IMF calls for urgent steps on Spain unemployment

IMF says Spain making progress but calls for urgent action to slash unemployment

Associated Press -

MADRID (AP) -- Spain faces the prospect of high unemployment and sluggish growth lasting years unless the country and Europe take "urgent action" to slash the nation's crippling 27 percent unemployment rate and free frozen credit to businesses so they can expand, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

A report issued by the IMF praised Spain's reforms for stabilizing an economy that almost imploded last year, particularly by propping up public finances, but said the jobless rate is "unacceptably high and the outlook difficult."

After years of recession, Spain will probably start growing economically at the end of this year and into next year but the growth may not be enough to bring down the unemployment rate, said James Daniel, the IMF mission chief for Spain.

"The uncertainty is whether the recovery will be strong enough to generate jobs," Daniel told reporters.

Spain has been in recession for most of the past four years following the collapse of its once-booming real estate sector in 2008. Concerns over its public finances, drained as the government tried to spend its way out of the financial crisis, have also piled the pressure on the government to rein in spending.

The country narrowly avoided taking an international bailout like those accepted by Greece, Ireland and Portugal. But it did receive permission last year from a European-funded program to tap as much as 100 billion euros ($133.74 billion) to save ailing lenders, and has taken 40 billion euros so far.

The IMF said it expects Spain's economy to grow about 1 percent a year over the next five years with "limited gains in employment."

The organization went on to compliment Spain for restoring credibility to its economic policies through a series of harsh and unpopular austerity measures imposed last year by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. These raised taxes and cut cherished government services like education and national health care.

But it said Spain "needs to deliver on its announced program, and indeed go further in some areas. The focus should be on a pro-jobs strategy that allows the economy to grow and hire."

The unemployment rate is among the highest in the 17-nation eurozone, and joblessness for Spaniards under age 25 is 57 percent. Many young and highly educated Spaniards have emigrated in recent years or are seriously considering doing so because the outlook is so bad for jobs. Top destinations include Britain, Germany and Latin America.

The IMF report also urged Spain to embark on more labor reforms for job generation after Spain already passed a host of measures last year making it easier and cheaper for companies to hire and fire workers. Among the other measure the report recommended were for companies to be more flexible with setting shifts, more collective bargaining reforms and further reductions on severance pay following dismissals.

"Spain needs to generate jobs and that probably means more flexibility on wages going forward," Daniel said.

Syria troops fight rebels near major Shiite shrine

FILE - In this Thursday, June 14, 2012 file photo, Syrian workers clean broken glass inside the Sayyida Zeinab shrine after a car bomb exploded near the shrine, in a suburb of Damascus, Syria. Hezbollah fighters join Syrian forces in battling rebels in a Damascus suburb that is home to a revered Shiite Muslim shrine, in a push to secure the area around the golden domed mosque. Protection of the Sayida Zeinab shrine has become a rallying cry for Shiite fighters backing President Bashar Assad, raising the stakes in a conflict that is increasingly being fought along sectarian lines. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, June 14, 2012 file photo, UN observers inspect the prayer hall of the Sayyida Zeinab shrine which was damaged after a car bomb exploded near the shrine, in a suburb of Damascus, Syria. Hezbollah fighters join Syrian forces in battling rebels in a Damascus suburb that is home to a revered Shiite Muslim shrine, in a push to secure the area around the golden domed mosque. Protection of the Sayida Zeinab shrine has become a rallying cry for Shiite fighters backing President Bashar Assad, raising the stakes in a conflict that is increasingly being fought along sectarian lines. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah fighters joined Syrian forces in battling rebels in a Damascus suburb that is home to a revered Shiite Muslim shrine, in a push to secure the area around the ornate, golden domed mosque.

Protection of the Sayida Zeinab shrine has become a rallying cry for Shiite fighters backing President Bashar Assad, raising the stakes in a conflict that is increasingly being fought along sectarian lines.

The fighting in the area south of the capital is part of a wider military offensive by Assad's forces to recapture suburbs held by rebels and areas in the country's strategic heartland. Activists said violent clashes coupled with heavy artillery bombardment of the southern suburbs reverberated in the capital.

The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, warned of an impending humanitarian disaster. It said regime forces, backed by Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite fighters and dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, were besieging the area, trapping tens of thousands of civilians under heavy bombardment.

"Civilians in this area live in grim fear and anxiety, with no electricity and no way to escape from the anticipated large scale massacre that often follows these types of regime attacks," a statement issued by the group said.

The international community has been largely unable to end the Syrian civil war, now in its third year, which has killed 93,000 people, and likely many more, according to the United Nations.

President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders of the Group of Eight industrial economies meeting in Northern Ireland this week tried to narrow sharp differences between Russia, a key Assad backer, and Western leaders who support the rebels, but could not agree on whether Assad must go.

Obama last week authorized supplying rebel groups with weapons but has refused to describe the type of military support the U.S. will give the opposition. A French diplomat said Wednesday that officials from the United States and other countries in the so-called Friends of Syria group will meet in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday to respond to requests from rebel commander Gen. Salim Idris, who has outlined urgent needs, including sophisticated weapons, the diplomat said.

Speaking in Berlin on Wednesday, Obama refused to be drawn about how the U.S. might supply the rebels.

"I cannot and will not comment on specifics around our programs related to the Syrian opposition," he said. "We want a Syria that is peaceful, non-sectarian, democratic, legitimate, tolerant. ... We want to make sure that chemical weapons are not used, and that chemical weapons do not fall into the hands of people who would be willing to use them."

He said there is a need for a policy that "isolates extremists who have incorporated themselves into the opposition forces inside of Syria," an apparent reference to the al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front, one of the rebels' most effective fighting units.

Obama said some of his critics have become "over-cranked" about the U.S. getting involved in another war. "What we want to do is end a war," he said, through a political transition.

The Syrian war is increasingly pitting Sunni against Shiite Muslims and threatening the stability of Syria's neighbors.

Assad draws his support largely from Syria's minorities, including fellow Alawites, or followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, as well as Christians and Shiites. He is backed by Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group based in neighboring Lebanon. Most rebels are Sunni, as are their patrons Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. They have been joined by thousands of Sunni foreign fighters from the Muslim world.

The area surrounding the Sayida Zeinab suburb, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) south of Damascus, has seen fighting before. But the regime forces and Hezbollah fighters launched an intensified assault there on Monday, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The assault appears aimed at decisively pushing rebels back and securing the suburb, home to the shrine of Sayida Zeinab, the Prophet Muhammad's granddaughter. Before the war, the shrine attracted tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims from around the world. Last year, rebels kidnapped Iranian pilgrims visiting the area, accusing them of being spies. The pilgrims were later released.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has called it "a duty" to protect the shrine, saying that its destruction by extremists among Syrian rebel ranks would ignite a sectarian war with no end.

State TV said government forces were able to clear rebels out of one adjacent neighborhood, al-Bahdaliya. Meanwhile, rebel forces claimed they took control of the Khomeini hospital in a village south of the shrine, from which they were battling regime forces and allied militias. They said they inflicted losses among the ranks of Hezbollah fighters and regime troops in the area.

Opposition fighters control several suburbs of the capital, threatening the heart of the city, the seat of Assad's power. But the regime has largely been able to keep them at bay.

The Syrian uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against Assad, but later grew into a civil war in response to a brutal military crackdown.

U.S. officials estimate that 5,000 Hezbollah militiamen are fighting alongside the regime, while thousands of Sunni foreign fighters are also believed to be in Syria — including members of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaida affiliate that is believed to be among the most effective rebel factions,

Hezbollah fighters were instrumental in a recent victory for regime forces, regaining control of the strategic town of Qusair in central Homs province after it was in rebel hands for more than a year.

Buoyed by that victory, regime forces have been on an offensive to dislodge rebel fighters from areas they hold on the edge of Damascus and surrounding areas, as well as other towns in Homs and the northern province of Aleppo. That would enable Assad's regime to secure a corridor leading to the coastal Alawite enclave that is home to the country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus.

All-Time Heat Records Broken in . . . Alaska?!

• Published: June 18th, 2013, Last Updated: June 19th, 2013

By Andrew Freedman

One man's silent vigil energizes a movement in need of a hero

You've surely seen the iconic image of an unidentified man who stared down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square, and inspired pro-democracy demonstrators in China. Well, now Turkey's anti-government protesters have their own symbolic hero — Erdem Gunduz, also known as the "Standing Man."

Standing Man in Taksim. Silent protest. And loneliness...pic.twitter.com/Vxs4MfLvCH

SEE ALSO: Has Snowden crossed a red line?

— Elif Safak / Shafak (@Elif_Safak) June 19, 2013

The gesture went viral on Twitter. Hundreds of copycat protesters joined Gunduz on the square on Tuesday before being dispersed by police. Will the Standing Man help keep the protests alive, despite Erdogan's vow to keep Taksim Square, which police have cleared, a protest-free zone?

SEE ALSO: The culture war is over, and conservatives lost

"It's too early to tell," writes Robert H. Reid at The Associated Press. "But singular actions, captured in images distributed around the world, have sometimes influenced the course of history and transformed obscure figures into symbols of their era." Standing Man's influence, Reid suggests, could therefore prove critical.

Gunduz has unleashed what Turkey's Hurriyet Daily newspaper has called a new kind of protest — one that seeks nothing more than the right to stage a protest. Similar protests, inspired by Gunduz, are popping up across Turkey.

SEE ALSO: The last word: He said he was leaving. She ignored him.

without rage/violence, silent resistance. pic.twitter.com/npd9r4QKs8

— Elif Safak / Shafak (@Elif_Safak) June 19, 2013

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Thanks to social media, Gunduz — a performance artist — has instantly become a national hero. AsRichard Seymour puts it at The Guardian, "Gunduz is a legend." And, Seymour adds, his "moving, motionless protest, is a symbol of great peril for the Turkish regime."

The "Standing Man" exemplifies some features of the tradition of passive resistance. First, the ability to meet overpowering physical force with a determined, but passive, feat of defiance has sometimes been the death knell of recalcitrant regimes, whether it is the Shah or Marcos — because it points to resources that the protesters have which can overwhelm the state's repressive capacities. Second, passive resistance is not merely symbolic; it confuses and derails the calculations of the rulers. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, part of the resistance involved painting over street signs and mysteriously shutting off infrastructure.

SEE ALSO: 10 things you need to know today: June 19, 2013

Gunduz's protest was both an affront and a question for the authorities: beat him? Why? He's just standing there. Leave him alone? Then he wins, doesn't he? [Guardian]

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Why Is Africa Ripping Apart? Seismic Scan May Tell

This radar image highlights portions of three of the lakes located in the Western Rift of the Great Rift Valley, a geological fault system of Southwest Asia and East Africa: Lake Edward (top), Lake Kivu (middle) and Lake Tanganyika (bottom).

Arrays of sensors stretching across more than 1,500 miles in Africa are now probing the giant crack in the Earth located there — a fissure linked with human evolution — to discover why and how continents get ripped apart.

Over the course of millions of years, Earth's continents break up as they are slowly torn apart by the planet's tectonic forces. All the ocean basins on the Earth started as continental rifts, such as the Rio Grande rift in North America and Asia's Baikal rift in Siberia.

The giant rift in Eastern Africa was born when Arabia and Africa began pulling away from each other about 26 million to 29 million years ago. Although this rift has grown less than 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) per year, the dramatic results include the formation andongoing spread of the Red Sea, as well as the East African Rift Valley, the landscape that might have been home to the first humans.

"Yet, in spite of numerous geophysical and geological studies, we still do not know much about the processes that tear open continents and form continental rifts," said researcher Stephen Gao, a seismologist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Mo. This is partly because such research has mostly focused on mature segments of these chasms, as opposed to ones that are still in development, he explained. [Earth Quiz: Mysteries of the Blue Marble]

Seismic SAFARI

Geodynamic models suggest that below mature rifts, a region called the asthenosphere is upwelling. The asthenosphere is the hotter, weaker, upper part of the mantle that lies below the lithosphere, the planet's outer, rigid shell. So far, there are two contenders for what might cause this upwelling: anomalies deeper in the mantle or thinning of the lithosphere due to distant stresses.

To help find out which of the two different rifting models is correct, the Seismic Arrays for African Rift Initiation (SAFARI) project installed 50 seismic stations across Africa in the summer of 2012, each spaced about 17 to 50 miles (28 to 80 kilometers) apart.

"One of the techniques that we will use to image the Earth beneath the SAFARI stations is calledseismic tomography, which is in principle similar to the X-ray CAT-scan technique used in hospitals," Gao told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. "The only differences are that our sources of the 'rays' are earthquakes and man-made explosions, and the receivers are the seismic stations such as the 50 SAFARI stations."

Altogether, these arrays encompass a length of about 1,550 miles (2,500 km) and are located in four countries — Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.

"I think the project has a positive impact on local communities," Gao said. "Some of our 50 SAFARI seismic stations are on local schools, and the teachers and students were excited and were proud about the fact that their school was selected for a high-tech scientific instrument. We believe that this project showed some kids that the outside world is different and even fascinating."

The arrays will image the areas under the Okavango, Luangwa and Malawi rifts, the southwest and southernmost segments of the East African Rift system. These so-called incipient rifts are not yet mature and could thus shed light on why and how rifting occurs.

"This is the first large-scale project to image the structure and deformation beneath an incipient rift," Gao said. "The Okavango rift in Botswana is as young as a few tens-of-thousand years, while most other rifts such as the Rio Grande and Baikal rifts are as old as 35 million years."

Upwelling or thinning?

If thermal or dynamic anomalies deep in the mantle are responsible for rifting, then upwelling from the asthenosphere should already be occurring beneath these incipient rifts. In contrast, if thinning of the lithosphere is the cause of rifting, then any levels of upwelling should be insignificant because the lithosphere should not have thinned adequately for major upwelling to occur yet.

A magnitude-5.6 earthquake in November near the northern end of the Indian Ocean's mid-ocean ridge sent out seismic waves that were more than 1 second slower than predicted. This supports the idea that the mantle layer beneath Southern Africa is hotter than normal, perhaps due to a jet of magma known as a mantle plume that geologists have proposed exists beneath this area.

To image the structures beneath these rifts and pin down what the rifting mechanism in Eastern Africa is, researchers need data from more than just one event. The seismic arrays will be deployed for 24 months, and each station will sample the Earth for seismic waves 50 times per second.

"We are anxious to see if there are melted rocks in the mantle beneath the rifts, if there is convective mantle flow that is driving the rifting process, and how much the crust has been thinned in different portions of the rifts," Gao said. "But this cannot be done until next summer, when all the data recorded by SAFARI are processed."

The scientists detailed their findings to date in the June 11 issue of Eos, the online newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.