Three astronauts blast off for International Space Station in Russian rocket

Baikonur, Kazakhstan: A Russian rocket carrying two Russians and an American blasted off on Tuesday for the International Space Station, an AFP correspondent reported.

Russia's Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin and NASA's Kevin Ford blasted off in a Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft on schedule at 1051 GMT into a clear blue sky from Russia's cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.