US space shuttle pulls away from orbital outpost after delivering enough food and equipment to bridge potential year-long gap The last US space shuttle has left the International Space Station, ending a 12-year programme to build and service the orbital outpost, the primary legacy of Nasa’s shuttle fleet. Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson and pilot Doug Hurley gently pulsed their shuttle’s steering jets early on Tuesday to pull away from the station as they sailed about 250 miles (400km) over the Pacific Ocean. “Thanks so much for hosting us,” Ferguson radioed to the station crew. “It’s been an absolute pleasure.” “We’ll miss you guys,” replied station flight engineer Ron Garan. “See you back on Earth.” Flight controllers at Nasa’s Mission Control Centre sat in silence as they watched the last shuttle pulling away from the station, a $100bn (£60bn) project of 16 countries that has been assembled and serviced during 37 of Nasa’s 135 shuttle missions. During their nine-day visit to the station, Ferguson and his crew delivered more than five tons of food, clothing, equipment and science experiments, a stockpile intended to bridge a potential year-long gap in US cargo runs to the station. Atlantis’s return to Earth, scheduled for Thursday, will conclude the 30-year-old US space shuttle programme, with no replacement US spacecrafts ready to fly. Nasa has hired two private firms, Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp, to resupply the station beginning next year. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly freighters to the station. Astronauts will fly aboard Russian Soyuz capsules at a cost of more than $50m per person, until and unless US companies are able to offer similar transportation services. Several firms, including Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies and Sierra Nevada Corp are developing passenger spaceships, but none are expected to be ready until 2015. The first US space taxi to reach the station will return home with a prize. In an emotional farewell ceremony on Monday, Ferguson presented the station crew with a small American flag that flew during the April 1981 debut flight of sister ship Columbia. The flag was mounted on the vestibule wall of the compartment that leads to the shuttle’s now-obsolete docking port. It is promised to the first US company that flies astronauts to the station. Nasa wants to refly the flag aboard the first of its planned spaceships that are designed to carry astronauts to asteroids, the moon and other destinations beyond the station, where the shuttles cannot go. Atlantis is due back at the Kennedy Space Centre on Thursday. Final space shuttle mission Nasa Space The space shuttle International Space Station United States guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Police say Tyler Hadley, 17, killed his parents with a hammer, hid their bodies in a bedroom and then invited friends over for party A 17-year-old boy in Florida has been accused of bludgeoning his parents with a hammer, then holding a party with dozens of friends while their bodies lay in the bedroom, according to police. Tyler Hadley of Port St Lucie is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, which authorities say took place on Saturday. He is being held without bond at a juvenile detention centre. Blake and Mary-Jo Hadley were believed to have been struck in the head and torso with a hammer sometime after Tyler had posted on Facebook, around 1.15pm on Saturday, inviting friends to an evening party at his house, about 50 miles (80km) north of West Palm Beach. Investigators believe the parents were attacked outside their master bedroom, and that their bodies were then moved into the bedroom and the door locked. As many as 60 people attended the party that night, according to Port St Lucie police spokesman Tom Nichols. They were loud enough to prompt a noise complaint and a visit by police officers. When police arrived at 1.30am on Sunday to warn about the noise, the party was already breaking up, Nichols said. The police then received a tip that murder may have taken place and returned to the home at 4.20am, where they found the bodies covered with towels, files, books and other household items, and the hammer between them. Mary-Jo Hadley, 47, was an elementary school teacher. Blake Hadley, 54, worked for Florida Power and Light. Autopsies were under way, but police believe they died of blunt-force trauma. They said the motive behind the killings was unknown. Florida United States guardian.co.uk
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• Competition Commission orders sell-off • Either Glasgow or Edinburgh must go • BAA says it may seek judicial review • Falling passenger numbers could weigh on price BAA must sell Stansted airport and either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport, the Competition Commission has ruled, in a move that has brought threats of a judicial review from the Heathrow owner. The commission brushed aside arguments from BAA that the original order for a break-up in 2009 has been rendered irrelevant by a shift in the political landscape. Under this earlier ruling BAA had been told to sell off some of its largest airports because, in the commission’s view, it was holding back the development of new runways in south-east England. However, the coalition government’s embargo on airport expansion has annulled the commission’s position, the airport group claimed. The commission gave that stance short shrift on Tuesday morning as it demanded that BAA sell Stansted first, followed by either Glasgow or Edinburgh. Noting improvements at Gatwick, which BAA sold for £1.5bn to a US investment fund two years ago , one of the commission’s senior officials said passengers and airlines would benefit from further competition in the south-east. “The introduction of new ownership at Gatwick, whilst too recent for us to draw any firm conclusions, has given a foretaste of the benefits competition can bring,” said Peter Freeman. “We think that these benefits will be all the greater once Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow are all in competition with each other.” BAA accused the commission of ignoring political developments and said it is considering a judicial review, despite having won an earlier appeal at a tribunal only to have the decision overturned in the supreme court. Colin Matthews, BAA chief executive, said: “We are dismayed that the Competition Commission’s final decision still requires BAA to sell Stansted and either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport. The Competition Commission has not recognised that the world and BAA have changed. This decision would damage our company which is investing strongly in UK jobs and growth. We have a responsibility to protect our shareholders’ investment and we will now consider a judicial review of the Competition Commission’s decision.” Spanish conglomerate Ferrovial is the majority shareholder in BAA, having led a consortium that paid more than £10bn for the business, loading the company with a multi-billion pound debt burden that was partly alleviated by the sale of Gatwick. BAA also faces the prospect of putting Stansted and possibly Glasgow on the block at a time when both assets are in a state of decline. Stansted saw passenger numbers fall 7% to 18.6 million last year as Ryanair and easyJet, its biggest customers, grounded planes in the winter or took them elsewhere, while Glasgow suffered the biggest dip of any BAA asset as traffic declined by 9.6% to 6.5 million people. It is understood that BAA’s board has yet to formally consider which Scottish airport to sell, although Glasgow is thought to be the more likely candidate because Edinburgh has the stronger growth prospects and more profitable passengers. Price will also be an issue for BAA, which was at least able to avoid a firesale of Gatwick because it sold the airport voluntarily ahead of a final commission ruling. Even then, BAA took a £277m hit on the sale after admitting that 2009 was “not a good year” in which to be selling Britain’s second largest airport. Stansted and Glasgow’s passenger statistics are expected to weigh on BAA’s attempts to secure a premium for those assets, analysts warned. “Surely they need a judicial review, just to buy time,” said one analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is a dreadful time to sell those airports, worse than 2009. You keep thinking that the downward momentum in traffic numbers will slow down, but it doesn’t.” BAA Travel & leisure Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
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Environment secretary expected to green light killing of creatures within strict limits in bid to protect cattle from bovine TB The fate of England’s badgers will be decided at lunchtime on Tuesday in parliament, when the environment secretary will tell MPs whether a proposed cull of the creatures – blamed for helping to spread tuberculosis in cattle – will take place. The decision, to be announced by environment secretary Caroline Spelman, is likely to be in favour of a cull, albeit one that is geographically restricted and that includes strict limits. But a green light for a cull – which farmers have demanded for more than a decade – would be highly controversial. Badgers, though not endangered, are a protected species, and the efficacy of a cull in protecting cattle from TB is widely contested . Lord Krebs, who as a government adviser in 1997 was the architect of a 10-year experimental cull, recently rejected culling as “ineffective” and said other measures would be more productive, such as improved security for cattle to prevent them coming into contact with badgers, and the use of a vaccine when one becomes readily available. Culling badgers, according to the trials, resulted in a 16% reduction in “confirmed new incidence” of TB in cattle herds – an outcome that farming leaders have hailed as a useful strategy, but that Krebs said was not enough to justify a widespread cull. He said: “You cull intensively for at least four years, you will have a net benefit of reducing TB in cattle of 12% to 16%. So you leave 85% of the problem still there, having gone to a huge amount of trouble to kill a huge number of badgers. It doesn’t seem to me an effective way of controlling the disease.” However, the National Farmers’ Union favours a cull, citing evidence from Ireland, where experimental culls have been allowed, and from Australia and New Zealand, where culls of other wild animals have been credited with reducing disease rates. Bovine TB causes tens of millions of pounds of damage annually, with affected farmers forced to discard milk, meat and other products from infected beasts, and sometimes to abandon livestock farming altogether. The worst affected areas are in the south-west of England and Wales, but “hotspots” for the disease occur around the country. Under the proposals before the government, farmers would be allowed to kill badgers using “free shooting”. This would mean trained marksmen targeting badgers, a method that would be paid for by farmers and is likely to be cheaper than the alternative of trapping and killing badgers. Farming leaders said free shooting would enable groups of farmers and landowners to club together to target areas of at least 150 sq km, the minimum likely to be allowed under any new culling rules, and they would only be granted a licence if it can be proven the area is a TB “hotspot”. However, the farming experts acknowledged that, based on experiences in other countries, the cull would have to take place over as long as 20 years in order to have the effect needed. Badgers Bovine tuberculosis Rural affairs Animals Caroline Spelman Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
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Environment secretary expected to green light killing of creatures within strict limits in bid to protect cattle from bovine TB The fate of England’s badgers will be decided at lunchtime on Tuesday in parliament, when the environment secretary will tell MPs whether a proposed cull of the creatures – blamed for helping to spread tuberculosis in cattle – will take place. The decision, to be announced by environment secretary Caroline Spelman, is likely to be in favour of a cull, albeit one that is geographically restricted and that includes strict limits. But a green light for a cull – which farmers have demanded for more than a decade – would be highly controversial. Badgers, though not endangered, are a protected species, and the efficacy of a cull in protecting cattle from TB is widely contested . Lord Krebs, who as a government adviser in 1997 was the architect of a 10-year experimental cull, recently rejected culling as “ineffective” and said other measures would be more productive, such as improved security for cattle to prevent them coming into contact with badgers, and the use of a vaccine when one becomes readily available. Culling badgers, according to the trials, resulted in a 16% reduction in “confirmed new incidence” of TB in cattle herds – an outcome that farming leaders have hailed as a useful strategy, but that Krebs said was not enough to justify a widespread cull. He said: “You cull intensively for at least four years, you will have a net benefit of reducing TB in cattle of 12% to 16%. So you leave 85% of the problem still there, having gone to a huge amount of trouble to kill a huge number of badgers. It doesn’t seem to me an effective way of controlling the disease.” However, the National Farmers’ Union favours a cull, citing evidence from Ireland, where experimental culls have been allowed, and from Australia and New Zealand, where culls of other wild animals have been credited with reducing disease rates. Bovine TB causes tens of millions of pounds of damage annually, with affected farmers forced to discard milk, meat and other products from infected beasts, and sometimes to abandon livestock farming altogether. The worst affected areas are in the south-west of England and Wales, but “hotspots” for the disease occur around the country. Under the proposals before the government, farmers would be allowed to kill badgers using “free shooting”. This would mean trained marksmen targeting badgers, a method that would be paid for by farmers and is likely to be cheaper than the alternative of trapping and killing badgers. Farming leaders said free shooting would enable groups of farmers and landowners to club together to target areas of at least 150 sq km, the minimum likely to be allowed under any new culling rules, and they would only be granted a licence if it can be proven the area is a TB “hotspot”. However, the farming experts acknowledged that, based on experiences in other countries, the cull would have to take place over as long as 20 years in order to have the effect needed. Badgers Bovine tuberculosis Rural affairs Animals Caroline Spelman Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Elizabeth Warren might be out of that gig at the CFPB today, but that’s only got tongues wagging busily about her future job prospects: namely, a run for Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senate seat, reports the Hill. Warren herself declined to rule out a run when asked by MSNBC today, saying…
Continue reading …VIP’s A Gentleman’s Club can brag that it’s “Chicago’s only full liquor and topless bar”—but it’s a title backed by quite the struggle. Owner Perry Mandera has been fighting to keep his club open since City Hall set its sights on it in 1993, backed by a city ordinance…
Continue reading …One thing we’ve learned from the debt ceiling debate: Republicans are no longer behaving rationally. They’ve been revealed as a “dysfunctional” party “whose conservative wing is behaving less like a mainstream electoral force than an ultra-left sect being advised by a petulant 2-year-old,” writes Gary Younge in the Guardian . “It…
Continue reading …So it turns out that the News of the World isn’t the only gig in town that can hack: Notorious prankster-hackers LulzSec and Anonymous are wreaking havoc with Rupert Murdoch and his empire, reports Gizmodo . Lulzsec fired the first volley, publishing a cheeky account of Murdoch’s death—via palladium—on…
Continue reading …There will be no storybook ending for Borders. The 40-year old bookseller could start liquidating its 399 remaining stores as early as Friday. The chain, which helped pioneer the big-box bookseller concept, is seeking court approval to liquidate its stores after it failed to receive any bids that would keep…
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