Bill to assure millions their pensions eludes Congress yet again

WASHINGTON -- Congress falls short once again of achieving one of its prime goals: coming up with a bill to assure 44 million workers who depend on employer-based pension plans that they will get their promised retirement benefits.

House and Senate negotiators originally set Tax Day, April 15, as their target for finding a compromise. When it eluded them, the new deadline became Memorial Day, and then Independence Day.

But they left Friday on a weeklong Fourth of July recess still apart on two big issues:

How to make companies that have fallen behind on payments to their pension plans make them up without driving them to terminate the plans or declare bankruptcy.

Whether to single out financially struggling airlines for special treatment. The Senate wants to give them up to 20 years to get back to full funding of their pension plans; House negotiators don't.

Northeast weary after third flood in 3 years

TRENTON, N.J. -- Even as they cleaned up the muck left behind by some of the Northeast's worst flooding in decades, some riverside residents wondered Friday how long it would be before they would be at it again.

Life along the swollen Delaware River was frustrating -- thousands evacuated, roads and bridges closed, utilities crippled and tens of millions of dollars in flood damage. It was at times bizarre -- with a 4-foot alligator left behind in a Trenton apartment and foot-long carp flopping around on the streets of a nearby neighborhood.

"Our basement is destroyed -- again -- exactly what happened last time," Lambertville resident Dan Jacquemin said as he shined a flashlight at muddy water that still filled half his basement.

NASA takes calculated gamble with launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA chief Michael Griffin is taking a calculated gamble by going ahead with the launch of Discovery, overruling two top managers who fear foam flying off the fuel tank might harm the space shuttle.

The world will soon know if his gamble pays off.

Discovery was set to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 3:49 p.m. EDT today, the first launch of a space shuttle in almost a year and only the second since the Columbia disaster in 2003.

Storm clouds forecast for the afternoon remained the chief obstacle to launch. The shuttle faced no technical problems a day before launch.

"The vehicle is remarkably clean, certainly as clean as I've ever seen it," Griffin said Friday.

Bush administration weighs next gen nukes

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- The scientists who crack open the nation's nuclear weapons for a living are never quite sure what they will find inside.

Many of the warheads were designed and built 40 years ago, and their plutonium and other components are slowly breaking down in ways that researchers do not fully understand. With no new bombs in production, the government spends billions of dollars each year tending to its aging stockpile.

The Bush administration wants to revamp the entire arsenal with a weapon now on the drawing board named the Reliable Replacement Warhead.

The redesigned weapon is needed to ensure "a safe, secure, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent for the indefinite future," said Linton Brooks, chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Third try at medicine rarely works for depression, study says

NEW YORK -- The large group of depression sufferers who haven't recovered with two common medications stand little chance of success from a third drug, says the latest report from the nation's most ambitious study of depression treatment.

Only about 16 percent of those in the study became free of symptoms after switching to a third drug, researchers said.

Combined with previous reports from the project, the new finding suggests that about 60 percent of people who have depression can gain complete remission by the time they've tried three drugs. Each year, about 14.8 million American adults struggle with depressive illness.

The six-year, $35 million treatment project has yet to publish its findings from further treatment attempts, including trying a fourth drug.

Judge sets aside verdict in 'Mafia cops' case

NEW YORK -- A judge on Friday threw out a racketeering murder conviction against two detectives accused of moonlighting as hitmen for the mob, saying the statute of limitations had expired on the slayings.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein also granted a new trial to the defendants, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, on money laundering and drug charges.

Defense attorneys had argued that the five-year statute of limitations had expired on the most serious allegations against the pair -- that they committed or facilitated eight killings between 1986 and 1990 while on the payroll of both the New York Police Department and Luchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.

Prosecutors had countered that the murders were part of an ongoing conspiracy that lasted through a 2005 drug deal with an FBI informant.

In a 77-page ruling, Weinstein agreed with a jury that Eppolito and Caracappa were guilty of murder, kidnapping and other crimes, but he said the law compelled him to set aside the verdict.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A4.