WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
U.S. intelligence agencies believe al Qaeda’s No. 3 leader was killed recently in a missile strike in the tribal areas of Pakistan, officials said on Monday.

The CIA has stepped up the pace of unmanned aerial drone attacks, targeting not only high-level al Qaeda and Taliban targets but largely unknown foot soldiers as well.

A U.S. official said Sheikh Sa’id al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was widely seen as the group’s No. 3 figure and its main conduit to leader Osama bin Laden. As al Qaeda‘s chief operating officer, he had a hand in everything from finances to operational planning.

“We have strong reason to believe … that al-Masri was killed recently in Pakistan’s tribal areas,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “In terms of counterterrorism, this would be a big victory.”

In March, U.S. officials said a drone strike in Pakistan killed a key al Qaeda planner.

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NEW ORLEANS – The best hope for stopping the flow of oil from the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been compared to hitting a target the size of a dinner plate with a drill more than two miles into the earth, and is anything but a sure bet on the first attempt.

Bid after bid has failed to stanch what has already become the nation’s worst-ever spill, and BP PLC is readying another patchwork attempt as early as Wednesday, this one a cut-and-cap process to put a lid on the leaking wellhead so oil can be siphoned to the surface.

But the best-case scenario of sealing the leak is two relief wells being drilled diagonally into the gushing well — tricky business that won’t be ready until August.

“The probability of them hitting it on the very first shot is virtually nil,” said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, who spent most of his 39 years in the oil industry in offshore exploration. “If they get it on the first three or four shots they’d be very lucky.”

The relief well drilling and temporary fixes were being watched closely by President Barack Obama, who planned to meet for the first time Tuesday with the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill. A senior administration official said the meeting will take place at the White House. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting had not been formally announced.

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