zoology

Progress told in CWA strike against Nynex

2012-03-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) Progress was reported yesterday in talks to end astrike by 40,000 phone workers in New York, the last part of thecountry where large numbers of local phone company employees remainedoff the job.

The only other strike continuing yesterday involved 1,000employees of US West Direct, the publishing arm of Denver-based USWest Inc. Phone workers elsewhere in the country have reachedsettlements or agreed to continue working during negotiations.

The phone workers, represented by the Communications Workers ofAmerica, walked …

Cubs Beat Reds 6-0, Near Lead

2012-03-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

CINCINNATI - Carlos Zambrano says his latest run is the best one of his career. He's having a pretty good time at the plate, too.

Zambrano became the majors' first 14-game winner and finished with three hits to help the Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds 6-0 Sunday.

"I think this is the best stretch I've ever had," said Zambrano, who has won four straight and seven of his last eight. "I feel confident and comfortable. I've been hitting my spots and throwing more strikes. My arm slot feels good."

Derrek Lee homered for the third time in four days for Chicago, which finished a 4-2 trip and moved within a half-game of NL Central-leading Milwaukee - the Cubs' …

Officials look into new HIV case in porn industry

2012-03-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

State health officials are looking into the latest HIV case reported in California's multibillion-dollar porn industry, fearing that reckless practices on film sets might be raising the risk of new infections.

It was revealed this week that a woman tested positive for HIV immediately after making an adult film. The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health is attempting to identify the filmmaker, at which point a formal investigation would begin.

"Our concern is that we need to quickly get to the employer so that we can work with them to change their practices to ensure the proper safety measures are being taken to prevent the additional spread …

FDA Panel Begins Nicotine Hearings

2012-03-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON An advisory committee to the Food and DrugAdministration on Monday opened an investigation into theaddictiveness of nicotine as a step toward possible FDA regulation ofthe nicotine level of cigarettes.

The Drug Abuse Advisory Committee heard testimony that smokerswho used a nicotine nasal spray to wean themselves off cigarettesalso had difficulty stopping use of the spray.

Today, the panel of outside medical experts will hear testimonyon the relationship of nicotine and smoking.

FDA Commissioner David Kessler has asked Congress to spell outhis authority to regulate cigarettes as a drug, hinting that if heacted it could be to gradually ratchet …

World Features Digest

2012-03-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

Below is a list of feature stories that The Associated Press plans to move in the coming week. Questions about the stories may be addressed to the North America Desk supervisor in New York at 212-621-1650 (fax 212-621-5449) or e-mail amidesk(at)ap.org or to individual bureaus in your country or region.

We will update this digest daily, adding new features as available. Feature stories that moved in the previous three days are included at the bottom for editors who may not have seen them.

NEW:

US-CHINA-MILITARY RIVALRY

PUBLIC MEDIA-INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

HOMES-RIGHT-NAMING FURNITURE

FASHION-BEAUTY-SECRET INGREDIENTS

FASHION-RODARTE …

Israel to pump diesel to Gaza for power plant

2012-03-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

The Israel military says 1 million liters of diesel will be pumped Wednesday to the Gaza Strip to power its electricity plant.

The plant supplies one-third of Gaza's electricity, and Gaza officials said it was in danger of shutting down later Wednesday if fuel weren't supplied.

One million liters is enough to power the plant …

Don't add to security hassles

2012-03-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

You would think people would know better than to take weapons,live animals and even spiders through airport security.

But officers are still having to stop people with …

Florida restricts use of aftermarket parts

2012-03-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Florida shops can no longer use nonOEM crash parts unless they can prove the parts are of like kind and quality (LKQ), according to a law now being enforced by the state's Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner, Bob Crawford.

The statute, passed in July 1993, makes it illegal for insurers to require the use of generic parts that are not LKQ. In a notice sent to all of Florida's body shops in mid-April, Crawford asked shop owners to report "any attempt by insurance companies to force the shops to use inferior crash parts:' Such an action will trigger an investigation by Crawford's office and a referral to the Florida Department of Insurance, according to the notice. Even …

UNAMID concerned over Darfur camp deaths

2012-03-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

The head of the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur has expressed 'grave concern' over the shooting deaths of dozens of refugees on Aug. 25 by Sudanese forces in Darfur.

Rodolphe Adada, representative of the UNAMID force tasked with maintaining peace in the wartorn region, met Monday with Sudanese Foreign Ministry official Mutrif …

Bulger optimistic about future of Rams

2012-03-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

ST. LOUIS - It's early May, so former WVU quarterback Marc Bulgercan afford to be optimistic about the St. Louis Rams' changes. Nottoo optimistic.

The Rams have made several upgrades on offense, signing big-ticket free agent center Jason Brown and drafting tackle Jason Smithwith the second pick. They've added a fullback and a blocking tightend to protect their highest-paid player.

It all sounds good, although Bulger noted he's been upbeat thistime of the year before.

"The culture around here has changed and it's great," Bulger saidSunday after a three-day minicamp. "We can talk all we want in thespring and during camp and during preseason about how good …

GIs, Iraqis Capture Suspected Insurgents

2012-03-14T08:13:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD - U.S. and Iraqi troops captured eight suspected insurgents Thursday in raids north of Baghdad as part of a campaign to prevent insurgents from regrouping outside the city during the ongoing security crackdown.

The operation took place in Duluiyah and the Jabouri peninsula - a bend in the Tigris River about 55 miles north of Baghdad - part of the Sunni areas around Baghdad where insurgents have fled since the crackdown in the capital began last month.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said the security operation would be extended beyond the city limits to target these areas, which he referred to as "the Baghdad belt."

"The priority …

Svindal clinched World Cup overall

2012-03-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway clinched his second World Cup overall title on Saturday when Benjamin Raich straddled a gate in the opening run of the final slalom of the season and was disqualified.

Austrian Raich, the only skier who could catch the leading Svindal, trailed the Norwegian by only two points, 1,009 to 1,007, going into the final race of the season.

Raich, who started first, quickly found his rhythm and skied smoothly through the first gates at the top of the course before straddling a gate about halfway down. His race lasted 36.72 seconds.

"I had a really good feeling," Raich said. "I was in shape today. I was fast. I …

Former Cape Verde president Aristides Pereira dies

2012-03-14T03:26:00.000-07:00

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Aristides Pereira, who fought Portugal's colonial rule in the Cape Verde Islands and became the West African country's first post-independence president, died Thursday. He was 87.

Joao Silva, head of protocol at the Cape Verde embassy in Lisbon, said Pereira died at Portugal's Coimbra University Hospital where he had been since August.

Silva did not know the cause of death, and the hospital declined to provide details.

Pereira was a guerrilla fighter against the Portuguese colonial administration and became head of state after Cape Verde won independence in 1975, ruling until 1991 when he lost the country's first democratic elections.

Silva said Pereira would be buried in Cape Verde. Family details were not immediately available.

Pereira was a co-founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, or PAIGC, in 1956. It opposed the Portuguese and Pereira was one of its most influential members.

The PAIGC operated in secret in Guinea-Bissau, on Africa's west coast, and in Cape Verde — an Atlantic archipelago of 10 volcanic islands and eight islets 600 kilometers (360 miles) off the coast.

Pereira said he was a reluctant activist but was inspired to take up arms by the unjustness of rule from Europe which made local people second-class citizens.

"I always say I was involved in politics without being a politician," he said in a 2002 interview with Portuguese paper Publico. "What led me into politics was the humiliation and exploitation of the Cape Verdean people and the injustices of the colonial system."

Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva said Pereira was a "towering figure" in Cape Verde's history.

"Leader of a generation and first president of the young Cape Verdean nation, (Pereira) was a man of deep convictions whose overriding concern was the people's social and economic progress," Cavaco Silva said in a statement on his website.

Cape Verde was one of Portugal's five African colonies.

After 1975 independence, the PAIGC ruled the country as a Marxist one-party state, with most people living from subsistence agriculture. Economic decline and lengthy droughts worsened by overgrazing and deforestation brought a wave of emigration, especially to the United States and Europe.

IR SATELLITE DATA ENABLES NEW APPROACH TO CYCLONE FORECASTING

2012-03-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

Cyclones in the northern Indian Ocean are notoriously difficult to predict, due to incomplete atmospheric data in the region. After last year's Cyclone Nargis, one of the largest and most destructive cyclones on record, researchers from NASA reexamined the storm as a test case for a new data integration and mathematical modeling approach. Compiling satellite data from the days leading up to the 2 May landfall of the storm, the scientists hindcast Nargis's path and landfall in Burma using additional data and processing to better reveal the tropical cyclone's likely track.

"There is no event in nature that causes a greater loss of life than Northern Indian Ocean cyclones, so we have a strong motivation to improve advance warnings," says the study's lead author, Oreste Reale, an atmospheric modeler with the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center.

Because they don't have access to hurricane hunters, forecasters from the India Meteorological Department and the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center have to rely on remote satellite measurements that can only assess atmosphere and ocean temperatures under "clear sky," or cloudless, conditions, something that doesn't exist in the midst of a cyclone. Forecasting in this region is also difficult because large temperature contrasts between land and sea can lead to erratic storm tracks.

These difficulties led Reale and his team to look at modeling the cyclone in a new way. In their experiment, the researchers detected and tracked Nargis's path by employing novel three-dimensional satellite imagery and atmospheric profiles from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite to see into the heart of the storm.

AIRS has the ability to show changes in atmospheric temperature and moisture at varying altitudes. Until recently, many weather modelers were only using AIRS data from cloud-free skies. But in 2007, AIRS demonstrated the ability to obtain accurate atmospheric temperatures from "partly cloudy" data. Reale used the temperature data products to run the model with the added information from partially cloudy areas of sky that had not previously been included.

According to the scientists, agencies monitoring the region can access AIRS's data daily and optimize forecasts for cyclones in the Indian Ocean. The same technique could be useful to forecasts of hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the western Pacific, particularly when a storm has formed over the open ocean out of flight range of hurricane-hunting airplanes.

"With this approach, we can now better define cyclones at the early stages and track them in the models to know what populations may be most at risk," explains Reale. "And every 12 hours we gain in these forecasts means a gain in our chances to reduce loss of life."

Results from the study were published in a March issue of Geophysical Research Letters. (SOURCE: NASA)

More of the same

2012-03-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

Emil Jones wants his kid to take his Senate seat? Puh-leeeze!

We have a plague of juniors --Jr. Bush, Jr. Stroger, Jr. Daley. The last thing we need is another subpar scion feeding at the taxpayers' trough.

David White

West Loop

Mounting injuries haven't hurt Bulls

2012-03-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

No matter the missing parts, the sum of the Bulls' recentperformances has been victory after victory.

Even though Luc Longley and Toni Kukoc were back in Chicagowatching on television, the Bulls never missed a beat in pulling awayin the fourth quarter for an easy victory over the Houston Rockets.

Ring jurors having trouble agreeing on a verdict

2012-03-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jurors in the trial of a lobbyist accused of bribing federal officials with meals and event tickets are having trouble reaching a verdict.

The 12 jurors hearing the case of Kevin Ring, an associate of corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, sent a note to the judge Wednesday saying they were deadlocked and requesting guidance.

They wanted to know the criteria for deciding when gifts given to public officials are illegal. U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told them, "It isn't simple," but they must determine whether Ring gave gifts with a corrupt intent. She sent them back to deliberate more.

Ring is on trial a second time. The first jury could not agree whether he was guilty of trying to corrupt congressional aides and Bush administration officials.

Top Israeli: No Palestinian leadership

2012-03-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

A top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there is no Palestinian leadership and he doubts there will be true peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The statement by National Security Council chief Uzi Arad raises new questions about how Israel intends to proceed with efforts to renew stalled peace talks. It was carried Thursday in the Haaretz daily.

Arad says he doesn't see a Palestinian leadership or Palestinian regime. Instead, he said he sees what he calls a "disorderly array of forces and factions."

He doesn't rule out the establishment of a Palestinian state in the next few years but doesn't think there will be true peace.

Palestinian spokesmen weren't immediately available for comment.

North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful

2012-03-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

"The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to the our military and people," KCNA said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, citing defense officials.

Egyptian government demolishes mud houses, evict inhabitants near the Valley of the Kings

2012-03-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Almost 60 mud brick houses were demolished Sunday near tombs in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor after security forces used tear gas to force out residents, according to inhabitants.

For the past half century, local authorities and officials in Egypt's antiquities department have been trying to move inhabitants out of the Gurna area adjacent to the Pharaonic era tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

Last year, several houses were demolished and inhabitants moved to new houses several miles away, however many locals still refuse to leave, describing the replacement houses as substandard.

"They had no mercy, if they had any they wouldn't have tear gassed us," Sayed Mohammed Hassan told the Associated Press late Sunday by telephone from the Gurna Hospital. "They treated us worse than animals."

Hassan, 36, said that his wife, three children, mother and father are now in the street after their houses were demolished and together with 50 others, he has gone on a hunger strike.

Neither security officials or anyone from the local Luxor government was able for comment on Sunday night.

Hassan admits that he and the others had no official title to the land which they began squatting on eight years earlier, though he noted the government was happy to charge them for utilities during that time.

Mohammed Baghdad, another resident, said that only by bribing the city officials, were they able to keep their houses for so long.

"If you pay them, they keep quiet, but if you don't pay, they pull the house down and throw your children out," he said.

Officials from Egypt's antiquities department have long decried the Gurna residents and there have been several attempts over the years to move them out because their homes rest near several tombs.

They accuse the residents of making their living by robbing tombs and selling the artifacts to tourists and collectors.

The locals, however, vigorously dispute this accusation and maintain that the current houses that were demolished were no where near archaeological sites.

"It's not near the tombs, it's six kilometers from the monuments," Baghdadi said. "We do not steal from the tombs, it is the big people, like the head of antiquities, who do that ... no one from Gurna is a rich person.

Regulatory Compliance Drives Encryption

2012-03-13T02:47:00.000-07:00

As data breaches continue to rise, U.S.-based companies are increasingly adopting encryption to secure their IT infrastructures, and their main reason is to comply with privacy and data protection regulations, a new study has found.

In the past, protecting data and mitigating data breaches drove encryption adoption. This year, for the first time, regulatory compliance became the top reason for implementing encryption technologies, according to the Ponemon Institute's annual "U.S. Enterprise Encryption Trends Report," which is in its fifth year.

In 2010, 69 percent of the 964 IT and business leaders surveyed said compliance is their primary driver for encryption, an increase of five percentage points from the previous year. Mitigating data breaches fell to second place, with 63 percent saying it was a top driver for encryption adoption: a drop of four points from 2009 and eight points from 2008.

The results show the growing realization that compliance is important as companies try to avoid post-breach legal noncompliance penalties, according to the study, which was produced in conjunction with Symantec.

"Compliance is the most important reason for doing encryption, and the PCI [Payment Card Industry] Security Standard and the various state privacy laws have a lot to do with it," says Larry Ponemon, chair and founder of the Ponemon Institute, a research firm in Traverse City, Mich.

The PCI standard, which requires credit card transaction security, is the fastest-growing reason for IT organizations to use encryption. The number of those surveyed who said PCI requirements constituted the most influential reason for using encryption has grown more than fourfold in the past four years, from 15 percent in 2007 to 64 percent in 2010. That's because failure to comply will prevent organizations from doing online credit card transactions, the study says.

The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), remains a key driver of encryption. However, other traditional drivers-the Sarbanes-Oxley and Graham-Leach- Bliley acts-have decreased in importance because companies have integrated compliance for those regulations into their standard operations, the study says.

Data Breaches on the Rise

Overall, the number of data breaches is increasing, and they are more severe. In 2010, 88 percent of respondents reported they had at least one breach during that year, a three-point increase from the previous year.

More specifically, 25 percent of companies reported that they had experienced five or more data breaches-a three-point increase from 2009. Forty percent of organizations surveyed had suffered two to five breaches, while 23 percent had only one breach. The results show that cyber-attackers continue to target unprotected data and mobile devices, the study says.

In other key findings, 95 percent of respondents said they were likely or very likely to experience the loss of sensitive or confidential information within the next 12 to 24 months. Of those surveyed, 93 percent consider data protection an important or very important part of their overall risk management efforts, a 13-point increase from 2009.

As a result, more IT organizations are implementing data encryption technology. In total, 84 percent of respondents have either fully executed or are in the process of implementing encryption. That's a two-point increase from 2009 and a five-point increase from 2008.

Ponemon says he expects that encryption adoption will continue to increase in the coming years because more people are working remotely-either from home or on the road-and they access data on notebook computers and smartphones that could potentially house sensitive or confidential information.

Brian Tokuyoshi, a Symantec marketing manager who assisted with the study, agrees. "They're handling information about employees, and they could be carrying that information on a laptop," he points out. "You lose the laptop and it's a data breach."

Spending More on Encryption

Because protecting data is an ever-higher priority, IT organizations are spending more money on encryption technologies. Encryption is the fastest-growing earmark in IT budgets, meaning that the technology is strategic and receives dedicated annual funding. The percentage of IT organizations that earmark encryption has grown from 57 percent in 2008 to 69 percent in 2010.

The most popular encryption technologies in 2010 were file server encryption (62 percent adoption), full-disk encryption (59 percent) and database encryption (57 percent). As for other areas, desktop email encryption is used by 50 percent of the respondents, while storage networking and USB flash drive encryption are used by 19 percent.

Voice over IP and mainframes are the least encrypted technologies. Only 9 percent of the respondents encrypt IP-based phone calls, and 8 percent encrypt mainframes.

Most organizations encrypt data at the end points, where it touches users, but protection for the administrative back end is emerging, the study's authors wrote.

SOUND OFF: WHAT YOU SAID

2012-03-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

Last week's question:

Do you encourage your employees to dress up for Halloween? Why or why not?

From our LinkedIn group:

We would normally have a "Halloween Luncheon" where associates could dress up for the luncheon only, but not during the rest of the day, as we want to present a professional appearance to any customers that would come to our office.

-JohnMark Rohrbaugh

From our Facebook page:

Halloween is extremely popular at Members 1st. It trickles straight down from Bob, our CEO!

-Members 1st Federal Credit Union

No, only because I had not thought of it! It sounds like fun, though. Is it too late?

-Central PA Webster

This week's question:

Should the Harrisburg City Council renew its Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance program, known as Lerta? Why or why not?

To answer, visit www.cpbjnow.com.

What's your opinion?

Only the unsigned editorial on this opinion page represents the views of the editorial board.

We encourage readers to write letters. Please keep them to fewer than 350 words. Please include your name, telephone number and address. We reserve the right to edit letters.

ADDRESS: Editor, Central Penn Business Journal, 1500 Paxton St., Harrisburg, PA 17104

FAX: 236-6803 | PHONE: 236-4300

EMAIL: editorial@journalpub.com

Rights activist convicted and jailed in Belarus

2012-03-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Belarus' leading human rights activist was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 4.5 years in prison on Thursday at a trial condemned by U.S. and European Union officials as politically motivated.

Ales Belyatsky heads Vesna, the ex-Soviet nation's most prominent rights group which actively reported on alleged irregularities in last December's presidential election and the ensuing police crackdown on protests.

The election, in which authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko won another term, was criticized by international observers and sparked a massive protest rally that was violently dispersed by police who arrested some 700 people, including seven of the nine presidential candidates.

Belyatsky's group has since provided legal assistance to those arrested, helped them pay fines and offered help to their families.

The 49-year old Belyatsky, who has been in jail since his arrest in August, looked tired but composed while listening to the judge reading out Thursday's verdict. Some in the audience shouted "Shame."

"My case is politically motivated," Belyatsky said in his final statement. "I'm fighting for human rights, but now I feel like a voice crying in the desert."

Belyatsky was charged with tax evasion after Polish and Lithuanian authorities provided data about his accounts in those countries. Vesna said Belyatsky had to use the accounts to get cash from donors because Belarusian law left him no other option to receive funds needed to help victims of political repression. Polish and Lithuanian governments later apologized for giving Belarusian prosecutors the data on Belyatsky's accounts.

The U.S. Embassy in Minsk strongly condemned Thursday's verdict and urged Belarus "to release Belyatsky and all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally, remove any barriers to their future participation in public life, and cease its campaign against critics of the government."

The European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele deplored the sentence as "clearly politically motivated" and "a symbol of the ever intensifying crackdown on civil society in the country." ''We call on Belarus to immediately and unconditionally release and rehabilitate Ales Byalyatski and all other political prisoners in Belarus," they said in a statement.

Poland, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said the verdict "confirms that the current regime does not observe the basic U.N. standards on civic rights and freedoms."

Warsaw urged authorities in Belarus to immediately release Belyatsky and "other political prisoners." Without that, the Polish foreign ministry warned, "the European Union's dialogue with Belarus will not be possible."

Garri Pogonyailo, another Belarusian rights activist, described the verdict as a punishment for Vesna's activities in defending victims of political repression.

"That's the authorities' revenge for Belyatsky's rights activities," he told The Associated Press. "Lukashenko wants to show what happens to those who are involved in defending human rights."

United Nations experts warned Thursday that Belarus has moved even further to clamp down on basic freedoms with a new law that was passed last month.

The legislation further boosts the already sweeping powers of the secret police, still known as the KGB, allowing its officers to break into residences and offices without a warrant. It also bans political and civil society groups from receiving foreign assistance and from holding money in foreign banks.

"When defenders are allowed to associate but cannot effectively seek, receive or utilize funding resources, the right to freedom of association becomes void," said Margaret Sekaggya, a U.N. expert on defenders of human rights.

___

AP writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Frank Jordans in Geneva and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed to this report.

Greece pushes to end cozy license deals

2012-03-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — For decades, a job in Greece often came with certain guarantees.

Pharmacists could know they would make at least 35 percent profit on medicines, by law. Lawyers didn't have to worry about out-of-town rivals, who couldn't take up cases in their area. Truckers faced limited competition — only from people who could come up with €100,000 or more for a state license sold on the open market.

Cozy arrangements — and ones the Greek government says the country can no longer afford. Through the teeth of public protest, Prime Minister George Papandreou is asking parliament to eliminate a host of restrictive professional licenses as its desperately tries to improve the productivity of the Greek economy, stricken with a government debt crisis.

The protests are intensified because some people borrowed heavily to buy licenses and now face the prospect they will become worthless overnight.

More than 200,000 people in restricted professions — including lawyers, pharmacists, civil engineers as well as truckers and others. Their markets operate essentially as closed shops with tightly controlled licensing practices or fixed profit margins.

The government argues labor controls have been holding back an economy in urgent need of reinvention before international bailout loans run out in 2012.

Many low-paid Greeks, shut out of protected jobs and the country's massive civil service, tend to agree.

An Internet campaign group called Generation 700 Euros — named after the country's minimum monthly wage — argues restricted professions are to blame high consumer prices.

"This system of closed professions benefits the few rather than Greek society and state as a whole," the group said.

"Closed professions keep the income of those working in them artificially high without producing the corresponding quality and low cost for the consumer."

Some market restrictions date back more than 40 years, when governments were keen to win loyalty by handing out jobs and business licenses in return for votes, but were also used as part of welfare programs. Licenses for Greece's ubiquitous street kiosks selling tobacco and newspapers are still reserved for war veterans, the disabled and people with large families and low incomes.

Others will lose their safety net: No fixed minimum fee for civil engineers supervising contruction or hefty cuts on land deals for the notary public, as the government shreds Greece's dusty labor rulebook.

Business permits and licenses are currently tangled in regulations. To open a pharmacy, an applicant must be from the European Union, have graduated from a pharmacology school in Greece, and completed military service if male, and open his business in a area which does not have more than one pharmacy per 2,000 residents in the municipality.

Truckers, the first to be affected, lined up their vehicles along highways for 19 days in September, choking traffic and threatening fuel supplies.

Christos Katsoulis, a stout 65-year-old fuel-tanker driver, joined them, worried the measures taken during a recession will throw colleagues out of work or into minimum-wage jobs.

"There's no future for us. All they want is cheap labor," he said, standing in the middle of a two-mile line of trucks, as motorists stoically inched by.

"When something you own is taken from you, you have to react ... You can't change the rules overnight and expect businesses to survive," said Katsoulis, 65.

Prime Minister George Papandreou's 11-month-old government slashed pensions and civil service payrolls in a barrage of austerity measures this year, but is under pressure to make lasting changes while Greece's economy remains propped up by emergency loans.

In May, mounting debts and borrowing costs took Greece to the verge of bankruptcy, avoided only by the rescue loans worth €110 billion over three years from the eurozone governments and International Monetary Fund. Those lenders are pressing Greece to make wide-ranging structural change: loosen state control of power generation, stop bankrolling loss-making state enterprises, and liberalize tightly regulated professions that are sapping productivity.

If pushed through, the proposed deregulation could eventually boost gross domestic product by 10 percent, according to the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, or IOBE, a Greek think-tank that advises the government.

More growth would mean more tax revenue and a better chance of Greece paying down its crushing debts.

Supporters of the reforms argue that licensing rules are an anachronism dating back decades when there was little international competition and governments were keen to win loyalty by handing out jobs and business licenses in return for votes.

The head of the truckers' union says it doesn't oppose the changes but their suddenness.

"Greece has charted its course and that's a fact. But things are not being done in an organized way. These measures have been delayed for fifty years, so there has to be a fair transition," truckers' union boss Giorgos Tzortzatos told the AP.

"Seventy percent of our members still haven't covered their license fee ... what will happen to these people?"

So far, protests have been limited compared with often-violent demonstrations in the spring, with unions holding six general strikes before the summer. Local government elections in November will test the public's tolerance of Papandreou's punishing reforms.

Gerasimos Routzounis, head of political research at polling firm Kappa Research, says the Socialists so far are holding on to public support. "They have a strong alibi because the country is on the brink of bankruptcy ... Our numbers suggest that people blame the previous government for what has happened," he said.

"When nations go through this kind of shock, people tend to rally around the leader and the government that can rescue them."

Woman accused of DUI after driving onto levee

2012-03-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

Fargo police say a 49-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after she attempted to drive up a clay levee near the flooded Red River.

Capt. Tod Dahle (dolly) says Vicki M. Bates of Dilworth, Minn., was driving parallel to the levee Sunday night when she approached a section where the levee blocks the entire road.

Police say Bates tried to drive her van up the bank and got stuck. Dahle says she was lucky she didn't get all the way over, because she would have ended up in the floodwaters.

Engineers checked the levee and concluded there was no damage.

Bates was taken into custody and released. Police said they did not know if she had an attorney and a phone listing for her in Dilworth could not be found.