World in brief

Uranium exports to Tehran denied

Bolivia on Tuesday denied supplying uranium to Iran for its nuclear program, saying it has never produced the key ingredient for nuclear energy and weapons. Mining Minister Luis Alberto Echazu dismissed the allegation in a secret Israeli government report, saying “there isn’t even a geological study [of uranium deposits], much less export” of uranium to another country.

Mission to double space station crew

Three astronauts set to make history by doubling the permanent population of the international space station got a go-ahead Tuesday for today’s launch from Russia’s remote space complex in Kazakhstan. Severe winds and a report of a journalist being diagnosed with swine flu had raised last-minute concerns that the flight by Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and Belgian Frank De Winne might be cancelled.

Blackouts planned to conserve energy

Cubans are in for an especially hot summer under an energy saving plan that could shut off air conditioners at work and require Saturday-morning blackouts at home. The plan, circulated Tuesday among government offices and state companies, also calls for large-scale vacations for government workers.

State official among dead in bombing

A roadside bomb struck a U.S. convoy in western Iraq, killing three Americans, including a senior State Department official, U.S. officials said Tuesday. The blast killed Terence Barnich, 56, of Chicago, the deputy director of the State Department’s Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad, as well as a U.S. soldier and a civilian contractor as their convoy left a construction site near Fallujah on Monday.

3 soldiers, 3 civilians die in suicide attack

A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-rigged car into a military convoy Tuesday, killing three U.S. soldiers and three Afghan civilians in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, a stronghold of insurgents loyal to warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Opposition leader cleared to campaign

Pakistan’s top court on Tuesday lifted a ban that has kept popular opposition leader Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections, paving the way for his return to parliament and possibly becoming prime minister for a third time. Sharif is key to Western allies’ hopes that moderate political parties will unite to fight the Islamic extremists who are destabilizing the nuclear-armed country and threatening the success of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan.

Cancer medication erases fingerprints

When a cancer patient from Singapore traveled to the U.S. last year, immigration officials discovered an unusual side effect of his medication: missing fingerprints. The 62-year-old man was taking capecitabine, or Xeloda, to treat head and neck cancer, and the drug had caused so much redness and peeling on his fingers that he had no prints, according to the case published Wednesday in the Annals of Oncology. Capecitabine is routinely given to patients with head, neck and kidney cancers as well as lymphomas and leukemias. Doctors said very few temporarily lose their fingerprints, but it does happen.