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CAPE CANAVERAL: Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel will exit the space Shuttle Atlantis Thursday morning for the first of five space walks to upgrade Hubble. Astronauts will replace the telescope's 15-year-old workhorse camera with one that sees deeper into the universe. The new camera is the size of a baby grand piano. The old camera will be displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.This space walk should take about six-and-a-half hours and includes replacing a computer data device that broke down last year. Atlantis grabbed Hubble Wednesday and shuttle commander Scott Altman said the two spacewalkers were ``salivating over the telescope.''

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Jordan on Thursday for talks with King Abdullah II ahead of his visit to the United States next week, an Israeli official told.Netanyahu flew into Jordan in the surprise visit early on Thursday, he said. Next week the hawkish premier will hold talks with President Barack Obama on May 18, his first since being sworn in late March.

KABUL: Overnight fighting between Afghan police and insurgents in southern Afghanistan left 11 militants dead, officials said. Meanwhile, a NATO pilot was injured after his jet crashed following take off in the same region. Insurgents attacked the police post in Paktika province Wednesday evening and fighting raged for several hours, said Gen. Dawlat Khan, the provincial police chief. Eventually, international forces called in an air strike to help the officers. Eleven militants but no police were killed in the fighting, he said.In the southern Kandahar province, meanwhile, a British jet crashed on take off Thursday due to mechanical failure, said Lt. Cmdr Christopher Hall, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. The pilot was wounded after ejecting from the aircraft in Kandahar airfield, he said. ``There were no other passengers on board. At present we are not aware of any other casualties,'' Hall said.In another incident, police officers were again the target of an attack Thursda...

NEW DELHI: India's top court Thursday ordered charges dropped against Varun Gandhi, an estranged member of the Nehru-Gandhi political clan, for inciting religious hatred while election campaigning.Gandhi, 29, had been on parole for a month following his arrest under the stringent National Security Act by the Uttar Pradesh state government in March.He was taken into custody after being filmed telling supporters at an election rally that he would "cut the heads of Muslims"."The state government shall forthwith withdraw the detention order against Varun Gandhi under the NSA (National Security Act)," ruled a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, according to the India’s official news agency.The court had initially ordered Gandhi's release on April 16 on the condition he refrain from making any speeches that could inflame communal tensions in Hindu-majority India.A great-grandson of India's first premier Jawaharlal Nehru, Varun Gandh...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Afghanistan on Thursday agreed to improve the border control system, import 1000MW of electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with an estimated cost of $750 million and establish rail links to boost regional trade.In a joint declaration issued at the end of a two-day moot on Regional Economic Cooperation on Construction of Afghanistan (RECCA), the Technical Working Group on Transit and Trade Facilitation recommended that the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) negotiation process should be completed by December 2009.Addressing a joint press conference along with Afghanistanís Minister for Economics Jalil Shamas, Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar said that the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA) regional project of importing 1,000MW of electricity and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project would be completed with technical and financial support of the international financial institutions (IFI...

CAPE CANAVERAL: After months of delay, the space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts embarked on a risky mission Monday to breathe new life into the Hubble Space Telescope. The stakes are high. Hubble is 19 years old with two broken cameras and a host of other systems in need of replacement or upgrades. Atlantis is on the fifth and final mission to overhaul the iconic space telescope. "Particularly on this mission, the final mission, we're going for broke," said David Leckrone, senior project scientist for Hubble. "We've set the bar extraordinarily high for ourselves." The mission carries a price tag of $1.1 billion. NASA and the European Space Agency have spent $10 billion on Hubble since the orbiting observatory's conception and launch in 1990. "We're ready to go give Hubble a hug," said veteran Hubble repairman John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist-turned-astronaut making his third trip to the space telescope. "I hope Hubble's...

NEW DELHI: India's legion of political parties positioned themselves to form new alliances Thursday as preliminary exit polls from the national election indicated that no party won anything close to a majority in Parliament.An unwieldy coalition will almost certainly form the next government and could usher in an era of tortured administration. The results of the monthlong election are to be announced Saturday.Politicians are expected to be busy during the next several days negotiating alliances, making new friends and betraying old ones in exchange for plum ministries and other totems of power."New friendships, new groupings and new polarization will emerge after May 16," said Chandrababu Naidu, president of a south Indian party that hopes to come to power in the state of Andhra Pradesh. "Do not get carried away by surveys or rumors that are being spread by political parties," he told supporters, according to the Times of India.Naidu said he would travel to New...

NEW DELHI: Indian authorities demolished the home of "Slumdog Millionaire" child actor Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail.Despite the hit movie's mega-millions in box-office receipts, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail's life changed little after he returned home to Mumbai, India's, Garib Nagar.Even the roof over the real-life slum dweller's head was taken away as Indian authorities tore down the shanty where Ismail's family lived.Authorities said the home and about 20 others around it were illegally built.Senior Inspector Rahim Sheikh told media that the shanties were brought down as part of a municipal drive to clear encroachments on public land. Bulldozers leveled the slum built on a municipal garden, said Sheikh, who is in charge of the locality in Mumbai where Ismail lived.Ismail said his family was given no notice of the demolition and did not have time to remove their belongings. But, they said, they plan to return and rebuild.

JODHPUR: A Russian-made Indian fighter jet crashed in western India on Friday, injuring seven people on the ground, after the pilot bailed out safely, police said. The MiG-27 pilot ejected over a village in Rajasthan state but seven members of a family working in a field were injured by falling debris, police superintendent Sharad Kaviraj told foreign news agency. The plane was on a routine sortie when it went down in the village of Salawas, 42 kilometers (26 miles) from the city of Jodhpur, he said. The Indian air force, the world's fourth largest, has been plagued by crashes, particularly of its Russian-made MiGs.

MUMBAI: Madhuri Dixit turns 42 today and she plans to celebrate her birthday in a quiet way with her kids in the US, while her husband is away. There won’t be any big party for the former Bollywood diva today. The actress will reportedly accompany her elder son Arin for a school visit to a museum and she will miss her husband who generally surprises her with gifts on birthday.

SYEDNEY: An Australian man has saved a kangaroo from drowning in shark-infested waters by using his surfboard to rescue the exhausted animal. In a story that could only come from Queensland, Neil McCallum was on an early morning walk with his son on a Gold Coast tourist beach when a young kangaroo hopped past the pair, bounded into the surf and started swimming out to sea.Mindful that two hammerhead sharks had been spotted in the area in the past few days, Mr McCallum, 48, decided to keep an eye on the adventurous marsupial.However, it wasn't long before the animal started to struggle in the waves. Mr McCallum realised the kangaroo had become stuck in a dangerous rip current and was pulled being about 200 yards offshore."A guy came up and said: 'Gee your dog's a long way out'," he told Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper. "I said: 'That's not a dog, that's a kangaroo'."Mr McCallum quickly ran home to fetch his surfboard and wake hi...