Spanish ''cost - cutting plan "....[ 1211 ]

Spanish politicians approve 15bn-euro austerity plan

 

Refusal to approve the package would have been a blow to Prime Minister Zapatero

BBC Thursday, 27 May 2010 11:51 UK 

The Spanish parliament has backed a 15bn-euro ($18.4bn; £13bn) austerity package by one vote as the country strives to cut its budget deficit.

The vote saw 169 in favour of the Socialist government's austerity plan and 168 against, with 13 abstentions.

Spain announced the austerity package earlier this month. It includes wage cuts of 5% or more for civil servants and slashes public investment plans.

Spain hopes to rein in its deficit and ease fears of a Greek-style crisis.

'Calming'

A parliamentary defeat would have been a blow to the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Spain's programme is intended to reduce a deficit of 11% of GDP to 6% by 2011.

"The result is calming for the markets because a vote against would have been very worrying," said Jose Luis Martinez, a strategist at Citigroup.

"But the small margin is worrying considering what Spain is facing."

'Painful but inevitable' Many Spaniards fear the effect the cuts will have on the economy, where the unemployment rate exceeds 20% - twice the eurozone average.

SPANISH COST-CUTTING PLAN

Continue reading the main story

• 5% average pay cut for public workers in 2010
• Payout scrapped to parents for birth of children
• Automatic inflation-adjustments for pensions suspended
• Funding to regions cut by 1.2bn euros

The country moved out of recession in the first quarter of this year, with growth of 0.1%.

The European Union has been anxious to see more fragile European economies, including Spain, Portugal and Greece, impose tougher austerity measures.

Before the vote, finance minister Elena Salgado had asked politicians to vote in favour, saying the measures were "painful but inevitable".

Russian Navy plans Naval-exercise off N.Korea...[ 1210 ]

Russia plans big naval exercise off North Korea

Anti-North Korean Rally

VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIA.., ( Reuters ) May 27, 2010 10:01 AM- 

Russia will hold large-scale naval exercises near North Korea next month that were planned before the current stand-off on the Korean peninsula, naval officials said on Thursday.

Tensions between the two Koreas are at their highest level in years, a week after international investigators accused the North of torpedoing a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.
Moscow, which maintains ties with North Korea, has issued repeated calls for calm and restraint from both sides to prevent tension from bubbling over into armed conflict.

The Kremlin says it wants more information about the accusations that a North Korea torpedo sank the warship.
A flotilla of warships will set off for the Sea of Japan from Vladivostok, the home port of Russia's Pacific fleet, its spokesman Roman Martov said. Vladivostok is in the Primorsky Krai, the only Russian region that borders North Korea.
For the first time, other fleets of Russia's navy will also join in the war games.

The Black Sea fleet's flagship Moskva missile cruiser, dubbed "the aircraft carrier killer" in the Russian media, will take part alongside the heavy nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, flagship of the Northern fleet.
Martov did not say whether the planned show of force had any relation to the current precarious stand-off on the Korean peninsula.

The Pentagon has announced plans for a joint U.S.-South Korean anti-submarine drill "in the near future" and said talks are under way on joint maritime interdiction exercises.
"It is business as usual for the (Pacific) fleet," Martov said, without elaborating.
A navy spokeswoman in Moscow said "the exercises had long been planned." She gave no further details.

A permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia like China has the right to veto any sanctions against North Korea over the sinking.

Next week Russian torpedo experts will fly to South Korea at Seoul's request "to examine material evidence" and say whether the South Korean warship was indeed sunk by a North Korean torpedo in March, Itar-Tass news agency quoted a navy source as saying.

The Kremlin said in a statement on Wednesday that "if there is veracious information on someone's complicity (in sinking the South Korean corvette), the culprits must be given punishment which is judged necessary and adequate by the international community".

Moscow wants explanations from USA.. [ 1309 ]

Russia awaits articulate explanations from U.S., Poland on missile deployment

MOSCOW, May 27 2010, 20:38 (Xinhua) -- Moscow wanted articulate explanations from the United States and Poland of the deployment of Patriot missiles near the Russian border, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Thursday press conference.


Bildunterschrift: Original US plans to base missiles in Poland caused tension with Russia
  "We oppose the new arms race about to start in Europe. Patriot systems are not an anti-missile measure of defense. They are designed for anti-aircraft defense. So we don't quite understand why one needs to ... create military infrastructure in the close vicinity of the Russian border," the minister said.
"We expect to hear some articulate explanations from the American and Polish sides. Still, so far we hear only the pleas not to worry, because these systems are not targeted against Russia. But we have already heard that and we hope our new relations with Washington and Warsaw would allow us to receive more detailed explanations," Lavrov said.
U.S. Patriot missiles arrived in Poland on Monday. On Wednesday, Polish Defense minister Bogdan Klich welcomed a 100-strong U.S. unit and high-ranked US military officials to the town of Morag, close to the Russian border, where six training-mode Patriot missiles had been deployed. After 2012, they will be supplemented with the standard SM-3 combat missiles.
The Polish minister said the arrival of the missiles had been "an important step to enhancing the security" of Poland, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
Related:
Russia not to deploy missiles due to U.S. missiles deployed in Poland

MOSCOW, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Russia is not going to deploy Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad region as a response to the deployment of the U.S. Patriot missile along the border in Poland, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.

"Currently there are no intentions to deploy the Iskanders since the American Patriot missiles are the part of anti-aircraft defense, not anti-missile one," said the spokesman as quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency.  Full story

Deployment of Patriot missiles increase Poland's security: defense chief

WARSAW, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Deployment of Patriot missiles in Poland increases Poland's security and boosts cooperation with the United States, Poland's Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said when greeting U.S. soldiers in Morag on Wednesday.

"We consider deployment of the Patriot system in Poland to be an important step in increasing our national security and boosting cooperation with the United States," Klich said, quoted by the PAP news agency.  Full story

U.S. deploys missiles in Poland, may dampen relations with Russia

BEIJING, May 26 (Xinhua) -- A battery of U.S. Patriot missiles and more than 100 soldiers have arrived in Morag, north-western Poland, prompting concern from Russia.

The move will have lasting impact on security in the region and may dampen the United States and Poland's relations with Russia, analysts say.  

Editor: Xiong Tong

NASA Image of the Day,May 27th,..[ 1308 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

ISS Transits the Sun

Thilo Kranz, a staff member at DLR, the German Space Agency, took this image of the transit of the International Space Station ISS with Space Shuttle Atlantis during the STS-132 mission. Kranz photographed "the ISS as it passed across the solar disk in just 0.51 seconds ... 

 

At this time, preparations for undocking of space shuttle Atlantis during its final mission, STS-132, were ongoing. 

 

You can see the still docked shuttle in the 11 o'clock position. Also, you may recognise the solar panels and the large radiators. In the full resolution version of this image, you can also see the Soyuz capsule. 

 

Close to the centre of the sun, a group of sunspots is visible." Visit the DLR News Blog for more information. 

 

Image Credit: Thilo Kranz/DLR

Πέμπτη, 27 Μάιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

West Yorkshire : A suspected serial killer arrested[ 1307 ]

Suspect quizzed over six women as police probe CCTV of crossbow attack

Justin Davenport and Rashid Razaq
27.05.10

A suspected serial killer arrested for the murders of three prostitutes may be questioned about the deaths of up to six women, it was revealed today.

Mature student Stephen Griffiths, 40, was being quizzed as police confirmed the remains of a woman found in a river were those of Suzanne Blamires, 36.

The criminology student, who researched serial killers, is also being held on suspicion of murdering Shelley Armitage, 31, and Susan Rushworth, 43, who have disappeared.
All three sex workers had vanished from Bradford's red light district — a haunt of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered 13 women, mainly prostitutes, 30 years ago.
The Standard can reveal the suspect sent “unnerving messages” to a yoga teacher a year ago, according to a friend of the woman.

Detectives are also said to be studying CCTV footage found by a security guard at the weekend which shows a woman being chased, attacked and shot with a crossbow.
Griffiths was arrested at his one-bed flat in a converted mill in Bradford on Monday, the day before police found the human remains in the River Aire.
Now detectives are combing through the killings and disappearance of other women dating back 20 years. In particular, they are examining the unsolved murders of three other women from the Bradford area.
Ms Blamires, 36, went missing from her home in the red light area last Friday. Ms Armitage vanished on April 26 and Ms Rushworth, a grandmother and mother of three, vanished on June 22 last year.
West Yorkshire Police have confirmed they are treating the disappearance of al three as murder.
Detectives are also said to be examining the disappearance of Gemma Simpson, 23, from her home in Leeds in May 2000 and the murders of Bradford prostitute Yvonne Fitt, 33, in 1992 and Rebecca Hall, 19, whose naked body was found in a Bradford alley in 2001.
While police are looking at further cases, senior officers emphasised today they had not found any definite links so far. They have been granted extra time, until early this evening, to question Griffiths. Detectives are scouring a My Space internet site set up by Griffiths to research his background.

The site, now removed, was created under the pseudonym Ven Pariah and he styled himself “the misanthrope who brought hate into heaven”. He is believed to have written about notorious serial killers and claimed he was doing a “PhD in murder”.
He used two main images of himself, gave himself the age of 99, listed his location as Bradford and last accessed his pages on April 23.
Listing his mood as “evil”, he quotes the book of Ezekiel: “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides.” The quote was made famous after being used in an execution scene in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction.
One black and white shot on the website shows Griffiths with his hair slicked back and was taken a number of years ago. A second is a topless self-portrait taken in a mirror.
Born in Dewsbury, he was said to be doing a criminal justice course specialising in homicide at the University of Bradford. He is also said to have a psychology degree. The university today refused to comment.
Neighbours at the block of flats in the converted property known as Soho Mills described him as “weird” and a “a bit of a Goth”.
West Yorkshire Police said today: “Inquiries are ongoing and a man of 40 remains under arrest in custody.”