Greek cabbies suspend 19-day strike

Greek cab drivers halted a 19-day strike Friday after the government agreed to temporarily limit the number of new taxi licenses.

After several hours of negotiations, taxi owners and drivers voted to suspend the strike against a government deregulation plan until Sept. 5, Ekathimerini.com reported.

The vote came after cabbies won assurances Thursday from regional governors that no additional taxi licenses would be issued until the government submits a draft law near the end of August.

But cabbies, who want the number of licenses to be limited, based on cities' populations, said they could stage more strikes if they are not satisfied with the law.

Ekathimerini.com reported that Transport Minister Yiannis Ragousis is expected to call for deregulation of the industry, opening it to competition in response to demands from Greece's foreign creditors.

Ragousis said none of the 4,600 applications for new licenses would be approved before the legislation is made public.

The strike came in the heart of tourist season, and cabbies, facing the loss of income, had already returned to work on the Aegean islands of Lesvos, Myconos, Rhodes, Kos and Santorini, Ekathimerini.com said.

Belarus activist's arrest criticized

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek has expressed "great concern" about the arrest of a prominent human rights activist in Belarus.

Ales Belyatsky, head of the human rights group Vesna, was arrested Thursday, his apartment and office were raided and a computer and documents seized, said Anastasia Loiko, a Vesna activist, RIA Novosti reported.

Belyatsky, accused of evading taxes, faces a maximum seven-year sentence.

Buzek, a former prime minister of Poland, expressed "great concern" about the arrest and called Belyatsky and others "unjustly detained political prisoners."

"Dragging people off the streets takes us back to the dark Communist past that we do not want repeated ever again," Buzek said in a statement. "This is unacceptable on our continent in the 21st century.

"I urge the Belarusian authorities to release Ales Belyatsky and the other unjustly detained political prisoners. Such repressive actions will only bring people closer together, uniting them to the final goal -- that of freedom and liberty."

Hundreds of people were arrested in July in Belarus, a former Soviet Republic, for their participation in protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's authoritarian rule. Some demonstrators were beaten, reports said.

Last gay concentration camp survivor dies

Rudolf Brazda, who served 32 months in Buchenwald concentration camp for homosexuality and was the last survivor of Nazi persecution of gays, died in France.

He was 98.

Brazda had served two prison sentences for "debauchery between men" and was among 10,000 people the Nazis interned for homosexuality, Radio France Internationale reported.

The Nazis, who sentenced Brazda as a repeat offender, said homosexuality was a disease that threatened the perpetuation of the German nation.

He was forced to wear a pink triangle, as were other gays.

Brazda, a Czech who spoke German, was born in Saxony and was deported to Czechoslovakia after serving his first prison sentence. He was arrested again after Germany annexed the Sudetenland in 1938.

He said he survived Buchenwald because of his friendship with a Communist kapo, a prisoner who worked in administrative positions, and "a bit more chance than others."

Brazda became a French national in 1960 but did not disclose why he had been interned until 2008 at the urging of friends after the unveiling of a memorial to the Nazis' gay victims in Berlin.

He had since spoken at several schools about his imprisonment and campaigned for memorials to homosexuals deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

His body is to be cremated and his ashes placed next to a companion who died in 2003.

Polar bear kills British student in Norway

A British teenager was killed and four of his companions were hurt in a polar bear attack on their camp on a glacier in the Norwegian Svalbard Archipelago.

Horatio Chapple, 17, was participating in an expedition organized by the British Schools Exploration Society, The Independent reported. He was a student at Eton, one of Britain's premier schools.

Those injured included two team leaders and two high school students, officials said. After they were evacuated from the Von Postbreen Glacier, they were flown from Longyearbyen, the principal settlement in the archipelago, to the mainland.

"We got a call via satellite phone from a British group of campers that there had been a polar bear attack and that one person was dead and that others were injured and they needed assistance," said Liv Asta Odegaard, spokeswoman for the Svalbard governor. "There are no roads in the area so we scrambled a helicopter."

Polar bears are common in Svalbard, where local residents carry rifles when they leave settled areas. Attacks are frequent but fatalities are unusual, with only four reported since 1971.

Ilona Wisniewska of the Svalbard tourism board said when bears attack they are usually shot before they have the chance to hurt more than one or two people.

White House names new technology chief

Former Microsoft executive Steven VanRoekel has been named U.S. technology chief, the White House announced.

VanRoekel, 41, becomes chief information officer, succeeding Vivek Kundra, 36, who was the first to take on the IT position when it was created in 2009, a White House release said Friday.

VanRoekel said he would work to introduce new technologies to improve government service as well as focus on cutting costs in an age of austerity.

"The productivity gap between where the private sector has gone over the last two decades and where government has gone is ever-widening," he told

The Washington Post.

Government must increase its spending on new technology, which "can be done in a way that actually saves money, saves resources and everything else," he said.

VanRoekel will oversee an annual spending budget of $80 billion for the U.S. government, the world's largest customer for information technology services and products.

VanRoekel spent 15 years at Microsoft before becoming the managing director of the Federal Communications Commission in 2009.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/08/05/White-House-names-new-technology-chief/UPI-24611312563762/#ixzz1UDsreo3T

Cost of Part D drug plans to decrease

Medicare beneficiaries will see the average price of Part D drug plans drop next year, even as U.S. health costs continue to increase, officials say.

The average Part D plan will cost seniors about $30 a month in 2012, down from $30.76 in 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a release Friday.

"The Affordable Care Act is delivering on its promise of better healthcare for people with Medicare," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.

Under the Part D program, seniors and others on Medicare can join a privately administered, government-subsidized health plan for their drug prescriptions.

The decrease in average costs predicted for 2012 would mark the second time average premiums have gone down since the program started in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Competition among private plans and the growing use of less expensive generic drugs have combined to make the program much less costly than budget analysts originally expected.

Obama offers tax credits for hiring vets

Spurring U.S. companies to hire veterans can help men and women returning from war zones move into routine civilian jobs, President Barack Obama said.

"Today we're saying to our veterans, you fought for us and now we're fighting for you, for the jobs and opportunities that you need to keep your families strong and to keep America competitive in the 21st century," the president said as he unveiled a plan that offers tax credits to companies that hire veterans.

Obama, speaking at the Washington Navy Yard Friday, said the proposal calls for a $4,800 "Returning Heroes" tax credit to companies that hire veterans unemployed for six months or more and a $2,400 tax credit if they hire one without a job for less than six months, a White House release said.

Companies would get a $9,600 "Wounded Warriors" tax credit -- an extension of an existing program -- if they hire a disabled vet who was unemployed for six months or more or $4,800 if the vet was without a job for less than six months, the adviser said.

The administration estimates the cost of the tax credits will be $120 million over two years and will be funded from the existing budget.

Obama also ordered the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments to head up a task force on reforms, including a "reverse boot camp" to help veterans make the transition to civilian careers.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management will be directed to publish a manual showing business managers how they can locate veterans with skills and training that match open positions, CNN reported. And the U.S. Labor Department would unroll an "enhanced career development and job search service package."

Obama challenged private-sector businesses to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans or their spouses during the next two years.

Many economists forecast the civilian unemployment rate would remain at 9.2 percent, as it was in June, with 75,000 to 120,000 in net new jobs created.

The job growth would largely come from the private sector, with government losing about 30,000 jobs, the economists forecast.

The unemployment rate among recent veterans was not included in the forecast, but it was 13.3 percent in June and was expected to increase in the coming months as an expected 10,000 troops return from Afghanistan and 46,000 return from Iraq.

An additional 23,000 troops from Afghanistan are set to return by September 2012.

The unemployment rate among veterans who served since Sept. 11, 2001, was 11.5 percent a year ago, the Labor Department said. In 2008 the rate was 7.3 percent.

Obama's proposal will require congressional approval. The credits would be made available in 2012 and 2013.

The military's existing training program for soldiers re-entering civilian life hasn't succeeded, senior administration officials acknowledged.

One jobless veteran told CBS News it was probably easier fighting in Iraq than searching for a job in the United States.

The White House plans to meet with House and Senate finance committee leaders to craft the tax-credit legislation when lawmakers return to Washington the second week of September.

The program, which would be considered government spending through the tax code, has been proposed at a time when heated debate is expected on finding $1.5 trillion in budget cuts