CURRENT AFFAIRS-1

Outrage in Spain over soaring air traffic controllers’ pay
The Times Jan 2010



Among the Spanish controllers, some were previously lawyers, doctors and engineers. One was a philosopher

Every air traffic controller will agree: the pressure is intense and each shift is underlined by the fear that one mistake could be fatal.

In Spain, however, there’s another worry on their radar. A storm has followed the discovery that some controllers are earning more than £800,000 a year.

The revelation that Spain’s air traffic controllers can earn ten times more than their Prime Minister — and more than 50 times the average salary — has provoked outrage, while presumably raising more than a few (concentrated) eyebrows among lesser-paid counterparts across Europe.

The soaring salary scale was revealed as the country’s socialist Government announced plans to cut the cost of its loss-making airports, run by the state operator Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA).

Of 2,300 controllers, ten were paid between €810,000 (£725,000) and €900,000 last year. A further 226 were paid between €450,000 and €540,000 and 701 were paid between €270,000 and €360,000.

The average basic salary is €200,000 but most double or triple this amount by working overtime.

In contrast, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, is paid €91,982 a year and the average salary in Spain is €18,087, according to government figures.

“Scandalous” harrumphed an editorial in El Mundo, the right-wing daily. “Half earn more than double the salary of a government minister.”

One cartoon showed a character, which resembled Emilio Botin, the chairman of Banco Santander, Europe’s biggest bank, studying how to be an air traffic controller.
Certainly some controllers were previously lawyers, doctors and engineers. One was a philosopher.

Few passengers can complain that preventing aircraft collisions is not worthy of reward but the pay may come as something of a surprise to the Britons whose holidays have been ruined by striking controllers.

Earlier this month, passengers endured long delays, after two runways were closed at Madrid Barajas airport, because of staff shortages among its controllers.

Spanish air traffic controllers work 12-hour days made up of two four-hour shifts and two, two-hour rest periods. Most do an average of 1,200 hours with 400 hours overtime a year, according to the government but the Union of Air Traffic Controllers (USCA), which negotiated the salaries, said its members work 2,000 hours a year with 575 hours extra.

The controllers must have a degree, speak good English and pass a medical test every two years. After they are 40, they must undergo the test every year. A long list of medical complaints, including heart or digestive problems, will rule them out of the job.

The minimum entry age is 18 and the maximum working age is 55. Air controllers must pass a series of exams, including one on aeronautics and other psychological tests before being accepted for training. These tests aim to establish if they are able to withstand fatigue and high levels of stress. If they pass, they undergo 15 months training, However, the jumbo pay packets look set to fly no farther.

“I have taken the decision to take the bull by the horns and end the privileges of these controllers,” José Blanco, the Development Minister, told the Spanish parliament, after it emerged that AENA, which manages Spain’s 48 state-run airports, had recorded a loss last year of €300 million.

Mr Blanco aims to cut the costs of air traffic control by at least €12.6 million next year, which could mean a pay freeze or job cuts. Spain is now considering replacing air traffic controllers with a computer system in at least 12 small airports, which handle fewer than 50 flights a day.

British air traffic controllers are paid £60,000 on average but this can rise to around £90,000, according to NATS, the air traffic information service. Their French counterparts take home €110,000.

CARTOON

THE BRITISH TOILET !

FINANCE & ECONOMICS

Spain now leads the European Union, but not by example
The Economist Jan 2010

IN FEBRUARY 2005 Charlemagne spent a morning pestering voters in Barcelona for their views ahead of Spain’s referendum on the European Union’s planned Constitutional Treaty. It proved a tricky few hours. Voter after voter appeared baffled that their Yes might even be in doubt. “Pues hombre, cómo no?” replied one pensioner—or, roughly, “Of course I will vote Yes.” After further prodding, the pensioner offered an explanation. “We have to support Europe, because it means progress.”

Later that year, the constitution was killed off by No votes in France and the Netherlands, following heated referendum debates. (Reborn as the Lisbon treaty, a near-identical collection of rule changes, it came into force in December 2009.) But Spain’s referendum was never in doubt. The prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, toured the country talking about the tens of billions of euros in subsidies poured into Spain since joining the EU in 1986. Four out of every ten kilometres of Spain’s highway network were built with European money, Mr Zapatero told rallies: now, it was time to vote Yes “in gratitude”.

It was not just the money. Arguments for or against European integration are often expressed in terms of objective economics, or rational interests. But one of Europe’s little secrets is that Euroscepticism and Europhilia are not really determined by the head, but by the heart (and life-story). Who you are, and where you are from, matters more than any theory. For Britons, joining Europe in 1973 was overwhelmingly an act of economic pragmatism. For Spaniards old enough to remember Franco, joining the European Union felt like the capstone on a long process of liberation. Spaniards talk about “Europe” as bound up emotionally with the coming of democracy, with the release from isolation in a conservative, rural Iberian peninsula, even—in Barcelona—with the scrapping of Franco-era rules repressing the Catalan language. The phrase “European constitution” had positive overtones, thanks to Spanish reverence for their first post-Fascist constitution, drawn up in 1978 and still celebrated in an annual holiday.

All of this Euro-enthusiasm helps explain why Mr Zapatero’s government is making such a meal of the fact that Spain took over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU on January 1st. Five days in, a series of former Euro-bigwigs, among them the ex-president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, arrived in Madrid to discuss Spain’s biggest ambition for its turn chairing ministerial meetings: the launch of a “2020 strategy” for Europe. This is a ten-year plan for boosting competitiveness and growth to help pay for Europe’s generous welfare systems. It follows another ten-year plan, the old “Lisbon strategy”, which failed wretchedly in its aim of making the EU “the world’s most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy” by 2010.

Alas, the reaction has been unenthusiastic. Spanish unemployment is heading close to 20% (double the average among euro-zone countries), following the popping of a housing bubble of monstrous proportions. It is worsened by a two-tier labour market in which a hard core of permanent workers is almost impossible to sack, shovelling the pain onto those on temporary contracts, all too often meaning the young and immigrants. Editorials across the EU have mocked the idea of Mr Zapatero advising Europe on economic recovery.

Outsiders’ hostility has other causes, too. Among these is belated shock that rotating six-month presidencies still exist. The Lisbon treaty creates a new standing president to chair meetings of national governments in the European Council, and a foreign-policy chief to chair meetings of foreign ministers. Brussels fizzes with rumours that the new council president, Herman Van Rompuy, who started work on January 4th, will be locked in a fight for airtime with Mr Zapatero. There is much sniffiness about Spain’s insistence on hosting an EU-US summit in Madrid this May, so that Mr Zapatero can welcome Barack Obama to Spanish soil, though—some say—Mr Van Rompuy should by rights host the summit in Brussels. Some of this is just snippiness from bored Eurocrats. But some of the hostility matters.

The refrain in Spain

In important ways, Spain symbolises, on a national scale, broader European trends. Its booming economy was hailed, for years, by those who (rightly) supported a model of EU enlargement based on competition, the removal of trade barriers, and catch-up growth. When Spain joined the block, it was a poor, rural, rather protectionist place. Long before the Polish plumber became a bogeyman, neighbours like France fretted about competition from cheap Spanish tomatoes and bricklayers. The deal, in effect, was for Spain to lift trade barriers and accept competition within the newly created single market in exchange for cash to modernise. For more than two decades, the results looked like a win for both sides. Spain modernised beyond recognition, and two-way trade with the rest of Europe boomed. Like it or not, Spain’s economic agonies are a blow to that convergence model.

Next, Spain’s rigid, overpriced labour market will be a test case for the euro zone, and whether countries that use the euro have the political will to regain competitiveness by lowering labour costs, now they cannot devalue their own currencies.

Finally, Spain offers warnings about being a midsized power, in an age increasingly dominated by emerging giants. Spain fought like fury to be invited to recent G20 summits. Mr Zapatero succeeded only in amplifying the sense that there were too many Europeans sitting at the table. The European Union, a bunch of midsized powers with lots of ideas about how the world should run its affairs—notably over climate change and financial regulation—should ponder Spain’s lesson. If you want your advice to be heeded, you need something credible to say.

CURRENT AFFAIRS-2

Owner of El Bulli, world's most exclusive restaurant, shuts up shop for two years




In the rarefied world of Spanish alta cocina the rumours had been swirling like a cloud spilling out from one of his laboratories: the godfather of mol- ecular gastronomy needed a break.

Years of dreaming up the likes of gold-tinted caramel of quails’ eggs and a frozen dust of foie gras had taken their toll. Yesterday Ferran Adrià confirmed the fears of gastronomes the world over: El Bulli, perhaps the most exclusive restaurant on the planet, is to close for two years. “No meals will be served in El Bulli in 2012 and 2013,” Adrià told the Madrid Fusion gastronomic conference.

“But El Bulli is not closing down,” he was quick to add. “I need time to decide how 2014 is going to be. We want the year 2014 to stand out. I know that when I return it will not be the same.”

A statement on the restaurant’s website added that “these two years will be devoted to thinking, planning and preparing the new format for subsequent years”.

For anyone who has dreamt of securing a reservation at an establishment crowned the world’s best restaurant five times, it was a huge blow. El Bulli (The Little Bulldog in Catalan), in Roses, near Barcelona, is where Adrià has revolutionised cooking since the late 1990s by using science to produce taste sensations no one had heard of before.

Diners lucky enough to get a table were treated to polenta of powdered Parmesan, truffle cappuccino or liquid ravioli. Adrià used tools more usually employed in DIY — such as screwdrivers — in his cooking and he was unofficially considered the best chef around.

When not cooking, Adrià could be found surrounded by white-jacketed “assistants” in his laboratory in Barcelona, planning the next season’s surprises. Hidden away off La Rambla, in the old town, it is more akin to an orderly chemistry class than a chaotic kitchen.

His recipes have been likened to art and he was even invited recently to try to save the Spanish economy by lecturing business leaders about innovation.
However, Adrià, 47, admitted that he found the 15-hour days that went with being the top chef difficult. The effort needed to keep dreaming up mouthwatering wonders, has, say Spanish culinary insiders, worn him down. “He’s fed up,” said Gaspar Rey, editor of Cocina Futuro (Future Cooking), who knows the chef well. “After 25 years of working so hard he needs to do something else.”

Despite all the accolades, food critics have begun recently to utter the once unthinkable: what Adrià cooks may not be good for you. Jörg Zipprick, a German food writer, and the Spanish chef Santi Santamaría have claimed that ingredients in molecular cooking are filled with gelling agents and laboratory emulsifiers.

It has done little to dent his popularity. El Bulli is already full for this year and while reservations for next year do not begin until December, anyone hoping to get a table needs to write the date in their diary — and be quick off the mark. Usually all places are gone within minutes.

Adrià acknowledged that in closing the restaurant he would lose his three Michelin stars. “I have a lot of respect for the guidebooks, and when you go, you go,” he said.

CURRENT AFFAIRS-3

Spain MP photo used for Bin Laden



A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look.

Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster.

He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was "shameless".

The FBI admitted a forensic artist had obtained certain facial features "from a photograph he found on the internet".

The digitally-altered photos of the al-Qaeda leader, showing how he might look now, aged 52, were published on the state department's Rewards for Justice website on Friday.

Officials said they had adapted a 1998 file image to take account of a decade's worth of ageing, and possible changes to facial hair.

Mr Llamazares, 52, the former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, said he could not believe it when he was first told about the similarity between himself and the new photo-fit of Bin Laden.

He said he soon realised that his forehead, hair and jaw-line had been "cut and pasted" from an old campaign photograph.

"I was surprised and angered because it's the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist," he told a news conference.

"It's almost like out of a comedy if it didn't deal with matters as serious as Bin Laden and citizens' security."

The FBI claimed to have used "cutting edge" technology, but Mr Llamazares said it showed the "low level" of US intelligence services and could cause problems if he was wrongly identified as the Saudi.

"Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is," he said, adding that he was considering taking legal action.

Later, an FBI spokesman told the BBC that it was "aware of the similarities in hairline features of the age-progressed photograph of Osama Bin Laden, posted on the web yesterday, and that of an existing photograph of a Spanish public official".

"When producing age-progressed photographs, forensic artists typically select features from a database of stock reference photographs to create the new image."

"After a preliminary review, it appears that in this instance the forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the internet."

"The forensic artist was not aware of the identity of the individual depicted in the photograph. The similarities between the photos were unintentional and inadvertent."

PROFILES

GANDHI



Known as 'Mahatma' (great soul), Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, and is widely considered the father of his country. His doctrine of non-violent protest to achieve political and social progress has been hugely influential.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in Gujarat. After university, he went to London to train as a barrister. He returned to India in 1891 and in 1893 accepted a job at an Indian law firm in Durban, South Africa. Gandhi was appalled by the treatment of Indian immigrants there, and joined the struggle to obtain basic rights for them. During his 20 years in South Africa he was sent to prison many times. Influenced primarily by Hinduism, but also by elements of Jainism and Christianity as well as writers including Tolstoy and Thoreau, Gandhi developed the satyagraha ('devotion to truth'), a new non-violent way to redress wrongs. In 1914, the South African government conceded to many of Gandhi's demands.

Gandhi returned to India shortly afterwards. In 1919, British plans to intern people suspected of sedition - the Rowlatt Acts - prompted Gandhi to announce a new satyagraha which attracted millions of followers. A demonstration against the acts resulted in the Amritsar Massacre by British troops. By 1920, Gandhi was a dominant figure in Indian politics. He transformed the Indian National Congress, and his programme of peaceful non-cooperation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions, leading to arrests of thousands.

In 1922, Gandhi himself was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He was released after two years and withdrew from politics, devoting himself to trying to improve Hindu-Muslim relations, which had worsened. In 1930, Gandhi proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience in protest at a tax on salt, leading thousands on a 'March to the Sea' to symbolically make their own salt from seawater.
In 1931, Gandhi attended the Round Table Conference in London, as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, but resigned from the party in 1934 in protest at its use of non-violence as a political expedient. He was replaced as leader by Jawaharlal Nehru.

In 1945, the British government began negotiations which culminated in the Mountbatten Plan of June 1947, and the formation of the two new independent states of India and Pakistan, divided along religious lines. Massive inter-communal violence marred the months before and after independence. Gandhi was opposed to partition, and now fasted in an attempt to bring calm in Calcutta and Delhi. On 30 January 1948, he was assassinated in Delhi by a Hindu fanatic.

GRAMMAR POINT

SPELLING

A number of words end in –or in American English and –our in British English (e.g. color/colour). Some words end in –er in American English and –re in British English (e.g. center/centre). Many verbs which end in –ize in American English (e.g.realize) can be spelt in British English with –ize or –ise. Some of the commonest words with different forms are:

American English, (British English)

aluminum, (aluminium)
analyze, (analyse)
catalog(ue), (catalogue)
center, (centre)
check, (cheque)
color, (colour)
defense, (defence)
honor, (honour)
jewelry, (jewellery)
labor, (labour)
pajamas, (pyjamas)
paralyze,(paralyse)
program, (programme)
realize, (realize/realize)
theater, (theatre)
tire, (tyre)
whiskey, ((scotch)whisky)