Russia sent the army on Saturday to battle wildfires that have killed at least 28 people and were threatening dozens of towns and villages. Thick smoke and ash slowed firefighting efforts and thousands of people were being evacuated.

Half of the 300 homes in the village of Maslovka, half a day's drive south of Moscow, were reduced to cinders. Stunned locals sifted through the ash for possessions to salvage and people pooled what little food they had — mainly potatoes and carrots — to ensure no one starved.

"This is a catastrophe," Maslovka resident Yevgeniya Yuzhina said as she waited in a hotel lobby in the nearby city of Voronezh filling out a form to receive cash compensation.

All 300 of the army's fire trucks have been dispatched, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said,

Many regions of the country are suffering through their hottest summer since record-keeping began 130 years ago. Officials said Friday over 214,136 acres of parched woodland and peat bog were burning in at least 14 of the country's 83 regions, mainly in western Russia. State television reported Saturday that the death had risen from the last reported figure of 25, without providing details.

"Fire and wind have no days off, so we can't take any days off," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a videoconference with emergency officials, where he announced 3 million rubles ($100,000) would be allocated for each of the 1,200 homes destroyed so far. He pledged that all would eventually be rebuilt.

Yuzhina said her house had been worth half a million rubles more than the amount Putin pledged and her husband, daughter and elderly parents now had no place to go.

The world's third most wanted Nazi suspect was involved in the entire process of killing Jews at the Belzec death camp: from taking victims from trains to pushing them into gas chambers to throwing corpses into mass graves, a German court said Thursday.

Samuel Kunz, an 88-year-old who has lived undisturbed for decades, was indicted last week on charges of involvement in the killing of 430,000 Jews — after a career as an employee in a government ministry and obscurity in a quiet village just outside the former West German capital of Bonn.

On Thursday the court in Bonn that indicted him revealed more details of the charges against him, describing in gruesome detail some of the crimes the suspected former death camp guard allegedly committed in occupied Poland from January 1942 to July 1943.

"The accused was deployed in all areas of the camp," Bonn court spokesman Matthias Nordmeyer told The Associated Press.

Kunz's case only came to the attention recently of prosecutors and the world's major Nazi-hunting organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, when prosecutors were poring through World War II-era documents as they built their case against retired autoworker John Demjanjuk, now being tried in a high-profile case in Munich.

The discovery prompted the Wiesenthal center to list Kunz in April as the world's No. 3 most wanted Nazi due to the fact that he was allegedly involved personally in the killings and to the "enormous scope" of the killings, said the center's chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff.

The court also announced Thursday that Kunz has been charged in a German youth court because he was a minor at the time — meaning he could be brought to trial as an adolescent and face a more lenient sentence.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A passenger jet that officials suspect veered off course in monsoon rains and thick clouds crashed into hills overlooking Pakistan's capital Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board and scattering body parts and twisted metal far and wide.

The head of Pakistan's civil defense body told NBC News that, contrary to earlier reports, no one travelling aboard the Airblue flight from Karachi to Islamabad had survived.

Initial reports suggested that up to five survivors had been pulled from the wreckage after the plane smashed into a heavily wooded hillside during a rainstorm.

"Dead bodies are lying all around," Bin Yameen, a senior Islamabad police official, told Reuters.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire confirmed that at least two American citizens were on board, but he declined to provide any further information on their identities.

The plane left the southern city of Karachi at 7:45 a.m. for a two-hour flight to Islamabad and was trying to land when it lost contact with the control tower, said Pervez George, a civil aviation official. Airblue is a private airline based in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.

The aircraft, an Airbus A321, crashed some 15 kilometers from the airport, scorching a wide stretch of the Margalla Hills, including a section behind Faisal Mosque, one of Islamabad's most prominent landmarks. Twisted metal wreckage hung from trees and lay scattered across the ground. Smoke rose from the scene as helicopters hovered.

An airliner has crashed near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board.

The plane, a domestic flight from Karachi operated by the private company Airblue, came down in hills just north of the city as it was about to land.

There is no word on the cause of the crash. At the time the area was shrouded in fog.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

The air was heavy with a deathly smell of petrol, smoke and charred flesh”

End Quote Zeesha Zafar BBC News, Islamabad

* Smoke, rain and bodies

Pakistani TV showed images of smouldering wreckage on a foggy hillside, with helicopters overhead.

Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the Capital Development Authority, which deals with emergencies, said the crash was "heartbreaking".

"It is a great tragedy, and I confirm it with pain that there are no survivors," he told the Associated Press news agency.

The plane, reported to be an Airbus A321 with 146 passengers and six crew on board, is thought to have left Karachi at 0750 (0350 GMT).
Analysis
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image of Syed Shoaib Hasan Syed Shoaib Hasan BBC News, Karachi

Airblue is the largest of the private airlines which have sprung up in Pakistan in recent years.

The company and civil aviation officials say there was nothing in conversations between the pilot and the Islamabad control tower that suggests anything was wrong.

Although the country's air industry has been booming, critics say standards have not always kept pace with the increase in services.

Pilots complain they are being forced to fly extra hours which they say leads to fatigue, a claim denied by the airlines.

Two Americans were among the victims, a US embassy spokesman said, but gave no further details.

Pakistan's interior ministry initially said at least five survivors had been taken to hospital, but local officials later said those reports were wrong. The flight data recorder has been found.

Recovery operations are being hampered by bad weather and the crash site, on a steep hill, has no roads.

The BBC's Lyse Doucet in Islamabad says helicopters found it hard to land in the midst of heavy fog, and smoke rising from the fire of the wreckage.

Aamir Ali Ahmed, a senior city government official, told Reuters news agency: "It's a very difficult operation because of the rain. Most of the bodies are charred."

Rescue worker Dawar Adnan told Associated Press from the crash site: "I'm seeing only body parts. This is a very horrible scene."

Express 24/7 television journalist Sabur Ali Sayed said: "The plane is totally destroyed, the pieces and parts scattered over a large distance."

It is the deadliest air disaster in Pakistan's history.

Airblue spokesman Raheel Ahmed told reporters that the crash was "an extremely tragic incident", adding that an investigation had been launched.
Airblue
Continue reading the main story
File photo of one of Airblue's A321 planes

* One of Pakistan's most respected airlines
* Operates since 2004 on domestic and international routes
* Uses A320 and A321 aircraft
* Flight 202 is company's first crash

* Key factors for crash probe
* Ordeal of crash relatives

The plane had no history of technical problems, he added.

It was leased by Airblue in January 2006 and had accumulated about 34,000 flight hours.

The BBC's Haroon Rashid in Islamabad saw the plane flying low over the capital.

"I was surprised to see the plane, because the area where I live is called a no-fly zone as it is close to some of Islamabad's most important official buildings, including President House and parliament," he said.

Other witnesses saw the plane flying towards the hills, and shortly after that heard a loud explosion and smoke billowing into the air.

Express 24/7 TV reporter Anjum Rahman said she saw the plane flying over the rooftops of houses where she lives.

"I wondered why the plane wasn't flying higher as it was flying towards the hill. Then within three or four minutes I heard a loud explosion," she told the channel.

Initial reports said the flight had originated in Turkey. But officials later said it was a domestic flight.

A key test to measure pressure inside BP's ruptured Gulf of Mexico well is under way, the company said Thursday.

The test will take from six to 48 hours, and successful results could lead the way for the flow of oil to finally be stopped.

Earlier Thursday, BP replaced a leaking piece of equipment in preparation for the pressure test, which is key to determining whether a new cap can finally seal off oil that has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the last 12 weeks, said Senior Vice President Kent Wells.

BP plans to close off -- one by one -- the valves through which oil can escape, said retired Adm. Thad Allen, the government's response manager. It was in the process of doing that Wednesday when a leak was discovered in the choke line, forcing BP to abandon operations until the line was replaced earlier Thursday



Video: Allen talks progress

Video: Homeless pets in Gulf

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Scientists and engineers will monitor the pressure every six hours and evaluate the situation with the new undersea containment cap put into place earlier this week.

If the pressure readings are satisfactory, the valves on the custom-made stacking containment cap could remain closed, signaling the beginning of the end to the catastrophe that began when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the relentless oil spill.

But if the pressure readings are low, BP will know that oil is seeping out through another part of the well as well, sort of like a leaky garden hose that dribbles out water when you've got your thumb on the nozzle, Allen said.

The cap was not designed to permanently shut in the well -- it was meant to move to a four-vessel containment system and assure redundancy in the event of a hurricane. But Allen said there could be a huge side benefit if the oil can be contained -- a "twofer," as he called it.

Allen said the more permanent solution to the spewing oil remains the two relief wells BP is drilling and expects to have them finished in August.

BP pumped drilling mud into those relief wells to mitigate risks during the pressure testing. The two wells intersect with the Macondo.

Oil recovery was stopped Wednesday ahead of the integrity test but resumed while BP was fixing the problem with the leaking choke line. It will stop again as the testing nears.

Wells said BP collected 537,600 gallons of oil Wednesday. Government scientists estimate between 1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons are flowing into the Gulf every day.

A key question over the pressure tests was whether shutting the well was worth the risk, or whether they might cause fresh damage to the blowout preventer.

A Libyan-backed ship carrying humanitarian goods for Gaza appeared Wednesday to be taking a turn toward Egypt, a move that could avert a showdown between Israeli forces and activists aboard the vessel.

The ship said it is heading toward the Egyptian port of al Arish, Israeli officials familiar with the situation said Wednesday. The location is close to Gaza.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossam Zaki, says the ship is having engine trouble but said it has not officially requested permission to dock.

"We haven't received an official request yet but if we do, we will grant permission," Zaki said.

The Israeli information Wedneday matches what an Israeli official with knowledge of the communications between the Israeli military and the vessel said on Tuesday: The ship's captain had agreed to change course and go to Egypt.

However, Yusuf Sawani, the executive director of the Gadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation, which sent the ship, said Tuesday the vessel would continue to its destination.

Sawani said the aid ship is surrounded by at least eight Israeli navy vessels and has been ordered to either turn back or sail to al Arish. According to Sawani, the ship is moving slowly, but should reach shore Wednesday afternoon.

"We started sailing toward Gaza and Gaza is our target and we hope that every party concerned will come to their senses and realize that this is a humanitarian, peaceful mission," Sawani said Tuesday. "This is not a propaganda stunt."

The aid ship was launched by the Gadhafi Foundation, a charity headed by the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. It set sail from Greece on Saturday carrying 2,000 tons of aid. This is the latest Gaza-bound aid ship attempting to breach an Israeli naval blockade of the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

Israel says it must inspect all goods that enter Gaza so that weapons do not get into the hands of militants. Gaza is run by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement which has said it is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Israel came under fierce international criticism for killing nine people in the course of boarding a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship in May. Israel said the activists on that ship attacked its troops when they boarded the boat.

The Israeli military had said its navy earlier was making "preparations to stop" the latest ship from delivering aid directly to Gaza.

"IDF is monitoring the situation and intend to stop the boat if it insists to go into the Gaza strip," the IDF said. "We see this as a provocation."

The Gadhafi Foundation refers to the ship as the Hope, although it appears to be registered as the MV Amalthea. It is Moldovan-flagged and run by ACA Shipping, based in Greece.

According to the Israeli military, 164 truck loads of goods went into Gaza Tuesday, saying it was more aid than the Libyan ship has on it.

The Israeli assault on the Turkish ship reverberated internationally and shined light on the Gaza blockade.

Israel has resisted demands for an international inquiry into the incident, but an Israeli military investigation was conducted into the boarding of the Mavi Marmara and it criticized some aspects of the operation.

The operation prepared only one course of action and had no backup plan, military commanders were not presented with options other than boarding the ship, and different branches of military intelligence did not coordinate well enough, the report found.

But the report said the commando team that boarded the ship operated properly, with bravery and professionalism, and that the use of live fire was justified.

Vladimir Saint-Louis is glad to be back in business months after January's devastating earthquake in Haiti shut down his large athletic complex in the heart of Port-au-Prince.

Although he was unharmed, his father nearly lost his life when cement blocks fell on his car, injuring and trapping him for hours.

On this particular afternoon six months after the quake, customers worked out at Saint-Louis' main gym, some hitting the weights, others at the Ping-Pong table, a welcome break from all that still plagues Haiti.

Still, just footsteps away, stands a tent city erected by 7,000 homeless Haitians on the complex.

"This is a 400-meter track, and this is my soccer field; it's my land; it's part of the same property," Saint-Louis told CNN.

He said that on the night after the quake, desperate Haitians climbed over collapsed walls and found refuge on his land. At first, it was understandable, he said. But six months later, it's clear he has become frustrated.

"All the government officials we sent letters to, all the letters went unanswered," Saint-Louis said.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says the government is working on a resettlement plan, not only to solve land disputes, but also to provide housing for all displaced. But he says the government's hands are tied until billions of pledged funds for Haiti come through.

"Even if we don't have the money, we should have a calendar," says Bellerive, stressing the need for a disbursement calendar.

And there's also the matter of priority.

"We have to understand that right now, the priority of the government is to protect the population from the next hurricane season," Bellerive said. "Most of our force is going in that direction."

Meanwhile, tent camps, thought to be temporary living arrangements in the aftermath of the quake, have become permanent fixtures all over the capital. More than 1,300 have sprouted -- hot, muddy from the rains, lacking water and proper sanitation, and in some cases breeding grounds for turf wars.

An estimated 1.5 million people are homeless and living in such conditions in Haiti. Many are on private property and the crisis is pitting landowners against the desperate.

At another tent camp pitched on private property, Aline Masselin washes clothes by hand in a plastic basin that sits on a dirt floor. She has lived in this camp since the night of the quake. Her daughter, Alexandra, was born here just weeks later.

Recently, a judge showed up at the site, warning the homeless it was time to go and that the owner was fed up. They missed the deadline to leave, and still they are waiting without a place to go. At a nearby camp, another landowner successfully evicted a group of homeless.

"It was 52 families," said Emmanuel Auguste, showing a lot that once housed quake victims who have now resettled in other camps.

Asked whether there will be a change six months from now, United Nations humanitarian spokesman Imogen Wall was blunt.

"It will take time to get 1.5 million people back into the kind of long-term living arrangements that they want and need," she said.

For Vladimir Saint-Louis -- whose athletic complex once boasted tennis and basketball courts, a soccer field and other recreational areas that have now become squatting areas -- news that this will take even longer does not sit well.

"There's a barbershop. There's a cyber cafe. There's a hotel in one of the tents, where people pay to stay there for the night -- I swear to God," he said.

So far, Saint-Louis has found a way to make peace with the homeless on his land, waiting for a solution to come to salvage his business that's taken a 50 percent hit since it became the site of a tent city.

Asked whether he can keep his business afloat, he replied, "God give the strength. God give me the strength."

A suicide car bomber killed at least 56 people and wounded more than 100 others Friday when his vehicle exploded in a market in Mohmand Agency in Pakistan's tribal region, officials said.

The intended target of the attack was a local government office in the town of Eakah. But the vehicle detonated in a market near the building, said Hayat Khan, a local administration official.

About 20 shops, five houses and the local jail were damaged in the blast.

In the confusion following the attack, various officials provided conflicting death tolls.



Pakistan RELATED TOPICS
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Amjad Ali Khan, chief of Mohmand Agency, said four policemen were among the dead. Maqsood Mahed Khan, a local government official, said three children and two women were killed.

Authorities also believe more victims may be trapped under the rubble of damaged buildings.

Mohmand is one of seven semiautonomous tribal agencies along the 1,500-mile border porous border that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military has been battling insurgents in the area for some time.

On the fifth anniversary of the devastating London bombings, Britain's most senior anti-terror policeman at the time has said that the risk of a repeat attack by extremists is "as high as it has ever been."

The British capital was plunged into chaos on July 7, 2005, when four suicide bombers targeted three subway trains and a bus during the morning rush hour, killing 52 people and wounding hundreds more.

Two weeks later a copycat attack on the city's transport network failed after the bombs misfired causing no casualties. The failed suicide attackers were eventually captured and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Survivors and relatives of those killed in the attacks gathered at a memorial in London's Hyde Park on Wednesday to mark the anniversary. A wreath from Prime Minister David Cameron was laid at the site, bearing the message: "In memory of the victims of terrorism in London on 7 July 2005. They will never be forgotten."

But former policeman Andy Hayman, who was responsible for counter-terrorism in the UK until 2007, says the risk of a similar attack in London remains high.

"That's the reality of it", he told CNN. "Five years down the line we've had other attempted attacks, we've put some people in prison for them, and we're not making the inroads we hoped for with the Muslim community to understand why people are being radicalized.


Video: 7/7 victims remembered 5 years on
Video: Renouncing radical Islam
Gallery: London's terror attacks remembered "So you tell me why we shouldn't be fearful? I think we should be."

John Reid, then Home Secretary, said the four July 7 bombers -- three British males of Pakistani descent and a Jamaican-born man -- were young "radicalized" Muslims whose motivation was "fierce antagonism to perceived injustices by the West against Muslims" and a desire to become martyrs.

It later emerged that two of the bombers, including ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan, were trailed by security services for a year before the attacks, according to a report released last year by the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

Entitled "Could 7/7 have been prevented?" the report said that domestic intelligence service MI5 considered Sidique Khan a "small time fraudster" and "minor criminal" and did not link him to potential attacks within the UK at that time.

Hayman's warning comes despite a £140 million ($212 million) strategy set up in 2007 by the British government to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremists.

"So you tell me why we shouldn't be fearful? I think we should be.

--Andy Hayman
RELATED TOPICS
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"Prevent" involves gathering information about potential offenders at a local level, with cooperation between regional police forces, local authorities, schools, mosques and other community groups.

According to West Yorkshire Police, which polices the region of northern England where the July 7 bombers came from, the intelligence helps to identify young people deemed to be at risk of radicalization. Potential offenders are then given one-to-one "mentoring" sessions to steer them away from extremism.

"We cannot arrest our way out of terrorism," the force's assistant chief constable John Parkinson told the regional Yorkshire Post newspaper.

However counter-terror projects such as Prevent could be at risk after Hayman's successor as Scotland Yard's anti-terror chief, John Yates, warned of impending budget cuts by Britain's new coalition.

According to the UK's Guardian newspaper, Yates told a private gathering of UK police chiefs "eyewatering" cuts of £150 million ($227 million) to the anti-terror budget would endanger the public.

But Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude hit out at Yates' "alarmist" comments. "I'd like to avoid public servants doing this kind of shroud-waving in public," he told the BBC.

"It's going to be pretty important for people who are managing big public services like police forces to focus on cutting out unnecessary costs, driving down costs, being as efficient as they possibly can before they even begin to contemplate talking about alarming the public in this kind of way."

But for one young British Muslim woman, who was herself radicalized after joining extremist group Hizb ut Tahrir at college, seeing the July 7 attacks for herself on television proved to be the high watermark for her radical beliefs.

"I think it was a wake-up call," Hadiya Masieh told CNN. "I was heavily pregnant with my third child when I was in the waiting room of the hospital watching the screen. I just felt like hiding. I wanted to distance myself from those people who created that atrocity."

She and her husband, who also belonged to Hizb ut Tahrir, now work to foster better relations between faiths. In her latest project she helped set up a screening of a movie she hopes will break down barriers. The film, "Arranged," depicts a blossoming friendship between a Muslim woman and an orthodox Jewish woman.

"At the end of the day, if we have an understanding of each other I think this will eradicate any feelings of animosity and hatred."

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday addressed the United Nations for the first time in more than 50 years, saying she has "witnessed great change, much of it for the better" since her previous speech there in 1957.

Later Tuesday, the queen visited ground zero to lay a floral wreath at the site of the September 11, 2001, terror attack. In a separate event in New York, she cut the ribbon to officially open the Garden of Remembrance for British citizens killed in the attack.

The seven-minute speech to the U.N. General Assembly touched on her first visit decades earlier, when she was a young monarch and the United Nations itself was a young organization.

"When I was first here, there were just three United Nations operations overseas," the queen noted. "Now over 120,000 men and women are deployed in 26 missions across the world."

She spoke of the importance of leadership and how critical the role of the United Nations continues to be in upholding human rights in the 21st century.

"You have helped to reduce conflict, you have offered humanitarian assistance to millions of people," she said, adding that the United Nations has been "deeply committed to tackling the effects of poverty in many parts of the world."

Despite such efforts, she said, "so much remains to be done," citing the struggle against terrorism and the response to climate change.

The queen called for special attention to the "risks facing smaller, more vulnerable nations," many of which belong to the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations that she heads.

"I know of no single formula for success," she said. "But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together."

The United Nations "has helped to shape the international response to global dangers," she said, adding that the challenge is to continue to show such leadership without losing sight of "your ongoing work to secure the security, prosperity and dignity of our fellow human beings."

"It is my hope that when judged by future generations, our sincerity, our willingness to take a lead, and our determination to do the right thing will stand the test of time," she said.

However, she added, her speech was not "to reminisce" but instead to focus on the hard work required ahead "if we are truly to be united nations."

In welcoming the queen, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called her "an anchor for our age," noting that her reign spanned decades "from the challenges of the Cold War to the threat of global warming," from "the Beatles to Beckham" and from "the television to Twitter."

"You have become a leading symbol of grace, constancy and dignity," Ban said.

The queen's U.N. speech, which followed a trip to Canada with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, was in her capacity as head of state of 16 U.N. member states -- the United Kingdom, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.