Florida: Shuttle leak found; new problem emerges

NASA has found the oxygen leak that delayed space shuttle Endeavour’s launch earlier this week, but now is trying to determine whether the ship’s robot arm was damaged during inspections.

The countdown was halted with only two hours remaining Sunday night because of an abrupt leak in the astronauts’ oxygen supply. The launch was postponed until Monday at the earliest.

NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said Wednesday that the leak was traced to a flex hose in Endeavour’s midbody and that the entire section of hose was removed.

While working in Endeavour’s payload bay, however, technicians bumped a platform into the shuttle’s cradled robot arm on Tuesday.

Some of the thermal insulation on the arm was torn and the arm itself was scraped. No one knows yet whether any of the internal parts of the 50-foot crane were damaged; tests are under way.

Phoenix: Posthumous conception cancels benefit rights

A federal judge ruled that 6-year-old twins conceived after a Tucson man’s death are not considered his children under Arizona law, and therefore aren’t entitled to Social Security benefits.

“Only a child who survives a deceased parent or was in gestation at the time of the deceased parent’s death may inherit,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge John Roll.

Anthropology professor Robert Netting, 59, and his wife, Rhonda Gillett-Netting, now 38, were trying to have children when he was diagnosed with cancer in December 1994. He stored sperm before his death in February 1995. Ten months after his death, his wife became pregnant through in vitro fertilization.

After giving birth to a son and daughter, Gillett-Netting petitioned the Social Security Administration for benefits. Her initial claim and an appeal were denied, and in January she sued.

Federal officials argued that the children do not qualify as survivors because they didn’t exist when Netting died.

Florida: 8 passengers fall ill on sanitized cruise ship

Eight passengers have become ill aboard a cruise ship where a virus sickened more than 400 people on recent voyages, cruise officials said Wednesday.

Six-hundred workers cleaned and sanitized the ship before Holland America’s Amsterdam left Monday from Fort Lauderdale carrying 1,316 passengers on a 10-day Caribbean cruise.

“We had crew cleaning Scrabble tiles and the poker chips,” Holland spokeswoman Erik Elvejord said.

By Wednesday afternoon, eight people were sick with the same Norwalk-type virus symptoms, Elvejord said.

While not considered serious, the virus strikes people with up to two days of diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain. It is spread through food and water and close contact with infected people or things they have touched.