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Spanish hostages freed by al-Qaida-linked group following prisoner swap, allegations of ransom
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Two Spanish aid workers kidnapped almost nine months ago by an al-Qaida affiliate arrived Tuesday in Barcelona after a multi-million-dollar ransom was reportedly paid for their freedom — a sign of the terrorist group's growing sophistication in bankrolling operations through kidnappings, experts said Aid workers Roque Pascual and Albert Vilalta were abducted last November when their convoy of 4-by-4s was attacked by gunmen on a stretch of road in Mauritania, They were whisked away to Mali, whose northern half is now one of the many stretches of remote desert where al-Qaida of Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, has stretched its tentacles ,Late on Monday afternoon, the pair stepped out of a helicopter that landed on the grounds of the presidential palace in Burkina Faso and were handed a cell phone.
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CCDH urges rights NGOs to intervene to ensure safe return of Mostafa Salma Sidi Mouloud to Tindouf
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The Moroccan Advisory Council on Human Rights (CCDH) urged, on Tuesday, all the national and international human rights organizations to do their best so that the senior polisario official, Mostafa Salma Sidi Mouloud, can return to Tindouf (south-western Algeria) safe and sound and defend his opinions freely,"CCDH urges all sister national institutions, including the National Consultative Human Rights Commission of Algeria, all international agencies and all national and international human rights associations to do their best so that Mr Mostafa Salma Sidi Mouloud can return to Tindouf safely and defend his opinions freely," The CCDH said in a statement The CCDH, which received a letter from Mostafa Salma Sidi Mouloud in which he expressed fear of "possible retaliation by the leadership of the Polisario Front," underlined that "given the deplorable state of human rights in the Tindouf camps, or even the illegal character of these camps under the international humanitarian law, the fear of retaliation expressed by Mr.
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Perfect timing means to stop waiting for it
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It bothers me when I hear people describe a personal set of conditions that need to be met before they can make the next move in their life Most often, they’re just making excuses — creating obstacles that aren’t actually there, placing the blame on some outside force they can’t control, and choosing to let day after day of inaction turn into many years of waiting for their cosmos to align.
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| Full Article Voice of the People |
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Mixed signals on US jobless rate
By Agencies
February 8, 2010 12:00 AM
The US unemployment rate has reached a five-month low of 9,7 per cent, despite US employers reporting that they cut 20,000 jobs from their payrolls in January Before Friday's announcement from the US labour department, it was widely reported that the number of employed was likely to rise by between 5,000 and 15,000 The apparent discrepancy between number of jobs lost and the improvement in the unemployment rate reflect the department's use of two different surveys for collecting the data,The jobless rate is decided based on information gathered from households, while the change in the number of people receiving a paycheck in determined by figures provided by companies,A sharp increase in the number of people giving up looking for work is believed to have helped depress the jobless rate.
The number of so-called "discouraged job seekers" rose to 1.1 million in January from 734,000 a year ago.
Market reaction
Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, said: "What is going to be important here is how the markets and the general population react to these numbers.
"Whether they focus on the fact that jobs continue to be lost in the US economy or if they think that it doesn't look quite as bad, at least statistically.
"The hope was that you would start to see an increase [in the number of jobs] - obviously the economy has started to grow, so the administration was hoping that jobs would follow suit.
"Most economists will tell you that this economy will have to add 400,000 jobs a month for the next three years to get back to where this country was before the recession began."
Global stock markets were already at three-month lows before the figures were released.
'Psychologically' good
Eugenio Aleman, an economist with the Wells Fargo bank, said that although the figures reflected little change in the number of people working, the drop in the jobless rate was "good for the psychological aspect of the recovery".
"This can improve consumer confidence, and maybe allow consumers to spend more" to boost overall economic activity," he said.
Barack Obama, the US president, has declared that job creation will be his top priority in 2010.
"While unemployment remains a severe problem, today's employment report contains encouraging signs of gradual labour market healing," Christina Romer, the White House economic advisor, said on Friday.
Obama's fellow Democrats fear voters could punish them in November's congressional elections if the administration fails to make headway in tackling the high jobless rate.
Friday's figures followed a revision of 2009 data, which showed about 600,000 more job losses than previously estimated.
For December, the data was revised to show a steep drop of 150,000 jobs instead of 85,000 previously estimated. But November data was revised to show a gain of 64,000 jobs instead of a rise of 4,000.
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