h Up, up in the air

h Up, up in the air
HAMILTON, N.J. -- Hot-air balloonist Eleanor Robinson of York, Pa., holds a control rope as she descends to land during the balloon festival at Veterans Park. The event Saturday was Hamilton's first balloon festival.
Six Brazilians chargedin $70M bank robbery
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Federal prosecutors have charged six men accused of stealing $70 million from Brazil's Central Bank last August in one of the world's biggest bank robberies, news media reported Saturday.
Those charged Friday include three men who were arrested shortly after the robbery, and another three who are still at large, the local Agencia Estado news service said.
The reported thieves spent three months tunneling under a busy city avenue in Fortaleza, a city about 1,500 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, to break into the Central Bank vault and steal the equivalent of $70 million in Brazilian currency, the real.
More than $2 million in cash was recovered shortly after the robbery in three pickup trucks that were on a vehicle transporter truck located several hundred miles from the ransacked Central Bank vault.
Afghans urge to turn outfor landmark election
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Officials urged Afghans on Saturday to defy Taliban insurgents and powerful warlords by turning out in force for Sunday's landmark parliamentary elections despite a wave of rebel attacks that killed 12 more people.
Security forces reported thwarting an attempt to blow up a big dam in the south and three other bomb plots, underlining the threat to a ballot aimed at bolstering Afghanistan's fragile democracy and marginalizing insurgents after decades of bloodshed.
Top U.N. envoy Jean Arnault said militants failed to disrupt poll preparations with a surge of fighting that has killed more than 1,200 people the past six months, including seven candidates and four election workers.
Ticket sold in N.J. winsMega Millions jackpot
ATLANTA -- A single player has won the grand prize from the latest Mega Millions lotto drawing.
Lottery officials said the winning ticket from Friday night's drawing -- worth $250 million -- was sold in Rutherford, N.J.
In addition to the grand prize winner, 23 players matched all five numbers but not the Mega Ball number. They will receive second prizes of $250,000 each.
Another 119 players matched four numbers, plus the Mega Ball number -- good for third prizes of $10,000 each.
The winning numbers from Friday night's drawing were: 5, 16, 41, 46 and 50. The Mega Ball number was 1.
Maryland baby's bodymistakenly cremated
WASHINGTON -- They had planned to bury 20-month-old Akilah Austin on Saturday in a white-and-pink princess dress inside a tiny white coffin with pink ribbons.
The whole family would have been there: her parents, Lisa and Marvin Austin, who had spent countless hours by her hospital bed since she took ill with a genetic heart defect in January. Her aunts, uncles, grandmother and family friends wanted to be there, just as they had been when she was implanted with an artificial Berlin heart, then later with a donor heart.
Luca Vricella and other members of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center's cardiac intensive-care staff had planned to go, to say good-bye to the baby who survived two heart surgeries only to die of pneumonia.
But the funeral plans were dashed after Akilah's parents arrived Friday at the Fleck Funeral Home in Laurel, Md., -- with pink hair bows and nail polish for their daughter -- and were told their baby had been cremated, relatives said.
Funeral director Shawn Wells refused to comment.
Lucille Czechanski, Akilah's aunt, said that the Austins had been told there were two babies in the facility and that the other baby was to have been cremated.
Combined dispatches