NASA prohibits their specialists to visit Russia over acrid smog

U.S space agency NASA will not send their specialists to Russia for working on ISS mission's program until the acrid smog in Moscow dissolves, the deputy head of NASA's Human Space Flight Program in Russia (HSFP-R) said on Saturday.

"We have decided our colleagues should better stay in Houston [NASA headquarters is based there] until the Moscow weather changes," Mark Bowman said, adding the urgent trips related to the mission support will be carried out as usual.

Moscow has been hit by smog from nearby peat bog and forest fires mixed with pollutants for much of the last 12 days.

The smog has seen levels of carbon monoxide reached over 6 times the safe level. The fires have been caused by a heat wave that has seen temperatures more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

Bowman said the air filtration systems in the buildings that kept the interiors relatively smoke free, now had been overwhelmed forcing people to breathe contaminated air.

On Thursday, NASA satellites Terra and Aqua registered 535 hotspots from wildfires across Russia. RIA Novosti

Woods slumps to his worst round at Firestone as Mickelson waits

(CNN) -- Tiger Woods' five-year reign at the top of the world golf rankings appears to be almost over after the defending WGC-Bridgestone Invitational champion slumped to a five-over-par 75 at one of his favorite courses on Saturday.

The American, who has won a record seven times at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, remained at the tail of the 81-man field -- 18 shots behind clubhouse leader Retief Goosen, who had yet to tee off when the American had finished his third round.

World No. 2 Phil Mickelson had also yet to begin, but will do so in the knowledge that he needs to finish just fourth to break his longtime rival's run of 270 weeks at the top.

The Masters champion will start his round tied for second with Justin Leonard on six under, one shot behind Goosen. CNN

Nixon admirers seek Watergate 'context'

YORBA LINDA, Calif., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The former operators of President Nixon's library say a new exhibit on Watergate needs better historical context.

The Nixon Foundation says the planned exhibit at the California library should include more references to the in-office taping that other U.S. presidents routinely employed in the years before the now-infamous Nixon tapes helped prod him out of office 36 years ago.

"Taping and wiretapping go back as far as FDR," said Bob Bostock, a former Nixon aide who works for the foundation. "It lacks the context it needs: that Nixon was not the first president to do some of these things".

The New York Times said Saturday the new interactive Watergate exhibit was supposed to open July 1, but walls remained largely empty as content was debated by the foundation and the National Archives, which took over operation of the Yorba Linda attraction three years ago. Officials at the archives said it will be a few more weeks before any decisions are made on the foundation's objections.

"It is the last fight over Watergate," said museum Director Timothy Naftali. UPI

Amtrak train hits truck in California

SHAFTER, Colo., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Investigators Saturday were trying to determine if the driver of a tractor-trailer ignored crossing gates before he was hit by an Amtrak train in California.

Police reported the truck driver was not injured in the collision Friday afternoon near Shafter, the Los Angeles Times said. At least 21 people on the train suffered minor injuries.

Lt. Randy Milligan of the Shafter Police Department said the crash occurred just before 4 p.m. He said the Amtrak train braked before hitting the truck but did not have time to slow down significantly.

The crossing gates appeared to be working before the crash, Milligan said.

Michael Venneri, one of the 220 passengers on the train, told the Bakersfield Californian he saw debris in the air after the crash. UPI

Boy allegedly hit with boxing gloves dies

MIAMI, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Prosecutors in Miami say they plan to bring murder charges against a young man for allegedly fatally punching his 2-year-old son in the face.

Lee Willie DeJesus, 22, of Homestead, has been held on a charge of aggravated child abuse since his arrest this week, the Miami Herald Reported. The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office expects to file a second-degree murder charge Monday, a spokesman, Ed Griffith, said.

The charges may be upgraded to first-degree murder when a grand jury sits on the case, Griffith said.

Griffith said Willie Brown died Thursday afternoon after being removed from a ventilator at Children's Hospital in Miami. He had been brain dead since Monday. UPI

Cuba allows young Canadian to leave

TORONTO, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A young Canadian man kissed the ground at the Toronto airport after returning from an unwanted three-month stay in Cuba.

Cody LeCompte, 19, said he was not expecting the crowd of well-wishers who met him at Lester Pearson International Airport, the Toronto Sun reported. His mother and uncle accompanied him on the flight home.

LeCompte had promised that once he was free to leave Cuba he would kiss Canadian soil. So he knelt down.

"I'm just happy to be back on Canadian soil and I can't wait to get home," Cody said.

LeCompte and his mother, Danette, visited Cuba in April for what was supposed to be a two-week vacation to celebrate his admission to an aviation program. 

Three days after they arrived, LeCompte was driving when a dump truck broadsided their rental car. UPI

Glasgow life expectancy shorter

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Natives of Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, have a life expectancy several years longer than those born in the largest city, Glasgow, new figures showed.

Figures released Friday by the Registrar General also showed Scotland trails the rest of Western Europe in life expectancy, The Scotsman reported. Scottish men live an average of 75.3 years, while the average for the European Union is 76.1 years. Scottish women live an average of 80.1 years, two years less than the EU average of 82.2.

Only some Eastern European countries in the EU have lower life expectancy than Scotland.

But one of the most glaring differences is the one between Edinburgh and Glasgow, two cities that are less than an hour apart by local train. Glaswegian men have an average life expectancy of 70.7 years, almost 6 years less than the 76.5 in Edinburgh, while for women the figures are 77.2 in Glasgow and 81.4 in Edinburgh. UPI

Penn. family escapes when plane hits house

BELL, Pa., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A small plane crashed into a house in a rural area near Pittsburgh Saturday, but fire dispatchers said the residents appeared to have escaped unharmed.

There was no immediate word on the occupants of the twin-engine aircraft that burst into flames when it hit the home on Route 286 in the small community of Bell, Westmoreland County emergency dispatchers told WTAE-TV, Pittsburgh.

Pennsylvania state troopers told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that it was not known how many people were aboard the plane, but the county coroner had been dispatched to the scene. UPI

More rain threatens to worsen Pakistan floods

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Heavy monsoonal downpours worsened massive flooding in Pakistan Saturday and weather forecasts provided little hope of drying out in the next few days.

The flooding that began in the northwest threatened places as far south as the port city of Karachi. Districts in the southern province of Sindh were on high alert Saturday as more rain swelled already bloated rivers and inundated drenched earth.

Pakistan's Federal Flood Commission warned Saturday that the Indus River was flooded and rising in parts of Sindh, including Sukkur, the third largest provincial province.

As many as 12 million people have been affected by the torrential rains and floods, Pakistani authorities said. About 1,600 people have died.

Pakistan's Meteorological Department said more heavy rains were in store in the next few days, threatening to deepen the worst natural disaster Pakistan has experienced in recent history. And the monsoon season is only halfway over.

Pakistan's disaster management authority estimated that 650,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed. By comparison, the earthquake of 2005 affected 3.2 million people and damaged or destroyed 611,000 homes. CNN

Lochte ends Phelps' long winning run at U.S. nationals

(CNN) -- Record-breaking swimmer Michael Phelps was left stunned when his golden run at the U.S. national championships came to an abrupt halt, leaving his overall title tally stuck on 50.

The 14-time Olympic champion suffered a shock defeat to longtime rival Ryan Lochte in the 200-meter individual medley in Irvine, California on Friday.

It was Phelps' first defeat of the week, and his first in the discipline in 38 championship races.

The 25-year-old became the first U.S. swimmer to reach 50 national titles when he won the 100m butterfly on Thursday. CNN

Criticism of Zardari in Pakistan hides a political game

The Pakistani media's criticism of President Asif Ali Zardari over his visit to the United Kingdom has been unprecedented.

Newspapers and television news have criticised him for being absent when Pakistan was struck by the worst floods in living memory.

While the president has been out of the country, more than 1,500 people have been killed and scores of villages have been swept away.

Over four million people have been displaced. They now face hunger and disease.

In the initial days of the disaster the government failed to provide any response, and now the politicians are being heavily criticised for it.

In contrast, the media repeatedly drove home the point that, while the army's response was also inadequate given the scale of the disaster, at least the soldiers were out there.

The absent president has been criticised by the international media for his apparent indifference. But in Pakistan, the media's scorn has a deeper meaning and motive.

It hints at tensions between the country's civilian democracy and the powerful military establishment. BBC News

Turkish court annuls arrest warrants over 'coup plot'

A Turkish court has annulled arrest warrants against 102 military officers charged over an alleged 2003 coup plot.

The officers - who include 25 generals and admirals - were indicted in July.

All were accused of involvement in plotting a military takeover, in an operation codenamed sledgehammer.

The annulment comes days after the military agreed not to promote some of the accused officers, after a standoff with the Turkish government dominated by the Islamist-rooted AK Party.

In all, 196 people were charged in July over the alleged plot. Some had been arrested in February and then released.

Among the 102 earmarked for arrest were Gen Dogan Cetin, former commander of Turkey's First Army, former navy chief Adm Ozden Ornek and former air force commander Gen Halil Ibrahim Flirtina.

The BBC's David O'Byrne in Istanbul says the army's agreement not to promote some of the alleged plotters means arguments over who will fill vacant top posts are likely to continue for some time.

The indictment says the alleged conspiracy was drawn up in 2003 at the Istanbul base of the First Army, shortly after the governing AK Party came to power. BBC News

Tongue piercings 'can cause damage to teeth'

People with tongue piercings risk developing gaps between their front teeth as a result of playing with the stud, US researchers have found.

The University of Buffalo team says that, as well as potentially requiring cosmetic work, people can develop infections and chipped teeth.

It discusses a patient in the Journal of Clinical Orthodontics who needed braces to correct the gap in her teeth.

UK experts advised people to "steer clear" of the adornment.

The researchers said that people with tongue piercings were likely to push the metal stud up against their teeth and consequently cause gaps and other problems to arise.

Sawsan Tabbaa, professor of orthodontics at the University of Buffalo, detailed the 26-year-old's case.

She had had no space between her teeth before wearing a barbell-shaped tongue stud.

However, a space had appeared between her upper front teeth over the course of the seven years she had worn it for, because the metal bar was pushed against and between the teeth. BBC News

Russian Emergencies Ministry sends additional 1,000 people to tackle fires

Russian Emergencies services sent additional 1,000 people and 200 units of firefighting equipment to smother wildfires seized Moscow region, the head of the Ministry's National crisis control center said on Saturday.

The number of the wildfires nearby Russia's capital has increased twice at the weekend, Vladimir Stepanov said.

"It is mainly related with the human factor since people traditionally celebrate weddings, jubilees or just walk in the forest these days. They use squibs, fireworks and make fires resulting in such grave consequences," Stepanov said.

Earlier on Saturday the deputy emergency minister, Alexander Chupriyan, said that peat bog fires, causing thick poisonous smog throughout Moscow, will be put out in round-the-clock regime.

The smog has seen levels of carbon monoxide reached some 6 times the safe level. The fires have been caused by a heat wave that has seen temperatures nudge 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). RIA Novosti

6 Americans among 10 charity workers killed in Taliban ambush

The medical team had been providing eye care to villagers in a remote area of northern Afghanistan. Insurgents claim responsibility for one of the worst attacks on civilians in the war

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — 

Taliban fighters ambushed and killed a 10-member medical team, including six Americans, as they were returning from a trip to a remote northern area to provide eye care to rural villagers, their aid organization and local officials said Saturday.

The 10 charity workers, who also included two Afghans, a German and a Briton, were found slain in a remote forested area of Badakhshan province, according to provincial police and the International Assistance Mission, the Kabul-based group that organized the trip.

The Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the deaths, claiming those killed were spies and preachers of Christianity. The details provided in statements by spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid suggested that the killers were in fact insurgents and not bandits, who also roam freely in the area.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul could not confirm the nationalities of the six who were listed by the group as Americans, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said there was "reason to believe that several American citizens are among the deceased".

The charity's executive director, Dirk Frans, said it was still awaiting positive identification of the bodies, but that the police description matched that of its workers and their vehicles. Three of the team members were women, he said.

The attack was one of the deadliest strikes against foreign aid workers in the course of the Afghan war. It also represented the largest toll in a single episode for American civilians working in Afghanistan since a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team at a base in eastern Afghanistan in December. Los Angeles Times

Ivory Coast president pledges polls, defends record

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo pledged on Friday that his nation would hold elections this year at last, despite many years of missed electoral deadlines and political crisis.

The world's top cocoa grower has been plagued by instability and economic stagnation since a short 2002-3 war left half of it controlled by rebels who tried to oust Gbagbo in a failed coup attempt.

Elections were supposed to take place in 2005 but have been delayed repeatedly because of spats over establishing the identity of voters and disarming rebels. The government announced on Thursday that the vote would be held this year on October 31.

"I say to all of you that this year there will be presidential elections in Ivory Coast and our country will be able to start work rebuilding itself," Gbagbo said in a speech on national TV to mark Ivory Coast's 50th year of independence from France.

"The hope dearest to me is for Ivorians to be able to freely choose who will lead their country".

The elections are seen as vital for attracting investment back into the region's former economic powerhouse and to enable key reforms to the ailing cocoa sector to be carried out.

A November date was missed and the process later collapsed in political wrangling over whether some voters are really Ivorian, an issue that still has to be resolved. Reuters Africa

Pakistanis desperate to escape flood areas

By Asim Tanveer and Adrees Latif

MUZAFFARGARH Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistanis desperate to get out of flooded villages threw themselves at helicopters on Saturday as more heavy rain was expected to intensify both suffering and anger with the government.

President Asif Ali Zardari may have made the biggest political mistake of his career by leaving for visits to Paris and London during the worst floods in 80 years.

The disaster has killed more than 1,600 people and disrupted the lives of 12 million. Pakistan's agriculture-based economy, heavily dependent on foreign aid, has suffered a major blow.

Heavy rains are expected to lash the country again raising the prospect that more houses and crops will be swept away.

In the town of Muzaffargarh, near where rivers bloated with rain from as far away as Afghanistan and India merge with the Indus to flow south to the sea, army helicopters dropped packets of rice to people who had moved to higher ground to a cemetery.

Some latched on to helicopter skids as the aircraft took off. An elderly man fought his way inside one. He looked down and wept.

"Things are getting worse. It's raining again. That's hampering our relief work," said U.N. World Food Programme spokesman Amjad Jamal.

Districts in southern Sindh province were on high alert on Saturday as the water surged down the Indus river basin.

After a dike burst in a village in Sindh, authorities ordered people to leave and soliders started evacuations, said a district official. Authorities said up to a million people in the province have been evacuated.

Floods have roared down from the north to the agricultural heartland of Punjab to Sindh along a trail more than 1,000 km (620 miles) long.

Sindh is home to Pakistan's biggest city and commercial hub, Karachi, but the floods are expected to hit rural areas.

U.N. officials said more than half a million people had been evacuated in Sindh.

Flooding was also taking a toll over the border in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, where rain was hampering rescue and relief efforts. Flash floods have killed at least 132 people in the Himalayan region of Ladakh. Reuters Africa

Algeria militants kill mayor in Al Qaeda stronghold

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian Islamist militants killed the mayor of a village in a district considered to be a stronghold of al Qaeda's north African wing, local media and security services said on Saturday.

The 47-year-old mayor of Baghlia was assassinated late on Friday outside his house while heading to a mosque for prayers, Echorouk newspaper said on its internet site.

The Arabic-language daily, citing unnamed sources, gave no details on the circumstances of the incident, but said the mayor belonged to National Liberation Front party (FLN), Algeria's largest political party.

A security source confirmed the attack.

"They killed the mayor of Baghlia," he told Reuters.

Official Algerian authorities were not immediately available for comment.

Baghlia is located in Boumerdes province about 50 km (31 miles) east of Algiers, one of the main strongholds for al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Reuters Africa

IMF says Angola's economic outlook favourable

By Henrique Almeida

LUANDA (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday Angola's economic outlook remained generally favourable, but further steps were needed to create a sustainable fiscal position and reduce inflation.

The IMF said that Angola's foreign exchange reserves were recovering on the back of higher oil prices, but that the payment of arrears was weighing on the African nation's output and employment in the non-oil sector.

"The economic developments since the programme was approved have been broadly in line with expectations. Data for the first half of 2010 show signs of solid economic recovery reflecting higher oil prices and production that have boosted government revenues and international reserves," it said in a statement.

The statement was released at the end of an IMF mission to Angola to carry out the second and third review of a $1.3 billion loan to Angola approved in November last year.

The IMF said talks on the second and third review of the loan were to continue.

IMF Mission Chief to Angola Lamin Leigh told reporters at a news conference in Luanda that the IMF had disbursed roughly $500 million since the programme began.

Angola's government sharply cut its estimate for 2010 economic growth to 6.7 percent from a previous forecast of 9.7 percent in a revised budget submitted to parliament earlier this week. The economy expanded by 2.4 percent last year. Reuters Africa

Astronauts begin spacewalk to fix cooling system

(CNN) -- Astronauts have begun a spacewalk to fix a broken part of the International Space Station's cooling system, NASA said.

The seven-hour spacewalk focuses on removing and replacing an ammonia pump that failed a week ago, setting off warning alarms and shutting down part of the cooling system.

The pump module weighs 780 pounds and is 5.5 feet long, 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall, NASA said.

A second spacewalk is planned Wednesday to connect the fluid ammonia lines, NASA said.

Two astronauts are participating in Saturday's spacewalk. It will be the first for NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson.

Six people -- three Americans and three Russians -- are on the International Space Station. CNN

Astronauts begin key space station repairs

Two astronauts are undertaking a crucial spacewalk to make urgent repairs to a cooling system on the International Space Station.

Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson are carrying out the first of two walks that will be needed to repair a broken ammonia coolant pump.

There are two cooling units on the ISS needed to deal with temperatures that can range from 121C (250F) to minus 157C (-250F).

The second unit is so far unaffected.

Nasa has said the three Russian cosmonauts and three Nasa astronauts aboard the station are not at any risk but the functioning coolant system is having to do all the work.

The right-hand side system failed dramatically last week, forcing crew to reduce power on the space station and halt experiments. BBC News