Guatemalan Mayans take fight to the airwaves

Radio host Rosario Sul González gets set for a show on Radio Ixchel, a pirate radio station in Guatemala that provides content for local indigenous Mayan residents. Courtesy James Fredrick

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The Guatemalan government is cracking down on the country’s hundreds of pirate radio stations. Indigenous leaders say the 1996 Peace Accords give them the right to broadcast.

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SUMPANGO, Guatemala – The dial is tuned to Radio Ixchel, 102.3 FM. Rosario Sul González is signing off her show: “I just want to remind all of you today to keep smiling, because a smile is the key that can open any door, even the door of hate. Let’s not forget that.”

Turn the dial to 99.7 Kiss FM, and they’re on commercial. A spot features two men speaking: “Juancho, what’s up man?” asks one of the men. “Well, I’m worried, … they’re shutting down all the pirate radio stations,” Juancho replies.

“Well, of course, Juancho, those are against the law,” Juancho’s friend says. “Don’t tell me you have one! But you seem so respectable. Hurry up and close it. Or would you rather I come visit you in jail?”

The figurative Juancho in the fictional conversation is a radio pirate. Rosario, an energetic 28-year-old Mayan communications student, is a real one. In Guatemala, where there are 15 murders per day and only 2 percent of them are solved, constant warnings about radio piracy seem amiss.

Rosario broadcasts for her local Radio Ixchel in her free time. She sits in a bare nine-square-meter room with two small tables, a mixing board, one computer and two microphones. The main door is unmarked.

The radio’s founder, Anselmo Xunic, joins Rosario as the station switches from a children’s program to a youth program. Radio Ixchel programming includes a women’s-issues hour, a marimba music program, and a Kaqchikel language program. Kaqchikel is one of Guatemala’s 23 Mayan languages, and this type of program is typical of a community radio station.

Xunic, a Maya Kaqchikel farmer, became a radio pirate in 2003 when he and two partners invested almost $1,400 of their own money, no small feat in a country where 75 percent of the indigenous population lives on less than a dollar a day.

When he started his radio station, he could not afford a license. According to the 1996 Telecommunications Law, the only way Xunic could get one was by bidding at a public auction where licenses can go for more than $100,000 to big players.

Without a license, broadcasting is illegal, says Eduardo Mendoza, secretary of Guatemala’s Chamber of Broadcasting.

Mendoza explains that there are at least 800 pirate radio stations in Guatemala. While many of these do profit from broadcasting or serve a political or religious group, community-run stations like Xunic’s Radio Ixchel are deemed to be as menacing as the others.

The Chamber of Broadcasting is leading a campaign against illegal stations through radio spots like the one with Juancho. Mendoza says these ads will inform Guatemalans of the law and help enforce it.

“The law is the law,” says Mendoza. “We’re trying to avoid a complete mess on the radio-electric spectrum.”

This “mess” happens when a pirate radio sets up on a given frequency, disrupting legally bought frequencies in that range. For stations that have purchased frequencies and promised advertisers airtime, this hurts business. Mendoza also condemns illegal broadcasters’ failure to pay taxes.

But radio stations like Radio Ixchel claim that they have a right to the airwaves, and that the current law is discriminatory. They cite the Guatemalan Peace Accords, which were signed in 1996 and ended 36 years of bloody civil war between the military government and leftist guerillas.

The Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples says the state is responsible for promoting “reforms of the existing Act on radio communications that are required to make frequencies available for indigenous projects, and to ensure respect for the principle of non-discrimination in the use of the communications media.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also supports community radio. It holds that radio frequencies must be allocated using “democratic criteria that guarantee equal opportunity for all.” The U.N. Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples says that establishing media is a right.

Community radio stations claim that the current law fails to meet any of these standards. There is no category for community radio in the Telecommunications Law, and distributing frequencies through auction is not democratic, argues Danielle DeLuca, program associate for the U.S.-based organization Cultural Survival. “The current Telecommunications Law completely ignores [community radio].”

In 2009, with the support of Cultural Survival, community radios proposed the Community Media Bill to Congress’s Committee on Indigenous Groups. The bill would recognize nonprofit community media as a new category separate from the current law’s commercial-, public- and ham-radio designations. The bill would allow each of Guatemala’s 333 municipalities to have its own community radio station.

Community radio stations would have to meet certain criteria, such as having programming in an indigenous language, maintaining gender equality in management and programming, no political-party affiliation, and nonprofit status. The proposed law would also create a Council of Community Media that would uphold the standards for designating frequencies.

Asked about the proposed change, Mendoza says that, “It’s contradictory to current law.” Radio is an industry, and the spectrum of frequencies is limited, he says.

Mendoza denies that his stance is discriminatory. “We are not racist,” he says.

Mendoza says that community radio already exists legally in Guatemala; about 25 community radio stations have licenses. But he doesn’t see the need for community radio to become an entirely different entity, as proposed in the bill. He sees it as simply a different format of broadcasting, like a sports radio station.

Xunic was hopeful when the Community Media Bill was first proposed in 2009. It hurdled the first step to passage when Congress’ Indigenous Groups Committee officially supported it. But since then, the bill has gone nowhere. DeLuca believes it’s stuck because of “a lack of political will.”

This fight for community radio fits in to a bigger picture of the indigenous struggle for equality in Guatemala. Even though the Central American country is 60 percent indigenous, Mayan Congressman Amilcar Pop says this is a norm. “Historically, it’s typical for Congress to exclude indigenous groups. They accept bills but never adopt them.”

The proposed Community Media Bill is one of more than 10 bills dealing with indigenous rights that have been accepted by Congress and shelved indefinitely.

Although radio may seem insignificant to many, the Community Media Bill is crucial for indigenous people to stay informed. Without community radio stations broadcasting in each of the local languages, the many indigenous Guatemalans who can’t speak Spanish or read could be cut off from news. Xunic worries that indigenous communities could “fall backwards into the past” without their own radio.

Radio Ixchel listener Martina Sal says it would be a great loss to the community if the radio disappeared. She listens to the Kaqchikel Language Program and practices every week. When Sal was in school during the civil war, she was banned from speaking Kaqchikel and forgot it. She is proud to be able to hold on to that part of her culture.

Today, pirate radio stations face the constant threat of police raids and possible imprisonment. It happened to Radio Ixchel in 2006. But unlike the warnings made in radio announcements, Xunic was not sent to jail. He went before a judge and returned home without a fine.

Radio Ixchel was broadcasting again six months later, after community members donated more than $1,300 to start it again. He says that if Radio Ixchel were raided again, they would do it all over. “Radio is a right,” he says.

One Andaman tribe in Amezon

Mashco-Piro 'uncontacted' Peruvian tribe pictured

Chance encounters near an isolated Amazon tribe have resulted in the most detailed pictures ever taken of them.

Campaign group Survival International has released images of the Mashco-Piro tribe, which lives near the Manu National Park in southeastern Peru.

The tribe has had little if any peaceful contact with the outside world, but sightings are on the rise.

Survival blames the change on gas and oil projects and illegal logging in the area, pushing the tribe into new lands.

The message that the Mashco-Piro tribe seems to be sending, however, is that they want to be left alone.

"There's been increasing conflict and violence against outsiders that are on their ancestral land," Survival's Peru campaigner Rebecca Spooner told BBC News.

That violence has included arrows being fired at tourists in passing boats, and a warning arrow - with no tip - being recently fired at a Manu park ranger.

Most recently, members of the tribe fired a lethal arrow at Nicolas "Shaco" Flores - a member of a different tribe who had been attempting to make formal contact with the Mashco-Piro for some two decades.

An account of the attack by anthropologist Glenn Shepardunderlines the fact that the tribe is fearful of forming ties with the world around them. (http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/01/26/close-encounters-of-the-mashco-kind/)

So it was at a respectful distance of 120m that Spanish archaeologist Diego Cortijo snapped pictures of the tribe using a telescope mounted on a camera, capturing the most detailed images ever taken of such "uncontacted" tribes, many of whom are detailed at a site of the same name. (http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/)

Ms Spooner suggested that the evident increase in violence could be abated by preserving the local tribes' traditional lands.

"We're asking the Peruvian government to do more to protect that land, which should be set aside for the uncontacted groups," she said.

Gabriella Galli spotted the tribe on a riverbank in August 2011

Doing the math on Obama's deficits

Ezra Klein

(editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post)

The campaign trail can be a lonely place, so Mitt Romney frequently invites friends to accompany him. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is an occasional companion. So is Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. But more often, Romney brings a large clock.

Romney’s people made it themselves. It has two giant flat-screen televisions pushed side by side. It’s surrounded by a green foam sign. And it’s hooked to two computers feeding it a live count of America’s rising debt burden, which stands well above $15 trillion. The clock represents President Obama’s economic failures. It’s there so Romney can point to it and tell the crowd that if he’s elected, he’ll “do a better job slowing down that clock.” But if you’re a deficit-obsessed voter, the clock doesn’t answer the key question: How much has Obama added to the debt, anyway?

There are two answers: more than $4 trillion, or about $983 billion. The first answer is simple and wrong. The second answer is more complicated but a lot closer to being right.

When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10.5 trillion. Today, it’s about $15.2 trillion. Simple subtraction gets you the answer preferred by most of Obama’s opponents: $4.7 trillion.

But ask yourself: Which of Obama’s policies added $4.7 trillion to the debt? The stimulus? That was just a bit more than $800 billion. TARP? That passed under George W. Bush, and most of it has been repaid.

There is a way to tally the effects Obama has had on the deficit. Look at every piece of legislation he has signed into law. Every time Congress passes a bill, either the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the effect it will have on the budget over the next 10 years. And then they continue to estimate changes to those bills. If you know how to read their numbers, you can come up with an estimate that zeros in on the laws Obama has had a hand in.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities was kind enough to help me come up with a comprehensive estimate of Obama’s effect on the deficit. As it explained to me, it’s harder than it sounds.

Obama, for instance, is clearly responsible for the stimulus. The health-care law, too.

When Obama entered office, the Bush tax cuts were already in place and two wars were ongoing. Is it fair to blame Obama for war costs four months after he was inaugurated, or tax collections 10 days after he took office?

So the center built a baseline that includes everything that predated Obama and everything we knew about the path of the economy and the actual trajectory of spending through August 2011. Deviations from the baseline represent decisions made by the Obama administration. Then we measured the projected cost of Obama’s policies.

In two instances, this made Obama’s policies look more costly. First, both Democrats and Republicans tend to think the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts is a quirky budget technicality, and their full extension should be assumed. In that case, voting for their extension looks costless, and they cannot be blamed for the resulting increase in deficits. I consider that a dodge, and so I added Obama’s decision to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years — at a total cost of $620 billion — to his total. If Obama follows through on his promise to extend all the cuts for income under $250,000 in 2013, it will add trillions more to the deficit.

The other judgment call was when to end the analysis. After 10 years? After the first term? We chose 2017, the end of a hypothetical second term. Those are the years Obama might be blamed for, so they seemed like the ones to watch. But Obama’s spending is frontloaded, and his savings are backloaded. The stimulus bill, for instance, is mostly finished. But the Budget Control Act is expected to save $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years. The health-care law is expected to save more than a trillion dollars in its second decade. If our numbers were extended further, the analysis would have reflected more of Obama’s planned deficit reduction.

There’s also the issue of who deserves credit for what. In this analysis, anything Obama signed is attributed to Obama. But reality is more complicated. The $2.1 trillion debt-ceiling deal wouldn’t have happened without the Republicans. But a larger deficit-reduction deal — one including tax increases and spending cuts — might have.

In total, the policies Obama has signed into law can be expected to add almost a trillion dollars to deficits. But behind that total are policies that point in very different directions. The stimulus, for instance, cost more than $800 billion. So did the 2010 tax deal, which included more than $600 billion to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, and hundreds of billions more in unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut. Obama’s first budget increased domestic discretionary spending by quite a bit, but more recent legislation has cut it substantially. On the other hand, the Budget Control Act — the legislation that resolved August’s debt-ceiling standoff — saves more than $1 trillion. And the health-care reform law saves more than $100 billion.

For comparison’s sake, using the same method, beginning in 2001 and ending in 2009, George W. Bush added more than $5 trillion to the deficit.

What is often assumed in this conversation is that all deficit spending is equal and all of it is bad. That’s not the case. Deficit spending when the economy is growing is different from deficit spending when the economy is in crisis.

Nor is all deficit reduction alike. Sometimes, cutting the deficit will expand the economy. Sometimes, cutting the deficit will shrink the economy. Which brings up some other questions Romney’s clock can’t answer: What number we should see on it now? And when, and how fast, should it start slowing down?

Russia Stands in the Way of U.N. Call for Assad to Step Down

UNITED NATIONS — The battle over Syria moved to the United Nations on Tuesday with Western powers and much of the Arab world confronting Russia and its allies in the Security Council over their refusal to condemn the Syrian government for its violent suppression of popular protests.

As top diplomats gathered in the Council chamber for the showdown, the drumbeat of violence continued without pause in Syria, where government forces used heavy weapons and tanks to push rebels back from strongholds near Damascus.

At the United Nations, the two sides skirmished over a draft Security Council resolution proposed by Morocco that calls for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to leave power as the first step of a transition toward democracy.

But behind all the arguments lurked the ghost of Libya, with Russia determined to block any resolution that might be construed as a license for regime change. The Arabs and top Western diplomats argued that endorsing the demonstrators was the minimum step required to support popular demands for change that began with peaceful demonstrations and have evolved into an increasingly armed uprising.

“The Syrian government failed to make any serious effort to cooperate with us,” Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, told the Security Council about Arab League efforts to mediate the dispute. “The government killing machine continues effectively unabated.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, joined by the foreign ministers of Britain, France and several other countries, argued that Libya was a “false analogy.” The plan for a gradual democratic transition “represents the best efforts of Syria’s neighbors to chart a way forward, and it deserves a chance to work,” she said.

The proposed resolution, which most likely would not be voted on before Friday, called for Mr. Assad to cede power to his vice president, who would help form a unity government that would prepare for elections. It is unlikely that Mr. Assad would heed the demands to step down, even if the resolution made it through the Council.

But that remained a long shot Tuesday night. Fundamentally, the argument over Syria reflects a deeper divide between those who would use the Security Council to confront nations over how their governments treat civilians, versus those who consider that it has no role whatsoever in settling domestic disputes. Syria is the latest example in an argument that stretches back through all recent conflicts.

Russia, backed discreetly by China and India, rejects the idea that the world organization can interfere in the domestic politics of any country to force a leadership change. They all feel that they were duped into supporting a no-fly zone over Libya, which was promoted as a means to protect civilians last March. Instead, they said, NATO used it as a license to help overthrow the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The Russian envoy, Vitaly I. Churkin, adopted a “where will it all end” argument, telling reporters that the Security Council cannot prescribe ready recipes for the outcome of a domestic political process.

“Once you start, it is difficult to stop,” he said, adding that pretty soon the Council would start pronouncing “what king needs to resign, or what prime minister needs to step down.”

To a certain extent, the Arab League and the much of the world were ready to dump the eccentric Colonel Qaddafi because he had made many enemies. Mr. Assad, despite hostile relations with some neighbors and the West, continues to have a strong ally in Russia, yet analysts described Moscow as preoccupied with leadership change.

“That the Morocco resolution ‘calls for’ Assad to step aside is their worst example and fear,” said George Lopez, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and a sometime adviser to the United Nations. “If today it is Assad, tomorrow Putin? They worry.”

Yet in a sign that Russia was beginning to feel the need to deflect at least some of the accusations that Moscow is partly responsible for not stemming the rising death toll, Russia distanced itself from Mr. Assad himself. The United Nations stopped tallying deaths after they passed 5,400 in January, saying they were too difficult to confirm accurately, and since then the toll has mounted steadily.

Romney Wins, Regaining Momentum

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney rolled to victory in the Florida primary on Tuesday, dispatching an insurgent threat from Newt Gingrich and reclaiming his dominant position as he urged Republicans to rally behind his quest to capture the party’s presidential nomination.

The triumph by Mr. Romney offered a forceful response to the concerns that were raised about his candidacy only 10 days ago after a stinging loss to Mr. Gingrich in the South Carolina primary. It stripped Mr. Gingrich of his momentum and raised questions about his effort to persuade Republicans of his viability.

“A competitive primary does not divide us,” Mr. Romney told his cheering supporters. “It prepares us. And we will win.”

He urged Republicans to focus on defeating President Obama, declaring, “I stand ready to lead this party and to lead our nation.”

The outcome of the Florida primary promised to reorder the field of Republican candidates. As Mr. Gingrich pledged to fight on, saying that he would resist attempts to drive him from the race, he faced a newly aggressive challenge from Rick Santorum, who finished a distant third here.

The growing strength of Mr. Romney was clear across nearly all segments of the Republican electorate. No state where Republicans have competed this year is more reflective of the nation’s geographical, political and ethnic diversity than Florida, and its complexity seemed to help Mr. Romney to turn back the grass-roots coalition that Mr. Gingrich had been counting on.

Mr. Romney defeated Mr. Gingrich by a margin of 14 percentage points, a telling gap that the Romney campaign hoped would be resounding enough to undermine Mr. Gingrich’s ability to be seen as a credible threat. Yet Mr. Gingrich did not see it that way. He spoke to a crowd in Orlando holding signs reading “46 States to Go,” saying he had a message for those wondering about the future of his presidential bid.

“We are going to contest every place, and we will win,” said Mr. Gingrich, who did not congratulate Mr. Romney for his victory, nor did he call him.

Sensing a new opening in the race, Mr. Santorum said Tuesday night that he intended to emerge as the true conservative alternative over Mr. Gingrich. He is running new commercials in Nevada and Colorado comparing Mr. Gingrich to Mr. Obama.

“In Florida, Newt Gingrich had his opportunity,” Mr. Santorum told supporters in Las Vegas. He said, “I’m going to be the conservative alternative, I’m going to be the anti-Mitt,’ and it didn’t work.”

The victory by Mr. Romney, delivered by a diverse coalition of the Republican electorate, allowed him to return to the hard job of pulling together a divided party and resume his argument that he has the best chance at beating Mr. Obama.

“My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity,” Mr. Romney said, sounding very much like a general election candidate. As a crowd cheered his name here in the city where Republicans will gather to crown their nominee, he added: “When we gather back here in Tampa seven months from now for our convention, ours will be a united party with a winning ticket for America.”

The victory was the first for Mr. Romney that came without an asterisk.

His narrow advantage on the night of the Iowa caucuses was overturned two weeks later in the certified results. His New Hampshire win was discounted by his Republican rivals because he was seen as a favorite son from a neighboring state.

But his strong finish in Florida, which drew more voters than the first three contests combined, represented an extraordinary turnaround for his prospects to win the nomination. The outcome of the race, his advisers argued, should ease the qualms among some Republicans that he is not sufficiently conservative.

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Florida Primary Results »

CANDIDATE		PCT.
	Romney	46.4%
	Gingrich	31.9
	Santorum	13.4
	Paul	7.0
	Others	1.3

12:40 AM

Skin transformed into brain cells

London, Jan 31

Skin cells have been converted directly into cells which develop into the main components of the brain, by researchers studying mice in California.

The experiment, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, skipped the middle "stem cell" stage in the process.

The researchers said they were "thrilled" at the potential medical uses.

Far more tests are needed before the technique could be used on human skin.

Stem cells, which can become any other specialist type of cell from brain to bone, are thought to have huge promise in a range of treatments. Many trials are taking place, such as in stroke patients or specific forms of blindness.

One of the big questions for the field is where to get the cells from. There are ethical concerns around embryonic stem cells and patients would need to take immunosuppressant drugs as any stem cell tissue would not match their own.

An alternative method has been to take skin cells and reprogram them into "induced" stem cells. These could be made from a patient's own cells and then turned into the cell type required, however, the process results in cancer-causing genes being activated.

Direct approach

The research group, at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, is looking at another option - converting a person's own skin cells into specialist cells, without creating "induced" stem cells. It has already transformed skin cells directly into neurons.

This study created "neural precursor" cells, which can develop into three types of brain cell: neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.

These precursor cells have the advantage that, once created, they can be grown in a laboratory into very large numbers. This could be critical if the cells were to be used in any therapy.

Brain cells and skin cells contain the same genetic information, however, the genetic code is interpreted differently in each. This is controlled by "transcription factors".

The scientists used a virus to infect skin cells with three transcription factors known to be at high levels in neural precursor cells.

After three weeks about one in 10 of the cells became neural precursor cells.

Lead researcher Prof Marius Wernig said: "We are thrilled about the prospects for potential medical use of these cells.

"We've shown the cells can integrate into a mouse brain and produce a missing protein important for the conduction of electrical signal by the neurons.

"More work needs to be done to generate similar cells from human skin cells and assess their safety and efficacy."

Dr Deepak Srivastava, who has researched converting cells into heart muscle, said the study: "Opens the door to consider new ways to regenerate damaged neurons using cells surrounding the area of injury."

‘Sanction to prosecute must come within 4 months’

New Delhi, Jan 31

Setting aside the Delhi High Court judgement on sanction of prosecution in 2G case, the Supreme Court on Tuesday held that filing of a complaint under the Prevention of Corruption Act is a constitutional right of a citizen and the competent authority should take a decision on giving the sanction within a time frame.

If the sanction is not given within four months then it is deemed to have been granted, the two judge bench of the apex court held in a case filed by a petitioner seeking a direction to the Prime Minister for sanction to prosecute the then Telecom Minister A Raja.

The bench comprising justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly held that the petitioner had the locus standi to seek sanction for Raja's prosecution.

It said sanction should be granted within a time frame and the competent authority shall take action in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the apex court in the Vineet Narain case of 1996.

Justice Ganguly, who wrote a separate judgement, agreed with Justice Singhvi and said sanction would be deemed to be granted if the competent authority fails to take a decision within a period of four months.

The bench said that right to file a complaint against a public servant under the Prevention of Corruption Act is a constitutional right.

The bench said it was not accepting certain submissions made by the Attorney General in defending the stand of Prime Minister's Office.

The court said it was not declaring as ultra vires the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The apex court had reserved its judgement on November 24, 2010 on the petition filed by the petitioner alleging that there was delay in taking action on his plea seeking sanction to prosecute Raja.

The petitioner, who had made the Prime Minister a party in the case, had initially sought a direction to the Prime Minister to take decision on sanction to prosecute Raja but later on he sought framing of guidelines on the issue as his plea became infructuous with the resignation of the DMK leader as telecom minister on November 14, 2010.

He had alleged that there was an "inordinate delay" on part of the prime minister in taking a decision on his plea for grant of sanction to prosecute Raja in the scam and his plea was neither allowed not rejected for over 16 months.

The PMO had, however, refuted all the allegations and filed an affidavit before the apex court maintaining that the request for sanction for prosecution of Raja was considered by the prime minister and that he was advised that evidence collected by CBI was necessary before taking a decision.

The government said as the CBI probe was going on it was necessary to wait for its completion before taking any decision on granting sanction.

The petitioner had approached the apex court challenging the Delhi High Court judgement that had refused to pass any direction to the prime minister for taking decision on sanction.

UK bosses recruit thousands in Romania

London, Jan 31

-More than 2,400 vacancies for nurses, engineers and chefs are being advertised in Bucharest

-Meanwhile UK unemployment hit 8.4% - it's highest since 1994

British bosses are offering thousands of jobs to Romanian workers as unemployment in the UK soars.

Just days ago, officials revealed that the number of British unemployed had reached a 17-year high of 2.68million.

But more than 2,400 vacancies, including roles for nurses, engineers, chefs and other skilled workers, are being advertised by an online recruitment agency in Bucharest.

The firm says that British companies are trying to fill 2,434 new jobs with Romanian workers – making the UK a better bet for migrant workers than Germany, which is advertising 2,387 positions.

Many of the posts in Britain are for medical positions, tourism professionals and skilled staff, with 25 per cent being offered to labourers and unskilled workers.

Earlier this month, UK unemployment hit 8.4 per cent, its highest level since 1994. But official figures show that nine out of ten jobs created in 2010 went to foreign nationals.

The Romanian website, TjobsRecruit, cheerily greets prospective job seekers with ‘New year, new job, new life!’

The vacancies, advertised in English, include 28 taxi driver jobs located all over the UK, nursing roles in care homes for £12 an hour, sales positions promising a minimum salary of £750 a month, junior doctors and aircraft engineers.

There are also 80 vacancies at gastropubs, three-star and four-star hotels in Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Sussex and Surrey. These include opportunities for waiters (£12,646 a year), housekeepers (£6.20 an hour), receptionists (£14,500 a year) maintenance workers (£7.28 an hour) and various kitchen posts from porters to head chefs.

In 2010, the British Medical Association put the number of unemployed junior doctors in the UK at around 3,000. Yet the Romanian website is advertising for the junior doctor’s position of residential medical officer at hospitals across the UK.

Henry Smith, Conservative MP for Crawley, West Sussex, said he was concerned that jobs such as junior chef positions were being advertised to outside Britain when unemployment within the country is so high.

He went on: ‘Now we are in a global economic crisis we should be ensuring where possible jobs are filled by British people.

‘I can’t believe in the Crawley and Gatwick area there isn’t a suitably committed chef who is a resident of this country and cannot see why there is a requirement to advertise this job abroad, and that goes for other positions as well.

‘As a country we have become increasingly restricted by our membership of the EU to ensure local jobs are going to local people who are from this country.

‘This is still part of the problem, despite the Government introducing controls on people from Bulgaria and Romania.

‘I just don’t buy the argument that you can’t fill a job for a sous chef in a hotel kitchen in Gatwick locally or the commutable area. We are not talking about a highly specialist pieces of knowledge.

‘I’m sure there are plenty of sous chefs in Crawley who would jump at the chance to work in a top class hotel.

‘I think it is very irresponsible of whatever company is doing this.’

Helen Morgan, 31, was recently made redundant from her job in housekeeping at a hotel in Exeter. The mother-of-one said: ‘I have experience in quite a few areas of hospitality and thought I’d easily find something.

‘But I’ve been looking for a fortnight without any luck. It doesn’t surprise me that there are jobs being advertised abroad because I meet so many Eastern Europeans in the industry.

‘Most are perfectly nice and friendly and do a good job, but it’s annoying that they’re being recruited over British workers. I think the Government should step in and make sure the ads are placed here too.’

Phil McCabe, of the Forum of Private Business, said: ‘If there are British workers that are ready, willing and skilled enough to do these jobs then it is absolutely right that those jobs should be offered first to British workers.

‘However from talking to our members, we have found that there is a shortage of skilled workers from the UK, and many people have basic skills lacking such as numeracy and literacy.

Vandana, the first Indian teacher for US space programme

WASHINGTON, Jan 30

: A middle school teacher from Maharashtra has been selected as the first international teacher for a prestigious space programme in the United States.

Vandana Suryawanshi, an educator with theVidya Valley School, who has been teaching biology, earth science and general science for 20 years, would join the 19 other new Teacher Liaisons who were selected for their active promotion of space and science education by the Space Foundation.

This is for the first time that an international teacher has been selected for this prestigious fellowship of the Space Foundation, which is now 10 years old.

The new flight of Teacher Liaisons will serve as advocates for space-themed education across the curriculum and will use Space Foundation-provided training and resources to further integrate space principles into the classroom, a media release said.

The highly regarded Space Foundation Teacher Liaison programme has more than 270 active participants, including the 2012 flight.

The teachers are selected by a panel comprising representatives from the space industry and military, it said.

The 2012 Teacher Liaisons will be publicly recognised at the Space Foundation's 28th National Space Symposium, scheduled for April 16 to 19 in Colorado.

In addition to the recognition activities, the 2012 Teacher Liaisons will participate in workshops and education programmes at the 28th National Space Symposium.

Following the Symposium, Teacher Liaisons can take advantage of specialised training and instruction at Space Foundation and NASA workshops with optional graduate-level credit; exclusive science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professional development experiences with optional continuing education credit; and special space-oriented student programs created just for Teacher Liaisons, the press statement said.

'EUROPE' is a dirty word in American elections

Washington, Jan 30,

As Florida goes to the polls in its primary election for the Republican presidential candidate, how did Europe-bashing become such an issue?

"J'accuse!"

There is only one presidential contender fluent in the French tongue.

But if Mitt Romney wins the US Republican nomination, he is likely to stick to plain English when he delivers what he hopes will be a killer blow against President Barack Obama in November's general election.

Mr Romney and his chief Republican rival, Newt Gingrich - who is also said to have a passing acquaintance with French - have spent the past few months arguing that the current US president wants to turn the US into a European country.

In the US, this is not as crazy a line of attack as it might sound from Europe.

The eurozone debt crisis, and fears that Greece, Portugal, Spain and the rest might yet drag the faltering US economy down with them, has turned Europe into a dirty word in American politics

Accusing Mr Obama of wanting to follow the same path of ever-growing welfare budgets and high taxes that supposedly led the EU nations to this pass will strike a chord with many voters.

Those who already view Europe with suspicion, deriding the continent as an economic backwater with a dubious military record, may be particularly receptive to the argument.

'Welfare state'

With the US economy starting to show signs of recovery, it could turn out to be the best shot the Republicans have of unseating Mr Obama.

Newt Gingrich has constantly accused the president of being a "European Socialist", often adding in a reference to an all-but-forgotten community activist from Chicago, who died in 1972, but whose Democratic-leaning writings are thought to have influenced the current president.

"I am for the Declaration of Independence; he is for the writing of Saul Alinsky. I am for the Constitution; he is for European socialism," Mr Gingrich told voters in Florida last week.

When pushed, Mr Romney will also use the "S" word.

"I think some of the policies that he [President Obama] has adopted are very much like the European socialist policies," he told Fox News recently.

But Mr Romney prefers to talk about "a European-style welfare state", telling voters they face a choice between that and a "free land".

He is probably right to be cautious. Previous Republican attempts to brand Mr Obama as a socialist have been laughed off by the president and his supporters - and not even his sternest critics believe it really holds water.

'Gut feeling'

Iain Murray, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing Washington DC think-tank, says: "I don't think what Obama is doing is socialist.

"Rather, it's more EU-style social democracy; a government with a large, central welfare state, powerful government departments, large, state-supported, but not state-owned, commercial entities, and tax rates appropriate to pay for it.

"Americans call it socialism because they don't really understand socialism, never having experienced socialism. They experienced progressivism, which is subtly different."

The "European" tag might be harder to shake.

Mr Obama has never publicly expressed admiration for EU economic policies or been regarded as a particularly Europhile president.

But that has not stopped Mr Romney, who learnt French in the mid-1960s when he spent some time at a Mormon missionary in France, from accusing the president of seeking inspiration from the "capitals of Europe".

"I don't think there's any hard evidence that Obama is deliberately aping specific policies," says Iain Murray.

"However, there is a gut feeling that he is moving away from the 'shining city on a hill', founded on the principles of self-reliance and individual genius, towards a Platonic form, as it were, of European government."

'Cradle-to-grave'

This "gut feeling" is rooted in Republican fury over Mr Obama's Affordable Care Act, dubbed "Obamacare", which aims to extend health insurance to nearly all Americans.

They also fear he has greatly increased the role of federal government in the lives of ordinary Americans and embarked on a "radical" social welfare programme.

Mr Obama's recent State of the Union address, in which he attacked income inequality and called for the rich to be taxed more, led to claims he was indulging in very un-American "class warfare".

Americans have never had the sort of "cradle-to-grave" welfare provision that remains at the heart of self-styled centre right governments in EU nations like the UK and Germany. Despite rhetoric about tax and spending cuts, they retain a commitment to universal healthcare and benefits, along with the higher tax rates that come with them.

Fran Burswell, director of trans-Atlantic relations at the Atlantic Council, says: "There is a real reliance on the individual in America.

"For example, the way people have not supported the raising of taxes on the very wealthy. Even poor people don't support that in many cases."

Social mobility

But, she adds, many inhabitants of EU nations will be surprised to learn that they are living under socialism.

"If anything what we have seen in Europe during the financial crisis is people voting for the party of austerity.

"We don't know if that's going to happen in the Greek elections - but people are voting for taking their medicine. And they are certainly not voting for socialist parties."

Liberal commentators have been quick to ridicule the idea that Mr Obama might be some kind of latte-sipping boulevardier, secretly plotting to turn the US into France.

Some have even welcomed the idea that the US could be moving in a European direction, pointing to the greater life expectancy and social mobility that exists in some EU nations.

But if the eurozone takes a further turn for the worse before November's general election, many American voters will draw their own conclusions about "European-style" social and economic policies.

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But does Gingrich speak French too?

• Theories abound that Newt Gingrich is also a French speaker
• The former speaker's PhD thesis, from New Orleans' Tulane university, is on Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960
• Many French language sources are cited in the footnotes and some pundits have suggested that he must have learned the language
• Mr Gingrich - who has produced a TV ad attacking Mr Romney for speaking French - has yet to comment

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Romney en Francais

• In the late 1960s, a young Mitt Romney spent 30 months in Paris and Bordeaux as a Mormon missionary
• He says he had to get by on $110 a month and used a bucket for a lavatory and a hose for a shower
• Some have questioned how just frugal his living conditions were but he has described it as a formative experience: "I said to myself, wow - I sure am lucky to have been born in the United States of America .... It was a wake-up experience for me."
• ------------------------------------

And Mr Obama's Republican opponent, whoever that turns out to be, could have the last laugh.

US v Europe
US	UK	GERMANY	FRANCE
Health
SOURCE: OECD (GDP FIGURES FROM 2009)
Private provision, some federal aid. Individuals to be compelled to get health insurance, with subsidies for poor. Cost:17.4% of GDP	National Health Service funded by taxation. Healthcare free at point of delivery. Mostly publicly-owned hospitals. Cost:9.8% of GDP	Mandatory health insurance covers most of population. Mix of private and public hospitals. Cost:11.6% of GDP	Compulsory social health insurance, but most people have extra private cover. Mix of public and private hospitals. Cost:11.8% of GDP
Welfare
Few welfare benefits. Unemployment pay extended to 99 weeks in recession but recipients must rely on charity after that. Cost:19.5% of GDP	Wide range of welfare benefits for low and middle income families. Unemployment pay not time-limited. Cost:24.3% of GDP	All-embracing welfare system. Full unemployment pay limited to 12 months, before falling sharply. Cost:27.6% of GDP	Broad-based welfare state. Maximum two years unemployment benefit for under 50s. Cost:30.7% of GDP
Industry
Privately-owned, with federal regulation. Some consider Obama bank and General Motors bail-outs 'nationalisation'.	Vast majority of state-owned enterprises privatised in 1980s. Three banks partially nationalised in 2008.	Privately owned, except railways, post office and some banks. State-owned East German firms sold off or closed.	Mixed economy. State retains stake in several of France's largest companies and pursues active industrial po