Weekend News Digest

Hours after the British oil giant acknowledged failure in its “top kill” attempt to plug the underwater well, company officials said it could take a week to implement the next bid — placing a cap over the leak.

“Right now we are going to a containment operation,” BP Managing Director Bob Dudley told CNN’s “State of the Union” program of the latest attempt to deal with the ruptured well nearly a mile (1,600 meters) under water.

BP and federal authorities said Saturday they are now turning to a new strategy to stop the leak, but it will take at least four to seven days before it can be put into place.

At least 20 million gallons are now estimated to have gushed into the ocean since the disaster unfolded five weeks ago, threatening an environmental and economic catastrophe across hundreds of kilometers of the US Gulf Coast.

“Greece will not need additional measures,” George Papaconstantinou told the Eleftherotypia daily in an interview, adding that debt restructuring “would be disastrous for the country’s credibility.”

The minister said the recession gripping the country would bottom out in 2010 and that recovery would “gradually” begin thereafter.

“Stop the rise in unemployment”, “No to austerity” and “Those responsible for the crisis should pay for it”, read some of the placards held up by demonstrators.

Union organisers claimed nearly 300,000 people had joined the march in Lisbon, with people bussed in from around the country. Police declined to give a crowd estimate.

Laws stepped down as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported he had channelled more than 40,000 pounds (57,800 dollars, 47,100 euros) of taxpayers’ money in rent to his long-term boyfriend.

“I do not see how I can carry out my crucial work on the budget and spending review while I have to deal with the private and public implications of recent revelations,” Laws said in a brief statement Saturday.

Although nine candidates are running for the top office, former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos and former Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus lead the group, entering the election neck-and-neck in opinion polls with about 35 percent each.

Sunday’s ballot is the first round of the election, with Santos and Mockus expected to face off again June 20 in a knockout round.

The latest strike by crew in the Unite union is set to disrupt travel in the half-term school holidays, with another five-day stoppage planned from June 5.

Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, said it believed the 12 days of strikes since March had already cost BA 84 million pounds (121.5 million dollars, 99 million euros).

The 25-year-old, who had started second on the grid, was third after a poor pit-stop had delayed him briefly when championship leader Mark Webber was sent spinning off the track by his hot-headed Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

The collision cost Webber, 33, what looked certain to be a hat-trick after wins in Spain and Monaco and left Vettel, 22, in the gravel and out of contention – but delivered a gift-wrapped 43 points to the McLaren men.

“I’m so happy and so thankful and so grateful and I never thought that we could do this,” the 19-year-old, who just finished her final school exams, said.

Dark red lips trembling with emotion, the singer — who had been tipped as one of the evening’s possible winners — told the show’s hosts she did not feel strong enough to lift her trophy.

The move came after Pakistan banned access to Facebook, video website YouTube and 1,200 web pages over a row about “blasphemous” content on the Internet.

Facebook was blocked in Bangladesh late Saturday, the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission said.

Bryant fired a game high of 37 points Saturday and Ron Artest added 25 and the Lakers held off a late Suns’ rally to win the National Basketball Association semi-final series 4-2.

Bryant made one shot late and tapped Gentry on the shoulder then spread his arms wide like a bird and glided down the floor towards the Lakers bench for a timeout.

The failure on Saturday of a “top kill” technique attempted by British-based BP to try to seal its leaking Gulf of Mexico well unleashed a surge of anger and frustration that poses a major domestic challenge for President Barack Obama,

Obama, who has called the leaking BP well a “manmade disaster”, is trying to fend off criticism that his administration acted too slowly in its response to the nearly six-week-old spill, now known to be the worst in U.S. history.

Euro zone trade unions are preparing for possible confrontations in the coming week if governments impose austerity measures or labor reforms unilaterally.

But ministers made clear they were ready to take unpopular steps to prevent the Greek debt crisis spreading to their economies, although doubts are growing about whether the Spanish government in particular has enough support to get its way.

Weekend opinion polls showed Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government far behind the opposition, and that many voters believe he will have to call early elections as support for a 2011 austerity budget will be hard to muster.

“The government faces not only an economic crisis, but a political crisis too because the way it’s governing is not good enough,” said Angel Laborda, an economist at Spanish savings banks consultancy FUNCAS. “I believe that early elections will be called, sooner or later.”

Three center-right parties, led by the Civic Democrats under new leader Petr Necas, won 118 seats in the 200-seat lower house in Saturday’s parliamentary vote, defying expectations for a tight result.

The right has promised to push through fiscal austerity measures to avert the risk of a Greek-style debt crisis.

Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) share power with the Free Democrats (FDP) at the federal level and for the past five years were in coalition with them in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state.

But the parties lost their majority there in an inconclusive vote on May 9 and are now vying against each other to form a government with the rival Social Democrats (SPD), even though FDP leader Guido Westerwelle, who is Merkel’s foreign minister, ruled out such a move before the vote.

Top candidates ex-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos and two-time Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus promise to maintain Uribe’s security policies and create jobs, but polls show neither will gain the majority needed to avoid a second round.

A key U.S. ally in the region, Uribe steps down still popular after two terms dominated by his war against drug-trafficking rebels, and his pro-business approach that increased foreign investment five-fold.

New Delhi is keen for the June 2-3 talks to go beyond mere symbolism and tackle tricky issues such as the tighter U.S. relationship with Islamabad, due to strategic concerns over the conflict in Afghanistan and the potential for instability in Pakistan.

Washington, in turn, will look for assurances that India is on track to open its vast market in power plants to U.S. firms,

The departure of the SDP is a blow to Hatoyama, already seen by voters as a weak leader, damaging his Democratic Party’s chances of winning a majority in an upper house election expected in July, which it needs to pass bills smoothly.

It does not force the Democrats out of power since they boast a massive majority in parliament’s more powerful lower house, but may distract from the government’s struggle to rein in debt while nurturing a fragile economic recovery.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s decision to give up on a pledge to move the U.S. airbase off Okinawa has fanned local anger, upset a coalition partner, and risked another blow to his ratings ahead of the upper house election expected in July.

Chances are fading that Hatoyama’s Democratic Party can win the decisive victory they need to avoid policy deadlock.

As desperation grows and ecological misery spreads, the operative word on the ground now is, incredibly, August – the earliest moment that a real resolution could be at hand. And even then, there’s no guarantee of success. For the United States and the people of its beleaguered Gulf Coast, a dispiriting summer of oil and anger lies dead ahead.

Oh … and the Atlantic hurricane season begins Tuesday.

It reeks of yesterday’s fuel, yesterday’s sweaty labor – a hands-on way of life from another time. Today’s Americans don’t care to know how the gas comes to the pump, the food to the table, the iPad to the store.

Just make sure they do.

The Gulf is a superhighway for hurricanes that form or explode over pools of hot water, then usually move north or west toward the coast. It’s now the site of the worst oil spill in U.S. history and along the general path of some of the worst storms ever recorded, including Hurricane Camille, which wiped out the Mississippi coast in 1969, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The season officially starts Tuesday, and although scientists seem to agree that the sprawling slick isn’t likely to affect the formation of a storm, the real worry is that a hurricane might turn the millions of gallons of floating crude into a crashing black surf.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press from court filings in the case of the late Rev. Alvin Campbell of Illinois show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, following church law at the time, turned down a bishop’s plea to remove the priest for no other reason than the abuser’s refusal to go along with it.

“The petition in question cannot be admitted in as much as it lacks the request of Father Campbell himself,” Ratzinger wrote in a July 3, 1989, letter to Bishop Daniel Ryan of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill.

Adm. Mike Mullen did not directly criticize a House vote on Friday that marked a step toward repealing the ban. But he said it would have been better for lawmakers to wait until the Pentagon completed its review of how to make the repeal work. That study, due in December, is based on a current survey of troops and their families.

“Ideally, I would certainly have preferred that legislation not be brought forward in terms of the change until we are completed with that review,” Mullen said.

Marchers carrying signs, banners and flags from the United States and Mexico filled a 5 mile stretch of central Phoenix, demanding that the federal government refuse to cooperate with Arizona authorities trying to enforce the law.

Police declined to estimate the size of the crowd, but it appeared at least 10,000 to 20,000 protesters, some bused in from around the country, braved 94-degree heat. Organizers had said they expected the demonstration to bring as many as 50,000 people.

There are new jobs produced but old worries persisting for people despite belt-tightening and boosted savings, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

About 46 percent of those surveyed say they’re suffering from debt-related stress, and half of that group described their stress as “great deal” or “quite a bit.” On the other hand, about 53 percent say they feel little or no stress at all.

Marine Cpl. Jacob C. Leicht was killed Thursday when he stepped on a land mine in Helmand province that ripped off his right arm. It was the 24-year-old Texan’s second deployment overseas.

Leicht had begged to return to the battlefield after a bomb took out his Humvee in Iraq. He spent two painful years recovering from face and leg injuries, all the while pining for combat in letters from his hospital bed.

Bryant wrapped up a magnificent series with 37 points, Ron Artest added 25 and the Lakers held off the Phoenix Suns 111-103 on Saturday night to win the Western Conference finals.

The Lakers and Celtics, the NBA’s premier teams for much of the league’s history, will meet in the finals for the 12th time with Game 1 Thursday night in Los Angeles. They are the NBA champions each of the last two years – Boston beat the Lakers two years ago, and Los Angeles topped Orlando last season.

Tomas Kopecky, scratched in the previous five games and playing because of an injury to Andrew Ladd, took a great pass from Kris Versteeg in the third period and scored from a tough angle past backup goalie Brian Boucher to send Chicago to a 6-5 victory Saturday night.

“I kind of knew he was going to pass it once it once he got around. I kind of got it on a long reach and I saw him come out and before the game we were talking about both goalies,” Kopecky said.

The sharp cuts at its U.S. Walmart stores, which came ahead of Memorial Day weekend, have already pushed rivals such as Target into price wars. And the markdowns are expected to keep coming throughout the summer.

They’re one of the boldest moves the world’s largest retailer is making to turn around sluggish business at its U.S. namesake chain and win back shoppers from rivals. The cuts aren’t across the store but target 22 foods and other essentials at an average savings of 30 percent – splashy enough to get attention and perhaps change perceptions.

Their afternoon routine will change in August, when Zachary deploys to Afghanistan for six months and her husband, Air Force Sgt. Christopher Zachary, tackles the solo parenting duties for Ava and her 13-year-old half brother. Then in December, dad will deploy and the kids will go to Idaho and stay with an aunt until mom returns.

Growing numbers of American servicemen and women are married to each other – up 35 percent from 2000 to 2007 – and eight years of war that have stretched the military’s resources mean deployments for both spouses can come in rapid-fire succession.

It is unsettling, but Yost understands. In this North Carolina community a half-hour from Fort Bragg, where homes are draped with American flags and where it’s not uncommon to see men in buzz cuts, the 44-year-old Yost is a reminder of everything that can go wrong in war, how lives can change overnight.

“These women look at me and know how close it could have been their husband,” said Yost, mother of a 6-year-old boy.

As it stands, it won’t be the Navy paying Massiah. Instead, a company found to be 20 percent negligent – the owner of the tugboat that overran Porter’s small Navy vessel more than two years ago – has been ordered to pay the total damages.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr. has spawned a legal battle that could alter how the government defends itself in similar lawsuits.

But for more than 80 years, the Gilded Age mansion has been without one of its most treasured features: a vast collection of more than 300 objects of Medieval and Renaissance art.

The wealthy Vanderbilt family bought the works in Paris and displayed them for years on the red-silk walls of their mansion’s aptly named Gothic Room. But after the house closed in 1925, the items were sold to art collector and circus entrepreneur John Ringling and today belong to a Sarasota, Fla., museum bearing the Ringling name.

Despite these concerns, U.S. Air Force officials at 11 bases in 7 states – and civilian leaders of communities that surround these military installations – are scrambling to convince Pentagon brass to choose their facility to house the latest air-combat bling.

For bases, success during a first round of selections in 2011 could mean survival in a post-Cold War era of downsizing. For military communities, it means a much-needed economic shot-in-the-arm.

But as the man at the center of the Tibetan exile movement approaches his 75th birthday, the question has become impossible to escape: What happens after the Dalai Lama dies?

The issue echoes far from Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama’s home since he fled Tibet after a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. It ranges from policy decisions in Beijing to widespread fears inside Tibet and among the 150,000 exiles that their struggle for autonomy may collapse with the death of their icon.