FLORIDA: The Mars rover Spirit is stuck in soft soil while driving along a low plateau.NASA said on Tuesday that engineers have temporarily stopped sending driving commands to Spirit while they diagnose the problem. The six-wheeled Spirit has five working wheels. Its right-front wheel stopped functioning three years ago. The remaining five wheels sunk halfway into the Martian ground during a recent series of backward drives. Spirit and its twin Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004. Last month, Spirit suffered bouts of amnesia, but has since recovered.
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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