Atlanta hotels assess damage from tornado

Atlanta hotels assess damage from tornado

ATLANTA — Crews on Sunday cleaned up the city’s tornado-ravaged downtown as officials at hotels wondered when the shuttered convention center would reopen and bring back the millions of dollars in revenue it helps generate.

Since Friday night’s storm cut a six-mile path through downtown Atlanta, the Georgia World Congress Center lost the Atlanta Home Show, a dental convention and much of the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament.

The city’s main convention center — which includes the 3.9 million-square-foot convention center, the Georgia Dome and Centennial Olympic Park — and two major hotels were hobbled just as the convention season began.

The tornado ripped through the roof of an exhibition hall in one building, leaving light fixtures and awnings dangling and exposed as workers continued to clear the scattered insulation, metal, glass and other debris littering the facility.

Rescuers search for three missing in crane collapse

NEW YORK — Rescuers dug through debris Sunday for three people still missing in the rubble and wreckage left when a construction crane toppled like a tree across a city block and killed at least four construction workers.

Among the missing were two workers and a woman who was staying in an apartment at a townhouse flattened by the crane.

“Each passing hour, things get a little more grim,” Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said. Twenty-four others were injured, including 11 first responders, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Eight remained hospitalized Sunday, officials said.

The crane rose 19 stories and was attached to an apartment tower under construction when it broke away Saturday and toppled like a tree onto buildings as far as a block away.

Biologist catches fish he released in 1983

GREEN RIVER, Wyo. — Some people catch fish and release them. Bill Wengert releases them and then catches them — a quarter-century later.

In April 1983, Wengert and other state Game and Fish Department biologists stocked some 12,000 young trout in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in southwest Wyoming.

Game and Fish spokeswoman Lucy Wold said Wengert was ice fishing recently on the 91-mile-long reservoir and caught a 23-inch Mackinaw trout, a type of lake trout.

Wengert noticed the trout’s right pelvic fin had been clipped, indicating it was a hatchery fish that had been stocked. Examining historical stocking data, Wengert determined the fish was stocked April 14, 1983.

“I may have actually clipped the fins on this very fish, and I know I was driving the barge when the fish were stocked, nearly 25 years ago,” Wengert said.

Astronauts test brakes on handyman robot

HOUSTON (AP) — The international space station’s giant new handyman robot got its first checkup today, with astronauts and flight controllers testing its electronics, joints and brakes.

The Canadian-built robot, named Dextre, passed all but one of the tests. One of the wrist joint brakes in Dextre’s left arm slipped a tiny bit more than engineers wanted, but Canada’s acting space station program manager said he wasn’t too concerned. The brakes help hold the arm steady.

“In the long term it’s not going to affect the operation of Dextre in any significant way,” Pierre Jean said.

Astronauts and flight controllers planned to test the brake a couple more times in hopes that it slips less as it gets more worn in, Jean said.

Canada expects offer of 1,000 extra troops

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Canada expects NATO allies to soon offer 1,000 more soldiers to support the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, the foreign minister said Sunday.

Canada’s Parliament agreed last week to extend Canada’s 2,500-troop mission in Kandahar province to 2011, provided NATO sends more troops and equipment to back them up in the former Taliban stronghold.

Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said he expected a pledge for troops before or during NATO’s April 2-4 summit in Bucharest, Romania.

In addition to at least 1,000 extra troops, Canada is looking for equipment, including helicopters and unmanned surveillance aircraft.

“Those 1,000 extra troops — that is really a minimum,” MacKay told a weekend conference of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Associated Press