KABUL, July 18 (Xinhua) -- An explosion rocked east of Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, leaving two people dead and 20 others injured, all civilians," deputy to Kabul police chief Syed Abdul Ghafar Syedzada said.

"School children were also among the injured in the blast," Syedzada told journalists at the site of the incident, without revealing further details.

Earlier, an official, on condition of anonymity, had told Xinhua that the incident, which took place at 11:55 a.m., was a suicide motorbike attack against NATO-led troops. He said two NATO soldiers were injured and the suicide bomber was killed in the blast.

The latest blast took place amid tight security as the Afghan government will host an international conference on the war-torn nation on Tuesday.
Some 16,000 security forces have been tasked to ensure security for the conference, which will be attended by representatives from more than 70 countries and international organizations, including over 30 foreign ministers.

Personnel of security agencies have already been deployed on entry points to Kabul city and sensitive areas and buildings.

BAR HARBOR, Maine — President Barack Obama and his family managed to make it through a couple of days of family vacation time without a crisis forcing a change in plans.

The first family was to head home to the White House on Sunday after two days of nearly nonstop recreation at this upscale resort on the northern Maine coast.

From the moment they arrived Friday, it was clear the Obamas were determined to make the most of their time here, much of it in Acadia National Park.

The president, his wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha set the tone right away, motorcading straight from the airport to a park bike trail for an hour of cycling.

What followed was a whirl of outings, as their motorcade crisscrossed Mount Desert Island. They went boating on Frenchman Bay, hiked on a park nature trail, played tennis, hung out at the pool, toured a lighthouse, had lunch and dinner at harborside restaurants and — of course — stopped for ice cream.

Even their dog Bo had fun, playfully wrapping up a Coast Guard lighthouse keeper in the leash Sasha, 9, was holding.

But the high point — literally — was their visit to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, listed by park officials as the tallest peak on the Eastern Seaboard. From the granite mountaintop, as they listened to a park superintendent, the Obamas beheld a spectacular vista of granite hills above an emerald bay.

It was certainly a more uplifting scene than what awaited the president on his return to Washington: more wrangling with a bitterly divided Congress heading toward the August recess, lawmakers' attention increasingly focused on the fall elections.

The Obama family was also eyeing its August plans. Malia, 12, is headed to summer camp for the first time. Her dad has said he plans to return to the Gulf soon for another look at the oil spill zone. And residents of Martha's Vineyard are wondering if the Obamas will spend part of the month on the island off the Massachusetts' coast, as they did last summer.

The trip to Maine did appear to accomplish one important thing: breaking the Obama family travel jinx.

Since last year's Vineyard stay was interrupted by Sen. Edward Kennedy's death and funeral, Obama family travel plans have been repeatedly altered by events.

Christmas Day in Hawaii had the president responding to a near-bombing of a Detroit-bound jet. A planned trip to Indonesia, where Obama spent part of his youth, has twice been postponed. And other trips have had their schedules scrambled.
Of course, the Obamas' departure for Bar Harbor was itself delayed briefly, when Obama stopped to talk to reporters the morning after BP finally capped its runaway well that for weeks had poured millions of gallons of polluting crude into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, despoiling rich fishing grounds and chasing away summer

As the Gulf of Mexico entered a third day free of fresh oil from BP’s blown-out well, the government on Saturday extended a test that has so far shown no signs of damage in the 13,000-foot-deep hole.
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The new containment capping stack in this image captured from a BP live video on Saturday.
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Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who commands the spill response, announced Saturday afternoon, 48 hours after the test began, that it would continue for an additional day. “We continue to see success,” he said in a statement.

Earlier, Kent Wells, a senior vice president of BP, said the company was encouraged by the results of the test, which is meant to assess the condition of the well by allowing pressure to build inside it.

“The longer the test goes, the more confidence we have,” Mr. Wells said. There had been no signs of any oil or gas leaking out of the well or up through the seafloor into the water, he said.

The procedure began Thursday afternoon with the closing of valves on a new, tighter-sealing cap atop the well. With the valves closed, oil stopped gushing into the gulf for the first time since the disaster started with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20.

In his statement, Admiral Allen said that once the test was complete, “we will immediately return to containment,” reopening the well and collecting oil through pipes up to surface ships.

BP officials have said, however, that if the test showed the well was in good shape, it was possible that the well would remain shut. Admiral Allen has said that it might be shut only if a hurricane approached and collection ships had to leave for safe waters.

A technician involved in the effort said that with the encouraging news from the test, there had been discussions Saturday about leaving the well shut and changing the method of permanently sealing it. The current plan calls for the gusher to be plugged by pumping mud, and then cement, into it through a relief well that is nearing completion.

The technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work, said that engineers had discussed stopping work on the relief well in favor of a “bullhead kill.” In that operation, heavy mud would be pumped in through existing pipes and the oil and gas would be forced back into the oil reservoir at the bottom of the well.

The procedure is somewhat similar to the “top kill” method that failed in early June, but would be much more likely to succeed because with the well sealed, no oil or gas would be moving inside.

A BP spokesman said Saturday that the relief well was still considered the ultimate solution to the leak.

With the relief well strategy, the blown-out well would have to be reopened when the mud pumping began. The well would not have to be reopened to try a bullhead kill, the technician said.

If the well is not reopened, the exact flow rate of oil may never be known. It is estimated at 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

Mr. Wells said that if the well were reopened for containment, two vessels that had been collecting oil were on standby and a third with a device to funnel oil from the top of the cap could be brought in quickly.

But in reopening the well, engineers would have to let oil gush into the water, at least for a short time.

Mr. Wells said scientists were “not at all surprised” that pressure readings from the test were lower than had been expected if the well were, in fact, intact. But rather than the cause being damage to the well, he said, it could be that the reservoir of oil had been depleted by the gusher.