World Briefs

WASHINGTON – A Japanese warship failed to shoot down a ballistic missile target in a joint test with U.S. forces Wednesday because of a glitch in the final stage of an interceptor made by Raytheon Co, a U.S. military official said.

The kinetic warhead's infrared "seeker" lost track in the last few seconds of the $55 million test, about 100 miles above Hawaiian waters, said U.S. Rear Admiral Brad Hicks, program director of the Aegis sea-based leg of an emerging U.S. anti-missile shield.

"This was a failure," he said in a teleconference. It brought the tally of Aegis intercepts to 16 in 20 tries. The problem "hopefully was related just to a single interceptor," not to a systemic issue with the Standard Missile-3 Block 1A, the same missile used in February to blow apart a crippled U.S. spy satellite, Hicks said.

HOUSTON – Astronauts vowed to double-check, even triple-check, to make sure a bag of tools is properly tied down during a spacewalk Thursday so it doesn't float away like one did earlier this week.

"We're definitely not going to do it again. You're not going to see us lose another bag," lead spacewalker Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said in an interview from the international space station with The Associated Press.

During the two-week mission's first spacewalk Tuesday, the tool tote floated out of a larger bag as Stefanyshyn-Piper cleaned grease from a leaking grease gun.

Tethered to the lost briefcase-sized bag were a pair of grease guns used to lubricate a jammed joint that controls the space station's rotating solar wing. The bag was one of the largest items ever lost by a spacewalking astronaut, and NASA guessed it cost about $100,000.

WARSAW, Poland – Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books.

The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun as the center of the universe.

Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial reconstruction of the skull that his team found in 2005 buried in a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, bears striking resemblance to existing portraits of Copernicus.

The reconstruction shows a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus, and the skull bears a cut mark above the left eye that corresponds with a scar shown in the painting.

Moreover, the skull belonged to a man aged around 70 — Copernicus's age when he died in 1543.