Madrid, Spain (AHN) – Spain’s unemployment rate reached a 14-year high of 21.3 percent during the first three months of the year, up from 20.3 percent for the last three months of 2010.

The economy lost more jobs during the first quarter than it had during the entire year of 2010.

That boosted the number of jobless people to 4.9 million and government officials say they do not expect to see much in the way of job creation until the end of the year.

In addition, the economy has been depressed and Spain’s government has instituted stringent austerity measures in an attempt to deal with high public debt and deficits.

The austerity measures are not helping the economy to revive.

Retail sales fell by 8.6 percent in April compared to a year earlier. In addition, inflation rose by 3.5 percent in from the 3.3 percent rate in March.

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Jerusalem, Israel David E. Miller – The memorandum signed by the Fatah and Hamas movements on Wednesday, aimed at ending a 4-year-old political division, creates as many problems as it solves, experts warned.

The agreement calls for an interim Palestinian government of technocrats, followed by presidential and parliamentary elections one year after the agreement is signed on May 4. But the agreement leaves out a lot of critical issues to the Palestinian future, including Palestinian statehood, the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, control of security forces and the future of Western financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Although Fatah and Hamas have been bitter enemies, Palestinian analysts said they were optimistic the agreement would be implemented. The fact that Israel and the U.S. oppose an agreement with Hamas, which they designated a terrorist organization, counts for little these day in Palestinian decision marking, said Sameeh Hamoudeh, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah.

“Fatah has despaired of international approval,” Hamoudeh told The Media Line. “Today Fatah is more inclined to please the Arab world, which has pushed for a compromise.”

Statehood

One of the main stumbling blocks facing Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Fatah-controlled PA, in his bid for international recognition of Palestinian statehood has been the lack of political control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. With a unity agreement in hand, Abbas will be able to come to the world as president of a single Palestinian entity, as prescribed by the Oslo accords signed with Israel.

But there is a drawback: Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have been working for the past two years to bring Palestinian institutions up to international standards for good government. This month the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund both gave the PA a seal of approval. Now with Hamas sharing power, the PA will have a harder case for saying it is meeting the benchmarks.

Palestinian analysts said, however, they are optimistic Abbas can get around the good government problem because the unity agreement calls for the joint cabinet to be filled by technocrats, rather than movement activists, Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, told The Media Line.

“It will not be a factional government, but a professional one,” he said.

Peace Talks

Following the unity deal, the prospect of resuming negotiations between Israel and the PA seems more distant than ever before. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said immediately after the unity accord was announced that the PA would have to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned on Army Radio on Thursday that Palestinian unity would inevitably lead to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank.

For its part, Hamas also declared that negotiations could not take place in the coming year while an interim government is in power before elections are held. “Our program does not include negotiations with Israel or recognizing it,” Gaza-based Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar told Reuters.

But Abusada said Palestinian unity could actually revive the frozen peace process. Hamas, he predicted, will agree to be part of the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the umbrella group of Palestinian movements officially charged with conducting talks with Israel.

“Palestinian unity will push Israel to negotiate,” he said. “Israel has so far used Palestinian division as a pretext not to negotiate. Now it has no excuse.”

But, taking the line that the Palestinians are no longer so interested in pleasing the West, Hamoudeh of Bir Zeit said he thought unity removed any prospects for negotiations. “The peace process is a dead body,” he said. “Only if the Palestinians display a tough stance will Israel eventually soften.”

Security

The security issue is probably the greatest unknown element of the unity deal. Hamas’ reluctance to integrate the security apparatus it has built in Gaza into the PA security forces was one of the main factors that impeded an agreement until now. As part of the agreement, Hamas has demanded to establish a “high security committee” by presidential decree, but the committee’s responsibilities remained unclear.

Commenting on the security question, Fatah official Azzam Al-Ahmad, who brokered the deal on behalf of Abbas was extremely vague. “We have a law governing service in the security forces,” he told the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. “We [Fatah and Hamas] have reached an understanding between us, but [Palestinian] law is still paramount.”

Sabri Saidam, a senior Fatah member and adviser to Abbas, said security issues would not be dealt with immediately. “The issue will be left until post-elections and post formation of the government,” he told The Media Line.

Abusada said Hamas is interested in maintaining a ceasefire along the Gaza border with Israel, adding that although direct security coordination did not exist between Israel and Hamas, indirect contact could be maintained through third parties.

“Over the past two years Hamas has shown its commitment to calm,” he said.

Hamoudeh said that following reconciliation, security coordination with Israel will be of less importance, since Hamas’ violent resistance will die down. “Today’s security coordination serves Israel alone,” he said. “From now on the PA will focus on running the daily lives of Palestinians as the armed resistance loses its legitimacy.”

Western Aid

The Palestinian Authority relies heavily on foreign aid, scheduled to receive close to $1 billion in American and European foreign aid in 2011. The aid is not only critical for financing the PA but has given a lift to the West Bank economy, which remains otherwise hamstrung by political uncertainty and Israel controls of the movement of people and goods.

The Quartet, a diplomatic framework comprised of the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, has conditioned the removal of Hamas from its terrorist list on the latter’s recognition of Israel, its acceptance of previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel, and stopping cross-border violence.

A new unity government could jeopardize Western funding of the Palestinian Authority, but Saidam, Abbas’ adviser, said so long as the interim government functioned under Abbas’ mandate and acknowledged previous agreements with Israel, international funding of the PA would continue.

On Wednesday, U.S. Democratic Congressmen Gary Ackerman and Nita M. Lowey threatened to cut American funding to the PA following the unity agreement which did not force Hamas to recognize Israel.

“A unity government with Hamas would put U.S. assistance and support at risk,” said Lowey, who serves on the House Foreign Aid subcommittee. “I strongly urge the leadership of the Palestinian Authority to reconsider forming a unity government with Hamas and to instead return to negotiations with Israel.”

Hamoudeh said Congress would be wise to support Palestinian unity rather than unconditionally adopt Israel’s rejectionist stance.

“You cannot exclude a large chunk of the Palestinian people,” he said. “Hamas is part of the solution. The PA will never return to the armed struggle, but Hamas will be forced to compromise.”

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Athens, Greece (AHN) – Greece registered a yearly deficit equivalent to 10.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product on Tuesday. The figure, reported by Eurostat, showed the budget gap was higher than the initial 9.6 percent estimate made in February.

Portugal was in a similar situation. According to the EU statistics agency, Lisbon logged a deficit equivalent to 9.1 percent of the country’s GDP, much higher than the previous estimate of 7.3 percent.

Because of the larger-than-expected financial hole, Greek sovereign debt yield a 10-year government bonds hit a new high of 15.5 percent as buyers stayed away from the debt papers. The European Central Bank – the only major potential buyer of Greek debt papers – balked at buying because some eurozone nations such as Germany spoke out and placed pressure instead on Athens to restructure the country’s debt.

But a restructuring, while it would reduce the interest rate and prolong the loan terms, would be an effective default since the debt would have lesser value. It was the major revision of Greece’s deficit in late 2009 which led to the European debt crisis and a $161.6 billion (EUR 110 billion) bailout for Greece. The debt contagion spread to Ireland and Portugal, which sought also bailouts.

One economist said the Greek default could no longer be avoided, but it would not likely take place this year since the EU will likely keep Greece afloat with another multibillion euro bailout by 2013 under the European Stability Mechanism.

An ECB member warned that a Greek debt restructuring would have a disastrous effect on the eurozone, particularly French, British and German banks that hold Greek debt papers.

The continuous rise in Greece’s deficit is because of the government’s failure to hike taxes and reduce spending, causing the country’s debt to go up to 142 percent of its national income.

The Greek government initially planned to reduce its deficit to 8l.1 percent of GDP in 2010 from 14.5 percent in 2009. However, the country’s Finance Ministry blamed the failure to curb the deficit to deeper-than-anticipated recession of the economy, which affected tax revenues and social security contributions.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN Sports) – Spurred by a number of pictures showing empty stadiums throughout the first few weeks of the 2011 Major League Baseball season, a study by a major media outlet recently revealed MLB attendance has decreased by an average of 304 fans per game (less than 1 percent).

According to CNBC’s Darren Rovell, 16 of the 30 Major Leaguie teams have seen their attendance decline compared to the same time period last season.

That 2010 season saw MLB’s attendance figures drop for the third-straight year after a record high in 2007 that was the culmination of several years of atttendance increasing.

However, some teams like the 8-10 Toronto Blue Jays (+41.7 percent) and 9-9 Oakland A’s (+25.9) have enjoyed a significant increase despite middling records.

Though not much of a surprise, defending AL and NL champs the Texas Rangers (+22.0) and San Francisco Giants (+21.1) are also enjoying a significant increase in attendance.

Meanwhile, teams with traditionally strong attendance records like the Chicago Cubs (-16.0) and Los Angeles Dodgers have seen their ticket sales plummet.

The Tampa Bay Rays (-25.6) and Seattle Mariners (-23.1) have gotten the absolute worst of declining ticket sales.

Not even a large market or new stadium has stopped the economy from taking a bite out of attendance figures. The New York Mets are having trouble filling up CitiField, drawing a 7.8 percent decrease and the Yankees aren’t doing much better, drawing an average of 5.9 percent less fans per game.

In addition to a poor economy, high ticket prices for premium seats and the inclination of fans to enjoy the game on their warm, confortable couch are also believed to be reasons for the attendance decline.

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Ankara, Turkey (AHN Sports) – In a strapped Global economy, Turkey officials are weighing whether or not to host a Formula One race next season.

According to reports, a Turkish official said the staging fee to host a race has doubled from $13 million to $26 million, potentially putting the 2012 F1 race in Turkey in limbo.

Murat Yalcintas, the head of Istanbul’s Chamber of Commerce, has said publicly and on his Twitter account that the current fee is too high and could take away the 2012 event as a result.

Traditionally, an F1 event comes to Instanbul annually.

Turkish officials and F1 will have a meeting concerning the issue during next month’s Istanbul Grand Prix.

The country joined the F1 scheduled in 2005, but the event has seen poor attendance due for a myriad of reasons.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Concern and criticism are rising from abroad as difficulties of the U.S. government in controlling its debt threaten international markets.

So far this week, the Russian prime minister accused U.S. economic planners of “hooliganism” and the chief economist for the International Monetary Fund criticized Congress for lacking a “credible” plan for escaping more than $14 trillion in debt.

On Tuesday, China urged the U.S. government to take “responsible” steps to control its debt. China owns more U.S. debt than any other country.

On Monday, the credit rating service Standard & Poors downgraded the U.S. government’s credit from stable to negative.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats are fighting over whether to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling refers to the highest amount of debt the U.S. government can assume under the law.

At the current rate, the U.S. government will reach its $14.3 trillion debt ceiling on May 16, according to the U.S. Treasury.

Republican leaders said again Thursday they will agree to raise the debt ceiling only if they get guarantees of drastic spending cuts for the federal budget.

Democrats are reluctant to make cuts to programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which they say are vital to many households.

The unresolved dispute prompted International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard to tell the French magazine Le Monde, “There are reasons to be worried.”

“The United States lacks a credible plan, for the medium term, to reduce its budget deficit,” Blanchard said in the magazine interview.

“The ideological gap is huge between Democrats and Republicans on how to deal with the problem,” Blanchard said.

An International Monetary Fund report last week said U.S. debt could reach 100 percent of its gross domestic product by 2015 without drastic budget cutbacks.

Even harsher criticism came from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said during his annual address to parliament that “everything is not so good for our friends in the States.”

The U.S. economy is teetering as a result of a huge trade imbalance between imports and exports and growing annual budget deficits, he said.

Russia does not “have the luxury for such hooliganism,” Putin said.

He also accused the United States of flooding international markets with cash that lacks value because of the high debt.

The Treasury Department is buying back $600 billion in government securities in an effort to pump up the value of the dollar.

Mexican economists say the U.S. government’s inability to control its debt will result in increased cash flow into Mexico, an appreciation in the value of the peso, volatility in its stock market and higher unemployment.

Mexico’s economic trends are closely tied to the U.S. economy.

Gabriel Perez del Peral, an American University economist, said an increased value for the peso would slow Mexico’s exports.

“The change in perspective for U.S. debt will generate a greater appreciation of currencies for emerging markets and will complicate unemployment,” Perez told the Mexican news media.

He urged the Bank of Mexico to adopt cautious policies to protect the value of the country’s currency.

“The peso’s appreciation will generate greater unemployment and the economy will overheat, which will increase commodity prices,” Perez said.

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Bangkok, Thailand (IRIN) – The Mekong–the world’s 12th longest river and a lifeline for millions–has won a temporary reprieve from the construction of a controversial dam in Laos when the four member countries of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) failed to reach an agreement, deferring the decision to ministerial level later this year.

“This is the immediate next step,” Tiffany Hacker, a spokeswoman for the MRC, told IRIN on 20 April from Vientiane. “Although countries were unable to reach a conclusion [to proceed with the dam], they agreed that it needed to be taken to the ministerial level.”

On’ April, officials from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam gathered in the Lao capital to discuss the impact of the US$3.8 billion Xayaburi dam, the first of a series of proposed hydropower dams along the river .

“This is the spirit of Mekong cooperation – member countries have consulted for the past six months, and whereas they could not come to a common conclusion in yesterday’s meeting, they will continue to work together at the ministerial level until a consensus is reached,” Hacker said.

The MRC’s ministerial council generally meets once year in October or November. However, a special session for the Xayaburi project may be held before then, she added.

Welcome decision

The announcement was welcomed by environmentalists who say the dam would have devastating environmental, social and economic consequences.

“We are pleased to see that Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam have recognized the trans-boundary impacts of the project and the need for further research and public consultation,” Carl Middleton, a representative of the US-based environmental group International Rivers , said.

But despite the deferment, Thai media reports suggest construction of the dam by Laos has already begun, with an access road under construction since November and local residents being offered compensation of as little as $15 to relocate.

“Given the decision [on' April], Laos should immediately stop construction of the project and respect that the decision has been referred to a higher level,” Middleton said.

Lao officials at the meeting insisted there was no need to delay the project and that trans-boundary environmental impacts on other riparian countries would be unlikely. Laos says the dam would stimulate its $6 billion economy and improve the lives of its 5.9 million people. However, Vientiane ended up yielding to objections by downstream countries Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, which raised their concerns at the meeting about gaps in technical knowledge and studies about the project.

If the project goes ahead, approximately 2,100 people would be forcibly relocated and more than 200,000 would be directly affected, according to an independent review of the project commissioned by the MRC.

International Rivers says the dam could result in the extinction of approximately 41 fish species, including the critically endangered Mekong Giant Catfish, while an additional 23 to 100 migratory fish species would be threatened through a blocked fish migration route.

“These impacts in turn will affect the livelihoods and food security of millions of people in the region,” the group said in a statement.

The Mekong and its tributaries provide food, water and transportation for about 60 million people in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. About 40 million people are involved in the Mekong’s fishery industry part-time or seasonally, according to the MRC.

Influential US Senator Jim Web has also voiced criticism of the project, saying it failed to meet international standards. “Numerous scientific studies have concluded that construction of the Xayaburi Dam and other proposed mainstream dams will have devastating environmental, economic, and social consequences for the entire Mekong sub-region,” he said in a statement, adding that such dams could threaten the stability of Southeast Asia.

The Xayaburi Dam is one of 11 proposed for the lower Mekong mainstream due to increasing power demand in the region of about 6-7 percent a year, driven mainly by Thailand and Vietnam.

Both countries could face significant energy shortfalls in the near future. If built, the Xayaburi dam is expected to begin commercial operation in 2019, with about 95 percent of the project’s 1,260-megawatt capacity to be exported to Thailand.

nr/ds/mw

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – Most people would agree that donating an organ to someone in need is a selfless act. There’s no medical upside in giving up one of your kidneys or part of your liver, lung or pancreas. It’s a risk people take so that someone else — often but not always a loved one in desperate need — may live a better, longer life.

It’s said that no good deed goes unpunished, however, and living donors sometimes find themselves unable to find affordable — or any — health insurance after the fact. Insurers sometimes claim that the donation is equivalent to a preexisting medical condition and either reject an application outright or offer coverage with a very steep premium.

People who have health insurance through big companies generally aren’t affected, but those who try to find coverage on the individual market or who have coverage through a small business may run into this problem.

“It’s absurd,” says Matthew Cooper, director of kidney transplantation at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Transplant centers put potential donors through a comprehensive battery of medical tests before permitting them to give up an organ. “These patients are handpicked. They’re some of the healthiest people around.”

A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined the long-term mortality of more than 80,000 live kidney donors between’94 and 2009. It found that their death rates over six years were no higher than the rates for similar individuals who hadn’t donated a kidney. Experts say the results are in line with other studies that have shown that donating an organ doesn’t appear to increase people’s risk of illness or death.

When Beth Stary-Bain decided to donate a kidney to her mother nearly four years ago, she didn’t give health insurance a thought. At the time, she was covered under her ex-husband’s policy, which, under the federal law known as COBRA, she was permitted to keep for 36 months following their divorce. Before the operation, she gave up her instructor’s job at a cosmetology school in Appleton, Wis., figuring she’d have no trouble finding a job with health insurance once she recovered from surgery.

Beth Stary-Bain

That’s not the way it worked out. After the operation, which went off without a hitch, Stary-Bain, now 50, tried to buy an individual insurance plan. Once they learned she’d had a nephrectomy, as surgical kidney removal is called, two carriers turned her down outright. A third offered her a plan — for $800 a month. “I was really surprised,” she says. “I didn’t realize that because I’d donated a kidney I was considered unhealthy.”

Shortly before her COBRA ran out, Stary-Bain found a job with health coverage, working in customer service for a health insurer.

More than 110,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant. Nearly 90,000 of them are waiting for a kidney, but some need liver, lung, pancreas or intestine transplants. (Living donors can donate a whole kidney, a portion of their liver, which will regenerate, a lobe of a lung or part of their pancreas or intestine.)

Transplants using living donor organs are often more successful than those using organs from deceased donors. But even though the number of living donors has more than tripled in the past 20 years — there were 6,563 in 2010 — the increase isn’t nearly enough to meet the demand.

To encourage more people to donate, health-policy experts say barriers must be removed, including those involving insurance. Although a living donor’s evaluation, surgery and immediate postoperative care is covered by the recipient’s insurance, concern about coverage hassles down the road — sometimes well founded, as Stary-Bain discovered — is enough to deter some people from donating, according to a 2007 review of research.

Information on health insurers’ willingness to cover living donors isn’t extensive, but in that 2007 review, insurers said they wouldn’t refuse to cover these individuals as long as they were otherwise healthy. According to Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, donating an organ is not sufficient grounds on its own to lead to a denialof coverage.

But consumers and advocates tell a different story. The same 2007 review found that between 3 and 11 percent of respondents said they had trouble getting insurance after donating an organ.

Under federal rules, every transplant center must have an advocate for living donors. Health insurance problems do come up, says Rebecca Hays, a living-donor social worker at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison. Sometimes, Hays said, donors tell her about insurers that refuse to cover anything related to the organ donation for a year. “More oftenI hear from people who have been denied insurance and they don’t know what to do.”

Under provisions of the health-care overhaul law that take effect in 2014, insurers will no longer be able to deny people coverage because of preexisting conditions, nor charge more. At that time, patient advocates and health-policy experts hope that the problem being faced by living donors will disappear.

In the meantime, donors who run into difficulties can consider signing up for the preexisting-condition insurance plans that were created in every state under the new health law, says Dolph Chianchiano, senior vice president for public policy at the National Kidney Foundation. The hitch: You have to have been uninsured for six months in order to qualify.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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Nepal (AHN) – The governments of Nepal and United States have agreed to resume Peace Corps operations in Nepal.

The program was suspended seven in 2004 by the United States because of security reasons.

Finance Minister of Nepal, Bharat Mohan Adhikari, and PC Director Aaron William reached an agreement to restart the volunteer program on Thursday in Washington D. C.

The Peac Corp had a successful 42-year history in Nepal, making great strides in the areas of small business development, education, environment, youth development and working on health and HIV/AIDS education and awareness.

Adhikari visited US Peace Corps’ headquarters and held a meeting about the Peace Corps’s works in Nepal.

During the meeting with the director of Peace Corps, he expressed appreciation the contribution of Peace Corps Volunteers especially in the health, education and agriculture sectors.

The Corps’ program was suspended on September 13, 2004 following an attack by the Nepali Maoist party on the a Peace Corp operation in Gyaneshwor, Kathmandu. 84 Peace Corp volunteers were working in the field of health education, nursing, information technology, business development, teaching English as a foreign language and environmental conservation before they were evacuated on a short notice following the attack.

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Sacramento, CA, United States (AHN) – Faculty and students at California State University campuses held rallies on Wednesday to protest cuts to education and tuition hikes.

CSU, the nation’s largest university system, is facing an already approved 18 percent budget cut, representing a loss of about $500 million. The cuts, however, may increase since the budget proposal from Gov. Jerry Brown partly relies on tax extensions, which Republicans have refused to support.

The demonstrations involved sit-ins, teach-ins and a mock trial and a funeral march supported by unions including the California Faculty Association. Similarly peaceful rallies were held in Massachusetts and Portland as states struggle with record deficits and cuts to public schools.

California, the world’s eighth-largest economy, is facing a a $26.6 billion shortfall. The governor’s budget slashes funds for higher education by $1.4 billion but requires a June ballot to approve revenue-generating tax extensions that will prevent further cuts.

CSU officials have warned that anything beyond the half billion reduction would force them to drastically raise tuition and reduce enrollment. Republican opposition to the tax extensions could result in an “all cuts” budget, a situation that could lead to a $1 billion reduction, or 35 percent of state funding for CSU’s 23 campuses.

The governor last month ended negotiations with the GOP after what he said was “an ever changing list of collateral demands” in return for support for a June ballot. He met with CSU officials in early April and assured that an all-cuts budget was “unacceptable.”

However, it remains unclear if a compromise will be reached in time to allow voters to decide on whether to extend taxes that are expiring this summer. Under the state constitution, tax extensions require the approval of two Republicans from the Assembly and two from the Senate before a special election.

At least one Democrat, Assemblymember Norma Torres, urged her GOP counterparts to “do their job.”

“I hope [the] rallies and marches across the state are heard by those state representatives who refuse to vote and support Gov. Brown’s budget proposal,” Torres said in a statement. “We must do our job if we want to protect our public schools from deeper and drastic cuts. We share this responsibility and we cannot continue to burden our students by making it harder for them to go to college.”

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