The rising pressure readings in BP’s newly capped oil well are a good sign that another leak has not sprung. A BP official said the company is encouraged by the results, but said they’re being cautious. Pressure was at 6,745 pounds per square inch Saturday morning, rising 2 psi an hour. Spill overseer Thad Allen said a psi of 7,500 or more would be a good sign that nothing was spewing out of the wellhead. But even though there are no visible signs, it’s possible oil is leaking into surrounding rock or the water. The testing is being conducted in six-hour increments, with scientists analyzing the data at each break while closely watching the seabed for signs of leaks. Pressure levels are rising slowly, perhaps because so much oil spewed into the ocean for months, lowering the pressure in the reservoir.

With 103 coalition troops killed in Afghanistan last month, and confidence in the current strategy flagging among both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Hillary Clinton is heading to Kabul. Despite the increase in U.S. troops and success in capturing and killing Taliban leaders, militant attacks have continued. The administration says it will review its Afghan strategy at the end of the year, but for now Clinton is off to Kabul to renew Washington’s commitment to support Hamid Karzai’s government. She will attend a conference on Tuesday in which the Afghan government will reveal plans for improving security, bringing militants back into society, and fighting corruption. After Kabul, Clinton goes to Islamabad, where she will encourage greater cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then to South Korea, where tensions continue to run high since the report that North Korea was responsible for sinking a South Korean warship.

After recently revising its policies on dealing with sexual abuse by priests, the Vatican defended its stance Saturday in response to criticism that the new rules didn’t go far enough. On Thursday, the Vatican revised its investigation and discipline process for sex abuse by doubling the statute of limitations to punish and prosecute priests, in addition to simplifying legal procedures. The changes were prompted by this year’s fresh wave of sex-abuse scandals that rocked Europe. Critics noted that the new guidelines don’t require the church to report abuse to civil authorities, and don’t establish punishment for bishops who helped cover up abuse. A Vatican spokesperson explained that the exclusion of reporting abuse to civil authorities was due to the need for “commonly shared and autonomous” rules across various countries.

The Federal Election Commission is docking Vice President Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign for accepting contributions exceeding the legal limit and for failing to fully repay a New York hedge fund for a flight on a private jet. Biden’s campaign has told the FEC that it will pay the $219,000 fine to the U.S. Treasury, Politico reports. The flight was contributed by the Clinton Group, a New York hedge fund currently implicated (but not charged) in a state pension fund kickback investigation. The Biden campaign reimbursed the hedge fund for the estimated cost of a comparable commercial flight, not the cost of a charter flight, as the FEC believes it ought to have done. The difference amounts to a $26,889 contribution from a corporation—which are not allowed to contribute to federal campaigns. FEC audits are automatically triggered when a candidate accepts public financing; consequently, the Obama campaign—which broke the record for campaign funds and didn't participate in the public-financing program—will most likely not be audited.

Here’s the latest doomsday news from Arizona: A heavily armed neo-Nazi militia, led by a 37-year-old ex-Marine named Jason “J.T.” Ready, has declared war on “narco-terrorists” and begun patrolling the Mexican border. The group’s leader is an avowed Nazi, belonging to a party that believes all Jews and non-whites should leave the U.S.—either “peacefully or by force.” “We’re not going to sit around and wait for the government anymore,” Ready has said. “This is what our founding fathers did.” His group wears fatigues and body armor and carries assault rifles. Arizona’s agitated political climate and loose gun laws have tolerated the emergence of armed militia groups in recent years, but a sheriff in the county where Ready’s group is active—he patrols about 50 miles south of Phoenix—says he’d rather such groups stay away. “Especially those who espouse hatred and bigotry such as his,” the sheriff said. Officials from the Bureau of Land Management met the militia on their patrol and said they weren’t violating any laws.

Since leaving office in 2009, Sarah Palin sure isn’t keeping out of politics. According The New York Times, she’s endorsed at least 50 candidates in the 2010 elections, many of them women, whom she calls “Mama Grizzlies.” Though her endorsements give an impression of spontaneity, sometimes appearing without warning on her Facebook page, her choices in governor’s races tend to closely track the preferences of the Republican Governor’s Association, and there is now a formal structure through which Republican operatives can apply for Palin’s benediction. Despite the increased visibility she gains by weighing in on so many primary races, it doesn’t necessarily behoove a run in 2012, as she’s making as many enemies as friends.

After a prison break and 10 years on the lam, Puerto Rican drug lord Jose Figueroa Agosto was arrested by federal authorities in San Juan on Saturday. Agosto is suspected of importing drugs to the U.S. from Colombia, via Puerto Rico. The authorities had come close to nabbing Agosto before; last September Dominican police shot out a tire of his jeep, but Agosto escaped on foot. Police confiscated an apartment, a ranch, a small zoo, and an armored Mercedes with $4.6 million in cash inside. Despite using multiple aliases, Figueroa was sometimes astonishingly public, such as the time when he called into a Dominican radio show to boast about his escape and pledge $800,000 to anyone who killed one of the top Dominican police officers. "We know that the tentacles of Mr. Figueroa Agosto are long," said a special agent in charge of the FBI in Puerto Rico. Agosto was caught while disguised in a wig, much like Jamaican kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke.

Roman Polanski has finally been let out of the house, and he's back to living the good life. Less than a week after Swiss authorities declined to extradite him to the U.S. to face charges for having sex with a minor in 1977, the embattled director made his first public appearance to watch his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, perform at a Swiss jazz festival in Montreux. Though his attendance caused quite a stir with the press and photographers, Polanski stayed mostly out of sight, watching quietly from a VIP box during his wife's 55-minute set. Prior to the show, the famous director taped his first television interview since leaving the house, telling a Swiss media outlet that though he wasn't sure of his future plans, he was "happy to be free." He added, "I never asked for special treatment." Polanski, 76, is an old friend of Claude Nobs, the founder of the festival, and was spotted staying at Nobs' chalet earlier in the day, about an hour's drive from Gstaad, where he spent months under house arrest.

In the first debate of this heated primary, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth traded barbs Friday night, chuckling only at each other’s answers. (Late-entry Tea Party candidate Jim Deakin was there, too.) McCain kicked off the nastiness, criticizing Hayworth for an infomercial he cut in 2007 that taught people how to get money from the federal government. Hayworth replied that McCain’s mistakes had hurt America more in his bank bailout and immigration votes. Each pol tried to out-conservative the rest. All three opposed extending unemployment benefits, despite Arizona’s high jobless rate. McCain was reluctant to debate Hayworth, a former talk radio host, pushing the events to weekend nights.

When detained earlier this month at the World Cup in South Africa for being in possession of marijuana, Paris Hilton said it was all a misunderstanding. The pot reportedly belonged to a friend. But the heiress and socialite has now been caught red-handed again, this time after arriving via private jet on the French island of Corsica. According to police, Hilton had less than a gram of cannabis in her purse, and she was quickly released without charge.

Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared last year and resurfaced at the Pakistani embassy, was a CIA informant, The Washington Post reports. The CIA scooped him out of Iran last year after the agency suspected Tehran was onto the scientist—or, as the Telegraph reports, he could have been a double-agent for Iran as well. Another informant was scooped up, too, and brought to the U.S. Amiri was among half a dozen people working in Iran’s nuclear program who were tipping off the CIA. They were all given money—$5 million for Amiri alone. Amiri was reunited with his family in Iran this week, saying he was drugged and kidnapped by the CIA, shipped to the U.S. and suffered coercive interrogations, claims American officials deny. The newspaper’s sources say one of the informants got “sloppy” in his communications with the CIA, but stayed for a long time in Iran despite the risk. Now the CIA must reevaluate the information provided by Amiri, delaying again a much-anticipated assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.

Two Americans say the Mexican army planted marijuana in their truck and arrested them. After arriving at a military base, the pair says, they were blindfolded, restrained, tortured with electric shocks and hits from rifle butts, and threatened with death. Shohn Huckabee, 23, and Carlos Quijas, 36, were about to cross the border at Cuidad Juárez in December when the incident happened; that city is one of the worst hot spots in Mexico’s four-year drug war. As the military tries to crack down on the drug cartels, who have killed 25,000 people, it’s drawing some complaints about their tactics. Chihuahua, the state where Cuidad Juárez is located, is investigating 465 cases of abuse and torture by the military. About 70 cases involve planted evidence. Other Americans have alleged abuse. "When I did not answer their questions, they shocked me with a wire that was in my hands,” Huckabee says. “My whole body froze up. The pain went from bearable to a point where I couldn't even talk." Huckabee and Quijas are still in prison in Cuidad Juárez.

Scientists have created a genetically engineered mosquito breed that can’t carry the malaria-causing parasite, an innovation that could help stop a disease that kills a million people a year. The breakthrough involved tweaking just a single bug gene, one involved in making insulin. After making the change, researchers pumped 90 of the engineered insects with the Plasmodium parasite; 10 days later, when normal mosquitoes would have guts full of the malaria-causing parasites, researchers found zero. A 100-percent-effectiveness rate is unprecedented, and the results shocked the scientists, who were only hoping to cut down on the parasites. Blocking just 90 or 95 percent of the parasites could cause them to mutate, much like how overused antibiotics can lead to drug-resistant bacteria. The perfect blockage rate is a happy accident; researchers had only hoped to shorten the mosquitoes’ lives to give the malaria parasite less time to mature.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a big hit at the box office, grossing $21.3 million on Friday, including $3 million from midnight showings. The thriller, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is another No. 1 hit for the Dark Knight director. The 3-D animated feature Despicable Me was second, pulling in $10 million. Sorcerer’s Apprentice earned $5.4 million for third. In fourth place was The Twilight Saga: Eclipse with $4.5 million. And in fifth, Toy Story 3 made $3.45 million.

Mel Gibson has been ordered to turn over all his firearms within 24 hours by Judge Scott Gordon at a secret hearing Thursday. In January, Gibson allegedly waved a gun in the face of his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, saying, "I will show you how to get out of here fast!" But Gibson didn’t lose everything in the hearing—Grigorieva failed to get sole custody of their 9-month-old kid, so the actor will still be able to visit. Social services officials in Los Angeles are interviewing Grigorieva’s son, 12, in part because he allegedly witnessed an incident in which Gibson hit Grigorieva while she was holding their infant daughter. Grigorieva reportedly made a deal two months ago to keep the tapes secret, but regretted it and decided to ignore the settlement and go public by taking the case to court.

Wesley Snipes will serve three years in jail after losing his appeal on a conviction of tax evasion. Snipes was first found guilty in 2008 of dodging more than $15 million in taxes on income earned during the peak of his career. His lawyers argued that Snipes’ tax advisers, who also received jail terms, had convinced him there were no laws binding him to pay tax and that the sentence was “unreasonable.” But the case was not enough to sway the court. Even a letter from Denzel Washington to the District Court judge who upheld it could not save Snipes. “Wesley is like a mighty oak tree,” Washington wrote, “Many who know him have witnessed the fruit of his labours. I have sat in his shade and even been protected by his presence.”

No one can quite explain yet why there was a 30-foot wooden ship from the 18th century buried beneath Ground Zero, but the theories abound. One of the leading possibilities is that the ship was used as landfill material, as suggested by the deliberately sawed off beams, at a time when developers sought to extend the shoreline of Manhattan into the Hudson. But speculation as to the ship’s original function suggests that it sailed the Caribbean, probably as a commerce vessel. (Archaeologists deduced this from evidence of tiny marine organisms.) One theory that is apparently being ruled out is the original suggestion that it may have been a whaling ship.

Fidel Castro made yet another public appearance Friday—his fifth in 10 days, after four years out of the public eye—saying the U.S. would cause a devastating nuclear war if it continued pressuring Iran with sanctions to stop its nuclear program.  During his hour-and-a-half visit to Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, Castro also predicted that America would attack North Korea, according to a state-run website. After he left, the site reported, ministry employees and people in the area paid tribute with spontaneous shouts of “Viva.” Castro handed over power to his brother, President Raul Castro, in 2006 after emergency surgery ended 49 years of rule, and he wasn’t seen in public till July 7. Analysts are unsure why Castro is suddenly out and about, puzzling over a huge release of political prisoners and Castro’s continuing warnings against war.

This probably wasn’t the way AIG thought it would channel borrowed funds back to taxpayers. The insurance giant, which was bailed out by the government to the tune of $182 billion in 2008, agreed Friday to settle allegations of fraud by paying out $725 million to investors. In a class action suit led by three Ohio pension funds for public employees, teachers, and firefighters, AIG was accused of anti-competitive market division, accounting violations, and stock price manipulation between October 1999 and April 2005. "The serious misconduct by AIG more than deserves today's large settlement," Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray said. The settlement still requires court approval, which will be followed by immediate payment of $175 million. The other $550 million would be paid out later.

What are all those English majors from small, liberal-arts colleges to do? As old-school newspaper jobs dry up and, in the SEO age, copy editors are no longer expected to help write headlines, Gene Weingarten poses this very question in his latest op-ed for The Washington Post. “The only really creative opportunity copy editors had was writing headlines, and they took it seriously,” writes Weingarten. Some of his examples: “CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR” (when the Senate was unable to convict President Clinton) and “KISS YOUR ASTEROID GOODBYE” (when a meteor avoided hitting Earth). Now such opportunities for wordplay seem to be disappearing. Digital journalism, argues Weingarten, is creating headlines that are “dull but utilitarian.” In other words, headlines are not designed to maximize creativity. Rather, they’re designed to maximize clicks.

In remote villages of India’s Himalayan valley, the last women with more than one husband, an ancient practice there, are dying out. Polyandry thrived for centuries on these small farms clinging to mountainsides 11,000 feet above sea level, where the line between survival and starvation was slim. But in a single generation, polyandry has nearly disappeared. Roads, cars, phones, and TV have brought about major social change. Several men, often brothers, would once share one wife; children called the eldest husband “father,” though they knew who their biological dad was, by their mother’s decree. It was also a form of birth control—five brothers would sire six or seven kids, instead of dozens. And the practice gave women a stronger voice in society. But now, thanks to roads, men can venture further to find better-paying jobs. They can afford their own wife.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington-based lawyer turned government-appointed BP-claims administrator, is a busy man: He’s toured communities from the Florida Panhandle to the Louisiana bayou; he’s met with business owners and fishermen and crabbers and boat captains; he’s told a majority of them, “You have a claim.” As funding dwindles, however, his generosity will have to as well. And when it does, Feinberg will bare the brunt of communities hit hard by the oil disaster, predicts the Wall Street Journal—communities that never got money from the $20 billion BP-funded escrow account he manages. For now, though, without any legislation or contracts to guide him—unlike, say, the 9/11 terrorist attacks—Feinberg will be forced to wrangle with complex questions: Which businesses will get the money? And how much of it? “In my business,” says Feinberg, “there is no such thing as happy or grateful. All I want to do is help people get compensation.” From the looks of it, Feinberg’s got a heavy task cut out for him.

The chances for Peter Sutcliffe, aka the Yorkshire Ripper, to be eligible for parole were never good: In 1981, the British man received 20 life sentences after being convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder another seven in a rampage across northern England. So perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that on Friday a court denied the 64-year-old Sutcliffe parole and sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in custody. Sutcliffe, who’s currently being held in a high-security psychiatric hospital, joins 38 others who will never be released from British prisons.

Watch out: The U.S. Justice Department is getting serious about Medicaid and Medicare fraud, announcing on Friday that it charged just shy of a hundred people with cheating the health-care system. Federal agents wrangled defendants—doctors, health-care company owners, and executives among them—from five different states. Officials said the group is accused of pillaging more than $251 million through false claims. “Countless Americans rely on Medicare for their well-being,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told The Washington Post, adding that federal agencies will continue “to stop those who would illegally manipulate the system.”

With the actress in a sober-living facility, her new lawyer Robert Shapiro is fast whipping her into shape—he agreed to represent Lohan as long as she goes to jail.  “I have agreed to represent Ms. Lohan on the condition that she complies with all the terms of her probation, including a requirement of jail time that was imposed by Judge Marsha Revel,” Shapiro told TMZ, adding that Lohan “is suffering from a disease that I am all too familiar with.” (Shapiro’s son died of a drug overdose in 2005.) This comes on the heels of Lohan’s previous lawyer, Shawn Chapman Holley, quitting in frustration, and Shapiro urging Lohan to enter a sober-living facility in Los Angeles where he is a founder.

A mid-July weekend means summer vacation for every hard-working American, right? The answer, apparently, is no—if you're President Obama. At least that's what critics who are speaking out against his family’s weekend trip to Mount Desert Island, Maine, think. Most of the criticism comes from the fact that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is still an urgent issue. The Republican National Convention has set up a website bashing Obama’s recent “leisure activities”, for one. And then there’s the fact that the First Family is vacationing in the northeast instead of the Gulf region—an area Obama has repeatedly stressed for vacation-goers to travel during the summer months. "Presidents are certainly entitled to vacation, just like everybody else,” said Brad Blakeman, a former George W. Bush's senior staffer, “but there is a fine line as to when presidents should do it, what they should and where they should do it.” The president’s time off, though controversial, will nonetheless provide him with a respite from what will surely be chaotic months ahead. “Where he chooses to take his days off should really be up to him,” Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist, told CNN. “We don’t want to get into a situation where the president is making familial vacation decisions based upon polling or political maneuvers.”

BP continued testing the latest cap on its blown rig Friday, increasing scans of the seafloor for leaks. The oil stopped spewing from the well Thursday, but scientists are monitoring the pressure in the wellhead—if it doesn’t rise to a certain high level and then stay constant, it could mean there are new leaks forming. If those leaks are discovered on the seabed, the cap’s valves will be opened and vessels on the surface will resume sucking up some of the oil. On Friday, pressure rose quickly to 6,700 pounds per square inch—a good sign—before slowing down, worrying federal officials who then asked the oil company to monitor the cap more closely. BP will take more seismic readings of the seabed, and a ship will scan for methane bubbles in the water, which would indicate that BP’s problems are back. The slower rise in pressure could be the result of months of leaking, lowering pressure on the oil reservoir.

President Obama said Republicans have decided to “filibuster our recovery” by blocking key votes on economic issues, taking a sharper tone than usual in his weekly radio address Saturday. Obama said the bills—to extend unemployment benefits—would help the U.S. recover from the recession, because people without jobs spend that cash quickly, stimulating the economy. Democrats have been unable to pass the measure since the death of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) deprived them of a 60-vote supermajority required to end a filibuster. Republicans counter that the $34 billion measure would only add to the country’s massive debt. Obama said the GOP spent years during the Bush administration racking up debt, so blocking the unemployment insurance now is disingenuous. The president also asked for Congress to vote on a bill giving credit extensions and tax breaks to small businesses.