World News: BP accused of trying to shift blame in spill probe

BP's investigation into the Gulf of Mexico spill sparked a backlash from its contractors and US politicians who accused the oil giant of attempting to shift some of the blame.

The internal inquiry, led by the company's head of safety and operations, Mark Bly, found BP was responsible in part for the tragedy, but also pointed the finger at rig owner Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton. The report said a "complex and interlinked" series of events involving mechanical failures and human judgments led to the disaster.

The explosion on April 20 killed 11 workers and caused an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil to gush into the Gulf - the largest offshore spill in history.

It is not the first time that blame has been shared, with BP, Transocean and Halliburton all pointing the finger at each other at a US Congress meeting in May.

Swiss-based company Transocean attacked the BP investigation and said its own probe was ongoing and would be concluded once "critical information" from BP was received. Halliburton claimed there were "substantial omissions and inaccuracies" in BP's report.

34 rescued as storm hits oil rig

Two oil workers are missing and more than 30 have been rescued from a rig off China's north-east coast, which was damaged in a storm, state media says.

Rescue workers in helicopters saved 34 people from the rig about five nautical miles off Dongying in Shandong province.

TV journalist gunned down

Gunmen in Iraq have killed an Iraqi TV journalist, the second in as many days, while four other people were killed in two attacks in the capital Baghdad.

Safah Abdul Hameed was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul as he left for work at the al-Mosuliyah satellite television station.

Mexico 'faces insurgency'

Violence in Mexico linked to drugs increasingly has the hallmarks of an insurgency, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.

"It's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, when the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of the country," she said.

A Mexican government spokesman rejected Mrs Clinton's analogy, saying the only similarity was the root cause - a high demand for drugs in the US.

President clings on to power

President Hugo Chavez accused his political adversaries of sabotaging Venezuela's electricity grid as part of a bid to chip away at his popularity before legislative elections in two weeks.

Opposition leaders say outages are the result of failed efforts to upgrade the grid.

Contortionists Lazarus Mwangi and Hassani Mohammed from Cirque Mother Africa get tied up in knots during a show in Hamilton, New Zealand.

Forest fire destroys 136 homes in US

United States: A forest fire in the state of Colorado has destroyed at least 136 homes, officials said.

About 3500 people have been evacuated from the path of the fire in Fourmile Canyon, near the city of Boulder. Four residents are missing.

Honduras:Police have blamed street gangs linked to drug cartels for the killing of at least 18 people in a shoe factory.

The massacre took place in the city of San Pedro Sula.