figure. [ID:nN19272725]

“It was only ever meant to be a rough estimate,” a spokesman for the British company said on Friday after U.S. lawmakers accused it of concealing the extent of the spill and as TV images showed oil sloshing into Louisiana’s marshes. [ID:nN20262611].