Nation in brief
Navy sonar agreement reached
The Navy can use high-intensity sonar in some circumstances for Pacific warfare exercises under an agreement reached Friday with environmental groups, four days after a judge banned the sonar over concerns it could harm marine mammals.
The settlement prevents the Navy from using the sonar within 25 miles of the newly established Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument during its Rim of the Pacific 2006 exercises and also imposes a variety of methods to watch for and report the presence of marine mammals.
The environmental groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, had obtained a court order Monday temporarily barring the use of the “mid-frequency active sonar.”
Washington
Logs of Abramoff visits released
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff had a half-dozen White House appointments in the early months of the Bush administration, according to logs released Friday by the U.S. Secret Service.
The appointments included a meeting with a domestic policy aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and a meeting in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives attended by about 40 people. The logs also reflect that Abramoff attended one or more social events, as well as a gathering of Indian tribal officials and state legislators at which President Bush appeared.
The lobbyist, once one of the most powerful Republicans on K Street, pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and fraud.
The Secret Service released the White House visit data Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.
In May, the Secret Service released partial data showing two White House visits by Abramoff. In a letter faxed to Judicial Watch on Friday, a Justice Department lawyer said the Secret Service had recently learned of other visits when it “unexpectedly discovered computer files” containing entry and exit logs on the visits.
Houston
NASA extends shuttle mission
After analyzing the shuttle’s energy consumption, NASA officials decided Friday to extend Discovery’s mission by a day and to add a third spacewalk to the astronauts’ itinerary.
Astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum will use the extra spacewalk Wednesday to practice making repairs to the carbon material that protects the shuttle’s nose cone and the leading edge of the wings from extreme heat, said John Shannon, deputy shuttle program manager.
Sellers and Fossum are scheduled to conduct their first spacewalk today.
Discovery, which is docked with the International Space Station, is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 17 after 13 days in orbit.