Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 29 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 BP ‘pleased’ with progress of oil fix mission

by Mira Oberman, AFP

Sun Jul 11, 12:46 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) BP reported good progress Sunday in its high-stakes effort to fully contain the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by fixing a tighter cap over the giant gusher, now raging largely unchecked.

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.

2 BP works to replace cap over gushing well

by Mira Oberman, AFP

Sun Jul 11, 4:22 am ET

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Using underwater robots, BP engineers worked on Sunday to replace a cap over a gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico as part of a new attempt to contain the worst environmental disaster in US history.

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.

3 Japan government loses upper house majority

by Frank Zeller, AFP

43 mins ago

TOKYO (AFP) The centre-left government of Japan’s new Prime Minister Naoto Kan lost its narrow majority in parliament’s upper house in elections Sunday, spelling the threat of legislative paralysis.

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.

4 Srebrenica remembers its dead 15 years on

by Stephanie van den Berg, AFP

1 hr 19 mins ago

POTOCARI, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) – Bereaved families and survivors buried hundreds of victims of the Srebrenica massacre Sunday as world leaders demanded the arrest of the general whose troops killed the 8,000 Muslim males 15 years ago.

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.

5 Mandela appears at World Cup final

AFP

2 hrs 7 mins ago

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – A beaming Nelson Mandela waved to the tens of thousands of fans in Soccer City ahead of the World Cup final on Sunday, drawing thunderous applause as he was driven onto the pitch.

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.

6 Germany edge Uruguay to claim third place

AFP

Sat Jul 10, 4:59 pm ET

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa (AFP) – Sami Khedira’s 82nd-minute header earned Germany a 3-2 victory in a rousing and rain-soaked World Cup third-place play-off match with Uruguay here on Saturday.

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.

7 Total solar eclipse arcs its way across Pacific

by Martin Bernetti, AFP

21 mins ago

HANGA ROA, Chile (AFP) – A total solar eclipse began its 11,000 kilometer (6,800 mile) arc over the Pacific Sunday, plunging remote islands into darkness in a heavenly display set to climax on Easter Island.

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.

8 Mysterious Easter Island set for rare total eclipse

by Martin Bernetti, AFP

Sun Jul 11, 12:37 pm ET

HANGA ROA, Chile (AFP) – Thousands of excited stargazers waited on mysterious Easter Island Sunday to catch an almost five-minute total eclipse of the sun, with rainy, cloudy weather threatening to spoil the view.

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.

9 Government inspectors ease scandal over French minister

by Antoine Agasse, AFP

1 hr 20 mins ago

PARIS (AFP) – French financial inspectors offered a boost to the scandal-hit government on Sunday by clearing Labour Minister Eric Woerth of accusations that he helped L’Oreal billionaire Liliane Bettencourt evade taxes.

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.

10 ECB launches offensive on eurozone economic fears

by William Ickes, AFP

Sun Jul 11, 3:32 am ET

FRANKFURT (AFP) – The European Central Bank insists the eurozone will not fall back into recession, saying the worst of the debt crisis is past and other economies should now be fixing their public finances.

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.”

11 ‘My tour is over’, says Armstrong as Evans takes lead

by Justin Davis, AFP

2 hrs 57 mins ago

MORZINE-AVORIAZ, France (AFP) – American Lance Armstrong ruled himself out of going for an eighth Tour de France title after two crashes saw him finish Sunday’s action-packed eighth stage almost 12 minutes adrift.

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.

12 European probe Rosetta successfully flies by asteroid: ESA

AFP

Sat Jul 10, 7:39 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – The European spacecraft Rosetta performed a fly-by of a massive asteroid on Saturday, the European Space Agency said, taking images that could one day help Earth defend itself from destruction.

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.

13 China’s AgBank offers room for improvement

by Peter Brieger, AFP

Sun Jul 11, 1:15 am ET

HONG KONG (AFP) – Agricultural Bank of China’s huge share sale this week underscores investor confidence that the country’s so-called economic miracle is set to continue.

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.

14 BP sees progress on new oil containment system

By Kristen Hays and Chris Baltimore, Reuters

9 mins ago

HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc said on Sunday it is making progress on a new system to capture almost all the oil spewing from its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico and a relief well could finally plug the leak by early to mid-August.

“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.

15 Mental health a growing concern after Gulf spill

By Matthew Bigg, Reuters

Sun Jul 11, 1:16 am ET

VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) – Gulf Coast native Kindra Arnesen is so anxious about the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill she is packing up her family and leaving town.

“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.

16 NATO denies Taliban ascendant as Afghan toll mounts

By Rob Taylor, Reuters

Sun Jul 11, 7:34 am ET

KABUL (Reuters) – Insurgents in Afghanistan were not gaining the ascendancy against international troops after a violent weekend across the country, NATO said on Sunday, and there was no need to postpone coming parliamentary elections.

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.

17 Japan ruling party reels after vote

By Chisa Fujioka and Yoko Nishikawa, Reuters

Sun Jul 11, 12:29 pm ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s ruling party, mauled in Sunday’s upper house election, faces an uphill struggle to win new allies to back its policies to cut back huge public debt and probably bitter infighting over whether the premier should quit.

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.

18 No margin for error in Wall St bill’s final test

By Andy Sullivan, Reuters

Sun Jul 11, 1:13 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats will have little margin for error this week as they push for final congressional approval of the most comprehensive rewrite of financial rules since the Great Depression.

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.

19 Businesses step up criticism of Obama’s agenda

By Caren Bohan and Steve Holland, AFP

Sun Jul 11, 8:56 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some business groups, upset about budget and regulatory policies they say are costing jobs, are accusing President Barack Obama of pursuing an agenda that is hurting the U.S. economic recovery.

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.

20 BP happy with new oil-leak effort, but no promises

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Writer

43 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Underpromising with hopes of overdelivering, BP said Sunday that it is making progress on what could prove its most effective effort yet to contain the Gulf oil leak, but cautioned that the verdict could be several days away.

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.

21 Rev. Schuller retiring from Crystal Cathedral

Associated Press

1 hr 9 mins ago

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. – The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, founder of Southern California’s Crystal Cathedral megachurch and host of the “Hour of Power” televangelism broadcast, announced Sunday he will retire after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.

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.

22 Conn. land dug up for items from tribe-settler war

By STEPHANIE REITZ, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 11 mins ago

MYSTIC, Conn. – Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children’s swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood. A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries.

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.

23 Kennedy’s clout could grow on high court

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

2 hrs 9 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Justice Anthony Kennedy, who already decides whether liberals or conservatives win the Supreme Court’s most closely contested cases, is about to take on an even more influential behind-the-scenes role with the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.

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.

24 Japan ruling party handed big defeat over tax plan

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

37 mins ago

TOKYO – Japanese voters handed a stinging electoral defeat to the ruling party Sunday, exit polls showed, rejecting a proposal to increase taxes and handicapping a fledgling government struggling to keep the world’s second-largest economy from financial meltdown.

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.

25 Attacks kill 11 Afghan police, official in north

Associated Press

Sun Jul 11, 10:16 am ET

KABUL, Afghanistan – Militant attacks in once-calm northern Afghanistan killed at least 11 police officers and a government official whose car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb, officials said Sunday.

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.

26 775 coffins: Bosnia marks 1995 Srebrenica massacre

By RADUL RADOVANOVIC, Associated Press Writer

24 mins ago

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina – Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

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.

27 A country rocks as Spain rules soccer

By CIARAN GILES, Associated Press Writer

17 mins ago

MADRID – A roaring celebration rocked Spain on Sunday, with some 300,000 people in the capital’s downtown forming a sea of red and yellow in tribute to the nation’s first World Cup title.

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.”

28 Vt. scrap-wood dinosaur posing modern-day problem

By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer

Sun Jul 11, 12:38 pm ET

POST MILLS, Vt. – Does a 25-foot-tall, 122-foot-long dinosaur need a permit to avoid extinction?

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.

29 LA police teach Marines how to train Afghan police

By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer

Sun Jul 11, 2:03 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – A tough-talking, muscular Los Angeles police sergeant steadily rattled off tips to a young Marine riding shotgun as they raced in a patrol car to a drug bust: Be aware of your surroundings. Watch people’s body language. Build rapport.

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.”

2 comments

  1. I caught glimpses of the game during the day and watched the last 20 minutes of what was one rough and tumble game with 13 yellow cards and one red card. ESPN has a very good recap of the game and a chart with the stats. Again Spain controlled the ball 57% of the time played which is impressive against a strong team like the Netherlands.

    Yes, the octopus was right again.

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