NATION • WORLD
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X Friday, July 22, 2011
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James Murdoch contradicted by his former legal manager Police investigating ‘pinging’ allegations
John Raoux/AP Photo
SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS LANDS Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The landing of Atlantis brings the space shuttle program to an end.
End of an era: Space shuttle comes home for last time By Marcia Dunn Associated Press Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — The space shuttle passed into history Thursday, the words “wheels stop” crackling over the cockpit radio for the very last time. In an almost anticlimactic end to the 30-year-old program, Atlantis and its four astronauts glided to a ghostly landing in near-darkness after one last visit to the International Space Station, completing the 135th and final shuttle flight. It was a moment of both triumph and melancholy. “I saw grown men and grown women crying today — tears of joy to be sure,” said launch director Mike Leinbach. “Human emotions came out on the runway today, and you couldn’t suppress them.” Now the spaceship and the two other surviving shuttles will become museum pieces, like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules and the Wright brothers’ flying machine before them. NASA astronauts, a dwindling breed, will have to hitch rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules for at least three to five years. And thousands more shuttle workers will lose their jobs, beginning with a
round of layoffs today. The spaceship’s return was witnessed at the Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center by a relatively small crowd, mostly of NASA family and friends, compared with the 1 million who watched Atlantis lift off on July 8. In Houston, flight director Tony Ceccacci, who presided over Atlantis’ safe return, choked up while signing off from Mission Control for the final time. “The work done in this room, in this building, will never again be duplicated,” he told his team before the doors opened and the center filled with dozens of past and present flight controllers. Shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson and his crew seized every opportunity to thank the thousands of workers who got them safely to and from orbit and guided them through the 13day flight. “After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle’s earned its place in history. And it’s come to a final stop,” he radioed after Atlantis touched down just before dawn. “We copy your wheels stop,” Mission Control replied. “Job well done, America.”
NASA is getting out of the business of sending cargo and astronauts to the space station, outsourcing the job to private companies. The first privately operated supply run is expected later this year. But it will be an unmanned flight. It could be several years before private companies fly astronauts to the space station, which is expected to carry on for at least another decade. In the meantime, NASA will rely on the Russians for rides. The longer-term future for American space exploration is hazy, a huge concern for many at NASA. President Barack Obama has set a goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the mid-2030s. But the space agency has yet to even settle on a rocket design. Thursday, though, belonged to Atlantis and its crew: Ferguson, co-pilot Douglas Hurley, Rex Walheim and Sandra Magnus, who during their mission delivered a year’s worth of food and other supplies to the space station and took out the trash. Altogether, the shuttle fleet flew 542 million miles, circled Earth 21,152 times, carried 355 people from 16 countries and spent a combined 1,333 days in space — nearly four years.
LONDON (AP) — James Murdoch’s former legal adviser and a former editor contested the testimony he gave to British lawmakers, saying Thursday he was told years ago about an email that suggested the rot at his Sunday tabloid was far more widespread than previously claimed. Their statement could deal a blow to the credibility of Rupert Murdoch’s son as the family struggles to limit the damage from a phone-hacking scandal that has already cost the media empire one of its British tabloids, two top executives and a billion-dollar bid for control of a satellite broadcaster. Meanwhile Scotland Yard, which is still reeling from allegations that it turned a blind eye to the scandal, was asked to investigate another explosive claim: That journalists bribed off icers to locate people by tracking their cell phone signals. The practice is known as “pinging” because of the way cell phone signals bounce off relay towers as they try to find reception. Jenny Jones, a member of the board that oversees the Met-
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World’s chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. Because it seemed to implicate others in the hacking, the email had the potential to blow a hole through News International’s fiercely held contention that one reporter alone had engaged in hacking. If Murdoch knew about the email — and was aware of its implication — it would lend weight to the suggestion that he’d approved the payoff in an effort to bury the scandal. Murdoch told lawmakers he was not aware of the email at the time, but in a statement late Thursday, former News International legal manager Tom Crone and former News of the World editor Colin Myler contradicted him. “We would like to point out that James Murdoch’s recollection of what he was told when agreeing to settle the Gordon Taylor litigation was mistaken,” they said. “In fact, we did inform him of the ’for Neville’ email which had been produced to us by Gordon Taylor’s lawyers.”
ropolitan Police Authority, called for the inquiry into the alleged payoffs by journalists at Murdoch’s nowdefunct News of the World. James Murdoch, in a grilling by lawmakers on Tuesday, batted away claims that he knew the full extent of the illegal espionage at the News of the World when he approved a massive payout in 2008 to soccer players’ association chief Gordon Taylor, one of the phone hacking victims. Murdoch’s News International had long maintained that the eavesdropping was limited to a single rogue reporter, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator he was working with to break into voice mails of members of the royal household. But an email uncovered during legal proceedings seemed to cast doubt on that claim. It contained a transcript of an illegally obtained conversation, drawn up by a junior reporter and marked “for Neville” — an apparent reference to the News of the
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BUSINESS AT A GLANCE
Notable ● The top two U.S. companies managing prescription drug benefits are uniting in a $29.1 billion deal they say will help achieve key goals of the health care overhaul: reining in costs and improving patients’ health. Express Scripts Inc. announced an agreement Thursday to buy rival Medco Health Solutions Inc. Together, they would handle the prescriptions of about 135 million people, more than one in three Americans. That will give them even more clout in demanding discounts from drugmakers, who are dealing with falling or stagnant revenue as an unprecedented number of blockbuster drugs taken daily by millions is getting cheaper generic competition.
Thursday’s markets Dow Industrials +152.50, 12,724.41 Nasdaq +20.20, 2,834.43 S&P 500 +17.96, 1,343.80 30-Year Treasury +0.05, 4.31% Corn (Chicago) —4.75 cents, $6.73 Soybeans (Chicago) +4 cents, $13.88 Wheat (Kansas City) —20 cents, $7.74 Oil (New York) +73 cents, $99.13 DILBERT
Economy’s spring slump may last through summer By Christopher S. Rugaber Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — The economy’s spring slump appears to be extending into the summer, according to a slew of mixed data released Thursday. Layoffs are rising. Manufacturing activity in the Northeast expanded only slightly in July after contracting in June. Economic growth is projected to pick up this fall, but not enough to give businesses confidence to hire and speed the recovery. The economy could lapse even further if Congress and the Obama administration fail to reach an agreement on raising the nation’s borrowing limit in the coming week. But for the moment, traders on Wall Street don’t seem worried. Stocks soared Thursday on news that European governments were moving toward agreement on an aid package for Greece. The Dow Jones industrial average closed 152 points up for the day. Economists are less optimistic. They are forecasting a third straight month of feeble hiring in July, based on the latest round of data. Expectations are the economy added somewhere in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 net new jobs this month. That’s not enough to keep up with population growth and far below what is needed to lower the unemployment rate, which was 9.2 percent
last month. “We’re going to see improvement, but right now nothing’s improved yet,” said Joshua Dennerlein, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to a seasonally adjusted 418,000, the Labor Department said. They have now topped 400,000 for 15 straight weeks. Applications had fallen in February to 375,000, a level that signals healthy job growth. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its manufacturing index rose to 3.2 in July, a sign that the sector is growing again. It had contracted in June for the first time in nine months. The index dropped to negative 7.7, the lowest level in two years. Any figure below zero indicates contraction. The index had topped 40 in March. The lower reading illustrates the impact of a parts shortage caused by the Japanese earthquake, which has affected many U.S. automakers and electronics producers. Still, manufacturers expressed some hope in the latest survey, saying they expect orders and shipments to pick up significantly six months from now. The Conference Board projected modest growth for the broader economy in the coming months based on its latest reading of leading economic indicators.
by Scott Adams
S OUTH B END , I ND . — Many states hit hardest by this week’s searing heat wave have drastically cut or entirely eliminated programs that help poor people pay their electric bills, forcing thousands to go without air conditioning when they need it most. Oklahoma ran out of money in just three days. Illinois cut its program to focus on offering heating money for the winter ahead. And Indiana isn’t taking any new applicants. When weighed against education and other budget needs, cooling assistance has been among the first items cut, and advocates for the poor say that could make this heat wave even more dangerous. “I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Timothy Bruer, executive of Energy Services Inc., which administers the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in 14 Wisconsin counties. The group has turned away about 80 percent of applicants seeking cooling assistance. The sizzling summer heat comes after a bitterly cold, snowy winter in many places and at a time when unemployment remains stubbornly high. The cuts began after Congress eliminated millions of dollars in potential aid, forcing state lawmakers to scale back energy assistance programs. The agencies that distribute the money are worried that the situation could get even worse next year because the White House is considering cutting the program in half. The hot air mass that has plagued the Plains for days began spreading eastward Thursday, roasting residents of the Ohio Valley and the East Coast under a sizzling sun that made people sick, closed schools and prompted cities to offer cooling centers and free swimming. Forecasters issued excessive heat warnings for a huge section of the country, from Kansas to Massachusetts. Missouri off icials conf irmed f ive heat-related deaths since June. Kansas City authorities were investigating at least 13 others in which heat was suspected.
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