UPI NewsTrack TopNews

Space shuttle Atlantis lands in California

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., May 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. Space Shuttle Atlantis landed Sunday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, two days late due to inclement weather in Florida, NASA says.

The Space Shuttle's mission to complete repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope officially ended at 10:39 a.m. when Commander Scott Altman guided the spacecraft to a landing on Edwards' Runway 22, telling mission control that the flight was "a thrill from start to finish," the space agency's Web site said.

NASA said continued wet and rainy weather conditions over Florida's Kennedy Space Center Sunday morning forced flight controllers to wave off a landing there for the third straight day, directing the craft to instead land at the backup facility in California.

Atlantis arrived at the Hubble Space Telescope on May 13. Its crew performed five spacewalks on five consecutive days to repair and upgrade the telescope.

The flight was the 126th mission for the U.S. Space Shuttle program, NASA said.

Spanish judges defend international cases

MADRID, May 24 (UPI) -- Spanish judges seeking to prosecute top officials in other countries have overstepped their bounds, Spain's attorney general said.

The move by judges in Spain's National Court has delighted human rights activists and angered officials in the targeted countries, which include the United States, China and Israel, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

The cases, 16 in all, risk turning the National Court into a "plaything" for politically motivated prosecutions, Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido said. One of the cases involves allegations that Bush administration officials encouraged a policy of torture.

The judges say they're using universal jurisdiction, a legal principle that gives them authority to investigate heinous human rights crimes, even if there is no Spanish connection, the Post reported.

Last week, Spain's lower house of Parliament called for a new law to to limit judges to cases with ties to Spanish citizens or Spanish territories.

"How can a Spanish judge with limited resources determine what really happened in Tiananmen or Tibet?" asked legislator Gustavo de Aristegui. "We have our own problems and our own bad guys to take care of."

Pakistan, Taliban battle for Mingora

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 24 (UPI) -- Pakistani soldiers Sunday faced a bloody fight in trying to roust the Taliban from Mingora, a key city in the contested Swat Valley, military officials said.

"It's a very intense battle. Everyone is sniping one another," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.

Pakistani soldiers engaged in street battles Saturday, killing at least 17 Taliban fighters in Mingora, although the reports could not be independently verified, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The army Saturday wrested control of a power station from the Taliban and was working to restore electricity to Mingora, CNN reported Sunday. The battle for Mingora is seen as a test of the army's ability to defeat the Taliban throughout the region

Officials in Mingora estimate10,000 residents remain in what was a city of 200,000. How many civilians are trapped is unclear as thousands of residents throughout the region fled the fighting as Taliban militants occupied rooftops and took over whole neighborhoods, Abbas said.

GOP finds wedge issue with detainees

WASHINGTON, May 24 (UPI) -- The emotional debate over where to put Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, terror detainees threatens U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge to close the camp, analysts say.

With U.S. polls showing a narrow majority of Americans favoring keeping the prison camp open and indicating a deep well of fear about transferring detainees to stateside prisons, Republican Party leaders and right-wing television and radio outlets are jumping on what they have discovered is a potent "wedge" issue for Obama, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The president, however, has promised to press ahead with his campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay camp, which he says has stained America's honor with the harsh treatment meted out there to terrorism suspects there – treatment many have equated with torture. But last week's move by Senate Democrats to break with the president to oppose providing funds to close Guantanamo Bay hurt his position, Republicans told the Times.

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says Obama's chance of closing Guantanamo was now "a very slim possibility" and noted the president as U.S. senator in 2007 missed a Senate vote declaring the detainees should not be "transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods."