Reuters – Members of the Red Cross stand near a destroyed area after an explosion at a hotel in Cancun November …
– 1 hr 39 mins ago
CANCUN, Mexico – At least four Canadian tourists and two workers were killed on Sunday in a gas explosion at a hotel on Mexico's Caribbean coast, authorities said.
A child was among the dead at the Grand Riviera Princess hotel in the beach resort of Playa del Carmen, Francisco Alor, the attorney general for Quintana Roo state, told Reuters.
About 15 to 20 people were injured, he said.
"Under no circumstances are we talking about an attack. It was an explosion of gas and we are determining the causes," Alor said.
by Sunita Kureishi, BBC News, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla
– Sun Nov 14, 8:44 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the United States must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations, especially night raids that fuel anti-American sentiment and could embolden Taliban insurgents.
Karzai's remarks in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post come as the international military coalition has stepped up pressure on insurgents at the same time that the president has set up a peace council in hopes of reconciling with the top echelon of the Taliban.
"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said in the interview. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan ... to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."
Karzai also said he met with one or two "very high" level Taliban leaders about three months ago, but described a peace process in its initial stages — one that amounts to little more than "the exchange of desires for peace." He said, however, that he believes Taliban leader Mullah Omar has been informed of his discussions.
He said the Taliban share his feeling that the nine-year-old war has taken too high a toll on the people of Afghanistan.
"They feel the same as we do here — that too many people are suffering for no reason," Karzai said. "Their own families are suffering."
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, claims the 30,000 U.S. reinforcements and thousands of troops dispatched to the war this past year have made substantial progress in beating back the insurgency, although the coalition is not claiming victory.
In the past three months, more than 300 insurgent leaders have been captured or killed, more than 850 lower-level militants have been killed and at least 2,170 foot soldiers have been apprehended.
Karzai said the U.S. should end the rising number of Special Operations forces night raids that aggravate Afghans and could strengthen the Taliban insurgency.
He said he wants American troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes and that the long-term presence of so many foreign soldiers will only make the war worse.
"I don't like it in any manner and the Afghan people don't like these raids in any manner," Karzai said. "We don't like raids in our homes. This is a problem between us and I hope this ends as soon as possible. ... Terrorism is not invading Afghan homes and fighting terrorism is not being intrusive in the daily Afghan life."
A senior official with the military coalition's headquarters in Kabul said Sunday that the coalition share's Karzai's concerns and has discussed the issue with him on many occasions.
"However, the use of intelligence-driven, precision-targeted operations against high-value insurgents and their networks remains a key component of our comprehensive civilian-military counterinsurgency operations," the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Karzai's remarks.
"These operations are conducted in full partnership with the government of Afghanistan and they include Afghan forces on each operation. There is no question that they are having a significant impact on insurgent leadership and its networks.
Karzai said in the interview that he was speaking out not to criticize the United States but in the belief that candor could improve what he called a "grudging" relationship between the countries, although he said tension had eased and he feels he can talk openly about his feelings.
"We don't shout at each other as often as we did before," Karzai said.
White House officials had no immediate comment early Sunday.
Karzai has repeatedly criticized civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO operations.
The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured in the war soared 31 percent in the first six months of the year, but Taliban bombings and assassinations were largely responsible for the sharp rise, according to the United Nations. The U.N. said the number of deaths and injuries caused by NATO and Afghan government forces dropped 30 percent compared with the first six months of last year, largely a result of curbs on the use of air power and heavy weapons.
President Barack Obama has set July 2011 as a target to begin drawing down U.S. troops, if conditions allow, but American officials expect troops to be in Afghanistan for some time after that. Karzai has said he wants Afghan security forces to be able to take the lead in protecting and defending the nation by 2014. The mechanics of that transition will be a key topic of a three-day NATO meeting that starts Friday in Lisbon, Portugal.
The West can only contain, not defeat, militant groups such as al-Qaeda, the head of the UK's armed forces has said.
General Sir David Richards, a former Nato commander in Afghanistan, said Islamist militancy would pose a threat to the UK for at least 30 years.
But he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show a clear-cut victory over militants was not achievable.
The BBC's Frank Gardner said the comments reflect a "new realism" in UK and US counter-terrorism circles.
Our security correspondent said such an admission five years ago might have been considered outrageous and defeatist.
Gen Richards, 58, took over as chief of the defence staff last month, after a spell as head of the British army.
'Secure lives'
Before he was due to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph as part of the UK's Remembrance Sunday commemorations, Gen Richards told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show it was important to get the balance of remembrance right.
"It's something we've got to be very careful about... there's a lot of dwelling on death as opposed to what those people who have died achieved in their sadly too often too brief lives, but those people have done immense things that are good and I think we need to focus a bit more on that," he said.
Britain has lost 343 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001.
But Gen Richards told the BBC it was not possible to defeat the Taliban or al-Qaeda militarily.
"You can't. We've all said this. David Petraeus has said it, I've said it.
"The trick is the balance of things that you're doing and I say that the military are just about, you know, there.
"The biggest problem's been ensuring that the governance and all the development side can keep up with it within a time frame and these things take generations sometimes within a time frame that is acceptable to domestic, public and political opinion," he said.
He said extremist Islamism could not be eradicated as an idea.
"I don't think you can probably defeat an idea, it's something we need to battle back against as necessary, but in its milder forms why shouldn't they be allowed to have that sort of philosophy underpinning their lives.
"It's how it manifests itself that is the key and can we contain that manifestation - and quite clearly al-Qaeda is an unacceptable manifestation of it," he said.
Security lapse
Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy told the BBC Gen Richards was "right" that there was no purely military solution and said there would be "no white flag surrender moment".
Gen Sir David Richards is currently head of the British army
"This is a complicated issue. It will be for the long haul. It's got to do with history.
"But I think he's right to talk about the different ways that this has got to be taken on - militarily yes but diplomatically and in a peaceful sense of nation building in Afghanistan is also important," he said.
Former British Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, agreed warfare had entered a new era and needed the support of development programmes.
"In conventional wars, you talk about winning and losing.
"What we're trying to do here is succeed sufficiently to put Afghanistan as a sufficiently stable state that can look after itself and doesn't become ungoverned space into which al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups could reoccupy," he said.
Gen Richards comments came as the Foreign Office apologised to a group of MPs after a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan had to be called off because of a security lapse.
Next week's visit by members of the Commons defence select committee was cancelled after an unencrypted e-mail was sent out by an embassy official in Kabul, prompting fears that the MPs' safety may have been compromised.
The Foreign Office said it would be trying to rearrange a visit for the MPs.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We have offered our apologies for this regrettable lapse in our procedures and have assured the committee that we will do all we can to arrange a successful visit in the future."
A retired British couple have been released by Somali pirates after being held captive for more than a year.
Paul, 60, and Rachel Chandler, 56, from Kent, were seized from their yacht off the Seychelles in October 2009.
Mrs Chandler said: "I'm enjoying being free". The couple said they were fine, but will undergo medical checks.
On release they were taken to Adado, then Mogadishu, and have now arrived in Kenya. The BBC held off reporting the release due to an injunction.
It observed the terms of the order obtained by the Chandlers' family which was intended to stop news organisations covering their release until they were safely out of Somalia.
Mr Chandler told the BBC: "We're fine, we're rather skinny and bony but we're fine."
Rachel Chandler and her husband said they were fine after their ordeal
The couple were told they were to be released two days ago, he said.
"We were told on Friday in a way which gave us some confidence to believe it. Otherwise we'd been told we'd be released in 10 days almost every 10 days for the past nine months. So we'd taken all these suggestions with a pinch of salt."
Asked if he had felt their lives had been in danger during captivity, he said: "That's something we'll talk about later, but we were not really directly endangered by the gang, after the initial seizure."
The husband and wife both stressed that the conditions of their captivity were not important, with Mr Chandler saying: "You can see from our state that we suffered no serious physical harm."
However, he added: "We were beaten once."
Prime Minister David Cameron described the release as "tremendous news".
"We will ensure that they are reunited with their family as quickly as possible.
"I unreservedly condemn the actions of those that held the Chandlers for so long. Kidnapping is never justified."
Family 'overjoyed'
At a brief press conference at the presidential palace in Mogadishu, Mrs Chandler, from Tunbridge Wells, said: "We are among decent everyday people, with Somali people... and not with the criminals.
"To home now, with our family and friends," she added.
The trauma will have been terrible for them, and they'll need a lot of help and support.”
End QuoteBaroness Kinnock
The couple are now in the British High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya's capital.
A statement issued by the Chandler family, issued once the couple had arrived in Nairobi, said that although the couple looked to be in "relatively good health... we cannot yet be certain how the difficulties that they have had to endure in recent months will have affected them physically and emotionally".
There was no official word on whether a ransom was paid, but the BBC's Frank Gardner said it was "the best part of $1 million".
A payment of about $430,000 (£267,000) was made in June, but did not result in the release of the Chandlers, he added.
Media speculation was thought to have influenced the pirates, and so the family opted for a super-injunction banning coverage of the kidnap.
Our correspondent said it was thought unlikely any of those responsible will be brought to justice in Somalia, a country without an effective government since 1991.
The Chandler family statement said: "The family believes it would be irresponsible to discuss any aspect of the release process as this could encourage others to capture private individuals and demand large ransom payments, something that we are sure none of us wants."
Paul Chandler said he hoped to return to sea
Earlier in the Somali capital Mogadishu, Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed met the couple and said the government was pleased they had been freed.
He said the government had "exerted every humanly possible effort to bring you back to your loved ones".
Trauma and recovery
Baroness Kinnock, who was involved in the case during her time as Foreign Office minister for Africa, said: "The trauma will have been terrible for them, and they'll need a lot of help and support."
She said there had been "a lot of activity" in the Foreign Office, but it was difficult to make contact with the pirates.
Any ransom payment by the UK government would "cause an escalation of this kind of activity", she said.
In June, the couple asked Prime Minister David Cameron whether he was willing to negotiate with the kidnappers.
But the Foreign Office said at the time that the UK government's policy of "not making or facilitating substantive concessions to hostage-takers, including the payment of ransoms, is long-standing and clear".
Earlier this year their captors threatened to kill the couple if their demands for $7m (£4.4m) were not met.
by SUNITA KUREISHI, BBC NEWS, for THE BBC's BIODUN IGINLA – 37 mins ago
KABUL, Afghanistan – A series of bomb blasts and insurgents attacks killed 11 people across Afghanistan on Sunday, including five NATO service members and three Afghan police, officials said.
The strikes, which come a day after Taliban fighters stormed a NATObase in eastern Afghanistan, show the insurgents' fighting spirit has not been broken despite a surge of U.S. troops and firepower.
Also Sunday, the Afghan president's office said the former ambassador-designate to Pakistan, who was seized by gunmen two years ago in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, has been released and is back home safe.
The diplomat, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was freed in eastern Afghanistanlate Saturday in a joint effort by officials from both countries and has returned to Kabul, where he met Sunday with President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader's office said. A brief statement gave no details on how he was freed.
Farahi was heading from the Afghan consulate toward his home in the border city of Peshawar on Sept. 22, 2008, when gunmen stopped the vehicle and killed his driver.
"Abdul Khaliq Farahi is in good condition and right now he is in Kabul with his family," Karzai's office said.
NATO said three coalition service members were killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan and two others died in separate explosions in the south. The international military coalition did not provide further details or the nationalities of the dead service members. The deaths brought to 31 the number of coalition service members who have died in Afghanistan so far this month.
Insurgents also killed three Afghan policemen, who died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Uruzgan province in the south, said Gov. Khudi Rahim. Two other policemen were wounded in the blast in Tarin Kot district, he said.
Tens of thousands of Afghan and coalition troops are pressing insurgents throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan, and militants are retaliating with attacks on government workers and others aligned with the international troops.
A bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded in a marketplace in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, just east of the Pakistan border, killing two people and wounding 10, said district government chief Abdul Ghani.
Also in Nangahar province, a bomb placed in a wheelbarrow exploded in the provincial capital of Jalalabad, killing one person and wounding nine others, including six children and two women, the Interior Ministry said.
Insurgents also set fire to a NATO fuel convoy early Saturday morning. A group of gunmen rushed the trucks in Behsud district of Nangarhar province — the same area on the edge of Jalalabad city where a group of would-be suicide bombers tried to storm a NATO base on Saturday, provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said.
The truck drivers quickly fled and the insurgents set 12 tankers ablaze, said Abdulzai. Firefighters worked to quell the flames throughout the morning, as police secured the area. No one was killed in the attack, Abdulzai said.
Insurgents on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border have routinely struck NATO supply convoys — including a pair of attacks on Oct. 6 in which 55 fuel tankers were set ablaze in Pakistan. The alliance says the attacks have not caused supply problems for troops.
NATO also reported that it was investigating the death of an Afghan child, who was inadvertently killed during fighting Sunday in Zhari district of Kandahar province. Another child also was wounded when Afghan andcoalition forces shot back after coming under fire from insurgents, the coalition said.
Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has told the BBC she is willing to meet its military leaders to help work towards national reconciliation.
A day after her release from house arrest, she said it was time to "sort out our differences across the table".
Ms Suu Kyi also said she intended to listen to what the Burmese people and her international supporters wanted as she planned her next steps.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has spent 15 of the past 21 years in detention.
World leaders and human rights groups have welcomed her release.
US President Barack Obama said it was "long overdue", while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Ms Suu Kyi was an "inspiration", and urged Burma to free all its remaining 2,200 political prisoners.
The move came six days after Burma held its first elections in 20 years, which was won by the biggest military-backed party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), but widely condemned as a sham.
Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the last election in 1990, but was never allowed to take power. It was disbanded by the military authorities after it decided to boycott last week's polls.
'Not fearful'
In her first interview since being released, Ms Suu Kyi told the BBC's Alastair Leithead in Bangkok by telephone that one of the first things she had to do was "to listen to what the people have to say".
"The only thing is that if you talk to a large crowd, it's difficult to listen to them. You have to do all the talking. But that's not what I want to do.
"I want to listen to what the people want. I want to listen to what the other countries want, what they think they can do for us, what we think then that they could do for us, and to work out something that is acceptable to as many people as possible," she added.
Asked how she would describe her future role, she said: "I just think of myself as one of the workers for democracy. Well, better known, perhaps, than the others here in Burma but one of those working for democracy."
Ms Suu Kyi said she was prepared to hold face-to-face talks with Burma's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, to discuss the opposition's demands and to help launch a process of national reconciliation.
"I think we will have to sort out our differences across the table, talking to each other, agreeing to disagree, or finding out why we disagree and trying to remove the sources of our disagreement," she said.
"There are so many things that we have to talk about."
The NLD was currently investigating allegations of fraud in last week's elections, she said, and would soon publish a report.
Earlier on Sunday, Aung Sang Suu Kyi had to struggle through the throngs of jubilant supporters to reach the podium where she was supposed to speak. Thousands had gathered to hear her.
They were probably expecting Ms Suu Kyi to make clear what she planned to do now that she was free - in the event she asked for help. She said she could not do it alone, and was "ready to work with all democratic forces" - an appeal perhaps to an opposition bitterly divided over the recent election here to unite once more.
She told the crowd she believed in the rule of human rights and the rule of law and felt no antagonism to those who had kept her detained for much of the past two decades. The basis of democratic freedom, she said, was freedom of speech. But she cautioned that if her supporters wanted to get to where they wanted, they had to do it the right way. "Do not give up hope," she added.
Ms Suu Kyi's words were measured and careful, she will know that the military leaders who rule this country will be scrutinising her every move and today she was careful not to provoke them.
"From what I've heard there are many, many questions about the fairness about the election and there are many allegations of vote-rigging and so on."
Ms Suu Kyi said she was not fearful of risking re-arrest by continuing to push for democracy, even though she accepted that it was a possibility.
"I'm not fearful, not in the sense that I think to myself that I won't do this or I won't do that because they'll put me under arrest again. That I don't have in mind," she explained.
"But, I know that there's always the possibility that I might be re-arrested. It's not something that I particularly wish for, because if you're placed under arrest you can't work as much as you can when you're not under arrest."
But she stressed that her situation under house arrest had been much better than that of other political prisoners who are in jail.
Ms Suu Kyi added that, during her time in detention she had never felt alone, partly thanks to the BBC, which kept her in touch with the rest of the world.
Earlier on Sunday, Ms Suu Kyi was mobbed by her supporters as she made her way for the first time since her release from her house to the NLD's offices.
The 65-year-old said freedom of speech was the basis of democracy, but warned a crowd of about 4,000 people in Rangoon that if they wanted change they would have to go about getting it in the right way.
"We must work together," she told them. "We Burmese tend to believe in fate, but if we want change we have to do it ourselves."
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WASHINGTON -- For years, the U.S. government has entrusted Michael Drannan with one of its most important foreign policy efforts: rebuilding Afghanistan.
Yet as Drannan's company won millions of dollars in government contracts in the war-torn country, he was never questioned about his unpaid U.S. taxes or his four months in a Florida jail over unpaid child support.
Drannan's troubled background exposes the U.S. government's failure to thoroughly vet companies that are winning contracts in Afghanistan.
In all, McClatchy Newspapers found nearly $4.5 billion in contracts that were awarded to companies even though they violated laws or had high-profile disputes over previous projects. Such legal or financial troubles could indicate that a company isn't prepared to finish a project or is prone to wasting taxpayer money.
The lax scrutiny, critics say, has created an American contracting culture where almost any past indiscretion can be overlooked.
"The government should care if someone hasn't paid their taxes," said Nick Schwellenbach, the director of investigations for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based watchdog. "They should care if a company has admitted to overbilling."
Contracting giants are even more likely to get a pass than smaller companies because of a perception that some jobs are too big or too important to trust to an untested or smaller competitor and because political connections help pave the way to winning contracts, he said.
In other cases, the lapses can be blamed on the government's sloppy recordkeeping or inadequate background checks.
"Sometimes, they're just lazy," Schwellenbach said.
Congress, meanwhile, has admonished U.S. agencies in Afghanistan for their failure to aggressively root out waste and corruption that auditors estimate have led to $1 billion in questionable costs.
Making matters worse, U.S. agencies have acknowledged that their databases are so unreliable that they can't account for how much money they've spent rebuilding Afghanistan. The U.S. Agency for International Development, for instance, is one of the main agencies overseeing projects in Afghanistan, but it couldn't vouch for information submitted to the government's federal contracting database.
Even without access to reliable documents, McClatchy was able to find numerous examples of companies getting multimillion-dollar contracts despite past financial or legal troubles.
_Louis Berger continues to jointly hold a $1.4 billion contract for rebuilding Afghanistan, despite settling with the Justice Department this month in an overbilling investigation. As the settlement talks proceeded, the U.S. military awarded a portion of a $490 million contract to the company as well. As part of the settlement, the company will be permitted to continue bidding for future contracts.
_A subsidiary of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, was awarded a quarter of all contracts issued in Afghanistan by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command from 2007 to 2009, according to government records. McClatchy reported earlier this year that the Obama administration decided not to bring criminal charges against the security contractor after a nearly four-year investigation found sanctions violations, illegal exports and bribery.
_ITT Corp. was awarded $800 million in contracts for building maintenance and training in Afghanistan this year, despite violating export laws. The firm admitted in 2007 to sending classified materials to foreign nations, including China.
_Northrop Grumman, which paid millions to resolve allegations of improperly testing military parts, is also a leading firm in Afghanistan.
_A subsidiary of Agility was tapped along with two partners to oversee a one-year, $643.5 million contract that could eventually total almost $6 billion. At that point, Agility, formerly known as Public Warehousing Co., was being investigated for overbilling the military for food services. Five months later, in November 2009, the company was indicted for what federal agents described as "major fraud." DynCorp, one of the partners, then removed Agility from the contract, citing the indictment.
In written statements, representatives of Northrop Grumman and ITT said the companies cooperated with the government and consider the cases closed.
"We have no further comment on the matter," said Northrop Grumman spokesman Gustav Gulmert.
"The government stated that ITT could move forward as its trusted partner and fully reinstated ITT as an exporter in good standing," said David J. Albritton, an ITT spokesman.
In Drannan's case, it's unclear whether the government knew of his financial troubles. USAID said it wasn't aware of Drannan's child support issue, but didn't respond to questions about the tax problems.
USAID and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have awarded Drannan's joint venture, Venco-Imtiaz Construction Co., at least $27 million in contracts since 2007, according to government records.
"In some cases, an individual's status may or may not have a bearing on a company's financial capabilities or capability to perform," the agency said in the statement, without elaborating on whether it concluded that in Drannan's case.
The Corps didn't respond to questions.
Drannan said his company continues to win contracts because it does a good job. He said the U.S. government also appreciated his company's push to hire mostly Afghan workers and invest profits back into the country.
"I'm proud of our work," he said.
However, Drannan said his finances should be of no concern to McClatchy and declined to answer questions about his background.
"How I run my business and what happens in my business is none of your business," he said.
Drannan said he was aware of a $38,000 federal tax lien against him dating from 2005, but hadn't had time to resolve it. He settled the child support matter in January by paying nearly $100,000 after an informant brought it to the attention of U.S. government officials in Kabul.
Drannan had little experience that would prepare him for handling major government contracts in a war-torn country, according to government records and former business associates.
One of his first ventures in Afghanistan failed after he was given thousands of dollars by a Florida businessman to drum up contracts for him.
"It just didn't work out," he said.
Shortly after he formed his joint venture with an Afghan company, however, the Corps picked his company to oversee the construction of a series of projects, including a hospital, an office building and an Afghan police headquarters. USAID later selected his company for renovations of Kabul University and the Ministry of Transportation.
His former engineer who worked on the USAID projects, which are currently under way, raised questions about the company's ability to handle the contracts.
Diego Passarella, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., engineer who formed an engineering firm on behalf of Venco-Imtiaz in 2008, said he was fired in September after telling the company it needed to follow U.S. standards.
"The problem is when we start designing by the codes and involving American engineers, they tell me that we are blowing out their budget," he said.
At one point, the company sent him proposed plans that one of his engineers said was in violation of U.S. codes.
"He said 'Diego, they're dumping waste in a river,' " he said.
Drannan declined to discuss the matter and denied that Passarella had been fired.
Jafar Khan, the senior project manager for the joint venture in Afghanistan, said the U.S. government doesn't always require contractors to follow U.S. codes because they're unrealistic in Afghanistan. For instance, requiring fire sprinkler systems in a country where there are no fire hydrants or water pressure.
However, Passarella questioned how any company would know what U.S. standards to follow without an American engineer. When he tried to call Drannan, who now lives part time in Dubai, to ask him about the matter, he said he couldn't reach him.
"It's frustrating," Passarella said. "I have to put 11 Americans on unemployment."
WASHINGTON -- The good paying, predominantly white-collar jobs that once sustained many American communities are disappearing at an alarming pace, keeping the unemployment rate stubbornly high despite the end of the Great Recession.
More troubling, these jobs in accounting, financial analysis, commercial printing and a broad array of other mostly white-collar occupations are unlikely to come back, experts predict.
There isn't a single cause to the trend. Some of it is explained by changing technology, some of it is the result of automation. Sending well-paying jobs to low-cost centers abroad is another big part of the story. So is global competition from emerging economies such as China and India.
The result is the same in all cases, however. Jobs that paid well, required skills and produced vital communities are going away and aren't being replaced by anything comparable.
"Unfortunately, the evidence is that you see a form of downward mobility of workers who are displaced from middle-skilled, stable career occupations," said David Autor, an economist at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology , in an interview.
Autor published a much-discussed paper in April, suggesting that the U.S. labor market has become polarized, with employment growth in the high-skill, high-wage end, and the low-skill, low-wage end. The vast middle, he concluded, is shrinking.
"The Great Recession has quantitatively but not qualitatively changed the direction of the U.S. labor market," Autor concluded, pointing to an accelerating trend that he said has been underway for more than a decade.
As it stands, 14.8 million Americans were unemployed in September, 6.1 million of them for six months or longer. The unemployment rate has hovered around 9.6 percent for half a year, and few economists expect it to dip below 8 percent for years to come.
Lois Williams-Norman is on the upper end of what could be called a middle-skill job, working her entire career in corporations as an internal financial and budget expert. Like millions of Americans, she's had to swallow her pride and step down the income ladder.
"I've gone from a six-figure income to seriously looking at positions that are going to be paying probably half as much. So over the past 10 years, my income has continued to decline year after year," Williams-Norman said during an interview in the western New York city of Rochester, in between networking events where she searched for employment.
Her problems began in 2001 when she was downsized out of a job at Xerox Corp. after 20 years with the iconic company. Williams-Norman, who holds an MBA degree, was forced to take a 20 percent salary cut when she landed her next job at a pharmaceutical firm. She stayed there four years until her company was bought during the frenzy of mergers and acquisitions in the middle part of the last decade.
Finding work at corporate headquarters with eye care company Bausch & Lomb in Rochester, Williams-Norman was put on the street just 18 months later after private equity firm Warburg Pincus bought the company in 2007. She eventually landed with a small local manufacturer that tapped her strategic planning skills, but the economic downturn ended that job last year.
After going through four corporate employers in 10 years, Williams-Norman, who's in her 50s, has been out of work for more than a year. She's sober about her job search.
"I know a lot of them aren't going to come back, and the new jobs aren't going to pay as much," she said.
While older workers fight it out for a scant number of jobs, younger ones are voting with their feet, departing what once was prime turf for corporate America.
"We've had this white-collar work force, highly educated ... nevertheless, we've gotten almost no (employment) growth. In fact, there's been a decline; young people are leaving," said Ron Hira, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a co-author of the 2008 book "Outsourcing America," which warned about larger dangers from sending jobs abroad.
In cities such as Rochester, where multinational corporations such as Xerox, Kodak and Bausch & Lomb once lorded, the disappearance of middle-skill jobs tears at the very social fabric of community.
These corporations used to encourage their executives to join the Rotary Club or the Lions Club and to entrench themselves in community affairs. Through those efforts, these big companies were leading contributors to the United Way and other charities.
"This whole support system that we had doesn't exist anymore," said William Johnson, a former mayor of Rochester for 12 years and now a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "There is an untold story that we need to understand, which contributes to this malaise, this sense of anxiety that people have."
When corporations shrink their work force and send jobs abroad, job losses cascade down the supply chain.
Tom Bertolone, 50, spent most of his adult life in commercial printing, working his way up to a management post, raising a family on a $68,000 annual salary. When Kodak, Xerox and other big global employers got smaller at home, their printing demands in Rochester narrowed or moved abroad.
Bertolone has been without a steady job for more than two years, and in April ran out of unemployment benefits. He has only eight years left on a mortgage but has fallen behind on payments, unable to land even a retail job because he's considered overqualified.
"Initially, you try to find the same job, or something comparable. I've seen people start out that way, but then after six months or maybe nine months ... they just start looking outside that industry. . . . A lot of them are professional people who were making decent money," he said, adding that he and others in his situation are now resigned to working for considerably less. "Once your unemployment runs out, $8 an hour is better than zero."
In Rome, a few hours' drive to the east across New York's midsection, the loss of middle-skill jobs is felt in an unusual indirect way. Accountants used to come in from nearby Syracuse to pore over the books of a copper mill owned by Revere Copper Products Inc., a company founded by the famed crier who warned of the coming British.
"They used to have 150 people in their accounting office in Syracuse. Today they come into Revere and they scan the materials, and our accounts and ledgers and computer files, and they'll just transmit that to India. And they'll have a lot of the analysis of our books done in India," said Brian O'Shaughnessy, Revere's chairman.
He declined to name the firm, but noted that the independent accounting firm has substantially thinned its ranks, as have its competitors who bid to win his business.
"Instead of 150 people in Syracuse, they now have about 25 or 30, so all of a sudden you've seen a lot of accounting jobs go offshore," he said.
That might seem surprising, since the conventional wisdom is that the U.S. has become a service-driven economy.
In a 2007 study, Princeton University economist Alan Blinder estimated that 1 in 4 U.S. jobs potentially could be sent offshore because of technology, low-cost labor and the fact that service sector jobs are so much more abundant in the U.S. economy.
"I'm not totally convinced that the deep recession has accelerated the trend toward offshoring. There are certainly examples of that. But the main effect seems to be that firms learned to get by with less labor, whether domestic or foreign," said Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. "That said, as employment expands and labor markets normalize, we should see the offshoring trend reassert itself."
Blinder identifies accountants and providers of similar financial services as prime targets. Accounting blogs set up to lure these jobs to India boast of a $47,000 saving per U.S. accountant whose job is sent offshore.
Historical trends also reveal the mounting loss of middle-skill jobs.
According to data in the MIT study by Autor, skilled professional employment rose by 28 percent from 1979 to 1989, while employment in office and administrative jobs jumped 11 percent.
Then, from 1999 and 2007, those employment gains slowed to 11 percent and 1 percent, respectively. And from 2007 to 2009, spanning most of the Great Recession, there was no job growth for professionals, while office and administrative employment fell by 8 percent.
This loss of middle-skill jobs -- what Autor calls polarization of the job market -- intersects with another discouraging trend, the concentration of wealth at the highest rungs of the income ladder.
Research from University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez shows that from 1993 to 2006, average real income per family grew by an annual rate of 1.9 percent. But when subtracting out the top 1 percent of income earners, the rate of growth is 1.1 percent annually. Instead of income growth of 28 percent over the 15-year period, it's almost half that, 15 percent.
This suggests that the top 1 percent of earners in the nation captured almost half of the growth in income over a period of stellar growth in the U.S. economy. And this came against the backdrop of disappearing good-paying union jobs in manufacturing, and what now appears to be an escalating departure of well-paying middle-skill jobs.
"The middle class think they will be rich someday. The chance that people are going to become super rich is negligible. In fact, what we know is that income mobility up the ladder is slowing down, it's not increasing," said Robert Reich, an economist and former U.S. labor secretary, in a recent interview. "It's harder now for a kid born into a middle-class family to make it. It's harder for a kid in a lower middle class to do well ... the story is obvious and so clear that it really needs to be laid out to people."
Reich, the author of a new book on the topic called "Aftershock," advocates taxing the wealthy and providing greater tax relief to the vast middle class. But that only tackles income, and not the more difficult issue of jobs moving abroad or being replaced by automation and technology.
For some in the Rochester area, the answer lies in reviving the dwindling manufacturing sector, perhaps finding ways to make railcars or windmills in the U.S. under some sort of favored production.
"The only way you generate wealth is you make it, you mine it or you grow it. Just exchanging things back and forth, services, it doesn't generate wealth. It just moves it, and I think there's starting to be a realization of that," said Bob Trouskie, a regional director for the Workforce Development Institute, a union-affiliated employment and retraining group partly funded by the New York legislature.
Israeli cabinet to consider new US plan for settlement freeze Topic: israeli-palestinian conflict, na
by Nasra Ismail, BBC News, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask his Cabinet on Sunday to consider a US offer of security and diplomatic incentives in exchange for a 90-day moratorium on the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
- Israel’s prime minister will ask his Cabinet Sunday to consider a package of security and diplomatic incentives the U.S. has proposed to entice Israel to renew limits on settlement construction and revive moribund peace talks with the Palestinians.
The chief Palestinian negotiator expressed strong reservations about the proposal because the 90-day moratorium on new construction would only apply to the West Bank and not east Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ hoped-for capital. But Saeb Erekat did not reject it outright, saying the Palestinians would consult among themselves and with Arab leaders.
Peace talks ground to a halt, just three weeks after they began, after Israel rejected U.S. and Palestinian pressure to extend a 10-month moratorium on new construction that expired Sept. 26. Palestinians refused to return to the negotiating table if construction resumed on land they want for a future state and gave the U.S. until later this month to come up with a formula to salvage the talks.
The diplomatic climate soured even further last week after Israel pressed ahead with plans to build 1,300 apartments in east Jerusalem.
In a seven-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the U.S. last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that in exchange for a new construction moratorium, the White House would ask Congress to sell Israel 20 stealth fighter jets, an Israeli diplomatic source said.
The U.S. would also commit to fight international resolutions that would be critical of Israel or unilaterally advance the Palestinian quest for statehood, he said.
He spoke on condition of anonymity pending the presentation of the deal to the Cabinet on Sunday.
Netanyahu can expect some stiff opposition to the proposal from some members of his hawkish Cabinet. It was unclear if any decisions would be taken at Sunday’s meeting.
Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said the Americans had not officially informed the Palestinians about the details of the proposal, but “they know we have a major problem in not including east Jerusalem.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will put the U.S. plan before Palestinian decision-makers and call for an immediate session of Arab League officials before announcing an official decision, Erekat said.
Palestinians say construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem _ even in areas Israel is expected to retain under a final peace deal _ undermines the talks because it eats up land they want for their future state.
They have said that if negotiations fail they will consider sidestepping Israel and seek U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state.
According to the Israeli diplomatic source, the construction freeze would apply to all new construction that began in the West Bank after the moratorium expired on Sept. 26. Anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now reported Sunday that construction has begun on 1,649 apartments.
That number includes 1,126 apartments where foundations have been dug _ the government’s definition of a housing start. In all of 2009, there were 1,888 housing starts in the West Bank.
“It turns out that the settlement freeze was no more than a 10-month delay in construction, and the settlers managed to fill in the gap very fast,” Peace Now said in a statement.
The U.S. incentives package was presented after a contentious week in which the U.S. repeatedly criticized Israel for pressing ahead with new construction in east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu defiantly insisted that all of Jerusalem _ including the eastern sector annexed in 1967 in a move not recognized by the international community _ “is not a settlement. It is the capital of the state of Israel.”
Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest term of detention was due to expire Saturday, has been released from house arrest and appeared outside her Rangoon home.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted the resignations of Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his government Saturday to make room for a planned cabinet reshuffle. Fillon is expected to resume his post before naming a new team of ministers.
US President Barack Obama warned emerging economies like China against relying heavily on exports Saturday at the APEC forum in Japan, as the divisions between America and China on trade and currency issues re-emerged Saturday.
NATO troops and Afghan National Army soldiers killed eight Taliban militants who launched a pre-dawn raid on Jalalabad airport and a foreign military base early on Saturday.
The UN has appealed for 164 million dollars in aid to battle Haiti’s cholera epidemic. The death toll due to the outbreak has now jumped to nearly 800.
US President Barack Obama warned emerging economies like China against relying heavily on exports Saturday at the APEC forum in Japan, as the divisions between America and China on trade and currency issues re-emerged Saturday.
After two days of intense negotiations at the G20 summit in Seoul, leaders of the world’s 20 major economies agreed to a set of guidelines to tackle protectionism and trade imbalances. But details were left to be discussed next year.
Rolls-Royce announced on Friday that the failure of a Qantas A380 engine last week was a flaw specific to its Trent 900 series of engines and only affected a specific component of the turbine engine that started an oil fire.
Leaders of the largest EU economies issued a joint declaration on Friday stating that the 27-member bloc would support crisis-hit Ireland “if needed”, but that any new bailout mechanism would only come into effect after mid-2013.
US carmaker General Motors announced a two-billion-dollar profit for the third quarter on Wednesday, in further evidence of the company's return to health ahead of a planned initial public offering.
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel claimed pole position for his Red Bull team Saturday in the season's closer at Abu Dhabi's Formula One Grand Prix. Rival Lewis Hamilton of McLaren came in second followed by Ferrari's Fernando Alonso in third.
England manager Martin Johnson will be desperate to avoid a seventh home defeat as his team take on Australia on Sunday at the stadium once known as Fortress Twickenham.
Frenchman Franck Cammas has won the ninth edition of the Route de Rhum, finishing the transatlantic solo sprint from Saint Malo in France to Guadeloupe's Pointe-à-Pitre in his giant trimaran Groupama 3 in nine days, three hours and 14 minutes.
The UCI international cycling authority said Monday it was asking the Spanish cycling federation to open disciplinary procedures against Tour de France champion Alberto Contador after it was revealed he had failed a drug test taken in July.
Red Bull drivers Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber gave their team the constructor's title Sunday with a brilliant one-two at the Brazilian Grand Prix, but it will take a solo achievement for either of the two to win the driver's title next week.
Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of Italian neo-realist masterpieces and of Hollywood hits including "Serpico" and “Blue Velvet”, has died in Los Angeles aged 91.
The best-selling author Michel Houellebecq, known for his blunt depictions of alienation and male angst, has won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for his new novel, a satire of the Paris art world.
Thousands of articles seized from the homes of jailed financier Bernard Madoff go on auction in New York on Saturday. Proceeds from the 489 lots will go to compensate victims of Madoff’s infamous financial schemes.
Jean-Luc Godard will be honoured Saturday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Saturday. The decision by the director of "Breathless"to skip the ceremony has revived an old debate about his disdain for Hollywood.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei said Monday he was no longer under house arrest, after police confined him to his home for three days to stop him from attending an event at his Shanghai studio set for demolition.
Ai, 53, is one of China's most famous and controversial artists, who currently has an exhibition at London's Tate Modern. He also is an outspoken critic of the country's Communist rulers.
"My house arrest was supposed to last until midnight last night. In fact, the police left at about 11:00 pm," Ai told AFP.
This week Health has travelled to Chad for a special programme on the latest challenges facing the African country. Like several neighbouring states, Chad was hit by heavy flooding following an exceptional rainy season this year. Many areas in and around the capital are still underwater, months after the heavy rains. We investigate the health implications.
In today’s French press review, we focus on the five year anniversary of the riots that took place in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. The death of two boys chased by the police near a power transformer sparked extreme violence in the region. Also in the papers: medical assistance on the internet and the worst US campaign adverts, seven days before the mid-terms.
Finland has just become the first country in the world to make a law aiming to eradicate smoking entirely. The government has introduced a bill which aims to make Finland smoke-free by 2040. On October 1st, the first measures of the so-called Tobacco Act were introduced, making it harder for people under 18 to smoke, and restricting smoking outdoors. And tougher measures are to come. But can Europe follow the lead?
While over 200 countries come together in Japan to work out a road map to stop the extinction of species, ENVIRONMENT looks at the bugs and pests that are gaining in strength and taking over towns. Insecticides have gotten less toxic over the years and some species are profiting, but scientists in France may soon be able to trap them using the laws of attraction.
An accident at an Alumina factory in Hungary smothers three villages with a toxic sludge, leaving 9 dead and scores of others burned and badly injured. HEALTH meets those burned by the alkaline mud which ate deep into their skin. At Budapest’s hospitals doctors still rely on results from Greenpeace to see what metals or toxic materials are present in the mud.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted the resignations of Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his government Saturday to make room for a planned cabinet reshuffle. Fillon is expected to resume his post before naming a new team of ministers.
With an eye on lucrative contracts in the United States, France's national railway company SNCF has publicly expressed regret for its role in deporting tens of thousands of Jews to extermination camps during World War II.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy officially signed a controversial pension reform bill, raising the retirement age from 60 to 62, into law on Wednesday. The reform sparked weeks of street demonstrations and nationwide strikes.
Francoise Larribe, a French cancer patient who was kidnapped along with six other foreigners in Niger in September has received medication, AFP reported on Friday.
After eight months of speculation, a reshuffle of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet is expected before the end of November. France24.com takes a look at the frontrunners and outsiders in the race to be named France’s next prime minister.
British students are planning a further day of direct action after taking to the streets in protest at public spending cuts and proposed increases in university fees. Their leaders say they took inspiration from recent strikes and protests in France.
Leaders of the largest EU economies issued a joint declaration on Friday stating that the 27-member bloc would support crisis-hit Ireland “if needed”, but that any new bailout mechanism would only come into effect after mid-2013.
Four gunmen and at least seven Russian police were reportedly killed in a shootout Thursday, in the turbulent North Caucasus region of Dagestan, where the Russian military is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency.
A day after a protest by students and lecturers in the UK against a plan to triple tuition fees turned violent, British Prime Minister said the violence was "completely unacceptable" and vowed that such actions would not go "unpunished".
University students forced their way into the headquarters of British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party on Wednesday to protest against plans to triple tuition fees, overwhelming security guards and wrecking the reception area.
Iraq appears to have resuscitated a fragile power-sharing deal Saturday which will see Nuri al Maliki to serve a second term as premier, just days after a dramatic Sunni-backed parliamentary walkout.
Omar Bakri, a radical Muslim cleric who praised the 9/11 attacks, has been sentenced in absentia by a Lebanese court to life in jail for, among other charges, inciting murder. Bakri, who lives in Libya, said he would defy Lebanese authorities.
A series of bombings and mortar attacks targeting Christians killed at least three people and wounded dozens more in Baghdad on Wednesday. The attacks come 10 days after a brazen assault on a Catholic church killed 52.
Jordan has elected a parliament dominated by government loyalists after a boycott by opposition Islamists, according to official results released Wednesday. Islamist parties have disputed turnout figures, which the government estimates at 53 percent.
The US said on Monday it was "deeply disappointed" by Israel's plan to build 1,300 new homes in occupied East Jerusalem, as Palestinian leaders accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to sabotage stalled peace talks.
Just short of a week after the second round of Guinea’s presidential election and with only half of votes counted, former premier Cellou Dalein Diallo maintained a small lead over challenger Alpha Conde. Both men have alleged incidents of fraud.
The foreign ministers of Spain and Britain have expressed concern over Morocco's deadly raid on a refugee camp in Western Sahara, as exiled Sahrawis claim police killed dozens more people than was originally reported.
At least 11 of the 35 passengers aboard a Sudanese plane that crashed while landing Thursday in the country's western Darfur region have survived, according to an official with the UN and African Union peacekeeping mission in the area.
Three Frenchmen kidnapped off the coast of Nigeria on September 22 have been released, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Wednesday. The men were employees of France's offshore services firm Bourbon.
Opposition leader Henri Konan Bedie (right) has joined four rivals in calling on supporters to choose Alassana Ouattara (left) over current president Laurent Gbagbo when they vote in the last leg of the presidential race in two weeks.
The US Supreme Court has rejected a bid to block enforcement of the Pentagon's controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The ruling coincides with a request by the US Justice Department to let a Federal appeals court rule on the case first.
The UN has appealed for 164 million dollars in aid to battle Haiti’s cholera epidemic. The death toll due to the outbreak has now jumped to nearly 800.
Three more people have died from cholera in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, as the death toll from the epidemic hits 724. It is feared the disease could spread to tent camps that have sheltered over a million people since the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Cuban authorities have unveiled a new five-year plan designed to slash social spending, including ending the "equal pay" regime, and attract more private capital, in a bid to revive the country's stalled economy.
Cases of cholera were identified in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday as the death toll from the epidemic reached nearly 600. The disease could spread to tent camps that have housed over a million people since the Jan. 12 earthquake.
World leaders welcomed and celebrated the release of Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi Saturday, who has spent 15 of the last 21 years in detention, but expressed concern whether her ‘unconditional’ release would be honoured.
At least three people were killed and two injured by a suicide bomb at a lawmakers house in Doulatpur, Bangladesh, 155 miles from the country's capital Dhaka, Saturday. The lawmaker, who appears to have been the focus of the attack, escaped unhurt.
US President Barack Obama warned emerging economies like China against relying heavily on exports Saturday at the APEC forum in Japan, as the divisions between America and China on trade and currency issues re-emerged Saturday.
The death toll from a series of volcanic eruptions that began on Nov. 5 rose to more than 240 Saturday as rescuers continued to search layers of ash for victims. Government volcano experts have warned that Mount Merapi remains highly active.
Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest term of detention was due to expire Saturday, has been released from house arrest and appeared outside her Rangoon home.
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