Suspected Kurdish rebels hijack ferry in Turkey

A group of Kurdish militants on Friday hijacked a ferry with 19 passengers near Istanbul, the country's transport minister said.

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The minister, Binali Yildirim, said "four or five" hijackers claiming to be members of the armed wing of the Kurdish rebel group Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, commandeered the ship after it set sail from the northwestern port city of Izmit.

The rebels have been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast and have stepped up attacks on Turkish forces in that region in recent months.

One of the hijackers was in the captain's cabin and was claiming to be carrying a bomb, Yildrim said. The hijackers have so far not made any demands.

Earlier reports had said a lone hijacker had commandeered the boat.

The mayor for the city of Izmit said at least one of the hijackers was armed.

The PKK has increased attacks across the country, killing dozens of Turkish soldiers and civilians. The Turkish military responded by staging an air and ground offensive against rebel hideouts in neighboring Iraq. Turkish police have also detained hundreds of Kurdish activists on suspicion of ties to the rebels.

The pro-Kurdish Firat news agency, without citing sources, said the ferry was allegedly heading toward the heavily guarded prison island of Imrali, where the Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan is serving life in prison.

The Hurriyet newspaper's online edition said security at Imrali was increased. Gunboats were patrolling a five-mile no-go area around the island which is sealed with an electrical fence, it said.

Authorities suspended other ferry services in the Sea of Marmara as a precaution, state-run TRT television reported.

Authorities were not available for comment. The rebels and Kurdish politicians have been calling for Ocalan's release as a condition for peace.

TRT television said three coast guard boats were shadowing the ferry.

Yildirim said there were 19 passengers, four crew and two trainees on board.

NTV said the hijackers had collected all the passengers' mobile phones.

Tens of thousands of people have died since the Kurdish rebels took up arms 1984.

In a previous hijacking by the rebels in 1998, security forces stormed a plane on the tarmac of Ankara airport, and shot and killed a Kurdish rebel hijacker armed with a hand grenade who held 38 people hostage aboard a Turkish Airlines plane. The man was protesting Turkey's fight against the rebels. No passenger was injured.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45257684/ns/world_news-europe/

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Accuser says Herman Cain has 'complete amnesia'

Sharon Bialek, a Chicago-area woman, with her attorney Gloria Allred, right, addresses a news conference at the Friars Club, Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, in New York. Bialek accused Republican presidential contender Herman Cain of making an unwanted sexual advance against her in 1997. Bialek says she wants to provide "a face and a voice" to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Sharon Bialek, a Chicago-area woman, with her attorney Gloria Allred, right, addresses a news conference at the Friars Club, Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, in New York. Bialek accused Republican presidential contender Herman Cain of making an unwanted sexual advance against her in 1997. Bialek says she wants to provide "a face and a voice" to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

(AP) ? A woman who claims Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain groped her when she went to him for help finding a job accused Cain on Wednesday of having "complete amnesia" in saying he did not remember her. Sharon Bialek, who spoke to reporters outside her suburban Chicago home, said when asked about Cain's comments that he didn't know her that he was lying.

"The man has complete amnesia, and I really believe that he believes in himself," she said. "Pathological liars usually do those kinds of things."

Bialek said she was "so proud" of another of Cain's accusers, Karen Kraushaar, for coming forward by name. Two other women who say Cain behaved improperly toward them have not been identified publicly.

Bialek has said she approached Cain after he gave a speech at a Chicago-area tea party event several weeks ago. She denied reports that she hugged him at the event, saying instead that she grabbed his arm and whispered in his ear.

She told WMAQ-TV in Chicago in an interview broadcast Wednesday evening that Cain told her at the Tea Party event that he remembered her.

At a news conference in New York on Monday, Bialek said Cain made a sexual advance one night in July 1997, when she went to Washington to meet him and ask for help finding work. The encounter allegedly occurred while the two were in a car.

"Instead of going into the offices he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt toward my genitals," she said. "He also pushed my head toward his crotch," she added.

Cain, a businessman and former National Restaurant Association executive, has insisted that he did not sexually harass anyone.

He has denied Bialek's allegations and said Tuesday that he didn't know who she was until her news conference. His campaign has sought to undercut Bialek's credibility, sending a statement Tuesday that brought up her court battles in Cook County and reports of her involvement in a paternity case and a personal bankruptcy filing.

Bialek has primary custody of her 13-year-old son. The father of the boy is West Naze, an executive with News Corp.-owned News America Marketing. Both parents have battled in court over child support payments and custody. Naze did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

"My whole intention in this whole ordeal was to do just that, to make sure that there's a voice," Bialek said Wednesday. "And if I had to be the first one, so be it. I totally hope it doesn't damage my reputation, but if I have to, fine."

Bialek is the youngest of four sisters, said her brother-in-law, Mark Smith. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Smith called the firestorm after Bialek came forward Monday "really overwhelming."

"I don't like the way people are looking at my sister-in-law, looking at her finances and all that," he said. "She's not looking for a penny. She's just looking for an apology from Mr. Herman Cain."

Joel Bennett, Kraushaar's attorney, has said he hopes to have all four women appear at a joint news conference. Bialek said Wednesday morning that she hadn't decided whether or not to join the conference, saying she had to consult with her attorney, Gloria Allred. Allred did not return messages seeking comment.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-09-US-Cain-Accuser-Bialek/id-1dd2f668f9d742258fbb6380fce5d6a4

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Pfizer to push Prevenar beyond large Chinese cities (Reuters)

HONG KONG (Reuters) ? Pfizer Inc, the world's largest drug maker, aims to push sales of its Prevenar vaccine for children beyond large Chinese cities in collaboration with partner Shanghai Pharmaceutical and possibly other new partners.

"The way to do that is through arrangements with individual cities or some of the provinces that have shown interest in certain other products to establish local programs," Pfizer's global president for vaccines Mark Swindell told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday.

"We are constantly evaluating the landscape and if we are presented with the opportunity to expand our operations (with) other partners, we will take advantage of that," said Swindell, while on a business trip in Beijing.

Prevenar, known as Prevnar in the United States and one of Pfizer's top-selling products, prevents infection by streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis. It is a major killer of children, claiming up to 1.6 million lives a year globally.

Prevenar's global sales amounted to $3.7 billion in 2010.

"China is such an important opportunity for a company like Pfizer with a population of well over one billion citizens, a vaccine market that is already large," said Swindell. He said China's vaccine market was worth US$2.5 billion in 2010.

"It is expected to grow dramatically over the next several years," Swindell said.

Prevenar sales in China, in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Najing, amount to "several million doses" a year, he said.

"But if you compared the adoption of the vaccine to the number of newborn each year, we are still really scratching the surface," Swindell said.

PREVENAR 13

Pfizer faces intense pressure to keep revenues up with the imminent loss on November 30 of patent protection in the United States for its $10-billion-a-year cholesterol drug Lipitor, the best-selling prescription drug in the world.

It scored a crucial victory this year when European regulators recommended approval for another of its vaccines, Prevenar 13, for use in adults aged 50 and over.

Prevenar protects against seven strains of the streptococcus pneumoniae, while Prevenar 13 protects against 13. A competing vaccine, Synflorix by GlaxoSmithKline, protects against 10 strains.

"Pneumococcal disease is very important in young kids but it also emerges as a substantial burden of disease in older adults. Once people hit 50, they start to suffer increased burden of pneumonia and other pneumococcal syndromes," Swindell said.

"We will be introducing Prevenar 13 for adults very soon. We have had approvals in the last week from countries in the EU, Australia. We anticipate an approval in the United states early next year and we have approvals in certain Asian and Latin American countries as well," he said.

He added that the first countries in Asia where Prevenar 13 will be launched for adults would be Thailand and the Philippines, where approvals have already been obtained.

Prevenar 13 was approved for use in infants and young children in Europe in December 2009 and in the United States in February 2010.

Pfizer's biopharmaceuticals business, of which the vaccines business is a key component, was responsible for 86 percent of the company's total revenues in 2010 and 91 percent in 2009 and 2008.

Among its other business units are nutrition, animal health and consumer health products.

(Editing by Vinu Pilakkott)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111110/hl_nm/us_pfizer_vaccine

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Row over plans to mine Grand Canyon

US POLITICIANS are at loggerheads over whether to allow uranium mining in north Arizona, near the Grand Canyon. Mining would create jobs, but might pollute the Colorado river, which provides the Southwest US with irrigation and domestic water.

The White House wants to ban all new mining claims in the area for 20 years, but a group of Republicans is backing legislation that would render the ban meaningless.

A steep rise in metal prices during the last decade led mining companies to register interest in exploiting thousands of new sites across the US, including several hundred near the Grand Canyon. In 2009, secretary of the interior Ken Salazar put a two-year freeze on anyone even seeking permission to mine in three areas around the Grand Canyon. The US Geological Survey has since found that uranium mining there could increase the levels of radioactive materials and heavy metals in the Colorado river.

On 26 October, the Bureau of Land Management released its Final Environmental Impact Statement, which backs extending Salazar's moratorium for 20 years. Arizona congressman Ra?l Grijalva praised the bureau's research, which he thinks will help maintain the Grand Canyon as a tourist attraction.

However, Republican lawmakers, led by Arizona senator John McCain, have proposed a new mining act, which would overturn the ban and instead require Congressional approval for any moratorium.

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China's inflation falls on lower food cost rise

BEIJING (AP) ? China's stubbornly high inflation fell in October, giving Beijing room to stimulate its economy amid weak U.S. and European growth.

Consumer prices rose 5.5 percent from a year ago, down from September's 6.1 percent, data showed Wednesday. Politically volatile food costs rose 11.9 percent but that was down from the previous month's 13.4 percent.

The decline gives China's leaders room to boost growth if necessary by reversing interest rate hikes and other curbs imposed to cool an overheated economy. Those controls squeezed entrepreneurs and fed fears the world's second-largest economy might slow too abruptly at a time when hopes are pinned on relatively robust China to prop up global growth.

"Over the past year they had a single target ? control inflation. But now that inflation is fading, they are going to focus on economic growth," said Capital Economics analyst Qinwei Wang.

Beijing has hiked interest rates repeatedly and imposed investment curbs to cool growth that hit 10.3 percent last year. But now that those measures are gaining traction, China faces the dual threats of plunging consumer demand in key U.S. and European export markets and a cooling real estate market, a key driver of growth.

A government clampdown on bank lending has squeezed entrepreneurs, adding to the pain of lower foreign sales and forcing thousands into bankruptcy. Beijing has promised to help them by selectively easing some credit controls, though it says curbs imposed to cool surging housing costs will stay in place.

Inflation peaked at a 37-month high of 6.5 percent in July, driven by sharp rises in food costs caused by strong demand and summer flooding that damaged crops. Analysts expect inflation to ease further as the autumn harvest comes in, though the government says it will overshoot the official target of 4 percent for the year.

Economic growth slowed to 9.1 percent in the three months ending in September from 9.5 percent the previous quarter. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting 9.5 percent growth for the full year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-11-08-AS-China-Inflation/id-1dd203a1acd646d8812009fb67b00b2e

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Taming Lima's chaotic, poisonous transit system

In this photo taken Tuesday Sept. 6, 2011, cars, busses and taxis sit in traffic along Javier Prado Avenue in Lima, Peru. Peru's capital is afflicted by an anarchic, corrupt transit system due to chronic mismanagement and corruption dating back two decades. Lima's quarter million taxis, half of them unregistered, are unregulated. Taxi drivers, like bus drivers, will stop anywhere, and cab fare is negotiated on entry. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

In this photo taken Tuesday Sept. 6, 2011, cars, busses and taxis sit in traffic along Javier Prado Avenue in Lima, Peru. Peru's capital is afflicted by an anarchic, corrupt transit system due to chronic mismanagement and corruption dating back two decades. Lima's quarter million taxis, half of them unregistered, are unregulated. Taxi drivers, like bus drivers, will stop anywhere, and cab fare is negotiated on entry. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

In this photo taken Wednesday Sept. 28, 2011, a police officer directs cars as pedestrians wait to cross in Lima, Peru. Peru's capital is afflicted by an anarchic, corrupt transit system due to chronic mismanagement and corruption dating back two decades. Lima's quarter million taxis, half of them unregistered, are unregulated. Taxi drivers, like bus drivers, will stop anywhere, and cab fare is negotiated on entry. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

In this photo taken Friday Sept. 30, 2011, cars sit in traffic along Javier Prado Avenue in Lima, Peru. The air pollution in Lima, a capital of 8.5 million people, exceeds World Health Organization limits nine-fold. A 2009 government report blamed vehicular contamination for 6,000 annual deaths in Lima from respiratory ailments. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

In this photo taken Wednesday Sept. 28, 2011, a bus driver works on his broken down bus as pedestrians walk outside the pedestrian area in Lima, Peru. Lima city officials blame the bus system for most of the city's estimated 400 annual pedestrian deaths in traffic. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

In this photo taken Tuesday Sept. 6, 2011, commuters use the Metropolitano, a new rapid transit bus system, in Lima, Peru. Buses compete with this new rapid transit bus system with dedicated lanes that burns clean natural gas. Modeled on Bogota's Transmilenio system and launched last year, the Metropolitano is slated for expansion but so far only handles 3-4 percent of Lima's commuters. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

(AP) ? The rickety buses careen down Lima's dusty avenues, steel hulks rattling. White-knuckled passengers hold fast. Tailpipes cough soot. Drivers grimace. Pedestrians scramble.

Too often, three or four buses at a time jockey for fares on haphazardly oversubscribed routes.

The drivers are in a perpetual race. If they don't meet a daily passenger quota, they don't get paid. So they put in nerve-racking 16-hour days and work seven-day weeks.

Peru's capital is afflicted by an anarchic, corrupt transit system the city's freshman mayor calls a shameful menace. She is promising, against tall odds, to fix it and the traffic chaos that might well lead the region in motorized hostility to pedestrians, cyclists and human lungs.

"I'd say the city is in serious collapse, given the quantity of vehicles, their age and the notorious absence of operating rules," says city councilman Rafael Garcia, a reform advocate.

Lima is far from alone among Latin American cities with exasperating traffic congestion and near-complete gridlock on major thoroughfares. But unlike in Bogota, Colombia, Sao Paolo, Brazil, or even Mexico City, it is not a surge in private passenger vehicles that is causing Lima's traffic nightmares. Vehicle ownership is low; four in five commuters use public transit.

The problem: chronic mismanagement and corruption dating back two decades. And it's not just the belching buses but also Lima's quarter-million taxis, half of them unregistered, all of them unregulated.

That's one taxi for every 18 Lima inhabitants. Mayor Susan Villaran blames the cabs for more than 70 percent of traffic jams.

Taxi drivers, like bus drivers, will stop anywhere. And forget meters. Cab fare is negotiated on entry.

More lethal, though, is Lima's sorry bus fleet, the chief culprit for air pollution that exceeds World Health Organization limits ninefold. A 2009 government report blamed vehicular contamination for 6,000 annual deaths in Lima from respiratory ailments.

The fleet coexists, and competes, with a shiny new rapid transit bus system with dedicated lanes that burns clean natural gas. Modeled on Bogota's Transmilenio system and launched last year, the Metropolitano is slated for expansion but so far only handles 3-4 percent of Lima's commuters.

The average age of Lima's buses exceeds 20 years, according to the citizen's group Lima Como Vamos. Thousands are mechanically unsound threats to life and limb. The average age of a Sao Paulo bus, by contrast, is 4.2 years, the group says.

The challenge for Villaran is to retool what emerged in the early 1990s after then-President Alberto Fujimori issued decrees aimed at cushioning the impact of layoffs from the privatization of state-run industries.

Anyone at all could get into the public transport business with whatever jalopy they had. Aggravating matters, all restrictions were lifted on the import of used vehicles.

A free-for-all ensued as more than three quarters of a million used vehicles flooded into Peru, said Edwin Derteano, president of the Peruvian Automobile Association.

Accidents surged by 30 percent; the public bus network devolved into anarchy.

Overnight, it became possible to "be assigned" a bus route, renewing it every six months, without owning a single bus or employing a single driver.

"All the incentives built into the (current) system make it a killing machine, I mean the entire system," says Gustavo Guerra, a former deputy transport minister and Villaran adviser.

"It's the same in Honduras, in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the worst Latin American cities," said Guerra. He says they are the region's only big cities save Lima with such a system.

Ivo Dutra has a heart-wrenching reason for ending what he calls the "permanent battle" in Lima's streets: He lost his only child to it.

The August death of the 25-year-old photographer, also named Ivo, galvanized public outrage at the bus system, which officials blame for a big share of Lima's roughly 400 annual pedestrian deaths in traffic.

"My son was hit and thrown between 12 and 15 meters (40 and 50 feet)," says Dutra, by a bus whose driver ran a red light as he raced another bus.

The driver is on trial for criminal homicide in what lawyer Gustavo Ore, who is assisting the Dutra family, calls the first case of its kind in Peru. In past vehicular death cases, drivers always faced manslaughter charges. If convicted, the driver faces up to 20 years in prison.

Dutra calls him a victim, too.

"These drivers have a gun to their head every day as they go out and try to earn the quota they need to pay their employers nightly," he said.

Attempts to forcibly retire aged buses have so far failed, even though by law all buses and taxis older than 15 years were supposed to disappear by July 1, 2009, notes Luis Quispe, director of the citizen's group Luz Ambar.

The culprit is a system absent accountability: Drivers and bus owners are free agents hired by concessionaires, who obtain routes from the city transit office in an opaque process where bribes, not bids, have long determined who gets routes.

"What does it do? Congest, contaminate, create accidents. It's monstrous," said Mayor Villaran, who has been in office since Jan. 1, in an interview.

She has convened the parties involved for regular roundtables, bent on achieving what no predecessor had attempted: order and transparency.

A single route, with an average of 80 buses, can gross a concessionaire about $200,000 a year, according to Associated Press calculations. The administrative fees the concessionaires pay for a route, meanwhile, amount to just $1,600.

Several concessionaires were asked to disclose their revenues and declined.

"It's a helluva way to get rich," says 55-year-old bus driver Javier Diaz as he scarfs down a lunch of fried fish and rice during his half-hour midday break.

Diaz says he earns about $20 for a 16-hour day, roughly the norm for drivers. "I've got no pension for my old age. The day I quit, the vehicle's owner won't pay me severance, won't give me a thing."

Villaran says that's got to change.

The city is mandating that, beginning in July 2012, all route concessionaires own buses and employ salaried drivers and begin to scrap old, polluting buses. By then, says the municipal transit director Maria Jara the city will have reassigned routes with designated bus stops.

To achieve that, the city is pressuring transport companies to form consortia so they have enough buses and can meet cleaner-air standards. Currently, about 40 different concessionaires have routes on each of Lima's busiest thoroughfares. That number is supposed to be reduced to about four per thoroughfare.

Sociologist Claudia Bielich, who has studied Lima's transit system extensively, applauds Villaran's intent to end the chaos.

But she's skeptical. She's seen previous reform plans fail because they challenge the pocketbooks of "a big bunch of very powerful people."

And then, Bielich added, you need also persuade passengers.

"The Lima resident is accustomed to walking out to the corner, raising his arm and getting aboard the vehicle right there."

___

Associated Press writer Martin Villena in Lima contributed to this report.

Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-08-LT-Peru-Vehicular-Chaos/id-e91aae22d23449ba87a6b345c304a36e

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Russians desperately try to save Mars moon probe (AP)

MOSCOW ? A Russian space probe became stuck in orbit Wednesday after an equipment failure, raising fears it could come crashing down and spill tons of highly toxic fuel on Earth unless engineers can steer it back to its flight path.

One U.S. expert said the spacecraft could become the most dangerous manmade object ever to hit the planet. The mishap was the latest in a series of recent Russian failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the country's space industries.

The unmanned $170 million Phobos-Ground craft was successfully launched by a Zenit-2 booster rocket just after midnight Moscow time Wednesday (2016 GMT Tuesday) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It separated from the booster about 11 minutes later and was supposed to fire its engines twice to set out on its path toward Mars, but never did. The craft was aiming to get ground samples from Phobos, one of Mars' two moons.

Federal Space Agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said neither of the two engine burns worked, probably because the craft's orientation system failed. He said engineers have three days to reset and fix the spacecraft's computer program before its batteries die ? but the space agency later said the probe's orbit and its power sources could allow it to circle the Earth for about two weeks.

Russia news agencies cited space experts who offered widely varying estimates of how long the craft could stay in orbit before crashing down ? from five days to one month.

James Oberg, a NASA veteran who now works as a space consultant, said it's still possible to regain control over the probe.

"This is not an impossible challenge," Oberg said in an email to The Associated Press. "Nothing irreversibly bad has happened, the full propellant load is still available, and short-term 'stay healthy' maneuvers can be performed" like deploying the craft's solar panels to boost its power.

He warned, however, that if controllers failed to bring the Phobos-Ground back to life, the tons of highly toxic fuel it carries would turn it into the most dangerous spacecraft ever to fall from orbit.

"About seven tons of nitrogen teroxide and hydrazine, which could freeze before ultimately entering, will make it the most toxic falling satellite ever," he said. "What was billed as the heaviest interplanetary probe ever may become one of the heaviest space derelicts to ever fall back to Earth out of control."

Oberg said such a crash could cause significantly more damage than the Russian Mars-96 that crashed in the Andes Mountains or the American USA 193 spy satellite that was shot down by a U.S. Navy missile in 2008 to prevent it from splashing its toxic fuel.

The Russian rescue effort Wednesday was being hampered by a limited earth-to-space communications network that already forced flight controllers to ask people in South America to help find the spacecraft. Amateur astronomers were the first to spot the trouble when they detected the craft was stuck in an Earth orbit.

The Phobos-Ground was Russia's first interplanetary mission since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars, which failed when the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure.

The spacecraft is 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), with fuel accounting for a large share of its weight. It was manufactured by the Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin, which specializes in interplanetary vehicles.

The company also designed the craft for Russia's botched 1996 launch and the two probes sent to Phobos in 1988, which also failed. One was lost a few months after the launch due to an operator's mistake, and contact was lost with its twin when it was orbiting Mars.

The Russian space agency responded to the failures by promising to establish its own quality inspection teams at rocket factories to tighten oversight over production quality.

In contrast with the failures that dogged Soviet and Russian efforts to explore Mars, a succession of NASA's landers and rovers, including Spirit and Opportunity, have successfully studied the Red Planet.

If Russian space experts manage to fix the Phobos-Ground, it should reach Mars orbit in September 2012 and land on Phobos in February 2013. The return vehicle is expected to carry up to 200 grams (7 ounces) of ground samples from Phobos back to Earth in August 2014.

It is arguably the most challenging unmanned interplanetary mission ever. It requires a long series of precision maneuvers for the probe to reach the potato-shaped moon measuring just 20 kilometers (over 12 miles) in diameter, land on its cratered surface, scrape it for samples and fly back.

Scientists had hoped that studies of Phobos' surface could help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system. Some believe Phobos is an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity, while others think it's debris from when Mars collided with another celestial object.

China contributed to the mission by adding a mini-satellite that is to be released when the craft enters an orbit around Mars on its way to Phobos. The 115-kilogram (250-pound) satellite, Yinghuo-1, will become the first Chinese spacecraft to explore Mars, studying the planet during two years in orbit.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111109/ap_on_sc/eu_russia_mars_moon_mission

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Kesa dumps money-losing UK Comet stores (AP)

LONDON ? Kesa Electricals says it has agreed to sell its money-losing Comet stores in Britain for a token payment of 2 pounds ($3.22).

Kesa said Wednesday that it would also invest 50 million pounds in the buyers, Hailey Holdings Ltd. and Hailey Acquisitions Ltd., and would retain liability for Comet's defined benefit pension plan, which has a deficit of euro46 million ($63 million).

Kesa shares were up 1 percent at 102.8 pence in midmorning trading on the London Stock Exchange.

"Clearly, the board has decided that sustaining Comet's losses into an uncertain future is the wrong thing to do and it is difficult to disagree with them," said Philip Dorgan, analyst at Panmure Gordon.

He downgraded Kesa from "hold" to "sell," calculating that the shares were worth only 80 pence because of wider problems in the group.

Comet, which operates 249 stores in the United Kingdom, is the second group of stores this week to fall victim to poor sales in the store-based electricals sector. Carphone Warehouse announced on Monday that it was shutting all 11 of its British Best Buy stores, which had been planned as the start of a nationwide chain.

Kesa said Comet's sales were down 18 percent between May and the end of October.

The company said group revenue in that period fell by 6.2 percent on a local currency basis.

Revenue in Darty France declined by 2.4 percent, while the BCC, Vanden Borre and Datar businesses combined for a revenue increase of 0.7 percent.

Developing businesses of Darty Italy, Darty Turkey and Darty Spain posted a 5.2 percent increase in revenue, though expansion masked an 8 percent drop in revenue comparing stores open for at least a year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111109/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_kesa_comet

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