Finance and Economic

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Construction spending jumped in November as builders spent more on single-family homes, apartments and remodeling projects.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that spending on construction projects rose 1.2 percent in November, following a revised 0.2 percent drop in October. The increase was the third in four months and the largest since a 2.2 percent rise in August.

The November increase pushed spending to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $807.1 billion, still barely half the $1.5 trillion that economists consider healthy. Analysts say it could be four years before construction returns to health levels.

Home construction has begun a gradual rebound and likely added to the nation’s economic growth in 2011. The chief reason is apartments are being built almost twice as fast as two years ago. Renting is the only option for many people who have lost their jobs, their homes or both.

For November, private residential construction increased 2 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted $522.3 billion. It was the fifth consecutive gain.

Single-family construction rose 1.5 percent while multi-family construction including apartments rose 1.3 percent. The category that covers home remodeling rose 9.5 percent.

Nonresidential construction was unchanged at an annual rate of $243.7 billion, Spending on hotels and hospitals rose but those gains were offset by weakness in other areas. Spending on office buildings dropped 1.3 percent and the category that includes shopping centers fell 0.8 percent.

Spending on government projects rose 1.7 percent to an annual rate of $284.9 billion. That followed a 1.8 percent drop in October. State and local construction gained 1.3 percent and federal building activity increased 5.3 percent. But even with those gains, activity in the government sector was down 5.3 percent from a year ago.

The construction industry was hit hard by the housing bust and has had trouble recovering since the recession ended more than two years ago.

Severe budget problems have squeezed state and local governments while the federal government has come under pressure to get control of soaring budget deficits.

Private builders haven’t fared much better. While their spending increased, they have scaled back on construction plans and are working from depressed levels.

Builders in November broke ground on homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000. That was a 9.3 percent jump from October and the fastest pace since April 2010.

Builders should start at least 600,000 homes this year. That’s up from 587,000 last year and 554,000 in 2009 _ the worst year on record. Still, that’s half the number that economists expect in a healthy market.

While construction may be turning around, home sales are still weak. This year will likely end up as the worst for new-home sales in history.

While new homes represent less than one-fifth the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Builders are struggling to compete with weak demand because of still-high unemployment and a glut of homes on the market because of foreclosures and short sales _ where lenders accept less for a house than the mortgage on the home is worth. Those homes are selling for at an average discount of 20 percent, which is lowering neighboring home values.

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The free credit score industry has been booming since the recession as a lot of people hit hard times and want to keep an eye on how the recession has affected their credit standing.

Verizon Wireless was working to get its 4G network back up and running on Wednesday, following a nationwide outage that began in the early morning hours.

Customers across the country, from California to Ohio to Virginia, took to Verizon’s forums to complain that service was knocked out, though gripes were mostly limited to the new 4G LTE data network, which Verizon began to roll out a year ago. Voice calls, texts and 3G data were unaffected, according to the company.

Verizon (, Fortune 500) spokesman Tom Pica confirmed that service returned to normal at around 2 p.m. ET after engineers worked all morning to fix the issue. He did not comment on the cause of the problem.

It was the second nationwide outage in as many weeks for Verizon’s 4G network, and the third since April. That’s a tough pill to swallow for Verizon, which has built its brand on network reliability.

The bad news for Verizon and its customers is that wireless infrastructure experts expect this isn’t the last time the 4G network will go down. Since Verizon was the first company in the world to deploy a 4G LTE network at any great scale, it is dealing with the usual early adopter growing pains.

"Verizon is a pioneer, and it’s suffering the fate that all pioneers face," said Ken Rehbehn, analyst at Yankee Group.

Indeed, each new wave of network technology involves some degree of pain. When the last next-generation network (3G) first deployed, it was brought down by widespread capacity constraints that the carriers had not anticipated. Most notably, AT&T’s (, Fortune 500) 3G network became close to unusable in New York and San Francisco following Apple’s (, Fortune 500) launch of the iPhone 3G in 2008.

4G is a myth (and a confusing mess)

So what’s the trouble with Verizon’s 4G network? Verizon isn’t saying, and it would be very unusual for a network operator to reveal specifics about why it’s having a problem. But experts believe it has to do with the complexities of LTE, which is a much more intricate technology than its predecessors cash advance.

Unlike previous systems that use switches to control traffic, 4G uses "cores," that act like large, centralized command-and-control centers. Switches covered city blocks, but 4G cores are now serving multiple states. If one goes out, entire regions could lose service.

Since it’s a nationwide event, experts believe all the cores may have been affected by a software or hardware issue.

"This is truly indicative of a larger problem," said Robert Laracuente, vice president of business development at Telenetworks in Puerto Rico. "Best case scenario, some routing isn’t programmed as it should be. The worst case scenario is an undetected hardware fault that systemically disrupts the network under certain conditions."

Because this has happened three times now, Laracuente said it would be surprising if Verizon faced a software problem, since the company prides itself on its scrutiny of its engineering. If it is a hardware malfunction, that can be very hard to detect and prevent in the future.

"This is a whole new paradigm of network technology, so I expect that issues will continue to occur," said Akshay Sharma, analyst at Gartner.

Next-generation networks are based end-to-end on Internet Protocol, which routes packets of information over the Internet rather through circuits. That makes 4G about 10 times faster and gives it significantly more capacity for data traffic than 3G, but it also brings a new host of issues to the table.

"IP by its nature is not resilient from day one," Sharma said. "You don’t get resiliency and quality of service for free — you have to engineer that in. That’s a new wrinkle that adds to the challenge."

Verizon’s 4G customers may have to get used to a few bumps as their first-of-its-kind technology gets all the glitches smoothed out. It’s the price pioneers always pay.  

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There will be no storybook ending for Borders. The 40-year-old book seller could start shuttering its 399 remaining stores as early as Friday.

The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based chain, which helped pioneer the big-box bookseller concept, is seeking court approval to sell off its assets after it failed to receive any bids that would keep it in business. The move adds Borders to the list of retailers that have failed to adapt to changing consumers’ shopping habits and survive the economic downturn, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Blockbuster and Linens `N Things.

On Thursday, Borders is expected to ask the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York at a scheduled hearing to allow it to be sold to liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group. If the judge approves the move, liquidation sales could start as soon as Friday; the company could go out of business by the end of September.

Borders’ attempt to stay in business unraveled quickly last week, after a $215 million “white knight” bid by private-equity firm Najafi Cos. dissolved under objections from creditors and lenders. They argued the chain would be worth more if it liquidated immediately.

“We were all working hard toward a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, e-reader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now,” said Borders Group President Mike Edwards in a statement.

Borders liquidation could have far-reaching effects, putting thousands of people out of work at a time of high unemployment, particularly in Michigan where Borders is based. The chain, which has been shrinking in recent years, currently has 10,700 employees.

“We’ll want to look closely from the jobs perspective of people in the state,” said Geralyn Lasher, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Snyder, in a statement.

The loss of Borders stores will deal a blow to malls nationwide, according to real estate sources. Borders stores average about 25,000 square feet __ about half the size of a football field __ and a liquidation could leave large empty spaces across the country.

Borders’ move to close 228 stores while it reorganized in bankruptcy protection already increased the collective vacancy rate of shopping centers that contained a Borders to 9.3 percent from 4.2 percent, estimated Chris Macke, senior real estate strategist at CoStar Group, the nation’s largest provider of real estate data. Macke calculated the liquidation of the rest of the chain could increase the vacancy rate on that same basis to 18.8 percent.

Additionally, Simba Information senior trade analyst Michael Norris predicts the closing could cause sales of electronic books to fall. Borders, for one, entered the electronic book market with Canada’s Kobo Inc. last year. Owners of the Kobo e-reader will still be able use Kobo software to buy and read books. And Kobo officials said users of Borders e-book accounts, which began transitioning to Kobo in June, will be able to access their e-books uninterrupted.

“This industry is going to slowly figure out that a lot of e-book readers still use bookstores all the time to discover what’s new before heading home to buy it for their e-reading device,” he said.

Perhaps a Borders liquidation would hurt the consumer most. Tanya Ellis, 42, of Southfield, Mich., said the closings are “horrible.” She said she and a friend would stop at a nearby Starbucks, then visit the Borders store in Beverly Hills, Mich., and browse for about an hour.

“So where are we going to buy books from? I just got into reading books the last two or three years, and they just keep closing all these bookstores,” she said, adding that electronic readers aren’t an option for her. “It takes all the fun out of it.”

Justin Grant, 31, from Brooklyn, however, was less phased. Although he had just picked up a parenting book to read on his commute home Monday, he said he buys most of the 25 to 30 books he reads a year on Amazon.

“It’s much easier to get them through the mail and delivered to my desk at work,” he said.

It has been a long fall for Borders since Tom and Louis Borders opened their first store in 1971, selling used books in Ann Arbor. At its start, the brothers were mostly interested in offering other bookstores a system they developed for managing inventory.

But in 1973, the store moved to a larger location and shifted its focus to selling new books and expanding, helping pioneer the big-box bookstore concept along with Barnes & Noble Inc. At the time, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton mall chains, with small stores and 20,000 to 50,000 titles, were growing rapidly. The new superstores, by contrast, offered between 100,000 and 200,000 titles, as well as enticements to linger like comfortable chairs and attractive lighting.

Kmart Corp. saw the potential and acquired Borders in 1992, forming a book unit with Waldenbooks. It then spun the bookstores off as a separate company in 1995, the same year Amazon started selling books online.

Borders was slow to adapt to the changing industry and lost book, music and video sales to the Internet and other competition. Sales began to fall, leading to a revolving door of CEOs. By the time Borders’ current CEO, financier Bennett LeBow, came aboard in May 2010 after investing $25 million in the company, bankruptcy was already looking like a strong possibility.

Borders filed for bankruptcy protection in February after being hurt by tough competition from online booksellers and discounters. It hoped to successfully emerge from bankruptcy protection by the fall as a smaller and more profitable company, but pressure from creditors and lenders eventually led the chain to put itself up for sale and finally, seek approval to liquidate.

At its peak, in 2003, Borders operated 1,249 Borders and Waldenbooks, but by the time it filed for bankruptcy protection in February that had fallen to 642 stores and 19,500 employees. Since then, Borders has shuttered more stores and laid off thousands.

Borders says it expects to be able to pay vendors for all expenses incurred during the bankruptcy cases.

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Australia and Japan sparred verbally Tuesday at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission, after Japan called on Australia to better protect its whaling ships from sabotage raids by anti-whaling activists.

Confrontations with activists forced Japan to cut short its annual hunt south of Australia this year. Protesters threw paint, smoke bombs and rancid butter in bottles toward the Japanese whaling ships. They also got a rope entangled in the propeller on a harpoon vessel, causing it to slow down.

Australia rebuffed Japan’s request, with Environment Minister Tony Burke saying that while Australia would abide by the principles of safety at sea and international maritime law, his country “simply can’t agree” to providing more protection to Japanese ships than other vessels operating in the area.

Japanese whalers regularly hunt in Antarctic waters south of Australia, a feeding ground for 80 percent of the world’s whales, and the commission has no enforcement powers to stop them. Japan insists the hunt is for scientific research, something anti-whaling nations dispute.

“This so-called scientific whaling lacks any scientific argument behind it,” Burke said. “What’s going on there is commercial whaling. Australia is opposed to commercial whaling.”

Australia has launched a complaint against Japanese whaling at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the U.N.’s highest court.

Commercial whaling is banned by a 1986 moratorium. Talks on allowing limited commercial whaling broke down last year, and no breakthroughs are expected at IWC talks in Jersey.

Britain has proposed reforms to make the commission more transparent and effective, including by forcing governments to pay their membership fees by bank transfers, which can be easily traced, instead of cash or checks.

The move comes in the wake of allegations last year that Japan has been using aid money and personal favors to buy votes, which Japan denies.

“I still hear that people are paying their dues in cash. I think that’s unacceptable … and leaves an organization open to accusations,” British Fisheries minister Richard Benyon said. “These may be perceptions not reality, but it’s something this organization has to tackle.”

The British proposal was held up by procedural issues Tuesday and will be re-tabled Wednesday.

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Greece was pulled back from impending default Saturday, when eurozone finance ministers signed off on a vital loan installment. But the country’s international creditors are showing more concern over whether it can service its debt in the long run.

Athens will get a euro12 billion ($17.39 billion) tranche of its existing euro110 billion rescue package by July 15, in time to meet several bond repayment deadlines this month and next, the finance ministers of the 17 countries that share the euro said in a statement Saturday evening. The eurozone and the International Monetary Fund will also continue to prop up Greece’s struggling economy in the coming years, with a second package of aid loans to be finalized by September.

While the renewed commitments save Greece from immediate collapse, even its international creditors _ long the biggest optimists on the country’s prospects _ are warning that getting down a debt of 160 percent of economic output will be a difficult balancing act.

“The Greek government debt will remain for many years at a high level and, therefore, subject to possible adverse developments that cannot be predicted,” the European Commission, the EU’s executive and one of the three institutions in charge of Greece’s bailout, said in a report published Saturday.

Especially lower than expected economic growth “would put the debt trajectory on a clearly unsustainable upward path,” the commission said.

In an illustration showing several scenario’s for Greece’s debt load, growth of just 1 percentage point below expectations would leave Greece’s debt around 170 percent of gross domestic product past 2020, with the graph pointing firmly upward.

The report, the basis for the ministers’ decision to release the July aid installment and prepare a new bailout, is the most pessimistic assessment from the commission yet. Private analysts and economists have long questioned the sustainability of Greece’s debt. However, the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF have so far, at least publicly, upheld their belief that Greece’s situation is manageable.

The Commission still maintains that it is “not unrealistic to assume” that Greece can cut its deficits to the targets set out in its bailout program, and thereby slowly chip away at its debt. But the report puts a sizable question mark over the country’s ability _ and willingness _ to implement the reforms its creditors say are necessary to get the economy growing again.

“Solvency depends on the political and social conditions which allow or not the implementation of the required policies,” the report cautions.

The warning has a clear ring to it, following weeks of sometimes dramatic back and forth between Greek authorities and the country’s international creditors, which culminated earlier this week in the narrow passage of unpopular new austerity measures through parliament amid violent demonstrations in Athens.

“Given the length, magnitude and nature of required reforms, political and social consensus remains a prerequisite for success,” the Commission said in its report, repeating calls from European leaders on Greece’s opposition to start supporting the bailout program.

For the first time, the Commission’s report also contains a section on debt restructuring _ including a scenario for a 40 percent haircut, a forced reduction in the value of Greek bonds.

The EU has so far ruled out any haircuts on bonds, and in its report the Commission maintains that the negative consequences of a restructuring would outweigh any gains from debt restructuring.

A 40 percent haircut would devastate Greek banks, wiping out the capital cushions and triggering massive deposit flight, the Commission warns. Restructuring Greece’s debt also risks “creating a permanent shift in investor sentiment and lead to self-fulfilling prophecies for other vulnerable Member States,” _ shorthand for already bailed out Ireland and Portugal, as well as weak states like Spain or Italy.

The report highlights that Greece’s destiny will likely be decided by what happens within the country as well as by outside conditions it has little influence over, such as global economic growth that would provide it with a better market for exports.

Those factors are likely to overshadow any decisions on a second bailout package, which merely buys Greece more time, and the exact nature of private-sector involvement, the main open issue in the debates on a new bailout.

Eurozone finance ministries are currently trying to come up with a way of getting banks and other private creditors to contribute to a new aid program. Since a forced restructuring _ or any move that would trigger a negative reaction from rating agencies _ has been ruled out, banks will likely commit to reinvesting some of the money they get back when their existing Greek bonds expire in new debt at somewhat lower interest rates.

However, several analysts have already pointed out that such a scheme would be very costly for Greece and will not reduce its overall debt load.

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NATO said Saturday it has begun ramping up its airstrikes on military targets in the western part of Libya, where rebel forces claim a string of advances through territory still largely under Moammar Gadhafi’s control.

In a boost for Gadhafi, meanwhile, the African Union called on member states to disregard an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against the Libyan leader. That could enable Gadhafi to travel freely on the continent. The warrant was issued for his alleged role in a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters earlier this year.

Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim praised the AU’s decision, saying “we salute their courage.” He said Gadhafi had no immediate plans to leave the country, however.

“We are at war with the mightiest armies in the world, and the safety of the leader is a must for us. So we need to keep him safe to lead us through this difficult time,” he said.

Libya welcomed a road map for dialogue drafted by the AU that outlines plans for negotiations between the government and rebels, Moussa said.

He confirmed that Gadhafi would not be involved in the proposed talks, and expressed hope that a cease-fire could be reached “in the next few days, or weeks at most.”

Gadhafi’s regime is determined to stand firm against opposition fighters moving from southern and eastern fronts toward the capital, Tripoli. The rebels have largely solidified control over the eastern third of Libya but have struggled to push out of pockets they hold in the west.

NATO’s comments about its latest airstrikes suggest the alliance is hoping to tip the balance further in the rebels’ favor despite threats by Gadhafi to carry out attacks in Europe unless the airstrikes stop.

The coalition said it has destroyed more than 50 military targets in the west this week. It says it is targeting government forces in cities and along “major lines of communication.”

“We are engaging all military assets that are being used to indiscriminately target the civilian population throughout Libya,” Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, commander of NATO’s Libya mission, said in the statement sent Saturday but dated the previous day.

NATO said more than 1.8 million civilians are at risk from a buildup of forces loyal to Gadhafi in western cities along the coast and in the Nafusa mountain range southwest of the capital.

Rebels control several Nafusa mountain towns and the vital port city of Misrata. The rest of western Libya, including the heavily protected capital Tripoli, remain under Gadhafi’s control payday loans.

Col. Ahmed Bani, a rebel spokesman, said Saturday that rebel fighters have pulled back in some parts of the west, in what he described as a “strategic retreat,” but said they would go on the offensive again in the coming days. Asked about the NATO attacks in the area, he said they have been helpful to the rebels, but did not elaborate.

Bani told a news conference in the rebel-controlled eastern city of Benghazi that the rebels are not sending reinforcements to the west and that the fighters there don’t need more weapons.

A coalition including France, Britain and the United States began striking Gadhafi’s forces under a United Nations resolution to protect civilians on March 19, giving the rebels air support. NATO assumed control of the air campaign over Libya on March 31. It is joined by a number of Arab allies.

In recent days, NATO said it has repeatedly hit Tripoli and Gharyan, a city at the eastern gateway to the Nafusa mountains and on a major road to capital. Gharyan sits about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Tripoli.

It also claims to have struck a network of tunnels storing military equipment about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of the capital.

NATO said in a separate statement it struck two armed vehicles Friday near Bir al-Ghanam, a town rebels from the mountains have been trying to take along a road leading toward the capital.

Gadhafi threatened Friday to target European “homes, offices, families” unless NATO halts its bombing campaign. His defiant audio address was played to thousands of supporters packed into Tripoli’s main square during on of the biggest pro-government rallies since the airstrikes began.

It’s not clear whether Gadhafi can make good on the threats.

In the past, the Libyan leader supported various militant groups, including the IRA and several Palestinian factions, while Libyan agents were blamed for attacks in Europe, including a Berlin disco bombing in 1986 and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, mostly Americans. Libya later acknowledged responsibility for Lockerbie.

In recent years, however, Gadhafi was believed to have severed his ties with extremist groups when he moved to reconcile with Europe and the United States.

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The first thing Silvia Huelves was told when she started studying architecture was that she should take up Chinese or Japanese _ she was not going to build anything in Spain any time soon.

It wasn’t criticism of her skills but a reflection on the state of the country, where the jobless rate among 16-24-year-olds is a staggering 45 percent and a construction sector slump caused nearly two years of recession.

Now the young people are protesting, roughing it out in improvised camps in the hearts of Spain’s main cities to bring attention to their plight. While they’re angry about lots of things, bleak job prospects and having to live with Mom and Dad well into adulthood are high on the list.

Huelves, a 19-year-old with a big smile, said her professors make no secret of the dire state of things.

“You go in and the first thing they say is ‘forget about it, you are never going to build buildings,’” she said. “They say architecture is really cool and well-rounded and useful for a lot of things, but you are not going to build buildings.”

Construction is no doubt the hardest hit sector in Spain’s battered economy as it tries to recover from a burst real estate bubble. But in almost any line of work Spain’s young people face a dark outlook. The jobless rate in the under-25 age bracket makes the national unemployment rate of 21.3 percent seem mild by comparison. Widen the bracket to the age of 29 and the rate is still a stunning 35 percent.

To voice their discontent, young people have been coordinating over the past two weeks via social media like Twitter and Facebook to set up huge camps in city centers. The camp in Madrid features makeshift clinics and libraries with grungy sofas as well as stands with donated apples and bananas, juice and baguette sandwiches.

“More than anything, this is about being fed up. We are absolutely fed up,” said Maria Martinez, 32, sitting in a lounge chair under blue sheeting protecting the Madrid camp from a blazing midday sun.

Martinez considers herself relatively lucky because she has been jobless for only about two months and has worked since age 17, mainly in factories and offices. But it was always for low wages, sometimes with no benefits and always getting part of her pay under the table.

Martinez rattled off other gripes _ conservative politicians who watched Spain’s real estate market heat up and took credit as GDP rose nicely, banks that helped and profited by providing streams of easy credit, and the current Socialist government that presided over the bubble’s loud pop in 2008, with its disastrous impact on the country.

“I am the first one to acknowledge we have reacted late and we have been asleep for a long time,” Martinez said.

Another jobless protester, Pablo Luna, 27, has a degree in history, just finished a Masters in journalism and says he has zero prospects for work. He said it is virtually unheard of for people to complete their studies and go right into work in their field.

“Of the people I know, no one has done it,” said Luna, an articulate man with a thick, dark, wild pony tail and the rich voice of a radio announcer. “I should be out looking for a job. But my heart tells me I should be here now.”

Much of the problem lies with rigid rules governing Spain’s labor market, in particular the high cost of laying off established, older and less productive workers under legislation that goes back 30 years, said Gayle Allard, a labor market expert at IE Business School in Madrid.

With employers wary of giving new hires open-ended contracts with full benefits, younger workers often end up with temporary ones, sometimes lasting just a few months. In the good days, companies would roll those contracts over, but since recession hit many have just let them run out.

This makes the Spanish jobless rate highly vulnerable to swings in the economy, as nearly a third of all workers have temporary contracts. The jobless rate has more than doubled in about three years, with young people who often earn just euro1,000 ($1,400) a month taking a particularly hard hit.

In the 27 countries of the European Union, as of March of this year the jobless rate for under-25’s averaged about 21 percent, less than half of Spain’s, according to the statistical agency Eurostat. Even the rate in bailed-out Greece is lower, at 36 percent.

Last year the Spanish government passed labor market reforms designed to make it cheaper and easier for businesses to lay off workers and more expensive to use temporary contracts. The idea was to encourage hiring and make employment more stable.

But Allard says the changes are timid and that today’s young Spaniards _ even with foreign language and computer skills _ are still effectively shut out of the labor market.

The effects go beyond protests and rallies to shape the structure of the country’s society.

Spain has one of Europe’s lowest birth rates _ 1.4 children per woman of childbearing age _ in part because it takes so long for young people to get out of their parents’ house, establish a career and start families.

Until that happens, life for many young Spaniards is a sort of limbo.

“They cannot become productive. They cannot use their skills. They cannot save. They cannot invest in housing. They are not accumulating wealth that they can leave off in the future,” said Allard, an American who has lived in Spain for 25 years.

“These kids are paying our pensions and they are not going to have been able to save anything. It is really scary,” Allard said.

Arcadi Oliveres, an applied economist at Autonomous University in Barcelona, said that compared with other European countries Spain offers comparatively little vocational training as an early alternative to going to jam-packed universities.

The result is that Spain churns out legions of university-trained scientists _ who end up unemployed and eventually work in vocational jobs anyway, Oliveres said.

“Unlike a structure that is pyramid-shaped in other countries, here there is a real inflation of university graduates,” Oliveres said. “As a labor market model it is a bit anomalous.”

At the medical school in Madrid Complutense University, 21-year-old Maria Perez is two weeks away from graduating with a degree in podology and she is far from thrilled. Of her immediate circle of 20 friends and close acquaintances, she says three have jobs.

“There is not a lot of reason to celebrate because you know you are going to keep living with your parents and end up working in a grocery store,” she said.

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Israel has agreed to transfer to the Palestinians cash it withheld after the rival Palestinian factions signed a unity pact.

Israel collects tax funds and customs fees from Palestinians who work in Israel on the Palestinians’ behalf. It is supposed to transfer the money to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

But it held up the transfer this month, saying it feared money would reach militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority signed a unity deal with the Iranian-backed Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis.

Israel had come under heavy international pressure to release the funds.

The Finance Ministry said Monday the exact sum transferred would be determined in a meeting with Palestinian officials.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

JERUSALEM (AP) _ The military says Israel’s frontiers are quiet after a violent day of border breaches, though security forces remain on alert for more violence.

Police, meanwhile, say they arrested an unarmed man from Syria who tried to make his way out of the Golan Heights into Israel.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says the man was stopped in a taxi driven by a Palestinian from east Jerusalem at the exit of the Golan village of Majdal Shams.

Rosenfeld says police carried out house-to-house searches in Majdal Shams all night looking for some of the hundreds of people from Syria who burst through a border fence into the village Sunday.

Other Arab protesters marched on Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Gaza.

The protests sparked clashes that killed at least 15 people.

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Workers stopped a highly radioactive leak into the Pacific off Japan’s flooded nuclear complex Wednesday, but with the plant far from stabilized, engineers prepared an injection of nitrogen to deter any new hydrogen explosions.

Nitrogen can prevent highly combustible hydrogen from exploding _ as it did three times at the compound in the early days of the crisis, set in motion March 11 when cooling systems were crippled by Japan’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami.

Nuclear officials said there was no immediate threat of more explosions, and but the nitrogen plans were an indication of the serious remaining challenges in stabilizing reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and halting the coastal radiation leaks that have cast a shadow on northeastern Japanese fisheries.

Nitrogen normally is present inside the containment that surrounds the reactor core. Technicians will start pumping more in as early as Wednesday evening, said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for the plant operator. They will start with Unit 1, where pressure and temperatures are highest.

“The nitrogen injection is being considered a precaution,” said spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Workers have suffered near-daily setbacks in their race to cool the plant’s reactors since they were slammed by the tsunami, which also destroyed hundreds of miles of coastline and killed as many as 25,000 people.

But there was a rare bit of good news Wednesday when workers finally halted a leak of highly contaminated water into the ocean that had raised concerns about the safety of seafood.

Officials had said the runoff would quickly dissipate in the vast Pacific, but the mere suggestion that fish from the country that gave the world sushi could be at any risk stirred worries throughout the fishing industry.

In the coastal town of Ofunato, Takeyoshi Chiba, who runs the town’s wholesale market, is warily watching the developments at the plant, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) down the coast.

“There is a chance that the water from Fukushima will come here,” he said, explaining that fishermen in the area still haven’t managed to get out to sea again, after the tsunami destroyed nearly all of their boats pay day loan lenders. “If Tokyo decides to ban purchases from here, we’re out of business.”

After radiation in waters near the plant was measured at several million times the legal limit and elevated levels were found in some fish, the government on Monday set its first standard on acceptable levels of radiation in seafood.

“Right now, just because the leak has stopped, we are not relieved yet,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “We are checking whether the leak has completely stopped, or whether there may be other leaks.”

Stemming the leak of highly radioactive water is progress because it limits the contamination of the surrounding environment, but now workers must turn their focus to their primary goal: cooling the reactors and bringing them under control.

That mission has been hampered by highly contaminated water that is pooling throughout the plant, making it difficult or impossible to access some areas.

The pools have been an unavoidable side-effect of a makeshift cooling method: pumping water into the reactors and letting it gush out wherever it can. That messy process will continue until they can restore normal cooling systems _ which recycle water, rather than spitting it out.

Getting rid of that pooling water has vexed TEPCO; it has ordered a floating storage facility and is also requesting a vessel that decontaminates water from Russia.

With those solutions not available for some time, the utility decided to take a drastic measure Monday: pumping 3 million gallons of less contaminated water into the sea to make room in a warehouse for the more highly radioactive water.

The warehouse is almost empty, and officials planned to check it thoroughly for any cracks before starting to fill it up again. The building is not meant to hold water, but it also hasn’t leaked yet, so engineers decided it could make a safe receptacle.

“We must carefully check and repair the facility to make the water will not leak out and affect the environment,” Nishiyama said.

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