Countdown starts for liftoff Sunday of shuttle Atlantis
Cape Canaveral, Fla. – Atlantis’ six astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday as the countdown clock began ticking toward a Sunday launch of the space shuttle.
“We have a saying back in Texas, ‘It’s time to walk the walk,”‘ said Brent Jett, Atlantis’ commander, after arriving from Houston by training jet. “We are ready for the challenge. … All we need is a little good weather on Sunday and we’ll be out of here.”
And good weather appeared likely. There was only a 30 percent chance it would prevent a liftoff about 2:30 p.m. MDT Sunday. If the launch is delayed that day, for weather or any other reason, the space agency would keep trying over several more days.
The mission is the start of a renewed effort to finish building the international space station before the cargo-carrying shuttles are retired in 2010.
Construction has been delayed since the Columbia accident in 2003, which killed seven astronauts. The two space missions since that time have been focused on testing safety improvements on the spacecraft.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
Heavy rains flood usually dry riverbeds
Heavy rains caused flooding in the Phoenix area Thursday, turning normally dry riverbeds into raging rivers and trapping motorists.
Firefighters waded into the Indian Bend Wash to help two people out of two cars and walk them out of the swift knee-deep water.
The Scottsdale portion of the wash runs for 8 miles and was built in the 1970s as a flood-control measure, said city spokesman Mike Phillips.
“Today it’s functioning as it was intended to do, and that is to carry a heck of a lot of water out of the mountains,” Phillips said.
CHICAGO
To fool mom, traveler says sex aid is a bomb
Cook County prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately didn’t want her to know he’d packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey. So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.
Madin Azad Amin, 29, of Skokie was stopped Aug. 16 at O’Hare International Airport after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.
When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Lorraine Scaduto.
He later told officials he’d lied about the item because his mother was nearby and he didn’t want her to hear that it was part of a penis pump, Scaduto said.
He’s been charged with felony disorderly conduct, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
MIAMI
Debby stays at sea; another storm on tap
Tropical Storm Debby was expected to stay away from land as it remained out in the open Atlantic, but another system north of Venezuela was on the verge of strengthening into a named storm, forecasters said Thursday.
A hurricane hunter aircraft flying in the Caribbean found a tropical depression with sustained winds that appear to be just below tropical storm strength of 39 mph, said James Franklin, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. It would be called Ernesto.
WASHINGTON
American Indians to appeal to high court
American Indians are moving ahead with their 10-year-old lawsuit against the government despite congressional efforts to settle the dispute.
Indians involved in the case said Thursday they plan to ask the Supreme Court to review an appeals court decision last month to remove the trial judge because of an apparent bias against the government.
“It is unprecedented for a federal judge to be reassigned under these circumstances, especially where, as here, the judge has presided over a complex case for 10 years,” said lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet Indian from Browning, Mont.
Indians also filed papers Thursday appealing a decision to throw out U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth’s order to shut down some government computer systems to protect trust accounts managed for Indians.
The developments come as lawmakers try to broker a settlement.
KHARTOUM, Sudan
Ruling party rejects U.N. peacekeepers
Sudan’s ruling party rejected a proposal to transfer peacekeeping in the troubled Darfur region from a weak African force to a larger and stronger U.N. mission, saying that would put the nation under the control of foreign powers, official media reported Thursday.
The Bush administration said it will send a senior envoy to Sudan in hopes of winning the government’s consent for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.
“We cannot let the violence and atrocities continue. We cannot let humanitarian workers and peacekeepers continue to come under attack,” said Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer.
