Some experts hailed the measure as an important stimulus.

"We're starting to talk real money," said Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.

Conservatives, however, insisted that the bill's cost was a big, unnecessary price to pay. It would add an estimated $100 billion or more to the government's record deficits.

"I can no longer stand by, even on a bill such as this, and vote for it when it is going to add $100 billion to the debt," said Sen. George LeMieux, R-Florida.

The ban is the most aggressive step yet in a three-year effort in Congress to curb abuses in the awarding of earmarks, which direct that federal money be spent in a very specific way. The move follows criminal investigations, ethics inquiries and political embarrassment linked to the use of earmarks.

If the ban had been in effect last year, it would have blocked some 1,000 earmarks, many of them for military contractors that received multi-million-dollar contracts, leaders of the House Appropriations Committee said in announcing the decision.

The move came less than two weeks after the House ethics committee cleared seven members of a defense appropriations subcommittee of allegations growing out of their awarding of earmarks to political contributors.

The earlier decision to clear the lawmakers drew sharp criticism from government watchdog groups, who said it would open the door to further abuse. The ban announced Wednesday appeared to be an effort by House Democrats to regain the high ground after a series of allegations against their own members. Republican leaders are considering how and whether to follow suit.

Scientists who study climate change from a remote post on Ellesmere Island are planning to shut down their cash-strapped project after the federal government refused to refinance a key climate-change research foundation.

The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) is located 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole, and collects data on the changing climate of the Far North, where global warming is found to be most intense.

In a conference call this week, PEARL scientists were not discussing their findings but were making plans to shut down the lab, including complicated arrangements to air lift out their equipment.

In its budget last week, Canada's Harper government provided no new money for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences. The foundation is the country's main fund for scientists studying everything from global climate models, to the melting of polar ice and frequency of Arctic storms, to prairie droughts and shrinking Rocky Mountain glaciers.

For many in the research community, the budget decision merely confirmed the view that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government remain skeptical of climate-change science and hostile to those who provide evidence that aggressive action must be taken to avert catastrophic global warming.

“If you’re serious, as the Obama administration is, about being a leader in the multinational system, you can’t provide leadership in the international trade arena,” said Robert Z. Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at the Harvard Kennedy School. “In my view, it’s very critical for us to have the administration active in this area.”

On Wednesday, the director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, and with the United States trade representative, Ron Kirk, in an attempt to renew American involvement in the long-stalled Doha round of trade accords, which began in 2001.

At the same time, the Obama administration is dealing with trade disputes with Mexico and Brazil over American restrictions on trucking and subsidies for cotton growers.

In the U.S. Senate, there are signs of momentum toward implementing free-trade agreements that the administration of President George W. Bush negotiated with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. Those agreements have languished, primarily over concerns about Korean restrictions on auto and beef imports and the rights of unions in Colombia, but also because any trade-opening pact faces a struggle in Congress when unemployment is so high.

German auto giant Volkswagen is having trouble with its subsidiary Skoda. Not only are profits down at the Czech-based automaker, but its cars are now competing directly with VW models - and in some cases are beating them in road tests.

There are some mistakes that you only make once. Reinhard Jung, chairman of Volkswagen's subsidiary Skoda, recently made such a slip at the Geneva Motor Show.

Several dozen spotlights and cameras were aimed at the executive when he stepped onto the stage on Tuesday of last week. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn and Ferdinand Piech, the powerful head of VW's supervisory board, were sitting in the first row. Then Jung said: "I would like to welcome, in particular, the chairman of the supervisory board of the VW Group, Professor Dr. Ferdinand Porsche."

The slip of the tongue is unlikely to have gone down well with Ferdinand Piech. The Porsche and Piëch families - which are both descended from the legendary German automotive pioneer Ferdinand Porsche - have been involved in a dynastic feud for decades over control of the car companies Volkswagen and Porsche.

Jung will not have an opportunity to repeat his gaffe: The 59-year-old executive is being sent into retirement this fall.

Canadian and Afghan troops are pushing deep into southern Afghanistan's Panjwaii district, the cradle of the Taliban, to cut off enemy supply lines in advance of a major coalition offensive in Kandahar planned for the spring.

The move, designed to capitalize on recent NATO efforts to maintain a presence in enemy territory, is meant to interrupt Taliban movements into Kandahar city, said Lt.-Col. Jerry Walsh, the commanding officer of Canada's battle group in Afghanistan.

“The insurgency in Panjwaii right now is in a state of disarray,” said Walsh.

“They are being denied the freedom that they've enjoyed in the past because of the persistent presence that Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and ISAF soldiers ... have been able to establish over the course of the past few months.”

News of the move followed word from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that more than 20 suspected insurgents had been captured in a 36-hour period in the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand to the west and Khost, a tiny region on the country's eastern border.

The Panjwaii push is part of Operation Cerberus, the first in a comprehensive series of “shaping operations” aimed at securing the areas around Kandahar city.

Pakistani authorities said about a dozen masked militants stormed the building at about 9:30 a.m., pulled the staff members out of their offices and herded them into a single room, then started shooting indiscriminately. The attackers set off a bomb as they left, destroying the offices, which are located in North-West Frontier Province, in the village of Oghi, near the disputed region of Kashmir.

A spokesman for World Vision said the attackers robbed the employees and stole computers and telephones from the office before opening fire.

Officials in Pakistan said the assailants were of different ethnicities and spoke a mix of Urdu, Pashto and the Pakistani dialect Hindko as they shouted at the aid workers, telling them that they had been “forewarned to stop spreading immodesty.”

World Vision, based on the West Coast, called the attack the worst single act of violence in its 60-year history, and said it was suspending its operations in Pakistan as authorities there investigated the attack. The group has about 180 employees in the country, the vast majority of them Pakistanis.

While the rest of the world has been pursuing business opportunities in South America, Berlin has been sitting on its hands. Now, with Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle looking for a signature issue, that may change.

Trips to South America aren't always easy. One of the first Germans to travel to the continent barely escaped ending up in a soup pot. In 1550, Hans Staden, a mercenary from the Hessian town of Homberg, went to South America at the behest of Portuguese settlers. Not far from where Sao Paulo is today, he fell into the hands of cannibalistic indigenous peoples who wanted to turn him into their next meal. He saved himself by offering the natives his services as a shaman.

This week, 460 years after Staden, a German is visiting the continent once again. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, hardly an expert on Latin America, is touring Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil this week - in addition to a short stop in earthquake-shaken Chile - together with a colorful entourage. He hopes to make the region a focus of his foreign policy.

Westerwelle's approach stems from the insight that Brazil, in particular, is becoming more and more important on the international stage. But, like his predecessors, he is also searching for a foreign policy issue with which to make his mark. Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer focused on the Middle East, while his successor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, specialized in the Caucasus region. Both men sought to gain stature on the foreign stage without interference from the Chancellery.

Westerwelle is drawn to Brazil for the same reason. Chancellor Angela Merkel has monopolized Germany's relations with Russia, China, the United States and Israel. But she has never shown any real interest in South America's largest country.

A co-ordinated investigation into child pornography in Ontario, Canada, resulted in charges against 35 people across the province, police announced Wednesday.

Two child victims, one in the province, the other outside Canada, were “rescued,” police said, although they refused to provide details.

“This is a crime that, to me, is one of the most heinous one human being can commit against another,” said Ontario Police Commissioner Julian Fantino.

“(Police) will stop at nothing to hunt down child predators.”

The charges follow weeks of legwork involving 18 police services that are part of a province-wide initiative to combat child pornography.

In all, 44 search warrants were executed, leading to 122 child-porn and other charges.

Police said the individuals charged were not part of any ring.

Canadian-born actor Corey Haim has died in California.

The Los Angeles coroner’s office confirmed the 38-year-old actor died around 5:15 a.m. ET Wednesday but wouldn’t give any details. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death.

Early reports suggested Haim died of an apparent accidental drug overdose, but police said it was too early to draw conclusions.

Haim had flulike symptoms before he died and was getting over-the-counter and prescription medications, said  Police Sgt. William Mann. The cause of death is unknown, said Sgt. Mann.

“He could have succumbed to whatever (illness) he had or it could have been drugs. Who knows?” said Sgt. Mann. “He has had a drug problem in the past.”

A brief statement on the actor’s official website confirms his death.

The euro is under attack like never before, as the promises on which it was based turn out to be lies. Hedge funds are speculating against Greek debt, while euro-zone politicians work behind the scenes to cobble together rescue packages. But fundamental flaws in the monetary union need to be fixed if Europe's common currency is to survive. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was full of praise and recognition for Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou. His government, Merkel said on Friday evening after the two leaders had met to discuss the Greek financial crisis, had performed "a massive feat of strength". The Greeks, Merkel continued, had implemented a package of measures, which impressed the capital markets, "in a remarkably short space of time."

Merkel said that she was pleased to see how successful the placement of the Greeks' new government bond issue  had been. "It worked out well," she said.

Papandreou also seemed pleased as he listened to the German leader, thanking her profusely for her support and making it clear that he had not asked for financial assistance.

High turnout in the recent Iraqi election is fueling hope that stability in the war-torn country may not be far off. But the challenges Iraq faces are still considerable. In a Spiegel Online interview, Iraq expert Brian Katulis warns that the country must act decisively to ensure its own future before the United States finishes its planned withdrawal in 2011.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Initial reports on the parliamentary elections in Iraq have been encouraging. Sixty-two percent of the electorate cast their ballots. This is slightly lower than it was in 2005 but, given the recent spate of violence, still significant. Was Sunday a good day for Iraq's democracy?

Brian Katulis: Election Day was a very good day for Iraq. The real test will come in the coming months. For Iraq's democracy to take real root, the country's leaders need to move forward on resolving power-sharing disputes and protecting the rights of all citizens, especially religious minorities, such as Christians, who have faced tremendous persecution in many parts of the country.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Final election results are not expected for several days, if not weeks. Is it likely that a potential election cliffhanger could lead to more violence?

Katulis: Uncertainty about the elections could fuel more tensions on the ground. Since the country has been flooded with weapons over the past six years - with many of them going to militias and other groups outside of the Iraqi security forces - a danger exists that some political groups might try to use these weapons to settle political scores. But I doubt violence would return to (the level it was at during) the ugly days of Iraq's civil war, in 2006 and 2007. How the Iraqi security forces, including certain divisions of the Iraqi army, react to the election results is something many Iraq-watchers are monitoring.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot will depend on the willingness of the election's losers to accept its results. How do you think people will react if the election is contested? Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who seems to be trailing current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, has already indicated he would accuse the other side of fraud.

Katulis: In many early elections in countries undergoing political transitions, various parties and candidates dispute the legitimacy of the results. So, I'm not surprised by early complaints, and I suspect there will be many more to come. The question is whether Iraq's institutions, including the electoral commission and the judiciary, deal with such complaints in a transparent and efficient manner.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will the new divide between Shiites, who mostly voted for Maliki, and Sunnis, who largely backed Allawi, exacerbate divisions within the country?

Everyone loves an apocalypse, and none more so than the one that sped the dinosaurs to their now legendary status. Having been a popular theory for 30 years, last week scientists finally reached a consensus that it was indeed the after-effects of a juggernaut meteorite crashing 65 million years ago into what we now call Chicxulub in Mexico that triggered the end of the dinosaurs' reign on Earth.

The reasons for loving this particular catastrophe are easy to understand. Dinosaurs are awesome. Giant meteorites are awesome. And of course, the combination of the two opened the door for the rise of the mammals. Our own story begins with that cataclysm.

"Consensus" has unfortunately become a dirty word outside the scientific world, thanks to those who disagree with the overwhelming majority of scientists about man-made global warming, but fail to offer any science in return. Unlike climate change, though, many issues remain with this extinction event. Sixty-five million years later, the pattern of extinction looks decidedly uneven. Dinosaurs were wiped out, but many similar-sized crocodiles survived. Amphibians managed to come out of this apocalypse relatively unscathed. Sharks survived, but plesiosaurs perished. Much work remains to be done.

Nevertheless, this consensus on the fate of the dinosaurs is welcomed by people such as me who worry about such things. But let's not get too attached to it. On the grand scale of extinctions, the Chicxulub meteorite is a drop in the ocean. There have been five major extinctions in the history of life. 251 million years ago was the big mama, erasing 95% of sea species and 70% of land life.

It is important to recognize that although 10-mile-wide rocks crashing from space are not the norm, extinction itself is. About 97% of all species that have ever existed currently do not. We may be in the midst of a mass extinction,  though probably not on the scale of those 65 or 251 million years ago. Up to a third of all species are "committed to extinction", according to current models.

The stakes were huge - a $35 billion contract for 179 tanker jets - but in the end European aerospace giant EADS saw no chance in winning. On Monday, its U.S. partner Northrop Grumman withdrew its joint bid with EADS to build tankers for the Pentagon based on an Airbus aircraft model. EADS officials claim the new bidding process was tailored exclusively for a Boeing win.

After years of intense competition, Airbus parent company EADS abandoned its bid on Monday for a lucrative U.S. Air Force contract to build 179 refueling jets at a value of $35 billion. German media had described it as the "deal of the century" for the European aerospace and defense giant. The bidding process had put Airbus in head-to-head competition against U.S. airplane-maker Boeing.

But on Monday, EADS' United States-based partner on the project, Northrop Grumman, withdrew its bid, saying the call for bids had been so tightly tailored that Boeing was the only company that could possibly land the contract. Airbus CEO Thomas Enders has accused the U.S. government of "prejudice".

The news didn't come as a total surprise. Three months ago, Northrop Grumman threatened to abandon the bid, saying the company wasn't being treated fairly. Officials said Boeing had been given access to Airbus' pricing offer and was able to adjust its own accordingly. Northrop-Grumman and Airbus originally won the order for the jets in 2008, but under protest from Boeing, the bid was overturned. The Pentagon, backing government auditors who claimed errors had been made in the original bid, called for a new bidding process.

"The current contract is clearly tailored to the competition's smaller and less capable aircraft," EADS' Enders said, according to German news agency DPA. "The bottom line is obvious: This process is no longer about the best tanker plane or fair competition." In 2009, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he could only live with a Boeing offer.

The vote, which is an early step in the process of amending the Constitution, brought pandemonium to the floor of the Parliament, as a small group of regional caste-based parties waged a fierce fight to block it, arguing that it would diminish their influence.

The parties, allies of the governing coalition led by the Congress Party, have threatened to withdraw their support, which would reduce the coalition’s voting majority to single digits and jeopardize crucial legislation like India’s budget, which was just introduced. The chaos surrounding the bill threatens to undermine what has been an otherwise stable coalition government, said analysts.

Tuesday’s vote was the first of four hurdles the measure must clear. The lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, must pass the bill, then the proposed amendment will need to win approval from at least half of India’s state legislatures. Then India’s president, a largely ceremonial post, must sign off.

The amendment is a long-sought tool to improve the lot of women in India, the world’s most populous democracy. Despite having had several formidable female leaders - including the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi, the current leader of the Congress Party - Indian women lag behind men in virtually every sphere of life.

The U.S. and Russia are currently negotiating a successor to the START nuclear disarmament treaty. But continued American plans for a missile shield in Europe have proven to be a major stumbling block. President Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world is in danger.

There is good news on the disarmament front: U.S. President Barack Obama is fine-tuning a new nuclear strategy. As White House officials said last week during a meeting between Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he plans to reach a decision by April. The new strategy could include the scrapping of "thousands of nuclear weapons," and even a commitment by the United States not to develop any new nuclear weapons.

In addition, what may be the final round of Russian-American talks on the further reduction of strategic offensive weapons started on Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland. The successor for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is "almost 100 percent complete," says a Moscow negotiator. "We have agreed on the number of launch systems and the warheads, as well as the inspection and destruction of the nuclear payloads. All problems have been solved."

So much optimism has rarely been seen in Moscow and Washington, particularly when it comes to the two countries' arsenals of nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, though, the elation is not genuine. The idea that the world can become a planet free of nuclear weapons one day - as promised by President Obama in his visionary speech last year in Prague, Czech Republic -  remains a fallacy for the time being.

And the new treaty won't change that. Even if Russia and the U.S. finally put aside their decades of hostility during the Cold War and sign a treaty outlining the further reduction of their nuclear arsenals, their behind-the-scenes relationship is, once again, characterized by deep mistrust - perhaps even more so than during the administration of the abrasive former U.S. president, George W. Bush.

The state-by-state January employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) clarifies and deepens the national employment data released last week, which suggested that employers have stopped firing workers and are starting to hire.

In January, said the BLS, California led all states in employment growth with 32,000 net new jobs. Illinois and New York state followed with respective net gains of 26,000 and 25,500, and the state of Washington followed with 18,900. Eighteen states saw employment decrease, and one state saw no change.

"The fact that you have three important and largely service-based economies showing gains may tell us that we have a broader recovery emerging, and this may be a bit of a bright light here," said Steve Cochrane, a managing director at forecaster Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

States with big manufacturing operations showed positive signs last year, he said, thanks to demand created by the government's "cash for clunkers" program and growing exports. So improvement in states with large service sectors is another positive indicator.

EADS and its American partner Northrop Grumman have abandoned their joint bid for a $35 billion contract to build tanker jets for the U.S. military, citing unfair competition as their reason for withdrawing. German commentators on Wednesday sense more than a whiff of hypocrisy from European governments.

Politicians in Berlin and elsewhere in Europe are accusing Washington of protectionism over the collapse of a deal for the construction of 179 refueling tanker planes that pitted European aerospace giant EADS and its Airbus subsidiary against Boeing. Berlin is claiming the bidding process conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense was so custom-tailored to Boeing that EADS' American partner company, Northrop Grumman, had virtually no chance of scoring the lucrative $35 billion contract.

On Tuesday, German Economics Minister Rainer Bruderle expressed his disappointment over the Defense Department's behavior in the deal, which led to a decision by Northrop Grumman on Monday to withdraw completely from the bidding process. "Free competition cannot be unilaterally limited in the procurement of defense goods," the politician, a member of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, told reporters. "Right now, in the midst of the current crisis, even hints of protectionism can be damaging."

The heads of economics issues in the parliamentary groups of Germany's three largest political parties in the Bundestag were even sharper in their criticism. Joachim Pfeiffer of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, told reporters: "This is a scandalous, unacceptable act. This needs to become a political issue with the USA."

'You Can't Change the Rules Just Because You Don't Like the Winner'

"The government has to push the United States to cease its protectionist tendencies," the FDP's Paul Friedhoff told the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper. Meanwhile, Garrelt Duin of the center-left Social Democratic Party, told the tabloid Bild: "This is a sleight of hand on the part of the Yanks. … The Americans only talk about free competition when it is to their advantage. You can't simply change the rules of the game just because you don't like the winner."

On Tuesday, an Airbus spokesman told Spiegel Online: "During the first bidding process two years ago, the best aircraft was sought." But this time around, the criteria had allegedly been specifically tailored to the Boeing 767. The Americans sought a "small aircraft whose only purpose was refueling," the spokesman said. But the only aim was to "shut us out." By doing so, he argued, the Americans "would for the first time in their history have worse equipment than the Brits or the Australians."

German exports surprisingly fell by 6.3 percent in January while Germany's biggest rival in world trade, China, enjoyed a 45.7 percent surge in February. It's worrying news for Germany which is relying on its export strength to drive its recovery. Analysts expect exports to grow this year, aided by a weak euro.

German exports unexpectedly fell by 6.3 percent in January from the previous month, according to data released on Wednesday that run counter to economists' forecasts of an export-led recovery.

By contrast, Chinese exports jumped 45.7 percent in February, the biggest increase in three years. China replaced Germany as the world's biggest exporter in 2009. Germany had proudly held the unofficial title of "export world champion" since 2003.

Germany's traditional export strength lies in heavy machinery, automobiles and chemicals, and economists expect German sales abroad to be boosted by the sharp depreciation of the euro in currency markets this year, which makes the country's goods cheaper outside the 16-nation euro zone.

Stefan Bielmeier, an economist at Deutsche Bank, said exports must have been hit by extraordinary factors in January. "The figures don't fit in with the picture generated by other economic indicators. The purchasing managers' index and Ifo survey had indicated a recovery in export industries," he said.

One of the most detailed investigations ever conducted in Canada into the fate of road salt has found that it is polluting groundwater and causing some streams during winter thaws to have salinity levels just under those found in the ocean.

The elevated salt readings were detected in Pickering, where researchers from the University of Toronto have been studying how the salt spread on highways, such as the 401, and other roadways through suburban sprawl affects water quality. They found that so much salty water from the community is ending up in Frenchman's Bay, a scenic lagoon on the shores of Lake Ontario, that the small water body is being poisoned.

"Our findings are pretty dramatic, and the effects are felt year-round," said Nick Eyles, a geology professor at the university and the lead researcher on the project. "We now know that 3,600 tons of road salt end up in that small lagoon every winter from direct runoff in creeks and effectively poison it for the rest of the year."

He called the findings, which were published recently in the journal Sedimentary Geology, "a really bad-news story" involving a "relentless chemical assault on a watershed."

The Pickering area provided researchers with an ideal place to study the effects of road-salt spreading, because most of the city lies within a relatively compact 27-square-kilometer watershed, where it was easy for pollution monitors to track where salt spread on roads ended up.

Wheelis, who's now in a wheelchair and a little hard of hearing, has lost none of her spunk. One of 300 surviving WASPs, she proudly participated in a ceremony Wednesday at the Capitol that honored the women with the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's highest civilian honors.

"This tops it off," the Weatherford, Texas, resident said of getting the award and the long-overdue recognition. "I wonder why it took so long."

The ceremony had to be moved from the Capitol Rotunda to the much larger Capitol Visitor Center's Emancipation Hall, because so many WASPs and their families attended.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said that more than 2,000 people were in the hall at what was "one of the largest crowds ever gathered in the Capitol."

"We acknowledge that for too long the proud service of the WASPs was not recognized in word or in deed," said Pelosi. "Today, we honor you as the heroes that you are."

The U.S. government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9-billion (U.S.), 14 per cent higher than the previous record set in February of last year.

The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6-billion, 10.5 per cent higher than a year ago.

The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56-trillion, surpassing last year's $1.4-trillion total. The administration is forecasting that the deficit will remain above $1-trillion in 2011, giving the country three straight years of $1-trillion-plus deficits.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle faces accusations of blurring the lines between his office, party politics and his private life. He has taken his partner Michael Mronz, an entrepreneur, on an official trip to South America this week along with several former donors to his pro-business FDP party.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is openly gay, has rejected criticism of his decision to take his partner, Michael Mronz, on an official trip to South America with him.

Mronz is an event manager who organizes sports events. Critics have accused Westerwelle and Mronz of failing to keep their professional and private lives separate.

Asked to comment on the criticism, Westerwelle said: "I am pleased that Herr Mronz is taking the time to accompany me at his own expense to inform himself about social projects in the region and get involved in them. We want to continue that, and we will."

Westerwelle is currently on a week-long trip to South America with a delegation of business people including Mronz. They are touring Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and they made a short stop in earthquake-shaken Chile.

Tantawi was the "grand sheik" of al Azhar, Sunni Islam's principal center of scholarship and faith, a millennium-old institution that President Barack Obama described as a "beacon of Islamic learning" during his trip to Cairo in June.

Critics, however, say the prestige of Azhar fell into decline under Tantawi, who was perceived by many Muslims to be a mouthpiece for U.S.-allied Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak appointed Tantawi to his position in 1996 to cap a long career as a scholar whose reputation as a relative moderate extended well beyond Egypt.

Tantawi was a vocal critic of female circumcision, a pre-Islamic custom that's still widely practiced in Egypt and North Africa. He condemned suicide attacks, spoke against the notion of a clash of civilizations and was conspicuously silent on the U.S.-led war on Iraq after early remarks that were interpreted as giving the green light for Egyptians to join the insurgency in Iraq.

Detractors say the cleric merely gave religious cover to state decisions.

"He did not act as the sheik of al Azhar, but as a government employee. The result was the shrinking of al Azhar's role in the Muslim world," said Fahmy Howeidy, a prominent Islamist thinker and columnist in Cairo.

States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement.

Companies are quietly and gradually moving their pension funds out of stocks. They want to reduce their investment risk and are buying more long-term bonds.

Yet states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk.

“In effect, they’re going to Las Vegas,” said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas, Texas, investor and the former chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which oversees public plans in that state. “Double up to catch up.”

Though they generally say that their strategies are aimed at diversification and are not riskier, public pension funds are trying a wide range of investments: commodity futures, junk bonds, foreign stocks, deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities and margin investing. And some states that previously shunned hedge funds are trying them now.

A statement issued by Israel’s Interior Ministry said the housing plan was three years in the making and its announcement was procedural and unrelated to Biden’s visit. It added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  had just been informed of it himself.

But Palestinian leaders and Israeli politicians on the left saw it as a deliberate provocation issued on the day that  Biden, the highest ranking member of the Obama administration to visit here, was completing a day of meetings with President Shimon Peres and Netanyahu.

A spokesman for the American Embassy in Tel Aviv said the United States opposed unilateral actions that prejudiced the outcome of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating two states, and this was such an action. The Palestinians want their capital to be in East Jerusalem.

After a speech on other topics, Bair spoke about tight credit conditions in response to a question at a gathering of business economists just outside the nation's capital.

"A light needs to be shined on this and explanations need to be made where credit is not being provided," Bair told members of the National Association for Business Economics.

Her comments followed her agency's recent release of 2009 bank industry data that showed a 7.4 percent contraction in lending, the largest since 1942, the first year the United States fully engaged in World War II.

While advocating public pressure on lenders to offer loans, Bair stopped short of supporting any government mandate to banks to make a minimum amount of loans, warning that "the history of that isn't good."

The child-abuse scandal that broke out in Germany in late January has now spread across the country. As shocked German politicians argue over whether to lift the statute of limitations or impose civil penalties, newspaper commentators are unanimous in their call for swift and concerted action.

At first, it seemed like an isolated incident of abuse at one Catholic school in Berlin. But now, in little over a month, it has ballooned into a massive scandal, with reports of molestations and beatings stretching back decades - in all types of private institutions and all over Germany. Shocked by the scope and terrible nature of the scandal, Germans are clamoring to find the appropriate response.

The series of scandals broke out in late January with initial reports about abuse at Canisius College, a university-prep high school run by Jesuit priests in central Berlin. Since then, it has spread to include other Catholic institutions around the country, including boarding schools, a cathedral choir in Regensburg and a Benedictine monastery school in Ettal, as well as private, secular boarding schools, such as the Oldenwaldschule, an elite private school in Hesse.

Heading the calls for a concerted investigation of the matter is German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP). She has proposed the appointment of ombudsmen and a round table of representatives of the government, the Church and abuse victims. Such a panel, she says, would be "a good way to clear up the many abuse cases and give the Catholic Church an opportunity to enter into dialogue with the victims about voluntary compensation." Leading conservatives have also called for the 20-year statute of limitations on cases of child abuse to be abolished, a move the justice minister opposes.

Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles due to reports of sticking gas pedals and unintended acceleration. But finding out exactly what causes the problem has proven difficult. An explanation for why most of the accidents have occurred in the U.S. has likewise proven elusive.

It is an agonizing predicament that Toyota finds itself in - the most excruciating in the company's history. Vehicles accelerating on their own continue to cause problems, and the inability to bring the matter to a close could spell ruin for the company.

Worn down Toyota managers wanted to bring a little optimism to the Geneva Motor Show last week, but the latest bad news - that repairs failed to solve the car maker's gas pedal problem - ruined the mood.

Numerous Toyota drivers in the United States have alerted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the country's highest transport authority, that their vehicles continue to accelerate by themselves even after repairs made following the recall.

The NHTSA isn't releasing details at the moment, but the news feeds a suspicion that has been circulating for some time - that the cause of the problem lies not with the pedal mechanism, nor is it due to floor mats sliding out of place. Rather, it is thought that the engine's electronic steering system is to blame. Were that to be the case, it would render pointless the repairs, which involve inserting metal shims under the gas pedals, currently being carried out in Toyota repair shops.

Thanks to GPS, scientists at Ohio State University and the University of Hawaii found that the city of Concepcion moved at least 10 feet to the west. It is the nearest major city to last month's quake.

Chile's capital, Santiago, moved just shy of a foot, and even Buenos Aires, in Argentina, moved an inch. The Falkland Islands also went a tad west.