6A
NATION • BUSINESS
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
L AWRENCE J OURNAL -WORLD
BUSINESS AT A GLANCE
Notable ● President Barack Obama is calling once again for Boeing Co. and its workers to resolve their differences without “wasting a lot of time in court.” Obama was asked about the National Labor Relations Board’s lawsuit against the aerospace giant in a KING-TV interview aired Friday night. The president restated an earlier comment that “businesses should be able to locate wherever they want to operate” and have to follow the law. But Obama noted America is “competing against folks around the world who are after our jobs and our businesses and our market share.” He added, “We can’t afford to have businesses and their workers arguing instead of coming together to try to produce the best possible products and sell them as aggressively as possible.”
Friday’s markets
Dave Martin/AP Photo
THE SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS LIFTS OFF from the Kennedy Space Center Friday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis is the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA.
Shuttle lifts off for last time By Marcia Dunn Associated Press Writer
C APE C A N A V E R A L , F LA . — With a cry from its commander to “light this fire one more time,” the last shuttle thundered into orbit Friday on a cargo run that will close out three decades of both triumph and tragedy for NASA and usher in a period of uncertainty for America’s space program. After some last-minute suspense over the weather and a piece of launch-pad equipment, Atlantis and its four astronauts blasted off practically on schedule at 11:29 a.m., pierced a shroud of clouds and settled flawlessly into orbit in front of a crowd estimated at close to 1 million, the size of the throng that watched Apollo 11 shoot the moon in 1969. It was the 135th shuttle flight since the inaugural mission in 1981. “Let’s light this fire one more time, Mike, and witness this great nation at its best,” Atlantis commander Christopher Ferguson told launch director Mike Leinbach just before liftoff. Atlantis’ crew will dock with the International Space Station on Sunday, deliver a year’s worth of critical supplies to the orbiting outpost, and bring the trash home. The shuttle is scheduled to land back on Earth on July 20 after 12 days in orbit, though the flight is likely to be
extended to a 13th day. After Atlantis’ return, it will be lights out for the shuttle program. Thousands of workers will be laid off within days. The spaceship will become a museum piece like the two other surviving shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour. And NASA will leave the business of building and flying rockets to private companies while it turns its attention to sending humans to an asteroid by about 2025 and Mars a decade after that. It will be at least three years — possibly five or more — before astronauts are launched again from U.S. soil. Leinbach said that as Atlantis disappeared in the clouds, he and a friend in the control center put their arms around each other and said: “We’ll never see that again.” Inside the room, “it seemed like we didn’t want to leave,” Leinbach said. “It was like the end of a party, and you just don’t want to go, you just want to hang around a little bit longer and relish our friends and what we’ve accomplished. So it was very special, lots of pats on the back today.” The space shuttle was conceived even as the moon landings were under way, deemed essential for building a permanent space station. NASA brashly promised 50 flights a year — in other words, routine trips into space — and affordable service.
Shuttle crews built the International Space Station, repaired several satellites in orbit and, in a feat that captured the public’s imagination, fixed the Hubble Space Telescope’s blurry vision, enabling it to see deeper into the cosmos than ever before. But the program suffered two tragic accidents that killed 14 astronauts and destroyed two shuttles, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. NASA never managed more than nine flights in a single year. And the total tab was $196 billion, or $1.45 billion a flight. This day of reckoning has been coming since 2004, a year after the Columbia tragedy, when President George W. Bush announced the retirement of the shuttle and put NASA on a course back to the moon. President Barack Obama canceled the moon project in favor of trips to an asteroid and Mars. But NASA has yet to work out the details of how it intends to get there, and has not even settled on a spacecraft design. The lull that the end of the shuttle program will bring is unsettling to many space-watchers. The space shuttle demonstrates America’s leadership in space, and “for us to abandon that in favor of nothing is a mistake of strategic proportions,” lamented former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who led the agency from 2005 to 2008.
Hollywood’s newest stars: Will and Kate By Thomas Watkins and Derrik Lang
PRINCE WILLIAM AND KATE, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, arrive at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles on Friday for a three-day visit.
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES — Bathed in sunshine and under clear blue skies, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrived Friday in Southern California’s vacation playground. But within minutes of touching down, they were whisked off to work. The royal couple had tacked on a quick visit to Los Angeles following a nine-day tour of Canada, their first foreign trip since marrying in April. Aside from a game of polo in the seaside city of Santa Barbara, much of the couple’s three-day visit will focus on business and not pleasure. Instead of trips to the Hollywood sign or Malibu’s beaches, their itinerary includes some hefty fundraising for good causes, promoting U.S. investment in Britain and charitable work. The newlyweds landed shortly before 4 p.m. in a Canadian military jet. The former Kate Middleton, who left Canada in a red satin and wool scarlet coat-dress by Catherine Walker, changed aboard the flight and emerged wearing a light-gray, knee-length dress with asymmetric draping at the shoulder. William wore a navy blue
Jae C. Hong/AP Photo
suit with a purple tie. Their arrival was a lowerkey affair compared to the largely rapturous welcomes they received as they crisscrossed Canada. A small group of officials including California Gov. Jerry Brown and his wife Anne Gust, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Britain’s ambassador the U.S., Sir Nigel Sheinwald, greeted the couple at the airport. They climbed into a black Range Rover and headed for their first event, a technology summit in Beverly Hills aimed at promoting U.S. investment in British tech firms. Zoomed along by a California Highway Patrol motorcade, the duke and duchess avoided rush-hour traffic on
the 12-mile route by staying off the ever-clogged west Los Angeles freeways. The summit was set up to generate support for Tech City, London’s answer to Silicon Valley. The area around the trendy Old Street part of east London is quickly becoming a hub for technology and software firms. Though Prince William has been to America before, it is Kate’s first trip to the U.S. William’s late mother, Princess Diana, who would have turned 50 this month, charmed Americans when she visited in the 1980s. Authorities have put the paparazzi, known for their cutthroat tactics, on notice that aggressive actions will not be tolerated.
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Weak hiring casts doubts on rebound
By Christopher S. Rugaber Associated Press Writer
W A S H I N G T O N — Hiring slowed to a near-standstill last month, raising doubts that the economy will rebound in the second half of the year. The report baffled economists who had predicted much stronger job creation. And it escalated a debate in Washington over how to spur hiring and energize the economy while also cutting federal spending. Just 18,000 net jobs were created in June, the fewest in nine months. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, the highest rate of the year, the Labor Department said Friday. Stocks plunged after the report was released, although the market recovered some losses in late-afternoon trading. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 62 points for the day. Broader indexes also fell. For President Barack Obama, the sputtering job market represents a threat 16 months before his re-election bid. “Our economy as a whole just isn’t producing nearly enough jobs for everybody who is looking,” Obama acknowledged in a speech in the White House Rose Garden. Obama used the dismal job data to press Congress to
raise the government’s borrowing limit. He also said Congress could strengthen the economy by passing three free-trade accords, approving government projects to create construction jobs and extending a Social Security tax cut. But Republicans oppose an increase in the $14.3 trillion borrowing limit without steep cuts in spending. And they said the report reinforces their argument that tax increases would stunt job growth and shouldn’t be part of any deal. Friday’s report suggested that a slowdown that struck the economy in the spring and curtailed job creation may be more than brief. “June’s employment report doesn’t have a single redeeming feature,” said Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics. “It’s awful from start to finish.” Two years after the recession officially ended, companies are adding fewer workers despite record cash stockpiles and healthy profit margins. A result is that more people are giving up looking for work. More than a quartermillion people stopped their job searches in June. That kept the unemployment rate from rising even further. When laid-off workers stop looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed.
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