The New Nation - Internet Edition

WASHINGTON: Despite funding uncertainty, NASA is on track to return humans to the moon by 2020 and set up a lunar outpost to serve as a springboard to explore Mars, officials said Monday. "Our job is to build towns on the moon and eventually put tire prints on Mars," NASA's Rick Gilbrech told reporters here, one year after the US space agency unveiled an ambitious plan to site a solar-powered, manned outpost on the south pole of the moon.

Weather disasters on rise

NUSA DUA (Indonesia): The death toll from storms, floods and other extreme weather events rose in 2006, although the economic cost was just a fraction of that in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina, a report issued here Tuesday said. A total of 953 such events occurred in 2006, after 716 in 2005 and 718 in 2004, according to the document issued by German environment group Germanwatch based on data supplied by reinsurance giant Munich Re.

Fujimori claims innocence

LIMA: Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori shouted his innocence on charges he ordered killings in a "dirty war" against rebels during his rule in the 1990s, as his trial for alleged human rights violations began Monday. "I declare myself innocent," he said in a fiery outburst in court. "I don't accept the charges against met..I never ordered the death of anybody," he said.