SpaceX makes a splash in exploration - Pioneer Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Triumphant from start to finish, the SpaceX Dragon capsule parachuted into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, May 31, to conclude the first private delivery to the International Space Station and inaugurate NASA's new approach to exploration.

The unmanned supply ship scored a bull's-eye with its arrival, splashing down into the ocean about 500 miles off Mexico's Baja California. A fleet of recovery ships quickly moved in to pull the capsule aboard a barge for towing to Los Angeles.

Thursday's dramatic arrival of the world's first commercial cargo carrier capped a nine-day test flight that was virtually flawless, beginning with the May 22 launch aboard the SpaceX company's Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral and continuing through the space station docking three days later and the departure a scant six hours before hitting the water.

Abortion measure fails in House vote

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans provoked a fresh confrontation in the ongoing battle over women's health care rights, but failed Thursday to win approval for a bill designed to outlaw abortions based on gender.

The bill, aimed at families trying to avoid unwanted daughters, attracted the support of a majority of representatives, but failed because it was considered under a procedure normally used for uncontroversial measures. It needed the votes of two-thirds of the House.

Research by Columbia University economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund found evidence of sex

selection in Chinese, Indian and South Korean-American families who had a daughter.

Their findings were cited in the bill and the measure drew particular ire from some Asian-American groups who worried that it would lead to particular discrimination against Asian-American women seeking abortions.

Suu Kyi speaks for exploited migrants

MAHACHAI, Thailand -- Long a fighter against oppression inside Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has used her first foreign trip in 24 years to fight for her countrymen suffering abroad -- millions of economic migrants unable to work at home but vulnerable to exploitation elsewhere.

On Thursday, she pressed her concerns about the millions of Myanmar migrants living in Thailand in a meeting with the country's deputy prime minister.

"She can't force the Thai government to do anything, but she can speak on our behalf better than anybody else," said Win Aung, who lost his hand in an accident at a Thai-run shoe factory and is still fighting to obtain employer compensation for it a year and a half later.

Carbon dioxide in air hits milestone

WASHINGTON -- The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

Warren told schools she was part Indian

BOSTON -- Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has acknowledged for the first time that she told officials at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she had Native American heritage.

The Harvard Law School professor's campaign said in a statement that she gave that information to the schools only after she had been hired for faculty positions. She previously confirmed that she had allowed herself to be listed as a minority in a national directory of law school faculty.

Warren grew up in Oklahoma and has provided no documentation of the ancestral claims. She has said her heritage is part of family lore.

Satellite images show Iran cleanup

VIENNA -- New commercial satellite images suggest that Iran has demolished two buildings at a site where it is suspected of trying to erase evidence of a nuclear arms program, a U.S. think tank said Thursday.

The images were published Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which consults for U.S. government agencies focused on nonproliferation and is considered an objective source of information on Iran's nuclear program.

A senior diplomat who saw the photos displayed on the think tank's website and who is accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency told The Associated Press they showed apparent cleanup work similar to that depicted on spy satellite photos supplied to the IAEA by member nations closely tracking Iran's nuclear activities.

Syria leaders pin massacre on rebels

BEIRUT -- Syria on Thursday blamed up to 800 rebel fighters for the massacre in central Syria last week that killed more than 100 people, nearly half of them children, in its fullest explanation to date of the bloodshed.

The narrative starkly contradicted accounts of witnesses who blamed "shabiha" or the shadowy gunmen who operate on behalf of President Bashar Assad's regime. The U.N. also said it had strong suspicions those pro-regime gunmen were responsible for much of the carnage on Friday in a cluster of villages known as Houla.

-- Associated Press, Chicago Tribune

Snakes killed both preacher, his father

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- A West Virginia preacher who followed his father into the rare practice of handling snakes to prove faith in God died after being bitten during an outdoor service involving the reptiles.

Mark Randall "Mack" Wolford, 44 -- whose own father died in 1983 after suffering a fatal bite -- had been bitten before and survived. But he died earlier this week after witnesses say a timber rattler bit him on the thigh. Wolford's sister and a freelance photographer told media outlets it happened during a Sunday service at Panther State Forest.

"I don't think anyone necessarily expected it," Lauren Pond, a freelance photojournalist from Washington, D.C., told the he Bluefield Daily Telegraph, "but they've dealt with it before so it's not such a huge shock, maybe."