Thursday, September 17, 2009 LONDON: The number of people out of work in the UK has risen to its highest level in 14 years, official figures have shown.Unemployment increased by 210,000 to 2.47m in the three months to July, taking the jobless rate to 7.9%, the Office for National Statistics said. Claims for unemployment benefit in August grew by 24,400 from July to 1.61m, the highest since May 1997. And one in five people aged between 16 and 24 is now looking for work, the highest on record, the data showed. The number of jobless in this age group rose from 928,000 to 947,000 - edging closer to the landmark of one million and adding to fears of a new "lost generation" of young people. Work and Pensions Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the government was targeting investment to help young people find jobs. "Young people are always more heavily affected by recession because, it's the easiest thing for employers to do, to put back recruitment for a year," she told media. "That's why you've got to help young people get that first step on the ladder and that's why a lot of our extra investment is all in getting those young people into those first jobs, that first bit of training or work experience, to get them started." Shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May said that the levels of youth unemployment were "disturbing", and that there was an urgent need to "tackle this culture of worklessness".
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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