Dr. Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, details what's happening under the surface of the Gulf; headlines.

Over the weekend, BP made major headway in containing the flow of oil still leaking from the site of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, which ruptured back on April 20. Since that day, oil has flowed into the gulf at a rate of at least 210,000 gallons a day, and some argue that the rate may be as high as 3,000,000. (For comparison, a standard gasoline tanker truck holds 9,000 gallons: Imagine a line of 24 tanker trucks pulling up to the Gulf every day, dumping their crude oil, and driving off.)

• Washington Takeout: Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan hasn't left much of a paper trail, but that could change. We talk to Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich about the reams of paper the Senate will soon be sifting through to get a better sense of her record, and what Senate Republicans might be hoping to find. [Read the Senate's full questionnaire for Elena Kagan (PDF).]
• Sports Takeout: In the NBA and NHL Conference finals this week, historic teams are going against upstarts. We talk to Takeaway sports contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin about old wounds, fresh blood, and best bets.

Iran has agreed to a new confidence-building deal over its nuclear program. The country signed an agreement with Turkey and Brazil, in which a large part of Iran's enriched uranium will be shipped to Turkey in return for fuel for a Tehran research reactor.

As Irina Aleksander sees it, the feminist movement of decades past was defined, to a great extent, by the fight for access to contraception and abortion. But today, in middle class urban circles, she believes feminism can be seen in family-oriented fights for breastfeeding acceptance and stroller parking — a movement she calls "faminism."

In her words: "Our mothers fought so that we could choose the life we wanted, not so that we were forced into a paradigm where family didn't matter."

The Global Post's Thailand correspondent, Patrick Winn describes the chaos in Bangkok; headlines.

Anti-government unrest continues in downtown Bangkok and has spread to other areas of the capital, leaving at least 37 dead and hundreds injured in four days. On Sunday, the Thai government ruled out U.N.-backed mediation talks, which had been suggested by protest leaders; the government says no outside help is needed.  

• Finance Takeout: Last week, the euro dropped to its lowest point since October 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed. This, despite the $1 trillion bailout from the European Union; it seems that not even twelve zeroes can save Europe from it's current crisis of confidence. To talk about why, we turn to Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for The New York Times.
• Listeners Respond: Takeaway listeners offered reading suggestions to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

The New York Times national security correspondent Mark Mazzetti explains that, despite thorny issues of legality, the U.S. is still dependent on a network of spies and independent contractors to accomplish its foreign policy goals in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Yesterday, a rare piece of positive news came from the BP camp when they announced that engineers were successful in their attempt to siphon off some of the millions of gallons of crude oil still leaking from the Deepwater Horizon well site in the Gulf of Mexico. But, even as they admit that the procedure of threading a four inch diameter tube through the broken pipe is successfully pulling out some of the oil, this isn’t a complete solution to the region's environmental catastrophe

Barack Obama decided on the night he won the presidency to make comprehensive health care legislation his first priority. Not all of his aides agreed. "I begged him not to do this," his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, later told Jonathan Alter for his book, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One."

What can the oil spill teach us about the industrialized world? According to author and environmental activist, Bill McKibben, environmental damage is no longer the result of something going wrong, but the result of something working pretty much as it's supposed to. He hopes that even if the spill is capped soon, it will lead to a more aggressive approach to protecting the environment.