SAN JOSE, Calif. – Spies hacked into the U.S. electric grid and left behind mechanisms for them to disrupt service, according to a newspaper report Wednesday that renewed questions about the security of key pieces of national infrastructure.

The report in the Wall Street Journal said that the intruders have not yet sought to damage the nation’s electric grid, but that they could try in a war or some other crisis.

Government officials declined to comment on the report.

Congressional investigators and intelligence officials have warned before that electric utilities are vulnerable to cyber attacks. CIA analyst Tom Donahue told utility engineers at a conference last year that in other countries, hackers had broken into electric utilities and demanded payments before disrupting power — in one case turning off the lights in multiple cities.

Stewart Baker, the former assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department, said Wednesday that electric grids have been hacked for years, and that he would not be surprised if China, Russia and other countries had taken part.

“We were certainly aware that there were intrusions into the electrical grid,” said Baker, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Security of these systems is not regulated, so the industry is under no mandate on how it should secure its computer networks.

“What I think we’re seeing, as time goes on, is much more careful, much more intentional planned intrusions that have gone beyond hacking into (seeing) what can be found,” Baker said. “The intruders are carrying out comprehensive surveillance with a view to actually taking action.”

The story in the Journal said Russian and Chinese officials denied any involvement in spying on U.S. infrastructure.

Associated Press Writer Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report from Washington.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday.

But those numbers were challenged as “overly optimistic” by a coal industry group, which noted that half the nation’s electricity currently comes from coal-fired power plants.

The secretary spoke at a public hearing in Atlantic City on how the nation’s offshore areas can be tapped to meet America’s energy needs.

“The idea that wind energy has the potential to replace most of our coal-burning power today is a very real possibility,” he said. “It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now.”

Offshore energy production, however, might not be limited to wind power, Salazar said. A moratorium on offshore oil drilling has expired, and President Barack Obama and Congress must decide whether to allow drilling off the East Coast.

“We know there are some people who want us to close the door on that,” he said. “We need to look at all forms of energy as we move forward into a new energy frontier.”

Salazar said ocean winds along the East Coast can generate 1 million megawatts of power, roughly the equivalent of 3,000 medium-sized coal-fired power plants, or nearly five times the number of coal plants now operating in the United States, according to the Energy Department.

Salazar could not estimate how many windmills might be needed to generate 1 million megawatts of power, saying it would depend on their size and how far from the coast they were located.

Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind, which wants to build a wind farm off Cape Cod, Mass., estimates it would take hundreds of thousands of windmills. The average wind turbine today generates 2 to 5 megawatts per unit, he said.

“It would take a number of years to build out, but we’ve got to get going in this country with the first few projects,” he said.

Jason Hayes, a spokesman for the American Coal Council, said he was puzzled by Salazar’s projections. He said wind power plants face roadblocks including local opposition, concerns about their impact on wildlife, and problems in efficiently transmitting power from far offshore.

“It really is a stretch,” he said of Salazar’s estimate. “How you put that many new (wind) plants up, especially in deep water, is confusing. Even if you could do what he said, you still need to deal with the fact that the best wind plants generate power about 30 percent of the time. There’s got to be something to back that up.”

Monday’s hearing was hosted by Salazar and was the first of four to be held around the country to discuss how energy resources including oil, gas, wind and waves should be utilized as the new administration formulates its energy policy. It was held at the Atlantic City Convention Center, whose roof-mounted solar energy panels are the largest in the nation.

In 2007, the Outer Continental Shelf, a zone extending roughly three to 200 miles from shore, accounted for 14 percent of the nation’s natural gas production, and 27 percent of its oil production.

Salazar said it is essential that the nation fully exploit renewable energy resources to reduce its reliance on imported oil.

By buying oil from countries hostile to the United States, “we have, in my opinion, been funding both sides in the war on terrorism,” he said.

Environmentalists are urging the Obama administration to bar oil and gas drilling off the East Coast, and invest heavily in wind, solar and other energy technology.

“This is a defining moment, whether we’re going to have a clean energy future or continue to rely on oil drilling,” said Jeff Tittel, New Jersey director of the Sierra Club. “Right now the government is fossil-foolish, and we need to change that.”

But Skip Hobbs, a petroleum geologist from New Canaan, Conn., said oil and gas drilling has been shown to be safe.

“We should recognize that as a practical matter, fossil fuel will rule for another generation,” he said.

New Jersey is tripling the amount of wind power it plans to use by 2020 to 3,000 megawatts, or 13 percent of New Jersey’s total energy. In October, Garden State Offshore Energy, a joint venture of PSE&G Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, was chosen to build a $1 billion, 345 megawatt wind farm in the ocean about 16 miles southeast of Atlantic City.

In Atlantic City, the local utilities authority has a wind farm consisting of five windmills that generate 7.5 megawatts, enough energy to power approximately 2,500 homes.

In this image from NASA Television, Space Shuttle Discovery is seen on Wednesday with a portion of the international space station in the foreground.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – After eight days together, space shuttle Discovery pulled away from the international space station Wednesday, beaming down stunning photos of the orbiting outpost, finally balanced and boasting all its solar wings.

NASA was thrilled to see the space station with its new glistening pair of solar wings — the final ones that will boost electrical power and science research. The shuttle took a victory lap around the station, primarily for picture-taking, and then put itself on a course for a Saturday touchdown.

“The $100 billion photograph,” flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said, showing off one of the snapshots. He noted that was the space station price tag cited by senators during President Barack Obama’s call to the astronauts the day before. NASA disputes that amount, “so that’s a little joke we’ve got in Mission Control,” he said.

With the installation last week of the last set of solar wings, the space station finally resembles the artist renderings from years past, balanced with four wings on both sides.

“You always saw it in the pictures and you just wondered if you’re really ever going to get there,” said Dan Hartman, a space station manager who’s worked on the project for 15 years. He took “an extreme amount of pride and joy” in seeing the images sent down.

NASA expects the extra electrical power to drastically increase the amount of research in the various labs that make up the 220-mile-high outpost.

“You made the space station much better than it was before,” Fincke told the shuttle astronauts just before their departure. “You gave us more power, symmetry — which is not to be underrated — and you gave us a new crew member.”

That new member, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, remained behind on the space station with Fincke and a Russian cosmonaut.

Sandra Magnus, whom Wakata replaced, kept waving as she disappeared down the hatch and floated into Discovery. Wednesday marked her 131st day in space; she moved into the space station in mid-November.

“All of you guys, this is the toughest part of the mission, at least for me,” Fincke said. “On one hand, it’s a moment of triumph … and yet on the other hand, we’re going to really be missing you.”

The two crews embraced as they said goodbye and closed the hatches. The actual undocking occurred a few hours later, as the spacecraft soared over the Indian Ocean.

“Godspeed,” called out Fincke. He added: “Come again.”

Fincke and his crew will be getting company again in just a few days. A Russian Soyuz rocket is set to lift off Thursday with two new station crewmates and a billionaire tourist along for the ride; they’ll arrive this weekend. Fincke then will return to Earth with Microsoft Word and Excel developer Charles Simonyi and cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov.

Discovery is bringing back five months of experiments from the space station. The 80 to 90 vials of blood, urine and saliva samples were stuffed into the shuttle freezer or wrapped in ice packs.

Discovery also is returning four to five liters of recycled water made from the astronauts’ urine and sweat. NASA wants to make sure the water is safe before space station astronauts start drinking it there; test results are expected in about a month.

The reclaimed water is an essential part of NASA’s plan to double the size of the space station crew, to six, in just another two months.

Discovery supplied the space station with a new urine processor to replace the original one, which malfunctioned.

WASHINGTON – President Brack Obama kicked off a first-of-its-kind Internet era Town Hall at the White House, thanking online participants for watching it online.

Speaking before taking questions sent in by online readers and from people assembled at the White House, Obama said the precedent-setting online town hall meeting Thursday was an “an important step” toward creating a broader avenue for information about his administration.

The president said, “When I was running for president, I promised to open the White House for the American people. This is an important step toward achieving that goal.”

Before the meeting got under way, the White House had gotten over 100,000 online questions.

———

ON THE WEB

Submit questions or watch the streaming video: www.whitehouse.gov/

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Confronted with orbiting junk again, NASA ordered the astronauts aboard the linked space station and shuttle Discovery to move out of the way of a piece of debris Sunday.

Discovery’s pilots fired their ship’s thrusters to reorient the two spacecraft and thereby avoid a small piece from a 10-year-old Chinese satellite rocket motor that was due to pass uncomfortably close during Monday’s planned spacewalk.

Mission Control said keeping the spacecraft in this position for about three hours — with Discovery’s belly facing forward — would result in a slow, natural drag of about a foot per second, enough to get the complex out of the way of the 4-inch piece of junk.

Space junk has been a recurring problem for the space station, especially recently. Earlier this month, the three space station residents had to take shelter in their emergency getaway capsule when another piece of orbital debris seemed like it might come too close.

And just last week, right before Discovery’s arrival, the space station almost had to dodge yet another piece of junk. The debris — from an old busted-up Soviet satellite — stayed at a safe distance.

“Space debris is becoming an ever-increasing challenge,” flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said Sunday evening. When it comes to dodging junk, “It’s a big deal. It’s very tiring. Sometimes it’s exhausting.”

The latest episode occurred as NASA scrambled to put together a spacewalking repair plan for a jammed equipment platform at the space station. “That was certainly exciting,” Alibaruho said, chuckling.

On Monday — on the third and final spacewalk of Discovery’s mission — astronauts plan to return to an equipment storage shelf that jammed and could not be deployed Saturday. The spacewalkers accidentally had inserted a pin upside down. On Sunday, Alibaruho said the catch for the mechanism is considerably stiffer than expected and engineers now believe the upside-down pin might not be the culprit after all.

Monday’s spacewalkers — former schoolteachers Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II — will use all their strength this time to get the shelf properly deployed. They will have pry bars and hammers, just in case. If nothing works, the jammed platform will simply be tied down with sturdier tethers.

A hastily assembled team of experts spent Saturday night and much of Sunday trying to figure out how best to deal with the problem.

The storage platform — located on the long space station framework that holds all the solar wings — is meant to secure big spare parts that don’t fit inside the space station but will be needed once NASA’s shuttles stop flying. Because of all the pin trouble Saturday, the astronauts did not have time to deploy additional shelving on the opposite side of the station. That work was bumped to Monday’s spacewalk.

Despite the recent incidents, Discovery’s astronauts said they don’t worry about space junk when they’re outside.

“We have enough other risks and worries to take on as we go outside,” said Steven Swanson, who took part in the first two spacewalks.

One item on Sunday afternoon’s agenda — a slow day for both crews, with time off — was a full test of a urine processor that was delivered by Discovery. There were hiccups, unfortunately, that the astronauts were trying to resolve.

The urine processor is a critical part of the space station’s new water-recycling system, which NASA would like to get working before the population at the orbiting outpost doubles to six at the end of May. The system, which arrived in November, is designed to convert astronauts’ urine and condensation into drinking water.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronauts successfully unfurled the newly installed solar wings at the International Space Station on Friday, a nerve-racking procedure that went exceedingly well and brought the orbiting outpost to full power.

To NASA’s relief, both wings went out smoothly, one at a time. None of the panels stuck together as they had on previous panels.

The wings stretched more than 240 feet, a glistening golden hue in the sunlight and a dazzling sight for the astronauts and everyone else involved.

“It’s just really amazing,” said Mike Fincke, the space station’s skipper. He said there was “a shout of triumph” aboard the linked station-shuttle complex once the two wings were fully extended.

The work was a highlight of shuttle Discovery’s mission. Completed 220 miles above Earth, the new panels are the final pair of electricity-generating wings and should boost the amount of science research at the orbiting outpost.

“Great work, guys,” Mission Control told the astronauts. “We’ve got a whole bunch of happy people down here.”

After 10 years of assembly, the space station now has eight full wings. Altogether, the wings will be capable of generating enough electrical power for about 42 large houses, according to NASA.

On Thursday, a pair of spacewalking astronauts hooked up the $300 million framework that holds the wings.

This last major American-made addition increased the mass of the space station to 670,000 pounds; it is now 81 percent complete. Construction is scheduled to wrap up next year with the retirement of NASA’s shuttles.

The second of three planned spacewalks will take place Saturday.

Discovery is due to leave the space station Wednesday. Its landing, though, may be moved up a day to preserve science samples being returned from the station. Right now, touchdown is scheduled for March 28.

In a study released Thursday, British luxury carmaker Jaguar surged to the top of J.D. Power and Associates' closely watched vehicle dependability study this year, tying Buick for the No. 1 spot and dethroning Lexus for the first time since the Japanese luxury brand has been a part of the survey.

NEW YORK – British luxury carmaker Jaguar surged to the top of J.D. Power and Associates’ closely watched vehicle dependability study this year, tying Buick for the No. 1 spot and dethroning Lexus for the first time since the Japanese luxury brand has been a part of the survey.

Lexus, Toyota Motor Corp.’s luxury brand, took the next spot in the study released Thursday, followed by Toyota’s namesake brand, then Mercury, Infiniti and Acura.

“Buick and Jaguar both lead the industry in nameplate performance,” said Neal Oddes, director of product research and analysis at J.D. Power. “In terms of individual model performance, Lexus and Toyota still do very, very well.”

The annual study measures problems experienced by the original owners of vehicles after three years. Suzuki owners reported the most problems among the 37 brands assessed by J.D. Power.

Despite losing its crown to Jaguar and Buick, Lexus still swept top awards in four segments, while Toyota’s namesake brand took five awards. General Motors Corp.’s Buick LaCrosse was J.D. Power’s top midsize car, while Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln brand took two awards. Chrysler LLC, which took no segment awards last year, won top honors for its Dodge Caravan in the van segment.

Jaguar’s sudden jump to the top from its No. 10 spot in 2008 was notable for a study that is fairly consistent from year to year. Oddes said the brand has made significant improvements across many areas.

“We see improvements all over the board with Jaguar,” Oddes said, citing fewer reported problems with vehicle exterior, sound system and the overall driving experience. “The improvement at a nameplate level is significant.”

Still, Jaguar, which Indian car giant Tata Motors Ltd. bought from Ford in 2007, remains a relatively small-volume brand in the U.S. It sold just 14,000 vehicles here in 2008, while Buick sold 128,000.

Oddes said this year’s study was redesigned to exclude routine fixes from a vehicle’s list of problems. For example, the study no longer counts tire or windshield wiper replacements as a reportable problem. The intended result is a study that focuses on actual glitches with a vehicle, Oddes said, though it also makes it difficult to make year-over-year comparisons.

“We cleaned up the survey to really try to focus in on things that are truly broken,” he said.

The industry average was 170 problems per 100 vehicles, or somewhat less than two problems per vehicle. Last year, the industry average was 206 problems per 100 vehicles, but year-over-year improvements this year are much less pronounced when accounting for the changes in the study’s methodology, Oddes said.

The most frequently reported problem was wind noise, followed by brake noise, peeling paint, brake vibrations and problems with a vehicle’s lights, Oddes said. The problems have been fairly consistent from year to year, he said.

J.D. Power’s dependability study surveyed 46,313 original owners of 2006 model-year vehicles in October 2008. The results are watched closely by automakers and are often used in advertising. Owners’ opinion of a car after three years can be a major influence on their opinion to buy that brand again.

The firm also releases an initial quality study, which measures problems in the first 90 days of ownership.

———

JD POWER RANKINGS

J.D. Power and Associates on Thursday released its annual survey of vehicle dependability based on questionnaires sent to owners of 2006 model-year vehicles.

The list includes the top performers and runners-up in each category. An MAV, or multi-activity vehicle, refers to sport utility vehicles and crossovers.

Subcompact Car

• Highest ranked: Scion xA

• Runners-up: Suzuki Aerio, Chevrolet Aveo

0Compact Car

• Highest ranked: Toyota Prius

• Runners-up: Toyota Matrix, Pontiac Vibe

Compact Sporty Car

• Highest ranked: Mazda MX-5 Miata

• Runners-up: Subaru Impreza, Pontiac Solstice Convertible

Midsize Sporty Car

• Highest ranked: Toyota Solara

• Runners-up: Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Ford Mustang

Midsize Car

• Highest ranked: Buick LaCrosse

• Runners-up: Toyota Camry, Mercury Milan

Large Car

• Highest ranked: Mercury Grand Marquis

• Runners-up: Buick Lucerne, Mercury Montego

Compact Premium Sporty Car

• Highest ranked: Nissan 350Z

• Runners-up: Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class, Acura RSX

Entry Premium Vehicle

• Highest ranked: Lincoln Zephyr

• Runners-up: Cadillac CTS, Infiniti G-Series

Midsize Premium Car

• Highest ranked: Acura RL, Lexus ES330 (tie)

• Runner-up: Infiniti M-Series

Large Premium Car

• Highest ranked: Lexus LS430

• Runners-up: Lincoln Town Car, Cadillac DTS

Premium Sporty Car

• Highest ranked: Lexus SC 430

• Runners-up: Porsche 911, Chevrolet Corvette

Compact MAV

• Highest ranked: Honda Element

• Runners-up: Honda CR-V, Mitsubishi Outlander

Midsize MAV

• Highest ranked: Toyota Highlander

• Runners-up: Toyota 4Runner, Buick Rainier

Large MAV

• Highest ranked: Toyota Sequoia

• Runners-up: Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Expedition

Large Pickup

• Highest ranked: Toyota Tundra

• Runners-up: Ford F-150 LD, GMC Sierra LD

Midsize Pickup

• Highest ranked: Ford Ranger

• Runners-up: Honda Ridgeline, Toyota Tacoma

Van

• Highest ranked: Dodge Caravan

• Runners-up: Ford Freestar, Toyota Sienna

Midsize Premium MAV

• Highest ranked: Lexus GX 470

• Runners-up: Acura MDX, Lexus RX 330/RX400h

Large Premium MAV

• Highest ranked: Lincoln Mark LT

• Runners-up: Land Rover Range Rover Sport, Lincoln Navigator

The Associated Press

Pressman Jim Herron looks over the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as it comes off the press Monday at the printing plant of The Seattle Times in Bothell, Wash., where the paper was published.

SEATTLE – Patrick Sheldon has been a loyal reader of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer since 1965, when his dad started buying it because he preferred its sports coverage to that of rival Seattle Times.

Will he continue being a loyal reader, now that the P-I exists only as a Web site? Like many of the paper’s customers, he says it depends on who writes and what they cover.

“If it’s just bloggers, I probably won’t,” he said, sitting on a ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle.

After 146 years, the P-I’s final edition rolled off the presses Tuesday, but a skeleton crew remained in the cavernous newsroom to take part in a journalistic experiment: whether a major newspaper can make money, and consistently produce good stories, as an Internet-only operation. It’s the first major U.S. daily paper to switch from print to digital, a step that the P-I’s parent company, Hearst Corp., took after it failed to find a buyer for the newspaper.

Seattlepi.com on Tuesday featured many of the same articles that appeared in the final edition, including somber remembrances of days gone by. But it also offered a glimpse of what the site will look like once the content produced by the full staff vanishes, including breaking news updates from crime and political reporters, columns by Seattle luminaries such as U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott and about 150 blogs by readers. Some marquee names, including columnist Joel Connelly and cartoonist David Horsey, will remain on staff, while sports columnists Art Thiel and Jim Moore will freelance for the Web site.

The final edition sold quickly; The Seattle Times, which handled nonnews functions for the P-I under a joint operating agreement that dated to 1983, printed three times as many P-Is as usual. At First and Pike News, in Pike Place Market, the final P-I sold out by 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, even though the newsstand had 600 copies delivered instead of the usual 50. Liberal radio talk show host Ron Reagan, the son of the late president, showed up to buy one for his producer, who lives in New York.

“It’s a sad day, but I guess that’s the way things go,” he said.

Sen. Patty Murray eulogized the paper on the Senate floor, crediting its investigative reporting as the reason she introduced legislation to ban asbestos and to boost the number of FBI agents in the region.

“At the end of the day, newspapers aren’t just another business,” she said. “For generations, newspaper reporters have been the ones who have done the digging, sat through the meetings and broken the hard stories.”

At the P-I, laid-off reporters continued clearing out their desks. Some were still suffering after a night of hard drinking when they showed up Tuesday for their exit interviews.

Among those most skeptical about whether seattlepi.com can thrive with an editorial staff of 20 – about 130 fewer than the print edition had – are those who lost their jobs.

“You cannot kill a newsroom and still cover news; we didn’t have enough people to cover everything that deserved coverage as it was!” reporter Debera Harrell wrote in a forum for P-I employees at the Columbia Journalism Review’s Web site. “In an era where Paris Hilton and Angelina Jolie’s breastfeeding earn the most hits off our Web site, maybe real journalists are not needed.”

“A staff of 20 can’t cover what over 150 reporters and editors covered for the print product,” former assistant managing editor Janet Grimley agreed.

Several of the laid-off workers are exploring the idea of creating their own news Web site, possibly in partnership with Seattle public television station KCTS.

The remaining P-I employees say they know what they’re up against.

“Seattlepi.com will continue to cover city hall, crime, courts, real estate, development, education, transportation and more,” executive producer Michelle Nicolosi wrote in a letter to readers. “I hope you’ll pardon our dust for the next few weeks as we launch our new digital news and information Web site.”

A black-and-white artist's rendering of the smallest meat-eating dinosaur shows it chasing a cicada in Alberta, Canada, 75 million years ago.

WASHINGTON – Imagine a vicious velociraptor like those in “Jurassic Park,” but only as big as a modern chicken.

That’s what Canadian researchers say they have found, the smallest meat-eating dinosaur yet discovered in North America.

This pint-sized cousin of velociraptor, weighing in at 4 to 5 pounds, “probably hunted and ate whatever it could for its size – insects, mammals, amphibians and maybe even baby dinosaurs,” said Nicholas Longrich of the University of Calgary.

The creature lived 75 million years ago in the swamps and forests of southern Alberta, Longrich and colleague Philip J. Currie report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There has been plenty of evidence for large and medium-size dinosaurs in North America, but not small ones, Longrich said. Now researchers say there was a dinosaur filling that niche.

The bones of the small raptor were discovered among fossils that had been collected a quarter-century ago and remained in a museum drawer, Longrich said.

Similar small dinosaurs have been uncovered in China.

“It was hard to tell because it was still encased in rock,” Longrich said. “It is only because I had been studying the Chinese dinosaurs I could tell what it was.”

NEW YORK — George Stephanopoulos and John McCain plan to be “tweeting” Tuesday in an interview hosted on the Twitter Web site.

The Arizona senator and the ABC News correspondent will come together online for a “Twitterview” to be conducted at 12 noon EDT on Tuesday. But they can’t get too wordy. The microblogging platform restricts each entry to just 140 characters.

“We’re going to attempt to conduct a full interview exclusively on Twitter — complete with the 140-character limit,” Stephanopoulos said in a statement Friday. He said it was the latest in an effort to find new ways to connect with viewers of “This Week,” which he anchors.

The public will be able to read the real-time 15-minute exchange by signing up at the Twitter site to follow both Stephanopoulos and McCain.

Meanwhile, Stephanopoulos is inviting everyone to “tweet” him proposed questions — with a 140-character limit.

Twitter is a growing Internet phenomenon, with millions of participants, including increasing numbers of public figures who use it to reach their supporters.

While messages posted by the average Twitter user might be read by a few dozen registered “followers,” Stephanopoulos’ Twitter page Friday listed more than 148,000 followers, while McCain could claim nearly 200,000.

———

On the Web

Follow the Citizen’s tweets at www.twitter.com/Tucson_Citizen

www.twitter.com

www.abcnews.com

If all goes well, space shuttle Discovery’s coming mission will leave the International Space Station looking the way engineers and artists have pictured it for a decade.

Seven astronauts scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday morning will install the last major structural component built in the United States, a girder larger than a school bus that will finish the outpost’s 11-piece, $2 billion backbone.

From the 45-foot truss, a final pair of American solar array wings will unfurl to fully power the 10-year-old station for the first time – if the crew can avoid snags that have added drama to past array deployments.

“We’ve learned some lessons since the very first one we did eight years ago,” said mission specialist John Phillips, who will hit an abort button if the pleated arrays begin to stick together or rip as they unfold.

Beyond appearances, the addition is critical to the station’s future: It doubles the power available for science experiments, and supports a planned expansion of crews from three to six people in May.

With the new solar wings in place on the starboard, or right, side, the station’s power supply could light up a neighborhood of more than 40 large homes.

For some engineers at Kennedy Space Center, where the major truss components are assembled and tested in preparation for launch, Discovery’s two-week mission caps careers spent building a station backbone that will soon stretch the length of a football field.

“It’s the end of a chapter for me, and the start of another one,” said Sam Amundsen, who will shift his attention to different station components.

The new iPod

SEATTLE – Apple Inc. unveiled a minuscule new iPod Shuffle on Wednesday that takes its “smaller is better” mantra to a whole new level.

The third-generation Shuffle, a slim aluminum rectangle less than 2 inches long, takes up about half as much space as the previous version even as it doubles music storage space to 4 gigabytes. To achieve such a tiny form, Apple had to remove most of the buttons from the body of the $79 device and build them into the headphone cord instead.

“Smaller has tended to work very well for us,” said Greg Joswiak, a marketing vice president at Apple.

The trade-off for a sub-$100 Shuffle always has been the lack of a screen to visually navigate through the music stored on the device. The first-generation Shuffle, which launched in 2005, could hold about 240 songs, arguably not enough to warrant a screen.

Now that the device can carry 1,000 songs, Apple has come up with a way for people to identify the music they’re listening to or find songs they want. A new feature called VoiceOver can, at the push of a button, speak the song and artist name or rattle off the list of custom mixes — called playlists — that the owner has loaded onto the device.

Here’s how it works: As you synchronize a new Shuffle using an updated version of iTunes, your PC or Mac looks at each track and playlist and creates a small file of a computerized voice speaking the title, artist for playlist name. If a song is in Spanish or Chinese, say, the software figures this out and speaks in the appropriate language. Apple says the device can handle 14 languages.

The new Shuffle, which comes in silver or black aluminum with a shiny stainless steel clip, is set to go on sale Thursday. Joswiak said Apple’s own earphones will be the only option for early buyers, but that other companies plan to make compatible headphones as well as adapters for regular headphones.

Ross Rubin, an analyst for market researcher NPD Group, said there’s no such thing as “too small” for gadget-happy consumers as long as Apple stays focused on ergonomics and provides a way to secure the device and keep it from getting lost.

But people who do buy a new Shuffle will be paying a premium for Apple’s design, he added, noting less-expensive mini-models like SanDisk Corp.’s Sansa Clip and Creative Technology Ltd.’s Zen Stone.

Shares of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple jumped $3.91, or 4.4 percent, to $92.54 in afternoon trading.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is allowing federal taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research, the latest reversal of his predecessor’s policies.

The president, who plans to sign an order later Monday, will be fulfilling a campaign promise that could set in motion a broad push on research to find better treatment for ailments from diabetes to paralysis. Proponents such as former first lady Nancy Reagan and the late actor Christopher Reeve had called for ending restrictions on research spending.

The executive order undoes former President George W. Bush’s directive that was based on his determination that using embryos to create additional stem cell lines was morally wrong and, therefore, research on those lines should not be funded by the government.

Bush had limited the use of taxpayer money to 21 stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001. The Obama order reverses that but does not address a legislative ban that precludes any federal money to researchers who develop stem cell lines by destroying embryos.

The legislation, however, does not prevent funds for research on stem cell lines that were produced by researchers who did their work without federal aid.

Bush and his supporters had said they were defending human life. Days-old embryos — typically from fertility clinics and destined for destruction — are destroyed for the stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are master cells that can morph into any cell of the body. Scientists hope to harness them so they can create replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases — such as new insulin-producing cells for diabetics, cells that could help those with Parkinson’s disease or maybe even Alzheimer’s, or new nerve connections to restore movement after spinal injury.

In reversing the Bush policy, Obama also planned to issue a memo on scientific research in an East Room ceremony. White House advisers said the memorandum was part of the president’s policy of deeper scientific involvement in issues ranging from renewable energy to climate change.

“I would simply say this memorandum is not concerned solely — or even specifically — with stem cell research,” said Harold Varmus, chairman of the White House’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. He said it would address how the government uses science and who is advising officials across federal agencies.

But Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said the White House should focus on the economy, not stem cells.

“Frankly, federal funding of embryonic stem cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning,” he said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We don’t want that. . . . And certainly that is something that we ought to be talking about, but let’s take care of business first. People are out of jobs.”

Regardless, researchers say newer lines that have been produced without federal money during the period of the Bush ban are healthier and better suited to creating treatment for diseases.

“We’ve got eight years of science to make up for,” said Dr. Curt Civin, whose research allowed scientists to isolate stem cells and who now serves as the founding director of the University of Maryland Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

At the same event Monday, Obama planned to announce safeguards through the National Institutes of Health intended to diminish what the administration believes is an intrusion by the political process on the scientific community.

“We view what happened with stem cell research in the last administration is one manifestation of failure to think carefully about how federal support of science and the use of scientific advice occurs,” Varmus said.

Space shuttle Discovery astronauts (from left) Richard Arnold II, Steve Swanson and Joseph Acaba meet the media upon their arrival at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Sunday. Discovery is scheduled to launch on Wednesday. Acaba and Arnold are teachers.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Two science teachers who have spent the past five years under NASA’s tutelage are about to graduate with high-flying honors.

The space shuttle flight Wednesday night of Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II will mark the first time two former teachers have rocketed into space together. And during the two-week construction mission to the international space station, both will attempt multiple spacewalks – the most dangerous job in orbit.

The flight on Discovery was delayed a month because of concerns about hydrogen gas valves in the engine compartment. After extra tests, NASA deemed the spacecraft safe to fly.

Discovery’s astronauts arrived at the launch site Sunday afternoon and thanked everyone who helped resolve the valve issue. The countdown clocks began ticking four hours later.

The teachers and their five crewmen – the usual assortment of military pilots and rocket scientists – will deliver and install a final set of solar wings for the space station. With just over a year remaining until the orbiting complex is completed, the framework holding the solar wings is the last major American-made building block left to fly.

The flight comes a year and a half after the last teacher-astronaut, Barbara Morgan, went into space after a two-decade wait. Morgan was the backup in the mid-1980s for schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was killed when space shuttle Challenger exploded after takeoff.

Acaba was a freshman at the University of California at Santa Barbara when McAuliffe died on Jan. 28, 1986. Arnold was fresh out of college and living in Washington, and his wife-to-be was a student-teacher.

“It definitely had an impact when you look at the sacrifices that she (McAuliffe) made and the importance that NASA put on it,” Acaba said.

He’ll allow taxpayer spending using embryonic cells

WASHINGTON – Reversing an 8-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science, President Obama plans to lift restrictions Monday on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells.

The long-promised move will allow a rush of research aimed at one day better treating, if not curing, ailments from diabetes to paralysis – research that crosses partisan lines, backed by such notables as Nancy Reagan and the late Christopher Reeve. But it stirs intense controversy over whether government crosses a moral line with such research.

Obama will hold an event at the White House to announce the move, a senior administration official said Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the policy had not yet been publicly announced.

Embryonic stem cells are master cells that can morph into any cell of the body. Scientists hope to harness them so they can create replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases – such as new insulin-producing cells for diabetics, cells that could help those with Parkinson’s disease or maybe even Alzheimer’s, or new nerve connections to restore movement after spinal injury.

“I feel vindicated after eight years of struggle, and I know it’s going to energize my research team,” said Dr. George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Children’s Hospital of Boston, a leading stem cell researcher.

But the research is controversial because days-old embryos must be destroyed to obtain the cells. They typically are culled from fertility-clinic leftovers otherwise destined to be thrown away.

Under President George W. Bush, taxpayer money for that research was limited to a small number of stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001, lines that in many cases had some drawbacks that limited their potential usability.

But hundreds more of such lines – groups of cells that can continue to propagate in lab dishes – have been created since then, ones that scientists say are healthier, better suited to creating treatments for people rather than doing basic laboratory science.

Critics denounced the move.

“Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for experiments that require the destruction of human life,” said Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council.