WWII-Era Bomb Discovered in France
By AP Sunday, Mar. 18, 2012
(MARSEILLE, France) — Officials in Marseille are evacuating an area around the French Mediterranean city's port so they can remove a 1-ton German bomb that dates to World War II.
Around 1,000 people have been asked to clear out Sunday. Boat traffic has been halted and access to several coastal roads blocked. The bomb will be taken to a military base to be detonated.
It was discovered a week ago by construction workers who accidentally pierced the explosive with their back hoe.
The regional government says the bomb's ignition system no longer works but the sheer amount of explosives — 1,400 pounds (650 kilograms) — made it dangerous.
The bomb was apparently buried by German soldiers, who had planned to destroy the city's port, as they retreated near the end of the war.
School killings suspect wounds three in French raid
Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:15am EDT
TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - A gunman suspected of killing three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school wounded three police officers in a shoot-out at a house in Toulouse in southwestern France on Wednesday and said he was a member of al Qaeda.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the man targeted in the raid was a 24-year-old man who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had shot dead the four out of revenge for France's military involvement abroad. He is also suspected by authorities of having killed three soldiers of North African origin last week.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, campaigning for re-election in a presidential poll in five weeks time, has blamed racism for Monday's school attack. His handling of the crisis could be a decisive factor in determining how the French people vote.
"He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al Qaeda," Gueant told journalists in Toulouse, referring to the gunman.
"He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to attack the French army because of its foreign intervention."
France has troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces.
Gueant did not say how they had tracked the man down, but that police were talking to his brother at a separate location in connection to the killings.
His mother had also been brought to the scene to help negotiate with the man, who is holed up in a small apartment building in the leafy neighborhood.
Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the area where the raid was taking place, in a suburb a few kilometers from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where Monday's shootings took place.
Reuters witnesses heard several shots at about 0440 GMT.
A police source said the police could launch an assault if the standoff lasted for some time. "There are more and more people around, so this creates a dangerous situation."
Gueant said Sarkozy had been informed of the raid which began at 3:00 a.m. (0200 GMT). When he was the mayor of a upmarket Paris suburb, Sarkozy helped negotiate the end of a hostage crisis involving several children. It has been credited with boosting his political career.
Immigrants and Islam have been major themes of the campaign as Sarkozy tried to win over the voters of far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Analysts say the shootings could transform the election debate and possibly tone down the populist rhetoric.
Jean Marc, a 56-year-old restaurant owner in the city who declined to give his last name, said he believed the crisis would benefit the far right or Sarkozy in the election.
"The Socialists don't talk about this stuff and it shows they don't know what they are doing," he said. "They (the police) need to get this guy."
Earlier on Wednesday, police sources told Reuters that a man had been arrested at a separate location in connection with the killings.
Authorities believe that the gunman in the school shooting was the same person responsible for killing three soldiers of North African origin in two shootings last week in Toulouse and the nearby town of Montauban.
The same Colt 45 handgun was used in all three attacks and in each case the gunman arrived on a Yamaha scooter with his face hidden by a motorcycle helmet.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Flynn and Geert de Clercq in Paris; writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Harry Potter actor jailed for rioting in London
LONDON | Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:23pm EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Actor Jamie Waylett, who played Hogwarts bully Vincent Crabbe in six of the Harry Potter films, was jailed for two years on Tuesday for being part of a mob during last summer's riots in London.
Waylett, 22, was found guilty of violent disorder by a jury at London's Wood Green Crown Court, the Press Association reported.
But the actor, who had already admitted swigging from a stolen bottle of champagne during the rioting, was cleared of intending to destroy or damage property with a petrol bomb he was pictured holding.
Waylett, who already had a previous conviction for cannabis possession, was with a gang of at least four people who went into the Chalk Farm area of north London last August on the third day of violence in the capital.
He was captured on CCTV at various points during the evening, often with a hood over his head.
The footage shows him accepting a bottle of champagne from a rioter who had just looted the supermarket he was standing outside.
Judge Simon Carr sentenced the actor to two years for violent disorder and 12 months for handling stolen goods, to run concurrently.
Jailing him, the judge said: "Anyone watching the footage in this case can only imagine the mayhem that took place on the streets.
"You chose to go out on to the streets on what was the third day of the violence. You were pictured on a number of occasions with a bottle full of petrol with a rag as a wick.
"I accept ... that you did not throw or have any intention of throwing it, but merely being in possession of it would have been terrifying to anyone who saw you."
Judge Carr told Waylett he would be eligible for release after a year in jail.
The star, who had a shaved head and a goatee beard, wore a white shirt with an open collar and a dark suit to hear the sentencing.
ヨーロッパの国境を越えた人口移動と過疎化・少子化・高齢化の問題−ルーマニア・ルプサヌ村の例
Poverty drives central Europe's great exodus
By Ioana Patran and Sam Cage | Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:20am EDT
LUPSANU, Romania (Reuters) - Maria Ene's traditional white house on a muddy, unnamed Romanian street doesn't have running water, but it does have two satellite dishes sprouting from its fence.
Three of Ene's five children have moved to Spain. It's not that far, but with everyone feeling the pinch of Europe's economic downturn, she sees them once a year at most, and needs to feel connected.
"I saw them on the Internet," said Ene, 69, who lives in the small village of Lupsanu, 75 km east of Bucharest.
"A grandson of mine showed them to me as I felt at one point I could not go on," she said, with tears in her eyes.
"It's hard there for them, but what would they do here? There at least they have a job."
More than 20 years after the fall of communism, the wealth gap between the east and west of Europe persists, and countries from the Black Sea to the Baltic are shedding people at an alarming rate.
While membership in the European Union has brought prosperity to many, it has also made it easier to emigrate, drawing young people out of the east, especially rural areas, and leaving behind an ever older and poorer population.
Romania, the EU's second-poorest member with an average monthly wage of $450, is one of the worst affected, with a 12 percent population drop in a decade, according to census data.
At the other end of the continent, the census in Latvia - a Baltic state which was seen as a great success story until the current financial crisis sent its economy into freefall - showed it lost 13 percent of its people, mostly to emigration.
Both countries have had to impose harsh austerity programs under the terms of International Monetary Fund-led bailouts.
The population in comparatively richer countries like the Czech Republic and Poland has remained steady thanks to returning emigrants and others arriving from less well-off states in the region.
But to the south, in the Balkans, and in the northern Baltic states, the picture is grim. Censuses conducted across the continent in 2011 showed Lithuania has lost 12 percent of its population in a decade, Bulgaria 7 percent and Serbia, still outside the EU, 5 percent. Hungary had 10.4 million people just after the 1989 fall of communism, but statistics office data show that slipped below 10 million last year.
Wealthy Germany's population, by contrast, rose last year for the first time since 2002 thanks to immigration from the EU's new members, despite the fact deaths were projected to exceed births, according to its statistics office.
People who opt to leave the poorer parts of Europe do not sense there will be an improvement in living standards any time soon.
"Ninety percent of Romanians do not believe there is going to be a better future in Romania," said Victor Ponta, who leads Romania's leftist opposition and is favorite to be the next prime minister after a November election.
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By 2060, Romania, Latvia, Poland and Bulgaria will have the highest share of elderly people compared with working population in the EU, Eurostat data shows. That means the number of taxed workers will decline just as government expenditure rises to help ever more pensioners in need of support.
Of Romania's 19 million population, less than 5 million are workers paying taxes, with most of the rest pensioners, children, subsistence farmers or people working illegally. Costs for the more than 5 million pensioners amounted to 9 percent of GDP in 2010.
Romania has raised the retirement age to 65 for men and 63 for women, but it will not be enough to keep the budget on track, and Latvia is considering a similar step.
"Under this worst case scenario, social security costs will mount to very high levels," said Mihai Patrulescu, an economist at Bancpost, part of Greece's EFG Eurobank.
"To address this problem, governments would have three options: raise the retirement age, increase taxes or run permanently higher deficits."
The EU has declared 2012 the "European Year for Active Ageing" to encourage both companies and workers to support the idea of employment at older ages and to help older people to continue living independently.
Newly appointed Labor Minister Claudia Boghicevici said Romania plans new legislation to give tax breaks to companies hiring older people and better support for those in need of special care. But those kind of measures will do little to improve the lot of people in villages like Lupsanu right now.
ABANDONED VILLAGES
In February, temperatures in Romania plunged below minus 20 degrees Celsius and snow storms blocked roads, railways and ports and even buried many houses in the south.
Elderly villagers without young family members or neighbors struggled to dig their homes out from under some three meters of snow and had to be rescued by the army.
Abandoned homes and villages dot the Latvian region of Latgale, near the border with Russia. In the town of Merdzene, a new school stands by an abandoned Soviet-era apartment block covered with shattered and taped windows.
Inta Nogda, a 45-year-old elementary school teacher, said her son left for England with his girlfriend and her brother. Now, all of his friends have followed.
"He told me 'You know, Mum, if I had anything to do here, I would never have left,'" Nogda said. "There are six families that live in our building. Out of 21 people, eight are abroad."
Rebeca Pop left Romania in 2010 to study in the United States and does not expect to return any time soon.
Pop, 24, is the kind of young person Romania, which is rich in resources like farmland, gas, precious metals and a skilled but still relatively cheap workforce, needs to keep to tap its full potential.
"I had multiple reasons to leave Romania: quality of education, work environment, opportunity, money and social issues," Pop told Reuters by telephone from Oklahoma, where she has nearly completed a Master's degree in communications.
Pop already has a research job in Michigan. After that, she may move to another country.
"I was tired of seeing people who do not respect each other on the streets, people who always look stressed and unhappy and who cannot enjoy small things in life," she said.
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There are benefits to having big populations working abroad.
Romania's huge diaspora sent roughly 2.6 billion euros ($3.4 billion) home to their families in 2011, some 2 percent of GDP - well below the remittances in the boom years before the economic crisis but still a lifeline for poor communities.
Working abroad also helps people acquire skills and many eventually return with those skills because of family links, said Roderick Parkes, of the foreign policy think-tank German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
And while an ageing population means older workers, they also have more experience, Parkes said.
"I think the panic is overdone and the reality is more nuanced," he said. "It could eventually be good for Romania."
Gabriela Gryger returned to Poland after working for Morgan Stanley, Soros Real Estate Partners and Goldman Sachs in London, New York and Frankfurt. Now in her mid-30s, she owns and runs a real estate investment agency in Warsaw.
"Poland has changed a lot," Gryger said. "The real estate industry that I deal with has opened widely to foreign investors and developers, which also made Poland an attractive place for me to work."
Headhunters in western Europe increasingly value professional experience in the emerging EU and are looking for candidates for posts in Poland, she said.
But in Romania, it's the downside that is far more obvious.
Lupsanu has lost nearly a tenth of its population since 2002 and more than 3 percent of those registered in the area work abroad, said mayor Victor Manea.
"Around 60 percent of the population in the commune is above 50, so I expect the population to continue dropping. Marriages are fewer and fewer, and the number of deaths is double the number of births in the last years," Manea said.
Pensioner Ene is struggling to make ends meet.
"I have a 300 lei ($90) pension and my husband has 600 lei," Ene said. "We live from one day to the next." ($1 = 0.7610 euros) ($1 = 3.3179 Romanian lei)
(Sam Cage reported from Bucharest; Additional reporting by Aleks Tapinsh in MERDZENE, Latvia and Joanna Bronowicka in WARSAW; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
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幸福度-世界ランキング
Happiness tops in Denmark, lowest in Togo, study says /the Gallup World Poll
April 2, 2012 | 11:21 am | L．A．TIMES
Are you happy? It's a question that economists and pollsters are asking all over the world, hoping to gain new insight into what brings us joy -- and why people answer differently in different countries.
Bhutan is leading an international meeting Monday at the United Nations, seeking to establish “next steps towards realizing the vision of a new well-being” that include gauging happiness in different nations. The Asian country already has a national happiness index, and is urging others to follow suit.
How happy is your country? In a report released for the meeting, economists John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs round up what is known about happiness around the globe.
Different groups have asked different questions to measure happiness. In the widest such survey, Gallup asked people to rate their lives from 0 to 10. It found huge differences in global happiness: More than a third of Europeans ranked themselves an 8 or higher. Less than 5% said so in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to polls taken from 2005 to 2011, these were the happiest countries:
The United States ranks 11th, just after Ireland. The unhappiest countries were Togo (ranked last), Benin, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Comoros, Haiti, Tanzania, Congo and Bulgaria. Bhutan, which pioneered the happiness index, is not included in the Gallup World Poll. (Other surveys rank countries differently from Gallup. To see some of the other rankings, read the full report. http://documents.latimes.com/world-happiness-report/)
It's not hard to notice that the unhappiest countries are also some of the poorest.The four happiest countries have incomes that are 40 times higher than the four unhappiest countries, the report said. People can also expect to live 28 years longer in the happiest nations.
But economic growth doesn't necessarily drive up happiness, the report found. For instance, U.S. incomes have grown dramatically since the 1960s, yet average happiness hasn't changed, past research has found. Freedom and trust in government are also big factors in happiness, the report said.
-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles
Photo: Danish Minister for Economy and Interior Margrethe Vestager after the second day of a Eurozone finance ministers meeting in Copenhagen on Saturday. Denmark is the happiest country in the world, according to Gallup polls. Credit: Lars Krabbe / Associated Press / Polfoto
極右と経済不況 - ギリシャの場合
Far-Right Rise Worries Greece Mainstream
By AP / ELENA BECATOROS Monday, Apr. 30, 2012
(ATHENS, Greece) — Reeling from a vicious financial crisis that has cost them pensions and jobs, Greeks have been turning away in droves from the mainstream politicians they feel have let them down. Another political force is trying to tap the void, with blunt promises to "clean up" the country.
It's one that could see Europe's most extreme far right deputies take up seats in Greece's Parliament in crucial May 6 elections.
(PHOTOS: Protests in Greece)
Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods — and vowing to kick out immigrants.
Greece's borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union's illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million.
Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.
"Golden Dawn stands against this corrupt system of power. All those who are responsible for the waste of public money must go to jail. That is our priority," said Ilias Kasidiaris, a 31-year-old party member who served in the Greek army's special forces.
Around him, the party offices in downtown Athens were a hive of activity, with newcomers dropping in and the membership list growing by the day. In the back, T-shirts and caps are for sale marked with the party logo, taken from the ancient Greek meander, a motif resembling the swastika and often seen on ancient mosaics, carvings and wall paintings.
Firmly on the fringe of the right since it first appeared 20 years ago, Golden Dawn garnered a meager 0.23 percent in the 2009 elections. Now, it looks set to easily win more than the 3 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament, with recent opinion polls showing support at about 5 percent.
The party has a barely veiled sinister side, and has been blamed for vicious attacks on immigrants. Members skirt questions about violence, saying they have no knowledge of such incidents.
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"We don't do anything, we protect the Greeks," said Epaminondas Anyfantis, a mild-mannered, 59-year-old candidate who looks the antithesis of many of the young, muscled and shaven-headed members. "Now, if in protecting the Greeks, a foreigner might get a slap or a kick or something, I think that's in the framework of the protection of the Greeks. ... Because unfortunately the Greeks at the moment have come to the point of asking Golden Dawn for protection."
With parts of central Athens turning into ghetto-like neighborhoods where drug users inject openly and muggings and burglaries are regular events, many have lost confidence in the police.
Giorgos Vardzis, who lives in the small seaside town of Artemida, has taken down the numbers of Golden Dawn members in case of emergencies.
"Who else should I call, the police? ... When you ask for help from the police because you're being killed, you have to be killed first, and then the police will come," he said.
Immigrants are increasingly concerned.
"We are worried very much," said Javed Aslam, the head of the Pakistani community in Greece, during a recent anti-racist demonstration. "This is very bad. You can imagine one political party with weapons, with knives, they are going out in the roads, and this is politics? This is not politics!"
Led by Nikolas Mihaloliakos, who won a seat on the Athens city council in 2010 local elections and shocked Greeks by delivering a fascist salute in his first appearance there, Golden Dawn rejects the neo-Nazi label, pointing out that many of their fathers fought the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
"We are Greek nationalists. Nothing more and nothing less than that," said Kasidiaris.
But they don't hide their admiration for many of Hitler's policies, saying he eliminated unemployment in Germany. Golden Dawn members often give fascist salutes at marches and rallies featuring nationalist slogans and burning torches, pictures of which adorn walls in party offices.
And they are tapping into a deep well of discontent with the parties that have dominated Greek politics for decades, conservative New Democracy and socialist PASOK.
"Our children have no jobs. They cut my husband's pension," said Evlambia Spantidaki, sitting on the porch of a friend's house in Artemida. "For a while I voted New Democracy. I changed and voted for PASOK. But now nothing, none of them."
This year, her vote will go to Golden Dawn.
"All those people who are following us at the moment, let's be realistic ... they didn't suddenly become nationalists from one minute to the next," said Giorgos Germenis, a member of the party's political council responsible for ideology. He is running as a Golden Dawn candidate in the wider Athens area. "It is a vote of protest. They find confidence in the face of Golden Dawn, that it will enter Parliament and really shake up the system."
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With none of its more than 220 candidates, bar its leader, a recognized politician, the party also plays to voters disillusioned with the political elite.
"We will never become politicians. We are soldiers and we will die soldiers," said Anyfantis. "We are soldiers fighting for a cause."
In a country that suffered famine under Nazi occupation and saw arbitrary detentions and torture under the 1967-74 military dictatorship, the party's growing popularity has alarmed many.
"I have been surprised and very worried by the explosion in the opinion polls of Golden Dawn, the most extreme form of the extreme right," Athens University political science professor Ilias Nicolacopoulos said shortly after elections were declared in mid-April.
So the mainstream has been scrambling to win back the right-wing vote, putting immigration at the top of the agenda. Public Order Minister Michalis Chrysohoidis has pledged to build detention centers for 30,000 illegal immigrants by 2014, with the first one to open within days. Police have raided migrant apartments, and legislation now allows authorities to force migrants to have health checks and medical treatment.
Immigrant groups say there has been a spike in racist violence recently.
"There is a worrying trend of racist attacks directed against non-EU foreigners in Greece," said Ketty Kehagioglou, UNHCR spokeswoman in Athens. "In times of instability it is always easy to look for scapegoats and extremist groups take advantage of this situation."
In an Athens hospital ward, Pakistani migrant Mohammad lies propped up on a bed, his right arm in a cast, his head bandaged, his nose broken — the result of a severe beating one recent Sunday night by a group of about 25 men armed with wooden bats and iron rods, he said.
Across town in a small one-bedroom flat, his friend Ahmad is recovering from head and hand injuries from the same attack.
"They just asked 'what's your country?' and then they start beating us. ... With hands and wood and the iron rod," Ahmad said. Neither had spoken to the police about the incident. Fearing reprisals, they asked for only their first names to be used.
For their part, Golden Dawn seem confident of taking up parliamentary seats after May 6 — even if it is on a protest vote.
"That is why the whole system is fighting us," said Anyfantis. "Because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler. ... We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people."
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ガンジーもスーキーも欧米教育の産物。
****
Suu Kyi receives Nobel Peace Prize 21 years late
By Balazs Koranyi
OSLO | Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:45pm EDT
OSLO (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally received her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday after spending 15 years under house arrest, and said her country's full transformation to democracy was still far off.
"What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me," Suu Kyi said as the packed crowd, led by Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja, rose in a standing ovation at the ornate Oslo City Hall.
Suu Kyi, 66, the Oxford University-educated daughter of General Aung San, Myanmar's assassinated independence hero, said much remained to be resolved in her country.
"Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today," said Suu Kyi, on her first visit to Europe in nearly a quarter of a century.
"There still remain (political) prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten," she said, wearing a purple traditional Burmese dress and looking strong and healthy after falling ill on Thursday.
Still, Suu Kyi - elected to parliament in April - said she was confident President Thein Sein wanted to put the country on a new path.
"I don't think we should fear reversal," she told public broadcaster NRK. "(But) I don't think we should take it for granted there is no reversal."
Suspending rather than lifting sanctions was also the right move to keep pressure on the government, she said a day after arriving from Switzerland to a jubilant, dancing and chanting crowd, which showered her with flowers.
"If these reforms prove to be a façade, then the rewards will be taken away."
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Suu Kyi, who spent a total of 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and her release in late 2010, never left Myanmar even during brief periods of freedom after 1989, afraid the military would not let back in.
Her sons Kim and Alexander accepted the Nobel prize on her behalf in 1991, with her husband Michael Aris also attending the ceremony. A year later Suu Kyi said she would use the $1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for Burmese people.
She was unable to be with Aris, an Oxford academic, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died in Britain in 1999.
On Saturday, Kim and Anthony Aris, her late husband's identical twin brother, attended the ceremony.
Suu Kyi thanked Norway, a nation of just 5 million people, for its support and the instrumental role it played in Myanmar's transformation.
In 1990, the Bergen-based Rafto Foundation awarded its annual prize to Suu Kyi, after a Norwegian aid worker in South-East Asia highlighted her work.
The award provided lasting publicity for her non-violent struggle against Myanmar's military junta, putting her in the international spotlight and setting the stage a year later for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Norway has also provided a home to the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition television and radio outlet, which broadcasts uncensored news into Myanmar.
Suu Kyi acknowledged that recent violence between Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingyas in the northwestern Rakhine region was a test of Myanmar's transformation but she blamed lawlessness for the escalation.
The violence, which displaced 30,000 people and killed 50 by government accounts, flared last month with a rampage of rock-hurling, arson and machete attacks, after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims.
"The very first time a crime was committed... they should have taken action in accordance with the rule of law," Suu Kyi told the BBC.
"If they had been able to do that, and to satisfy all parties involved that justice was done ... I do not think these disturbances would have grown to such proportions."
Tensions stem from an entrenched, long-standing distrust of around 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas, who are recognized by neither Myanmar nor neighboring Bangladesh, and are largely considered illegal immigrants.
Suu Kyi is also due to visit Ireland, Britain and France.
5 reasons for Spain's colossal economic troubles
Jul 24, 11:47 AM EDT
By HAROLD HECKLE and ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press
MADRID (AP) -- Spain's financial crisis is a lot like peeling an onion: remove one troubled layer and you expose another.
Repeated efforts since 2009 by successive governments to fix the country's problems have managed to undermine confidence in the fourth-largest economy among the 17 nations that use the euro.
A recession is deepening in Spain and a growing number of its regional governments are seeking financial lifelines. These developments are adding to the problems of a government already struggling to prop up its shaky banking system.
Spain's main IBEX stock index has lost 3 percent over the last three days while the government's borrowing costs for its debt have soared to their highest levels since the country joined the euro in 1999.
Last Friday, Spain finally got approval from the other 16 members of the eurozone to access up to (EURO)100 billion ($121 billion) in loans to prop up its banks which are weighed by down by (EURO)180 billion in soured real estate investments.
Spanish officials had hoped a solution for the banks would ease some concerns about the state of the country's finances and prompt investors to stop demanding unmanageably high interest rates for government debt. Such high rates forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek full-blown public finance bailouts.
But instead of easing off, investors panicked again.
On Monday the country's central bank said that the economy shrank by 0.4 percent during the second quarter, compared with the previous three months. The government predicts the economy won't return to growth until 2014 as new austerity measures hurt consumers and businesses.
On top of that, Spain is facing new costs as a growing number of regional governments that function like U.S. states ask federal authorities for assistance.
By Tuesday, investors had sent benchmark borrowing rate for Spain's 10-year bonds to 7.53 percent, just the latest in a series of records. By contrast, Germany's is just 1.26 percent.
If Spain's borrowing rates continue to rise, the government may end up being locked out of international markets and be forced to seek a financial rescue that would push Europe's rescue funds to breaking point.
Here are five reasons investors are scared about Spain:
HURTING REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS
During Spain's property boom, the country's 17 semi-autonomous regions raked in unprecedented revenues from building permits and fees. They windfall to finance infrastructure projects and the ranks or public employees swelled. Across Spain, highways, parks, public swimming pools, gleaming government buildings and airports sprung up.
Now the property market has collapsed and the regions can no longer afford to pay their bills and manage their debts.
The regions' problems have been a focus of investor concern for more than a year, but the fears skyrocketed last Friday when the region of Valencia announced it would be the first to tap a federal fund set up to bail out the hurting regions. Over the weekend, the region of Murcia said it also needed help.
More regions are expected to join the queue, threatening to overwhelm the central government. No one knows how much money the regions will need, though leading newspaper El Pais said they have combined debts of (EURO)140 billion and that (EURO)36 billion must be refinanced this year.
The fund set up by the government on July 13 will have (EURO)18 billion in capital, part of it raided from the national lottery. If more funds are needed, Spain would either have to issue debt at punishing rates - or ask for a bailout.
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While one out of every four Spaniards are unemployed, the rate for job-seekers under 25 stands at 52 percent. Emigration by young adults is on the rise, and companies are taking advantage of new labor reforms that make it cheaper to fire workers. The country is in its second recession in three years.
Just as Valencia was announcing its financing needs last Friday, Spain's finance minister revealed that the economic contraction will be deeper than expected in 2013 - meaning an even longer period of economic pain before Spain can hope to start generating jobs again.
For this year, the government expects a smaller contraction than previously forecast of 1.5 percent, down from a previous estimate of 1.7. However, instead of economic growth of 0.2 percent for next year, the government now forecasts a contraction of 0.5 percent.
BANK BAILOUT WORRIES
The concerns circling Spain's shaky banks intensified in May when Bankia, the country's fifth-largest lender, unexpectedly announced it would need (EURO)19 billion to cover its toxic property loans and assets. A month later, leaders of the other 16 countries that use the euro crafted a rescue package of up to (EURO)100 billion for Spain's banks.
Spain still hasn't put a precise figure on how much the banks will need, denying investors a clear picture of the extent of the problem and whether the (EURO)100 billion is enough to handle it. Those numbers won't start coming out until September when extensive audits and stress tests of each bank are finalized.
Friday's announcement by eurozone finance ministers that they had agreed the terms of the bailout hasn't quelled markets. That's because the government is ultimately liable to repay the loans. Europe's financial leaders agreed in principle earlier this month to eventually make loans directly to banks and take the Spanish government out of the equation. But that shift is a long way off - a pan-European banking authority would have to be created first and that could take years.
There is also concern that the rules of the bailout mean that eurozone would have to paid back first before other debt is settled. This could leave less money for private investors.
DEBT DEPENDENCY
The bank bailout has only made investors more worried about Spain's financial position.
Two-thirds of Spain's government bonds are held by the country's banks, pension funds and insurance companies - that's 50 percent higher than last year. This sharp increase is a sure sign that foreign demand for Spanish debt is falling fast.
Market-watchers are concerned that Spain and its banks are dependent on each other: the government is issuing debt, the majority of which is being bought by its banks, only to use the funds from the sale to prop up its banks so that they can buy more government debt.
Spain has so far this year issued (EURO)59 billion in bonds out of a total (EURO)86 billion planned for 2012. But as the banks' condition deteriorates, there is growing concern that they won't be able to buy up much more government debt.
Since beating former Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in the polls late last year, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been introducing successive rounds of austerity measures aimed at preventing the country from being forced into a public finance bailout.
Rajoy's latest set of measures has been his most controversial -a steep hike in Spain's sales tax, and the elimination of one of the 14 yearly paychecks that public servants receive.
Spain has been spared the level of brutal anti-austerity street violence like that seen in Greece, but got a taste of it on July 11 after Rajoy unveiled the new round of cuts and tax rises. Spanish miners and sympathizers, incensed with the seemingly endless cutbacks and tax hikes, clashed with riot police who fired rubber bullets, injuring 22 demonstrators and 10 officers.
The miners said cuts in government mining subsidies will leave them jobless, and many Madrid residents joined in because they believe the problems that the miners face are similar to their economic woes.
Off-duty police and firefighters are starting to join in anti-austerity protests by public servants. Officers are prohibited from wearing their uniforms while protesting, but deck themselves out in white shirts to identify themselves, and the firefighters hold their helmets.
If future protests come with escalating violence, that would only make investors more nervous about Spain.
ヨーロッパ経済と出稼ぎ、頭脳流出の実態
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Class of 2012: Europe's young pursue dreams abroad
By ALAN CLENDENNING
Aug 1, 11:27 AM EDT、Associated Press
MADRID (AP) -- Santiago Oviedo, a lanky 24-year-old from Madrid, is on track to get his master's in physics in October - a crucial milestone in his dream of becoming a researcher probing the origins of the universe.
Spain won't benefit from his big brain.
Because of education spending cuts and Spain's downward economic spiral, Oviedo is planning to emigrate to Britain, France, the Netherlands or Germany to get his Ph.D. or work at a company that lets him do research. He's afraid he may never work or raise a family in his country.
If he had graduated two years ago, Oviedo would have stood a good chance of landing a government-funded scholarship and grant for four years of doctoral study and research. That has evaporated in an austerity drive that has brought slashed budgets for scientific research and waves of layoffs at companies large and small.
With Spain's unemployment rate for people under 25 at an astonishing 53 percent, young Spaniards are leaving the country in droves to carve out a brighter future. Most seek jobs, but some, like Oviedo, are leaving because the government is struggling to afford to develop their minds.
Since 2009, when Europe's financial crisis hit full-bore, the number of Spaniards in their late teens, 20s and early 30s leaving the country has increased 52 percent - from about 12,500 to nearly 20,000 according to the government statistics agency. Young and talented Europeans from other hurting eurozone nations - Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal - are also abandoning home not only for stronger European countries but surging former European colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas.
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Editors: This is the latest installment in Class of 2012, an exploration of Europe's financial crisis through the eyes of young people emerging from the cocoon of student life into the worst downturn the continent has seen since the end of World War II.
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Oviedo is set to join a growing number of young Spaniards giving up on Spain, a nation that had visions of grandeur during a decade-long property boom but which is now teetering on the edge of financial collapse.
"I don't want to go away forever, but looking at the situation how it is now, maybe that will happen," said Oviedo, who heads to every Madrid anti-austerity protest he can fit in with his studies. He blames politicians for immersing Spain in its misery.
In addition to education spending cuts, Spain last December eliminated its Ministry of Science and Innovation to save money, making it a division of the Economy Ministry. In May, the country saw a tide of protests against the education squeeze by university students and teachers, some of whom clashed with police.
"Science isn't a priority now in Spain," Oviedo said. "The economy is terrible. A couple years ago we had a really good public health and education system, but now they are destroying it all. When I have children, I don't want them to live here if they don't have the things I have enjoyed."
Oviedo's fears mirror those of Spanish architecture student Rafael Gonzalez del Castillo, one of the five European students whose lives The Associated Press is tracking in the Class of 2012 project.
"I see myself working abroad," said Gonzalez del Castillo, as do many of his 25 architecture classmates at his elite Madrid university. "I don't know where. It doesn't matter where."
The long-term toll could be sinking competitiveness as crisis-hit countries lose many of their best and brightest amid already falling birth-rates - a potential formula for a vicious circle of economic agony. But countries like Spain could benefit if young emigres return because they would bring back better work and language skills that would help fix low productivity, said Gayle Allard, an economist with Madrid's IE Business School.
"If they come back it will be for the good of the country," said Allard. "If they don't come back, this is a tragedy."
Across the border from Spain, the number of Portuguese heading to former colonies Brazil and Angola for work has increased sharply since 2008. The trend has accelerated since last year when Portugal got a bailout of its public finances, according to statistics based on consulate and embassy registrations. Portugal's prime minister suggested last year that unemployed teachers should consider heading to former colonies for work. The country doesn't track youth emigration, but researchers say it is rising.
One of Gonzalez del Castillo's friends is a 26-year-old Spanish civil engineer who graduated last October, and moved to Brazil last month after a six-month job hunt in Spain that netted not a single job interview. She represents a sharp reversal for countries like Spain and Portugal, which for decades were on the receiving end of migrants from Latin America.
She has already had better luck in the booming business hub of Sao Paulo, getting an interview within two weeks of arriving. The woman did not want her name revealed because she entered Brazil on a tourist visa and fears she could be deported if caught seeking work.
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In bailed-out Ireland, emigration has become a defining national characteristic. More than 76,000 people left last year, representing 1.7 percent of the population. They joined 200,000 who have departed since 2008 at the end of a property boom-gone-bust similar to Spain's. Their top destinations are Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States. Official statistics show that the vast majority of those leaving are in their 20s and 30s.
Orla Kelleher, executive director of the Aisling Irish Community Center in Yonkers, New York, said the volume of newly arrived Irish jobseekers had multiplied six times "if not more" since 2009, following the implosion of the Celtic Tiger economy.
Brian Whelan, 28, moved to London from Dublin two years ago after being recruited to work on the Irish pages of the Yahoo news site. Many of his Dublin friends are living outside the country, many in Canada.
"If I hadn't landed a job in advance I'd have been heading to London anyway," said Whelan, who now works as a freelance journalist. "Irish people are not having any difficulty landing jobs abroad. It's often the best and the brightest who are going abroad. Some of the best trained and most able young people are leaving because Ireland can't afford to keep them."
Italy, whose decaying economy may soon need a bailout, has long been bleeding much of its finest talent as rigid labor laws and chronic cronyism force highly skilled young people abroad. Italy doesn't track how many citizens leave, but the country's statistics agency said the number of Italians with college degrees living abroad rose from 8.3 percent in 2001 to 15.9 percent in 2010.
Maria Adele Carrai, 26, got her bachelor's degree in Chinese language and culture in Rome, graduating at the top of her class, and went on to complete a master's in Venice focusing on Asian languages, economics and legal institutions. When she finished, she could find only low-paying work as an Italian-Chinese translator for a court that always paid her late - or not at all. She did freelance translation on the side, making (EURO)5 ($6) an hour.
Carrai would rather be home but left Italy for Hong Kong, where she's doing her Ph.D.
"That's the only way to become economically independent," she said. "Italy is an unthinkable destination right now."
Oviedo, the physics master's candidate, thinks he would probably be able to land a well-paid job in Madrid, where large banks pay good money for math whizzes like him to be analysts, known as "quants," and design complex trading formulas.
Oviedo says he would hate himself if he used his math skills to help big banks profit off the financial crisis.
"I don't want to do that job. It would be like helping the enemy," he said. "They have destroyed the world. I see the results every day in Spain."
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Associated Press writers Paola Barisani in Rome, Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin and Daniel Woolls and Harold Heckle in Madrid contributed to this report.
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Poland hopes to identify remains of Auschwitz hero
Aug 30, 10:04 AM EDT
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - It could hardly have been a riskier mission: infiltrate Auschwitz to chronicle Nazi atrocities. Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape. But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime - tried on trumped-up charges and executed. Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki's remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw's Powazki Military Cemetery. The exhumations are part of a movement in the resurgent, democratic nation to officially recognize its war-time heroes and 20th century tragedies.
