Around the world

CASE CLOSED: The Greek government closed the case Friday on two employees of the American Embassy arrested with wigs, guns and radio equipment while conducting a surveillance operation in Athens. The two men were recalled to Washington, the U.S. ambassador expressed regrets to Greece and both governments tried to play down the affair. The press speculated they were working for the Defense Intelligence Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency.

NAME GAME: The Tokyo District Court has rejected a suit from a professor demanding that a state-run university stop preventing her from using her maiden name. The three-judge court also turned down a 13 million yen ($123,000) damage suit from Reiko Sekiguchil, a sociology professor.

BIG HAUL: British customs agents say they have seized the largest ever haul of heroin in Britain, with a street value of 20 million pounds ($35 million). The drug was found in a truck laden with tomatoes that entered Britain from Turkey. British agents, working with police, said they tailed the truck for several days before moving in.

View Comments

AFTERMATH: Tearful families collected the bodies of loved ones Friday, a day after rioting at a prison in eastern El Salvador left 27 inmates dead. "My man is dead! He would have gotten out Dec. 8," cried one woman outside San Francisco Gotera prison, 110 miles east of the capital where about 200 people had gathered.

Across the nation

ENDEAVOUR: NASA decided Friday to fly space shuttle Endeavour with a faulty pressure sensor and proceeded toward a Dec. 1 launch for the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. To replace the sensor, NASA would have had to move Endeavour off the launch pad and into a hangar. That almost certainly would have pushed the flight into January. The bad sensor is in a mechanism that drives the right, inboard wing flap. The other three sensors in the mechanism, called an actuator, are fine, said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham.

PLUNGE: A car plunged hundreds of feet into Grand Canyon on Friday. The driver was killed and his body recovered. The driver apparently was alone, park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge said. The car was driving around the parking lot at the South Kaibab Trailhead, four miles east of the visitors center, before it returned at high speed and drove off the rim, Oltrogge said. She didn't know if the driver was trying to commit suicide.

Join the Conversation
Looking for comments?
Find comments in their new home! Click the buttons at the top or within the article to view them — or use the button below for quick access.