News Corp's UK political meetings to be published (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – Ministers in Britain's coalition government, criticized for being too close to Rupert Murdoch's scandal-hit News Corp, face more scrutiny this week when details of their meetings with the company's executives are published.

News Corp executive James Murdoch is also under pressure over his handling of a phone-hacking scandal that has hit the Murdoch family's media empire and could jeopardize his own position at the company.

British police are considering a request from opposition Labor politician Tom Watson to investigate claims that the 38-year-old son of News Corp head Rupert Murdoch gave "mistaken" testimony to a parliamentary hearing last week.

Another Labor lawmaker, Chris Bryant, has written to News Corp's independent directors calling on them to suspend both James and his 80-year-old father for failing to exercise proper corporate control.

The scandal, centered on the now defunct News of the World newspaper, has led to the resignation of senior executives at News Corp and also cost two of London's top policemen their jobs after they were accused of getting too close to the company.

Prime Minister David Cameron has also faced the worst crisis of his 15 months in charge, his judgment questioned after he hired former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief.

Finance minister George Osborne echoed Monday Cameron's regret over the appointment of Coulson, who quit his government post in January and was arrested earlier this month.

"Knowing what we know now, we regret the decision (to hire Coulson) and I suspect Andy Coulson wouldn't have taken the job knowing what he knows now as well," Osborne told reporters after meeting his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee.

The government will publish details of ministerial meetings with News Corp executives, seeking to dispel claims that the company was wielding undue influence when the government was deciding on its $12 billion bid for full control of pay TV company BSkyB.

"When it comes to my meetings with the proprietors and editors of all newspapers, we are very shortly going to publish the details of my meetings and the meetings of other members of the government," Osborne added. Cameron has already given details of his own such meetings.

FOCUS TURNS TO BSKYB

News Corp dropped its BSkyB bid and closed down the 168-year-old News of the World to try to defuse the scandal after allegations the newspaper had listened in to voicemails of crime victims included a murdered schoolgirl.

The scandal has shaken the company that Rupert Murdoch turned into a global media after starting out with an Australian newspaper.

James Murdoch is expected to retain the support of investors and independent directors of BSkyB -- which he chairs and in which News Corp holds a 39 percent stake -- when the company announces its financial results Friday.

James and his father appeared before parliament's media committee last Tuesday to answer questions on phone-hacking.

News Corp's British arm News International had long maintained that hacking at the News of the World was the work of a lone "rogue reporter."

However, two former senior figures at its British newspaper arm disputed Friday James Murdoch's claim at the committee hearing that he had been unaware in 2008 of an e-mail that suggested such wrongdoing was more widespread.

The email related to a 700,000 pound ($1.1 million) out-of-court settlement paid to the head of English soccer's players union and signed off by James Murdoch in 2008, shortly after he took charge of News Corp's European operations.

In a letter to the media committee's chairman, James Murdoch said he had answered questions in parliament truthfully.

But legislators may now contact the men disputing his account, ex-News of the World editor Colin Myler and the newspaper group's top legal officer Tom Crone, to hear their version of events.

"James Murdoch is in a precarious position," said media analyst Steve Hewlett. "If it emerges that he knew the details of what he was signing, then he's in trouble."

"But if he knew absolutely nothing about why he was signing away so much money, then another question arises, as to whether he is competent to run the business, and whether he is a worthy successor to his father."

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle, writing by Keith Weir; Editing by David Stamp)

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Whither astronauts? Corps shrinks as shuttles stop (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA's mighty astronaut corps has become a shadow of what it once was. And it's only going to get smaller.

It's down to 60 from an all-time high of 149 just a decade ago, with more departures coming once Atlantis returns this week from the very last space shuttle voyage.

With no replacement on the horizon for the shuttle, astronauts are bailing fast, even though the International Space Station will need crews for at least another decade.

The commander of Discovery's last flight back in March, Steven Lindsey? Gone to a company whose proposed commercial spacecraft resembles a mini-shuttle; his last day at NASA was Friday.

The skipper of Endeavour's last mission in May, Mark Kelly? Retiring in another few months to write a memoir with his wounded congresswoman wife, Gabrielle Giffords.

The captain of Atlantis, Christopher Ferguson, assured The Associated Press from orbit late last week that he'll be sticking around after this final shuttle journey of them all. At least one of his crew, though, isn't so sure.

After spending her childhood wanting to be an astronaut — and achieving that goal in 1996 — Atlantis astronaut Sandra Magnus now has to figure out what the next chapter holds.

"Now that I'm an astronaut, the whole idea of what I want to do when I grow up comes back full circle," said Magnus, a scientist and former space station resident who's flown in space three times.

What a difference a decade makes.

NASA's fabled astronaut corps numbered 149 in 2000-2001, the biggest group ever. Then shuttles were zooming back and forth building the space station, and a crew was being groomed to fly aboard Columbia to the Hubble Space Telescope. Now the space station is finished, Columbia is gone and the 30-year shuttle program is ending.

These days, chief astronaut Peggy Whitson finds herself on overdrive, working hard to keep up the morale at Houston's Johnson Space Center, astronaut headquarters, while trying to convince outsiders that America still needs a robust astronaut corps in the shuttle-less era.

After all, she's got a space station to staff.

Two Americans usually are among the six people living on the orbiting lab at any given time, hitching rides up and down on Russian Soyuz capsules. Private U.S. companies hope to take over this taxi job in three to five years, freeing NASA up to explore true outer space. First the goal was the moon, now it's an asteroid and Mars.

"It's a very dynamic time, and a lot of folks aren't real comfortable with all the uncertainties," Whitson said. "None of us are."

Ferguson observed from space Friday that former military pilots make up about one-third of the astronaut corps, so he's not surprised so many commander types are departing.

"Pilots like to do what pilots like to do, and that's fly airplanes," the retired Navy captain told the AP.

Whitson — herself a two-time space station resident — figures she needs 55 to 60 active astronauts "at a bare minimum and for pretty much the duration." She said she has to account for absences due to injury, illness, pregnancy, even maxed-out exposure to cosmic radiation.

The National Research Council is evaluating just how many astronauts America really needs. A report by a committee of retired NASA leaders, ex-astronauts and others is expected next month.

Depending on the findings, NASA may start taking applications soon for a new, albeit small, astronaut class. No matter the size, there will be plenty of applicants, all eager to join this exclusive club. Only 330 Americans have been chosen by NASA to become astronauts, beginning with the seven original Mercury astronauts in 1959. The number of applicants over the decades: nearly 45,000.

More than 3,500 applied for the nine slots in the 2009 astronaut class, the most recent, even though the shuttle's fate was clear. Those selected were in their 30s and 40s.

The same thing happened after the Challenger and Columbia disasters in 1986 and 2003, said Duane Ross, NASA's manager of astronaut candidate selection. He theorizes that the more NASA is in the news, the more the attention and, consequently, applicants.

Ross said he told the 2009 hopefuls up front: "You guys are not going to be flying shuttle period, you guys are space station astronauts."

Translation: as much as five years of training, Russian language immersion, half-year space stays. No more sprinting back and forth to orbit for a week or two. Plenty of desk duty, too, in between flights, assisting from Houston with future exploration projects and other matters.

NASA's first shuttle pilot, Robert Crippen, waited out the lengthy gap between Apollo and the space shuttle. Nearly 12 years passed from the time he became an astronaut in 1969 until his first spaceflight on Columbia in 1981 alongside moonwalker John Young.

"I figured, well, it's the best thing in town as far as I'm concerned, so I went in knowing it was going to be at least a decade before I had an opportunity to fly," said Crippen, now 73. "I believe there will be people who still would want to stick around and do that."

Army Lt. Col. Mark Vande Hei, Class of 2009, is one of them. While he anticipates flying to the space station in the middle of this decade, he'd jump at the chance to fly to an asteroid in 2025. That's the favored destination of the Obama administration, to be followed up with a trip to Mars in the 2030s.

"It's an adventurous, challenging, interesting job," Vande Hei said last week, "and even if you're not flying in space, you're participating in a space program where somebody else is getting up into space."

But what if you've already flown in space? Then what?

Andrew Feustel, Class of 2000 and a member of Endeavour's last crew in May, said that's the topic of conversation at home and in the hallways of the astronaut office at Johnson Space Center.

"When I started with the program, I never realized there would need to be a third career," said Feustel, a geophysicist who worked in mines once upon a time.

"That's the trick, is to figure out how do you top that," he said. "I don't think you can."

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Online:

NASA: http://www11.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/index.html

Astronaut selection: http://astronauts.nasa.gov/

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