In brief: Shuttle sails up Hudson to its N.Y. home

New York – New Yorkers lined the West Side waterfront to welcome the space shuttle Enterprise as it sailed up the Hudson River on Wednesday to its new home aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

The prototype space shuttle rode a barge from Jersey City, N.J., to the Intrepid, where it was hoisted by crane onto the flight deck.

A flotilla of vessels including a police boat, a Fire Department boat and a yellow taxi boat accompanied the Enterprise as it sailed past the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center site and other Manhattan landmarks en route to the Intrepid at midtown.

Multimedia producer Tara Gore took a break from work to watch the shuttle.

“There’s so much going on in New York that you can walk out of your office and see the space shuttle floating by,” she said.

The Enterprise never went on an actual space mission; it was a full-scale test vehicle used for flights in the atmosphere and experiments on the ground.

It comes to New York as part of NASA’s decision to end the shuttle program after 30 years. It is scheduled to open to the public in mid-July.

Scouts to review proposal on gay leaders

New York – The Boy Scouts of America have agreed to review a proposal that would allow individual units to accept gays as adult leaders, but a spokesman says there’s no expectation that the ban on gay leaders will in fact be lifted any time soon.

The resolution was submitted by a Scout leader from the Northeast in April and presented last week at the Scouts’ national meeting in Orlando, Fla., according to BSA spokesman Deron Smith.

Smith said it would be referred to a subcommittee, which will then make a recommendation to the national executive board.

The process would likely be completed next year, according to Smith, who said there were no plans at this time to change the policy.