Deaths in Moscow Put Pressure on Officials

MOSCOW—Antonina Babenko, who <a href="http://www.coachhandbagsmart.com/">coach

handbags</a>
survived World War II on a Belarussian battle front, spent her final days in a sweltering Moscow apartment,

struggling against a choking smog that rolled in through open windows.
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The 86-year-old Soviet army intelligence veteran collapsed on Friday, when contaminants in the city's air

were five times the acceptable norm, and died the next day in a hospital, her niece said Tuesday. The cause

was listed as a heart attack.

By official <a href="http://www.coachhandbagsmart.com/">coach handbags outlet</a> count, 52

people have died nationwide, outside big cities, as a direct result of forest fires. As bodies piled up in

morgues, authorities declined to say how many deaths could be linked indirectly to the twin crises of heat

and fires, feeding rumors of a coverup.

After Mr. Seltsovsky gave his estimated death toll Monday at a televised meeting of the city council, his

federal counterpart, Health Minister Tatyana Golikova, called it "bewildering" and dismissed it as

unofficial.

The average <a href="http://www.coachhandbagsmart.com/">coach shoes</a> daily death toll in

Moscow last July was 307, according to the Moscow civil registry office. Mr. Seltsovsky said the average

daily death toll "during normal times" is 360 to 380, in a city of about 11 million people. He said the

city's morgues are filling up, with 1,300 of the 1,500 slots taken.

Those left behind hang wet towels inside their Soviet-era tower-block apartments and take cold showers. They

complain of breathing difficulties, stinging eyes and severe depression.

"They <a href="http://www.coachhandbagsmart.com/">coach outlet</a>
keep asking, 'When is it all going to end?' " said Larisa Romana, a psychologist serving one of the

community centers."Most people who come to the center are old…. All I can do is give them a gentle pat on

the shoulder and say, 'Soon, I hope.' "

HELWAN, Egypt coach handbags â€” The observatory director, Salah M. Mahmoud, squinted at the smog gathering over the distant Nile.Curious Egyptians look through telescopes atop a hill at the Egyptian National Research Institute of Astronomy coach handbags outlet and Geophysics following official efforts to view the new moon on Aug. 10 in Helwan, Egypt. His deputy, Ahmed Fathy, concurred with a sigh, â€œIâ€™m afraid weâ€™re not going to see anything tonight.â€ The two Egyptian physicists on Tuesday night had a delicate mission: They were charged with providing the scientific imprimatur to the start of the holiest time for Muslims worldwide, the lunar month of Ramadan. Egypt plays a major role in this ritual because it is the seat of Al Azhar, the worldâ€™s most prominent Sunni Muslim institution. According to the coach shoes Koran, Ramadan, a month of fasting and prayer, begins on the first night that the crescent moon is visible to the naked eye. For centuries, clerics and laymen jostled to spot the Ramadan moon first and often differed. An area with cloudy skies or a different longitude and latitude might declare Ramadan a day or even two later than the rest of the Islamic world. The observatoryâ€™s coach outlet telescope is too powerful for this sort of thing, so the staff lugged two reflective telescopes to the parking lot facing west. Below a sharp dun-colored bluff stretched the brick and cement factories of Helwan.Mr. Fathy pointed the larger of the two telescopes, a white double-barreled apparatus about the size of a car axle, eight degrees south of the sunâ€™s trajectory, toward the spot where he knew the Ramadan moon would be lurking.

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