Thousands in Spain revive May 15 protests to rail against cuts, government

Chanting "they don't represent us," tens of thousands in Madrid railed early Sunday against Spain's government and austerity cuts -- venting their anger on the first anniversary of the so-called May 15 protest movement.

Many ignored a government deadline to disperse by Saturday night from the central Puerta del Sol plaza, prompting police to clear the square by 5 a.m. on Sunday (11 p.m. on Saturday ET), the interior ministry said.

About 30,000 attended the Madrid protest, and 18 were detained for resisting arrest or disorderly conduct, the ministry said.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, demonstrators were a loud and vibrant presence in the square -- as a large number of police, stationed at a nearby government building and along side streets, looked on and let them be.

Throngs of like-minded demonstrators also gathered over the weekend in Barcelona and about 80 other cities around Spain.

Barcelona saw about 22,000 protesters, while Valencia had 8,000 and Seville had 2,000, authorities said. All the demonstrations were cleared by Sunday morning, the interior ministry said.

The coordinated events marked the return of the "indignados" -- or the outraged, as the protesters became known -- who led Europe's first serious and significant grassroots movement against austerity and government budget cuts.

Similar demonstrations decrying governments' attempts to get their budgets in order, sometimes by slashing public funding, later emerged elsewhere around Europe.

In Madrid this weekend, marchers from the north, south, east and west descended on Puerta del Sol plaza on Saturday evening.

For hours, demonstrators shouted, jumped, sang and waved white handkerchiefs. Their most dramatic moment, though, may have been their quietest: when they held their hands aloft, silently, in a "silent shout" before erupting in cheers.

The crowd is expected to return. The government has approved three more days of protests in Madrid, meaning similar scenes could play out into the middle of the week.

The number of demonstrators in Madrid over the weekend appeared to be slightly fewer than those who had gathered in the same spot -- in what's known as ground zero of the movement -- a year earlier.

Back then, protesters encamped in Madrid and other cities made their voices heard. The tens of thousands of people who turned out in the initial days grew to an estimated 6 million protesters over the following months, in a nation of 46 million people.

Since then, Occupy camps around the world have come and gone.

The new protests organized by the May 15 movement are different in at least one key respect: a new conservative government is now in control, having taken over in December.

Spain's economic crisis also has worsened since last year. The nation has slipped back into a recession, the unemployment rate has risen to 24% overall and more than 50% for those under age 25, and the government has enacted billions of dollars in austerity cuts, along with some tax hikes, to reduce the budget deficit.

"We are really tired of this situation," said Madrid protester Paola Alvarado, a purchasing agent. "And the new government is the same. They steal our money and give it to the banks."

Spain's austerity protests have been largely peaceful to date, with only occasional clashes between protesters and police, and some arrests in cities like Barcelona and Valencia.

And prior the latest protests, the new government -- which has vowed to maintain order and prevent a repetition of encampments in Madrid and beyond -- urged police commanders to use "common sense" as to how they dealt with the latest round of public dissent.

In recent months, Spanish trade unions, traditionally the protest leaders, have been at the forefront of demonstrations against the austerity cuts and labor market reforms, with the May 15 movement barely visible.

"Maybe the most important thing is it awakened a consciousness, beyond concrete changes, to make historic change possible," said Jon Aguirre Such, who was a movement spokesman a year ago but now spends more time on his architectural cooperative for urban planning.

"I think everyone who took part in the May 15 movement made history. They can take away from us many things, but not our memory and our dream," Aguirre said.

The original May 15 movement is credited with helping stop dozens of housing evictions. Activists pressured bank and court officials to delay or stop foreclosures on delinquent mortgages.

But Ignacio Urquiza, a sociologist who has studied the movement for the left-leaning Fundacion Alternativas, said there has been little big-picture change as to government policies and operations.

"The demonstrations didn't do more than expose -- for a brief time -- some issues. But Spain's economic crisis and political system have not changed. They are the same as last year," he said.

Source: CNN News

China's exports and imports see slower growth

Exports rose by 4.9% in April from a year earlier, down from the 8.9% annual growth seen in the previous month, a sign that global demand may be slowing.

Meanwhile, imports rose just 0.3% on the year, down from 5.3% in March, indicating a fall in domestic demand.

China has been trying to boost domestic consumption to rebalance its growth.

"It is quite a revealing number. What we are seeing in China at the moment is an economy that is very much exposed to the global volatility," Alistair Thornton of IHS Global Insight in Beijing told the BBC.

"It is clear that the situation in Europe is dragging on China's export performance, and in turn on its overall growth."

Policy easing?

China's robust economic growth in the past few years was accompanied by a sharp rise in inflation and a surge in property prices.

As a result, Beijing introduced various measures, including curbs on lending, to try to rein in consumer and property price growth.

While it has since eased some of those policies, analysts said the effects of the tightening were still being felt.

"China's economy is still to bounce back from the cumulative effect of the monetary tightening last year which is impacting domestic demand," said Mr Thornton of IHS Global Insight.

China's central bank has reduced the amount of money banks must hold in reserve twice in the past few months in a bid to increase lending. The hope is that more easily available credit will spur investment and boost demand.

However, some analysts said that the government needed to ease its policies even further.

"There is weakness in domestic demand and that should be a wake-up [call] to policy makers to do more to stimulate domestic demand," said Dariusz Kowalczyk of Credit Agricole-CIB.

"Domestic demand is weak and that means we could see gross domestic product growth start to slow."

'Plenty of weakness'

Over the past few years China has relied heavily on the success of its manufacturing sector and exports to boost its economic growth.

However, economic problems in the key US and eurozone markets have dented demand and hurt growth.

While there had been hopes of an economic recovery in those markets, recent data and developments have suggested that the recovery may take much longer.

In the eurozone, the region's debt crisis fears have re-emerged after voters in France and Greece backed politicians who are opposed to state spending cuts.

In the US, jobs growth, which is seen as key to a recovery in the world's biggest economy, slowed in April.

China's policymakers have also found it tough to boost domestic demand enough to offset lower growth in exports.

Given these issues, analysts say the recovery in China's trade is likely to be a very slow one.

"We do expect things to improve. However, it is not going to be a sharp V-shaped recovery but a slow and volatile one amid plenty of weakness in both the domestic and global economy," said IHS Global Insight's Mr Thornton. 

Source: BBC News

US adds 115,000 jobs in April, fewer than expected

However, the unemployment rate fell slightly to 8.1% from 8.2% in March, the Labor Department said.

Employment has been rising for the past eight months, but the jobless rate has been stuck above 8% since early 2009.

The weak report pushed US and European shares lower, with the Dow Jones index falling 168 points to 13,038.

Both the Nasdaq and the Standard & Poor's 500 had their worst week of the year, while markets in London, Paris and Frankfurt closed almost 2% lower.

Meanwhile, the oil price continued to fall, with US light crude dipping below $100 a barrel on concerns about the strength of the world's largest economy.

President Barack Obama said he would urge Congress next week to implement "common sense ideas" to accelerate job growth.

Speaking after the data was released, he said: "We've got to do more if we're going to recover all the jobs lost in the recession."

Andrea Saul, a spokesperson for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said: "President Obama has broken countless promises during his time in office - but none more important than his promise to help create jobs and get our economy moving again".'Bad sentiment'The stubbornly high unemployment rate is seen as a drag on economic growth in the US.

Jobs were created in the business services, retail and healthcare sectors in April, but were lost in transport.

The Labor Department said the number of long-term unemployed was "little changed at 5.1 million".

The unemployment rate hit a three-year low, but part of the reason for the fall was a drop in the number of people looking for work, which reduced the size of the workforce.

"The drop in the unemployment rate was actually an unhealthy drop - you had less people looking for work, which shows a bad

sentiment," said Ron Florence at Wells Fargo Private Bank.

'Sluggish growth'

The US saw two consecutive months of robust jobs growth in January and February, with increases of well over 200,000 jobs in both months.

But the past two months have seen a sharp fall in job creation, with 154,000 jobs added in March, a figure revised up from 120,000.

Analysts had expected a rise in April.

"We're still growing just gradually," said Nigel Gault at IHS Global Insight in Massachusetts.

"Hiring is coming back into line with what you would expect with sluggish growth."

Last week, official figures showed that US economic growth slowed to an annualised rate of 2.2% in the first three months of the year, down from 3% in the final quarter of last year.

The Commerce Department said a cut-back in business investment was the key reason for the slowdown in growth.

Source: BBC News

BP profits slip in first quarter

It made $4.9bn (£3bn) in replacement cost profit - profit stripping out the effect of oil and other price movements - for the first three months of this year compared with $5.6bn a year ago.

BP is shrinking in size after being forced to sell fields after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

It has so far paid $16.6bn into a trust fund and expects to meet its target of $20bn a year earlier than planned.

The blast at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig at the Macondo well killed 11 workers and created the worst offshore spill in US history.

Production falls

The group chief executive, Bob Dudley, said the results were encouraging: "We have made a good start against our strategic priorities for 2012."

He added that the company's continuing divestment programme now totalled $23bn.

BP said oil and gas production, excluding its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, was down 6% to 2.45 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The oil price was higher for this quarter than it was last year. Brent crude prices averaged $118.60 a barrel last time, compared with $105.43 in the same period of 2011.

Keith Bowman at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers said the results were mixed.

"Like rivals Exxon and Chevron, BP has failed to take advantage of the higher oil price. For BP, the Gulf of Mexico accident continues to overhang, with asset sales impacting production," he said.

"On the upside, planned asset sales are 60% complete, new exploration projects continue to be pursued, while the costs, at least for now, for the Macondo accident are reducing. "

The company said there had been tough conditions in its downstream unit, which sells fuels, lubricants and fertilizer.

With regard to the Deepwater Horizon blast, BP said it had paid a total of $8.3bn in individual, business and government claims, advances and other payments.

It added that the total charge in respect of the Gulf of Mexico spill had reached $37.2bn at the end of the first quarter.

The company has not admitted liability and still faces claims from the US and state governments, and drilling firms.

Source: BBC News