Moscow  - Texan space tourist Richard Garriott returned to firm ground Friday in a Russian Soyuz capsule that carried him and two Russian cosmonauts back from space.

The capsule with Richard Garriott, a computer games designer and son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, touched down safely around 0330 GMT at the Baikonour base on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Garriott paid 30 million dollars to follow in his father's footsteps.

Stockholm - Doctors at a Swedish hospital said Friday they have successfully conducted surgery to fit a Swedish patient with a temporary artificial heart.

The operation - the first of its kind in the Nordic region - was conducted October 15 at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, in western Sweden.

The 31-year-old male patient was reported to be in stable condition, but remained in intensive care, said Dr Asa Haraldsson, a member of the team that conducted the operation.

Dr Ulf Kjellman, who performed the surgery, said both sides of the patient's heart had been failing. He added the patient had not been responding to treatment and other vital organs were threatened without the procedure.

Washington - Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman and once a close confidant of President George W Bush, has said he will vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on November 4.

McClellan, who has since fallen out with Bush after sharply criticizing the president in his memoirs this spring, said Obama was best placed to change the way Washington does business, according to excerpts of a CNN interview to be broadcast on Saturday.

McClellan served as White House press secretary from 2003 to 2006. He had been a part of Bush's media team since his days as governor of Texas in the 1990s.

Reykjavik  - The government of Iceland said Friday it has reached an agreement with a visiting team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a 2-billion-dollar economic rescue plan.

The IMF team was to return to Washington to seek approval from the IMF's management, the government said. If approved, Reykjavik could immediately draw on 830 million dollars under the two-year arrangement.

New York - The international finance crisis claimed another US bank on Friday, as regional bank National City was taken over by rival PNC Financial Services, in a merger that will create the nation