St. Louis

Campaign will center on surviving dog

A dog that survived a trip to the gas chamber was tapped to star in a campaign to raise awareness about the millions of strays that are euthanized each year.

“His bad days are behind him for good,” said Randy Grim, founder of Stray Rescue of St. Louis.

Grim became Quentin’s guardian earlier this month, after the 30-pound dog, above, went into a city gas chamber to be euthanized with other unwanted or unclaimed dogs — then emerged very much alive, with tail wagging.

The survival tale brought headlines, television cameras and more than 700 offers of adoption.

Now, Quentin will be the front dog for the awareness campaign by the Mill Valley, Calif.-based In Defense of Animals.

Washington, D.C.

Study: Lake draining caused ancient chill

A massive freshwater lake that covered much of southern Canada 8,200 years ago burst through its ice dam and flooded into the Atlantic, disrupting ocean currents and causing a climate change that chilled the Northern Hemisphere for 200 years, a study suggests.

The ancient body of water, called Lake Agassiz, was formed by ice dams that blocked drainage from the vast central plains of Canada during the fading centuries of the last ice age. The lake once was more than twice the size of the current Great Lakes.

Researchers, in a study appearing today in the journal Science, said the huge flood of fresh water from Lake Agassiz might have been enough to disrupt the currents of the North Atlantic because in Europe, where the climate is moderated by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, there was a sudden chill.

New York

Rebuilding plan raises preservation concerns

A 200-year-old mansion, a skyscraper sheathed in terra cotta and a telephone factory from 1888 are drawing international attention from preservationists concerned the structures could be leveled when the World Trade Center is rebuilt.

The buildings make up the architecturally eclectic neighborhood south of the trade center site, which preservation groups say is rich with historic structures that should be saved from the wrecking ball.

A group was formed after the Sept. 11 attacks to help protect historic buildings around the 16-acre trade center site.

No historic buildings are now marked for demolition, but preservationists say they want to intervene ahead of that possibility.

Washington, D.C.

Report: Nuke shipments could be made safer

Shipments of radioactive nuclear waste are generally safe from terrorist attacks, but there are ways the shipments can be better protected, a congressional report said Thursday.

Large steel casks used to house the nuclear waste make it unlikely that any terrorist attack or accident during shipment would have widespread health effects, the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, reported. It relied on earlier studies by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department.

However, the GAO said the shipments could be made safer by minimizing the number of them, providing terrorists with fewer potential targets. The office noted that rail shipments can carry five times as much waste as trucks.

The GAO said waste from closed-down reactors should be shipped first, allowing them to be decommissioned, thus reducing the number of sites that need to be protected.

Washington, D.C.

Panel suggests options for Hubble telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope could be spruced up and continue to photograph the universe for another decade or so, or it could be abandoned when it breaks and dumped into the ocean, depending on which option NASA picks, a group of astronomers say this week in a report.

The Hubble was launched in 1990, the first of a series of orbiting observatories put in space by NASA, and is now nearing the end of its expected operational lifetime. NASA plans to replace it with a more advanced instrument, called the James Webb Space Telescope, at the start of the next decade.

Originally, the space agency planned to extend the life of the Hubble by servicing it with a space shuttle mission in 2005 or 2006. It was expected that mission would allow the telescope to keep working until about 2010.

Those plans could be affected by the fact that the shuttle fleet is now grounded due to the Columbia accident in February, and by the need, once shuttles are flying, to continue building and servicing the International Space Station.