FLYING HIGH — With a cloud-covered part of the Earth as a background, the space shuttle Discovery approaches the International Space Station before docking on Saturday. This is the last flight for Discovery. After it returns to Earth next week, it will be retired and sent to the Smithsonian Institution. Only two other shuttle missions remain.

MOSCOW — It might sound like a great way to escape the mean streets of Moscow, hang out with buddies and get free food. But animal protection activists are aghast at a proposal to send the Russian capital's stray dogs to an isolation facility outside the city.

City authorities on Tuesday will discuss the proposal to round up Moscow's estimated 26,000 stray dogs and move them to a camp in the Yaroslavl region about 150 miles to the northeast.

Actors and musicians have petitioned city hall to abandon the idea. Speaking at news conference today, actor Yevgeny Mironov compared the planned facility to a “concentration camp.”

Moscow's strays are famous for their street smarts, many of them learning to sleep in the city's subway stations and even ride on the trains.

But while some of the pooches are polite and well-behaved, many are intimidating and aggressive, roaming their neighborhoods in packs and attacking humans.

Police in the capital of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan recently announced their intention to shoot 10,000 stray dogs this year. Moscow's plan would be less overtly grisly, but activists say it no less cruel.

Artyom Zverev, veterinarian for the animal rights charity Bim, warned the facility could become a breeding ground for disease.

BEIJING — China’s population grew to 1.34 billion people last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced today, marking a modest jump for a massive population and leading experts to suggest China might relax its one-child policy.The figure of 1.3410 billion, which is preliminary and based on a sample survey, shows China added about 6.3 million people last year, up from 1.3347 billion at the end of 2009. A more accurate figure is expected to be released within the next few months after the government tallies the results of its 2010 census, the first in 10 years.The number indicates a slower rate of growth than the previous year and experts said the decline could help convince policymakers to relax the government’s strict family planning limits.Since 1979, the government has limited families in cities to one child and rural parents to two to control its population.