SAO PAULO: England expects Lewis Hamilton to become Formula One's youngest world champion in Brazil on Sunday at the same circuit where last year he buckled under pressure and blew his chance. Brazil hopes Ferrari's Felipe Massa can somehow upset the odds and, with his home Interlagos crowd roaring him on, be crowned the country's first champion since the late Ayrton Senna in 1991. After last year's astonishing finale, with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen clawing back a seven-point deficit to prevent Hamilton becoming the first rookie to take the title, anything could happen. The only certainty is there will be a first-time champion. Hamilton, 23, is back with another seven-point advantage while Massa must win and hope the hand of fate favours him. All the McLaren driver has to do, to become Britain's first champion since Damon Hill in 1996 and his team's first since Mika Hakkinen in 1999, is finish fifth. That proved beyond him at Interlagos last year, despite starting alongside Massa on the front row, when he struggled to seventh place. This time Formula One's first black driver is determined to make amends and show he has learned from the past by playing it safe. "I remember last year, going into the final race, I was really on the back foot," he told Britain's Observer newspaper. "I felt the whole country, the whole world ... I just felt this huge weight on my shoulders. I went in and made several mistakes and we dropped back. This year, because I've experienced it, I'm much better prepared."
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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