Quebec Fires:Environment Canada warned of reduced air quality, especially in Nova Scotia’s western region, for yesterday morning and evening. Quebec’s forest fire fighting agency reported 52 fires burning as of mid-afternoon on Saturday. Firefighters from Quebec, New Brunswick, New Hampshire and Maine have been battling the blazes.

Those with asthma or other respiratory conditions may experience coughing and shortness of breath during prolonged periods outdoors or while performing heavy exercise.

Paramedics spokesman J.P. Trottier said Monday morning that the smokey haze would certainly affect residents, but that the paramedic service hadn't yet seen a higher volume of respiratory-related calls.

He said those most vulnerable to breathing problems generally know what to do when air quality is low.

The paramedic service will, however, be monitoring the situation throughout the day, Trottier said.

The Ottawa fire department was kept busy responding to ‘multiple calls from clear across the city’ about the odour early Monday. A fire dispatcher said the calls were coming from Limoges to as far as Chesterville. By 8 a.m., dispatchers had answered about 100 calls about the smoke and calls were still coming in.

Jacques Delasablonniere, spokesperson for Environment Canada, said the smoke can be attributed to the Quebec fires, which are centred about 350 kilometres northeast of Ottawa.

He said that over the weekend, the smoke had been blown away from Montreal and toward Vermont, but with the changing winds overnight, the smoke has blown back toward Montreal and across the Ottawa Valley.

He said the winds are only travelling at 10 to 20 km/h.

"But that's enough to bring the smoke in the region," he said.

By this evening, the winds will change again to blow the smoke north and clear of the Ottawa region, he said.

Residents there have complained of heavy smoke turning the skies yellow and the sun red and ash floating down onto their city, said Marcel Trudel, a spokesman with Sopfeu, Quebec’s forest fire protection agency.

The fires have forced about 2,500 from their homes.

As of Sunday afternoon, 52 fires ranging in size from one to 40,000 hectares were burning in the province, bringing to 128 the number of fires Sopfeu has fought in the last week. So far, 90,000 hectares have been hit.

In 2002, smoke from fires in the Lac St. Jean region of Quebec darkened the sky over Ottawa and Montreal and as far south as Washington, D.C.

The smoke led the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to advise residents of 20 counties, especially those with respiratory conditions, to stay indoors until this afternoon.

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Real Clear Politics,Bagram Attack:Taliban attacked on an Air base in Afghanistan, about 30 miles north of capital Kabul. Seven Taliban militants were killed & five NATO troops injured.Taliban has claimed responsibility and said that it used 20 suicide bombers for the mission. NATO officials however, dispute the number.

The attack started at around 4:00 to 4:30 in the morning (and) it was concluded at around 10:30 to 11:00 am,” the last six hours comprising “light and sporadic” gunfire, Clementson told AFP.

In Tuesday’s attack, five military vehicles were damaged & more than 12 civilian vehicles, including a bus, were caught in the blast.

Cnn News,    World News,Cnn:LONDON : World stock markets and the euro rebounded Friday as fears about an outright default by Greece eased amid mounting talk that the country will soon get crucial funding from its partners in the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed up 58.28 points, or 1 percent, to 5,770.98 while Germany's DAX rose 77.87 points, or 1.3 percent, to 6,249.70. The CAC-40 in France was 72.08 points, or 1.8 percent, higher at 4,050.54.

And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 53.88 points, or 0.5 percent, at 10,980.95 around midday New York time while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 5.16 points, or 0.4 percent, at 1,191.60.

The focus all round the world has been on Greece again, a day after the country's cost of borrowing went through the roof. Investors now think that Greece will get bailed out even though the country's public debt agency said it will raise money by auctioning euro1.2 billion in 26- and 52-week treasury bills next week.

"In Europe, stocks have risen on the back of speculation that the troubled Greek economy may be bailed out, with Greek bonds experiencing a rally for the first time in two weeks," said Philip Gillett, a sales trader at IG Index.

Fitch Ratings, for one, thinks that the four-month long Greek debt crisis is coming to a head. Though it credited the Greek government in its attempts at sorting out its crisis, the ratings agency said managing the crisis is now increasingly out of the country's control.

Fitch, one of the world's big three ratings agency, took a swipe at Greece's partners in the eurozone for failing to provide enough clarity about a promised loan facility, in conjunction with the IMF, as it slashed its credit rating on the country's debt because of mounting concerns about the government's ability to get a handle on its debt mountain.

Fitch lowered its rating by two notches BBB-. The downgrade means that Greek debt remains investment grade — but only just. Another downgrade would make Greece's debt junk status — an ignominious position for a country using the euro.

Fitch said external financial support is likely to be forthcoming, but that greater clarity on back-stop financial support in the form of an explicit IMF programme "is likely to be required to shore up market confidence in the face of still substantial near-term financing needs."

Simon Derrick, an analyst at Bank of New York Mellon, also thinks that it's not a question of whether Greece will trigger the loan package agreed by the eurozone and the IMF last month "but rather a when and at what price."

Greece faces a number of refinancing hurdles over the coming weeks — it is thought to require euro11.5 billion worth of new funding by the end of next month — and if it fails to clear any one of them, then Derrick thinks Prime Minister George Papandreou will have no option but to request the money.

The plan, if enacted, would include bilateral loans from willing eurozone countries and aid from the International Monetary Fund, but it remains unclear at what price the loans would come, what would trigger their issuance, and whether the IMF would require more stringent austerity measures.

Alongside stocks, the euro won some respite Friday from the less panicky bond market environment — by late afternoon London time, the euro was trading 1 percent higher at $1.3486.

Earlier in Asia, stocks edged higher too, with Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng index leading the advance. It closed 1.6 percent higher while China's main Shanghai index increased 0.9 percent, Malaysia inched up 0.4 percent and Japan ended 0.3 percent higher.

South Korea's Kospi index led decliners, slipping 0.5 percent while Indonesia fell 0.2 percent.

Benchmark crude for May delivery was down 51 cents to $84.88 a barrel.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski Killed In Plane Crash:Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 96, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the Soviet-era Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Russia's Emergency Ministry said there were 96 dead, 88 part of a Polish state delegation. Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up for the roughly 1 1/2-hour flight from Warsaw's main airport.

"We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," Paszkowski said. "We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed."

The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11 a.m. (0700 GMT), also said no one survived.

State news channel Rossiya-24 showed footage from the crash site, with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded with fog. A tail fin with the red and white national colors of Poland stuck up from the debris.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," regional governor Sergei Anufriev said on Rossiya-24. "Nobody has survived the disaster."

The presidential Tu-154 was at least 20 years old. Polish officials have long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said they lacked the funds. According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service.

The presidential plane was fully overhauled in December in Russia, the general director of the Aviakor plant in Samara told Rossiya-24. The plant repaired the plane's three engines, retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment and updated the interior, Alexei Gusev said. He said there could be no doubts that the plane was flightworthy.

Polish-Russian relations had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders of some 22,000 Polish officers, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest near Katyn was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Rossiya-24 showed hundreds of people around the Katyn monument, many holding Polish flags, some weeping.

President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences and promised to work closely with Poland in investigating the crash.

"Russia shares the grief and mourning of Poland," Medvedev said in a statement posted on the Kremlin Web site. "Please accept the most sincere condolences to the Polish people, words of compassion and support to relatives and friends of those who perished."

Putin has been put in charge of a commission investigating the crash, the Kremlin said.

In Warsaw, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet and the national flag was lowered to half-staff at the presidential palace, where people gathered to lay flowers and light candles.

Black ribbons appeared in some windows in the Polish capital.

Poland's president is commander in chief of its armed forces but the position's domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. Kaczynski, 60, became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year's presidential vote.

The nationalist conservative was the twin brother of Poland's opposition leader, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Kaczynski's wife, Maria, was an economist. They had a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters.

Kaczynski had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk's governing Civic Platform party.

According to the constitution, Komorowski would take over presidential duties.

Klaus Bachmann, a professor of politics at Wroclaw University, said the president "wasn't very popular and it was quite obvious that he would lose the upcoming elections."

"The open question is what will Kaczynski's party and his brother do; he might decide to run for president himself, he might also consider to withdraw from politics at all because he had a very very close link to his brother and I can't imagine how much shocked he must be."

Poland, a nation of 38 million people, is by far the largest of the 10 formerly communist countries that have joined the European Union in recent years.

Last year, Poland was the only EU nation to avoid recession and posted economic growth of 1.7 percent.

It has become a firm U.S. ally in the region since the fall of communism — a stance that crosses party lines.

The country sent troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and recently boosted its contingent in Afghanistan to some 2,600 soldiers.

U.S. Patriot missiles are expected to be deployed in Poland this year. That was a Polish condition for a 2008 deal — backed by both Kaczynski and Tusk — to host long-range missile defense interceptors.

The deal, which was struck by the Bush administration, angered Russia and was later reconfigured under President Barack Obama's administration.

Under the Obama plan, Poland would host a different type of missile defense interceptors as part of a more mobile system and at a later date, probably not until 2018.

Kaczynski is the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

Plane Crash Austin,Echelon Building Austin:The seven-story Echelon Building Austin, TX was struck by a small plane just as the 9/11 terrorist attack on Twin Towers. The investigations are going on, to establish the cause and source of the crash rigorously.

As per the latest news from ground zero, two people were gravely injured with the attack and were taken to hospital immediately, apart from the two there are others still unaccounted for. The plane crashed into Echelon Building Austin Texas was stolen from the airport and was a small four seater plane.

The plane was flown by Joe Stack who had some personal grudges against IRS services and to take the revenge he took this step. The pilot Joe Stack is presumed dead and it is known that the he before executing this crash, burned his own house along with little daughter and his wife.

Investigators are looking into the reason of the Austin plane crash deeply and are making sure that there are no terrorist strings attached to the crash. Meanwhile complete protection and security alerts has been sent all over and the security agencies are making sure nothing ill happens due to the crash. Also there hasn’t been any terrorist involvement established in the crash till now.