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and benefits and raise taxes aggressively to bring public debt under control. That includes not only the most financially troubled governments, like Greece, but also the traditionally more stable ones, like France and Britain.
• The result has been a dramatic drop in living standards in many nations that leaders have accepted as collateral for policies they claim are unavoidable. With no end in sight to the economic misery, workers were trying to take a stand on Wednesday.
• "Of course it's a political strike, against the policies of a suicidal and anti-social government," said Igancio Fernandez Toxo, a CCOO Spanish union leader, as the general strike spread through Spain where a 25 percent unemployment rate has put the country at the heart of the EU social unrest.
• A Spanish Interior Ministry official says 32 people have been arrested and 15 people treated for minor injuries in disturbances.
• ___

• BEIJING (AP) -- President Hu Jintao stepped aside as ruling party leader Wednesday to clear the way for Vice President Xi Jinping to take China's helm as part of only the second orderly transfer of power in 63 years of communist rule.
• Hu and senior leaders mostly in their late 60s are handing over power to the leader-in-waiting Xi and other colleagues in their late 50s over the next several months. The new leadership faces daunting challenges including slowing growth in the world's No. 2 economy, rising unrest among increasing assertive citizens and delicate relations with neighboring countries.
• In keeping with the widely anticipated succession plans, Hu was not re-elected a member of the party's Central Committee on the final day of a pivotal party congress, showing that he's no longer in the leadership, said two delegates, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official list of members had not yet been released.
• It was still unclear whether Hu would relinquish his most powerful remaining position as head of the commission that oversees the military, or hold onto it for a transitional period as previous retiring leaders have done.
• Delegates said they cheered when the announced results of secret balloting showed that Xi had been unanimously chosen for the committee, a step toward being named to the topmost panel, the Politburo Standing Committee, and becoming party leader as expected on Thursday. Li Keqiang, designated as the next premier,

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