Tag: 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.

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.

The attacks devastated Yakaghund town in the district of Mohmand, one of seven that make up Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt which Washington calls a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth.

It was the deadliest attack in nuclear-armed Pakistan since gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed prayer halls belonging to the minority Ahmadi community in the city of Lahore in May, killing at least 82 people.

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have become the main weapon used against international and Afghan forces fighting to end an insurgency increasingly seen as bogged down in favour of the Taliban.

The equipment was “at least doubling” current counter-IED capacity as forces did not have all they needed to take on an escalating threat, said Ashton Carter, US undersecretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics.

For a finale his bride, in a trenchcoat, pulled out a violin and after a brief warm up, struck up in a convincing mime to a tape of the wedding march.

It was yet another collection celebrating women in full control of their powers of seduction – like burlesque artiste Dita Von Teese, who came down the catwalk in a powder pink corset boned in black, watched admiringly by her companion Louis-Marie de Castelbajac, sitting next to his designer father in the front row.

A BP spokeswoman denied the firm was planning to sell new stock to a strategic investor to raise money, amid reports that the British government is working on a crisis plan if the company is sunk by the disaster.

“We are not issuing any new equity,” she said. “We welcome new shareholders to come onto the shareholder register and we welcome existing shareholders who want to take a bigger amount of shares.”

Komorowski scored 53.01 percent of votes over 46.99 percent for his conservative rival in Sunday’s run-off, sparked by the April 10 air crash death of president Lech Kaczynski, full official results showed.

Turnout was 55.31 percent, election commission head Stefan Jaworski said.

The ECB’s main interest rate will undoubtedly remain at a record low 1.0 percent set in May 2009 and bank president Jean-Claude Trichet will press banks again to draw on state support if necessary to bolster balance sheets.

Around 100 banks across Europe are being subjected to “stress tests” aimed at determining whether they can withstand shocks such as another recession or the default of a major borrower.