Monday Business Edition

“We have decided, by narrow majority, to suspend the strike,” the head of the Greek truck owners confederation, George Tzortzatos, told reporters after a union meeting that lasted over three hours.

“Transporters will be back at the steering wheel as of tomorrow,” he said.

Military trucks and petrol company vehicles were employed to alleviate the fuel shortage as over 30,000 lorry and tanker truck operators sat out a government requisition order to return to work on pain of prosecution.

Officials said the situation was improving in the main cities of Athens and Thessaloniki, but shortages were still reported on many holiday islands and destinations in northern Greece where thousands of tourists are stranded.

A strike wave against austerity policies, a violent May protest in which three people died in a firebombed bank and unionist action targeting cruise ships and flights have made for a calamitous season, operators say.

And additional disruption caused to tens of thousands of travellers by the fuel holdup caused by a trucker walkout could not have come at a worse time for a sector which makes up nearly a fifth of the troubled Greek economy.

The HSBC China Manufacturing PMI, or purchasing managers index, fell to 49.4 last month from 50.4 in June — its first drop below the neutral 50 threshold since March 2009, the bank said.

A reading above 50 means the sector is expanding, while below 50 indicates an overall decline.

The UAE suspension would kick in on October 11 and last until a legal solution was reached, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a statement on its website.

It said the decision was taken “after failing to make progress in repeated attempts to make BlackBerry services compatible” with the Gulf state’s legislation.

The main ECB interest rate is sure to remain at a record low of 1.0 percent for the 16th month running and governors can take a summer break in the wake of some positive economic indicators and amid relative calm on financial markets.

Recent ECB meetings have been held as the Greek debt crisis festered, record one-year bank loans were coming due or markets braced for the results of stress tests on European financial institutions.

Highlighting the conundrum has been the death of wealthy Americans including oil tycoon Dan Duncan and New York Yankees baseball owner George Steinbrenner, who can pass on their fortunes to heirs with no taxes. Duncan’s fortune was estimated at nine billion dollars and Steinbrenner’s at 1.1 billion by Forbes magazine.

If they had died in 2009 or 2011, their estates would have paid huge amounts of taxes to the US Treasury. The heirs avoided the tax man because a law enacted in 2001 under president George W. Bush phased out the estate tax entirely in 2010.

The increase in sales has come as Amazon slashes the price on its Kindle device amid heavy competition from Apple’s multi-purpose iPad and e-readers from Sony and bookstore giant Barnes & Noble.

Underscoring the growth, Hong Kong’s massive book fair, an annual event attended by almost one million people, wrapped up last week with visitors exposed to a brand-new section: digital reading.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell back sharply to 2.4 percent in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said, slamming the brakes on an already tepid rebound and painting a bleak picture of the road ahead.

“The post-recession rebound is history,” said Bart van Ark, chief economist for The Conference Board, a leading business research group.

“The particular challenges facing Spain will likely make the recovery slower and more fragile than in the euro area,” the IMF said in its latest report on the country’s economy.

The International Monetary Fund’s growth forecast for Europe’s fifth-largest economy for next year was lower than the 1.3 percent expansion predicted by the Spanish government, which is under pressure to close its public deficit.

It’s a daily journey that could be made easier as a bridge spanning the bay goes under construction later this year, part of the 1.5 billion dollars (1.2 billion euros) that Mozambique is pouring into rebuilding its war-shattered infrastructure over the next five years.

“It will help. I won’t have to wait for a ferry,” the 29-year-old says.

The two banks showed a dip in investment banking income in the latest quarter, but more than made up for that with lower losses on personal and corporate loans as broad economic conditions improved.

Half-year profits for HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, hit $11.1 billion, more than double the $5 billion of a year ago and above the average forecast of $9.1 billion from eight analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Zhejiang Geely, parent of Hong Kong-listed Geely Automobile (0175.HK) said on Monday it paid $1.3 billion in cash and issued a $200 million loan note to Ford. That represents $300 million less than the earlier headline of $1.8 billion, but Ford said it would get a further “true-up” payment later in the year.

With the deal now done, the real challenge for Geely will lie ahead as it aims to restore Volvo to long-term profits. Volvo Cars posted revenue of $12.4 billion in 2009 by selling 334,000 cars, but it recorded a pretax loss of $653 million.

Global stock markets rose on Monday, viewing a declining Chinese manufacturing purchasing index as the signal of a desired slowdown rather than the harbinger of a slump, with strong results from two of Europe’s top banks adding to the positive tone.

Investors also looked ahead to equivalent U.S. factory data due later on Monday for further signs that the recovery in the world’s biggest economy might be stalling, three days after second quarter output numbers there came in below forecasts.

Documents filed with the Singapore High Court by the defense last Thursday alleged that the orders against them were oppressive and had been for “unlawful or illegitimate reasons.”

The filings highlight the manner of the execution of the seizure by BP, in particular, the seizure of mobile phones and laptops used by the six former employees’ spouses and children, the search of the handbag of the wife of one of them and the search of one former employees’ son’s school book folder.

It will be Dudley’s first visit to Russia since he was forced to flee the country in 2008, citing a campaign of harassment by its billionaire partners in the TNK-BP joint venture of which he was CEO.

BP has since settled its dispute about control of TNK-BP and the venture remains a key part of BP’s portfolio, representing a quarter of total production and over 10 percent of profits.

The job market, often described as reacting in slow-motion to shifts in the pace of economic growth, may actually be a pretty solid indicator of the United States’ prospects.

That means a double-dip U.S. recession cannot yet be completely ruled out, particularly since economists believe Friday’s payrolls report for July will show a second straight month of net job losses.

Net profit jumped 31 percent thanks to lower loan provisions and strong retail banking, offsetting volatile financial market conditions that hit investment banking, BNP said.

The performance underlined an improving but still challenging macroeconomic environment in BNP’s key euro zone markets, pointing the way to more growth in retail, Chief Executive Baudouin Prot said in a statement.

BlackBerry’s Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf Arab region but because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be tracked locally.

“Certain BlackBerry services allow users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns,” the United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a statement.

The setback halted a drop in month-to-month stress readings that had begun in February. In May, economic stress had declined from the previous month in 33 states. And in April, stress fell in every state but two.

But in June, bankruptcy rates rose in Utah, California, Colorado and Idaho. Higher foreclosures spread to the Midwest, particularly Illinois. This occurred even as foreclosures eased in states that have suffered most from the housing bust, such as Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

The legendary Swedish automaker is China’s biggest foreign auto acquisition and an unusually large deal for a private Chinese company.

Industry analysts say 13-year-old Geely, barely known abroad, will face a struggle in integrating the two corporate cultures and turning around Volvo Cars, a perennial money-loser in a country with strong labor unions.

Based on surging first-half results, the Louisville-based company raised its net income-per-share expectations for the full year to a range of $5.65 to $5.75, compared to a prior range of $5.55 to $5.65.

Analysts expect $5.71 per share, on average.

Some of the nail salons, restaurants and other small shops that have sold the coupons have risked both new and existing business as they struggled to handle the surge in clients.

For Crystal Nail Salon in Chicago, ratings at web sites like Yelp.com tumbled as owner Phu Bui struggled to serve up the 5,100 manicure-pedicure combinations he sold in June for 65 percent off.

The appeal is easy to understand.

Junk bonds, known more politely as high-yield bonds, are bonds with very low credit ratings that corporations pay more interest on so they can attract investors. As of last week, they were yielding 8.34 percent, down from 9 percent earlier in July.

The only thing keeping millions more gallons of oil out of the Gulf right now is an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent.

The so-called “static kill” attempt carries no certainty, and BP PLC engineers still plan to follow it up days later by sending a stream of mud and cement into the bottom of the mile-deep underground reservoir through a relief well they’ve been digging for months.

Fresh splotches of chocolate-colored crude, probably globules broken apart by toxic chemical dispersants sprayed by BP with government approval, still wash up almost daily on protective boom and in marshes in reopened fishing grounds east of the Mississippi River.

When shrimp season opens in a couple of weeks and fisherman Rusty Graybill drags his nets across the mucky bottom, he worries that he’ll also collect traces of oil and dispersants – and that even if his catch doesn’t smell, buyers and consumers will turn up their noses.

Medicare will save about $8 billion by the end of next year, and $575 billion over the rest of the decade, the report said.

Release of the analysis comes ahead of the official annual financial checkup for Social Security and Medicare from the program’s trustees, expected as early as this week. It provides support for the administration’s position that the health care law secures and strengthens health care for seniors.

Congress is at work on a new program that would send $30 billion to struggling community banks, in a process similar to the huge federal bailouts of big banks during the financial crisis. This time, money is more likely to disappear as a result of bank failures or fraud.

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama declared an end to taxpayer bailouts when he signed a sweeping overhaul of financial rules. In his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, he described the new bailout program as “a common-sense” plan that would give badly needed lending help to small-business owners to expand and hire.

The study, which has been embraced by many agricultural groups but criticized by some environmentalists, found that improvements in technology, plant varieties and other advances enabled farmers to grow more without a big increase in greenhouse gas releases. Much of the credit goes to eliminating the need to plow more land to plant additional crops.

The study’s authors said they aren’t claiming modern, high-production agriculture is without problems, including the potential for soil degradation through intense cultivation and fertilizer runoff that can contaminate fresh water.