Queen Mary 2 ends maiden Atlantic crossing

Queen Mary 2 endsmaiden Atlantic crossing
NEW YORK -- Gigantic, it is. Titanic, it's not. Ninety-two years and eight days after another British ocean liner almost but not quite made it to New York on its maiden voyage, the Queen Mary 2 steamed through the Verrazano Narrows and up the harbor for the first time today.
Laden with opulence, the Cunard Line's newest and largest ship was nearly on schedule after making up time lost to bad weather during the first 48 hours of its inaugural Atlantic crossing.
The ship arrived under the extra-tight security that has been in effect for all major events in New York since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was escorted by a fleet of tugboats, police vessels and Coast Guard boats as it passed the Statue of Liberty on its way toward the Hudson River terminal.
The early morning arrival was marked by the customary Gotham greeting -- fireboats spouting red, white and blue water.
Though Commodore Ronald Warwick followed the same northerly track known as the Great Circle Route, the Queen Mary 2 was never imperiled by icebergs such as that which sank the RMS Titanic with 1,503 dead in modern history's worst maritime disaster April 14, 1912.
Nuke plant hunts for partsof missing fuel rod
MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod are missing from a Vermont nuclear plant, and engineers planned to search onsite for the nuclear material, officials said Wednesday.
The fuel rod was removed in 1979 from the Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance. Remote-control cameras will be used to search a spent fuel pool on the property, officials said.
"We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the pool," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.
But Sheehan said it was possible the spent fuel was mixed in with a shipment of low-level nuclear waste and ended up at a repository in South Carolina, or a facility in Washington state. He said it was also possible it was taken to a nuclear testing facility run by General Electric, which designed the plant.
Spying on Web surfers
SHANGHAI, China -- Authorities are installing video cameras and high-tech software in Shanghai's Internet cafes and bars to make sure customers don't look at forbidden Web sites, a state-run newspaper reported today.
The new controls -- part of a crackdown also aimed at keeping children out of such places -- will begin in all of Shanghai's 1,325 Internet hangouts by the end of June, the Shanghai Daily newspaper quoted an official with the Shanghai Culture, Radio, Film and TV Administration as saying.
The equipment will be used to "spot illegal activities immediately," it quoted the official, Yu Wenchang, as saying.
Off-limits Web sites are those deemed pornographic or "superstitious," the report said, giving as an example those with information about the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.
5 wholesalers detained
SHANGHAI, China -- Police have detained five wholesalers who sold fake infant formula blamed in the malnutrition deaths of dozens of children in the eastern province of Anhui, state media reported today.
In a sign that more cases may follow, government television reported that fake powder and undernourished infants have also been found in the neighboring province of Shandong.
Reporters found at least 10 brands of fake powder for sale at a large wholesale market on the border between Shandong, Anhui and Henan, according to Chinese Central Television's Web site. More than a dozen sick children have been hospitalized, but it wasn't clear if any had died, it said.
Ready to be separated
VALHALLA, N.Y. -- Two Filipino boys, who may be in their last few months as conjoined twins, celebrated their second birthday Wednesday, scooting around on a mat with other children, clapping their hands to music and receiving separate birthday cakes.
The other children at Blythedale Children's Hospital wore party hats. Carl and Clarence Aguirre, still joined at the tops of their heads, wore a bandage over their skulls, covering the area where surgeons have been working for six months to convert a tangle of blood vessels into separate circulation systems for independent lives.
At a news conference before the party, doctors and therapists said the Filipino twins, who live at Blythedale with their mother between operations at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, have been showing they're ready for separation: One will sleep while the other's awake; one will play while the other cries; and they fight over toys.
But doctors said it will still be months before they can perform the long-awaited surgery that separates the boys.
Associated Press