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Show Sunday, August 26, 2007 HERALD DAILY A4 . FAST FACT birds According to 1 1998 University of Chicago study, finches zebra while In asleep, dream about singing. fact, rehearse songs. ... Soukk It look of 1,001 Ttwii QuMtiM Compiled from Doily Herald wire services The WORLD The NATION ' ' ' f . W.i : -- , 'a i SM- - .1 i A I i JOHNNY HANSONHoucton Chrome Skydiving at 89 World War JI veteran from Fred Winter, an 89 year-ol- d Houston, touches down after making his first skydive at Skydive Spaceland on Friday in Rosharon, Texas. I did this jump not for the thrill of jumping out of a plane. I did it so other amputees would see that life goes on after losing a limb and for people to remember that we have a war going on and we Med to treat these veterans with respect Winter said, who has an amputated leg from a hunting accident ' . over most of the past week : caused disastrous floods from southeastern Minneso- : ta to Ohio that were blamed for at least J7 other deaths. .Rain had most stopped : military Friday showed off its new generation of heavily falling Saturday in northern Illinois as a line of storms armored trucks that have begun replacing Humvees as all- moved eastward and south- and prime ward, but flooding was still purpose vehicles a danger for hundreds of targets of (he enemy in Iraq. Because of the hype thousands of people who the new additions ' live near swollen creeks and to the Iraq inventory, these rivers.'. Newest military ; vehicle designed to deflect bomb blasts ABERDEEN. Md. -- The . are becoming . symbolic tar-- ; . gets" as they debut ort the battlefield, Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan said of the M RAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) line of trucks, Brogan presided as technicians put several versions of MRAPS through field testing for a group of reporters at the Aberdeen Proving ' Ground. , Sinn much about the MRAP is still classified, Brogan, head of the Marine Corps Systems Command, declined comment on the. performance of the more than 200 now in Iraq, but ; said "absolutely, they've been hit." ' The military also refused to permit photographs of the MRAPs main feature the armored undercar- -' riage designed to deflect-- . mine and bomb blasts or state when the more than 6,000 MRAPs on order will be delivered. "I dont want them (the V enemy) to know when were going to have certain levels of protection," Brogan said. But Army CoL John Rooney, testing chief at Aberdeen, said, With tremendous confidence, 1 can V tell you absolutely that these vehicles will save lives.: The MRAPs are about threeimes the size of the e ,: workhorse Humvees and win replace them in Iraq and Afghani- stan in an effort to reduce casualties from improvised . FAA . ' . CHICAGO Barbara : Campagna and three cd-- . leagues paddled to the Farnsworth House in Plano, built by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1951. There, they piled furniture into their borrowed rowboat as rising water threatened .. .. the building in the aftermath of torrential storms. We've been calling it "Lake Farnsworth all day be-- . cause (the house) is floating .: on the water," Campagna, the ; architecture director for the National Trust for Historic Reservation, said late Friday of the glasswaUed house, stilts. which rests on four-foo- t Every piece is worth tens of thousands of dollars. They're all replaceable, but very expensive, she said. J About 120,000 ComEd: .; customers in northern Illinois : remained without power Saturday, said ComEd spokes-- . man Joe Trost. Bower to more than half a million custom- - . ers had been restored since Thursdays storm, but it could take days to restore power to all customers, officials said The storms in Illinois were responsible for at least one death, a man struck by a windtoppled tree, officials said. In addition, an autopsy was planned on a man found lying in more than 2 feet of water in his basement in suburban Inverness, officials said. Powerful storms rolling through the Upper Midwest . A r . . The FAA is asking Congress to approve $4.6 billion1 over the next five years for developing the system, now ; being tested oh Bights in Alaska. Development could .; cost $15 billion to $20 billion. Manny Weiss, the FAAs eastern regional administra- - : (or, Said the country needs to get away from World War navigational systems, along with the nations highways and bridges, are in dire need of repairs and upgrades. II-e- . Hot air balloon catches fire In Canada, burning 2 passengers to death . ' VANCOUVER, British Columbia A hot air balloon burst into flames over western Canada, burning two to death while their families looked on, police said Saturday. Other passengers leaped to the ground, some with their clothes in flames, witnesses said. Eleven people were seriously injured when the balloon rs . . : . border and the Israel-Gaz- a in the West Bank that left 21 Palestinians dead during the Royal Canadian Mounted " Police Sgt. Roger Morrow said week, one of the summers dead bloodiest. of the the two Four relatives of passengers killed witnessed the fire. He de- were noncombatants. .. Shrouded by early morning clined to comment on reports that the dead were a mother fog, the infiltrators used a lad- - , der to scale the concrete wall .and her grown daughter. and a rope to climb down the Its juk tragic. They Israeli side, said Maj. Tal watched it unfold before their an Israeli army spokeseyes, Morrow said of the fam man. ilies. The fatalities suffered Once across, the mot exfrom burns. r The balloon caught fire as changed fire with guards at an it prepared to launch, said Bill army post at the nearby Erez border crossing terminal and Yearwood, an investigator with the Transportation Safety led infantry forces on a chase Board of Canada. deeper into Israeli territory. ThePalestinians carried The crew loaded 12 passengers and was preparing to grenades and automatic weap-launch when a fire erupted ons, the army spokesman said. The pilot asked the passengers After a clash near the town of Netiv Haasara, soldiers to get out of the basket, he said. "The balloon was tethered retrieved the militants' bodies at the time, but then broke and with a robotic crane in case came loose, he added. they were rigged with expkv They were all trying to get sives. Three militant groups, the out." , After most of the passengers v Popular Resistance Commit- - ' escaped, the balloon exploded tees, the Democratic Front for in a fireball and shot up into the Liberation of Palestine and the air. Shortly after, the burn- - the A1 Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, jng baUoon phmged to ground claimed responsibility for the , the rv park, leaving a tad attack in a joint statement, . They said two militants died after a "long battle and the fate of a third was unknown. who briefed rePalestinians breach porters by telephone, insisted ..' border wall that no more than two mili-- ; r . JERUSALEM In a rare tants had crossed into Israel Police and soldiers nonet he-breach of Israel's border with less set up checkpoints and the Gaza Strip, two heavily armed Palestinians scaled a searched both sides of the wall Saturday, opened fire border with help from spotters on an army outpost mid eluded in a helicopter. ,, e capture for nearly a . . . . : , : . . . . . . ; . : NEW HAVEN, Cona Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to '. mark a trail for their offbeat running dub inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare andpow face a felony charge-- . C&-ula- m . . . ; 25-fo- ot half-mil- Possible downing of aircraft remains subject of dispute MOSCOW between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic that aspires to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , is that things are murky. Officials of the small country in the Caucasus region said Friday that its forces had filed at a Russian plane that entered its airspace two days earlier, and that the aircraft might have crashed in a remote area. But Russia denied having had any aircraft in the region at the time and said it had lost .. no planes. On Saturday, the defense minister of Abkhazia, a separatist region of Georgia that is a de facto Russian protector- ate, said he had seen a plane breaking up and falling. But he said he didn't think it was a Russian plane, and he didn't think Georgia shot it down The whole story might merit a shrug if not for some serious : - t r i BAGHDAD A car bomb exploded Saturday near Bagh- dads most important Shiite shrine, killing seven people and wounding dozens as authorities imposed new security restrictions to prevent attacks on Shiite pilgrims ahead of major religious ceremonies south of . . the capitaL . The only thing thats clear in the latest spat Transport curbs imposed to protect Shiite pilgrims first-degre- ... Lev-Ra- there said. Elsewhere in Kandahar, a roadside bomb killed two Af-ghans guarding a convoy car- rying supplies for NAT04ed forces, according to provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib. In neighboring Helmand province, Afghan soldiers shot and killed two suspected Taliban fighters planting a roadside bomb, said police officer Wall Lev-Ra- . . Running dub faces The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday. New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both e charged with breach of peace, a felony. The siblings set off the scare while organizing run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a "drinking dub with a running problem." "Hares are given the task of marking a trail to direct runners, throwing in some dead ends and forks as challenges. On Thursday, the Salchows decided to route runners through the massive IKEA parking lot. n, . . officials said. The incident was part of a .. surge of violent clashes along . . " four-whe- causes. felony charges for scare at IKEA store Abdul-Rahma- ; . shop owner Hussein who suffered minor shrapnel wounds. I rushed to the scene and saw some dead and injured Then I felt blood ' oozing from my back. Then rescuers took me to the hospital for treatment." Despite the force of the Mast, casualties were relatively low because many people were indoors during the broiling noontime heat or had left for the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles to the south, to attend ceremonies marking the birth of Mohammed the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century. . . . I980s-vintag- Midwest struggles with flooding . . ' said, ablaze. It was a big explosion, said . of the system to a group of reporters. During the flight between Philadelphia ' and suburban Washington, D.G, the plane used current navigational systems, but officials showed how the new. technology worked. V . . AsmaU. brightly colored screen provided a detailed picture of aD the planes nearby ..which showed up.aa green triangles. The system uses GPS signals to give pi-: kits information. The agency hopes the so-called NextGen system cart eventually help reduce flight delays by allowing aircraft to fly closer together in the crowded skies and enabling pilots to weave their own . explosive devices. . decades. On a flight out of a Philadelphia airstrip on Friday, the FAA demonstrated parts :. - .; . ;. ' - .. ol . ! . ; experimental air traffic con-trsystem that would letpi- lots see other nearby planes and help prevent gridlock in the skies. The Federal Aviation Administration hopes the satellite-based navigation system will replace the current land: based system in the coming . A string of bombings and gun battles repented around Af- ghanistan Saturday killed 41 people and left at least six wounded, including two for--. eigners hurt in a suicide bombing near the capital. Insurgent violence is run- ning at its highest level since US. forces invaded the coun-- . tty in 2001 to oust the hard-lin- e Islamic Taliban rulers, who had harboredul-Qaid-a leaders following the Sept. 11 attacks. Most pi the violence is - concentrated in southern or eastern Afghanistan, where insurgents staged several attacks Saturday, but there have been occasional suicide attacks on Afghan security forces end foreign targets in KabuL A suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a con-vo- y of two drive Land Cruisers on a main road : leading out of the capital Saturday, said Ali Shah Paktaiwal, chief of criminal investigations in the city. Interior Ministry .. spokesman Zemerai Bashary said two foreigners and four Afghans were, injured-- He said he did not know the nationals ties of the foreigners or the extent of their injuries. In Kandahar province in the south, insurgents attacked a police patrol with a bomb and then opened, fire with aittov matic weapons and rocket-pro- -' pelled grenades, police officer Umar Khaq said. Eight officers were killed and one was miss- ing, hesaid. ' In Ghazni province in the east, police had killed 24 militants, two of whom were ; believed to be Arabs, over the last 24 hours, local police chief Ali Shah Ahmadzai said Five insurgents were also killed in Badghis province, in the west, since Friday, a police official KABUL, Afghanistan before soldiers tracked them down and killed them, Israeli crashed Friday evening in a recreational vehicle park in Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. There . were 12 passengers and a pilot on board, police and witnesses spoke on condit ion of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the infor' mation.; No group claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on Sunni religious extremists who consider Shiites as heretics ami collaborators with the Americans, Shiites dominate the U.S. backed Iraqi government. ' The blast gouged a small hole in the street, shattered windows in nearby shops and restaurants and set three cars convoy in Afghanistan ' V: PHILADELPHIA -Fe- deral officials showcased an . . Suidde bomber attacks navigation system . . testing new Dm RmM Associated Pro hot air balloon's basket bursts into lames shortly after takeoff when it was about 25 feet off the ground in Surrey, British Colombia, Canada Friday evening. Witnesses said passengers screamed and jumped to the ground The balloon reportedly took off from a grassy field with 12 passengers. The balloon crashed in a trailer park and campground , Injuring as many as 11' people, police and local reports said. Two passengers were killed by the fire.. A : The blast occurred around noon in busy Oruba Square, a major commercial area in the Kazimiyah district of Baghdad about 500 yards from the twin-domshrine of Imam Musa Kadhim, an 8th century Shiite religious leader who is buried there. An official at the neighborhood hospital said seven people were killed and 30 wounded, including two children He policy implications. Grorgia was incorporated into both Gcarist Russia and the Soviet Union, and Moscow ed KHUH NAMRAAuooatsd Prow A young Palestinian relative reacts next to the body of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant, Mohammed Saker, 22, not seen, during his funeral in his family house at the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya, Saturday. Two Palestinian militants infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip early Saturday, attacking an Israeli military position before soldiers tracked them down and killed them, Israeli officials said continues to view the country as part of its legitimate sphere of influence. That attitude infuriates many of Georgias 4.5 million people, and relations have de-teriorated since a government came to power in the capital of Tbilisi in 2003. ' pro-Wester- t a |