Evening Edition

Operations have reached a critical phase as engineers race to take advantage of a stretch of fine weather in the midst of the Atlantic hurricane season to install a new system with the potential to capture all the leaking crude.

Expected to take between four and seven days, the round-the-clock work began at midday on Saturday when the old, less efficient cap was ripped off a fractured pipe a mile down on the sea floor by robotic submarines.

The old cap loosely covering the well was removed by the robots on Saturday as the first step in the operation.

A fleet of about 400 skimmers crowded around the well site to boost shoreline defense during the complex operation, BP said, as the oil giant struggled to put an end to the damaging spill.

The government was not immediately threatened, because it holds a majority in the more powerful lower chamber, but the result makes it more difficult to pass laws and will force it to seek new coalition partners.

The election defeat — the first test at the ballot box since Kan’s party swept to power under a previous leader in a landslide poll last summer — complicates Kan’s ambitious reform plans for the world’s number two economy.

Some 50,000 people, including European leaders and the presidents of all former Yugoslav republics, were present in the Potocari graveyard where 775 victims were buried along side the 3,749 bodies already there.

In a speech read out for him at the cemetery, US President Barack Obama called the massacre “a stain on our collective conscience,” admitting the failure of international community to protect the enclave.

His brief appearance showed to the estimated 700 million viewers around the world what is still seen as the face of South Africa, the man who embodied the nation’s ideals and its peaceful transition to majority rule.

South Africa’s first black president rode next to his wife Graca Machel in an open-air vehicle, flashing his world-famous smile as he circled the field.

The Stuttgart midfielder rose to nod the ball beyond Fernando Muslera after Uruguay failed to clear a late corner, while Diego Forlan was inches away from a dramatic equaliser with an injury-time free-kick that struck the crossbar.

Forlan rounded off an impressive individual showing at the tournament with a brilliantly-taken volley to give Uruguay a 2-1 lead early in the second period, only for Marcell Jansen to restore parity moments later.

In Tahiti, the effect was so stunning it drew crowds of football-mad Polynesians away from their television sets and the World Cup final to turn their eyes to the skies instead.

Some 5,000 astronomers spread out across the atolls of French Polynesia to gaze in rapture through special glasses as the Moon moved in front of the Sun.

The confluence of the rare eclipse casting its shadow over the island’s ancient, strange stone statues lent a mystical air to events, occurring as Spain and the Netherlands battle it out in the finals of the World Cup 2010 match.

The eclipse was set to trace an 11,000-kilometer (6,800-mile) arc across the Pacific, beginning at 1815 GMT, when the umbra or shadow falls on the South Pacific about 700 kilometers (440 miles) southeast of Tonga, according to veteran NASA eclipse specialist, Fred Espanak.

The report by the General Financial Inspection office (IGF) strengthened President Nicolas Sarkozy’s hand as he moves to calm a huge political funding scandal before unveiling a sensitive pensions bill on Tuesday.

The IGF, which is under the authority of the finance ministry, said that Woerth did not use his power when he was budget minister to spare Bettencourt from tax inspectors, according to an extract quoted in a ministry statement.

ECB chief economist Juergen Stark told reporters last week: “It seems that the worst is over” after a key ECB loan deadline passed smoothly and German data showed industrial production in Europe’s top economy had soared in May.

ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet cautioned that “it is still too early to declare the crisis over”, but added: “The latest signs that we are receiving from the economy are encouraging.”

The 189km stage in the French Alps, the first real mountain stage of the race, was won by Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck, with fellow contender Australian Cadel Evans taking possession of the race leader’s yellow jersey.

Schleck, the Saxo Bank rider who finished second behind Spaniard Alberto Contador in last year’s Tour, out-sprinted Euskaltel’s Samuel Sanchez for the stage win after the duo broke 1km from the summit finish line.

Racing through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter at 47,800 kph (29,925 mph), the billion-euro (1.25-billion-dollar) probe flew within 3,200 kms (2,000 miles) of the huge potato-shaped rock, Lutetia.

“The fly-by has been a spectacular success with Rosetta performing fautlessly,” ESA said in a statement.

But it also highlights what may be the lender’s biggest challenge: to book ever-increasing profits while fulfilling its mandate to help bridge the yawning gap between urban and rural economic prosperity.

AgBank — on track to set a record, 22.1-billion-US-dollar initial public offering ahead of its dual Hong Kong-Shanghai listing this week — was founded two years after Mao Zedong’s 1949 communist revolution to lend money to China’s poor farmers and distribute state money in rural areas.

“We’re pleased with our progress,” BP senior vice president Kent Wells told reporters on a conference call.

It will take up to a week for robots working 1 mile underwater to completely fit a new cap and seal. Oil will flow mostly unchecked until the bigger containment system is installed, further hurting tourism and fishing in all five states along the Gulf Coast.

“Stress? Dude my clothes are falling off me (because of weight loss). The level of stress here is tremendous. My husband has aged 10 years in two months,” Arnesen said on Friday as she loaded possessions into a van outside her trailer home in Venice.

Fears are growing of an increase in stress-related illness and mental health problems from the BP Plc spill. Anecdotal evidence abounds but mental health officials say they lack data about the scale and scope of suffering.

Saturday was a particularly bloody day, with six U.S. soldiers killed in separate incidents and more than a dozen civilians — including 12 gunned down in a bus near Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan.

“The insurgency has not become stronger. We are actually squeezing the insurgency, we are cornering the insurgency, we are taking out the oxygen out of the insurgency,” coalition forces spokesman General Josef Blotz told reporters.

Voters dealt Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan a stinging rebuke in the election, depriving the DPJ and its tiny ally of a majority less than a year after the Democrats swept to power with promises of change.

Media projections showed Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won fewer than 50 seats and its partner, the People’s New Party, none. That was fewer than projected for the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and far short of Kan’s goal of winning 54.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to take up the sweeping legislation as Congress returns from a weeklong break, even though he has not yet locked down the 60 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the 100-seat chamber.

The House of Representatives has already approved a final version of the bill, which imposes a range of tough new restrictions on the industry in an effort to avoid a repeat of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. After a year and a half of work, Democrats are eager to send it to President Barack Obama to sign into law.

The criticism comes amid a tepid pace of private-sector job creation and the White House is responding by saying a lack of regulations triggered the economic crisis and that a balance is needed to protect Americans.

The issue could give Republicans a potent weapon in the November elections in which they hope to overturn the dominance in the Congress of Obama’s Democrats.

A new cap being placed atop the gusher is intended to provide a tight seal and might eventually allow the oil giant to capture all the crude leaking from the well for the first time since an April 20 oil rig explosion set off the environmental crisis. But several prior failed attempts to stop the leak have made BP PLC careful to keep expectations grounded.

“We’re pleased with our progress,” said BP senior vice president Kent Wells, who then hastened to add the operation was still expected to last up to six more days.

The 83-year-old Schuller told his congregation that Sheila Schuller Coleman will become sole lead pastor, after sharing that role with her father for the past year.

Coleman previously served as principal of a private Christian school run by the cathedral and head of the Orange County church’s family ministries division.

It’s also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.

Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn’t hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide.

By virtue of seniority, Kennedy will inherit Stevens’ power to choose the author of some court opinions, an authority that has historically been used – including in as big a case as the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision – to subtly shape a ruling or preserve a tenuous majority.

This change might keep the court’s most liberal justices from writing some of its biggest decisions.

With public spending at more than double its GDP, Japan is trying to manage its ballooning debt while also addressing high unemployment and stagnant growth. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has warned the country could face a Greek-style meltdown if it does not get its finances in order – possibly by raising the sales tax.

But projected losses in elections for the upper house of parliament indicate voters have rejected his solution, and will make it difficult for his government to effectively revive the economy.

In the south, NATO said a U.S. service member died Sunday following an insurgent attack and a combined coaliton and Afghan patrol killed a senior Taliban commander and a dozen other insurgents who were discovered planting a homemade bomb on a road.

Insurgents as well as coalition forces have escalated attacks across the country in recent months, as the NATO-led force pours in 30,000 more U.S. troops in a new push to break the Taliban’s hold in their strongholds and establish stable Afghan governance.

A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town was dug out with graves, waiting for 775 coffins covered in green cloths to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.

Still, that was less than a tenth of the total number of Muslim men and boys executed after Serb forces overran the U.N.-protected town on July 11, 1995, during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

The national flag and team colors were in full display on Paseo de Recoletos boulevard to watch the match live on gigantic screens.

Then, as the final whistle marked Spain’s 1-0 victory over the Netherlands in extra time, fireworks lit the city sky as people herded into the streets. Crowds began dancing and singing one of the team’s battle cries, “Let’s Get Them.”

That’s the unlikely dilemma posed by “Vermontasaurus,” a whimsical sculpture thrown together with scrap wood by a Vermont man. The oddity now faces opposition from neighbors and regulatory challenges from government entities that he fears could force him to dismantle it.

It’s art, not edifice, says Brian Boland.

Marine Lt. Andrew Abbott, 23, took it all in as he peered out at the graffiti-covered buildings, knowing that the lessons he learned recently in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods could help him soon in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“People are the center of gravity and if you do everything you can to protect them, then they’ll protect you,” he said. “That’s something true here and pretty much everywhere.”