BBC News with Marian Marshall.
The oil company BP says it'll continue">continue to monitor the cap it's put on the
stricken
oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier, BP's senior vice president Kent Wells gave a
cautiously
optimistic assessment of the operation to cap the ruptured well. Laura Trevelyan reports from Louisiana.
BP says it's encouraged by the pressure tests on the well, and
crucially
there is no sign of new leaks. The pressure inside the
gigantic
cap on top of a leaking well is rising, but it's not as high as BP engineers had initially hoped it might be. This may be due to the oil reservoir running dry. BP is drilling a relief well which should intercept the leaking one at the end of July,
enabling
it to be sealed by mid-August.
The leader of the main opposition
con
servative party in Australia, Tony Abbott, has criticized the country's new Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard after she called an early general election. Mr Abbott said voters wouldn't be conned by a leader who, he said, was running to the polls before establishing her credentials. Julia Gillard became Australian prime minister last month after ousting her Labor Party predecessor Kevin Rudd.
The authorities in central Nigeria say about eight people, including the family of a priest have been killed in fresh clashes. Residents said men with machetes were involved in the attack on a Christian village near Jos. Richard Hamilton reports.