Rover’s Sunday drive doubles odometer

The Spirit rover took a weekend spin on Mars that doubled the distance on the six-wheeled vehicle’s odometer, NASA said Monday.

The slow, nearly 10-foot drive took Spirit 30 minutes, including repeated pauses to allow the rover to snap pictures. The drive was the first forward movement of the rover since it rolled off its lander and onto the Martian surface Thursday.

Spirit stopped in front of a football-size rock scientists have dubbed “Adirondack.” It lies a foot from Spirit, within easy reach of its robotic arm.

Before halting, the rover wiggled its wheels into the silty soil to anchor itself in advance of several days’ worth of observations to begin today.

North Carolina

Commandments marker flaunted at city hall

A Winston-Salem City Council member and U.S. House candidate put a monument with the Ten Commandments in front of city hall Monday.

Vernon Robinson, a self-proclaimed conservative advocate, said he was inspired by former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore, who was removed from office last year after refusing to remove a 2 1/2-ton Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state Supreme Court.

In September, Robinson asked his colleagues to place Moore’s monument on public property in Winston-Salem. The suggestion died for lack of support.

Undeterred, Robinson paid $2,000 for his own granite slab. He and four others installed it when city offices were closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

California

Oakland weighing limits on cannabis shops

Telegraph Avenue, in the shadow of Oakland’s City Hall, has been nicknamed “Oaksterdam,” a reference to Amsterdam’s freewheeling pot scene.

This week, the city of Oakland may be ready to clamp down on the image. A proposal expected to be considered today by the Oakland City Council would impose a cap on the number of medical marijuana dispensaries, forcing some to close.

Such regulation could be contentious in an area that provided strong support for California’s Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot initiative legalizing medical marijuana.

A staff proposal before the City Council would allow only three medical marijuana clubs and impose licensing fees ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, a city legislative analyst said. None of the dozen or so dispensaries and suppliers is licensed by the city or state.

Washington, D.C.

Ebola outbreaks tied to animals

Scientists think they may have come a step closer to figuring out where the deadly Ebola virus hides in the African wild, periodically emerging to attack humans.

In new research, an international team led by Eric Leroy of the Development Research Institute in Gabon studied five Ebola outbreaks that occurred in Central Africa in the past two years. Before each one, they found, large numbers of chimpanzees, gorillas and small antelopes called duikers had died in the area. Tests confirmed the animals were infected by Ebola.

The findings suggest that the human cases are preceded by outbreaks in the animals, which then died or were killed and passed the virus on to hunters who butchered the infected carcasses for food.