Space Shuttle Glides To a Safe Landing

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts glided to a safe landing in darkness early yesterday, ending a 12-day mission whose smooth success was briefly upstaged by the high drama caused by mysterious floating debris. “Nice to be back. It was a great team effort,” a commander, Brent Jett, said immediately after touchdown at Kennedy Space Center at 6:21 a.m. yesterday.

— Associated Press

House GOP Members Agree To Ease Ban On Drug Imports

WASHINGTON — House Republicans tentatively agreed yesterday to prohibit Customs agents from seizing prescription drugs that Americans buy in Canada and bring back into the United States. The deal would let Americans carry up to a 90-day supply of medication back to the U.S. from Canada without being stopped by Customs agents, House and Senate Republicans said. But it would not let Americans purchase cheaper prescriptions over the Internet or by mail-order, officials said. “This really breaks the dam, and it shows that it’s only a matter of time before we pass a full-blown reimportation bill,” Senator Vitter, a Republican of Louisiana, said. Mr. Vitter led the fight in the Senate to prohibit the Homeland Security Department from seizing prescription drugs being carried over the border.

— Associated Press

Ahmadinejad: Iran Doesn’t Need the Bomb

UNITED NATIONS — President Ahmadinejad of Iran insisted yesterday that Tehran doesn’t need atomic weapons and that he is “at a loss” about what more he can do to prove that. Mr. Ahmadinejad said his country has not hidden anything and was working within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “The bottom line is we do not need a bomb,” he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

— Associated Press

Pentagon: Secret Unit Couldn’t Stop 9/11

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon report rejects the idea that intelligence gathered by a secret military unit could have been used to stop the September 11, 2001, hijackings. The Pentagon inspector general’s office said yesterday that a review of records from the unit, known as Able Danger, found no evidence that it had identified ringleader Mohamed Atta or any other terrorist who participated in the attacks.

— Associated Press

Pakistan Leader Says U.S. Made Threats

WASHINGTON — President Musharraf of Pakistan says America threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the September 11, 2001. attacks if he did not help America’s war on terror. General Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Mr. Musharraf’s intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.”

— Associated Press

More Choosing Genetic Makeup of Children

WASHINGTON — More and more couples are turning to an embryoscreening technique that allows them to choose the genetic makeup of their children, according to a survey released this week in the online edition of the journal Fertility and Sterility.

Some use the test so they can give birth to a child genetically similar to a sick sibling in need of a bone marrow transplant from a matched donor. Others are screening for genetic abnormalities, including some for which the test has not been proved useful. Still others are using it to get a baby of the sex they want. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, starts with the creation of a “test tube” embryo. At the eight-cell stage of development, one cell is removed, apparently without causing lasting harm, for testing. Embryos that pass the test are allowed to develop further and are transferred to a woman’s womb. Others are frozen or discarded.

— The Washington Post

Judge Hands Small Victory to Defendant In Valerie Plame Case

WASHINGTON — A federal judge handed a victory to the defense yesterday in the Valerie Plame case, siding with Vice President Cheney’s indicted former chief of staff in a fight over release of classified information. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton decided that he won’t impose strict standards sought by prosecutors who want to limit the amount of classified information used in the trial of the defendant, I. Lewis Libby. Prosecutors had proposed a stringent three-part legal test that would have allowed information to be considered for the trial only when its benefit to the defense outweighed the government’s need to keep it secret.

— Associated Press