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"This is the true frontier of transportation," said Marion Blakely, head of the US Federal Aviation Administration, when SpaceShipOne, designed, built and flown by American private citizens, flew into space for the second time in two weeks and won the US$10 million Ansari-X prize. Then Richard Branson of Virgin enterprises made a deal with Mojave Aerospace Venture, the team headed by Burt Rutan and funded by Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, to develop a fleet of larger spacecraft based on Rutan's design and start commercial space flights in 2007-8. It took us all back to the romantic early years...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, initially expected to headline the Democratic response to the Republican convention, are both missing in action this week -- leaving the job to lesser-known lawmakers. The low-key Democratic response at the GOP convention is a sharp contrast from the Republican counterattack in Boston, where party luminaries included Rudy Giuliani.

Monday, April 12, 2004 Rooney: Our Soldiers in Iraq Aren't Heroes We weren't even going to regurgitate the latest ramblings of "60 Minutes" fixture Andy Rooney because we thought no one cared any longer about his attempts to get attention, but we've already had a few outraged comments from relatives of GIs, so here goes. He writes today in his little-read column (the only place we could find it was the Buffalo News): Treating soldiers fighting their war as brave heroes is an old civilian trick designed to keep the soldiers at it. But you can be sure our soldiers...

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