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National briefsCompiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published October 16, 2000 Astronauts whoop as they work on stationCAPE CANAVERAL -- With a joyous whoop, two astronauts floated out of space shuttle Discovery on Sunday and hooked up cables and antennas on the newest addition of the international space station. Spacewalkers Bill McArthur and Leroy Chiao spent six hours working on the aluminum framework that had been installed on the space station Saturday. Their excitement streamed through the radio lines as they toiled 240 miles up. "Woo-hoo!" they shouted again and again. They described the 140-foot space station towering out of Discovery's cargo bay as "huge" and "gorgeous." In politics . . .GOVERNORS TO STUMP FOR BUSH: Gov. George W. Bush plans to send the nation's Republican governors in a three-day fly-around to battleground states as well as deploy a phalanx of women and his one-time bitter primary rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, to woo swing voters. The Bush campaign said that 28 of Bush's fellow Republican governors, including his brother Jeb of Florida, plan to converge upon Austin, Texas, on Sunday for a rally. They then plan to split onto seven planes and crisscross the country for Bush, making 45 stops in 24 states. TEXAS DEATH PENALTY: A new report concludes that the state's death penalty system is in dire need of reform because of problems like prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias, phony experts and inadequate lawyers for indigent defendants. The report was written by the Texas Defender Service, a non-profit group that represents death row inmates. It follows another critical study, commissioned by a committee of the State Bar of Texas, that described the state's system of providing legal representation to the poor as "a national embarrassment." In transit strikes . . .LOS ANGELES: Negotiators in a transit strike that has shut down bus and rail service across the city for a month appeared to be making progress Sunday as the Rev. Jesse Jackson shuttled between the two sides. Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Marc Littman said the negotiations broke Sunday night and would resume this morning. PHOENIX: Phoenix city bus drivers went on strike Sunday, leaving an estimated 110,000 people who depend on the mass transit system each workweek without a ride for this morning.
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From the Times wire desk
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