Woman sorry for getting off plane

A woman who got off an American Airlines plane after expressing concerns about traveling with a group of Arabic-speaking Iraqi men said she regretted the men were later questioned but she could not help being nervous, AP reports from San Diego.

The six men, some of whom are US citizens, were on their way home to Detroit after training US Marines at Camp Pendleton.

Leigh Robbins, 35, elected to get off American Airlines Flight 590 from San Diego to Chicago late on Tuesday with her two young sons. “I do feel very bad but I was just protecting my tiny little family,” Robbins said.

Britney says “Gimme More”

Troubled pop star Britney Spears has released her first new song in years on the Web, a single called Gimme More that is expected to hit radio airwaves as early as next week, reports Reuters from Los Angeles.

The song was officially released late on Thursday on the Web site of New York radio station Z100, and by Friday it was heard on YouTube.

NASA’s Mars rovers back in business

They are old and dirty, but NASA’s Mars rovers are back in the exploration business after enduring a lengthy Red Planet dust bowl that blocked most of the sunlight they need for power, reports AP from Los Angeles.

With skies gradually brightening, the solar-powered rovers Spirit and Opportunity recently resumed driving and other operations that had been suspended during the dust storm.

“The rovers are in good health and in good shape,” said John Callas, the rover project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “Things have improved from the more dire conditions that were existing previously due to the dust storm on Mars.” During the storm, each of the rovers spent a couple of weeks sleeping most of the time.

“They were in sort of a hibernation state where we were only communicating with them every few days,” Callas said yesterday. “The rovers would only be awake a very short amount of time each day to save power.”

The major concern was whether the rovers would have enough energy to keep sensitive electronics at proper temperatures on the frigid planet.

“At the darkest part of the storm, Opportunity had only 128 watt-hours of energy. Today, it has about 350 watt-hours of energy, so almost three times as much now,” Callas said. “The most energy that the rovers have ever seen in their 3 1/2 years on Mars is about 900 watt-hours of energy.”