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Critical last-ditch talks to form a coalition government in crisis-struck Greece floundered once more Sunday, leading the country one step closer to new elections, although the socialist party leader said he retained `existing but limited’ optimism for a deal.

The political uncertainty has alarmed the international creditors who have given Greece billions of euros in bailout loans over the past two years, and has thrown the country’s continued presence in the European Union’s joint currency into serious doubt.

President Karolos Papoulias convened the heads of the parties that came in the top three spots in last Sunday’s inconclusive elections, in an ultimate effort to broker an agreement after a week of talks led to deadlock. The meeting ended without a solution, but the process continues while the president holds individual meetings with the leaders of smaller parties that made it into parliament.

Voters furious at the handling of Greece’s financial crisis and two years of harsh austerity measures taken in return for billions of euros in international bailout loans punished the formerly dominant socialist PASOK and conservative New Democracy parties in the elections. The two saw their support crumble to the lowest point in decades, while Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, made big gains to come in second place after campaigning on an anti-bailout platform.

The PASOK and New Democracy leaders could form a coalition with the smaller Democratic Left party of Fotis Kouvelis _ combined they would have 168 seats in the 300-member parliament. New Democracy won 18.9 percent last Sunday while PASOK garnered just 13.2 percent, compared to nearly 44 percent in the last elections in 2009. Kouvelis’ 6.1 percent put him in a kingmaker position, with 19 seats.

But all three insist any power-sharing deal must include Syriza, led by the 38-year-old Alexis Tsipras, given its strong showing at the ballot box.

Tsipras, however, insists he cannot join or even lend his support to a government that will continue implementing the terms of Greece’s international bailout. In return for euro240 billion in rescue loans from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, Greece has imposed severe spending cuts, including slashing pensions and salaries in the public sector, and repeated rounds of tax hikes. The measures have left Greece mired in a fifth year of deep recession, with unemployment spiraling above 21 percent.

“The three parties that have agreed on a two-year government in order to apply (the bailout) have 168 seats in parliament,” Tsipras said after the meeting. “Let them go ahead. Their demand that Syriza participate come what may in their own agreement is senseless and unprecedented.”

Tsipras insists the terms of the bailout must be cancelled. PASOK head Evangelos Venizelos, who spent nine months handling the crisis as finance minister, and conservative leader Antonis Samaras, say that position is irresponsible and will force Greece out of the euro. Although Sunday’s meeting convened by the president with the three top party leaders was inconclusive, Venizelos said that “I retain some limited but existing optimism that a government can be formed.”

Samaras appeared more pessimistic.

“I made every effort for the cooperation of all,” he said. “Syriza didn’t listen to the mandate of the Greek people and does not accept not only the formation of a viable government, but not even the tolerance of a government which would in fact undertake to renegotiate the terms of the (bailout) and the loan agreement.”

Tsipras, however, stuck to his position, insisting that supporting a pro-bailout government would be a betrayal of his pre-election platform.

“After today’s meeting it is obvious they are demanding that Syriza become an accessory to a crime,” he said after the discussions with the president. “In the name of democracy, of our patriotic duty, we cannot accept this shared guilt. We call on all Greeks to condemn once and for all the forces of the past and to realize that only one hope remains: unity against blackmail in order to prevent the continuing barbarity.

“Fellow Greeks, we can assure you of one thing: we will not betray you.”

Tsipras will also have his eye on recent opinion polls which show his party would gain strength if Greeks go to the ballot box again next month.

A poll published by To Vima newspaper Sunday indicated Syriza would come first in new elections with 20.5 percent of the vote _ less than the 28 percent an earlier opinion poll published Thursday gave him, but still well ahead of New Democracy. Although it would not be enough to form a government, it would put him in the dominant position to form a coalition with smaller anti-bailout parties.

To Vima’s poll, carried out by Kappa Research, showed New Democracy in second place with 18.1 percent and PASOK losing yet more votes to reach 12.2 percent. The poll was carried out on May 9 and 10, and had a margin of error of 3.09 percentage points.

Papoulias’ mediation to broker a deal could in theory continue until May 17, the scheduled opening date for the new parliament, although they are expected to end sooner. If no agreement is reached, Greece will have to hold new elections next month, most likely on June 10th or 17th.

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The Federal Reserve has issued policy guidelines for banks turning foreclosed homes they own into rentals, a trend that could help boost falling home prices.

The central bank said Thursday that banks making the conversions should preserve needed documents and meet all federal, state and local laws that apply to renting.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and other Fed officials have said that with home prices continuing to fall and rents rising, it makes sense for some foreclosed homes to be converted into rentals. Demand for rentals has grown since the housing meltdown.

Sales of millions of foreclosed homes are resuming since the government’s settlement with the five biggest mortgage lenders over lending practices. Homes in foreclosure sell at a 20 percent discount on average.

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An Australian court on Tuesday found Google Inc. guilty of breaching trade law by hosting misleading or deceptive advertisements in a ruling that holds search engines responsible for their advertisers’ content.

Three Federal Court judges unanimously overturned a lower court’s ruling from September last year that Google was not responsible for advertisers’ breaches of Australia’s Trade Practices Act.

The appeal court ruled that Google had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct with four ads that appeared on its Google Australia website. The advertisers used the names of competitors as keywords to trigger their own ads appearing.

The court ruled this was likely to mislead people searching for information about those competitors. Google’s “AdWords” system posts small text-only advertisements next to search results based on search keywords selected by the advertisers.

The section of the law that Google breached does not impose a fine. But the court ordered Google to make changes to prevent future breaches and to pay court costs to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which appealed the September ruling cheap pay day loans.

Google said it was disappointed by the decision and is considering its options, which include a High Court appeal.

“Google AdWords is an ads hosting platform and we believe that advertisers should be responsible for the ads they create on the AdWords platform,” Google said in a statement.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said he had appealed the original ruling because it raised important issues about the role of search engine providers as publishers of paid content.

“This is an important outcome because it makes it clear that Google and other search engine providers which use similar technology to Google will be directly accountable for misleading or deceptive paid search results,” Sims said in a statement.

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The recent New Democratic Party convention in Toronto may have done more than just select Thomas Mulcair as the party

It was hardly the stock market debut BATS Global Markets was hoping for.

Since being founded nearly seven years ago, the Kansas-based stock exchange operator has been doing battle with its much larger rivals Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange for a piece of the stock exchange market. On Thursday night the initial public offering of its own stock priced at $16 apiece, the low end of what the company had originally predicted. Intended as a symbol of its newfound stature, the IPO would trade on BATS’s own exchange.

If only the problems stopped there.

The shares immediately plunged to just pennies before being halted. They never reopened. By late afternoon, BATS withdrew its public offering and said it had no plans to refile. All trades made that day would be canceled.

Meanwhile, a problem linked to a faulty trade on a BATS platform in Apple caused that stock to be temporarily halted. BATS also said it temporarily suspended trading of all stocks whose ticker symbols began with A through BF, though it restored that trading by early afternoon.

“We have an electronic mess,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading for broker Themis Trading.

The botched IPO was a blow was not only to the exchange, but to a new business for which it had high hopes. In February, BATS offered free listings to companies whose shares traded a certain amount each day. It strove to define itself as a tech-savvy exchange, and said companies would benefit from its “world-class customer support and technology.”

To help the business, BATS picked a new listing that would be sure to garner attention: itself.

The irony was hard to miss.

“It was the biggest day of the life of the company, and their own stock melts down,” says Larry Tabb, CEO of Tabb Group, a markets research firm. “This doesn’t build confidence.”

Saluzzi called the glitch a “black eye” for the complicated web of more than 40 electronic trading venues that has largely replaced the open outcry system of human traders yelling numbers at each other. “All it takes is one piece of the puzzle to fall, and they all fall.”

The problems brought comparisons to the May 6, 2010, “flash crash,” when a crush of electronic trading glitches caused a stomach-churning plunge in the markets. They also raised questions about the safety of the new stock trading platforms such as BATS that have sprung up in recent years.

High-frequency trading driven by powerful computers and complex mathematical formulas has largely elbowed out guys in jackets on the NYSE floor as the main source of trading. The computers comb the markets for securities priced too high or too low for a split-second, then trade on them.

Though computer glitches aren’t all that unusual in the fast-paced world of high-frequency trading, the embarrassment couldn’t have come at a worse, or more public, time for BATS. Based in Lenexa, Kansas, with about 170 employees, it’s trying to position itself as an alternative to the bigger, much older NYSE and Nasdaq. When companies go public, they pick one of the exchanges to list themselves on.

With memories of the flash crash still fresh, regulators have been taking a closer look at high-frequency trading firms. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether such platforms give some traders an unfair advantage. The Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter, said the investigation includes BATS.

The SEC declined to comment. BATS said in regulatory filing in February that it had received a request for information from the SEC’s enforcement division about “our communications with certain market participants … regarding the development, modification and use of order types; our information technology systems; and trading strategies.” BATS said in the filing that it was cooperating with the SEC.

Friday’s trouble was exacerbated at 10:57 a.m., when a trade on a BATS platform marked 100 Apple shares as $542.80 for a millisecond, when a split-second earlier Apple had been $598.26.

That triggered a “circuit breaker,” which is meant to alert traders when a stock trades at a price that is significantly different from its previous price.

BATS temporarily halted trading of all stocks whose tickers began with A through BF. It said later that a “systems issue” had affected those stocks, and that the issue was corrected by 12:50 p.m.

BATS and the Nasdaq, where Apple is normally traded, both declared “self-help” against each other. Exchanges are normally required to consider other exchanges’ prices when accepting order prices. But they can declare “self-help,” meaning they do not need to consider another exchange’s price, when the other exchange is malfunctioning, said Manoj Narang, chief executive of Tradeworx.

BATS’ motto is “Making Markets Better.”

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Good fund performance isn

Private investors agreed to swap about 85 percent of their Greek government bonds for new securities in the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in history, according to a banker briefed on the results.

Preliminary indications showed that as much as 155 billion euros ($205 billion) of the 177 billion euros of Greek-law bonds were offered, said the banker, who declined to be identified. Twelve billion euros of debt not under Greek law was also tendered, as was 7 billion euros of bonds from state-owned companies guaranteed by the government, the banker said.

With Greece again the focus of the euro-area debt crisis now in its third year, the goal of the exchange is to reduce the 206 billion euros of privately held Greek debt by 53.5 percent. Together with a 130 billion-euro second Greek aid package, the writedown is a key element in European leaders

Iraq’s al-Qaida branch has claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings and other attacks that killed dozens in Baghdad and across the country the day before.

The Islamic State of Iraq says it targeted security forces and government officials in “revenge for the elimination and torture campaigns that Sunni men and women face in the prisons of Baghdad and other cities.”

The daylong series of attacks in 12 cities across Iraq killed 55 and wounded 225 people. The al-Qaida claim was posted on militant websites late Thursday.

In the past two months since the American military pulled out of Iraq, al-Qaida and other Sunni militants have stepped up attacks on Shiites, raising concern of a new surge in sectarian violence.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BAGHDAD (AP) _ Bombs and deadly shootings relentlessly pounded Iraqis on Thursday, killing at least 55 people and wounding more than 225 in a widespread wave of violence the government called a “frantic attempt” by insurgents to prove the country will never be stable.

Cars burned, school desks were bloodied, bandaged victims lay in hospitals and pools of blood were left with the wounded on floors of bombed businesses after the daylong series of attacks in 12 cities across Iraq.

The assault demonstrated how vulnerable the country remains two months after the American military left and put the onus for protecting the public solely in the hands of Iraqi forces.

“There was no reason for this bomb. A primary school is here, students came to study and people came to work,” Karim Abbas woefully said in the town of Musayyib, where he saw a car bomb parked near an elementary school kill three people and wound 73. Most of the injured in the town, located about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of Baghdad, were schoolchildren.

Other Iraqis, fed up with the continued violence, furiously blamed security forces for letting it happen.

“We want to know: What were the thousands of policemen and soldiers in Baghdad doing today while the terrorists were roaming the city and spreading violence?” said Ahmed al-Tamimi, who was working at an Education Ministry office a block away from a restaurant bombed in the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad.

He described a hellish scene of human flesh and pools of blood at the restaurant, where another car bomb killed nine people and wounded 19.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but car bombs are a hallmark of al-Qaida. The Iraqi Interior Ministry blamed al-Qaida insurgents for the violence.

“These attacks are part of frantic attempts by the terrorist groups to show that the security situation in Iraq will not ever be stable,” the ministry said in a statement. “These attacks are part of al-Qaida efforts to deliver a message to its supporters that al-Qaida is still operating inside Iraq, and it has the ability to launch strikes inside the capital or other cities and towns.”

Fifteen of the day’s 26 attacks targeted security forces on patrols, at checkpoints and around government and political offices. Six policemen were killed at their checkpoint in northern Baghdad in a pre-dawn drive-by shooting. A suicide bomber blew up his car in front of a police station in Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, killing two and wounding eight.

Such violence undermines the public’s confidence in the ability of their policemen and soldiers to protect everyday citizens, and discourages people from joining or helping the security forces.

All the casualties were reported by local police and hospital officials in the cities where the attacks took place. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

A statement by the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya political party, the main opposition bloc to the Shiite-led government, called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to accept full responsibility for protecting the public.

“If the government fails to do so, then it should resign and the parliament should choose a government capable of confronting the terrorists and impose security and stability in all over Iraq,” the statement said.

Even months before U.S. troops left, extremists launched large-scale attacks every few weeks. The violence now is nowhere as frequent as it was during the tit-for-tat sectarian fighting that almost pushed Iraq into civil war a few years ago. But the attacks appear to be more deadly than they were before American military’s withdrawal in late December.

Days after the American military left, a Dec. 22 wave of bombs targeting Shiites killed at least 69 people. That happened twice more over the following three weeks, killing 78 and 53, respectively. Al-Qaida was blamed for them all.

Until the U.S. troops left, the most sweeping attack of 2011 was in August in a multi-city bombing spree that killed 63.

The renewed potency of the violence points to a dangerous security gap that Iraqi forces have not yet solved without the help of the U.S. military: Gathering intelligence on militants plotting attacks.

Ongoing negotiations between the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government are addressing, in part, how to supply security forces with enough equipment and training to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

Turbulence in Iraq’s political system also has fueled sectarian tensions, but there’s no indication so far that it’s led to violence. The day after the U.S. withdrawal on Dec. 18, the Shiite-led government announced an arrest warrant against Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunni politician, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, on charges he commandeered death squads against security forces and government officials.

Al-Hashemi has denied the charges he calls politically motivated, and many Iraqis fear the case will bring the return of widespread sectarian violence. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad alluded to that in a statement Thursday calling the terrorist attacks “heinous” acts that “tear at the fabric of Iraqi unity.” Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi condemned the attacks as an attempt “at igniting strife among Iraqi people.”

Yet in an encouraging sign that Iraq’s government is able to function, Parliament late Thursday approved the nation’s $100 billion operating budget for 2012.

Al-Nujaifi said Thursday’s blast likely sought to frighten diplomats from attending the Arab League’s annual summit, scheduled to be held in Baghdad in late March. The League meeting was canceled in Baghdad last year amid similar fears.

Douglas A. Ollivant, who oversaw Iraq policy at the National Security Council at the White House from 2008 to 2009, said that while security forces may not be able to stop al-Qaida, the violence has come nowhere close to pushing the nation back into war.

“Al-Qaida has been incredibly ineffective in its goal of renewing sectarian violence,” said Ollivant, now senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. “Yes, Iraq has a terrorism problem and it needs to get better at dealing with it. But al-Qaida’s inability to get any traction on their larger strategy is demonstrating that the civil war in Iraq is decidedly over.”

But as the burning, charred cars that littered streets across the country showed Thursday, Iraq’s battle against terrorism and violence is far from over.

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St. Louis • It took less than 90 minutes - with a 20-minute break - for the city on Monday to sell off 162 acres of land it had spent decades accumulating.

In a series of unanimous votes, three city panels agreed to sell developer Paul McKee 1,233 pieces of land, and an option to buy the massive former Pruitt-Igoe site, for $3.2 million and promises that his stalled NorthSide Regeneration project will start to move forward.

Altogether, the purchases will more than double McKee’s holdings on the city’s near north side, where he has been working for eight years to assemble land for a project he says could transform some of St. Louis’ most battered neighborhoods. Taking on hundreds of city-owned parcels, most of which have long sat vacant, will enable him to market larger sites - in some cases whole blocks - to potential tenants, McKee said. That should make more deals feasible, he said.

Largely unmentioned was the ongoing lawsuit that has slowed the project. It has been nearly two years since a city judge tossed out $390 million in tax increment financing, which has stalled road and sewer work in the area. An Appeals Court heard oral arguments in the case earlier this month; a decision is expected soon.

In the meantime, McKee keeps talking with prospective tenants, and he shared more details Monday.

Grace Hill Health Centers is planning a clinic in the project area, he said, and Sunshine Ministries is preparing to move into 40,000 square feet of new space. A biotech company McKee wouldn’t name is interested in a project near the old Carr School, and various office and retail users are looking at sites.

“We have had interest (from tenants) all over the project area,” he said.

While McKee already owns about 103 acres of the project’s 1,500-acre footprint, it was always clear that he would need more land. He has been talking with the city about buying its property for years.

But the agreement was only announced on Friday, when agendas were posted for special meetings of the three city agencies that own the land. The meetings themselves had all the markings of a done deal, with a few questions by board members but no real debate, and unanimous votes all around.

While about a dozen of McKee’s consultants and lawyers showed up, no neighborhood residents or McKee critics attended the mid-afternoon meeting at the St. Louis Development Corp. offices downtown. The only skeptical note was sounded by Alderman Marlene Davis, who represents a small part of the project area. She asked that 31 parcels in her ward be held out of the sale for other development, which the city permitted.

“If I were sitting in your chair I probably wouldn’t do this,” she told the three members of the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA). “But it’s not my call.”

Rodney Crim, Mayor Francis Slay’s top development official, said the agreement was a good one. It moves more than one-tenth of all city-owned property off the books, adding $100,000 to the tax rolls and saving the cost of mowing and maintenance. Some of the $3.2 million proceeds will pay to demolish more crumbling city-owned buildings across north St. Louis, freeing up more land for redevelopment. And much of the ground has been up for sale for decades, with no credible buyers, until McKee.

“The market hasn’t addressed this issue,” Crim said. “Now we have a developer who plans to address the whole area and is ready to move forward.”

The agreement requires that McKee create more than 160 jobs and get his first wave of projects well underway by 2016. But the developer said he’s moving on a much faster timeframe.

“I need this to happen tomorrow,” he said.

It won’t take long to be official. Monday’s votes were the only public action required for the sales. Now McKee’s lawyers and city officials will iron out details. They plan to close by the end of February.

Then McKee will have two years to find something to do with Pruitt-Igoe. The infamous former housing complex sits at Jefferson and Cass Avenue, the heart of his project area, and is a key piece of ground. But it’s also likely polluted ground, with unknown debris from the demolition of its high-rise apartment towers in the 1970s. McKee bought a two-year option on the site for $100,000, to buy time while he looks for cleanup funding and markets the site to tenants. Taking control for good will cost him an additional $900,000.

Crim said the prices were determined through LRA’s standard appraisal process, which is based on comparable property nearby and other factors. The city included Pruitt-Igoe in the deal, Crim said, because it wants a comprehensive approach to the area.

“It has to fit in. It can’t be an individual use,” Crim said. “And this developer has a lot of business ties that will help him to market the site.”

TERMS OF THE DEAL

Three city agencies agreed to sell 1,233 parcels of land - totaling 162 acres - to Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration LLC, for $3.2 million. The deal includes $100,000 a two-year option for the 33-acre Pruitt-Igoe site. To close the sale, NorthSide must pay an additional $900,000. NorthSide must demolish 200 buildings by the end of 2013 and rehab 75 buildings. NorthSide must perform regular maintenance and mowing, hold job fairs and offer training to local residents. NorthSide must complete three-fourths of its first round of projects and create 168 jobs by 2016. The second round must be half-complete by 2020. Failure to meet terms means the city can buy back the land at the purchase price.

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Nokia Corp. plans to stop assembling cell phones in Europe by year-end as it shifts production to Asia and will cut another 4,000 jobs, its latest attempts to cushion itself from stiff competition in the smartphone sector.

The Finnish company said Wednesday it will make the new job cuts at three plants in Finland, Mexico and Hungary this year as it reorganizes global manufacturing operations to compete better with the likes of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and handsets using Google Inc.’s Android operating software.

The cuts come on top of nearly 10,000 layoffs announced last year.

Nokia said it had increasingly shifted cell phone assembly from Europe to Asia, where the majority of component suppliers are based, to help it reach markets faster. The company said it would not close the three factories, however.

“There will be no assembling of mobile phones at our plants in Europe after this,” Nokia spokesman James Etheridge said. “We plan to focus product assembly at our plants in Asia where the majority of our suppliers are based, while our facilities in Salo, Komarom and Reynosa will focus on the software-heavy aspects of the production process.”

Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said Nokia’s move “made sense” and was in line with what other cell phone makers had been doing for years, such as Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc., and Sony Ericsson, which had large assembly plants in Europe.

“It’s an unstoppable trend really. Essentially, labor costs, land costs and other associated costs are so much lower in Asia,” Mawston said. “Also, Asia is so much closer to the biggest pool of users now so from a supply and demand side Asia looks a lot more attractive than Europe.”

Nokia said the shift to Asia would enable it to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and “ultimately be more competitive.”

Once the bellwether of the industry, Nokia has lost its dominant position in the global mobile phone market, with Android phones and iPhones overtaking it in the growing smartphone segment. It’s also been squeezed in the low-end by Asian manufacturers making cheaper phones, such as ZTE.

Nokia has been the leading handset maker since 1998 but after reaching its global goal of 40 percent market share in 2008, the company has gradually lost overall market share. It plummeted to below 30 percent last year.

In an attempt to remedy the slide, Nokia launched its new Windows Phone 7 in October, eight months after CEO Stephen Elop announced a partnership with Microsoft Corp. That heralded a major strategy shift for the Espoo-based company as it adopted the Windows operating system in its new phones.

But analysts have said it could take a few quarters before Nokia’s success can be measured.

Last month, Nokia reported that smartphone sales plummeted 23 percent globally in the fourth quarter as net revenue fell 20 percent to euro10 billion ($13.11 billion) compared to a year earlier.

Nokia share price closed up slightly at euro3.88 ($5.09) on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Nokia, based in Espoo near the Finnish capital, employs 130,000 people _ down from more than 132,000 a year ago.

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Online:

http://www.nokia.com

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