Palin, a Republican, was elected governor in 2006. She was tapped as Arizona Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate last year.

Palin said she was transferring authority to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will be sworn in at the Governor's Picnic on July 25.

A Republican source close to her political team told CNN's John King that it was a "calculation" she made that "it was time to move on." The governor's "book deal and other issues" were "causing a lot of friction" in her home state, the source said, adding that he believes she is "mapping out a path to 2012."

The high court also ruled Thursday that Crist must make a judicial selection from the all-white list of six names for the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach.

Crist, complaining Dec. 1 that none of "three well-qualified African-Americans" made the cut, asked the nominating commission to send him more names; but the commission refused.

In a written statement Thursday, Crist said he was "disappointed" with the ruling, but he will comply with it. "I remain committed to ensuring that the diversity of the people of Florida is represented in our judiciary," said Crist.

The court said the Constitution couldn't be ignored.

Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup - some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows.

Financial disclosure records show that some of these Financial Services Committee members, including Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, made bank stock trades on the same day the banks were getting a government bailout from a program Congress approved. The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest.

"I don't think that any of these people should be owning these types of financial instruments," said Brian Biggins, a Cleveland securities lawyer and former stock brokerage manager. "I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the stock market. But if they're on the banking committee and trading in these kinds of stocks, I don't think that's right."

Mounting job losses rattled hopes Thursday that the economy is on track to grow later this year, showing that prospects for American workers are terrible - and still getting worse.

Employers reduced their payrolls by 467,000 jobs in June, said the U.S. Labor Department, far more than forecasters had expected. The unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent, from 9.4 percent and, last week, another 614,000 people applied for unemployment insurance benefits.

The number of job losses had decreased every month since January before spiking again in June, and economists think it is highly likely that the jobless rate will hit double-digits later this year. A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people working part time who want full-time work and those who have given up looking for a job, has already risen to 16.5 percent. The nation now has the same number of jobs it did in 2000, meaning that nine years of employment gains have disappeared.

The stock market fell steeply on the news yesterday, with the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index off 2.9 percent. European stock markets fell sharply as well, after the European Central Bank left its target interest rate unchanged and its president indicated that he expects a recovery to begin in the middle of next year. Investors have wanted the bank to fight the recession more aggressively, which it seems disinclined to do.

Until Thursday, economic forecasters and government officials had become increasingly enthusiastic about signs that the U.S. economy is stabilizing. Many had begun to think as the year progressed, layoffs would taper off, companies would crank up their assembly lines and the troubled U.S. economy would get back on a path toward growth.

Germany's military deployment in Afghanistan has split public opinion back home. Spiegel talks to former German Defense Minister Peter Struck and Jurgen Todenhofer, a prominent critic of the war, about civilian victims of American bombing attacks, negotiations with the Taliban and the role of al-Qaeda.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Struck, is Germany safer today, after seven years of having the German army, the Bundeswehr, in Afghanistan?

Struck: Of course. Under the Taliban regime, the threat of terrorism coming from Afghanistan was much greater for us in Europe and in Germany. We will still have to defend our security in the Hindu Kush region. This statement will continue to be true until Afghanistan no longer poses a threat in terms of terrorism.

SPIEGEL: Do you also feel safer, Mr. Todenhofer?

Todenhofer: On the contrary. This NATO mission puts Germany in danger. The images of American bombing attacks, civilian casualties and destroyed villages flicker across the television screens of millions of Muslim households around the world. Obviously, there are young people - even in our country - who will not put up with this and will want to defend themselves. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble is chasing terrorists in Germany that his fellow cabinet minister, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung is creating in Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is a breeding program for terrorists.

SPIEGEL: You make it sound as if the deployment of German soldiers to the Hindu Kush was both naive and irresponsible.

Todenhofer: Even politicians are allowed to make mistakes. But they must have the courage to correct them. The SPD was always proud of being the party of peace. That's why I want politicians like Peter Struck to have the courage to correct mistakes. I know several leading German politicians who consider this war to be bullshit, but who wouldn't dare say it out loud.

Struck: Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said exactly the same thing to our parliamentary group a few weeks ago: We have to get out of Afghanistan. That's indisputable. But it will take time. Much depends on the plans of the new American administration.

United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon is heading for military-ruled Burma on a diplomatically risky mission to seek the release of political prisoners including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be found in 90 percent of organic baby formula.

The government's turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an advisory board's approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous companies win a coveted green-and-white "USDA Organic" seal on an array of products.

Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Organic mock duck contains a synthetic ingredient that gives it an authentic, stringy texture.

Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country's adults say they buy organic food often or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health.

Yet the neighbors seem to have other ideas. Belarus - which was promised $2 billion in Russian aid - is in open rebellion  against the Kremlin, flaunting its preference for Europe while also collecting money from the International Monetary Fund. Usbekistan joined Belarus in refusing to sign an agreement on the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces, an idea Moscow sees as an eventual counterweight to NATO.

There are other examples, like Turkmenistan’s May signing of a gas exploration deal with a German company, and  Armenia's awarding of a major national honor to Moscow’s nemesis, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili,  but the biggest came last week when Kyrgyzstan - set to receive $2.15 billion in Russian aid - reversed a decision that had been seen as a coup for Moscow, last winter’s order terminating the American military’s use of the Manas Air Base there.

“A game of chance has developed in the post-Soviet space: Who can swindle the Kremlin in the coolest way?” wrote the military analyst Aleksandr Golts, when news of the Manas decision broke. “Such a brilliant result of Russia’s four-year diplomatic efforts!”

Meet Australia's answer to velociraptor. Nicknamed Banjo he had three large slashing claws on each hand and is the most complete meat-eater ever found in Australia.

His remains were discovered near those of two other dinosaurs - new species of giant plant eaters - at Winton, in western Queensland.

Dubbed Clancy and Matilda, they lived about 100 million years ago and were titanosaurs, the largest kind of dinosaurs ever to have lived.

Queensland Museum Palaeontologist, Scott Hucknell, said the carnivore, Australovenator wintonensis, was even bigger and more terrifying than velociraptor.

"The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile. He could run down most prey with ease over open ground."

In a statement issued from U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, officials said "we are exhausting all available resources to ascertain his whereabouts and provide for his safe return."

The soldier was not part of the large-scale assault launched on Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan early Thursday. That operation, which involves about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, was encountering only light resistance, said officials. The military expects the Taliban to respond more harshly once troops move into towns and begin patrols.

Military officials in Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation, said the missing soldier appears to have walked off his base into an unsecured area.

A U.S. official in Afghanistan said the soldier's absence was discovered when he did not show up for morning formation. It is highly unusual for a U.S. soldier to leave a military base unaccompanied by other American troops.

Credit card companies are raising interest rates and fees seven months before new rules go into effect that will limit their ability to do so, much to the irritation of Congress and consumer advocates.

Chase, for instance, will raise the minimum payment required of some of its customers from 2 percent to 5 percent of the statement balance starting in August. Chase and Discover have increased the maximum fee charged for transferring a balance to the card to 5 percent of the amount, up from 3 and 4 percent, respectively. Bank of America last month raised the transaction fee for balance transfers and cash advances from 3 to 4 percent. Card issuers including Bank of America and Citi also continue to cut limits and hike up rates, which they have been doing with more frequency since January.

"This is a common practice and will continue to be common, because issuers can do these things for really no reason until February," said John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com, which tracks the industry. "It's what I call the Credit Card Trifecta - lower limits, higher rates, higher minimum payments."

It's not just the top card issuers making changes. Atlanta, Georgia-based InfiBank, for example, will raise the minimum annual percentage rate it charges nearly all of its customers in September "in order to more effectively manage the profitability of our credit card account portfolio in a very challenging economic environment," said spokesman Kevin C. Langin.

Dining at some restaurants will be a new experience starting today, when California becomes the first state to require that chain restaurants supply calorie counts for virtually everything they serve.

"Consumers should be able to make informed decisions about their health and it will raise the consciousness of how much we eat," said John Rogers, Sacramento County environmental health division chief.

There will be no guessing - or denial - about that double Western Bacon Cheeseburger from Carl's Jr.: 960 calories. Side of Chili Cheese Fries to go with that? 990 calories. Maybe stick to the fried zucchini at 330 calories?

The new law requires restaurants with at least 20 stores in California - about 17,000 locations statewide - to provide a brochure on site listing calories, sodium, saturated fat and carbohydrates for each menu item. Both sit-down and drive-through restaurants must comply.

An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.

With the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case.

U.S. President Barack Obama will lobby for nuclear disarmament and a fresh start in relations with Russia during his first visit to Moscow as president next week. But little concrete progress is expected - the hosts fear America's overtures are a trap aimed at further reducing Russia's global influence.

John Beyrle, Washington's man in Moscow, would never have seen the light of day if it hadn't been for a group of decent Red Army soldiers. "My father always saw the Russians as a people that saved his life," the U.S. ambassador recalls. "They could simply have shot him dead."

Beyrle's father had escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp and headed east in the final months of World War II. Soviet soldiers found him hiding in a haystack and he was afraid they would kill him. He offered them Lucky Strike cigarettes and spent the final weeks of the war fighting on their side.

This background has given his son a high standing in political circles of the Russian capital, and his fluent command of Russian no doubt helps. He has been ambassador for exactly one year and now faces his biggest test - next Monday, Barack Obama will travel to Moscow for his first visit to Russia as American president.

Russia, whose foreign policy is traditionally fixated on America, is buzzing with anticipation that the visit might improve ties between the former Cold War enemies. Beyrle, ever the diplomat, has been at pains to play down all the issues of conflict. Russia and America, he says "have more common interests than disagreements."

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century" [http://www.rice.edu/energy/publications/docs/TaskForceReport_Final.pdf ], was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.

"Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.

"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the U.S. should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."

Beverly Wooley, who has worked more than 20 years in public health in Alaska, most of it with the municipality of Anchorage, ended her stint as state public health director on Wednesday.

She's the second top health official to leave within days. The state's chief medical officer, Jay Butler, left in late June after declining to take on Wooley's job along with his own. He now is in Atlanta, Georgia, overseeing a U.S. Centers for Disease Control task force on a vaccine to protect against the H1N1 flu virus.

The division has about 550 employees and a budget of $100 million. It includes nurses and epidemiologists, health facility inspectors and keepers of birth and death records. Its staff members run health laboratories and try to prevent diseases like HIV and diabetes.

The key source of tension was legislation that would have required girls under age 17 to get parental consent for an abortion, Wooley said Thursday. The bill, which Palin actively supported, passed the state House but stalled in the Senate.

A fire at Fisher Plaza disrupted television and radio stations that broadcast from the building near the Seattle Center and affected a server farm that provides service to multiple Web sites.

The vice president of operations for Fisher Communications Inc., Rob Dunlop, says a fire at an electrical vault broke out around 11 p.m. Thursday, forcing the evacuation of the building.

The fire also affected a data center located in the building, which is disrupting service at several Web sites, including Verizon Communications Inc. and Authorize.net Holdings Inc., which provides credit card services for merchants.

The witnesses recently called by the special prosecutor, former government officials said, include the agency’s top officer in London and Porter J. Goss, who was C.I.A. director when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005.

The grand jury testimony of C.I.A. officers is further evidence that, despite President Obama's pledge not to punish agency operatives for their role in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, the shadow of the controversial program still looms over the agency’s daily operations.

The court appearances are tied to a criminal investigation led by John L. Durham, whom the Justice Department appointed in January 2008 to investigate the destruction of the tapes. The tapes had shown C.I.A. officers using harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on two detainees, Abu Zubaydahand Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Euro-skeptics have plenty of reasons to celebrate. By strengthening national parliaments vis-a-vis the EU, Germany's highest court has ended the dream of a "United States of Europe". And that's good news for Eastern European countries, who often feel bullied by Germany, the alliance's heavyweight.

A few years ago, continental Europe was busy trying to present itself as a convincing alternative to American neoconservatives and their power-hungry world view. And, in doing so, "Old Europe" actually experienced a completely unexpected resurgence. In the minds of its inhabitants, the European Union was the perfect alternative to an enormous United States that was drunk on power, savoring its "unipolar moment" and not giving a hoot about either its allies or enemies. To them, it was soft power against the hard U.S. way of doing things - wanting to impose Western democracy on the entire world at any price. These were the issues that historians and political scientists were debating at American universities and at think tanks in the U.S. capital.

If we take a look, they said, can't we see that the European Union is currently expanding democracy, freedom and prosperity - and in a peaceful way? Of course, it's not trying to do things like they've been done in Iraq. No, in the E.U.   sovereign nations have relinquished part of their rights in order to attain something better for all of those concerned. A few years back, you could often hear the phrase "the European model". And Europe could have served as a model - at least until the next regional or global crisis that proved once again that the E.U.'s 27 member states had still not forfeited enough sovereignty or mustered the nerve to share a joint foreign policy. In other words, it was enough until everyone called on the U.S. again to make everything all right.

After each of these embarrassing episodes, there was always new hope that everything would get better. At first people thought this would happen after Europe had a constitution in place. And, then, after the word "constitution" was ditched following failed referenda France and the Netherlands, people thought that everything would get better once the Lisbon Treaty was ratified. If the E.U. could only get to that point, they thought, it would actually have a number it could be reached at, a genuine foreign minister and a president of the European Council who actually stayed in office for two and a half years. And maybe, just maybe, something approximating joint foreign policy would develop, bringing the E.U.'s 500 million inhabitants into a recognizable bloc and earning them some respect.

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations.

The administration's discussion of Wilson's link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial.

A list of at least seven related conversations involving Cheney appears in a new court filing approved by Obama appointees at the Justice Department. In the filing, the officials argue that the substance of what Cheney told special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in 2004 must remain secret.

No such agreement was reached between Fitzgerald and Cheney at the time of their chat, according to a 2008 Fitzgerald letter to lawmakers. The Bush administration rejected requests by Congress and a nonprofit group for access to two FBI accounts of the conversation, saying the material was exempt from disclosure under subpoena or the Freedom of Information Act.

A House of Commons statement by Britain's Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, marks a watershed in the spread of the flu. No more schools will be closed, unless forced to by the lack of staff or if the pupils are especially vulnerable. Families and people in contact with those with flu will not be given preventative antiviral drugs.

The new policy of treatment for those with diagnosed illness, rather than containment, has already begun in the hotspots - chiefly London, Birmingham and Scotland.

The change of tactic is the predicted response to the swelling number of people infected. There are now 7,447 diagnosed cases in the U.K., but the number is doubling every week. If they continue in this way, said Burnham in his statement, "we could see over 100,000 cases per day by the end of August". He later stressed that the figure "is a projection. It is not a fact. This is how the disease could develop and we don't know."

Those sorts of numbers would put a heavy burden on the National Health Service, which is already feeling the strain in some areas. The new strategy will help keep those with possible symptoms out of General Practitioner (GP) surgeries.

Canadians who heard news last week of a major recall involving beef products from the United States may have felt assured the steak in their freezers was safe.

As they found out, it's wrong to assume beef and other meat products originate in Canada just because the country has its own meat-producing industries.

Earlier this week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced a recall involving a variety of President's Choice beef products, including steaks, roasts and ground beef over fears of E. coli contamination. The products came from JBS Swift Beef Co., based in Colorado, and are part of a larger recall that has been linked to at least 18 illnesses in numerous states.

While news of a food recall is hardly surprising - in recent weeks, the CFIA has announced recalls on everything from pistachios to salad greens to food made with peanut products - many consumers were startled to find out some fresh meat products sold by Canadian companies actually originate in the U.S..

The recall is prompting new questions about sources of meat sold in Canadian grocery stores, and whether consumers have a right to know where the product originated.

Flight AF 447 went missing during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. The exact cause of the disaster is not yet known.

"The plane was not destroyed while it was in flight. It seems to have hit the surface of the water in the direction of flight and with a strong vertical acceleration," said Alain Bouillard, who is leading the investigation on behalf of France's BEA air accident board.

Bouillard said control of the flight was supposed to have passed from air traffic controllers in Brazil to their counterparts in Senegal, but that never happened.

The report Thursday follows a similar weak jobs report from overseas.

The Labor Department’s unemployment figures showed the jobless rate rose to 9.5 percent last month from 9.4 percent in May.

Recession-weary employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, suggesting that the economy’s road to recovery will be bumpy. In addition, a report in Europe showed unemployment in the 16 countries that use the euro rose to a 10-year high in May.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 184 points, or 2.1 percent, in mid-morning trading. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 2.2 percent. The Nasdaq was down 2.5 percent.

Officials emphasized that fear should not stop patients from taking the smoking-cessation medicines, Chantix, made by Pfizer, and Zyban, made by GlaxoSmithKline, which also sells it under the brand name Wellbutrin, for depression.

“Stopping smoking is a goal we should all be working towards,” said Dr. Curtis J. Rosebraugh, director of a drug evaluation office at the Food and Drug Administration. “We don’t want to scare people off from trying a medication that could help them achieve this goal. You should just be careful.”

Pfizer will add a so-called black box warning - the F.D.A.’s most serious caution - to the packaging information for Chantix.

Harve Presnell, whose rich operatic baritone thrilled audiences in the stage and film versions of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” and who made an unexpected return to the screen as William H. Macy's overbearing father-in-law in “Fargo,” died Tuesday in Santa Monica, California. He was 75 and lived in Livingston, Montana.

The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, said his agent, Gregg Klein.

Mr. Presnell, who trained as an opera singer, brought an imposing physical presence - he stood 6 feet 4 inches - and a resplendent voice to the Broadway stage, delivering a star-making performance as Leadville Johnny Brown in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”

“He anchored that show, with a down-to-earth quality that played perfectly against Tammy Grimes' wonderfully eccentric style,” said Miles Kreuger, the president of the Institute of the American Musical. “It’s a pity they didn’t give him more larger-than-life roles because he had the physical presence and the voice for it.”

This year, Florida’s budget crisis has gutted summer school. Brevard classrooms are shuttered, and students like 11-year-old Uvenka Jean-Baptiste, whose mother works in a nursing home, are spending their summer days at home, surfing television channels or loitering at a mall.

Nearly every school system in Florida has eviscerated or eliminated summer school this year, and officials are reporting sweeping cuts in states from North Carolina and Delaware to California and Washington. The cuts have come as states across the country are struggling to approve budgets, and California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a fiscal state of emergency on Wednesday.

“We’re seeing a disturbing trend of districts making huge cuts to summer school; they’re just devastating these programs,” said Ron Fairchild, executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s having a disproportionate impact on low-income families.”

SPIEGEL: Ayatollah Kadivar, we are meeting you here at Duke University in the U.S. State of North Carolina, 7,500 miles away from your home. Are you not needed more urgently in Iran now?

Kadivar: Believe me, in these dramatic hours I would much rather be in my homeland. Within the next two weeks, the future of Iran will be decided. Almost all my friends, 95 percent of them, are now in prison; and I am barely able to contact my family, the phones are almost dead.

SPIEGEL: You are said to be the co-author of the most recent declarations of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Kadivar: That is not right. Although I enjoyed his statements, they are not mine. I published my declarations separately, although I support Mousavi strongly. We have found means to communicate with each other. Via the Internet and via third parties, I am in constant contact with my homeland. Every day I receive about 100 messages.

SPIEGEL: Tehran appears quiet at the moment, at least compared with the mass protests of the week before last. Are we currently seeing the beginning of the end of the resistance - or the end of the Iranian regime?

Kadivar: This Iranian form of theocracy has failed. The rights of the Iranian peoples are trampled upon and my homeland is heading towards a military dictatorship. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad behaves like an Iranian Taliban. The supreme leader, Mr. Ali Khamenei, has tied his fate to that of Ahmadinejad, a great moral, but also political mistake.

SPIEGEL: What has your counsel been for opposition leader Mousavi in recent days? Is he truly the undisputed head of the movement?