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Traces of explosive found on second plane in Russian aviation disaster

MOSCOW – Russian investigators found explosive residue on the wreckage of the second of two airliners that crashed minutes apart, a security spokesman said Saturday, adding to evidence that terrorists breached security at one of the country’s most up-to-date airports.

The high explosive hexogen was found on the Tu-134 airliner that went down Tuesday south of Moscow, said Sergei Ignatchenko, spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Russia’s domestic security agency.

Traces of the same explosive were found on the Tu-154 jetliner that crashed near Rostov in southwestern Russia, officials said Friday. The two planes took off from the same terminal at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport and went off radar screens within minutes of each other hundreds of miles apart on different routes. All 90 people on board died.

The discoveries pointed to terrorism as the cause of both crashes — suggesting that militants had succeeded in getting bombs past airport security to attack Russia’s civil aviation system, a vital industry in the vast nation.

Even in face of high oil prices, weak job growth, Fed expected to raise rates again

JACKSON, Wyo. — The job market may be in a funk and oil prices may be in the stratosphere, but interest rates probably will climb again in September because the Federal Reserve is confident the economy’s ‘‘soft patch’’ is temporary.

At least that was the prevailing view at a meeting of top central bank officials and their guests at the annual conference put on by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

The main topic of the meeting was the challenge faced by the United States and other countries from a rapidly aging population. Participants also discussed the economic fallout from soaring oil prices.

Members of the interest-rate setting Federal Open Market Committee were guarded in their comments about what may happen at their Sept. 21 meeting. But these Fed board members and regional Fed bank presidents did express confidence about the future of the economy.