Israeli Forces Kill Unarmed Palestinian JERUSALEM ? Israeli forces shot to death an unarmed Palestinian man early on Thursday at the edge of a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, Israeli military and Palestinian officials said. The Palestinian Authority government condemned the killing, calling it a "breach of the rule of law." The Israeli military said that soldiers saw three Palestinians approaching the settlement of Barkan before dawn. Suspecting that one was armed, the military said, the soldiers opened fire, killing one man. The two others fled. It initially reported that there had been only one other man. In a statement, the military said that it had set up a night watch by the settlement because there had been numerous attempts to infiltrate it in recent weeks, and settlers had complained of a rise in thefts. Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, criticized the shooting of the man the man killed, identified as Bilal Abu Libdeh from the West Bank city of Qalqilya. . ?Israel must hold its soldiers accountable for illegal and unjustified killings,? he said. He continued, ?The Israeli practice of shooting first and asking questions later has become the norm when dealing with Palestinians? in the West Bank. There has been a sharp reduction in violence in the West Bank over the last few years, with greater cooperation between the Israeli army and Palestinian security forces, but the relative calm is occasionally punctuated by attacks on Israelis, vandalism or attacks against Palestinian property or fatal encounters between Israeli forces and Palestinians. Such episodes deepen tensions and complicate the environment for peace talks. Four Palestinian youths were killed by Israeli forces in two separate episodes in March in the northern West Bank. After investigating the shootings, the military said operational mistakes were made and the deaths could have been prevented. The military said on Thursday it had called on the Palestinian authorities to conduct a joint investigation into the latest death and a Palestinian representative had visited the site
European Markets, Awaiting Data, Are Mixed European shares were mixed on Wednesday after more disappointing economic reports reinforced concerns about a recovery in the United States. Investors are also started to look ahead to Friday and the crucial jobs report in the United States. In London, the FTSE 100 was down 32.89 points, or 0.6 percent, while the DAX in Frankfurt rose 16.55 points, or 0.3 percent. The CAC 40 in Paris was down unchanged. Earlier, stock markets in Asia were mixed. While Japan?s Nikkei 225 closed down 204.67 points, or 2.1 percent, to 9,489.34, the Shanghai Composite Index added 0.4 percent to 2,638.52 and Hong Kong?s Hang Seng advanced 0.4 percent to 21,549.88. Wall Street was poised for modest declines at the open after slipping Tuesday following downbeat figures on pending home sales, factory orders and consumer spending. The disappointing reports were a fresh reminder that the recovery is weakening. They tempered the excitement seen Monday when an Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index did not show as much of a slowdown as forecast. Cautious investors continued to move their money into Treasuries, which drove interest rates lower in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.89 percent from 2.92 percent late Tuesday. Its yield is often used as a benchmark for rates on mortgages and other consumer loans. Stocks dipped Tuesday after reports showed personal income and spending were flat in June and factory orders and pending home sales both fell in June. All four readings fell below economists? expectations, which added to the worries about the slowing pace of recovery. Before the markets opened on Wall Street, the payroll company ADP said private employers ramped up hiring slightly in July. ADP saidprivate employers added 42,000 jobs last month. That was slightly better than the 40,000 new jobs predicated by economists polled by Thomson Reuters. High unemployment remains the biggest obstacle to a stronger recovery. The data follows the trend seen over the past few months that the economy continues to expand, but at a sluggish pace. Economic reports over the past couple of days have begun to again overshadow quarterly earnings, which were mostly upbeat and drove stocks higher in July. Results that beat forecasts have largely been welcomed by investors in recent days because it provides reassurances that while a recovery might be slow, the economy isn?t falling back into a second recession. The ADP report is often used as a gauge for the Labor Department?s monthly employment report. The government report, which is broader and includes government jobs as well as private sector employment, is due out Friday. ?The potency of data for the market is particularly strong at the moment,? an analyst at Credit Agricole, Daragh Maher, said. ?In part, this is due to talk of a double-dip in the U.S. which has lent any soft data particular prominence but it is also because there is a new sense of urgency as to what this might mean for policy.? If Friday?s payrolls data come in below expectations for an increase in jobs of around 100,000, then the markets will be on the lookout for additional money-boosting measures from the Federal Reserve, though many economists doubt that the rate-setting panel will decide to get anything done so quickly. If the Fed turns on the taps once again, then most currency strategists think the dollar will be undermined further, after falling to a four-month low against the euro on Tuesday. The euro was down slightly at $1.3206. On Tuesday, it went as high as $1.3261. While the dollar has been pressured by the evidence showing the American economy is losing momentum, the euro has recovered its poise as the government debt crisis has eased and the economic reports out of the 16 countries that use the currency has generally outperformed expectations. ?What is clear is that the focus of concerns has moved very clearly from the euro zone towards the U.S.? said Simon Derrick, senior currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon. One sector that stubbornly fails to match the improvements seen elsewhere, though, is consumer spending. Eurostat, the European Union?s statistics office, said retail sales in the euro zone were flat in June from May, down from a 0.4 percent rise booked in May. June?s outcome was in line with expectations after figures showed that sales in Germany and France fell sharply, and means retail sales were only 0.4 percent higher in June than the year before. The figures came out a day ahead of the European Central Bank?s expected decision to leave its key interest rate unchanged at 1 percent. Though its president, Jean-Claude Trichet, is expected to sound a more optimistic tone in his news conference after the announcement, he is likely to point to the hurdles the euro zone economy faces, not least the fact that consumers are holding back from major purchases even though separate figures last week showed consumer confidence running at a 26-month high. The worry is that consumer spending may get pressured by the austerity measures being enacted across the euro zone in response to the government debt crisis.
A Labor Market Punishing to Mothers The last three men nominated to the Supreme Court have all been married and, among them, have seven children. The last three women ? Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Harriet Miers (who withdrew) ? have all been single and without children. This little pattern makes the court a good symbol of the American job market. Women and men with similar qualifications ? age, education, experience ? are much more likely to be treated similarly today than in the past. The pay gap between them, while still not zero, has shrunk to just a few percentage points. Yet once you look beyond the tidy comparisons of supposedly identical men and women, the picture is much less sunny. There are still only 15 Fortune 500 companies with a female chief executive. Men dominate the next rungs of management in most fields, too. Over all, full-time female workers make a whopping 23 percent less on average than full-time male workers. What?s going on? Men and women are not identical, of course. Many more women take time off from work. Many more women work part time at some point in their careers. Many more women can?t get to work early or stay late. And our economy exacts a terribly steep price for any time away from work ? in both pay and promotions. People often cannot just pick up where they have left off. Entire career paths are closed off. The hit to earnings is permanent. The fact that the job market has evolved in this way is no accident. It?s a result of policy choices. As Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, says, ?American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.? In many ways, the choice was shrewd. The feminist movement has been fabulously successful fighting for antidiscrimination laws that require men and women to be treated equally. These laws have not eliminated the blatant sexism of past decades ? think ?Mad Men? ? but they have beaten back much of it. As a result, outright sexism is no longer the main barrier to gender equality. The main barrier is the harsh price most workers pay for pursuing anything other than the old-fashioned career path. ?Women do almost as well as men today,? Ms. Waldfogel said, ?as long as they don?t have children.? ? The data make this case. So does the disproportionate number of prominent women who do not have children ? Ms. Kagan, Ms. Sotomayor, Janet Napolitano and Condoleezza Rice, among others. Obviously, many other successful women (including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) have children. Through a combination of talent, hard work and good fortune, they have managed to beat the odds. But that is indeed what they are doing: beating odds stacked against them. Most parents are simply not able to have it all, regardless of where they are on the income spectrum. A recent study of business school graduates from the University of Chicago found that in the early years after graduating, men and women had ?nearly identical labor incomes and weekly hours worked.? Men and women also paid a similar career price for taking off or working part time. Women, however, were vastly more likely to do so. As a result, 15 years after graduation, the men were making about 75 percent more than the women. The study ? done by Marianne Bertrand, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz ? did find one subgroup of women whose careers resembled those of men: women who had no children and never took time off. On the other end of the spectrum, low-income women generally do not have a choice between career and family. Many are single parents. Their chances of escaping poverty are hurt by the long-term costs of taking time off after childbirth and having little flexibility in their schedules. Taking the next step toward workplace equality probably has to start with an acknowledgment that most parents can?t have it all ? at least as long as part-time work, flexible schedules and long leaves do so much career damage. A growing number of parents already seem to have come to this conclusion. That?s one reason for the rise in the number of mothers who have dropped out of the labor force. Lacking good part-time job options, more are choosing full-time parenting. Last year, 40.2 percent of married women with children under 3 years old were outside the labor force, up from a low of 38.6 percent in 1998. The increase, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis, ?occurred across all educational levels and, for most groups, by about the same magnitude.? By contrast, women without children at home have continued to join the work force in growing numbers. Unfortunately, this problem isn?t one that lends itself to a sweeping policy solution. There are steps that can help. Universal preschool programs ? like the statewide one in Oklahoma ? would make life easier for many working parents. Paid parental leave policies, like California?s modest version, would make a difference, too. With Australia?s recent passage of paid leave, the United States has become the only rich country without such a policy. (Giving parents here a full year of leave for each child would cost about $25 billion a year, or less than 0.2 percent of gross domestic product, Ms. Waldfogel says.) Given fiscal realities, a more realistic immediate idea may be the recent British law giving workers the right to request a switch to a part-time or flexible schedule. Employers can still say no, but the establishment of a formal right seems to have made a difference. So far, about 90 percent of requests have been approved. Yet policies like these are not enough. In the European countries with much more generous parental leave laws, women remain far behind men on career ladders. The best hope for making progress against today?s gender inequality probably involves some combination of legal and cultural changes, which happens to be the same combination that beat back the old sexism. We?ll have to get beyond the Mommy Wars and instead create rewarding career paths even for parents ? fathers, too ? who take months or years off. We?ll have to get more creative about part-time and flexible work, too. If you want a preview, you can look at the few professions in which large numbers of highly skilled women have been able to force change. Obstetrics used to be a field that required doctors to be on duty at all hours. Today, group practices allow obstetricians to share the 3 a.m. deliveries and, in the process, have a life outside of work. Optometry and veterinary medicine have their own versions of this story. With both government and corporate budgets tight, it?s easy to be pessimistic, but I think history argues for optimism. This country doesn?t always move quickly or evenly toward equality. Yet it does tend to move in one broad direction. For almost 200 years, the Supreme Court did not have a single woman on its bench. Sometime later this week, it is likely to have three.
Oil Giant Fined for Shipping Sludge to Ivory Coast A Dutch court on Friday imposed the maximum fine of 1 million Euros, or $1.28 million, on the oil trading company Trafigura for illegally exporting highly toxic sludge that ended up dumped in Ivory Coast. The stinking waste was eventually linked to the deaths of 16 people and thousands of illnesses in 2006. The court also found the company guilty of covering up the hazardous nature of the waste when it first tried to unload its unusually toxic slops, which included high levels of caustic soda, sulfur compounds and hydrogen sulfide, in the port of Amsterdam. The nauseating sludge was pumped back on board after the company balked at treatment costs, and the ship, the Probo Koala, left with its load. The ship then headed to Ivory Coast, where the sludge was dumped in several areas of Abidjan, the capital. Trafigura has denied wrongdoing, but in separate settlements it paid $200 million to the Ivory Coast for clean-up and $50 million to close to 30,000 victims and their families. The ruling of the Amsterdam court marks the first time Trafigura has been criminally convicted in the sludge scandal. Another criminal lawsuit in the case is still before a court in The Hague.
