Dorothy Walsh

HOUSTON, Texas (AFP) –
The shuttle Endeavour descended safely to Earth on Friday, ending a successful 16-day assembly mission to the international space station with the final piece of Japan's Kibo science laboratory.

The seven US, Canadian and Japanese astronauts aboard Endeavour touched down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:48 am EDT.

There were concerns that early morning thunder storms, coastal rain showers and fog near the Florida landing site might force shuttle commander Mark Polanski and his crew to postpone their return until Saturday.

However, the stormy conditions improved after daybreak, allowing Endeavour to begin its high speed descent to Earth.

Endeavour's crew includes Koichi Wakata, Japan's first long duration astronaut. He returned to Earth after 138 days in space, spent mostly aboard the space station carrying out experiments in Kibo.

"Welcome home, congratulations on a superb mission from beginning to end," said Mission Control, as the shuttle rolled to a stop on the Florida runway under sunny skies.

"That's what it's all about," said Polansky, who shared the controls with pilot Doug Hurley for the landing. "We are happy to be home."

The shuttle astronauts delivered and installed the last major piece of the one billion dollar Japanese research complex, the largest and most capable of the station's three primary science modules.

The new open platform for external science experiments was fastened to the primary research enclosure and a equipment stowage chamber that were launched last year.

The astronauts also furnished the new platform with an X-ray telescope, an environmental monitor and a communications device to link the space station lab with Japan's mission control in Tsukuba.

Four of the astronauts carried out five long spacewalks in which they equipped the oldest of the station's outstretched solar power modules with new storage batteries and stowed away an assortment of large external spare parts.

Both activities were intended to ensure that the station functions beyond the planned retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet, now planned for late 2010.

The flight also saw a record number of astronauts aboard the 220-mile high orbital outpost, representing Europe, Japan, Canada Russia and the United States.

Endeavour dropped off American astronaut Tim Kopra at the orbital outpost, where he joined five Russian, Canadian and European fliers. Kopra, who is making his first trip to space, is scheduled to return to Earth aboard the shuttle Discovery in early September.

Polanski, Hurley and Wakata were joined aboard Endeavour by mission specialists Julie Payette of Canada as well as Chris Cassidy, Tom Marshburn and David Wolf.

All seven planned to spend the night at Kennedy undergoing routine medical exams and meeting with family before returning to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Meanwhile, NASA is preparing the shuttle Discovery for an Aug 25 mission that is scheduled to last 11 days.

Discovery's astronauts will deliver research equipment, medical gear and other supplies to the orbital outpost. With the looming retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet, seven missions remain.

GENEVA (Reuters) –
The Afghan battlefield is spreading into residential areas where more people are being killed by air strikes, car bombs and suicide attacks, according to a U.N. report published on Friday.

The U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan said that 1,013 civilians were killed on the sidelines of their country's armed conflict from January to the end of June, compared to 818 in the first half of 2008 and 684 in the same period in 2007.

Commenting on the report, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said it was critical that steps be taken to shield Afghan communities from fighting.

"All parties involved in this conflict should take all measures to protect civilians, and to ensure the independent investigation of all civilian casualties, as well as justice and remedies for the victims," the South African said.

Taliban fighters and their allies were named responsible for 59 percent of bystander deaths, caused mainly by roadside blasts, and Afghan government and international forces were also faulted for errant air strikes that claimed hundreds of lives.

"Both anti-government elements and pro-government forces are responsible for the increase in civilian casualties," the human rights report said, arguing that tactical changes in the war had put more innocent people in the cross-fire.

Insurgents, who previously targeted the Afghan military and NATO troops with frontal attacks and ambushes, are now employing "guerrilla-like measures" in residential zones "to deliberately blur the distinction between combatants and civilians."

This shift, it said, is "what appears to be an active policy aimed at drawing a military response to areas where there is a high likelihood that civilians will be killed or injured."

FURTHER CASUALTIES LIKELY

Afghan and international forces have launched more operations in areas where ordinary Afghans live, killing people and damaging homes, assets and infrastructure, the report said.

The United Nations warned that resistance to a U.S. troop surge and efforts to disrupt August elections could lead to more loss of life in Afghanistan, where war has been waged since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 for having sheltered al Qaeda militants.

"Given the pattern of the conflict so far, further significant civilian casualties in the coming months are likely," the human rights report concluded.

The U.N. tolls are based on witness testimonies, military and local leader interviews, hospital visits, and photographic and film evidence as well as media and secondary-source reports.

The latest report said 200 civilians have been killed since the start of the year in 40 air strikes by pro-government forces. May was especially bloody, with 63 civilian deaths in one aerial bombardment and a total of 81 deaths over the month.

"While the number of deadly air strike incidents remains low overall, when they do occur they can claim a significant number of lives," the U.N. study found.

It also raised concerns about raids in which people died, and said "there have been reports of a number of joint Afghan and international military forces operations in which excessive use of force has allegedly resulted in civilian deaths."

But it said pro-government forces -- who until last year were responsible for the bulk of Afghan civilian deaths -- seemed to have clamped down on "force protection incidents" where civilians are killed after failing to follow instructions when nearing military convoys, sites or checkpoints.

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Finance Committee Chairman
Max Baucus said his panel won’t be able to pass health-care
legislation next week, dealing a setback to President Barack
Obama and underscoring the rifts in Congress over the measure.

“It’s clear there won’t be a markup next week,” Baucus
told reporters after meeting with a group of lawmakers at the
Capitol yesterday. “We are committed to finding a bipartisan
solution as expeditiously as possible.”

Baucus was facing pressure from fellow Democrats to
schedule a committee vote before the Senate’s Aug. 7 recess. The
last House panel plans to wrap up debate today, and both the
House and Senate have already put off full chamber votes until
September, defying Obama’s target of August.

Democrats wanted to show more progress amid concern the
monthlong break will give opponents time to galvanize public
opinion against their proposals to expand coverage to tens of
millions of uninsured Americans and curb health-care costs,
which account for a sixth of the nation’s economy. Republicans
say Democrats will end up raising taxes to pay for the measure
and limiting choices for patients.

“Over the August recess, as more Americans learn about
their plan, they’re likely to have a very, very hot summer,”
House Republican Leader John Boehner said of Democrats at a
Washington news conference yesterday.

The House, which intends to adjourn today, is further along
than the Senate. The energy and commerce panel is aiming to
finish work today after beginning debate on its portion of the
legislation yesterday. Two other House committees and the Senate
health panel have passed versions of the bill on party-line
votes.

Looking for Consensus

The Senate finance panel is struggling to reach consensus
on issues such as whether to set up a government-run insurance
program, whether to require that employers offer coverage and
how to pay for the most sweeping changes in the nation’s health-
care system in more than four decades.

Baucus sounded a note of optimism on July 29 when the
Congressional Budget Office estimated that the options he’s
considering with two other Democrats and three Republicans on
the finance panel would cost $900 billion over 10 years. The
Montana Democrat said the estimate would “clearly” help talks
as lawmakers have balked at pricetags topping $1 trillion.

Then yesterday, a member of Baucus’s group of negotiators,
Wyoming Republican Mike Enzi, said he wouldn’t sign onto an
agreement before Aug. 7.

‘Great Pressure’

“The bill is not ready for prime time,” Enzi said after
leaving a meeting with another of Baucus’s negotiators, Iowa
Republican Charles Grassley, in the office of Virginia
Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republican
leaders of blocking progress.

“Senator Grassley and Senator Enzi have been under great
pressure,” he said. Reid said Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, the
third finance committee Republican negotiating with Democrats on
Baucus’s panel, “avoided” a July 29 meeting with Republican
leaders that her colleagues attended.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, one of the two Democrats
negotiating with Baucus, said the group of six senators will
meet all next week and have conference calls during recess.

Senate leaders need to combine the finance panel’s version
with one passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions committee on July 15. If the new measure passes the
Senate, it has to be melded with a version from the House and
sent back for another round of votes in each chamber before it
can reach Obama’s desk.

Bipartisan Effort

The Senate finance panel has drawn much attention because
it’s the only one trying to find a bipartisan compromise.
Yesterday, amid speculation the White House and Democratic
leaders might press Baucus to push through a partisan plan,
Grassley warned of a potential “lost opportunity.”

Baucus’s negotiations “could lead to a bill that makes
things better, not worse, but that’ll never happen if Democrat
leaders tell Republicans to take a hike by forcing the committee
to move on an all-Democrat bill,” Grassley said in a statement.

House Democratic leaders may also face more stumbling
blocks when they return in September, after a group of Democrats
objected to a July 29 deal struck with dissident members of
their party in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

A centerpiece of the agreement was a scaled-back version of
a government-run plan to compete with private insurers such as
Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. The deal calls for the new
program to negotiate rates with health-care providers the way
private insurers do, instead of pegging them to the lower rates
of Medicare, the federal program for the elderly.

‘Compromise No More’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the provision
yesterday, while holding out the possibility it might be changed
down the road.

The legislation that leaders put on the House floor must
have “a robust public option,” or “we will vote against
this,” Representative Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat who
heads the 83-member House Progressive Caucus, said at a news
conference yesterday. “We can compromise no more.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Kristin Jensen in Washington at
kjensen@bloomberg.net ;
Laura Litvan in Washington at
llitvan@bloomberg.net

BERLIN – It's all there: the well-known desk lamps, the original metal tube chairs and models of boxy white buildings.
Ninety years after the founding of the Bauhaus school, a new exhibition in Berlin brings together the collections of three museums for the largest celebration ever of the most famous and influential school of avant-garde art and design in the 20th century.
The 1,000 objects that are presented in 18 galleries at the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin extend far beyond the familiar images of Bauhaus.
There are little-known paper cuttings by Bauhaus students, expressionist paintings by their teachers, metal sculptures, pottery, a chess board and even a sleekly designed baby cradle.
"We created a show that has never been seen like this before," Annemarie Jaeggi, director of the Berlin Bauhaus Archive and one of the exhibit's three curators, said Wednesday.
The show, "Bauhaus — A Conceptual Model" already has drawn 17,000 visitors since it opened last week, she said.
"Often one thinks of Bauhaus as a style," Jaeggi said. "But Bauhaus was foremost a school that — and this was typical for this modernist and upheaval time period after World War I — wanted nothing less than to change the world."
Shaped by its three directors Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus school was formed in 1919 in Weimar to transcend the divisions that had separated arts and crafts, and emphasize a new modern aesthetic that could also be mass-produced.
World-famous teachers such as Vasily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee or Oskar Schlemmer also put their imprint on the 1,250 students who were enrolled in the 14 years of the school's existence.
According to the slogan "People's necessities, not luxuries," which was coined by Meyer, the "Bauhausers" created articles of daily use such as tea sets, chairs or set tables that could be afforded by all.
Pictures and models of landmark structures like the Bauhaus school building in Dessau, the flat roof homes of the school's master teachers, as well as an entire Bauhaus complex in Berlin Bernau that served as a school for a German trade union, catch visitors' eyes with their unadorned surfaces and clear lines.
The conservative German establishment was hostile toward the Bauhaus movement and its progressive ideas right from the beginning. Only six years after its founding in Weimar, the school had to move to Dessau in 1925, to evade politically motivated attacks. In 1932, the school had to relocate to Berlin, where it was eventually shut down by the Nazis a year later.
"It is one of the phenomena of Bauhaus, that it wasn't weakened by persecution and oppression, but emerged stronger from every crisis," said Jaeggi.
After 1933, many Bauhaus students emigrated and spread the signature style of Bauhaus around the world.
Even today, many of the exhibits such as glass ashtrays and models of clear-lined building structures seem surprisingly familiar.
"The idea that one can create mass products well, that are functional and even low-priced ... is something that's understood today, but back then it was really new and revolutionary," said Jaeggi.
The exhibition, which was curated by the Bauhaus Archive, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and the Klassik Stiftung Bauhaus, is open through Oct. 4. In addition to the show, there also are organized tours to private Bauhaus buildings in Berlin and Dessau.
The show includes some pieces from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and 400 objects from the Berlin exhibit will be shown there in November.

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On the Net: http://www.modell-bauhaus.de