Soul searching lies ahead as riots cool in Britain

  British Prime Minister David Cameron will face pressure Thursday to soften his austerity plans, toughen up policing and do more to help inner-city communities after days of riots and looting laid bare deep social tensions in a depressed economy.

With the public seething over the looting of anything from sweets to televisions, Cameron has so far dismissed the rioters as nothing more than opportunistic criminals and denied the unrest was linked to the knock-on effects of deep spending cuts.

But community leaders say inequality, cuts to public services and high youth unemployment are also probably to blame for some of the worst violence seen in Britain for decades.

As the clear up continues, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government must find quick fixes to avoid further unrest while also addressing longer-term problems in what Cameron has called "broken Britain."

"There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick," Cameron told .
A surge in police numbers helped to calm streets in London and cities across England such as Manchester and Birmingham on Wednesday night, but four days of often unchecked disorder have embarrassed the authorities, leaving communities ransacked and exhausting emergency services.

Police arrested more than 1,000 people across England, filling cells and leaving courts working through the night to process hundreds of cases. Among those charged were a teaching assistant, an 11-year-old boy and a charity worker.

It is unclear whether the peace will hold, but trouble on Wednesday night was limited to the odd skirmish. Businessmen and residents had also come together to protect their areas.

"Blacks, Asians, whites - we all live in the same community - why do we have to kill one another?" said Tariq Jahan, whose son was one of three young Muslim men run over by a car and killed while apparently protecting property in the mayhem in Birmingham Tuesday night.

"Step forward if you want to lose your sons, otherwise calm down and go home, please," he said.

As police investigate that incident and the many other crimes of the last few days, attention is now likely to turn to finding out why the riots and looting erupted and spread and why police were slow to tackle the violence.

PARLIAMENT RECALLED

Cameron has ordered a rare recall of parliament on Thursday from its summer recess to debate the unrest which flared first in north London after police shot dead an Afro-Caribbean man.

The opposition Labor party, eager for the government to take a less harsh approach to dealing with a record budget deficit, said cuts to police budgets had contributed to the escalation in violence.

"The scale of government cuts is making it harder for the police to do their jobs and keep us safe," said Yvette Cooper, Labor's home affairs spokeswoman.

Long-term tensions between police and youth, a dearth of opportunities for children from disadvantaged areas and visible inequalities where the wealthy often live just yards away from run-down city estates have also been highlighted.

Others have sided with Cameron, condemning the groups of youths as thrill-seeking thugs who are indicative of a breakdown in Britain's social fabric and morals.

Tensions have been bubbling in Britain for some time, with the economy struggling to grow after an 18-month recession, one in five young people out of work and high inflation squeezing incomes and hitting the poor hardest.

Finance minister George Osborne will also address parliament Thursday amid growing concern that the widely publicized scenes of rioting could damage confidence in the economy and in London, one of the world's biggest financial centers.

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For Americas "99ers," jobs crisis is hard to escape

Unemployed operations manager Mary Kay Coyne looks at an employment website at her residence in Sewell, New Jersey, July 7, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer

SEWELL, New Jersey

Mary Kay Coyne has just filed what she says is her 1,862nd job application since being thrown out of work three years ago.
She is one of millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits have expired -- after 99 weeks in many states -- as the United States suffers its highest level of long-term unemployment since 1948.
Coyne had to move in with a friend after benefit payments ran out last year. Now she gets by on Medicaid -- U.S. health insurance for the poor -- and food stamps, contributing what little she can to her friend's household costs.





"You're 56-years old and you feel like you are sitting on a big pile of nothing," said Coyne, who spends about four hours a day sending out resumes.
"For the better part of a year, I have something sitting on my chest. It's not a medical condition. It is that pressure of 'Is this going to end, when is this going to end?'"

Unlike in much of Europe, the safety net of the U.S. welfare system times out for the long-term unemployed. The federal government and many states have provided extra help for those caught up in the worst labor market in decades but the U.S. debt crisis rules out further extension of the programs.
Coyne is typical of many middle-class Americans now struggling to get by.

She used to earn $70,000 a year as an administrative assistant until her firm began to downsize and left Coyne among the growing number of Americans struggling to live on unemployment benefits, and eventually on minimal food aid.

Now Washington is considering cuts to social welfare programs to shrink a swelling budget deficit.
It may not only be Americans like Coyne who feel the pain. Some economists say the cuts could make it even harder to shrink long-term unemployment that damages the wider economy by dampening consumer demand and lowering output.

In 2010, an estimated 3.9 million unemployed Americans exhausted unemployment benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that campaigns for lower-wage workers.
More than 14 percent of the U.S. unemployed have been out of a job for 99 weeks, or longer.
May saw the second-highest percentage and outright number of Americans out of a job for that period or more since weekly data was first collected in 1967. The highest was in April. Payrolls data for June, due on Friday, is unlikely to show a major change in the labor market after the overall jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent in May, economists say.

Many so-called "99ers" subsist on social services like food stamps and Medicaid, programs now in danger of deep cuts demanded by many Republicans in Congress in exchange for allowing the federal government to go deeper into debt.

"An increase in demand for social services is what you would expect in a downturn of this magnitude and so the fact that they are cutting the social safety net is quite perplexing," said Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "We've just never seen (long-term unemployment) at these levels, period."

Forty six percent of those looking for work have been jobless for six months or more and the average length of job searches that eventually result in a hiring has doubled to 10 weeks between 2007 and 2010.

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Hillary Clinton says Taliban outreach key to Afghan solution

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that Washington's "preliminary outreach" to the Taliban was part of a necessary but unpleasant attempt to achieve a political solution in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mrs Clinton told the Senate that the US is backing a diplomatic surge complementing the military surge that President Barack Obama has begun to wind down with the planned withdrawal of 10,000 troops this year.

"It is diplomatic efforts in support of an Afghan-led political process that aims to shatter the alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the insurgency, and help to produce more stability," she said.

She repeated that the Taliban insurgents must meet the US "red lines" of renouncing violence, abandoning support for al Qaeda, and supporting the Afghan constitution, which includes protections for women.

"The United States has a broad range of contacts at many levels across Afghanistan and the region that we are leveraging to support this effort, including very preliminary outreach to members of the Taliban," she said.

"This is not a pleasant business, but a necessary one because history tells us that a combination of military pressure, economic opportunity and an inclusive political and diplomatic process is the best way to end insurgencies."

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Woes of famous, powerful shine light on sex addiction

 






Addictions to alcohol, drugs and gambling can destroy lives, but less well known and more controversial is the overwhelming need for sexual satisfaction so intense that psychologists compare it to crack cocaine.

US Representative Anthony Weiner stepped down from Congress under pressure from fellow Democrats, including President Barack Obama, after he admitted to "sexting" in which he sent lewd pictures of himself to young women. He said he was seeking treatment for an unspecified problem.

Golfer Tiger Woods checked into an unspecified rehabilitation center for treatment after admitting to a number of extramarital affairs.

Actor David Duchovny, star of "Californication," is one of the few who has publicly announced his sex addiction. He entered a rehabilitation center for the sex disorder in 2008.

But the sensational nature of the public admissions by the famous and powerful to multiple extramarital affairs, obsession with Internet sexting, or repeated accusations of sexual harassment, draws intense media attention -- and a fair amount of ridicule.

"People joke that if they are going to have an addiction, that's the one they want to have," said therapist Stephanie Carnes, author of "Mending a Shattered Heart."

There is also skepticism among the public and some psychologists that the sexual disorder even exists, but is rather an excuse for infidelity or viewing pornography. There is no diagnosis of addiction at all in the official listing of mental disorders -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But as not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic, sex addiction is characterized by out of control compulsive behavior. And it can be more damaging to family life and harder to give up than more typical addictions.

Sex, like food, is a primary need for humans. With the advent of the Internet, it is readily available-- either cybersex or quick hookups arranged through online sites. Cybersex has been called the crack cocaine of the addiction. It is also easier to hide and to deny than the more public evidence of drug or alcohol use.

But the consequences can be as severe -- loss of jobs, damaged health, financial ruin and estrangement from family and friends.

"If you look at their lives, nobody would want that. They are devastated, they lost everything, they hate themselves," Carnes said in a telephone interview.

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