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BP Oil Spill Day 46: Cap Installed, Should Know Later Today How Much Oil is Being Captured.

A BP executive says he’s “confident” that a new cap placed over the leaking well will begin to capture some of the oil and prevent it from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

“I am actually pretty confident this is going to work,” BP COO Doug Suttles told “GMA.” “It probably won’t capture all of the flow but it should capture the vast majority…”

BP has siphoned some of the oil up a pipe, The Associated Press reported. Suttles told George Stephanopoulos on “GMA” that they should have their first indication of how much oil they are capturing later this morning.

“It is hard to put a precise number on it. But what we will be doing is monitoring it very, very closely as we slowly increase the production,” Suttles said. “And what we are trying to do is get the maximum amount we can with the minimum amount leaking by. But we will probably have to have some very small amount leaking around the bottom to make sure we don’t draw this water in.”

The live images of the leaking well show oil still flowing out from the cap, but Suttles said that is due to four vents that were installed in the top of the dome to prevent hydrates from forming. BP will begin successively closing those vents over the course of the day, Suttles said.

Later today President Obama will visit the region, his third trip since the spill began. He will be briefed by Adm. Thad Allen and meet with local residents and the governors of the Gulf states.

Obama postponed his trip, for the second time, to Indonesia and Australia that was scheduled for later this month.

At least 140 miles of the Gulf Coast have now been touched by oil. An oily sheen has been spotted less than seven miles from Pensacola, Fla.

 By KATE McCARTHY

Two commuter trains collided head-on at rush hour in a Brussels suburb Monday, killing as many as 25 people, Belgian rail officials said. Other officials said the death toll was lower.

Belgian National Railways told the VRT radio network that 25 people had died. The suburb’s mayor said the death toll was 20. Lodewijk De Witte, governor of the province of Flemish Brabant, told VRT that 10 people were killed.

The trains collided in light snow just outside of the station at Buizingen around 8:30 a.m. local time.

Television reports showed that the force of the collision pushed the first car of each train up off the tracks. The cars ended up resting against each other. Photos from the scene showed another car that appeared to have tipped onto its side. Rescuers rushed victims on stretchers along the tracks.

“The most recent information we have is that 20 people died,” town Mayor Dirk Pieters told VRT. “I base this on what the police and firefighters tell me.”

There was no immediate word on the number of injured.

Pieters said the seriously hurt were taken to hospitals and the lightly injured were moved to a Buizingen sports complex.

The crash caused massive damage to overhead power lines. Eurostar reported on its Web site that its high-speed trains had suspended service in and out of Brussels and could remain shut down all day.

The international high-speed network Thalys, which links major cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, temporarily halted all traffic because its trains use the same rails as commuter lines near Hal, said Patricia Baars, a company spokeswoman.

‘Very severe accident’

At least four Thalys trains were stopped en route, and the railway operator deployed staffers to stations where they were rerouted to provide assistance to travelers on board, she said.

“No (Thalys) train is moving for the moment … it’s very hard to know today when services will resume,” she said. “It appears this was a very severe accident.”

Thalys has at least 25 round-trip trains operating between Paris and Brussels each day, plus seven linking Brussels and Amsterdam and six from Belgium to Cologne, Germany.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.

It was the most serious Belgian train crash since March 28, 2001, when eight people died when a crowded train plowed into an empty train driving on the wrong tracks. Hard money training.

Iran’s announcement that it has begun enriching uranium to the threshold at which it could set off a nuclear reaction drew a sharp rebuke from President Obama on Tuesday.

“Despite their posturing that their nuclear power is only for civilian use, they in fact continue to pursue a course that would lead to weaponization and that is not acceptable,” Obama said in a surprise appearance at the White House daily press briefing.

“We have bent over backwards to say we are willing to have a constructive conversation” with Iran about its nuclear program, he said.

He was speaking hours after Iran’s announcement, which followed through on a warning it had issued a day before.

The enrichment was taking place at its Natanz facility under the surveillance of U.N. nuclear watchdog inspectors, Iran state media said.

An official with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that a team of its inspectors was on site.

The United States and its allies think Iran intends to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran says its nuclear program is for civilian energy and medical use.

This latest step, Iran said, is being done to meet the demands of the country’s cancer patients.

Obama said the international community had made an offer to supply Tehran with its medical needs and “they rejected it.”

Now the United States and its allies are “developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to them how alone they are,” he said.

Obama said negotiations on proposed sanctions for Iran “are moving along.”

One of the difficulties of dealing with Iran, Obama said, is that “it’s not always clear who is speaking on behalf of the government” in Tehran.

The European Union said just before Obama spoke that Iran’s latest move decreased international trust in the regime.

Ramping up uranium enrichment “adds to the deficit of confidence in the nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” EU foreign policy representative Catherine Ashton said in a statement Tuesday. “This has already been aggravated by Iran’s unwillingness to engage in meaningful talks.”

Ashton also dismissed Tehran’s explanation that it needs to enrich uranium for medical purposes.

To use the uranium to help cancer patients “requires construction of fuel assemblies for which we do not believe that Iran has either the technical knowledge or the intellectual property rights,” she said.

“As things stand it seems unlikely that on its own Iran will be able to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor,” she said. “We continue to find it difficult to understand why Iran has not taken up the proposed agreement with the IAEA, which would have solved all these problems.”

Russia, a key player in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, also expressed some frustration Tuesday.

A top Russian security official said that although his country still favors a “political-diplomatic” settlement, “everything has its limits, and any patience may come to an end.”

“Iran asserts that it doesn’t seek nuclear weapons and is developing a peaceful atomic energy program. But the actions it undertakes, including its decision to enrich its low-enriched uranium to 20 percent — those actions are causing other countries to have doubts [about the nature of that program], and those doubts are quite justified,” Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev said in a news conference in Moscow, Russia.

Patrushev also said his Iranian counterpart had failed to show up for a scheduled meeting.

“I was to meet with [Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council],” he said. “The meeting was scheduled for a time shortly before they made their announcement on the 20 percent uranium enrichment. He did not arrive. …

“We are interested in a dialogue, so that [the Iranians] could explain [to] us what’s going on. But this does not always work,” he said.

Tehran saw a relatively unusual outburst of anti-Italian and anti-French sentiment Tuesday.

About 100 people demonstrated outside the Italian and French embassies, shouting “Down with the USA, France, and Italy,” and other slogans, the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome said.

The French Embassy was pelted with eggs and stones, while the Italian Embassy was not, Rome said.

The demonstrations lasted about 20 minutes and were peacefully dispersed by police. It was the first demonstration in Tehran outside the Italian Embassy in a number of years, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

It was not clear why the embassies were targeted, but there were reports during anti-government demonstrations in December that the diplomatic missions took in wounded protesters.

The level to which Iran is enriching the uranium — 20 percent — is considered “highly enriched,” the U.S. National Research Council says on its Web site. That’s the threshold for uranium capable of setting off a nuclear reaction. Iran’s current uranium was enriched to a maximum of 3.5.

State-run Press TV said the country needs 126 kilograms (264 pounds) of 20 percent enriched uranium to fuel a research reactor, which produces isotopes for cancer patients and is running out of fuel.

Even as tensions rise over Iran’s decision to defy the world on the enrichment issue, Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali-Asghar Soltanieh, said the window for nuclear negotiations is still open.

“If they [other countries] come to the conclusion that they had better have a cooperative environment or approach, rather than the language of threat, and they are ready to come to the negotiating table, our proposal is still on the table,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.

In October, the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany gave Iran a deadline of January this year to accept a deal on sending some low-level uranium out of the country for enrichment.

Tehran did not accept that deal and instead made a counteroffer, details of which have not been disclosed.

In the past, the Iranians have signaled concerns about whether any fuel they send out of the country would be returned.

Soltanieh said Iran had decided to advance its enrichment program because it had waited months for international action.

“For nine months, we have hesitated to do so because we wanted to give the opportunity for the others. We think the framework of the IAEA [is] to have some sort of international cooperation to open a new chapter of cooperation, rather than confrontation.” Home Security Systems.

The death toll from a gas leak at a steel plant in north China has risen to 21, after executives admitted they had covered up the true scale of the accident, state media said Friday.

When the gas leak occurred at the Puyang Iron and Steel Co. in Hebei province on Monday, officials initially said that only seven workers were killed, Xinhua news agency said, citing local authorities.

But company executives confessed Thursday that it had covered up the death toll during questioning by a joint investigative group made up of police and work safety officials, the report said.

The deputy manager of the plant was subsequently arrested and two other factory officials placed under house arrest for the alleged cover-up, it said.

The gas leak occurred as workers were assembling a furnace, it added.

China’s work safety record is notoriously bad, with thousands of people dying every year in mines, factories and on construction sites, according to official tallies.

In northwest Gansu province, five people were killed and one remained missing after a huge explosion Thursday at a chemical plant belonging to state-run China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Xinhua said.

The explosion and fire at the plant were seen as far away as 20 kilometres (12 miles), the report said.

An initial investigation indicated a gas leak was to blame.

The blast came after a diesel pipeline run by CNPC, China’s largest oil refiner, ruptured late last month, seriously polluting two tributaries of the Yellow River and threatening drinking water supplies for millions, reports said.

Also on Thursday, more than 150 workers at an electrical factory in southern Guangdong province tested positive for suspected mercury poisoning stemming from lax work safety regulations, reports said. Hard money training.