Gathering storm halts oil-well work

Gathering storm halts oil-well work

NEW ORLEANS

A storm brewing in the Caribbean brought the deep-sea effort to plug the ruptured oil well to a near standstill Wednesday just as BP was getting tantalizingly close to going in for the kill.

Work on the relief well — now just days from completion — was suspended, and the cap that has been keeping the oil bottled up since last week may have to be reopened, allowing crude to gush into the sea again for days, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man on the crisis.

The cluster of thunderstorms passed over Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, and forecasters said the system probably would move into the Gulf over the weekend.

Taliban denounce Kabul meeting

KABUL, Afghanistan

The Taliban denounced this week’s international conference on Afghanistan’s future, saying the “vague and terrible agenda” shows that the U.S. and its allies intend to abandon the country and blame their ultimate defeat on the Afghan government.

Representatives of the U.S. and 60 other countries met Tuesday to endorse President Hamid Karzai’s plan for Afghan police and soldiers to take charge of security nationwide by 2014.

Ruling: Prosecutor firing not criminal

WASHINGTON

The Bush administration’s Justice Department’s actions were inappropriately political but not criminal when it fired a U.S. attorney in 2006, prosecutors said Wednesday in closing a two-year investigation without filing charges.

The decision closes the books on one of the lingering political disputes of the Bush administration, one that Democrats said was evidence of GOP politics run amok and that Republicans have always said was a manufactured controversy.

Lincoln hybrid to sell for lower price

DEARBORN, Mich.

For the first time, an American automaker plans to sell a hybrid car for the same, lower price as its gas-powered counterpart, removing at least one obstacle for drivers who want a greener ride.

At a little more than $35,000, the 2011 Lincoln MKZ sedan won’t be cheap, but the decision by Ford to match the prices of the two styles could lead competitors to follow suit with future models.

The hybrid MKZ, debuting this fall and running on both gas and electric power, gets more than double the mileage of the traditional version in city driving.

15 die in bombing outside mosque

BAGHDAD

A car bomb outside a Shiite mosque in a village north of Baghdad killed 15 people Wednesday, the third deadly attack in the region in three days, and a U.S. soldier was killed in a separate bombing in the same province, Iraqi officials and the U.S. military said.

The blast in a shopping area in the village of Abu Sayda also left 21 wounded, Ghalib al-Karkhi, a police spokesman in Diyala province said.

FDIC sends payouts to 9,500 depositors

WASHINGTON

Thanks to the overhaul of financial rules that became law Wednesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. can truthfully say “the check is in the mail” to about 9,500 customers of banks that failed in 2008.

The agency plans to mail depositors roughly $200 million today.

The maximum the FDIC would insure in any single deposit account was raised from $100,000 to $250,000 at the height of the financial crisis in October 2008, as part of the $700 billion rescue package.

Associated Press