Pope arrives in Spain in time of economic turmoil

When the pope arrives in Spain on Thursday it's not just sweltering heat he'll be stepping into. The economy's in a shambles. Jobless youths are filled with rage and frustration. Politicians are gearing up for early elections that will be dominated by these hard times.

Benedict XVI arrives for a four-day visit to greet up to a million or more young pilgrims from around the planet for the Catholic Church's World Youth Day.

The pope's attendance shows how much a priority he places on this economically troubled country, which has departed sharply from its Catholic traditions and embraced hedonism and secularism. In the economic bust, he may be hoping to lure back some of his straying flock.

This will be the third time the pontiff visits Spain since his papacy began in 2005, and the second in less than a year.

But many Spaniards take issue with the hoopla and hefty cost.

The euro50 million ($72 million) tab for staging the visit — setting up everything from giant screen TVs to portable toilets and confession stalls — has hit a raw nerve even among some churchgoing Catholics and priests.

The visit also comes as Spain gets ready for early elections in November. And while the church officially keeps out of politics, it will be sure to be watching closely — as the outcome could affect Spain's direction on hot-button ethical issues.

The election will pit the ruling Socialists, who irked the Vatican with social reforms including gay marriage and a law allowing 16-year-olds to get abortions without parental consent, against conservatives who tend to back church thinking on such issues and are heavily favored to win.

Spain's economy is sputtering as it seeks to overcome recession, Madrid's stock market has been a roller-coaster of late, the government is saddled with debt woes, and young Spaniards feel doomed and angry over their grim prospects amid a nearly 21 percent unemployment rate.

This bitter cocktail, or ingredients of it, is being served up in much of Europe and elsewhere.

"This is a time of uncertainty for young people. The pope is coming to Spain for World Youth Day, bringing a positive and challenging message from young people from all over the world," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, chief Vatican spokesman, said last week.

Pilgrims echoed that need for solace and inspiration.

"The message is about hope, about the future, to move from the current situation — whatever it is, and now it is kind of devastating — but move forward toward the future and hope that things will be better," said the Rev. Father Stanley Gomes, a chaplain at Seton Hall University who is accompanying 15 students from the school near New York City.

Organizers say about 450,000 young people from 193 countries — some from as far away as Vietnam and Pakistan — have registered to take part. But signing up beforehand is not mandatory and from past experience the total will be about three times those who register.

Two-thirds are expected to be Spaniards; among the rest Italy, France, the United States, Germany and Poland are sending the largest delegations.

The main events are a prayer vigil with the 84-year-old Pope and outdoor sleepover for pilgrims Saturday night at a sprawling air base, and Mass there the next morning.

Except for a trip Friday to a historic monastery in El Escorial, 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Madrid, the Pope will spend the whole visit in Madrid, meeting with young people, hearing confession from some of them, riding through the city in his pope-mobile and greeting young nuns, seminarians and university professors, among other activities.

In Spain the church faces a congregation for whom being Catholic is more a birthmark than a way of life. A poll released in July says that while 72 percent of Spaniards identify themselves as Catholic, 60 percent say they "almost never" go to Mass and only 13 percent every Sunday.

Church organizers insist the papal visit involves zero cost for Spanish taxpayers because the money is coming from corporate sponsors, private donations and fees paid by some of the pilgrims, among other sources.

Pilgrims who buy the premium package get vouchers to eat at nearly 1,500 restaurants which have signed up to take part in the papal visit — from fast-food hamburger chains to others offering traditional Spanish tapas. And organizers have made created an iPad and smartphone application that will tell pilgrims where the closest participating eatery is and let them communicate with each other in their own social network.

Critics are complaining of the cost of providing extra police security, tax breaks being granted to the corporate sponsors, discount subway and bus tickets for the visitors, and the price tag of opening up school gyms and sports facilities in a vacation month to set up makeshift digs for so many pilgrims.

Even some progressive Catholics joined a protest march Wednesday night to denounce taxpayer money spent for World Youth Day, a globe-trotting meeting held every three years. The last was in Sydney, Australia, and the next will be in Rio de Janeiro.

"At a time of crisis, and with so many people in need, we feel this visit should not be so massive and attention-drawing, so spectacular, but rather something more simple and closer to the grassroots of the church," said Raquel Mallavibarrena, a spokeswoman for a progressive Catholic group called Redes Cristianas, or Christian Networks.

Yago de la Cierva, head of the World Youth Day organizing committee, insisted providing extra police for major, crowd-drawing events is the government's responsibility — as it was when Spaniards flocked to the streets last summer to welcome home the national football team that won World Cup in South Africa.

Pope Benedict will be received and sent off by King Juan Carlos Queen Sofia and during his stay will meet separately with Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and conservative opposition leader Marian Rajoy, the man likely to be Spain's next prime minister.

However, the Vatican insists Zapatero and Rajoy meetings are not about politics. It notes the visit was scheduled long before Spain called early elections and is a pastoral one, rather than a state visit.

New label to help people pick health insurance

Insurers and employers will have to spell out plainly the costs and benefits of the health plans they offer starting next year.

The rule announced by U.S. health officials on Wednesday is designed to better inform people about health insurance choices with a standard label, which the Department of Health and Human Services likens to the kind on a cereal box.

Among other things, the label will tell customers their premium, deductible and out-of-pocket costs, and the costs associated with medical events and procedures, such as doctor visits and breast cancer treatments. Insurers must provide the information before a customer purchases a plan and when there are any changes.

"Today, many consumers don't have easy access to information in plain English to help them understand the differences in the coverage and benefits provided by different health plans," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The rule, part of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul, pleases consumer groups, who have complained that the pages of fine print accompanying insurance plans are often confusing.

"By making the terms of health insurance plans easier to understand, consumers are less likely to find themselves in health plans that don't meet their needs," said Consumer Union senior health policy analyst Lynn Quincy.

Insurers are concerned that the administrative costs associated with the new label will raise the price of the plans themselves.

"The benefits of providing a new summary of coverage document must be balanced against the increased administrative burden and higher costs to consumers and employers," said Robert Zirkelbach, the spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group.

Kim Holland, executive director of state affairs at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, said insurers support people knowing what they are getting, but echoed that concern.

"The concern is we already have a body of law that tells us what we need to have," Holland said before the rule's release.

The six-page label follows the recommendations of a group formed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that included insurance companies, consumer groups and academics.

"At the end of the day, what NAIC recommended wasn't what everybody wanted, but it was as close to a consensus as possible," said Sabrina Corlette, an NAIC consumer representative and Georgetown University research professor.

"You wouldn't be comparing apples to oranges anymore," she said. "So it would make it much easier for families to make those decisions."

Boston is first U.S. airport to test new security technique

Along with luggage scans and removing shoes, getting through the security line in Boston's Logan International Airport may now include a brief conversation with a specially trained agent.

Beginning this week, all passengers in Logan's Terminal A will be peppered with questions by a Behavior Detection Officer just after they have their identification verified at the security checkpoint.

Officers will chat with passengers in what the Transportation Security Administration has dubbed a "casual greeting" conversation.

Based on physical cues or answers to questions during the dialogue, specially trained officers may detect suspicious behavior, said TSA spokesman Greg Soule.

This analysis will help determine if a passenger should go through additional screening at the security checkpoint and identify "potentially high-risk travelers," according to the

TSA.

Soule declined to elaborate on any of the questions or responses that would warrant further action.

Looking nervous and averting eye contact, however, are not the tell-tale signs of deception, said Richard Bloom, an aviation security expert and professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

He, too, declined to give away the cues he believed detection officers will analyze.

Experts often credit Israeli security specialists with doing much of the initial work on behavioral detection, said Bloom.

The expanded behavior detection program now underway at Logan is based on other international and domestic programs, said Soule, and will be tested over the next 60 days.

The TSA will consider the pilot program's results and wait times at security check points in order to determine if and how to expand the program more broadly, Soule said.

In Boston, Terminal A is home to Continental and Delta airlines. It's one of about a half dozen terminals at the airport, said Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella. Logan serves up to 50,000 passengers daily, he said.

Critics have said screening methods like this one could promote discriminatory profiling, but TSA's Soule said it would actually be prevented by having conversations with every single passenger in Terminal A and taking action based solely on reactions and answers.

"This program in no way is profiling passengers by race or ethnicity," he said.

Logan was the first airport to implement an observational screening technique in 2003. In those cases, a trained officer would look for passenger behavior that was suspicious. Then, based on a quick conversation, the officer might administer further security checks.

That program has rolled out to more than 160 airports and resulted in more than 2,000 arrests nationwide, Soule said.

U.S. sees growing losses from extreme weather

The United States has already tied its yearly record for billion-dollar weather disasters and the cumulative tab from floods, tornadoes and heat waves has hit $35 billion, the National Weather Service said on Wednesday.

And it's only August, with the bulk of the hurricane season still ahead.

"I don't think it takes a wizard to predict 2011 is likely to go down as one of the more extreme years for weather in history," National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes told journalists on a conference call.

The agency's parent organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, launched a campaign on Wednesday to better prepare Americans for violent weather.

There have so far been nine separate disasters this year that caused an economic loss of $1 billion or more in the United States, tying the record set in 2008, NOAA said. The most recent was the summer flooding along the Missouri and Souris rivers in the upper Midwest.

The "new reality" is that both the frequency and the cost of extreme weather are rising, making the nation more economically vulnerable and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk, Hayes said.

The number of U.S. natural disasters has tripled in the last 20 years and 2010 was a record breaker with about 250, according to property and casualty reinsurer Munich Reinsurance America.

Average thunderstorm losses have increased five-fold since 1980. For the first half of 2011 there have been $20 billion in thunderstorm losses, up from the previous three-year average of $10 billion, NOAA said.

The rising costs are due partly to demographics, Hayes said. The population is rising and there are more people and more buildings in environmentally vulnerable areas, such as coastal regions.

CLIMATE CHANGE?

Asked if global warming was to blame for the rising frequency of wild weather, Hayes said that was "a research question" and that it would be difficult to link any one severe season to overall climate change.

NOAA's effort to make America "weather-ready" is aimed at producing earlier, more precise warnings and helping people understand what to do to protect themselves, Hayes said.

In the current fiscal climate, it mainly focuses on already-budgeted items such as upgrading the weather radar system and on better coordination among existing agencies.

For example, one program aims to have rainfall forecasters work more closely with the agencies that build and maintain levees and operate flood-control canals.

Other steps include:

-Helping communities stage disaster preparedness drills.

-Dispatching specially trained meteorologists to emergency response centers during disasters such as wildfires.

-Asking behavioral scientists for advice on how to improve the wording of advisories so that the general public understands them, and how to deter risky behavior such as driving onto flooded roads.

-Expanding the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and chatrooms to help spread weather warnings.

NOAA's warning was timed with the advent of what is traditionally the busiest part of the June-through-November Atlantic hurricane season. The United States has not been hit by a hurricane in three years.

"Those are the types of things that lull people to sleep. We want people vigilant," Hayes said.

NOAA has predicted there will be as many as 19 tropical storms this year. So far there have been seven, but none have strengthened into hurricanes. Only one, Tropical Storm Don, came ashore in the United States but it quickly fizzled over the Texas coast without delivering the rain that is badly needed in the parched state.

Democrats hold seats in Wisconsin recall elections

Two Wisconsin Democratic state senators beat back Republican challengers on Tuesday in the last of a series of recall elections triggered by a fight over collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

Both Democrats and Republicans were claiming victory on Tuesday in a series of nine summer recall votes in which Democrats unseated two incumbent Republicans but fell short of winning control of the state legislature.

Democrats had hoped to win a majority in the state senate following a fierce battle with Governor Scott Walker and his Republican allies earlier this year over public workers' union powers that involved mass protests, legislative maneuvering and court challenges.

"This was a political Rorschach test in that anyone can read anything into the result," said Mordecai Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee governmental affairs professor and former Democratic lawmaker. "Politically, it was a draw."

He expected the results would embolden Democrats to try to recall Walker, which would require a half a million signatures just to schedule an election. "By November, we'll know if they're pursuing it seriously or not."

The Democrats who successfully defended their seats on Tuesday, Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin, were among 14 Wisconsin state senators who left the state in an attempt to prevent passage of an anti-union measure earlier this year.

Holperin beat political novice and Tea Party activist Kim Simac by 54 percent to 46 percent, according to WisPolitics.com. Wirch beat Republican lawyer Jonathan Steitz by 58 percent to 42 percent.

Overall in the recall elections, a total of three Democrats and four Republican incumbents kept their seats, while two Republicans were unseated.

CONTROL OF SENATE

Republicans managed to keep control of the state senate -- 17 to 16. But state Democrats point out that one Republican state senator, Dale Schultz, voted against Walker's curbs on public sector unions. They argue that the balance of power actually shifted away from the conservatives.

"The state Senate as now constituted would NOT have approved Walker's extreme, divisive assault on the middle class and working people," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said in a statement.

Brad Courtney, chair of the state's Republican Party, congratulated Simac and Steitz for mounting what he described as well-fought challenges.

"Wisconsin now emerges from this recall election season with a united Republican majority who has beaten off an attack from national unions and special interests and emerged steadfastly committed to carrying forward a bold job creation agenda," Courtney said in a statement.

Holperin told supporters in Rhinelander that he hoped the recall results would signal a change in Wisconsin politics.

"I do hope (these recalls) signal a new era of what I hope is a more moderate approach to public policy in the state, starting with the governor," he added.

Governor Walker fought for the union curbs, which restrict the bargaining rights of public workers and also make them pay more for health care and pensions, saying they were needed to help Wisconsin close a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Democrats cried foul, saying public workers had already agreed to steep benefit cuts. They called the effort union-busting, designed to hobble organized labor -- a major source of Democratic Party financing -- ahead of the 2012 elections.

The fight thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight, igniting massive pro-union protests and political fights that led to the recall efforts against six Republicans who backed the union curbs and three Democrats who opposed them.

Until this summer, there had been only 20 state-level recall elections in U.S. history, and the money poured into the recall campaigns has been something for the record books.

Mike Buelow, research director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, estimates that candidates and outside groups spent as much as $37 million on the recalls.

With the recalls acting as somewhat of a rehearsal for 2012, experts say the spending could be a harbinger of record outlays next year.

Army says improperly tested $2.5 billion body armor is safe

Body armor worth $2.5 billion that the Department of Defense's Inspector General found had been improperly tested poses no hazard to troops, according to the Army.

The Army cut corners and skipped tests altogether on seven body armor contracts, a DoD IG report released August 1 said.

Army spokesman Matthew Hickman said on Wednesday that the report never concluded that safety of soldiers wearing the body armor was at issue.

"I think when you first hear about it you think, holy moley, the Army's providing body armor to soldiers that can't even stop a bullet. And that's just not the case," Hickman said.

"If you read it it says this isn't an issue of safety it's more of an issue of testing procedures -- the report never actually questions the safety of the body armor," he said.

Congress requested the DoD IG's investigation of seven Army contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion dollars and awarded between 2004 and 2006.

"The Army cannot be sure that the appropriate level of protection has been achieved," Deputy Assistant Inspector General Bruce Burton stated.

The results showed that ballistic testing and quality assurance for some 5 million body armor inserts did not have proper controls to ensure the inserts met the contract requirements.

The inserts are part of Interceptor Body Armor (IBA), a system of body armor that consists of an outer vest, ballistic inserts, and other parts that increase area of coverage, according to the DoD IG.

"IBA increases survivability by stopping or slowing bullets and fragments and reducing the number and severity of wounds," the report states.

Problems such as accepting invalid test results or failing to enforce humidity and temperature requirements, critical to troops using body armor in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq, were found with testing on all seven contracts.

But the DoD IG also noted that it could not conclude that the body armor's performance had been negatively impacted.

"Because we did not conduct any additional testing, we could not conclude that ballistic performance was adversely affected by inadequate testing and quality assurance," the report said.

The Army had already implemented recommended testing changes by the time the report was published, according to Hickman.

"The testing procedures are an ever-growing process, when the army identifies better ways to test body armor, changes are made," he said.

The report is the fourth in a series issued after Democratic Congressman Louise Slaughter of New York directly requested investigation into the Army's policy on body armor.

In 2008 the DoD IG concluded 13 body armor contracts did not have proper documentation. In response, the Army recalled 100 percent of the body armor identified by the DoD IG to put it through more rigorous testing, said Hickman.

Of the recalled equipment, 100 percent has passed with "maximum protection rates," he said.

The Army has spent roughly $10 million in recent years to upgrade existing facilities for research, development and testing for body armor, according to the DoD IG.

Six of the 13 body armor contracts were addressed in a DoD IG report in January, and the August report addresses the remaining seven.

Police find stolen tombstones at California home

Deputies searching a suspected California meth house found some two dozen granite tombstones stolen from local cemeteries in the backyard, a San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

The grave markers found at the home in the Inland Empire community of Loma Linda on Tuesday all had custom inscriptions and had apparently been ripped from the ground, spokeswoman Jodi Miller said.

"We're all trying to figure out why," Miller said. "There's no monetary value to these. They are made out of stone, so they are very, very heavy."

Several of the tombstones were traced to cemeteries in the nearby community of Colton, and family members of deceased individuals buried there have contacted the sheriff's department, she said.

Miller said a few of the gravestones had small amounts of metal or brass attached but there was no indication the thieves were stealing them for those materials.

Also discovered at the home were two firearms and evidence that its residents were selling methamphetamine, Miller said.

A man found at the house, 50-year-old John Bleuer, was arrested on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance while armed and sales of a controlled substance, she said. Deputies were still seeking three other suspects.

Miller said it was not yet clear how the tombstones, which have been valued at about $48,000, were removed from the ground or transported to the home in Loma Linda, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles.