Picture News
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Reuters - Wed Aug 10, 3:35 PM ET
Stun guns, like the Taser pictured here, could soon be facing a more exacting foe -- the electric bullet. File photo from October 29, 2004 shows the TASER X-Rail Mounting System, which attaches TASER X26 to a Rifle through a Picatinny Rail. PRNewsFoto/Reuters (PRNewsFoto/Reuters) -
AFP/File - Wed Aug 10, 3:56 PM ET
Firefighters get set to try to extinguish a wildfire in Serra da Estrela National Park on August 8. Firefighters in drought-hit Portugal reported no wildfires for the first time in more than 10 days as cooler temperatures and light rain fell on large parts of the country.(AFP/File/Francisco Leong) -
AFP-NASA/File - Wed Aug 10, 3:57 PM ET
Image taken by cameras on board the Cassini Orbiter spacecraft and released by NASA shows the Earth's Moon. A US company associated with the Russian Space Agency hopes to send tourists to circle the moon, perhaps as soon as 2008.(AFP-NASA/File) -
AFP/NASA-HO/File - Wed Aug 10, 5:42 PM ET
The encapsulated Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) nears the top of the Vertical Integration Facility on Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in this NASA handout image. NASA said it would go ahead with the launch of a Mars orbiter after inspecting equipment on the rocket that will send it on its way.(AFP/NASA-HO/File) -
Canadian Press - Wed Aug 10, 5:45 PM ET
Researcher Benjamin Bonnefoy at a quarry in Pune, India in April 2005. It shows one of the lava flows in the Deccan Trap, an area that contains about one million square kilometres of lava. New research suggests that the duration of that period of volcanism was short and intense enough to have altered earth's climate, perhaps leading to the demise of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. (CP PHOTO/ Courtesy of Anne-Lise Chenet/ IPGP) -
AFP/File - Wed Aug 10, 6:16 PM ET
Clouds settle in over the Vehicle Assembly Building at sunrise at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Discovery astronauts have held an emotional reunion with their families as NASA sought to counter doubts about the future of the space shuttle programme(AFP/File/Robert Sullivan) -
AFP/Getty Images/File - Wed Aug 10, 7:23 PM ET
Cheryl Ruchert watches a 20,000 hectare (32,000 acre) wildfire 08 August 2005 near Pomeroy, Washington. Firefighters battled a wildfire that has devoured more than 41,000 acres (16,592 hectares) of forest and ranch land and destroyed 35 homes in the state of Washington, officials said(AFP/Getty Images/File) -
AFP/File - Wed Aug 10, 8:10 PM ET
Tourists refresh themselves in the water of a fountain in Piazza Venezia in Rome, June 2005. Summer temperatures have risen sharply in most west European capital cities over the past 30 years, adding to evidence of the accelerating impact of climate change, the environmental group WWF said.(AFP/File/Vincenzo Pinto) -
HAZY EMERGENCY: The air pollution index on Thursday in Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital, was 337, one and a half times the hazardous limit. -- AP -
AFP - Thu Aug 11, 2:35 AM ET
Royal Malaysian police constable Roslan Ramli(R) puts on a face mask before traffic control duty in downtown Kuala Lumpur. The opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) said Malaysians were 'furious and worried' about the pollution caused by fires in Indonesia and that it would mount a protest at the Indonesian embassy on Friday as well as a public rally on Sunday(AFP/Tengku Bahar) -
AFP - Thu Aug 11, 7:16 AM ET
Boats are barely visible in dense haze in Port Klang, near Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia declared a state of emergency in towns on its west coast as smoke from forest fires raging in Indonesia smothered parts of the country, pushing pollution levels dangerously high.(AFP/Tengku Bahar) -
AFP - Thu Aug 11, 7:16 AM ET
A postal worker delivers mail while wearing a face mask to avoid breathing in dense haze in the township of Klang, near Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia declared a state of emergency in towns on its west coast as smoke from forest fires raging in Indonesia smothered parts of the country, pushing pollution levels dangerously high.(AFP/Tengku Bahar) -
Tragedy en route to a holiday
Part of the Tunisian plane that crashed-landed in the sea near Sicily island on Saturday is lifted out of the water. It was leaving Bari in southern Italy for the Tunisian resort of Djerba when it tried to make an emergency landing. Thirteen out of the 39 people on board were killed. -- AFP -
Reuters - Thu Aug 11, 9:19 AM ET
Salmon swim north into Arctic seas, locusts plague northern Italy and two heat-loving bee-eater birds nest in a hedge in Britain. Signs of global warming fed by greenhouse gases produced by human activity, or just summertime oddities? A swarm of pink locusts flies on a beach near Corralejo, on the Spanish Canary Island of Fuerteventura, in this November 29, 2004 file photo. (Carlos Guevara/Reuters) -
Bird's eye view
Photographers gather around the water pit during the men's 3000m steeplechase heats at the 10th IAAF World Athletics Championships in Helsinki, Finland, on Sunday. The championships end on Aug 14. -- AFP -
AFP/NASA VIDEO - Thu Aug 11, 9:32 AM ET
This NASA video image shows liquid oxygen venting from a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it sits ready for launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA has delayed the launch for 24 hours, citing an 'anomaly.'(AFP/NASA VIDEO) -
Garbage overload
A man scavenges for reusable materials among flotsam trapped in Manila's Pasig River on Sunday. The Filipino capital is in crisis over garbage. The city of 12 million is expected to generate 70 million tonnes of solid waste in the next three decades but does not have the necessary set-up to collect and dispose of it properly. -- AFP -
Canadian Press - Thu Aug 11,10:05 AM ET
A brown dog tick. (AP Photo/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) -
Canadian Press - Thu Aug 11,10:56 AM ET
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter sits atop the Atlas V launch vehicle at the pad at Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday. (AP Photo/NASA) -
Reuters - Thu Aug 11,10:55 AM ET
Technicians work on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it is displayed to the press at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, July 20, 2005. NASA on Thursday postponed the launch of its next Mars probe due to a problem with sensors on the spacecraft's Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket. The MRO science instruments and cameras will aim to provide the most detailed study of the Martian surface and the planet's atmosphere ever conducted by an orbiting Mars spacecraft. (Joe Skipper/Reuters) -
Reuters - Thu Aug 11,11:47 AM ET
NASA postponed the launch of its next Mars probe due to a problem with sensors on the spacecraft's Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket. Liftoff of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was rescheduled for Friday between 7:43 and 9:43 a.m. EDT. The rocket sits on launch pad 41 after liftoff was scrubbed, in Cape Canaveral, August 11, 2005. (Charles W Luzier/Reuters) -
Sign of the times
A fallen tree makes up a sign put up by protesters in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil on Tuesday. Last year, the Amazon lost 26,130 sq km of trees, an area nearly the size of Belgium. Environmentalists estimate as much as 20 per cent of the trees have been cut down by ranchers, loggers, farmers and developers. -- AP -
Reuters - Thu Aug 11,12:19 PM ET
Young men in the village of Kotahblia in Ivory Coast's cocoa belt scoop beans into hessian sacks, November 20, 2002, which will then be shipped to port. The Dutch government and a UK-based industry body have donated 1.4 million euros ($1.74 million) to the world's first ever study of cocoa epigenetics -- how the environment influences the plant's genes and how this changes over a tree's lifetime and under the effects of stresses such as disease and drought. (Luc Gnago/Reuters) -
Battling the haze
A policeman dons a face mask in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. Malaysia said it would declare a state of emergency that would shut down offices, schools and factories if air quality reaches a critically hazardous level.. -- AFP -
Celebrating independence
The city hall building in Seoul is covered with 3,600 national flags on Wednesday. The decoration is part of the city's Aug 15 preparations to mark 60 years since the country's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II. -- AFP