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The leaders of Germany and Greece met in Berlin on Tuesday, buoying stock markets around the world with hopes they were finally preparing a comprehensive solution to the European debt crisis.

Greece must receive an euro8 billion ($11 billion) rescue loan before mid-October to stave off bankruptcy, a collapse that would send shock waves through financial markets in Europe and the world. But creditors have demanded more efforts to raise revenue.

In response, Greek lawmakers approved a controversial new property tax Tuesday evening, passing it 154 votes to 143 against in the 300-member parliament.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government downplayed speculation of bold new moves ahead of her meeting Tuesday with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou but the simple gathering itself buoyed spirits in financial markets.

The current plan is to have Greece implement painful debt-reduction measures in exchange for rescue loans. Greece relies on funds from last year’s euro110 billion ($149 billion) package, and European leaders have also agreed on a second euro109 billion bailout, although some details of that remain to be worked out.

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said his country will get the money. “The disbursement will be decided in time, in line with the course of our funding needs,” he said Tuesday.

Speaking over chants from protesting ministry employees and tax office workers outside his department, Venizelos said Greek had made great efforts to achieve its fiscal targets, but that a “hyper-effort” was necessary to fully meet its commitments.

Experts, however, say the current course of austerity is untenable.

There is growing speculation in the markets that Greece’s bailout creditors will look to impose bigger losses on Greece’s private bondholders as well as recapitalizing Europe’s banks and boosting the size of the eurozone’s rescue fund. Talk of such a comprehensive package has helped turn sentiment around in stock markets this week following last week’s turmoil.

So far, there’s been no confirmation from Europe’s capitals that such a comprehensive solution is being planned Payday Loan for Bad Credit.

Venizelos said representatives from the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank will return to Athens this week. The so-called troika suspended their review in early September amid talk of missed targets and budget shortfalls.

In Berlin, Papandreou told a conference of the Federation of German Industries that “we are borrowing to repay” _ but also stressed that Europe needs to show it can get its act together.

“I can guarantee that Greece will live up to all its commitments,” Papandreou said ahead of the evening meeting with Merkel.

The Greek government recently announced new austerity measures, including pension cuts and tax hikes.

The new property tax will be charged through electricity bills to make it easier for the state to collect, instead of going through Greece’s unwieldy and inefficient tax system. Those who refuse to pay risk having their power cut off.

But the extra charge has deeply angered Greeks, who have already been through more than a year of sharp austerity that has seen salary and pension cuts and increased taxes across the board. State electricity company unionists have threatened not to collect the tax.

Speaking before the vote, Venizelos acknowledged the new tax was harsh on some, but stressed the government had no choice but to impose it as it fought to reduce its budget deficit.

“Clearly there will be categories of people who will not be able to pay this housing charge and this is a situation that will be resolved,” he said. “But the most important thing is that we achieve the targets agreed to in 2011 and 2012.”

Greeks have been outraged by the new measures after a year of austerity, and unions have responded with strikes and protests. Public transport workers walked off the job Tuesday for two days, and were to be joined by taxi drivers on Wednesday. Tax office and customs workers were also on strike.

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Ford’s chief executive says the growth of China’s auto market is sustainable as the company looks to launch 15 new vehicles by 2015 in the country.

Alan Mulally said Monday that China is a sustainable market with the country’s leadership focused on keeping inflation in check without derailing economic growth.

Ford made a comeback last year with $6.6 billion in profit, its biggest in 11 years. Now the company is looking to invest further in Asia personal loans for people with bad credit. Last weekend it broke ground for the construction of a $350 million transmission plant in the southern Chinese megacity of Chongqing.

China is the largest car market in the world. Last year, sales of passenger vehicles in China, excluding large buses, jumped by a third to 13.7 million vehicles.

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UBS Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel, under pressure after a rogue trader lost $2.3 billion of the Swiss banking giant’s money, kept silent Friday after facing the institution’s board of directors in Singapore.

Gruebel was the first of UBS’s top management and board to leave the meeting at the bank’s office and refused to answer reporters’ questions as he sat alone in the back of a chauffeured Mercedes.

Several UBS board members left about 30 minutes later and also declined to comment.

Some analysts have speculated that Gruebel’s job is at stake, though he said last weekend that he will not resign. UBS leadership may also be mulling whether to keep its investment banking arm to go along with its wealth management business.

Earlier this week, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. _ the largest UBS shareholder _ said in a rare public rebuke that it was concerned about lapses at UBS and called on the bank to restore confidence.

The sovereign wealth fund, which owns about 6.4 percent of UBS, has suffered heavy losses on its investment as the bank’s share price has more than halved since GIC became a shareholder.

A UBS spokeswoman said Friday that no further meetings among the board and top management are planned for this weekend.

The bank’s board was scheduled to meet in Singapore this week because UBS is a major sponsor of the Formula One race being held on the island Sunday, and it plans to entertain clients at its luxury suite.

London-based UBS trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested last week and charged with fraud and false accounting for the loss. A judge ordered him Thursday to be held in jail until a hearing next month.

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PARIS

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday he’ll not be deterred from seeking U.N. recognition of a state of Palestine, despite what he said was “tremendous pressure” to drop the request and instead seek to resume peace talks with Israel.

Abbas spoke to reporters en route to the United Nations, where he is to seek U.N. membership for “Palestine” in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

The U.S. and Israel oppose Abbas’ bid, saying a state can only be established through negotiations. Abbas has said that negotiations remain his preference, but that they must be based on the pre-1967 war frontiers and a halt of all Israeli settlement construction on occupied land.

Abbas said Monday that even if Israel were to agree to those two demands, “we will go to the U.N. because there is no contradiction between negotiations and going to the U.N.”

Officials from the Quartet of Mideast mediators _ the U.S., European Union, Russia and the United Nations _ have been holding talks in recent days in hopes of persuading the Palestinians to drop the U.N. bid and instead resume peace talks with Israel.

The Palestinian leader said he came under “tremendous pressure” in recent days, but that the proposals for a new framework for talks were unacceptable.

Full U.N. membership can only be bestowed by the U.N. Security Council, where the recognition bid could be derailed if fewer than nine of the 15 members vote in favor or if the U.S. uses its veto, as it said it would.

Abbas said his plan, for now, is to go to the Security Council, but suggested that he might change tactics at the last minute and go for the lesser option of General Assembly approval of Palestine as a nonmember observer state. Chances for success are much higher in the General Assembly, which Abbas is to address Friday.

“From now until delivering the speech at the General Assembly, we have no thought except going to the Security Council,” he said. “Then, whatever the decision is, we will sit with the leadership and decide.”

Asked whether he was threatened by U.S. officials trying to stop him from seeking U.N. recognition, Abbas said: “It’s not a matter of threats, but they (the Americans) said that things will be very difficult after September. … We don’t know to what extent. We will know later.”

He said he has not been told officially that U.S. aid to the Palestinians would be cut. For months, congressional Republicans and Democrats have threatened to cut off some $500 million in economic and security assistance if the Palestinians move forward with the U.N. bid.

Abbas said he’s not scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

Concerning the possibility of mass protests in the Palestinian territories, Abbas said the only violence might come from Israeli settlers. In recent months, there has been an upswing in attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property, some of it as retaliation for attempts by Israeli troops to remove unauthorized settler outposts.

“We will never return to an intifada (uprising). We will never return to violence,” Abbas said. “All our people will do is demonstrate peacefully inside the (Palestinian) cities.”

Abbas, however, holds no sway over the Gaza Strip or its rulers from the violently anti-Israel group Hamas, which drove out forces loyal to Abbas during a power struggle in 2007.

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The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors _ including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama _ moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. Obama visited the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at its groundbreaking.

Since then, the implosion of the company and revelations that the administration hurried Office of Management and Budget officials to finish their review of the loan in time for the September 2009 groundbreaking has become an embarrassment for Obama as he sells his new job-creation program around the country.

An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for years before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee in September 2009. The company eventually got $528 million.

Given the company’s shaky financial condition, Republican lawmakers say the decision to restructure the loan raises questions about whether the administration protected political supporters at taxpayers’ expense.

“You should have protected the taxpayers and made some forceful actions here after this analysis,” Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., told a top Energy Department official this week. “Because you should have seen the problems. And you should have said, `Taxpayers need to be protected and this has got to stop.’ `’

The loan restructuring is one element congressional investigators are focusing on as they look into the federal loan guarantee Solyndra received under the economic stimulus law.

Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors _ Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP _ stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.

Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama’s 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president’s aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.

Madrone Partners is affiliated with the Walton family, descendants of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Rob Walton, the eldest son of Sam Walton, contributed $2,500 last year to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The AP review also found that officials at Solyndra had been seeking a second round of loans from the Energy Department to expand the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. The request for a second loan was denied.

“We have incurred significant net losses since our inception, including a net loss of $114.1 million in 2007, $232.1 million in 2008 and $119.8 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2009, and we had an accumulated deficit of $505 million at Oct. 3, 2009,” the company said in a December 2009 filing to the SEC. “We expect to continue to incur significant operating and net losses and negative cash flow from operations for the foreseeable future.”

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Friday that the company’s financial losses were not uncommon for a high-tech startup and were a major reason Solyndra applied for the federal loan. The loan program is intended to help promising companies that cannot receive financing through private banks because of high risk.

Jonathan Silver, executive director of the Energy Department’s loan program, said DOE officials faced a stark choice late last year and early this year: Refuse to allow the loan restructuring, “thereby ensuring that Solyndra would close its doors immediately” or allow the company to accept emergency financing, “thereby giving it and its almost 1,000 workers a fighting chance at success, and the government a higher expected recovery on its loan.”

The decision by Energy Secretary Steven Chu was not an easy one, Silver told the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but appeared to be the right action at the time.

“Without DOE’s agreement to restructure Solyndra’s loan, the company likely would have faced bankruptcy much earlier _ in December 2010″ or soon after, Silver said. “Restructuring gave them a fighting chance to compete and succeed, and kept approximately 1,000 workers from losing their jobs.”

Republicans were not impressed.

“If their model was weak to begin with, and then the market gets worse, doesn’t that mean that maybe we should have just not thrown good money after bad?” asked Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va. “Because now we’re in a worse position in the bankruptcy courts to get our money back.”

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann called the Solyndra loan an example of “crony capitalism” that benefited political donors.

“It’s wrong to abuse executive authority with unilateral actions” Bachmann said at a campaign event Friday in California. “And of course the other problem with Solyndra is the fact that it appears there was crony capitalism, that there were political donors that benefited by this $535 million loan.”

Newly released emails show the White House was worried about the likely effect of a default by Solyndra on Obama’s re-election campaign.

“The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” an OMB official wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a colleague. “The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.”

The budget official, whose name is blacked out in the email, wondered whether Solyndra should be allowed to restructure its loan.

“Questions will be asked as to why the administration made a bad investment, not just once (which could hopefully be explained as part of the challenge of supporting innovative technologies), but twice (which could easily be portrayed as bad judgment, or worse),” the email says.

Associated Press writer Gillian Flaccus in Costa Mesa, Calif., contributed to this story.

Follow Jack Gillum at http://twitter.com/jackgillum and Matthew Daly at http://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

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Libyan revolutionary forces faced fierce resistance as they streamed into one of the remaining bastions of support for Moammar Gadhafi on Friday, while the Turkish prime minister met with the country’s new rulers in the capital Tripoli.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit came a day after the French and British leaders traveled to Libya as the international community rallies around the interim government’s efforts to establish legitimacy and start rebuilding the country despite continued fighting against loyalists of Gadhafi, who remains on the run.

Libyan fighters in dozens of pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons made their way from the north into the center of town of Bani Walid, 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli. Explosions and gunfire resounded across the area and smoke billowed into the sky as fierce clashes broke out.

One of the fighters, Hisham Nseir, said the frontline is “very heated and chaotic” and his troops were meeting with heavy resistance from Gahdafi’s men.

Libyan fighters also have converged on Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte to the north of Bani Walid.

NATO airstrikes continued to pound pro-Gadhafi targets. The alliance said it struck multiple rocket launchers, air missile systems, armored vehicles and a military storage facility in Sirte on Thursday. NATO has conducted over 8,500 strikes on Libya since late March.

As revolutionary forces battle pro-Gadhafi holdouts centered in Bani Walid, Sirte and the city of Sabha, deep in the southern desert, Libya’s interim leadership has been pushing forward with efforts to form a new government.

Erdogan was greeted at the airport by Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the National Transitional Council, the closest thing Libya has to a government. He traveled to Libya as part of a tour of the Arab world, including Egypt and Tunisia, that is aimed at offering help for the countries and advancing his growing status as a regional leader.

He was expected to discuss how to resume investments in Libya, where Turkish contractors were involved in 214 building projects worth more than $15 billion before the rebellion that ousted Gadhafi personal loan for poor credit.

Erdogan’s tour comes as once-strong ties between Turkey and Israel are unraveling due to Israel’s refusal to apologize for its raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists last year.

The flotilla incident and Turkey’s desire to broaden its influence in the Middle East and the Arab world could dramatically affect the power dynamics in the region since the revolutions now known as the Arab Spring.

Turkish companies have been involved in lucrative construction projects worth billions of dollars, building hospitals, shopping malls and five-star hotels in Libya before the uprising began in mid-February.

The bilateral trade with Libya was $2.4 billion in favor of Turkey before the chaos and the two countries had waived travel visas to boost that trade.

The United States and more than 30 other nations formally recognized Libya’s main opposition group as the country’s legitimate government in a July meeting in Istanbul, giving the rebel movement a major boost. The move came after Turkey escalated its pressure on Moammar Gadhafi despite its long-standing ties to the Libyan leader.

Erdogan has said: Gadhafi has ignored calls for change in Libya and instead preferred “blood, tears and pressure against his own people.”

Turkey has recently reopened its embassy in Tripoli which was shut down due to deteriorating security. The Turkish consulate in the rebel-controlled city of Benghazi remained open throughout the conflict.

Turkey initially balked at the idea of military action in Libya, but as a NATO member it is helping to enforce an arms embargo on Libya and volunteered to lead humanitarian aid efforts.

Erdogan also was expected to appear on the Martyrs’ Square, which was renamed from the Gadhafi-era Green Square, in Tripoli and to travel to the cities of Misrata and Benghazi.

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An electic mix of celebrities, crime victims and former police suspects will take part in a judge-led inquiry into the state of Britain’s scandal-tarred press.

Lord Justice Brian Leveson said Wednesday that Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, Formula One boss Max Mosley, the parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann and murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler will participate.

Leveson has been asked to examine the ethics of the British media and to investigate improper conduct.

The group of around 46 people will give evidence on alleged media intrusion into their private lives.

The inquiry was set up in response to the phone hacking scandal in which journalists at News International are accused of hacking into voice mails.

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