London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Up to 2 million public sector workers walked off jobs in schools, hospitals and police stations across the United Kingdom on Wednesday to protest proposed pension reforms.

As of noon London time, the government reported that the strike appeared to be having limited impact on many public services. However, more than half of the country’s schools were closed, impacting many families.

Prime Minister David Cameron dismissed the strike as a “damp squib” (a fizzled firecracker).

Chaos was expected at Heathrow Airport in London, one of the world’s busiest international airports, but operations were normal, officials said.

British Airways confirmed it had not canceled any of its own flights, though a few code-sharing flights were canceled.

Strikes and marches prompted by the proposed pension reforms were taking place in cities across the country. Public sector workers say they are bearing the brunt of austerity measures imposed to try to rein in Britain’s deficit.

Union leaders say it is unfair to expect public sector workers to pay more into their pensions, work longer and accept worse terms for their pensions.

The action comes one day after Chancellor George Osborne, the British finance minister, announced a pay raise cap of 1 percent for public sector workers for two years after the current pay freeze ends, as he lowered growth forecasts in an assessment of the economy.

The Labor Party argues that the poor growth is a result of the government’s spending cuts and tax hikes, which it says have put the most pressure on growth and strained any recovery.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – European leaders met with President Barack Obama Monday at the White House to figure out how to avoid another worldwide economic collapse.

Obama is pressuring the 17-nation European Union to resolve its banking and debt crises before they drag down the U.S. economy’s shaky recovery from recession.

“This is something they need to solve and they have the capacity to solve, both financial capacity and political will,” White House press spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.

At the same time, the European Union is trying to show the United States and other countries that it is managing its economic problems appropriately as the Europeans seek foreign investment.

Few details of the meeting were released publicly after U.S. and European officials said they preferred to keep the negotiations private.

However, they gave a glimpse of what would be discussed in statements before the meeting.

“We need also to develop a transatlantic agenda to growth and jobs,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

He hinted that new regulations could be coming on U.S. and European trade when he said, “…we will also be discussing how to increase our international cooperation and build a stronger and fairer rules-based system.”

The meeting Monday was one of several recent discussions between Obama and European economic leaders.

He has telephoned Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Greek Prime Minster Lukas Papademos to talk about strategies for avoiding economic collapse.

First Greece, Ireland and Portugal were facing default on their debt, beginning about two years ago. Now Spain, Italy and France are facing the same kinds of problems.

Obama has called the European debt crisis one of the greatest threats to the U.S. economic recovery.

The European Union’s primary method of handling its debt crisis is through the $440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility, which provided emergency bailout loans to Greece, Italy and Ireland in exchange for concessions on how their budgets are structured.

European economic ministers still are trying to figure out how they will protect government bond markets.

Foreign investment from the United States could be one of the backstop funding sources they seek.

They also are considering allowing the European Central Bank to buy out at-risk national debt as the lender of last resort for member countries and their banks.

However, advocates of the proposal must overcome opposition from Germany, which has Europe’s largest economy.

Among European economic leaders at the meeting Monday with Obama was European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

“We will both need to take action to address the near-term growth concerns as well as fiscal and financial vulnerabilities,” Van Rompuy said. “Together, we will also look for ways to use our very strong economic ties for creating growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.”

The meeting at the White House comes less than two weeks before the European economic leaders are scheduled to discuss tighter controls over budgets of European Union member nations.

At the Dec. 9 meeting, Germany, France and Italy are expected to take the lead in a move to change the treaty that governs the European Union.

Their proposed revisions would force member nations to submit to frequent audits of their economic policies and to ask for agreement from other European nations before seeking outside financial assistance.

The proposals would be the broadest rewrite of Europe’s economic policies since the European Union was formed in 1967.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – A federal judge’s decision this week to block part of a tough Alabama law against illegal immigration is casting doubt on whether the law will survive a court challenge.

A judge issued a temporary restraining order against part of the law that would prevent illegal aliens from obtaining home registrations on their mobile homes.

Thousands of Hispanic people were threatening to leave the state as soon as this weekend if the judge had ruled in favor of the state law.

The law that created the uproar is Alabama’s HB 56, which prohibits “business transactions” between the state and anyone unable to provide documentation of their citizenship or legal immigration status. It also allows police to check the immigration status of anyone stopped for a traffic violation.

Section 30 of the law requires mobile home owners to prove their lawful citizenship or residency status before they can renew their mobile home tags.

“This application of Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law threatens to throw families into the street,” said Mary Bauer, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It’s a flagrant violation of the Fair Housing Act and the United States Constitution.”

The temporary restraining order gives mobile home owners time to register their manufactured housing before the state’s Nov. 30 deadline.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson based the order on his finding that the entire HB 56 law is likely to be overturned in a lawsuit filed against it by civil rights groups.

The ruling represented the second setback in less than a week for state efforts to keep out illegal immigrants.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit to block enforcement of Utah’s tough anti-immigrant law that authorizes local police to check the immigration status of anyone stopped for traffic offenses or as suspects in crimes. The police can arrest illegal immigrants.

The Utah law is modeled on an Arizona law that the Justice Department also is trying to overturn in federal court.

“A patchwork of immigration laws is not the answer and will only create further problems in our immigration system,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “The federal government is the chief enforcer of immigration laws … it is clearly unconstitutional for a state to set its own immigration policy.”

Alabama Sen. Scott Beason and Rep. Micky Hammon, Republican co-sponsors of HB 56, said they were trying to drive illegal immigrants out of the state with HB 56. They denied it was a racist law targeted at Hispanics.

A provision in the law intended to avoid any image of racism forbids racial profiling when state officials refuse service to illegal immigrants.

“I would not have supported the bill if that language had not been there,” Hammon testified during the hearing this week on the temporary restraining order.

Other state lawmakers are having second thoughts about HB 56, even some who voted for it when it was approved in June. All but one of the state legislature’s Republicans voted for the law.

If Hispanic residents had fulfilled their threat to leave the state this weekend, they would have joined thousands of others who already left soon after the statute took effect in September.

Their exodus has caused a shortage of low-income workers for agricultural, cleaning and other jobs.

Some employers with state contracts have expressed concern they could be convicted of felonies if they inadvertently hire an illegal immigrant.

Six Alabama Republicans have suggested in the past week that the legislature revise HB 56. Even Gov. Robert Bentley, who was one of the law’s strongest supporters, told a group of business leaders this month that HB 56 is “very complicated” and needs to be simplified.

The law’s supporters suffered an embarrassment recently after an executive from German auto manufacturer Mercedes Benz was stopped for a routine traffic violation. He was visiting the company’s large plant, which has helped support the statewide economy and attracted other automakers to build in Alabama.

Because he was unable to prove his citizenship or legal residency, he was arrested until confusion over his right to be in the United States could be cleared up.

The incident helped to fuel rhetoric of civil rights groups trying to overturn HB 56 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

“Once again, Alabama’s anti-immigrant, anti-Latino law requires us to resort to the courts to force the state to respect the most basic of civil rights” said Justin Cox, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Alabama should cut its losses now and repeal this hateful law.”

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Derbyshire, United Kingdom (AHN) – Toyota has announced plans to add up to 1,500 new jobs at its Burnaston factory in Derbyshire in the United Kingdom.

Company officials say that Toyota will invest more than $155 million into making the factory its sole European plant for the next hatchback it introduces.

Prime Minister David Cameron was touring the factory when news of the new production was announced and he hailed it as a vote of confidence for UK manufacturing. He also noted that it would be a huge boost for the economy.

The new hatchback will be a small family vehicle similar in size to Toyota’s existing Auris model and cars by other manufacturers such as the Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf.

The Burnaston factory is one of four Toyota vehicle-building factories across Europe and Russia. The plant currently employs more than 3,100 people and manufactures the Auris and Avensis models.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Groupon, the Internet’s largest daily deal site that went public only three weeks ago, is now trading below its initial public offering (IPO) price. After a widely criticized IPO, pundits are now looking at the sell-off with little surprise.

The New York Times declared “deflated” Groupon shares “landed with a thud on Tuesday.”

The Wall Street Journal was less kind, calling the company’s IPO “a particular disaster” and declaring that “Groupon’s share price is in free-fall.”

Bloomberg called the sell-off a “plunge.”

“There was a lot of skepticism to begin with about Groupon’s model, its margins, its growth rate, but now you throw on a world economy that’s very unpredictable and shaky, and I think people are doing a flight to safety again,” Actarus Funds founder Stephan Paternot told Bloomberg.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The economy grew at a slower pace from July through September than originally thought, according to revised figures released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday.

Gross domestic product grew only at a 2 percent annual rate during the third quarter down from the 2.5 percent originally reported last month.

GDP is the measure of the sales of all goods and services produced in the United States. The government generally revises its estimate of the GDP figure twice and this is the first revision.

The 2 percent growth is still an increase from the second quarter growth of only 1.3 percent.

Third quarter consumer spending was also revised downward to 2.3 percent from 2.4 percent. Nevertheless, that was still higher than the 0.7 percent recorded during the previous quarter.

Moreover, export growth was better than previously estimated, rising by 4.3 percent instead of the previous estimate of 4 percent. In addition, exports grew at a slower rate of 0.5 percent instead of the first estimate of 1.9 percent.

Disposable income is still declining. It fell 2.1 percent in the third quarter compared to a drop of 0.5 percent in the second quarter.

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Amman, Jordan (The Media Line) – A United Nations organization dealing with refugees has said that land has been designated in Jordan to set up a camp to deal with an expected tide of refugees fleeing unrest in Syria.

Thousands of Syrians have reportedly been pouring over the border into Jordan as a defiant President Bashar Al-Assad has ratcheted up his lethal crackdown on anti-government protesters that has killed over 3,500 as the country slides deeper into civil war.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Jordan is working with the Ministry of Interior to prepare a refugee camp in Mafraq north of Amman to take in the Syrians who have fled their homes.

“The area where it would be possible to receive an influx of refugees has been designated, but there hasn’t been any kind of action taken on the ground yet. No tents have been set up, but at least the land has been designated for such a contingency,”

Dana Bajali, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, told The Media Line.

Bajali said they have been providing assistance to some 200 Syrian refugee families, but that it is estimated that over 3,000 have sought sanctuary in Jordan, some legally, others illegally. Hundreds are thought to be army deserters.

“This includes urgent cash assistance, some blankets and mattresses. We also try to provide some food items to these families, kitchen sets, hygiene kits, utensils, school kits and food packages,” Bajali said, adding that most of the refugees were being housed by relatives and friends since there were close family and tribal ties on both sides of the border.

Many have come from the Syrian town of Dara’a, the birthplace of the Syrian rebellion that erupted in mid-March when dozens or more youths were detained by security forces for spray painting anti-government graffiti. Since then, despite the massive presence of troops and attacks on the city’s main mosque, Dara’a remains in turmoil.

But others have been coming from the area around Homs, the heart of the anti-Assad revolt, north of Damascus.

“We have noticed a steady influx of Syrians into Jordan and the number of those registered with us has increased. There is a plan to receive an influx of refugees if that happens and one of them is to set up a reception center, but that hasn’t started yet,” she added.

Another UNHCR official told the Ammon news website that the cost of the refugee camp would be about half a million dollars and that the tents would come from their stocks currently stored in warehouses in Zaraq. But it also quoted government officials as saying they are not formally cooperating with the UN organization.

Syria has periodically sealed its 380-kilometer (236 miles) border with Jordan since the revolt began. Last week, Syrian army defectors clashed with loyalist troops near the border along the Damascus-Amman highway and at least 40 people were reportedly killed.

Since the fighting began tens of thousands of Syrians have fled to neighboring countries. Some 5,000 are estimated to have sought shelter in Lebanon and another 19,000 are reportedly in Turkey. Hosting the refugees and allowing Syrian opposition to organize on its territory has plunged relations between Turkey and Assad’s regime to their lowest point in years.

Syria’s 22 million people are not only feeling the pressure of growing causalities and fighting but the economic fallout. Syria has been hit by international sanctions and other measures that may cause the economy to contract by as much as 10% this year. Even those who can’t or won’t leave have been sending capital out of the country.

Two rocket-propelled grenades hit a major ruling party building in Damascus on Sunday, residents said, the first reported attack by insurgents inside the Syrian capital. Meanwhile, the Arab League said it rebuffed a request by Syria to amend plans for a 500-strong monitoring mission after Al-Assad disregarded a deadline to halt violent repression of protesters.

Unlike Turkey, Jordan is not allowing Syrian opposition groups in the kingdom. Still, there are tensions between the countries, particularly after King Abdullah last week became the first Arab ruler to call for Al-Assad to step down. Following the monarch’s statements, pro-government mobs attacked the Jordanian Embassy in Damascus.

Syria reportedly apologized to Jordan over the attack. Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency quoted Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad as apologizing for the attack on the Jordanian Embassy as well as other diplomatic missions, including the Turkish Embassy.

Last month, Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Judeh said in a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, that the kingdom would be ready for the receiving any new numbers of refugees from Syria in the event of deterioration of the security situation there.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States (AHN) – The all new 2012 Honda Civic Natural gas car was named Green Car of the Year Thursday at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

The Civic, the only factory built CNG powered car produced in America, was presented with the honors by editors of Green Car Journal, representing a diverse panel of environmental experts and automotive enthusiasts who annually select a single vehicle for its outstanding environmental performance.

The Civic Natural Gas engine produces almost zero smog forming emissions, and it is the cleanest internal combustion vehicle certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The new car features new styling, enhanced feature content and increased fuel economy. The redesigned 2012 Civic Natural Gas can now be equipped with the Honda-Satellite Linked Navigation System which includes an exclusive database of publicly accessible Compressed Natural Gas refueling stations across the United States.

All Civic Natural Gas models are produced by Honda Manufacturing in Indiana using domestic and globally sourced parts.

In addition to being named 2012 Green Car of the Year, pervious versions of the CNG-powered Civic have topped the “greenest vehicle” rankings of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy for eight straight years.

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Jerusalem, Israel David Rosenberg / The Med – For the second time in three years, Israel’s economy is threatened with the prospect of being pushed into a slowdown or even a recession not of its own making, prompting Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer to warn the government against boosting spending or raising taxes.

“If we continue to maintain responsible fiscal and monetary policies, and if the private sector stays calm, we can get through the implications of whatever happens in Europe relatively successfully, more or less as we did in 2008 and 2009,” Fischer said on Wednesday. “That is to say we wouldn’t avoid a slowdown, but it would be much less intense than what could happen.”

Hours after Fischer spoke, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported that gross domestic product expanded at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the third quarter, marking the third consecutive decline in the pace since it peaked at 7.2 percent in the final three months of 2010. Exports dropped at a 16.9 percent rate in the third quarter while consumer spending showed almost no growth.

“We’re talking about declining growth. We are not in a recession – we are far from a recession. We are growing more slowly,” Fischer told a Jerusalem news conference.

Fischer’s advice comes as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu faces conflicting economic pressures.

Responding to a summer of mass street protests over the high cost of living and income inequality, he has pledged to step up spending on education and to create affordable housing. But slower economic growth and the crisis in Europe gives Netanyahu less leeway to increase the budget because of sluggish tax revenue growth and jittery financial markets.

The Bank of Israel projects that GDP will expand by a healthy 4.7 percent this year, but it will slow 3.2 percent in 2012, a modest pace by recent Israeli standards. It may decelerate further if the crisis in Europe leads to a recession.

Milder growth has already begun to take its toll. The government is likely to suffer a shortfall of tax revenue amounting to 4 billion shekels ($1.1 billion) this year, a number Treasury officials say may balloon to 18 billion shekels in 2012. The Israel Manufacturers Association, which groups the country’s largest employers, reported this week that 19 percent of its members said in a poll they expect to begin laying off workers by the end of the year.

Fischer said that the budget deficit would probably rise without increased spending, which would help mitigate the economic slowdown.

As chief of Israel’s central bank, Fischer plays a critical role in domestic economic policy. But his views carry unusually large weight outside Israel as well because of his celebrated career as a top International Monetary Fund official and his success in steering the Israeli economy through the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

The collapse of the American real estate market in 2008 had barely any impact on Israel, which experienced only a mild economic slowdown while its banks avoided the deep write-downs their peers in the U.S. and much of Europe made. Economists have credited the country’s fiscal restraint, its current account surplus at the time and conservative monetary and regulatory policies.

Fischer said that as another financial crisis – this time starting in a Europe struggling with high levels of government indebtedness – threatens to set off a second global recession, Israel again is relatively well-positioned.

On the one hand, two thirds of Israeli exports go to Europe and North America and they have already begun to drop due to the economic uncertainty while Israel’s current account has slipped into deficit for the first time since 2003. The Arab Spring, which has created political havoc in neighboring Egypt and Syria, has heightened Israel’s security uncertainty.

But, Fischer noted, the financial markets have continued to express confidence in the Israeli economy. Spreads on credit default swaps (CDSs), a kind of insurance policy on bonds that serves as a barometer of the issuer’s financial condition, are narrower for Israel than for relatively healthy European economies, he noted.

”Something that I never expected to see is that it costs less to insure against the Israeli government defaulting than it costs to insure against the French government defaulting,” Fischer said. “The markets are looking at Europe with a great deal of suspicion.”

Working in Israel’s favor is the fact that Israel’s fiscal situation remains relatively strong, in part because it didn’t have to undertake budget-busting programs to stimulate its economy and bail out financial institutions. The country’s foreign reserves stand at close to $77 billion.

Israeli interest rates are high enough right now – the Bank of Israel’s base rate is currently 3 percent – that it can reduce them to help offset any economic slowdown. By comparison, the U.S. federal funds rate is close to zero.

Fischer said the situation in Europe is too much in flux to be confident about the outcome, but he suggested a break-up of the eurozone by Greece or other countries exiting would likely lead to a recession. Europe’s problems could reach Israel’s shores not only through declining demand for its products but through the financial markets.

The economy got a small foretaste of what may be coming this week when three of the country’s top five banks – Leumi, Discount and First International – issued profit warnings for the third quarter.

The banks have relatively little direct exposure to Italy, which has emerged as the new focal point of European woes, and they didn’t cite any unusual increase in problem loans. But indirectly their balance sheets were hit hard as the securities they trade on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange dropped in value in response to the Greek, and now Italian, debt crises.

Fischer lauded the government Trajtenberg committee, which was charged by Netanyahu with preparing a program to reorient govern policy to a more “social” agenda after last summer’s tent protests. He said the committee acted responsibly in starting off with the principle that reforms could not entail a significant increase in state spending, even though that limited the policies it could propose.

But the Trajtenberg panel’s proposals still have to be approved by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, where lawmakers have vowed to make changes. Protest leaders have threatened to revive demonstrations, saying the committee did not go far enough toward addressing their demand.

“We have to maintain the stability of financial system, particularly the banks. We must not surrender to populism and we have to be ready if things deteriorate to move very rapidly on policy,” Fischer said. Acknowledging that the Arab Spring might require Israel to step up allocations to the military, he added: “If we have to increase our defense spending we do not have to increase it by increasing the deficit but by raising taxes.”

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stock index futures pared losses on Tuesday after economic data showed October retail sales rose more than expected and November manufacturing in New York state was positive for the first time in five months.

Right after the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2 points, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the NASDAQ were both flat.

Helping retail sales show a gain were sales of Apple Inc.’s iPhones and demand for new cars. The 0.5 percent gain followed a 1.1 percent increase in September, according to data released from the Commerce Department on Tuesday.

Consumer spending is the biggest part of the economy and needs to keep growing to boost the U.S. economy as the European credit crisis threatens to slow overseas sales.

Retailers in the U.S. are widely planning to use discounts to lure shoppers during the holiday season, and more and more stores will open Thanksgiving night to get a jump start on the all-important Black Friday shopping event.

Sales at electronic stores increased 3.7 percent in October, the biggest gain since November 2009, Tuesday’s report showed. Internet and mail order companies reported sales advanced 1.5 percent, the most in nine months.

Sales rose 0.4 percent at auto dealers, following a 4.2 percent increase in September. The results were in line with industry figures.

While the increase in consumer spending is encouraging, experts say a stronger labor market is needed to speed up growth in the U.S. during its third year of recovery and cushion the country from risks related to the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

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