CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — With good weather expected, NASA was optimistic as it headed toward today’s launch of space shuttle Atlantis on its final voyage. Atlantis is set to blast off at 2:20 p.m. Forecasters said there is a 70 percent chance of good weather, with low clouds the lone concern. “We’ve had a very clean countdown so far,” a NASA test director said Thursday. The shuttle and its six astronauts will deliver a Russian compartment to the International Space Station. The chamber is filled with more than 3,000 pounds of U.S. supplies, including food and laptop computers. It will be the first — and last — time a shuttle carries a Russian module to the orbiting lab. Only two other shuttle flights remain.
D.C.: Big fine for Continental
The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday proposed fining Continental Airlines $325,000 for operating a plane on at least a dozen flights without fixing a problem with its landing gear. The crew of a Continental Boeing 737 flying from Houston to Los Angeles in December 2008 saw a warning light related to the plane’s right main landing gear, but decided after discussing the problem with the airline’s maintenance department to continue the flight, the FAA said. The airline has 30 days to respond to the FAA.
Montana: Wolf hunt to grow
State wildlife commissioners approved a plan Thursday that aims to reduce the gray wolf population for the first time since the once-endangered animal was reintroduced to the region 15 years ago. The proposal approved by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission calls for at least doubling the number of wolves that hunters can kill and introducing an archery season to go with the rifle season. The population of wolves in the northern Rockies has increased every year since they were reintroduced to the region in 1995.
California: Truancy fines
The state of California would hold parents responsible if their children regularly skip school, under a bill passed Thursday by the state Senate. The measure would let prosecutors charge parents with misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if their kids are chronically truant. Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco, says SB1317 is a public safety measure because children who do poorly in school or drop out are more likely to commit crimes. Judges could delay the punishment to parents as an incentive to get their children in class.
Gray whale returns to harbor
A young gray whale has returned to a Southern California harbor, one day after rescuers removed 150 pounds of fishing nets and ropes from its fin and tail. Surfers and beachgoers spotted the 35-foot, 20-ton female Thursday morning and biologists are concerned she is malnourished. The whale, nicknamed Lily, had been lethargic and listless this week before a rescue team removed the netting Wednesday and she headed out of Dana Point Harbor for the ocean with more energy. A wildlife biologist they’ll put a watch on her, keep boaters 100 feet away and helicopters from above, but he says they won’t close the harbor.
Haiti: Missionary sentence
A U.S. missionary should spend six months in prison for her failed attempt to remove 33 children from Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake, a prosecutor said Thursday on the first day of her trial. Prosecutor Sonel Jean-Francois told the court that Laura Silsby knew she was breaking the law by trying to take the children without proper documents to an orphanage she was starting in the neighboring Dominican Republic.
Afghanistan: Opium blight
The nation’s opium yield is likely to drop as much as 30 percent this year because blight is destroying fields full of poppies in the south — driving up prices amid a countrywide push to grow legal crops, a U.N. official said Thursday. The blight, which turns the poppy plants black as they apparently rot from the inside, has hit about half of the poppy crop growing in the northern part of Helmand province — the center of Afghanistan’s poppy production, the official said.
Mexico: Gay killings increase
Killings of gays and lesbians have risen in Mexico despite a government tolerance campaign and a law legalizing same-sex marriage in the capital, according to a report released Thursday by a coalition of civic groups. A review of more than 70 newspapers in 11 Mexican states found an average of nearly 30 killings a year motivated by homophobia between 1995 and 2000, compared to nearly 60 a year between 2001 and 2009, the report said.
From Herald news services
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
