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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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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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Bank of America is slashing 30,000 jobs as part of an effort to reverse a crisis of confidence among investors. It’s the largest single job reduction by a U.S. company this year.

What CEO Brian Moynihan is trying to do is nothing less than save the nation’s largest bank. Investors have cut the bank’s market value by half this year. The bank is facing huge liabilities over soured mortgage investments and concerns over whether it has enough capital to withstand more financial shocks.

The cuts, which affect Bank of America’s consumer businesses, represent 10 percent of the Charlotte, N.C., bank’s work force. The bank said it hoped the cuts and other measures would result in $5 billion in annual savings by 2014. The bank has already cut 6,000 jobs this year. The bank also said it would look for cost savings at its other businesses in a six-month review that will begin next month.

Bank of America’s stock has lost 48 percent this year, largely because of problems related to poorly written mortgages at Countrywide.

Just in the first half of the year the bank paid out $12.7 billion to settle claims from investors that it sold them securities backed by faulty mortgages no fax payday advance.

Some investors and analysts worry that the job cuts will lead to poor customer service and the bank will lose market share to rivals at a time when there are signs that the economy is slowing down.

They also wonder if the job cuts are enough to produce the profits the bank needs to overcome the spiraling costs from its mortgage business.

“There is a fair amount of skepticism on Wall Street, and Brian is doing as much as he can do in the face of a worsening economy,” said Nancy Bush, an analyst and contributing editor at SNL Financial.

Bank of America is the second-largest bank in the St. Louis region, based on deposits, and is a major employer here. As of June 30, Bank of America had 2,815 employees in the St. Louis area, down slightly from 2,888 employees at the end of last year. A Bank of America spokeswoman said Monday that the location of the job reductions had not been released by the bank.

Lisa Brown of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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Greece will meet ambitious savings targets despite a deepening recession this year, the prime minister said Saturday, to secure the continued flow of international rescue loans that are protecting the debt-crippled country from a catastrophic bankruptcy.

As George Papandreou delivered his annual, keynote speech on the economy in Greece’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki, police on the streets outside clashed with violent demonstrators as more than 25,000 people _ from taxi-drivers to sports fans _ joined a wave of anti-austerity protests.

Two people were arrested and nearly 100 people detained, police said, while at least two demonstrators were injured during the clashes in the northern port city.

“We will push through all the major changes our country has needed for years,” Papandreou said in a nationally televised address. “And we will take whatever other decisions are needed, we will do whatever is necessary to keep the country on its feet.”

The government has promised to make up for weeks of inactivity by accelerating overdue reforms meant to cut excess from the bloated public sector. It even broke a major taboo by warning that thousands of civil servants _ hired with guarantees of lifetime jobs _ could be fired.

Papandreou said his main concern was to keep the country solvent.

“We don’t have the right to abandon this effort halfway through,” he said. “Because if it remains half-done, (our) sacrifices will have been in vain.”

Papandreou’s Socialist government has imposed painful austerity measures over the past 20 months _ cutting pensions and salaries while raising taxes and retirement ages _ to secure vital international rescue loans worth euro219 billion ($302.6 billion). But its efforts to economize while reviving a fast-contracting economy amid record unemployment have faltered, sparking new market distress.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, who was forced to deny rumors of impending bankruptcy over the weekend, said earlier that the economy is expected to contract more than 5 percent this year, considerably exceeding forecasts. But Papandreou insisted that this would not derail the savings drive, which is meant to cut budget overspending from 10.5 to 7.6 percent of gross domestic product this year.

“Even if the recession is significantly deeper than forecast … Greece will achieve its fiscal targets, doing everything it must to that purpose,” he said. “At the point the eurozone and the international financial system have reached right now, any delay, any ambiguity, any option other than to faithfully honor our commitments is dangerous for our country and its citizens.”

Several thousand taxi drivers protesting new licensing reforms launched a chain of separate marches, chanting anti-government slogans. Members of the country’s two biggest labor unions, university students, anarchists _ and even fans of a soccer club _ joined in.

In Athens, police fired stun grenades to disperse around 400 protesters who tried to block a main road outside Parliament. The protesters retaliated with firebombs that they lobbed at officers over passing traffic.

The default rumors, combined with the sudden resignation of senior European Central Bank official Juergen Stark, created new market fears that sent yields on Greek 10-year bonds surging to 21 percent. Greece has the worst credit rating in the world, just shy of default.

But Venizelos insisted Saturday the country could still pull through.

“Whoever believes that Greece has been broken or has no hope is clearly out of touch with reality,” he said. “The two coming months are crucial for the very existence of our country. These are two months whose every day counts as a year in terms of effort.”

By the end of October, Greece has to conclude talks on a complex bond swap deal under which private holders of its debt _ mostly banks and pension funds _ will take a loss on their holdings in return for new, more secure bonds.

It must also persuade the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which are providing the bailout loans, that it is making sufficient progress with fiscal discipline, reforms and privatizations. If Athens fails in that, the country will not receive the next euro8 billion ($11 billion) batch of its loans, and will go bankrupt within weeks.

“The clearest message Greece is sending at this point … is that we are absolutely determined, without taking any momentary political cost into account, to fully meet our obligations to our partners,” Venizelos insisted.

Elected two years ago with a 10 percent margin, Papandreou’s Socialists have seen their ratings fade as the cutbacks soared. A poll in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini newspaper shows the opposition conservatives 4 percentage points ahead, 32 percent to 28 percent, but also forecast a hung Parliament if elections were held now. The Public Issue poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent.

Under the previous conservative government, Greece falsified some of its financial data to hide the true extent of the country’s debt problems.

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Americans are depressed about their economic prospects but continue to spend their way through their latest downturn in sentiment, new consumer confidence data showed Tuesday.

The latest survey from the New York-based Conference Board, a business-research center, had its consumer confidence index plunging almost 15 points to 44.5 in August, down from 59.2 points in July. The steep drop reflected the lowest point in consumer confidence since April 2009, a month when the economy shed 539,000 jobs amid recession and financial crisis.

Blame fell on Washington’s political brinksmanship over the debt ceiling, which took the nation to the verge of a first-ever debt default.

As bad as Tuesday’s confidence number was, there was offsetting positive news in the broader report from the Conference Board, as well as in Monday’s Commerce Department report that consumer spending rose 0.8 percent in July, the best showing in five months.

“Digging deeper in the (Conference Board) report, we find that consumers’ buying attitudes do not reflect their confidence levels,” economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch noted.

The number of consumers who indicated they would be purchasing automobiles in the next six months rose from 11.9 percent in July to 12.9 percent in August. And for the first time in nearly a year, more than 50 percent indicated that they would soon buy big appliances. Almost 47 percent of respondents planned to take vacations.

“We shouldn’t be seeing more consumers planning to take more vacations or purchase large items if they truly thought that another recession was on its way,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s report noted. “We think the drop in sentiment in August was a result of the dysfunction in Washington over raising the debt ceiling and also the S&P’s downgrading of the U.S.’s credit rating.”

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Nervous Nellies on Bay and Wall Streets pulled back a bit yesterday from their panic selling of recent weeks, which has seen the S&P/TSX Composite Index drop a total of 15.5 per cent in Canada from its previous peak, in March; and the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average fall a similar 15.2 per cent from its most recent peak, in May.

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The owner of The New York Times says it had a net loss in the second quarter because of a non-cash writedown for the declining value of some of its smaller newspapers.

The New York Times Co. said Thursday that it lost $120 million, or 81 cents per share. That’s down from earnings of $32 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding special items, it earned 14 cents per share, better than the 10 cents that analysts polled by FactSet expected.

Revenue fell 2 percent to $577 million, close to analyst expectations of $581 million. Growth in digital revenue has yet to make up for declines in print. The Times’ website began charging for full access this quarter and had 224,000 digital subscribers as of June 26.

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This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt, and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery and gas station. The meager gains are going to the wealthiest.

Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable

Strong quarterly results from Nike are helping to push stocks sharply higher.

The shoemaker gained 6 percent after beating analysts’ expectations. Retailers rose on signs that consumers are still spending.

A small lift in home prices and progress in Greece toward avoiding a default also lifted stocks.

Stock indexes have fallen from their April highs on concerns that the economy is slowing. Tuesday’s gain was the second in two days.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 145 points, or 1 Business Card Holders.2 percent, to close at 12,189. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 17, or 1.3 percent, at 1,297. The Nasdaq rose 41, or 1.5 percent, to 2,729.

Four stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was relatively light at 3.2 billion shares.

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France has halted the sale of three types of seeds linked to a British company after an E. coli outbreak caused the hospitalization of eight people.

French health officials say test results on two of the eight people hospitalized show an infection of the same strain of E. coli that killed 44 people _ all but one in Germany _ and sickened more than 3,700.

Commerce Minister Frederic Lefevre said late Friday the order involves fenugreek, mustard and arugula seeds linked to a British seed and plant vendor, Thompson & Morgan.

An investigation by France’s competition, consumption and fraud prevention agency found two of the eight people hospitalized had consumed sprouts from the three seeds at a school fair in the southwestern town of Begles.

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