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An idea that took flight A hot air balloon in the shape of a beetle takes off Sunday during the Montgolfiade festival, celebrating the lives of the hot air balloon pioneers the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne, in Geneva, Switzerland.

AP photo

MAPLETON, IOWA
Tornado devastates town

A large tornado flattened a grain elevator and destroyed homes and buildings on its weekend rampage through the small western Iowa town of Mapleton. Authorities reported no serious injuries.

Thomas Mohrhauser said the tornado appeared to be about a quarter-mile wide when it cut a northwest path through town Saturday evening.

Mayor Fred Standa said one side of town got hit worse than another, but overall he thought about 60 percent had been damaged. He estimated about 20 percent was “almost flat.”

SANAA, Yemen
President called to resign

A regional bloc of oil-rich Arab nations along the Gulf, including powerful Saudi Arabia, called on Yemen’s president Sunday to give up power as part of a deal with the protest movement demanding for his ouster after 32 years, a Gulf diplomat said.

Keeping up the pressure, tens of thousands of protesters marched in the capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, a day after renewed clashes between demonstrators and security forces there. Witnesses said police fired a barrage of tear gas late Saturday and that many demonstrators suffered breathing problems.

The statement, by foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in the Saudi capital, was effectively a call for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, something he has refused to do. The bloc repeated an offer to mediate between Saleh and his opponents, said the diplomat, who requested anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The plan offered by the bloc would have Saleh resign in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

WARSAW, Poland
Crash anniversary marked

Poland on Sunday relived the deep pain that engulfed the nation a year ago with a day of prayers and other ceremonies marking the anniversary of the plane crash in Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski and many other prominent leaders.

Church bells rang out across Poland to mark the exact time, 8:41 a.m., a year ago that the plane crashed, killing all 96 people aboard.

People filled churches and cemeteries, and a large crowd waving Polish flags gathered in front of the presidential palace, where Kaczynski and his wife Maria lived before their deaths in the crash near Smolensk, Russia.

PITTSBURGH
Drilling critic quits post

A western Pennsylvania university researcher who has been a vocal critic of gas drilling says he is leaving his post because the university doesn’t want him speaking publicly about environmental issues.

Conrad “Dan” Volz is director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Volz says drinking water is being contaminated by drilling and is among the critics of “fracking”

He told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he was not fired and has not been under pressure to resign.

Volz says drinking water is being contaminated by drilling on the Marcellus shale and is among the critics of “fracking” in which water, sand and chemicals are used to free the gas.