CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The astronauts on NASA’s final shuttle voyage floated out of the International Space Station for the last time Monday, leaving behind a historic U.S. flag and a commemorative shuttle model to mark the end of a 30-year era.
Atlantis was set to undock from the orbiting lab early Tuesday — providing the last glimpses of a space shuttle in flight before the fleet is retired.
As the hatches swung shut behind the four crew members of Atlantis, it closed “a chapter in the history of our nation,” space station astronaut Ronald Garan Jr. noted in Monday’s emotional farewell ceremony.
He attached the small flag — which rocketed into orbit on the very first shuttle flight in 1981 — to the door of the space station hatch before the shuttle astronauts departed. Atlantis has been parked at the space station for over a week, unloading a year’s worth of supplies and packing up trash and old equipment for the trip home.
Atlantis is due to land at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center just before sunrise Thursday.
Vermont judge denies bid to keep nuke plant open
MONTPELIER, Vt. — A federal judge said Monday he would not order that Vermont’s only nuclear plant be allowed to remain open while a lawsuit to determine its long-term future plays out.
The state is moving to close the Vermont Yankee plant, with both the governor and the state Senate on record as wanting it to close when its initial 40-year license expires next March.
The plant’s owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., got a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and filed a lawsuit arguing that the federal action pre-empts the state’s effort to close the plant.
Last month, Entergy went to court asking for a preliminary order allowing it to stay open while the underlying lawsuit works its way through the courts. In Monday’s order, Judge J. Garvan Murtha said there was no need for such an order because the main trial in the case is scheduled for mid-September, only eight weeks away.
Petraeus ends his command in Afghanistan
KABUL — Gen. David Petraeus turned over command of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan on Monday to Marine Gen. John Allen, as the United States and its allies begin to withdraw troops from the country where they have waged war for nearly a decade.
Petraeus ends his tour in Afghanistan without conclusive signs that the counter-insurgency strategy he helped design has turned the tide in the war against the Taliban. The more than 140,000 NATO troops under his command have weakened the insurgency in some of its key strongholds in the south, but other parts of the country remain dangerous, and Taliban leaders still operate with relativ e impunity from Pakistan.
On Monday morning, three NATO troops were killed in a bombing in eastern Afghanistan. And the Taliban claimed responsibility for killing a senior adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a member of parliament in Kabul on Sunday night.
Sectarian killing spree kills 30 in Syria
BEIRUT — The discovery of three corpses with their eyes gouged out set off a sectarian killing spree that left 30 people dead in a chilling sign that the Syrian revolt against President Bashar Assad is inflaming long-simmering religious tensions.
The opposition accused the president’s minority Alawite regime of trying to stir up trouble among the Sunni majority to blunt the growing enthusiasm for the 4-month-old uprising. The protesters have been careful to portray their movement as free of any sectarian overtones.
On Sunday, six bodies from various sects were found in the city, apparently in revenge attacks, Saleh said. Pro-government Alawite thugs called shabiha then went on a rampage, another activist said, opening fire in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods of Homs.