Phone hacking probe: Ex-NoW editor Coulson bailed

Former News of the World (NoW) editor Andy Coulson has been released on police bail after his arrest on suspicion of bribing police officers.

After nine hours of questioning, he said there was a lot he would like to say but could not. He denies knowledge of phone hacking when he was editor.

PM David Cameron defended his decision to employ Coulson as his aide. Late on Friday, an unnamed 63-year-old became the third man to be arrested by police investigating phone hacking. He was arrested at an address in Surrey on suspicion of corruption. Police are currently searching the property.

Earlier, former NoW royal editor Clive Goodman, 53, who was jailed in 2007 for phone hacking, was released on bail followinghis arrest on suspicion of corruptionCoulson, 43, was arrested at 1030 BST on Friday by detectivesinvestigating allegations of hacking the phones of various people in the news, and of corruption.

America's labour market

Hopes had risen in the past week that America's economic soft patch was ending. They have just been doused with a bucket of cold water. The job market showed further deterioration in June from May, the government reported today.

The number of non-farm jobs rose a meager 18,000, lower even than May's 25,000 number (itself revised down from the original estimate). The two months together mark a dramatic deceleration from the previous three when payroll growth averaged 215,000 per month.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, rose for the fourth consecutive month to 9.2%, from 9.1% in May. It was 8.8% in March. The economic recovery celebrated (if you could call it that) its second anniversary on July 1st, and in that time the unemployment rate has moved a lot while ending up almost exactly where it began.

America has made almost no progress closing the output gap opened up by the recession. The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes people who have given up looking for jobs and part timers who want full time work, shot up to 16.2% from 15.8% and the average duration of unemployment hit a new high of 39.9 weeks.

More women than men lost jobs. Indeed, since the recovery began, women have fared worse than men, a reversal of the pattern during the recession, as a new Pew study documents. Still, the male unemployment rate rose more last month than the female rate.

Digging deeper, the details grow worse. Hourly wages failed to rise and the average work week shrank slightly. The survey of households, from which the unemployment rate is drawn, shows a much bigger plunge in employment, at 445,000, than the payroll survey. The household survey is less reliable but is still a useful check. It tells us the payroll report is not understating the strength of the job market.

There is no good news in this report; in the category of "could have been worse," private sector job growth was better than the overall total, at 57,000 last month. Public employment fell, for the eighth consecutive month, led by more layoffs by state and local governments.

The best explanation for the sharp slowdown in the jobs market is the confluence of bad luck that hit the economy this spring: a sharp increase in petrol prices, a series of natural disasters, and the Japanese tsunami and earthquake that interrupted supply chains in electronics, automobiles and other industries.

Most of these temporary restraints have begun to lift. The weather is back to normal, petrol prices are down 10% (nearly 40 cents per gallon) from their peak, and Japan's disruptions are ending.

Automobile production schedules are ramping up and the Institute of Supply Management found that factory activity improved from May to June. Manufacturing employment rose last month, albeit by only 6,000. Even Greece seems, yet again, to have muddled through its latest confidence crisis (but keep your eyes on much bigger Italy).

Pheu Thai party wins election in Thailand

Led by Yingluck  Shinawatra, the younger sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as prime minister in a military coup in 2006, the party won a majority in the lower house of parliament and added coalition partners to form a government.

It is the fifth consecutive victory for a pro-Thaksin party and is a sharp rebuke to the governing elites. The army indicated that it would not challenge the result.

Space shuttle Atlantis in historic final lift-off

The 135th and final space shuttle mission has lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Space shuttle Atlantis was launched into history at 1129 local time (1529 GMT; 1629 BST) on Friday. The 12-day mission will ferry 3.5 tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station.

Upon its return, the 30-year space shuttle programme will come to a close, with Atlantis and the other two shuttles retired to museums. For much of the week, a launch had been thought highly unlikely. The weather on Thursday had thrown torrential rain at the orbiter, and forecasters had been talking grimly of similar conditions developing on Friday.