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Science lab installed on space station

By Times Wires
Published February 12, 2008

Cape Canaveral 

Europe's shiny new $2-billion science lab, Columbus, was anchored to the international space station Monday by a team of astronauts working inside and out. French astronaut Leopold Eyharts announced its arrival. "Beautiful work," replied Mission Control. The exhausting, daylong affair took more time than expected. The grand finale - the attachment of the 23-foot, 14-ton lab that was ferried up by Atlantis - took place at the end of an extra-long space walk by Rex Walheim and Stanley Love.

Homeland Security

Coast-to-coastChina spy cases

A Defense Department analyst and a former engineer for Boeing Co. were charged Monday in separate spy cases for allegedly handing over military secrets to the Chinese government, the Justice Department said. Additionally, two immigrants from China and Taiwan accused of working with the defense analyst were arrested after an FBI raid Monday morning on a New Orleans home where one of them lived. The two cases - based in Alexandria, Va., and Los Angeles - have no connection, and investigators said it was merely a coincidence that charges were be brought against both on the same day. The arrests mark China's latest attempts to gain top secret information about U.S. military systems and sales, said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein.

Elsewhere

Penguin threat: If the surface temperature of the Southern Ocean rises 0.26 degrees Celsius - an increase well below current forecasts of 0.4 degrees over the next 20 years - declining food availability would lead to extinction of the king penguin, researchers reported Monday.

E-mail entry: A federal judge agreed to allow a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, to delve into the operations of a White House office as part of a controversy over whether e-mails have disappeared.

Times wires

[Last modified February 12, 2008, 00:11:21]