By Kayla Pearson
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff

University of Arizona/ Takeshi Inomata

By the University of Arizona news service

Spanish and France at record
for unemployed citizens


Spanish unemployment shot up to a record 27.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. Joblessness also increased at alarmingly high levels in France, with the number of documented job seekers rising by 1.2 percent in March from February to 3,224,600. That's up 11.5 percent from March of 2012, right before Francois Hollande took over as president in May.

More than six million Spaniards now are out of work, underscoring the grim message that the woes of Spain and a number of other eurozone countries are far from over. Figures published Thursday by Spain's National Statistics Institute also show that nearly one in six Spaniards under the age of 25 is unemployed.

Today Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is expected to announce new measures aimed at jump-starting the country's ailing economy.

Standing in line at one Madrid unemployment office, Spaniard Fina Garcia expressed impatience at the government, saying he didn't know what the solution was, but that the government needs to act since the numbers of unemployed people like himself are growing every day. He expressed fear there would be more cuts to come.

Some experts are surprised at Spain's latest unemployment figures. Not analyst Zsolt Darvas, from the Brussels-based economic think-tank Bruegel.

"Unfortunately, I'm not surprised, because the economic outlook of Spain but also other European countries is extremely bleak," said Darvas. "There is no private demand, banks are in very bad shape and the policy is fiscal conservation. So from these factors nothing else can come out, just some deeper recession or unemployment."

Darvas said he believes the European Union, along with the European Central Bank, should do more to help struggling southern members, as should stronger countries like Germany. He predicts the ECB will be responding shortly by cutting its interest rate.

Growing joblessness also is posing a major problem for neighboring France, the eurozone's second-largest economy. Socialist President Francois Hollande, who came to power last year promising to grow the economy and cut joblessness, is now struggling with record low popularity ratings.
 
Overall, said Darvas, the outlook for the 17 nations sharing the euro currency is not bright.

"I think the major problem in the euro area is the lack of demand. Because the private consumption is falling, private investment is falling. And at the same time public expenditures are also cut back. So if you put these three things together… nothing else can come out of this, just deeper recession," said Darvas.

One thing that is growing is public anger, with many Europeans taking to the streets to express their discontent with the tough economic times.


U.S. arms treaty facing
grim future in U.S. Senate


The U.S. Senate recently rejected measures that would expand background checks on potential gun buyers, renew and strengthen a ban on military-style assault weapons and limit ammunition magazines to 10 rounds. The National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby group, is widely credited for helping defeat the measures. The organization is now expected to work against Senate ratification of an international treaty regulating trade in conventional weapons.

The Senate action defeating the gun control measures came four months after a gunman fatally shot 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and was seen as a major defeat for President Barack Obama and gun control advocates.

Following the vote, President Obama did not mince his words.

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it would create some sort of big brother gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation, in fact, outlawed any registry. Plain and simple, right there in the text,” said Obama. “But that didn’t matter. And unfortunately, this pattern of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose, because those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners, and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators.”

Obama said it was a “pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Earlier this month, the United Nations by a vote of 154 to three with 23 abstentions overwhelmingly approved a landmark treaty regulating trade in conventional weapons from battle tanks and warships to small arms and light weapons. Only Syria, Iran and North Korea voted against the pact. Costa Rica was an original sponsor of the treaty.

The National Rifle Association is also opposed to the treaty.

Martin Butcher, an arms policy adviser with Oxfam, the international humanitarian organization, said “If I were the National Rifle Association, I wouldn’t want to be standing with Iran, Syria and North Korea on this, and that’s where they are.”

The National Rifle Association argues that the Arms Trade Treaty infringes on the rights of Americans to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is part of the Bill of Rights guaranteeing individual freedoms.

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made that point during a speech to the treaty conference last July.

“Without apology, the NRA wants no part of any treaty that infringes on the precious right of lawful Americans to keep and bear arms,” said LaPierre. “Let there be no confusion. Any treaty that includes civilian firearms ownership in its scope will be met with the NRA’s greatest force of opposition.”

But Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, an independent research organization, said the NRA’s charge that the treaty limits domestic gun ownership rights is simply false.

“The National Rifle Association is demagoguing the arms trade treaty. They are trying to scare their members into thinking that this treaty is a problem for domestic gun ownership when it is not,” said Kimball. “And what that does is it enables the NRA to raise money and to be able to claim that they are somehow protecting domestic gun ownership rights.”

The treaty will be open for signature beginning in early June and will become part of international law once 50 countries ratify it.

President Obama is expected to sign it. But John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said Senate ratification of the treaty will be a difficult task.

“I think it has almost no chance of passing. We have already seen resolutions in the Senate where a majority of senators have disapproved of the treaty, even before they had the language,” said Bolton. “And of course under the U.S. Constitution, treaty ratification requires two-thirds of the senators present and voting to approve. So if advocates of the treaty don’t even have a majority, obviously there is simply no chance, I think, that this treaty will be ratified.”

Martin Butcher with Oxfam said many of the senators who expressed their disapproval of the treaty “were misled by the NRA.”

“It will be a process of educating them what the treaty is actually about, how it will actually work, and the fact that this is intended to help populations in conflict affected areas, in Africa and elsewhere, and nothing to do with the United States," he said. "I’m sure that will reduce opposition to the treaty in the Senate.”

Analysts also said the National Rifle Association will make sure that its opposition to the treaty is well-known in the Senate chambers.


European space agency
issues warning on junk


Space junk such as debris from rockets must be removed from the Earth's orbit to avoid crashes that could cost satellite operators millions of euros and knock out mobile and GPS networks, the European Space Agency said.
 
At the current density of debris, there will be an in-orbit collision about every five years, however research presented at a conference hosted by ESA in Germany showed that an increase in such junk made more collisions likely in the future.
 
Five to 10 large objects need to be collected from space a year to help cut down on smashes and stem the risk of fragments being sprayed into space that could cause more damage, it said.
 
Scientists estimate there are about 29,000 objects larger than 10 cm (four inches) orbiting Earth at average speeds of 25,000 kph (15,500 mph) — about 40 times faster than airplanes travel.
 
At that speed, even small pieces of fast-traveling debris can damage or destroy spacecraft and satellites — which could cost billions of dollars to replace and disrupt mobile phone communication or satellite navigation.
 
"Within a few decades, there are going to be collisions among large objects that will create fragments that can do further damage," Heiner Klinkrad, the head of ESA's Space Debris Office, told Reuters.
 
"The only way to keep this from happening is to go up there and remove them," he said. "The longer you wait, the more difficult and far more expensive it is going to be."
 
Space debris includes any man-made litter left in space — parts of rocket launchers, inactive satellites and broken parts from past collisions.
 
Space agencies around the world are cooperating on space debris research, and ESA's Clean Space initiative, launched in 2012, aims to develop the technology to safely capture and remove space debris.
 
Researchers are looking at several different methods for removing space debris from orbit, Klinkrad said, ranging from the use of propulsion packages, conductive tethers or lasers, to nets and harpoons.
 
But any decision to go ahead with a mission, as well as funds to pay for it, would need to come ESA's 20 member states, which include France, Germany, Italy and Britain.
 
Demand for the removal of objects from orbit could eventually offer opportunities for private companies, Klinkrad said, though many issues, including legal ones, surrounding space debris would need to be settled first.


Space agency testing bird
that can track Earth closely


The U.S. space agency is adapting tools it has used to learn about water on the moon, minerals on Mars and the composition of exoplanets to analyze ecosystems on planet Earth. NASA this week finished a month of preliminary high-altitude tests of a new Earth-imaging instrument package, which the agency plans to launch into orbit.
 
The instruments have been flying on NASA’s ER-2, an aircraft that skirts the edge of space at an altitude of 20,000 meters, nearly two times the cruising altitude of commercial jetliners.
 
The imaging tools gather data about how different wavelengths of light interact with landscape molecules and particles to produce a spectral fingerprint. According to Robert Green, a scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and principal investigator on the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager or airborne campaign (HyspIRI), sensors for an instrument called the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer precisely measure the light and temperature characteristics of each ecosystem the plane overflies.
 
“We can see the interaction of the molecules that are present in the earth’s atmosphere, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, and on the earth’s surface in plants such as cellulous and leaf water and the other constituents of plants," he said.
 
The tool, whose imaging spectroscopy technology was tested over California’s varied landscape, can also measure the impact of surface events such as volcanic eruptions, wildfires and droughts.
 
“We have snow-covered mountains, we have coasts, we have agriculture, we have deserts, we have forested areas," Green said of the testing region along the nation's western edge. "So in one fairly small region of the country, we can capture a tremendous diversity of ecosystems and environments found on the surface of the Earth.”
 
Green says each pixel captured by the imager holds a wealth of information invisible to the human eye. “We can map the species type. We can look at the bio-geochemistry of the plants, and determine the state of the chemicals in the leaves of the plant to tell us about their health and productivity," he said. "In the geology area, we can look at the different mineral signatures, which tell us the molecules in the rocks to know exactly what those minerals are.”
 
The test flights, he adds, are part of preparations for an eventual satellite mission that will provide global coverage from low-Earth orbit, about 700 kilometers above the planet.
 
“This would give us global direct measurements of molecules and temperatures of the Earth’s surface, repeated each year, so we could see seasonal and temporal variations," he said.
 
The HyspIRI satellite mission is still in the study phase, with ER-2 test-flights continuing through 2014.
 
Green says the new images of the planet could help scientists better assess how Earth is changing and possibly help policy makers and the public make better-informed decisions about how humans can adapt to the changes.


Bush library inauguration
raises question of his role


Thursday’s dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas is sure to rekindle the debate over the former president’s place in history. Public opinion polls showed Bush was highly unpopular when he left office in 2009. Some recent surveys, though, suggest his approval rating is making a bit of a comeback.

Former president George W. Bush has always insisted he was never bothered by opinion polls and that history will be the final judge of his presidency.

At the dedication of his presidential library, Bush said he hoped his administration will one day be remembered for advocating the spread of freedom.

“The political winds blow left and right. Polls rise and fall. Supporters come and go. But in the end, leaders are defined by the convictions they hold,” he said.

Historians say it can be difficult for presidents to either escape the judgment of history or to try to alter it once they are out of office.

Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas and an expert on the presidency, said the former president faces some daunting challenges in trying to change the perception of his administration over time, especially when it comes to the war in Iraq.

“If Iraq becomes the flower of democracy that blooms 20, 30, 40 years from now and spreads to the rest of the Middle East, it’s very likely the president’s highly controversial decision to invade without provocation will be forgiven. Right now it would be hard to predict that with confidence or certainty,” said Buchanan.

When Bush left the White House in early 2009, his approval rating had dipped to 33 percent. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, however, found his approval had climbed to 47 percent, giving Bush supporters some hope that his image will improve over time.

Former presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon also left office under a political cloud. Truman was unpopular because of the Korean War. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency because of his involvement in the Watergate scandal.

Over time, Truman’s approval ratings improved, but that was not the case for Nixon.

Buchanan said George W. Bush is hoping his post-presidential popularity follows the Truman model.

“One of the things people seemed to like about President Bush is that he stayed out of the limelight. He didn’t get out there like Richard Nixon did and try to resurrect his own image. He left it to others,” he said.

Historian Richard Norton Smith said ex-presidents often become more popular over time, especially in the modern information age. He said that was not the case for many U.S. presidents in the country’s early years.

“Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers worries that former presidents would be like ghosts wandering around and haunting their successors with nothing particular to do. And the fact of the matter is that for the first 100 years or so of the republic, there was some truth to that,” said Smith.

In the modern era, former presidents like Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have dedicated themselves to public service.

Buchanan said some of the presidents least successful in office were able to burnish their reputations by the work they did after they left the White House.

“Most of the books still being written about Carter are not very flattering in terms of their treatment of his presidency," he said. "But he’s increasingly regarded as the best ex-president in American history because of his good works.”

President Barack Obama attended the Bush Library dedication and it’s possible he took a few mental notes. Obama is barred by the Constitution from seeking a third term and is slated to join the ‘ex-presidents club’ when he finishes his second term in January 2017.


$5.5 billion plan announced
to eradicate polio forever


A new campaign has been announced to eradicate polio. The six-year plan costing $5.5 billion was unveiled Thursday at the Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi.

The Global Polio Initiative says the plan is the first that aims to eradicate all types of polio – the wild poliovirus and vaccine derived cases. Health officials say on rare occasions, the live, but weakened poliovirus in the oral vaccine may genetically alter in the immunized person’s gut triggering the disease.

If all the funding comes through, more than one billion children could be vaccinated. The U.N. children’s fund, describes ending polio as a historic feat for humanity.

“This is really the beginning of the end. We’re tantalizingly close to eradicating polio and really making history. So it’s an extraordinary opportunity,” said UNICEF spokesperson Sarah Crowe.

"Never before have there been fewer cases in fewer places,” she said.

There were 223 cases reported last year and just 19 so far this year.

“We must seize this opportunity because if we don’t make history – and we last made history, the grand we, was smallpox. The last time a disease was eradicated,” she said.

That was 1979. But the world was close to polio eradication before. It was nearly achieved in 2005, but immunization faltered in some countries, like Nigeria. So what’s different now?

Crowe said, “Because we’ve never been as close. We’re down now to three endemic countries in the world, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. And in those cases there are really just a handful of children who have been affected by polio this year. So we’ve never seen that kind of a drop-off in history.”

At the Global Vaccine Summit, leaders and philanthropists have pledged nearly three-quarters of the funding. $1.5 billion in pledges is still needed.

The polio eradication plan is seen as part of an overall effort to provide vaccines to children around the world.

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff