CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida) - NASA is counting down toward the weekend launch of space shuttle Endeavour.

The countdown clocks began ticking Wednesday morning.

Endeavour is slated to blast off Saturday on a space station construction mission.

MOSCOW - RUSSIA will rebuild its Soviet-era network of polar stations and use its icebreaker fleet to help support its claim to the vast resources of the Arctic, the man who led a mission to plant a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed said Wednesday.

Artur Chilingarov, a famed polar scientist who was recently appointed the Kremlin's point man for Arctic issues, said Russia will gather data and resubmit its claim to the United Nations that an underwater mountain range crossing the polar region is part of Russia's continental shelf.

BELGRADE (Serbia) - RUSSIA agreed Wednesday to take 3 metric tons of spent fuel from a closed Serbian nuclear reactor to ensure the radioactive waste does not end up in terrorist hands, officials said.

Thousands of fuel rods are now stored in poorly guarded storage areas just east of Belgrade. The rods contain radioactive material that could potentially be used in a bomb.