Volunteers clean oil from Florida's Pensacola Beach on Friday.

[Updated at3:10 p.m.]

Here are the latest developments on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which began when the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20:

- BP Senior Vice President Bob Fryar said the company "was very pleased" with the progress made on funneling oil from an undersea cap up to a drilling ship.

"That operation has gone extremely well," Fryar said.

- President Barack Obama said in his weekly address that the federal government was "prepared for the worst" in coping with the Gulf oil. He cited statistics that illuminated the "largest response to an environmental disaster of this kind in the history of our country":

• 17,500 National Guard troops authorized for deployment.
• 20,000 people are currently working to protect waters and coastlines.
• 1,900 vessels are in the Gulf assisting in the clean up.
• 4.3 million feet of boom deployed with another 2.9 million feet of boom available, enough to stretch over 1,300 miles.
• 17 staging areas across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida to rapidly defend sensitive shorelines.

- BP has funneled about 250,000 gallons of oil in the first 24 hours from a cap installed on the ruptured Gulf of Mexico well to a drilling ship a mile above, the company said Saturday.

- More sticky brown oil globs known as tar balls washed up overnight on the beach in Pensacola, Florida.

- President Obama has invited the families of the 11 people killed in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion to the White House and will offer condolences to them. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama plans to meet with the group on Thursday.

Obama has lunch with local business owners

- The cost of the federal response effort to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill totaled $93 million as of June 1, according to a Friday letter from Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen to congressional leadership. They are requesting that Congress approve a proposed provision that would make available up to an additional $100 million to the Coast Guard.