Evening Edition

Live video feed of the spill site showed remotely-controlled submarines maneuvering the cap system in order to remove the old containment cap and place a tighter one.

If all works as planned, the new cap combined with a series of tankers that on the surface could contain all the oil now soiling the Gulf’s fragile coastlines as early as Monday.

President Barack Obama imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a deadly explosion on a BP-leased rig in April caused a devastating spill of crude into the gulf that has imperiled fragile coastlines and wildlife.

But a federal judge blocked the moratorium last month after 32 oil companies and local officials argued it was causing irreparable economic harm.

The more snuggly-fitting containment cap, which comes on the heels of repeated failures and setbacks for BP, would then siphon crude and gas up to a series of tankers on the surface.

But the system is only a temporary solution before relief wells are completed that could stop the flow completely.

The explosions targeted a busy market in Yakaghund town in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt on Friday, destroying government buildings and shops and leaving victims buried under the rubble.

Local administration chief Rasool Khan said the death toll had jumped to 102, after he and other officials had earlier put the number of dead at 65.

An estimated 4,000 tourists, scientists, photographers, filmmakers and journalists flocked to the Chilean island of only 160 square kilometers (60 square miles) on Saturday, doubling the population of the barren isle that already suffers from water pollution and deforestation.

Conditions are anything but normal on Easter Island, deemed by astronomers as the best place to witness Sunday’s alignment of sun, moon and Earth for a fleeting four minutes and 41 seconds.

The nation’s overseas shipments of items including electronic gadgets, shoes and textiles reached 137.4 billion dollars last month, up 43.9 percent from the previous year.

The pace of growth was slower than in May when exports surged 48.5 percent, but was better than most analysts had expected.

None of the yellow jersey contenders lost time on what was the first day in the mountains and Quick Step all-rounder Chavanel now holds a 1min 25sec lead on Australian Cadel Evans.

Evans’ fellow yellow jersey challenger Andy Schleck is fourth at 1:55, with reigning champion Alberto Contador sixth at 2:26 and seven-time champion Lance Armstrong 14th at 3:16.

“Today we are here to honour the courage of Fernando Pereira and all who sailed with him,” said Greenpeace’s executive director Kumi Naidoo at a ceremony in the Polish port of Gdansk, where the vessel’s latest incarnation is being built.

“We honour the entire crew of the Rainbow Warrior which went down, as well as all our folks that work on ships, that take direct action, that hang from coal-fired power plants, that put their lives on the line,” he said.

The maneuver released a torrent of oil that will spew unrestrained into the Gulf for four to seven days — the time BP says it will take to put in place a bigger cap and seal. Officials say the new cap would capture all the oil leaking from the well and funnel it one mile upward to vessels on the water’s surface.

The new solution, 82 days into the worst oil spill in U.S. history, would not allow crude to billow out the bottom and the top, as the current cap does, said Kent Wells, senior vice president of exploration and production for BP.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack in Mohmand, a Pashtun region on the northwestern border with Afghanistan, where security forces have stepped up operations against militants in recent months.

Friday’s attack is the deadliest Pakistan has suffered since an attack on a market in Peshawar in October last year that killed 105.

Protesters chanted slogans against foreign forces and Afghan President Hamid Karzai after U.S. troops killed two civilians in a pre-dawn raid Wednesday in the northern city’s outskirts.

NATO also admitted killing six people with stray artillery Thursday, a day after an airstrike accidentally killed five Afghan soldiers.

“Can you hear that? They’re blowing their horns again,” one soldier shouts down the line.

It is a sound the U.S. soldiers have become accustomed to nearly every time they go out on patrol — insurgents sounding their car and motorcycle horns, warning each other the Americans are on the move.

It’s the first step in placing a tighter dome that is supposed to funnel more oil to collection ships on the surface a mile above. If all goes according to plan, the tandem of the tighter cap and the surface ships could keep all the oil from polluting the fragile Gulf as soon as Monday.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler said the old cap was removed at 12:37 p.m. CDT on Saturday.

BP and the federal government admit they have no idea how much oil has been collected by hundreds of boats that range from retrofitted fishing vessels to state-of-the art craft designed specifically for the task. The harshest critics say the amount of oil skimmed is as low as 2.9 million gallons of the 87 million to 171 million gallons of crude that have gushed into the Gulf since April 20, but BP and independent scientists alike say there’s no real way of knowing.

BP tracks the amount of oil-tainted water skimmers collect – nearly 29 million gallons so far – but not the amount of oil found in that mixture. Part of the problem, BP says, is the variety of vessels and skimming equipment being used.

Chu is a deck hand, or he was until two months ago when the spill put him out of work and rippled across his world. Before that, he had been saving to bring his wife, Nguyen, from Vietnam to America. He’d also been sending her money regularly since they wed three years ago. Now he needs help just to buy food.

And that’s what brings Chu to a Vietnamese community center this day where he’s among dozens of people lined up hours before the 9 a.m. opening when 25 coveted stubs will be exchanged for $100 grocery vouchers from Catholic Charities.

Patrick, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, carefully plucked the eggs from the foot-deep hole and placed them one-by-one in a cooler layered with moist sand from the nest, the first step in a sweeping and unusual turtle egg evacuation to save thousands of threatened hatchlings from certain death in the oiled Gulf of Mexico.

After about 90 minutes of parting the sand with her fingers like an archaeological dig, 107 eggs were placed in two coolers and loaded onto a FedEx temperature-controlled truck. They are being transported to a warehouse at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center where they will incubate and, hopefully, hatch before being released into the Atlantic Ocean.

Increased U.S.-led military operations in the southern province of Kandahar are aimed at trying to break the Taliban’s grip where they are strongest by delivering security and government services to win over Afghan people.

The hope is that once the tide begins to turn, more control can be handed to Afghan forces without fear that the Taliban might again seize power, bring back its harsh interpretation of Islamic law and resume sheltering al-Qaida terrorist leaders. Then U.S. troops could begin withdrawing in July 2011, in line with a timeline set by President Barack Obama.

“People came here yesterday to receive biscuits and edible oil,” the college student said. “I don’t know why terrorists killed them.”

Yakaghund village lies in Mohmand, one of several regions in Pakistan’s tribal belt where al-Qaida and Taliban militants are believed to be hiding. The Friday strike showed that Islamist extremists remain a deadly force along this area bordering Afghanistan, despite pressure from army offensives or drone-fired U.S. missiles.

The financial industry and consumers already are anticipating – in some cases bracing for – the impact.

Banks might see their bottom lines suffer. Lenders will have to disclose more information. Borrowers will have to prove their ability to repay. The masters of high finance will find it harder to sidestep regulations. Government watchdogs will be under orders to look more suspiciously at risky behavior.

Human rights activists and other officials, however, warned that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, could still be hanged.

The outcry over the death sentence is the latest thorn in Iran’s relationship with the international community, with the United States, Britain and international human rights groups urging Tehran to stay the execution.

She tells them: It’s not me you want, it’s a man with the same birth date and a similar name. Agents always confirm that and let her go.

Then it happens again. And again.

The billboard has dominated the city’s skyline for years but is being removed after the superstar announced he was leaving the Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.

As strips of the image of James, his arms outstretched and head thrown back after doing his pregame powder toss, began coming off, pedestrians stopped on Ontario Street to take photos and cars pulled to the side for one last look at No. 23, who has gone from being a hometown hero to villain.

So he moved to the middle, LeBron James on one side, Chris Bosh on the other.

Picture perfect.

The Food and Drug Administration posted an exhaustive 700-page review of Avandia on Friday ahead of a meeting next week to decide whether the drug should stay on the market.

The FDA finds itself in a difficult position that’s all too familiar: reviewing a drug approved a decade ago that now appears tied to deadly side effects. Experts say the FDA’s predicament is a result of shifting standards for the agency: increased scrutiny on safety and stepped-up pressure from Capitol Hill.

Candidates traveled in campaign vans, speakers blaring and aides waving out of windows, stopping here and there to give speeches throughout the country Saturday.

The balloting, in which half the seats in the 242-member upper house are up for grabs, won’t directly affect the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s grip on power because it has a hefty majority in the more powerful lower house that chooses the prime minister.

The window heaters have been tied to dozens of incidents involving in-flight fires, smoke, open streams of electricity known as electrical arcing, and shattered windshields in Boeing planes. In many cases, pilots have made emergency landings.

The source of the problem was identified in 2004 as a simple loose screw that chafes power wires where they connect to heating wires in the windows.

A day after President Barack Obama delivered a mocking indictment of her candidacy at a rally in Las Vegas, Angle accused the president and Reid of pushing billions of dollars in stimulus spending while Nevada struggles with “an economy that is a disaster.”

She called for repeal of the health care overhaul, lower taxes and disbanding federal agencies, including the Education Department, that she said had responsibilities that can be handled at the state level.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry has a tremendous amount of discretion in handing down punishment Aug. 6 against Johannes Mehserle – anywhere from probation to 14 years.

A sentence on the low end could further inflame tensions among the hundreds of angry people who took to the streets of Oakland Thursday over what they believe should have been a murder conviction.

Now the American Psychological Association has taken the unprecedented step of supporting an attempt to strip the license of a psychologist accused of overseeing the torture of a CIA detainee.

The APA has told a Texas licensing board in a letter mailed July 1 that the allegations against Dr. James Mitchell represent “patently unethical” actions inconsistent with the organization’s ethics guidelines.

Duncan made his remarks at a forum on innovation in education at Aviation High School in Des Moines, a small college prep school that focuses on science, technology and mathematics.

At the forum, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said she hopes fellow lawmakers spent their Fourth of July break hearing from parents and teachers, like she did. Murray said if they got the message about how urgent the school budget crisis is, they will return to Washington, D.C., with the drive to find more money for schools.

Republicans and Democrats alike wrestled with how to capitalize on a fledgling rebound as they talked dollars and sense at their summer meeting just days into a new budget year and as the economy shapes dozens of gubernatorial races across the country.

“All states still are facing tough fiscal situations even though I do believe we’re in recovery,” said West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who’s taking over as chairman of the National Governors Association.

West Hollywood, Calif. had done it, with little fanfare. Why not the city of St. Francis, patron saint of animals, which prides itself on its compassion toward all creatures great and small?

So Gerrie, a bee keeper and secretary of the San Francisco Commission of Animal Control & Welfare, a seven-member advisory board on animal issues to the city’s lawmakers, decided to suggest adding the idea to the commission’s agenda.

But if it weren’t for an annual ritual that has been kept alive for nearly two centuries by the close-knit community of Ranchos de Taos, it’s likely the iconic church wouldn’t be standing at all.

Hundreds of parishioners gathered over two weeks under the summer sun to plaster the thick walls of the San Francisco de Asis Church with a fresh coat of mud, from the massive buttresses at the back of the fortress-like church to the courtyard walls and the tops of the bell towers.

Artist, teacher, medicine man, he has roamed the country – visiting elders, soaking up old stories and songs. He married a Kiowa woman whose family practiced traditional ways. He formed a native dance troupe, prayed at the sacred mound of Nanih Waiya in Mississippi, immersed himself in historic preservation groups, taught tribal history.

Still, he has always wondered: What does being a Choctaw mean in an age when it seems anyone with a drop of tribal blood could declare themselves Indian?

Soon, the two were married and living in a leafy New York suburb, raising a young son along with Vicky’s older one, proudly watching him develop into a talented pianist. And now, three decades later, with the family suddenly torn asunder, her lawyer says she likely never even knew Juan’s real name: Mikhail Vasenkov.

It’s one of the more tantalizing mysteries to emerge from the spy saga that has entranced the world over the past 12 days: Could a wife be in the dark even as to her husband’s very name?