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MOSCOW – The world’s first solar sail spacecraft (search) crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday’s takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday. The Cosmos 1 (search) vehicle, a joint U.S.-Russian project, was intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make …

WASHINGTON – The House was poised to give the Pentagon an additional $45 billion for wars next year, even as public support for combat in Iraq wanes and lawmakers press for an exit strategy. While President Bush has not asked yet for more war funds, lawmakers included money for military …

ATLANTA – For two decades, Ralph Reed (search) made his mark as a squeaky-clean political operator and a driving force behind the Christian right. Now he’s trying to get himself into elected office amid allegations he raked in money from the same gambling interests he once called “a cancer on …

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The government has been looking at the possibility of terrorists targeting food destined for school cafeterias, a federal food safety official said Monday. “The school lunch program is particularly vulnerable,” said Carol Maczka, an administrator within the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety Inspection Service (search). Maczka, speaking …

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration, seeking to tap into one of the world’s fastest-growing food industries, is proposing to allow fish farming up to 200 miles off the nation’s coasts. Citing pilot projects off New Hampshire, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the administration said Tuesday it was sending a bill to …

The U.N. Oil-for-Food program is being investigated for lack of oversight and severe mismanagement, among other claims. Here is a quick look at what the program is and various elements of the ongoing investigation. 1.What was the Oil-for-Food program? After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the U.N. Security Council imposed …

BATON ROUGE, La. – Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (search), the singer and guitarist who built a 50-year career playing blues, country, jazz and Cajun music, died Saturday in his hometown of Orange, Texas, where he had gone to escape Hurricane Katrina (search). He was 81. Brown, who had been battling lung …

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Mexico (search), coming to its powerful northern neighbor’s aid for the second time this month, promised to set up shelters for any Americans left homeless by Hurricane Rita. Nuevo Laredo Mayor Daniel Pena ordered police officers to guide the evacuees, most of them Mexican-Americans who avoided …

PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – Pembroke Pines (search) police on Thursday captured a man they say may have raped a woman at a bus stop. The suspect reportedly followed the woman off a Broward County (search) Transit bus before allegedly raping her. Local television shows police and search dogs surrounding the …

The health perks of eating your vegetables may include a lower risk of lung cancer, new research shows. The finding, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, isn’t written in stone. More work is needed to check the results, write Matthew Schabath, PhD, and colleagues. Schabath works at …