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Nation in brief
Compiled from Times wires Clouds delay shuttle landing at last minuteCAPE CANAVERAL -- Thick clouds moved in at the last minute and prevented space shuttle Endeavour from returning to Earth on Wednesday with the former residents of the international space station. The delay added a 183rd day in orbit for American astronaut Peggy Whitson and her two Russian crewmates -- and probably a 184th day, given today's stormy forecast. Endeavour and its crew can remain safely in orbit until Sunday, but the shuttle has enough rocket fuel for only four more landing attempts. Black scholar won't leave Harvard for PrincetonHenry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Harvard, announced Wednesday that he had turned down an offer to jump to Princeton, ending a yearlong feud between his department and the university's president, Lawrence Summers, that had already cost Harvard two of the nation's most prominent black scholars. Gates' decision represents a victory for Summers, a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration who offended Gates and many other blacks at Harvard when he took office in the fall of 2001 and began questioning the scholarship and workload of the department's outspoken star, Cornel West. After several private and public confrontations with the president, West left for Princeton in April, not long after another colleague, K. Anthony Appiah, made the same move. Gates, 52, said Wednesday that he had talked extensively with Summers since West's departure. "We've been talking heart-to-heart," Gates said. "We've developed a warm working relationship. It's very candid, very open, very frank, and I'm absolutely persuaded that he sees Afro-American studies as fundamental to the intellectual life of a great university." Elsewhere . . .FIRE KILLS 5 CHILDREN: A wood- and coal-burning furnace started a fire that destroyed an Amish family's wood-frame home in Pulaski, Pa., and killed five children sleeping inside, authorities said Wednesday. Rudy and Lizzie Wengerd escaped into the bitter cold with their four other children Tuesday night. A family friend said one of the boys leaped from the second floor and then caught his younger brother; the two other children climbed down a ladder put up by their father before the fire became too intense for a rescue. Killed were Katie, 14; Levi, 12; Neil, 11; John, 4; and Jonathon, 2, police said. JURY RECOMMENDS SENTENCE IN CHILD'S DEATH: A Virginia jury recommended Wednesday that a Prince William County father be sentenced to 12 months in prison in the accidental death of the youngest of his 13 children, who was left in the family van for seven hours on a sweltering afternoon. Last month, the same jury found Kevin C. Kelly, 46, guilty of involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment for leaving the child, 21-month-old Frances, in the van in May. Testimony showed that the Kelly children had been mistakenly left in the same van at least three times before Frances' death. ARCHDIOCESE BANKRUPTCY: A financial panel of the Boston Archdiocese gave Cardinal Bernard Law permission Wednesday to file for bankruptcy as the church tries to settle potentially crippling lawsuits in the priest sex abuse scandal. Law would need approval from the Vatican before filing for bankruptcy, which would put litigation against the archdiocese on hold.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
