STOP RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION OF NAGARJUNASAGAR

Dear Friends...


The first temple of Modern India, NagarjunaSagar, World's Largest Masonry Dam, which provides drinking and irrigation water to over 200million people in five districts of Andhra Pradesh is under threat from Radioactive Contamination.

Please sign this online petition to Stop The Nuclear Radioactive Contamination of Nagarjunasagar Reservoir:

http://www.Petition Online.com/ ANTINUKE/ petition.html

HISTORY OF THE CASE: Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) after having wrecked havoc with the lives of people of Jharkhand with its Uranium Mining there: children born with deformiities, genetically mutated fruits, animals and humans, still births, women with multiple abortions or loosing children, cancers etc...due to the radioactive wastes floating around the region and filling up the Subernarekha river; has now decided to wreck havoc with the lives of the people in A.P.

So, in 2003, they declared that they will be mining for Uranium in Peddagattu and Lambapur villages (tribal villages) - with the mining site just about one kilometer away from the Nagarjuna sagar Reservoir. Most of the water supplied to Hyderabad comes from here...in addition to five districts which get their irrigation supplied from here. .

They called for two Environmental Public Hearings where people vociferously opposed the project.

But the Ministry of Environemnt and forests gave the licences to the UCIL for mining at Peddagattu and Lambapur saying it is "site specific"

The Movement Against Uranium Projects (MAUP) has filed a petition asking for suspension of the licenses granted to UCIL.

As on date the case is pending with the National Environment Appellate Authority.

But our good old UCIL is trying its tricks once again...they are going to the villages of Peddagattu and Lambapur and trying to coerce the villagers to accept the project somehow or the other. The villagers are cut off from the mainstream. They are strongly opposing the project. But under the coercive tactics of the UCIL like bring the CRPF police when they come to speak to the people etc...creating fear among the innocent tribal people, we cannot say, how long these people can withstand the pressure from the Powers That Be.

So, it is time we all pitch and stand by the courageous people who are fighting the mighty UCIL...for our own health, our children and the safety of our PLANET.

Do sign the petition online:

http://www.Petition Online.com/ ANTINUKE/ petition.html
Regards
saraswati kavula
Movement Against Uranium Projects
Hyderabad

Deepening Cycle of Job Loss Seen Lasting Into ’09

NYT, July 2, 2008
PETER S. GOODMAN

As automakers dropped their latest batch of awful sales numbers on the market on Tuesday, reinforcing the gloom spreading across the economy, the troubles confronting American workers seemed to intensify.

Plummeting home prices have in recent months eliminated jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, from bankers and real estate agents to construction workers and furniture manufacturers. Tighter lending standards imposed by banks in the wake of huge mortgage losses have made it hard for many Americans to secure credit — the lifeblood of expansion in recent years — crimping the appetite of consumers, whose spending amounts to 70 percent of the economy.

Joblessness has accelerated, and employers have slashed working hours even for those on their payrolls, shrinking the size of paychecks just as workers need them the most.

Now, add to that unsavory mix the word from automakers that sales plunged in June — by 28 percent for Ford, 21 percent for Toyota and 18 percent for General Motors — a sharp sign that consumers are pulling back, making manufacturers more likely to cut production and impose more layoffs. Until recently, the weak labor market has been marked more by the reluctance of employers to create new jobs than by mass layoffs.

Among economists, the sense is broadening that the troubles dogging the economy will be stubborn, leaving in place an uncomfortable combination of tight credit and scant job opportunities perhaps well into next year.

“It’s a slow-motion recession,” said Ethan Harris, chief United States economist for Lehman Brothers. “In a normal recession, things kind of collapse and get so weak that you have nowhere to go but up. But we’re not getting the classic two or three negative quarters. Instead, we’re expecting two years of sub-par growth. Growth that’s not enough to generate jobs. It’s kind of a chronic rather than an acute pain.”

Mr. Harris expects tepid economic growth and a shrinking labor market to persist through the fall of 2009.

The national unemployment rate climbed a full percentage point over the last year to 5.5 percent in May, according to the Labor Department. That does not include people who are jobless and have given up looking for work, or people who have been bumped to part-time jobs from full-time. Add in those people and the so-called underemployment rate rises to 9.7 percent, up from 8.3 percent in May 2007, according to the Labor Department.

Goldman Sachs forecasts that the unemployment rate will peak at 6.4 percent late in 2009 before the picture improves, meaning that the painful process of shedding jobs may be only half-way complete.

“The labor market is clearly deteriorating, and it’s highly likely to keep deteriorating,” said Andrew Tilton, an economist at Goldman Sachs. “It’s clear that the housing downturn and credit crunch are still very much under way. Clearly, there are more jobs to be lost in housing, finance and construction — hundreds of thousands of more jobs to be lost collectively.”

On Thursday, the Labor Department will release its snapshot of the job market for June. Economists generally expect the report to show 60,000 more jobs lost, marking the sixth consecutive month of decline.

But many anticipate the unemployment rate will nudge down a little bit, swinging back from an abrupt climb that could have been exaggerated by survey glitches in the previous month, when the rate jumped by half a percentage point — the sharpest one-month spike in 22 years.

If the unemployment rate were to hold steady or rise, that would likely spook markets, underscoring the impact of the economic slowdown.

“Slowing wage growth and falling employment is absolutely toxic if your business is selling anything to consumers,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics.

Recent indications lend credence to the view that the job market is in the grip of a sustained downturn. Three weeks in a row, new unemployment claims have exceeded 380,000, a level generally associated with recession. Construction spending fell in May. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey, which tracks attitudes about business and personal finance, has dropped to a depth last seen in 1980.

On the factory floor, a weak dollar has been fanning export sales. The I.S.M. Manufacturing Index — a widely watched gauge of factory activity — nudged up in June to 50.2 from 49.6 in May, entering barely positive territory, which indicates a slight expansion.

But that mostly reflected a buildup of inventories and higher prices for raw materials, and not an improvement in orders for factory goods, said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Service Group in a note to clients. If business stays weak and orders do not materialize, factory layoffs could accelerate. Indeed, the employment component of the index declined to its lowest level in five years.

The slide in the labor market has become both symptom and cause of a weak economy, pulling many families into a downward spiral. Back when housing prices were still rising, Americans borrowed exuberantly against the value of their homes to finance renovations, vacations and shopping sprees. But that artery of finance has constricted considerably along with access to credit cards, forcing a reversion to the traditional limits of household finance. Millions of American families must now confine their spending to what they can bring home from work.

With job losses growing and working hours shrinking, many paychecks are eroding, prompting millions of families to cut their spending. Soaring prices for food and gasoline are overwhelming modest wage gains for most workers, leaving households with even less money to spend. All of which deprives struggling businesses of sales, prompting them to shed more workers, sending the cycle down another turn. Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it would close stores and eliminate up to 12,000 jobs, about 7 percent of its work force.

The fear of a downward spiral prompted the Bush administration to unleash $100 billion worth of tax rebates in the hopes that recipients would spend money and spur sales. The Treasury has already dispensed more than $78 billion, and the money appears to be finding its way into cash registers, with consumer spending climbing by 0.8 percent in May, according to the Commerce Department.

Economists expect the rebates will continue to help retail sales through the summer, fueling modest economic growth that spares some jobs and prevents an outright contraction.

But few expect these rebate-laced sales to expand the job market, because businesses understand that the one-time surge of money will wear off later this summer.

Many experts expect the economy to then be pulled back into the weeds by the same forces that have led the downturn — declining home prices, tighter credit and leaner paychecks.

“It’s going to be very hard to overcome those headwinds,” said Mr. Harris, the Lehman economist.

Service Sector Data Adds to Inflation Anxiety

NYT, July 4, 2008
REUTERS

The United States service sector shrank unexpectedly in June, according to a closely watched survey released on Thursday, while inflation pressures soared to a record high for the survey’s 11-year history.

The Institute for Supply Management’s measure of employment in the vital service sector hit a record low, which could fan fears of a return to low growth and high inflation, known as stagflation, that was last seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The data also points up the quandary facing the Federal Reserve, which cut benchmark interest rates to support the weak economy at the risk of adding to price pressures. It is now expected to keep rates steady while waiting to see if inflation becomes a bigger problem.

The institute’s nonmanufacturing index was down to 48.2 for June, from 51.7 in May. A reading below 50 signals contraction.

“The nonmanufacturing results were decisively weak in a survey that typically does not show decisive movements,” said Pierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision Economics in New York.

Economists had expected a reading of 51.0, according to the median of 76 forecasts in a poll by Reuters.

The service sector represents about 80 percent of American economic activity, including businesses like banks, airlines, hotels and restaurants.

On Tuesday, the institute released results of another survey that showed manufacturing expanded in June for the first time in five months, helped by a weak dollar. That report also showed that inflation pressures soared to their highest since the stagflation-ravaged 1970s.

If there was any good news for the Fed, it was the suggestion that price rises in the service sector were not being passed on to consumers completely.

“Yes, prices are higher, but it’s not a total pass-through to the end consumer,” said Anthony S. Nieves, chairman of the institute’s nonmanufacturing business survey committee. “It’s more about eroding profit margins.”

Outlook Darker as Jobs Are Lost

NYT, July 4, 2008
LOUIS UCHITELLE

The nation’s employers eliminated tens of thousands of jobs in June for the sixth consecutive month in a steady chipping away of the work force that seems likely to leave the economy very weak through Election Day.

Responding quickly to the government employment report, issued Thursday, the presidential candidates called for action, beyond the recent stimulus package, to reverse the deterioration. In past downturns, the Federal Reserve saved the day, or tried to, by cutting interest rates. This time, however, with the Fed having already cut rates drastically, appeals are increasingly going to the White House and Congress.

“The numbers are telling us that there is an ongoing deterioration in the labor market at a relatively rapid clip,” said Jan Hatzius, chief domestic economist at Goldman Sachs. “It is a sign that the fiscal stimulus, the tax rebates, are failing to lift the broader economy.”

Apart from the 62,000 jobs eliminated in June — and 438,000 since January — most workers lost ground to inflation last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. While the average weekly wage of most ordinary workers was up 2.8 percent in the 12 months through June, the Consumer Price Index was up more than 4 percent.

“Workers just don’t have the bargaining power to fend off this erosion,” said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

The erosion of purchasing power, in turn, helps to explain the dismally low consumer confidence numbers in recent weeks. The housing market continues to sag, with little hope of improvement soon.

Adding to the gloom, stock prices plunged this week, pushing a crucial market gauge officially into bear territory, or 20 percent off its peak. And the unemployment rate, which had jumped half a percentage point in May, stayed at 5.5 percent in June, dashing hopes that a horde of young people hunting for jobs would find them and unemployment would fall back.

Few teenagers and new college graduates found work, the bureau reported. What’s more, the percentage of unemployed adult workers, 25 and over, ticked up for the second straight month, and various forecasters said that by Election Day, the unemployment rate would probably be 6 percent or more — a level last seen in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of a recession.

During the last 50 years, each time the economy has lost jobs for six straight months, a recession was ultimately declared.

The last two recessions, in 1990-1 and in 2001, started in the very month that employment began to shrink. That might turn out to be the case this time, too, once all the data is finally revised. But with jobs disappearing, the economy managed to expand in the first quarter by a weak 1 percent and probably dodged a contraction in the second quarter as well, in the view of Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, a forecasting and consulting firm.

“We have not really had a downturn quite like this one in which we lose jobs month after month but the economy somehow manages to grow,” Mr. Gault said.

He and Ian Shepherdson, chief domestic economist for High Frequency Economics, see a recession starting in the fall, just in time for the election. By then, the monthly job losses are likely to have accelerated.

As consumers lose buying power because of weakened wages and high gasoline prices, companies will respond, Mr. Shepherdson said, with bigger layoffs, like those announced this week by Starbucks and American Airlines.

“Right now, the economy is not shrinking because of the tax rebates,” he said, referring to the $107 billion in checks being mailed by the federal government to millions of Americans over three months.

As a supplement, Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, called on Congress and President Bush to enact “energy rebates” to offset the surge in fuel prices, create a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extend unemployment insurance benefits beyond the present 26 weeks and channel money to states suffering the most in the current downturn.

Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, asked Congress to help families facing foreclosure and to enact “a jobs-first economic plan,” as well as to lower health costs.

Responding to the jobs report, Dana Perino, the White House press spokeswoman, acknowledged that the nation was “in a period of slow growth,” which was having “an impact on employment.” So far, she said, 105 million rebate checks have gone out, totaling over $86 billion.

The job cuts were greatest in a category called professional and business services, which lost 51,000 jobs, most of them held by temporary workers. Construction, devastated by the collapse in home prices, was next on the list.

For the 12th straight month, employment in that sector shrank, this time by 43,000 workers. Manufacturing, in constant decline, lost 33,000 jobs in June. And there were job losses in a number of other areas, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

Indeed, the only notable increases in the private sector were in health care, restaurant work and other food services, and in each of these areas the rise was at only half the pace of a year ago, the Bureau said.

Donald Davis, a 35-year-old truck driver in Birmingham, Ala., certainly feels the pain. He was laid off on Easter as a driver for a concrete company, and has regularly thumbed through postings at a job placement center ever since, without luck. “Everything is at a standstill,” Mr. Davis said. “Nobody wants to hire anybody right now.”

State and local governments, on the other hand, continued to hire, adding 29,000 jobs last month, and more than 100,000 over the last six months. But most of these governments were operating on budgets enacted for the fiscal year that ended last Monday. The new budgets are expected to contain sharp cost cuts and payroll reductions as the states and municipalities adjust to shrinking tax revenues because of the housing crisis and the weak economy.

“My guess,” said Mr. Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, “is that the job declines across the economy are greater than the monthly numbers we are now seeing, and that will be evident when revisions are published later this year.”

Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.