Evening Edition

The pressure test aimed at evaluating the integrity of the wellbore, which stretches down 2.5 miles (four kilometers) below the seabed, involves shutting off the valves on a 75-tonne cap freshly installed on top of the leaking well.

High pressure readings would allow the three valves to remain shut and the well would effectively be sealed, but low ones could mean there is a hole somewhere in the casing of the well where oil is escaping.

But after months of environmental and economic ruin, there was a further agonizing delay for anxious Gulf residents as US officials reviewed procedures to make sure the well integrity test was safe and properly set up.

Originally scheduled for Tuesday, BP senior vice president Kent Wells told journalists it had been delayed by 24 hours because it was “so important” and everyone wanted to make sure this was the “best possible test procedure.”

The brazen assaults included the killing of three British troops by a rogue Afghan soldier, an incident that has underscored concerns over efforts to build up the local army, a cornerstone of the US-led war strategy.

Of the 12 dead, four were British troops and eight American.

Officials in the Qatari capital said Amiri would be kept off limits from journalists before taking a flight across the Gulf to Iran after midnight (2100 GMT).

Iran’s foreign ministry said the nuclear expert would arrive in Tehran at 5:00 am (0030 GMT) on Thursday.

About 150 investigators swooped on 13 German branches of the second biggest Swiss bank, the prosecutor’s office in Duesseldorf, western Germany said.

State attorney Johannes Mocken said the searches “targeted Credit Suisse staff suspected of having assisted tax fraud by clients.”

Paulinho was one of several riders who got into an early breakaway and which built a maximum lead of 12 minutes on the peloton as they finally raced out of the high Alps.

The group was reduced after Belgian Mario Aerts raced away as the road rose briefly with around 25km to go, although the Omega Pharma rider’s move ultimately left Paulinho and Kiryienka in front on their own.

Luxemburger Schleck, the Saxo Bank climbing specialist who finished runner-up to Alberto Contador in 2009, now leads what appears to be a two-man race with a 41sec lead on the Spaniard.

Frenchman Sandy Casar took the stage honours after a thrilling 204km ninth stage from Morzine on Tuesday, which included the gruelling 25.5km ascension over the Col de la Madeleine, the fourth and last climb of the race.

Gusting breezes near 30 mph, heavy rain showers and a chill in the air served notice to champions and challengers alike that Mother Nature is always a major contender, never moreso than at the Old Course’s legendary links.

“It will be interesting,” world number one Tiger Woods said. “I know the weather is not supposed to be very good coming in for this week, so all the players are going to have to make some adjustments.

The colourful display on the Champs Elysees avenue came as rights groups accused some African leaders and armies of war crimes and of perceived shady ties between France and some of its former colonies.

Mauritanian troops in white and blue robes and Central Africans in red were among those pounding the cobbles in central Paris on France’s national holiday, with rifles and bayonets at their shoulders.

In the coming days, AgBank’s performance in Shanghai and Hong Kong — where trading starts Friday — would signal whether it maximises the number of additional shares it can offer to raise a record 22.1 billion US dollars.

The debut of the last of China’s “Big Four” state banks will also test the resilience of the Chinese stock market in a volatile global economic climate.

Katrina Purcell of the University of Melbourne in Australia, presented a study in which she compared a rapid diet to lose around 1.5 kilos (three pounds) a week over 12 weeks, to a gradual 36-week diet to lose 0.5 kilos per week.

“Surprisingly, and against current beliefs, this study shows rapid weight loss appears to be superior to gradual weight loss in achieving target weight,” she said of the study conducted on subjects weighing around 100 kilos.

Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab militia claimed the attacks and police have already found an unexploded suicide vest at another site, seen as evidence of a botched plan for a third bomb strike.

One militant blew himself up at an Ethiopian restaurant in Kabalagala, a southern Kampala district, where crowds had gathered to watch the World Cup final on Sunday night, while the other attack targeted a sports bar.

BA, Iberia and American Airlines agreed last year to team up on flights between Europe and North America in order to cope with soaring fuel costs and falling demand.

The British and Spanish airlines also took a step further, signing a merger deal in April to create one of the world’s biggest airlines to compete more effectively in the fast-consolidating aviation sector.

Officials from BP and the U.S. government met to discuss concerns about the test, originally due to begin on Tuesday but delayed for more analysis.

“The risk through all this process is that somehow (oil) flow escapes outside of the casing,” BP chief operating officer of exploration and production Doug Suttles told CNN.

The answer: Pretty bad.

Battling a tough political climate fueled by economic fears and President Barack Obama’s political difficulties, Democrats face an uphill struggle to retain control in the House of Representatives and avoid big losses in the Senate.

The handover was part of a security pact signed in 2008 under which the U.S. military agreed to stop making arrests, hand over its remaining detention centers and withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of 2011.

The formal transfer of the last U.S. detention center in Iraq — Camp Cropper near Baghdad airport — takes place on Thursday.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid scheduled a key vote for Thursday morning after Senator Ben Nelson, one of the chamber’s most conservative Democrats, said he would support the bill, which would be the broadest rewrite of the Wall Street rulebook since the Great Depression.

Nelson’s support probably gives Democrats the 60 votes they need to clear an expected Republican procedural hurdle in the 100-seat chamber.

“It’s too late for me now,” she said, fighting back tears at the Freestore Foodbank in the low-income Over-the-Rhine district near downtown Cincinnati. “But it will be terrible for the people who’ll lose their benefits if Congress does nothing.”

For nearly two years, Coleman says she has filed an average of 30 job applications a day, but remains jobless.

U.S. prosecutors unsealed a 27-count indictment that charged three current officers and one former officer with the killing, and subsequent cover-up, of James Brissette, a 17-year-old city resident, and Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man who suffered disabilities and was shot in the back.

The officers were armed with two AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun and a M-4-type assault rifle, among other weapons, during two incidents that occurred within minutes of each other on the Danziger Bridge a few days after Katrina hit the city.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the government didn’t want potentially dangerous pressure tests on a new, tighter cap that has been placed on the well to go ahead until BP answers questions about possible risks.

Gibbs said he did not consider the delay to be “some giant setback,” describing it as “a series of steps … that are being taken in order to ensure that what we’re doing is being done out of an abundance of caution to do no harm.”

Shahram Amiri’s reappearance broke into the open an often-bizarre intelligence drama. U.S. officials have dismissed accounts of a kidnapping and suggested Amiri returned home because he missed or feared for his family. But much in the case remains mysterious, including the exact circumstances of how the defection fell apart and what information, if any, he provided about Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

Also unknown is whether the 32-year-old scientist could face any punishment in his homeland after the State Department said he came willingly to the United States and was in contact with the government.

The U.S. and its coalition allies have warned that violence and troop casualties are likely to mount this summer as thousands of new forces fan out across southern insurgent strongholds in a bid to turn around the nearly 9-year-long war.

However, a top U.S. commander in the south said Wednesday that the new operation should start reducing violence in coming months.

Simkins Hall, a two-story brick dorm built in the 1950s, is named after William Simkins, who was a popular law school professor in the early part of the 20th century but one with a dubious past. He served as a Confederate fighter and early organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida, promoting the Klan and bragging about efforts to terrorize and harass “darkey” in campus speeches and publications.

On Thursday, Texas President William Powers Jr. will ask university regents to take his name off the dorm – a move that comes after weeks of deliberations by an advisory panel and two public hearings. The regents are expected to bring the issue to a vote.

Not everyone is suffering, though. Shoppers with stable jobs and steady pay can find lots of bargains. The economy is bleaker for anyone seeking a job or at risk of losing one. Still, Americans as a group are spending less, and that threatens the pace of the recovery.

Federal Reserve officials took note of the weakness when they met in June, the minutes of that meeting show. The Fed signaled that it stood ready to take new steps to sustain the recovery if the economy worsened.

Those fees are not part of the ticket price, meaning they can easily go unseen until it’s too late for the consumer to shop around. Amounting to billions of dollars for the airlines, the fees also are exempt from an excise tax, and some lawmakers want to reclaim that money for the treasury.

Airlines, travel agents, online travel services and other ticket distribution channels should be required to disclose fees for checked baggage, changed reservations and other services in a clear and consistent manner, the Government Accountability Office said in a report out Wednesday.

He whiffed. Twice.

“No time to practice my golf,” Wade said.

An All-Star win the National League thought was long overdue. And with it, home-field advantage in the World Series.

McCann earned MVP honors with a three-run double in the seventh inning, right fielder Marlon Byrd alertly threw out David Ortiz to slow a ninth-inning rally and the NL captured its first Midsummer Classic since 1996 with a 3-1 victory Tuesday night.

In more than 1,000 pages of previously classified testimony and transcripts from 1967 and 1968, a picture emerges of the political, social and moral crosscurrents that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrestled with at a time when the shadows of Vietnam colored their thinking on problems foreign and domestic.

The documents were released Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee and its chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a decorated Vietnam War hero who later emerged as a forceful opponent of the war.

The BLM on its website Wednesday said four more animals died or were put down because of dehydration or water intoxication.

A federal judge has scheduled an emergency hearing on a temporary restraining order sought by animal rights advocates to halt the roundup in northern Elko County.

No doubt, buyers of the 2010 Porsche Panamera, whose starting retail price is $90,775, are well insulated from the economic turmoil – and that’s before they are encased in the Panamera’s 4,000-pound mass, 16 feet of metal from bumper to bumper.

Only about 4,700 of these rare cars have been sold in the United States so far, and the drive in a Panamera is special.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, who has sought an investigation into the funding of the mosque, was among the witnesses who testified in support of giving the building landmark status, which could complicate plans by Muslim groups to develop a community center and mosque there.

After noting the lower Manhattan building’s history and architectural significance, Lazio said it also warranted landmark designation because on Sept. 11, 2001, it was struck by airplane debris from the terror attacks against the nearby World Trade Center. That connection to the attacks, he said, made it “a place of deep historical significance and a reminder of just what happened on New York’s darkest day.”

Attorney Dan Woods challenged the policy on gays in the military during his opening statement at the non-jury trial of a lawsuit filed by the Log Cabin Republicans.

The case has put the federal government in the awkward position of defending the policy that President Obama has said should be repealed.

The 85,000-member union is accustomed to winning, often in attention-grabbing ways. But it now finds itself in Whitman’s crosshairs as part of her campaign against California’s Democratically aligned public employee unions.

While the nurses association represents both public and private employees, it is part of the labor establishment Whitman has railed against. To Whitman, the unions symbolize California’s undisciplined spending, political gridlock and inefficient, outdated operations that are anathema to her corporate sensibilities.