Ontario teachers will take home less pay and earn smaller pensions under a deal aimed at erasing a projected $17.2 billion shortfall in their pension plan.
Details of a negotiated deal approved by union representatives and the Ontario cabinet began reaching teachers by mail during this final week of the school year, or earlier by email.
A three-part plan calls for:
WASHINGTON
Efforts to work out a deal for cutting government spending while at the same time raising the debt limit move into a new phase with President Barack Obama meeting at the White House with Senate leaders.
Obama is set to meet Monday morning with the Democratic leader, Sen. Harry Reid, and then in the afternoon with the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Talks between congressional leaders of the House and the Senate reached an impasse last week over the question of federal revenue Online payday loans. Democrats say they want to close loopholes and scale back tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy taxpayers. Republicans want to focus on cutting spending and have waved off tax increases.
McConnell told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that proposals seeking more tax revenue won’t pass Congress.
Google may be entering a make-or-break phase in its history now that U.S. regulators have opened an investigation into whether the company has been abusing its dominance of Internet search and advertising to stifle competition.
The probe by the Federal Trade Commission, confirmed by the company Friday, will require Google to convince regulators that its closely guarded recipe for search results is designed to give people the best recommendations, not bury links to its rivals free credit report and score.
The inquiry also is expected to peer into Google’s financial engine: the advertising links tied to the subject of each search request. Some of these commercial messages appear, shaded in color, at the top of the results page, while others are stacked in the right-hand column.
Even as Google has expanded into video, mobile phones and TV, the text advertising that pops up alongside search results and other Web content generates most of Google’s revenue
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Sudan’s president threatened to block pipelines in the south if the government there doesn’t pay to transit oil or share it with Khartoum, the official news agency reported Wednesday.
Southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly in January to secede from Sudan and become an independent country in July. That vote was part of a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of war.
The two governments are still negotiating how oil wealth will be shared between the north and the south.
President Omar al-Bashir’s comments late Tuesday in the port city of Port Sudan seem to be hardening his side’s negotiating position, particularly in the context of borders clashes.
Al-Bashir said the southerners “have one of three options: either we share the oil, or they pay fees and taxes for every single barrel that passes through the north or we will shut down the pipeline,” according to Sudan’s official news agency.
Relations between the two partners remained rocky throughout the transitional period, and tension has increased since the vote. Oil is at the center of the fraught relations, as most of it lies in the south, but all the pipelines and the transporting port are in the north.
The south, which does not have any refineries of its own, relies on oil for more than 95 percent of its budget.
Even so, al-Bashir said his country still wants good relations with the south.
Troops from northern Sudan moved into the disputed central Abyei region last month, sending tens of thousands of people who are aligned with the south fleeing.
After regional mediation, the two sides signed an agreement Monday to demilitarize the area.
President Barack Obama urged north and south Sudan to agree to an immediate cease-fire in the state of South Kordofan. In a statement, he praised an agreement to allow Ethiopian peacekeepers into the contested Abyei area.
The U.S. says Sudanese forces have shelled and bombed the area and that there are reports that forces aligned with the government are arresting and allegedly executing southern Sudanese forces and sympathizers.
Obama said reports of attacks based on ethnicity were “deeply disturbing.”
Greece’s prime minister was gambling his government’s survival and the danger of a devastating debt default on a Tuesday night confidence vote aimed at helping him passing deeply disliked austerity measures that have provoked strikes, protests and a slump in his popularity.
Greek deputies began voting after midnight in a crucial confidence motion called by Prime Minister George Papandreou after he reshuffled his cabinet to face down an internal party revolt and help him pass deeply unpopular austerity measures.
The vote was being conducted by roll call after a heated debate that saw sections of the opposition briefly walk out. Papandreou needs 151 votes in the 300-member parliament to win, which he is expected to do.
A loss would likely lead to early elections and throw into question whether Greece can pass a new austerity bill by the end of June as demanded by the country’s international creditors. Unless the new measures pass, Greece will not receive the next batch of funds from its bailout loans, and will face a disastrous default.
Greece is being kept financially afloat by euro110 billion ($157 billion) EU-IMF bailout fund.
A default by Greece could spark a financial maelstrom around the world, dragging down Greek and European banks as well as stoking renewed fears over the finances of other eurozone countries, such as Portugal, Ireland and Spain.
Expectations that Papandreou would win lifted world markets. His Socialist party holds a five-seat majority in the 300-member legislature, and a simple majority is needed to pass.
“Indications over the last 24 hours or so have certainly been that the government will survive, if only because the alternative would be so dire,” said Beat Siegenthaler, an analyst at UBS.
Papandreou reshuffled his Cabinet last week and replaced his finance minister to ease growing dissent within the governing party.
On Tuesday the new finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, promised that parliament will pass the unpopular austerity package by the end of June in order to comply with European Union demands to receive the next payment in its bailout loan.
Venizelos said Parliament is set to vote on euro28 billion ($40.2 billion) worth of budget cuts and other savings next week.
Greece has said it will face a default unless it receives the euro12 billion ($17.3 billion) rescue loan installment from European countries and the International Monetary Fund.
“We must follow this course to save the country,” Venizelos said.
“Our European partners … face is with distrust,” he said. “This is an atmosphere that we have to change.”
Papandreou’s popularity has been hammered by the latest austerity measures, with an opinion poll published Tuesday giving the Socialists a 20 loans for people with bad credit.1 percent approval rating. Rival conservatives faired marginally better, at 21 percent, in the GPO survey for private Mega television of 1,000 adults. No margin of error was given.
Some 7,000 protesters, chanting “thieves! thieves!” were gathered outside parliament, while a strike by the country’s powerful electricity workers’ union continued to cause rolling blackouts for a second day.
Socialist skeptics, however, appeared to shy away from another fight.
Prominent dissenter Nikolas Salagiannis, said he would vote in favor of the government following the cabinet reshuffle.
“This has generated a slim hope that the issues can be addressed … We back the new government,” Salagiannis said. But he added: “Make no mistake, our connection with people in the street and in the squares is dwindling by the day. We have gone from austerity to more austerity, from denial to denial to get where we are … and the public’s tolerance has been used up.”
Though considered unlikely, if Papandreou loses Tuesday’s vote he would have little choice but to call early elections or try to form a coalition government. However, all opposition parties have said they want elections.
But even after winning, he faces an even more difficult task: Getting parliament to back the new austerity measures as well as an unpopular euro50 billion ($71 billion) privatization program by the end of the month.
If the new austerity measures pass, the finance ministers of the 17-nation eurozone will meet July 3 to give Greece its next bailout installment.
A key requirement from the eurozone and the IMF is that Greece steps up its privatization drive.
European officials are also discussing a second, similar-sized bailout for Greece since it’s obvious the country won’t be able to return to the bond markets and raise money to pay creditors any time soon.
“I trust that the new Greek government will receive the confidence of parliament,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after meeting with Papandreou Monday, but added the crucial vote was the one on the new austerity package.
“I therefore trust that Greece’s elected representatives will back these measures next week in a spirit of national and indeed European responsibility,” Barroso said. “These choices are not easy, but nor are the problems that need to be addressed. Now is not the time to falter.”
Stocks indexes were mixed in early trading Monday after European leaders failed to agree on releasing more financial aid to Greece.
In order to get the aid, Greece has to agree to more budget cuts, which has been causing unrest and political upheaval there. The Greek government faces a confidence vote on Tuesday.
Prime Minister George Papandreou’s newly-reshuffled government is expected to prevail in the confidence vote, and officials say they expect Greece to get its next installment of emergency loans in July. If Greece defaults on its debt, it could trigger losses for the banks that hold Greek bonds and more turmoil in financial markets.
The S&P 500 fell 1 point in early morning trading to 1,270. The Dow Jones industrial average edged up 2 points to 12,006. The Nasdaq composite index fell 2 points to 2,613.
Greece has been at the center of Europe’s debt worries, but other countries are also facing troubles. Moody’s warned that it may cut Italy’s credit rating because of its mounting debt and sluggish growth prospects. The worries dragged down markets across Europe Monday: Italy’s FTSE MIB index sank 2.2 percent, France’s CAC 40 index dropped 0.7 percent and Germany’s DAX index fell 0 payday loans.3 percent.
Major U.S. stock indexes broke a six-week losing streak last week as prospects for a solution to Greece’s debt crisis improved.
In corporate news fertilizer producer Agrium Inc. raised its forecast for second-quarter earnings after record crop prices pushed up demand for its products. Its stock rose 2.7 percent.
Nabors Industries Ltd., a driller for oil and gas, warned that its pressure pumping and international businesses have been weaker than it expected. The stock lost 3.5 percent.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc. fell 2.3 percent after saying it would buy the U.S. retail operations of Royal Bank of Canada for $3.45 billion. The deal will make PNC the fifth biggest U.S. bank with 2,870 branches. The deal follows Capital One Financial Corp.’s $9 billion purchase last week of ING’s U.S. online bank.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.94 percent as investors sought out the relative safety of U.S. debt. A bond’s yield falls when its price rises. The 10-year yield had been as high as 3.74 percent in February.
The Senate’s top Republican is suggesting a short-term increase in the nation’s borrowing limit unless there’s deal soon that includes changes to big entitlement programs.
Economists and Obama administration officials are warning of a calamity if the government defaults on its obligations. The default deadline is Aug. 2.
Vice President Joe Biden is leading bipartisan talks on the debt limit and cuts in federal spending.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky says that if a deal doesn’t include significant entitlement program changes, then legislation raising the borrowing limit for just a few months is likely.
He says lawmakers would return to what he calls “the same discussion” this fall.
McConnell appeared Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
A private research group forecasts that the economy will grow modestly over the next few months after a late-spring slump.
The Conference Board said Friday that its index of leading economic indicators rose 0.8 percent last month. That’s a rebound from April, when the index dropped 0.4 percent _ the first decline since June 2010. A string of declines would indicate that a recession was coming.
The May report showed marked improvement in most areas measured. And it suggests the economy will regain some of the momentum it lost this spring, when high gas prices cut into consumer spending and businesses pulled back on hiring.
Eight of the 10 measures the Conference Board uses to calculate the index increased. In April, only four showed improvement.
Still, Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein cautioned that economic growth will be “choppy” through summer and fall. The weak housing market remains weak. And even though there has been some relief in recent weeks from the high gas and food costs, prices remain elevated.
The Conference Board is a private research group based in New York. It uses data that has mostly already been released about real estate, manufacturing, employment, consumer confidence and financial markets in calculating the leading indicator index payday loans for bad credit. The Conference Board also includes its own estimates about manufacturers’ new orders and the country’s money supply.
A lot of economic data over the past month had disappointed investors and led many economists to lower their growth expectations for this year. Economists recently surveyed by The Associated Press cut their growth outlook to a 2.6 percent annual rate, down from an estimate of 2.9 percent in April. In January, they had forecast 3.2 percent growth for the year.
Some economists say the disruption to the manufacturing sector from Japan’s earthquake will ease and job creation will pick up again in the second half of the year. A survey of CEOs of the country’s biggest companies showed more than 60 percent of them planned to spend more on equipment over the next six months, a sign of confidence. More than half expected their U.S. work forces would grow.
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