Brad Davis and the Dynamo had reason to celebrate during Sunday's 3-1 win over Kansas City. (T. Shea/Getty Images)

The Houston Dynamo and Columbus Crew both extended their leads atop their respective conferences as Week 24 of the Major League Soccer season wrapped up over the weekend.

The Dynamo won for the fifth consecutive home game, getting a pair of second-half goals from Nate Jaqua on their way to a 3-1 victory against the Kansas City Wizards, extending their advantage atop the Western Conference to seven points. And the Crew won the marquee match of the weekend, Guillermo Barros Schelotto scoring one goal and setting up two as Columbus rolled over the New England Revolution 4-0 to raise their margin to five points in the East.

Chivas USA moved into playoff position in the West, winning the back half of their home-and-home series with Toronto FC, 3-1. They are now trailed by just two points by the San Jose Earthquakes, who moved into fourth place in the division with a 2-1 win against D.C. United.

In the East, the Chicago Fire moved into a tie for second with New England after their 1-0 victory against the New York Red Bulls. There are now four teams tied with 26 points at the foot of the MLS overall table, after the Colorado Rapids knocked off FC Dallas 1-0 on MLS Primetime Thursday and the Los Angeles Galaxy came back in a 2-2 draw with Real Salt lake.

At Robertson Stadium, the Dynamo had lost just once in league play since mid-June. winning of five of their previous six contests. The Wizards had won just once in their previous seven matches.

On a hot, steamy afternoon, the Dynamo drew first blood. Kei Kamara chased down a long flick-on to the left of goal, and after holding up the ball, laid it back for Brad Davis to smash home first-time under the crossbar from just inside the area (28). For Davis, it was his second goal to go with six assists over the past seven league matches.

After the break, the Dynamo blew the game open with a brace from Jaqua. First, Kamara corralled a long pass on the right flank and sent Stuart Holden racing into the area, and the young midfielder slid a pass to Jaqua to bang home in the 57th minute. The two assists on the afternoon for Kamara marked the first two of his MLS career.

Then 12 minutes later, Jaqua struck again. Craig Waibel launched a perfect through ball from the midfield stripe and sent the big striker in alone on goal, and he finished with aplomb for his fourth goal in seven league games since his return to the league.

The Wizards got a late consolation goal when Davy Arnaud charged down a clearance attempt by Wade Barrett, fought off the Dynamo fullback to reach the deflection and powered the ball home from close range, his second goal in as many games.

At Crew Stadium, the Crew and Revolution came together after having traded the top two spots in the Eastern Conference back and forth for a few weeks. The Crew were winners of three in a row heading in, while the Revolution had a win and two ties after losing back-to-back games in league play.

It took the Crew nearly the entire first half to break through, but they finally did in the 40th minute. Robbie Rogers sent in a rolling cross from the left, and while it was knocked away from Steven Lenhart, Guillermo Barros Schelotto followed up to hammer the ball into the goal for his sixth goal on the campaign.

The Crew doubled their lead in stoppage time just before the break. Schelotto swung in a freekick from along the left touchline and Andy Iro rose up to nod home, his first career goal as a professional.

The Crew put the game away with two goals from substitute Jason Garey. First, in the 67th minute, Schelotto went racing forward at the Revs defense, held up to allow Garey to come back onside, then floated a masterful chip that Garey chested down before lashing home past Matt Reis. For Schelotto, it was his league-leading 18th assist on the campaign, the seventh time in a game he'd recorded two assists, including each of the Crew's last four games.

Then in the 90th minute, Garey was sprung by Pat Noonan, making his first appearance against his former club, and banged home his third league goal on the season. For the match, the Crew outshot the Revolution 27-4, including a 14-1 advantage in shots on target.

At BMO Field, the teams were meeting in the back end of a home-and-home series after Chivas USA won 2-1 in Carson the week before. It was Chivas USA's first league victory after a six-game winless run, while TFC had won just once in their previous 10 games.

Despite missing nine starters to international duty, Toronto FC took the lead in the 30th minute. Chad Barrett sent a cross from the left flank, finding Rohan Ricketts beyond the far post, and he knocked the ball back into the goalmouth for Tyler Rosenlund to tap home for his first professional goal.

Chivas USA pulled level 11 minutes later. Ante Razov found Daniel Paladini at the edge of the area, and after holding up to elude a defender racing past, Paladini drove home a rising blast for his first professional goal.

The task then got increasingly harder for TFC when, in first-half stoppage time, their only regular defender in the lineup, Marco Velez, was sent off along with Chivas USA striker Alecko Eskandarian after an altercation between the two.

After the break, Chivas pulled ahead in the 58th minute when Jonathan Bornstein took a pass from Razov in the area and slotted home past TFC goalkeeper Brian Edwards for his first league goal in more than a year. The Red-and-White then completed the triumph deep into stoppage time when Razov collected a long clearance and strolled in alone on goal.

At Buck Shaw Stadium, the Earthquakes came in riding a seven-game unbeaten run since early in July, winners of three of their last four, while United were coming off a midweek victory in the U.S. Open Cup Final, breaking a string of alternating wins and losses in a draw with New York the week before in league play.

Against injury-hit United, the Quakes took the lead in the 18th minute. Darren Huckerby won the ball on the left side and centering for Arturo Alvarez, who steamed in to lash a left-footed shot inside the right post for his third goal in five games since coming to San Jose.

Huckerby doubled the Earthquakes' lead after the break. Eric Denton's long ball freed Scott Sealy down the left flank, and he found Huckerby coming in from behind, who drove home a shot inside the left post for his fourth goal in six games since joining the league.

United pulled a goal 14 minutes later, as Rod Dyachenko intercepted the ball and fed Santino Quaranta, who skipped through a pair of defenders before curling a shot home past Quakes 'keeper Joe Cannon, but D.C. could get no closer.

At Toyota Park, the Fire had lost two of their last three after a seven-game unbeaten run, while the Red Bulls were one of the hottest teams in the league, with three wins and three draws in their last six contests.

The game's lone goal came in the 36th minute when Red Bulls defender Diego Jimenez won the ball in the area, but sent his clearance right in front of goal, where Stephen King intercepted and slid it home for his second goal of the season. It was the first goal allowed by the Red Bulls in 380 minutes; earlier, Jimenez had headed a Mike Banner shot off the line.

Jon Busch was called upon to make two saves in goal in recording his league-leading 10th shutout for the Fire, who have allowed just 18 goals in 23 league games.

At The Home Depot Center, the Galaxy were looking to give Bruce Arena his first win in his third game in charge of the club, while putting an end to a 10-game winless run dating back to mid-June. Real had rebounded from back-to-back losses in their last match, a Rocky Mountain Cup win against rival Colorado.

RSL appeared to have taken the lead after six minutes when Fabian Espindola nodded a Kyle Beckerman blast home, but the goal was eventually ruled out for offside. In celebrating his apparent success, Espindola injured himself and needed to be substituted.

With Espindola still off the field, the Galaxy took the lead. Edson Buddle broke down the RSL defense on the left and sent a half-shot, half-cross aimed toward the far post that slipped past goalkeeper Nick Rimando right to Bryan Jordan, who knocked it into the empty net.

But RSL drew even in the 21st minute. Chris Wingert flighted a cross from the right flank that Kenny Deuchar flicked on, and Yura Movsisyan got on the end to drive home from inside the box.

Then in the 52nd minute, Real pulled ahead. Will Johnson, making his first start since signing with the club, played a one-two with Movsisyan, receiving the return pass inside the area and bending a wonderful shot off the inside of the right post for his second career goal.

Yet the Galaxy came back with the leveler in the 69th minute. A cross from the left sailed over everything, but Jordan tracked it down and sent back in front of goal. The ball deflected off Alan Gordon to Edson Buddle, who settled, turned and fired, beating Rimando for his 13th goal on the season.

At Pizza Hut Park, both teams came in needing a victory. The Rapids had won just once in their last seven games and had been shut out in four of their last five, while FC Dallas has two losses and a draw after winning back-to-back contests.

The game's lone goal came on the hour mark. Terry Cooke swung in a corner from the right flank and Mike Petke shook his marker and found himself completely open, calmly nodding the ball back inside the near post for his first goal on the campaign and the match-winner.

SEATTLE -- Call it eight the hard way. The Orioles jumped out to their highest-scoring inning of the year without the aid of a home run on Friday night, an eight-run fifth that paced them to a 10-5 win over the Mariners. Every Oriole reached base in the rally, and eight of the nine starters had at least one hit before Seattle could turn them away.

All of the runs scored with two outs, and five of them were charged to Seattle starter Jarrod Washburn (7-6). Baltimore (52-56) got three straight singles to start things off, and Ramon Hernandez doubled in one run. Washburn walked one batter, and then left Jay Payton cleared the bases with a triple. Three more hits ensued, scoring three more runs.

It was Baltimore's most runs in an inning since July 22 of the 2006 season, when it scored nine against Tampa Bay. And it was more than enough for Garrett Olson, who had held the Mariners to one hit through the first four innings. Olson (8-5) used the advantage to spin 4 1/3 more solid innings, marking the first time he'd ever gone deeper than the seventh.

The Orioles hit two long fly balls to the warning track in the second and wound up leaving the bases loaded. Seattle (41-68) didn't even push a runner into scoring position until the fifth, when Olson got two fly balls to strand runners at first and second. The Mariners hit into a double play in the sixth, and Olson escaped the seventh with runners at the corners.

Olson came back out for the ninth, but he was unable to finish the job. The left-hander allowed the Mariners to load the bases, and Baltimore went to reliever Lance Cormier. Seattle wound up scoring five runs before the Orioles closed out the game.

Designated hitter Aubrey Huff, who went 1-for-3, left the game early with a head contusion. Huff apparently hit his head on the concrete runway from the dugout to the clubhouse, and Baltimore pulled him early in favor of Luke Scott.

Swiss eclipsed by clouds

Bad weather scuppered many people's chances of catching a glimpse of the eagerly-awaited partial eclipse of the sun in Switzerland.

Astronomers and enthusiasts flocked to observatories to witness the phenomenon, but the best views were to be had in parts of western, northeastern and the Italian-speaking part of the country.

While most of Europe saw a partial eclipse of the sun, a total one was witnessed in the northern hemisphere.

The stellar spectacle - when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth - began in Canada, tracked across Greenland and Siberia, before ending in China. Thousands of people watched.

The last total eclipse of the sun in central Europe took place in 1999. The next in Switzerland is scheduled for 2081.

By Shobhana Chandra

Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. unemployment rate rose to the highest level in more than four years as employers cut jobs again in July, increasing the threat of a deeper economic slowdown.

Payrolls fell by 51,000, less than forecast, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 5.7 percent, from 5.5 percent the prior month. As recently as April, it was 5 percent. A separate report showed that manufacturing stagnated in July as companies were hit by rising raw-materials costs and slower spending.

``This is further evidence the economy is in a recession, probably a shallow recession,'' said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, referring to rising joblessness. ``It will be a major drag on consumer spending.''

The last time unemployment climbed so much in three months was at the end of the last U.S. recession in 2001. Payroll cuts combined with decreasing property values, stricter lending rules and near-record energy prices to send consumer confidence levels close to the weakest in 16 years in July.

Cutbacks at UAL Corp. and Starbucks Corp. signal firings are spreading beyond builders and manufacturers as raw-materials costs soar. General Motors Corp., which today announced a second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion, may eliminate about 5,000 U.S. jobs by year-end, people familiar with the plan said this week.

Payroll declines spanned transportation, retailing, manufacturing and temporary services industries, the Labor figures showed.

Treasuries, Stocks

Stocks dropped and Treasuries were little changed. The Standard & Poor's 500 Stock Index fell 0.6 percent at 4:14 p.m. in New York, to 1,260.3. Yields on benchmark 10-year notes were at 3.93 percent from 3.95 percent late yesterday.

The Institute for Supply Management's factory index fell to 50, a higher reading than forecast, from 50.2 in June, the Tempe, Arizona-based group said today. A reading of 50 is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. The Commerce Department reported construction spending dropped 0.4 percent in June.

Today's unemployment figures reinforce the case for the Federal Reserve to hold off on any interest-rate increase until next year, economists said.

The Fed's ``hands are tied, there is nothing they can do with regard to this,'' said Kathleen Stephansen, director of global economics at Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. in New York in an interview with Bloomberg Radio.

Revisions added 26,000 to payroll figures previously reported for May and June. Economists had projected payrolls would drop by 75,000 after a 62,000 decline the prior month, according to the median of 80 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. The jobless rate was forecast to rise to 5.6 percent.

Losses So Far

The July cuts bring the total drop in payrolls so far this year to 463,000.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama plans to announce today an emergency economic plan that would impose a windfall profit tax on oil companies to pay for rebate checks of $1,000 to families and $500 to individuals. He also backs a $50 billion stimulus package, including funds for bridge and road maintenance, intended to save 1 million jobs.

Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, criticized Obama for advocating higher taxes. ``There is no surer way to force jobs overseas than to raise taxes,'' McCain said.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of U.S. contractions, tracks payrolls, sales, incomes, production and gross domestic product in making the recession call. The group defines downturns as a ``significant'' decrease in activity over a sustained period of time, and usually takes six to 18 months to make a determination.

Recession Call

The economy shrank at the end of 2007 and grew less than forecast in this year's second quarter, figures from the Commerce Department showed yesterday. Some economists said this indicated the U.S. slipped into a recession late last year.

``The economy is limping along right around zero, slightly positive,'' said former St. Louis Fed President William Poole in a Bloomberg Television interview today.

Fed policy makers will probably keep their benchmark rate at 2 percent when they meet on Aug. 5, futures prices show.

More Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits last week than at any time in over five years, Labor reported yesterday. Consumer confidence surveys have indicated that Americans, growing more pessimistic about job prospects, may trim spending.

Starbucks Cuts

Starbucks, the world's largest chain of coffee shops, this week said it'll cut another 1,000 jobs as sales slump. The Seattle-based company on July 1 announced plans to eliminate as many as 12,000 positions worldwide.

Factory payrolls fell 35,000 after declining by the same amount in June. Economists had forecast a drop of 40,000. The decrease included a drop of 3,000 jobs in auto manufacturing and parts industries.

July announcements at airlines included 7,000 cuts at UAL's United Airlines, and 6,840 at American Airlines parent AMR Corp.

The protracted housing slump and resulting credit crisis were also reflected in today's jobs report. Construction payrolls declined 22,000, the smallest drop since October, after decreasing 49,000. Payrolls at financial firms were unchanged after declining 13,000 the prior month.

Services Jobs

Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, subtracted 5,000 workers, the first decline since March. Retail payrolls decreased by 16,500 after a drop of 6,300.

Government jobs increased by 25,000, the 12th month of gains in public payrolls, after an increase of 43,000.

The average work week shrank to 33.6 hours from 33.7 hours. Average weekly hours worked by production workers were unchanged at 41, and overtime was also unchanged at 3.8 hours. That brought the average weekly earnings up by 22 cents to $606.82 in July.

Workers' average hourly wages rose 6 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $18.06, matching economists' forecasts.

Sealed Air Corp., the maker of Bubble Wrap packaging, said this week it plans to eliminate 900 to 1,000 jobs globally after second-quarter profit fell because of rising costs to make plastics.

``We certainly are facing a challenging environment in 2008,'' Chief Financial Officer David Kelsey said in a July 30 telephone interview.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shobhana Chandra in Washington schandra1@bloomberg.net

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration confirmed yesterday the presence of water on Mars, raising the possibility that the Red Planet could support life.

NASA said on its Web homepage that its robotic space explorer Phoenix released water molecules by melting soil collected from Mars.

“We have water (on Mars). It’s the first time for us to touch and taste water on Mars,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona who spearheaded the research.

NASA will extend the research period five weeks to the end of September to search for organisms on Martian soil.

The Phoenix landed on Mars in May and has carried out experiments since. Researchers detected water while boiling soil in the oven built in the Phoenix. When the temperature reached the melting point for ice, water molecules were released.

Scientists working on NASA's Phoenix Mars lander have confirmed that there is water ice on the Red Planet. But they still have not found any evidence of life on Mars. VOA's Art Chimes reports

Phoenix's telescoping arm scoops up soil samples

The Phoenix Mars Missionwas launched a year ago to look for water and the complex organic molecules that could be signs that life once existed on Mars.

Water had already been identified from a distance, by the Mars-orbiting Odyssey spacecraft, and Phoenix had photographed what was presumed to be melting ice at the landing site.

Phoenix landed on Mars two months ago. It is equipped with a telescoping arm to enable it to scoop up soil samples so they can be analyzed by the spacecraft's onboard instruments.

Although Phoenix is apparently sitting on top of a layer of ice just a few centimeters below the surface, the clumpy quality of the Martian soil made it difficult to retrieve a sample.

Finally, though, on Wednesday, Phoenix scientist William Boyton said they were able to analyze a soil sample and confirmed that it contained frozen water.

"We've now finally touched it and tasted it. That's one thing that hasn't been done before and I'd like to say from my standpoint, it tastes very fine, I'm very glad to be in this position"

Water, of course, is essential to life as we know it, but project scientist Peter Smith said they've found more than just water.

"We're also finding nutrients - sodium, potassium, magnesium, fluorides - things that we find in our own bodies and are definitely nutrients that are important for life. However, we have yet to discover organic materials."

Smith said it will be for future Mars missions to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars.

In the meantime, NASA has extended the Phoenix mission for another month, through the end of September.

Ivins, 62, died Tuesday in an apparent suicide in Maryland. Federal authorities had informed his lawyer that criminal charges related to the mailings would be filed.

As a co-inventor of a new anthrax vaccine, Ivins was among those in line to collect patent royalties if the product had come to market, according to an executive familiar with the matter.

The product had languished on laboratory shelves until the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailings, after which federal officials raced to stockpile vaccines and antidotes against potential biological terrorism.

A San Francisco-area biotechnology company, VaxGen, won a federal contract worth $877.5 million to provide batches of the new vaccine. The contract was the first awarded under legislation promoted by President Bush, called Project BioShield.

One executive who was familiar with the matter said that, as a condition of its purchasing the vaccine from the Army, VaxGen had agreed to share sales-related proceeds with the inventors.

"Some proportion would have been shared with the inventors," said the executive, who spoke anonymously because of contractual confidentiality. "Ivins would have stood to make tens of thousands of dollars, but not millions."

Two years after the contract was awarded to VaxGen, the pact was terminated when the company could not deliver its batches on schedule. The termination meant that VaxGen was not paid, nor were Ivins and his co-inventors.

Ivins also was listed as one of two inventors of another biodefense-related product that has won federal sponsorship.

According to their still-pending application for a U.S. patent, the inventors hoped the additive would bolster certain vaccines' capacity to prevent infections "from bioterrorism agents."

From December 2002 to December 2003, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency committed $12 million for additional testing of the experimental additive. That research money was designated for Coley Pharmaceutical Group, which was developing the additive. The company was acquired last fall by Pfizer Corp.

Samuel C. Miller, a Georgetown Law Center professor who is a patent-law expert, said that the extent to which Ivins stood to gain from the two issued patents or the one that remains pending hinges on the terms of the related contracts.

"It will depend on the business arrangements that are in place," Miller said.

On Friday, colleagues and critics of Ivins pondered the mystery within the mystery: If Ivins did it, why?

One former senior official with Ivins' employer, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, whom the FBI questioned at length about Ivins, said he believed his former colleague wanted more attention -- and resources -- shifted to biological defense.

"It had to have been a motive," said the former official, who suspects that Ivins was the culprit. "I don't think he ever intended to kill anybody. He just wanted to prove 'Look, this is possible.' He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those envelopes and kill those postal workers."

Of the five people killed by the mailings, two worked for the U.S. Postal Service in the Washington, D.C., area; one was a photo editor in Palm Beach County, Fla.; another was a hospital supply provider in New York City; and the last known victim was a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut.

Several letters were addressed to prominent people -- two U.S. senators and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, for example.

For nearly 30 years, Ivins served far from the limelight, a PhD microbiologist who drew a civil servant's pay while handling some of the most deadly pathogens on Earth -- live spores of anthrax.