Shuttle launch on hold until at least Jan. 24, NASA says
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA on Thursday delayed the flight of space shuttle Atlantis until late January or, more likely, February to replace a suspect connector in the fuel tank. The connector is believed to be responsible for back-to-back launch postponements last month. A program manager said the mission to the international space station is off until at least Jan. 24. “Everything has to go exactly right for us to make the 24th,” he said.
Arkansas: Bus driver charged in fatal wreck
A bus driver involved in a crash that killed four people and injured more than 20 has been charged with four felony counts of negligent homicide after tests showed he had amphetamines in his system, a prosecutor said Thursday. Felix Tapia, 28, of Brownsville, Texas, posted a $50,000 bond after a brief court hearing, a prosecutor in Little Rock said. Tapia could face up to 10 years in prison on each count if convicted, he said.
Hawaii: $2.5 million discrimination award
The world’s largest military contractor will pay a record $2.5 million to a former avionics electrician who claims he was called the N-word, threatened with death and laid off after he reported racism at Lockheed Martin Corp. The settlement between Lockheed and Charles Daniels, filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, was the largest settlement with an individual in a racial discrimination case handled by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Daniels said he was targeted on nearly a daily basis by co-workers while working in South Carolina, Florida, Washington and Hawaii from 1999 to 2001.
New York: Window washer’s amazing survival
Doctors say they have never seen anything like it: A window washer who fell 47 stories from the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper is now awake, talking to his family and expected to walk again. Alcides Moreno, 37, plummeted almost 500 feet in a Dec. 7 scaffolding collapse that killed his brother. Somehow, Moreno lived, and doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center announced Thursday that his recovery has been astonishing.
Weapons cache triggers arrest
Police arrested a man after they found a gigantic cache of weaponry in his home and car that included 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Suwei Chuang, 36, was arrested Wednesday on charges of criminal weapons possession. Police in New York City said the weapons included an AR-15 assault rifle with 18 loaded magazines and a Belgium-made machine gun, along with 40 large combat knives. Some of the ammo was the armor-piercing variety. He also had four bulletproof vests and a half-dozen police-style radios.
Turkey: Smoking ban extended
Parliament approved a law Thursday extending a smoking ban in this tobacco-growing nation to all bars, restaurants and coffeehouses by mid-2009. The new law will prohibit smoking in all enclosed public areas next year. Turkey already bans smoking on buses, airplanes and large offices, and within four months, it will be prohibited in taxis, ferries, trains and some open-air locations such as stadiums and playgrounds.
South Africa: Lions eat worker
A group of lions devoured a man at the game lodge where he worked, police said Thursday. Samuel Boosen was attacked Tuesday after he entered an enclosure where eight or nine lions were being kept, superintendent Lesego Metsi said. “Only his spine and skull remained,” Metsi said. Boosen, 36, had been working at the lodge for about four years, Metsi said.
Switzerland: One dies in chairlift failure
A chair-lift accident near the Swiss ski resort of Grindelwald killed one person and injured several others Thursday. It wasn’t immediately certain what caused several chairs carrying skiers to fall to the ground. But the official in charge of the investigation said a cable appeared to have jumped off a guide wheel at one of the chair lift’s support towers, which rise up to 46 feet from the slopes.
From Herald news services
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