Less than a week following the primary election that produced a runoff for the Republican nomination for governor, the two biggest stories in Alabama are events taking place outside the state’s borders.

The crazy thing is that nobody can decide which is the bigger of the two stories.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is inching closer to Alabama beaches and is already having an economic impact on the state’s fishing industry.

Economic woes in a state full of economic problems is a concern, but it could possibly be trumped by a murder investigation thousands of miles away.

In case you have been away from the news, Joran van der Sloot was arrested in Peru for murder. If that name sounds familiar to you, it is because he remains the top suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a teenager from the Birmingham area.

Van der Sloot allegedly murdered a woman on May 30 — five years to the day anybody last saw Holloway alive.

Peruvian authorities said van der Sloot confessed to murdering the woman in his hotel room because she found evidence on his computer about his involvement with Holloway’s disappearance.

Van der Sloot, who is a Dutch national, has been nothing but trouble for most of the past five years.

In an undercover video, he confessed to getting rid of Holloway’s body following her death. He has been implicated in trafficking women into the sex trade in Thailand.

Van der Sloot is currently being charged with wire fraud and extortion in Alabama after offering information on the location of Holloway’s body for money. The money was sent, but van der Sloot allegedly gave bad information and used the money to finance his trip to Peru, where he killed the woman.

With all of the information coming out, van der Sloot makes the BP executives, who don’t seem to be in a hurry to plug the oil leak, look like perfect citizens.

Pehaps the best solution to both problems is to have the principle parties of each story meet and work out a solution to all of the problems.

Maybe the BP executives could use van der Sloot to plug the leak.

There would be no more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and the sleazy van der Sloot would be off the streets for good.

It is a perfect scenario in which everybody wins.