Toronto: Strike paralyzes city

With rotting garbage piling up in the streets and public services suspended, health concerns grew Friday as the largest strike by city workers in Canadian history continued in Toronto.

The walkout by 23,500 municipal workers also is threatening to tarnish the image of Canada’s largest city as a clean tourist destination.

More than 50 people have been charged with illegal dumping as the city struggles to keep the situation under control.

City employees who handle garbage and other outdoor services walked off the job 10 days ago, leaving rubbish to rot, swimming pools closed and parks untended.

They were joined Thursday by Toronto’s indoor municipal workers, which means city-run museums, galleries and daycare centers are closed, building and parking permits are unavailable and restaurants will not undergo health inspections.

The workers say they are striking over job security. They’re afraid of losing their livelihoods if the city privatizes public services.

Algeria: Bomb kills 35 on holiday

A wave of explosions marred Algeria’s independence day celebrations Friday, with the most deadly blast ripping through a crowded open-air market outside the capital, killing at least 35 people and injuring dozens.

The market blast in the town of Larba, nearly 15 miles southeast of Algiers, was the worst attack in more than two years in this North African nation, which is battling a 10-year Muslim insurgency. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

A second bomb at a cemetery honoring war veterans injured one person, while another injured four soldiers, reports said.

The attacks came as Algerians celebrate the 40th anniversary of independence from France, won after a brutal seven-year war.

Moscow: Space agency proposes putting crew on Mars

Russian space officials proposed an ambitious project on Friday to send a six-person team to Mars around the year 2015, a trip that would mark a milestone in space travel and international cooperation.

Russia’s space program hopes to work closely with NASA and the European Space Agency to build two spaceships capable of taking a crew to Mars, supporting them on the planet for up to two months and safely bringing them home, said Nikolai Anfimov, head of the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building.

The roughly 440-day trip is expected to cost about $20 billion, with Russia suggesting it would contribute 30 percent.

NASA officials have not mentioned any such project and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Germany: Workers gather pieces from midair collision

Workers used chain saws to cut fir trees from around part of a crumpled fuselage Friday, starting the laborious task of gathering wreckage from two planes that collided near the German-Swiss border, killing 71 people.

While attention has focused on whether Swiss air traffic controllers gave the pilots enough warning to avoid one another, investigators also will be looking at the debris for clues that could help piece together the cause of Monday night’s crash.

The pieces are scattered in an area 20 miles long amid forests and cornfields on the north shore of Lake Constance.

Also Friday, relatives of the 45 Russian schoolchildren killed in the crash returned to the central Russian region of Bashkortostan after a visit to the site, and were offered their first compensation payments from local officials.

For each victim, families will receive $4,700. Their children had been headed to a vacation in Spain.

New Zealand: Saddam’s stepson admits visa mistake

Saddam Hussein’s stepson, being held in Florida for immigration violations, has admitted he made an error in his application for an entry visa to the United States, officials in New Zealand said Friday.

The Iraqi leader’s stepson, Mohammed Nour al-Din Saffi, a citizen of New Zealand, now accepts he will be deported from the United States after failing to get the proper visa to cover his flight training program, New Zealand Foreign Ministry spokesman Brad Tattersfield told The Associated Press.

Saffi, a 36-year-old engineer with the national airline, Air New Zealand, was enrolled for a pilot recertification course but entered the U.S. on a tourist visa. He was planning to study at a flight school believed by the FBI to have been used by one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Saffi was arrested Wednesday by immigration and FBI officials in Florida.