Concessions

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that no amount of international pressure or any last-minute concessions, including a settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would stop him from taking the Palestinian statehood plan to the U.N. Security Council this month. In a briefing with foreign journalists at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abbas brushed aside warnings he said he had received this week from American officials about a possible confrontation with the United States, as well as the flurry of diplomatic efforts launched by the Mideast "quartet" — the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — to craft a compromise.

The sharp drop in attendance at Dodger Stadium this year is likely to cost the Dodgers at least $27 million in reduced ticket sales, concession and parking revenue for the 2011 season. Based on the Dodgers' $286 million of total revenue in 2009, the most recent year for which public figures are available, this season's attendance-related declines would amount to at least a 9.4% drop in the Dodgers' total annual revenue. As the Dodgers open a homestand Monday night against the Philadelphia Phillies, announced paid attendance is down an average of 7,902 a game so far this season at Chavez Ravine amid the ownership fight between owner Frank McCourt and Major League Baseball, and the team's sub-.500 play.

Compton has avoided a threatened government shutdown with the passage of a budget that calls for laying off dozens of city employees, but now the city faces a new battle in court. The spending plan includes $1.2 million in concessions that employee unions have not agreed to, a move that the city attorney has raised concerns about and that unions are calling illegal. After hours of discussion, reversals and occasional confusion, the City Council took its final budget vote early Wednesday.

President Obama is nearing a decision to sharply increase vehicle fuel-efficiency requirements. But automakers — emboldened by a return to profitability two years after an industry bailout — are pushing hard for concessions that would reduce energy savings in the next generation of cars and trucks. The companies are also calling for a review several years down the road that would potentially reopen the bargaining, which environmentalists say could enable the industry to drag its feet and eventually meet lower standards.

Even as the political battle mounts over federal spending, the end result for federal policy is already visible — and clearly favors Republican goals of deep spending cuts and drastically fewer government services. President Obama entered the fray last week to insist that federal deficits can't be reduced through spending reductions alone. Federal tax revenue also must rise as part of whatever deficit reduction package Congress approves this summer, he said. Obama has been pushing to end a series of what he calls tax loopholes and tax breaks for the rich.

Three lucrative food and beverage contracts were awarded to companies at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, bringing an end to a three-year competition that critics complained was overly politicized. The vote by the Los Angeles City Council concludes, for now, the effort to bring celebrity chefs and a more local flavor in food to LAX, which has received poor marks in consumer surveys. And it closes the book on a debate in which rival bidders staged protests and public tastings to make their case.

"Two dollars and fifty-five cents!" The price was giddily shouted by my son as he scanned the computer, and I quickly scolded him for joking. I wasn't trying to buy a six-pack of soda. I wasn't trying to buy a bowl of soup. I was trying to buy a reserve-level Dodgers ticket for last Wednesday's afternoon game against the Cincinnati Reds. "Be serious!" I told him. "Two dollars and fifty five cents!" he shouted again. I questioned him further. He wasn't kidding.

It was a peaceful afternoon in a rose-fragrant Kabul park set aside for women. But when girls and women strolling its pathways were asked about the Afghan government's overtures to the Taliban movement, faces that had been alight with pleasure grew tight with apprehension. "They don't change — if the Taliban had power, things would be just as they were before, when we could not work, or leave our houses, or even imagine a place like this, where we can walk freely," said Maryam Hashimi, a 49-year-old office worker who recalled witnessing Taliban beatings of women for infractions such as allowing a glimpse of their ankles to be visible under full-body veils.

Two of the four employee groups that rejected Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan for worker concessions last month have ratified it on the second go-round — sparing them from dozens of unpaid days off in the coming year, union officials said Friday. Villaraigosa said he will abandon plans for up to 42 furlough days for 5,500 clerks, security guards and other city workers who had originally balked at more employee givebacks. The agreement between the city and civilian employee unions delays a package of raises and requires a 4% pay cut, with proceeds going to pay for the rising cost of retirement benefits.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a joint session of Congress he was prepared to make "painful compromises" for peace but he offered few of the concessions that President Obama has sought as a way to revive moribund Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Ending a tumultuous five-day visit to Washington, Netanyahu said Tuesday he was willing to give up "parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland" in negotiations to create a separate Palestinian state. But he set requirements that varied only slightly from his previous views, and he did not address many specific Palestinian demands.