Radio glitch fixed; Phoenix Mars Lander ready to dig

Tucson, Ariz.

The Phoenix Mars lander may begin moving its robotic arm today after a communications glitch with an orbiter delayed work two days into the mission.

For most of Tuesday, NASA couldn't send commands to the Phoenix because of a radio glitch, officials said. After the repair, the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter resumed relaying the lander's images of the Martian landscape back to Earth, NASA officials said.

Officials could rely on a second orbiter, Odyssey, to communicate with Phoenix if necessary. "I suspect it's really a nonissue, and it's just a slight delay," said lead scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.

Scientists expect to send commands to Phoenix today to tell the lander to begin unstowing its robotic arm, which will dig into the soil as part of the effort to study whether the site could have supported primitive life.

Jackson, Miss.

At least 7 hurt as train, truck collide

An Amtrak passenger train collided with a garbage truck on a rural stretch of central Mississippi track Tuesday, injuring at least seven people, authorities said.

A fire erupted after the collision, authorities said, damaging the engine. The train's final car, which was empty, left the track, south of Jackson.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said there were 96 passengers and 11 Amtrak employees on the southbound city of New Orleans train that left Chicago on Monday night. "Two of the injured were waste management employees and five were from the train," said Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn.

A University of Mississippi Medical Center spokeswoman said two people were in critical condition and one was in fair condition. She didn't know which of the patients had been on the train or in the garbage truck.

The remaining passengers were to be taken to their destinations by bus, Magliari said.

Jarratt, Va.

Clemency rejected; Virginian executed

A man whose lawyers claimed he was mentally disabled has been executed for killing a convenience-store owner in Virginia.

Kevin Green, 31, was pronounced dead Tuesday night in the first execution in Virginia in nearly two years. Green's execution by injection was also the third in the United States since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in April.

Green was convicted of the 1998 killing of Patricia Vaughan. The U.S. Supreme Court, a federal judge and the state's governor each refused Tuesday to halt the execution.

Chicago

Study suggests better stroke therapy

Preventive use of antidepressants slashes the depression rate of stroke patients by more than half and could help them live years longer, a study out Tuesday suggests.

It's the first randomized, controlled research to show that treatment for depression for stroke victims who haven't displayed symptoms of depression can lead to significantly fewer becoming depressed within a year.

That may improve survival. Evidence suggests that being depressed after a stroke triples the odds of dying up to 10 years later, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

In the study of 149 patients, one-third got the antidepressant Lexapro, one-third participated in problem-solving therapy and the rest received sugar pills. After a year, 22 percent who took placebos were depressed compared with 9 percent given antidepressants and 12 percent who attended therapy.

The study, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, was paid for by the mental-health institute.

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Migrants die in dash for U.S.

Police responding to reports of a capsized speedboat discovered the bodies of four people believed to be Haitian migrants in bloody, shark-infested waters between Florida and the Bahamas, authorities said Tuesday.

Sharks devoured one of the bodies in front of rescuers. The amount of blood near the 27-foot boat suggests there were other victims whose bodies were not recovered, Bahamas police spokesman Basil Rahming said.

The capsized boat, found Sunday about 13 miles west of Grand Bahama island, was apparently aiming for the U.S. coast before it capsized, Rahming said.

Also

A federal judge in Virginia refused to toss out a bribery indictment against U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who said his alleged misdeeds were technically more akin to influence peddling than bribery.

Seattle Times news services