2 killed in explosion

2 killed in explosion

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A roadside bomb blast killed an Iraqi television cameraman and his driver as the crew worked on a report for the upcoming anniversary of one of the most stunning attacks blamed on Sunni extremists, the station reported Wednesday.

Alaa Abdul-Karim al-Fartoosi, 29, was part of an Al-Forat television team collecting reports to mark the February 2006 bombing that damaged the gold-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra — an attack that set off some of Iraq’s worst sectarian bloodshed.

The roadside blast Tuesday struck the journalists’ car in Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad and near the Samarra site, said Haider Kadhum, news editor of Al-Forat television.

Developer: Stern took
photos of Smith’s son

NASSAU, Bahamas— A former companion of Anna Nicole Smith’s said Wednesday that her attorney-turned-boyfriend Howard K. Stern took several photographs of the collapsed body of her late 20-year-old son for profit.

G. Ben Thompson, a South Carolina developer, testified that Stern took about four pictures of Daniel Smith’s body after he died Sept. 10, 2006, while visiting his celebrity mother three days after she gave birth to her daughter in a Bahamian hospital.

Stern said the photographs “might be worth some money one day,” according to Thompson, who was embroiled in an ownership dispute with Stern over the Nassau mansion where he lived with Anna Nicole before her Feb. 8 death of a prescription drug overdose.

Preparing for funeral

SALT LAKE CITY — Services for Mormon church president Gordon B. Hinckley this week could draw tens of thousands, a logistical challenge for officials looking to accommodate a White House candidate, countless other dignitaries and legions of the faithful.

The church’s estimates for the two days of public viewing followed by Saturday’s funeral range from 50,000 to 160,000.

The services for Hinckley involve the wrinkle of security and seating for White House hopeful Mitt Romney, the Mormon ex-governor of Massachusetts whose candidacy has dramatically elevated interest in the Salt Lake City-based church. If Romney attends as planned, he’ll have national media and security in tow.

New news on Mercury

WASHINGTON — The first pictures from the unseen side of Mercury reveal the wrinkles of a shrinking, aging planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped like a spider.

Some of the 1,213 photos taken by NASA’s Messenger probe and unveiled Wednesday help support the case that ancient volcanoes dot Mercury and that it is shrinking as it gets older, forming wrinkle-like ridges. But other images are surprising and puzzling.

The spidery shape captured in a photo is “unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere in the solar system,” said mission chief scientist Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The image shows what looks like a large crater with faint lines radiating out from it.

More fires flare in Texas

FORT WORTH, Texas — A day after wildfires burned almost 30 square miles across Texas, a few more blazes sprang up Wednesday while victims sifted through the charred remnants of their homes.

Gary Karr spent the day moving debris from his blackened mobile home moving business near Reno, west of Fort Worth. The building sustained about $100,000 in damage but was not destroyed, although much of his equipment and hundreds of tires were.

His was one of several dozen homes or businesses, mostly in Parker and Wise counties, in the path of 18,700 acres of wildfires fueled by winds of more than 50 mph in some places.

With conditions still ripe for fires, the National Weather Service issued a warning for about 60 percent of the state.

Baptists hold event

ATLANTA — Former President Carter said he hoped this week’s three-day meeting of Baptists across racial and theological lines could inspire other churches to end their internal divisions.

“If we can do it, maybe all other Christians can do it as well,” Carter said Wednesday at the start of the gathering. More than 10,000 participants are expected.

NASA sets takeoff date

MIAMI — Mission managers Wednesday tentatively cleared Atlantis for its long-delayed flight to the International Space Station, the first of six shuttle liftoffs on NASA’s ambitious 2008 schedule.

Blastoff is scheduled for Feb. 7 at 2:47 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Central Florida.

Combined dispatches