Tag: Afternoon Edition

And the day after President Barack Obama visited the disaster zone on the southern coast of Louisiana and put the blame squarely at the firm’s door, BP accepted full responsibility and accepted to pay the cost.

“BP takes responsibility for responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We will clean it up,” the British energy giant said, vowing to consider all compensation claims “promptly” and pay them quickly if justified.

With up to 200,000 gallons of oil a day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from a ruptured well, the accident stemming from a sunken offshore rig may soon rival the Exxon Valdez disaster as the worst oil spill in US history.

Strong southeast winds blew the first oily strands of the slick directly onto the coastal wetlands of South Pass near the mouth of the Mississippi river late Thursday, Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, where oil washed ashore, told AFP.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal called on the federal government for emergency help to stave off an environmental disaster after a sudden change in the wind direction turned week-long response efforts on their head.

The dangerous slick early Thursday reportedly was just 16 miles (25 kilometers) from shore, but hundreds of miles of coastline were under threat in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

The euro hit a one-year dollar low with a downgrade of Spain’s credit rating accelerating its fall, escalating fears that the Greek debt crisis is spreading across Europe a day after Greek debt was slashed to junk status.

Greece meanwhile acted to stop speculators operating on the Athens stock exchange as the interest rate it has to pay to borrow money hit 11.1 percent, only trailing Pakistan and Venezuela in the world’s highest interest payers.

Despite the extraordinary scenes that saw parliament — the Verkhovna Rada — filled with smoke, lawmakers ratified the deal to extend the stay of the Russian Black Sea fleet until at least 2042, denounced by the opposition as a sell-out for Ukraine.

The uproar started when the parliament speaker, Volodymr Lytvyn, was pelted with a volley of a dozen eggs, forcing him to duck for cover behind black umbrellas held by two aides.

The British energy giant — which leases the stricken Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible platform — is desperately trying to prevent a massive slick from growing and spreading to Louisiana’s ecologically fragile coast.

Satellite images on Sunday showed the slick had spread by 50 percent in a day to cover an area of 600 square miles (1,550 square kilometers), although officials said almost all the oil was just a thin veneer on the sea’s surface.

The violence wounded dozens more and underscored the unrest that continues to plague a nation whose politicians are struggling to form a government almost seven weeks after a general election seen crucial to its long-term stability.

Two parked car bombs in the impoverished district of Sadr City killed 39 people and wounded 56, a security official said.

Five grenades were fired into a crowd in the capital’s business district, said army spokesman Sunsern Kaewkumnerd, where pro-government demonstrators were facing off with their rival “Red Shirts”.

One Thai woman died, according to a local hospital, after the grenades hit the mass of pro-government supporters. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva immediately called an emergency meeting with security officials.

Top leaders and thousands of other people paid a silent tribute to the victims of the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that struck a remote area of northwestern China a week ago, leaving at least 2,064 people dead.

Another 175 people were still missing and more than 12,000 injured after the quake flattened thousands of mainly mudbrick and wood homes in the Yushu region of Qinghai province, a rugged area populated by ethnic Tibetans.

Ten days after 25 people were killed and 800 wounded in a failed attempt to dislodge the red-shirted demonstrators, the government said it was determined to end four weeks of rallies but would not give a date for the crackdown.

Confronted by the newly muscular approach and an intimidating military presence in Bangkok’s financial hub, the protesters were forced to cancel plans for a march to the strategic district.

The attacks take the number of people killed in bombings in northwest Pakistan to 73 in three days, after weekend suicide strikes bearing the hallmarks of Taliban militants left 49 people dead in the city of Kohat.

As dusk fell Monday at Peshawar’s busy Qissa Khawani Bazaar, a suicide bomber walked into the crowd and detonated explosives, scattering shoes and human limbs on the street and destroying cars, witnesses said.

The lawsuit is the biggest crisis in years for Goldman, which emerged from the global financial crisis as Wall Street’s most influential bank.

It is also a huge test for Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, who has faced a firestorm of criticism over the bank’s pay and business practices. It comes as lawmakers in Washington debate sweeping reform of financial industry regulation.