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.

Boudreaux, who gained his administrative post in 2005 and earned a salary of just under $200,000, was called to City Manager Carlos Migoya's office first thing Monday morning and told the news.

The manager has also put a halt to capital projects using general fund money and ordered Miami to stop procurement for three months as the financially strapped city scrambles to steady its financial grip.

Migoya, brought in by Mayor Tomas Regalado two weeks ago to shore up the city's finances and deal with a widening federal probe, said he dismissed Boudreaux after studying a series of money transfers used to balance the city's books in 2007 and 2008.

Looking to balance the budget in 2007 and 2008, Boudreaux said he had found $26.4 million in unused general fund money in capital accounts from long dead or finished projects. He then shifted that money back to the general fund. Yet Migoya said Boudreaux's actions effectively halted projects that remained ongoing. Plus, he said, "the people in Capital Improvements were not told to stop spending money against it."

Former choirboys of the Regensburger Domspatzen have told Spiegel about sexual and physical abuse at two boarding schools attached to the famous Catholic choir. One former choirboy says it's "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother Georg Ratzinger, a former head of the choir, didn't know about it.

The abuse scandal at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir is bigger than had been thought so far. Therapists in and around Munich treated several former choirboys who were traumatized by sexual and other physical abuse.

One man affected told Spiegel about cruel rituals in the Etterzhausen boarding school, a preparatory school for younger pupils from which the choir draws its recruits.

He said that at the end of the 1950s the headmaster of the school, a Catholic priest, had dealt out hard physical punishments. He had often practiced what was called "naked beatings" in his private rooms, where boys aged eight or nine had to undress and were beaten by hand. In some cases, the victim said, penetration took place.

'Sexual Lust'

The director and composer Franz Wittenbrink, who lived in the Regensburg boarding school of the choir until 1967, said the school had an "elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust."

Trans-Atlantic security needs have changed fundamentally in the last two decades. The East-West confrontation has ended, and Moscow now shares many interests with NATO. It is time for the alliance to open its doors to Russia, say German defense experts Volker Ruhe, Klaus Naumann, Frank Elbe and Ulrich Weisser in the following open letter written to the German public.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has noted with concern that many of today's politicians have too little knowledge of history. He could well have added that those same politicians are also frighteningly deficient when it comes to understanding strategic and security issues. In Germany, there is no significant discussion about the future of NATO, its self-image, its strategy for the future and the question of how Russia can be included. Berlin is not showing any opinion leadership, nor is it spurring international debate. This has been a disappointment for other members of the alliance, who are asking themselves whether the Germans are afraid of the debate or are simply no longer capable of contributing to it in a forward-looking way.

Europe's security, though, remains a constant task, and new challenges require different responses than in the past. The Euro-Atlantic region needs peace and stability at home, but it also needs protection against external threats. Ultimately, the emergence of a multi-polar world requires finding a way to offset the political, economic and strategic dynamics of the large Asian powers.

NATO, in its current form, is not up to these tasks. In the future, the alliance should see itself as a strategic framework for the three centers of power: North America, Europe and Russia. This trio has common interests that are threatened by the same challenges, and which require the same responses. If the alliance intends to be the primary forum for addressing all crises - because it is the only forum where North America, Europe and Russia sit at the same table - then it must now establish the requisite institutional framework for that to happen. The door to NATO membership should be opened for Russia. Russia, in turn, must be prepared to accept the rights and obligations of a NATO member, of an equal among equals.

Scientists estimate that nearly half the living material on our planet is hidden in or beneath the ocean or in rocks, soil, tree roots, mines, oil wells, lakes and aquifers on the continents.

They call it the "subsurface biosphere," a dark world where the sun and stars don't shine. Some call it Earth's basement.

"Earth's habitable zone extends to depths of hundreds or thousands of meters," Katrina Edwards, a microbiologist at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, told a December conference of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "The organisms that live in this environment may collectively have a mass equivalent to that of all of Earth's surface dwellers and may provide keys to solving major environmental, agricultural and industrial problems."

For example, geologists are considering whether to store some of the world's excess carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, in a worldwide network of crevices below the sea floor.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is warning the public not to consume some pretzel products because the products may be contaminated with salmonella.

The products contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein manufactured by Basic Food Flavors, Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada. Basic Food Flavors initiated a recall of the hydrolyzed vegetable protein due to salmonella contamination.

The following foods, manufactured in the U.S., are affected by this alert:

H.K. Anderson, Pretzel Bites, 9 oz. Honey Mustard. UPC code 070271 00130 3.

President's Choice, Honey Mustard flavor, 300 g, Pretzel Nuggets. UPC code 0 60383 99222 4

These products may have been distributed across Canada.

There have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of these products.

PetroChina is the second Chinese state-owned company to try to take a stake in Queensland's vast coal seam gas  (CSG) reserves, after China National Offshore Oil Corp last year struck an off-take and equity stake agreement with BG Group's Gladstone LNG project.

The move, which put a rocket under CSG shares Monday, continues the rapid acquisition of Australia's CSG reserves by global energy giants, who if this deal goes ahead, will have a controlling or equal stake in three of the four big LNG projects planned for Gladstone and their gas reserves.

The other three projects are owned by BG, Origin/ConocoPhillips and Santos/Petronas.

If the takeover goes ahead, Shell would also sell PetroChina half its existing Queensland CSG assets, which consist of a planned LNG project on Curtis Island and a 30 per cent stake in Arrow's reserves, so the pair would have a 50-50 joint venture.

Greek Alternate Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas, 41, talks to German news magazine Spiegel about his country's strained relations with Germany, possible reparations for the Nazi era and Athens' struggle to emerge from its debt crisis.

SPIEGEL: Many in Germany currently describe your country as a den of iniquity plagued by nepotism, corruption and tax evasion. Athens has responded with Nazi-related accusations. How strained are the relations between the two countries?

Dimitris Droutsas: Greece's relationship with Germany is excellent, as always. Over the past few days, the atmosphere has been characterized by tensions on a media level, on both sides. Our citizens are facing hard times, and they know that. They also have the feeling, however, that they have already achieved a certain amount. Nevertheless, they feel pressure and hear mainly criticism, sometimes also scorn and ridicule. This has caused emotions to boil over - and led to misunderstandings.

SPIEGEL: Greece's deputy prime minister, Theodoros Pangalos, couldn't help mentioning that the German occupying forces during World War II took the Greeks' gold and "never paid it back." And the president of the Greek parliament, Philippos Petsalnikos, even summoned the German ambassador.

Droutsas: This shows that the Greek population felt genuinely annoyed. But I am certain that this does not reflect the true relationship between the two countries.

SPIEGEL: During the German occupation, Hitler forced the Greeks to grant a "war loan" to pay for the Wehrmacht, and when the Germans withdrew, the remaining debt was the equivalent of roughly €5 billion ($6.8 billion). Is the bill still unpaid?

A provincial police officer has been rushed to hospital after being shot in a standoff in southwestern Ontario.

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) spokesman Sergeant Pierre Chamberlain said the shooting happened about 10:20 a.m. Monday as the male officer, who has not yet been identified, responded to a call. The officer is part of the force's Huron County detachment.

“I'm not sure how, or what, or why, or where, but there was a shooting. The officer was transported to hospital via air ambulance,” he said.

CTV reports the officer, who has 20 years experience, was in surgery with a head injury at a London, Ontario, hospital. However, Sgt. Chamberlain would not confirm the policeman's injuries or condition.

The shooting occurred as part of a “standoff” with a man, according to Monica Hudon, a spokeswoman for the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). She said the man was wounded and taken to Victoria Hospital in London, which is part of the London Health Sciences Center, for treatment.

The SIU, a provincial agency that examines all death or serious injuries involving police and civilians, has assigned nine investigators to the case.

Those wanting to own a McDonald's or Subway franchise in Germany must be prepared to offer up intimate personal details, including health information. One German official says the questionnaires violate the law.

One might think that the prerequisites for becoming the owner of a McDonald's franchise would be relatively straightforward. Decent business acumen, a management background, perhaps a well-practiced burger-flipping technique. The rest, it would seem, should take care of itself.

But as it turns out, you also have to be comfortable with exposing intimate personal details. According to information obtained by Spiegel, those wanting to partner with the fast-food chain Subway must agree to a background check "in accordance with anti-terror legislation" such as the U.S. Patriot Act.

The report must also include information about the applicant's character, lifestyle and relationships. Future franchise owners are also asked whether they have ever been part of a terrorist organization.

Potential McDonald's franchise holders, meanwhile, are grilled about extra-marital affairs and health problems. Indeed, potential proprietors are asked about the date and the reason for their last visit to the doctor.

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 two countries, among the largest and fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, submitted letters to the United Nations agreeing to be included on a list of countries covered by the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a three-page non-binding statement reached at the end of the contentious and chaotic 10-day conference.

China and India join more than 100 countries that have signed up under the accord, which calls for limiting the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond pre-industrial levels.

The agreement also calls for spending as much as $100 billion a year to help emerging countries adapt to climate change and develop low-carbon energy systems, accelerated energy technology transfers to the developing world and steps to protect tropical forests from destruction.

The 192 nations gathered at the Copenhagen climate meeting did not formally adopt the accord but merely voted to “take note” of it. The inclusion of China and India in the accord has only a minor practical effect but will provide a boost for the agreement’s credibility.

U.S. President Barack Obama accused insurance companies of placing profits over people and said Republicans ignored long-festering problems when they held power as he sought to build support Monday for swift passage of legislation stalled in Congress.

“Let's seize reform, the need is great,” Obama said at an appearance in Glenside, Pennsylvania, that had the feel of a campaign rally.

“How much higher do premiums have to rise before we do something about it?” said President Obama, making the first in an expected string of out-of-town trips to pitch his plan to remake the health care system.

The president said dismissively that Republican critics in Congress say they want to do something about rising health care costs, but said they did not when they held power. “You had 10 years. What happened. What were you doing?” he said to applause from an audience at Arcadia University.

President Obama made his appeal as Democratic leaders in Congress worked on a rescue plan for sweeping changes in health care that seemed earlier in the year to be on the brink of passage. The two-step approach calls for the House to approve a Senate-passed bill despite opposition to several of its provisions, and both houses to follow immediately with a companion measure that makes a series of changes.

The Vatican says it wouldn't comment on the criticism from Germany, the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI. Later Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the German church's effort to respond to a spate of abuse allegations.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger cited a 2001 Vatican directive requiring even the most serious abuse cases to be first investigated internally.

Scandals over sexual abuse by Catholic clergy of minors and cover-ups by church hierarchy have exploded worldwide in the last two decades, including in recent weeks in Germany and the Netherlands.

Benedict has a meeting scheduled this week with the head of Germany's bishops conference.

Over the past year, scientists have found more and more convincing evidence that the moon, once thought desert dry, holds significant amounts of water ice within the deep, eternally dark craters near the south pole. The evidence turned conclusive with the deliberate crash of a NASA spacecraft into one of the craters last October, kicking up about 26 gallons of water. 

The effort focused on the south pole, with its larger and deeper craters, but last week, scientists reported there is also ice in craters near the north pole.

And not just a dusting of frost. Within 40 small craters, one to nine miles wide, they estimated 600 million metric tons of water. Perhaps most notably, “It has to be relatively pure,” said Paul Spudis, the principal investigator for the instrument that made the discovery.

That is significant, because the ice in these craters could be easily tapped by future lunar explorers - not just for drinking water, but also broken apart into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel. In the previous findings, scientists could not rule out the possibility that the water was sparse or locked up within rocks and difficult to extract.

Iraq’s election commission announced that 62 percent of Iraqis voted, higher than expected, though only 53 percent cast ballots in Baghdad, which was struck by a wave of violence as polls opened.

While lower than the 76 percent that turned out in the country’s last parliamentary election in December 2005, it was higher than last year’s showing in provincial elections, suggesting an energized electorate and perhaps higher stakes. Some of the largest turnout occurred in regions, like Kirkuk and Nineveh, that include disputed territories.

“It was really a good day for Iraqi democracy,” the American ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, told reporters. “And I believe it will be a foundation point, a new beginning for the U.S. relationship with Iraq that we hope will stretch for decades to come.”

A combination of reasonably upbeat economic data, new tensions in oil-producing Nigeria and reports that China intends to build up its strategic reserves lifted crude prices to around $82 on Monday, about a $10 increase over the last month.

Prices at the pump have followed suit, with the average national price for a gallon of gasoline rising 5 cents in the last week.

“That’s a drag on the economy,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, who estimated that consumers are paying just over $1 billion a day at the pump, about $250 million more than this time a year ago.

Kloza predicted that gasoline prices would top $3 a gallon between April and June as warm weather encourages more driving, before dropping to as low as $2.50 after the summer driving season. “We’re in the fourth or fifth inning of the typical end of winter, early spring rise in gasoline prices,” he added.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has suggested setting up a European monetary fund to enable the euro zone to tackle debt crises such as that seen in Greece without resorting to the IMF. European Union Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn has welcomed the idea.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has won support from E.U. Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn for a proposal to set up a European monetary fund to tackle debt crises such as the one in Greece.

"We are working closely with Germany, France and the other E.U. member states on this issue," Rehn told the Financial Times Deutschland in an article published on Monday. "The Commission is prepared to propose such a European instrument that gets the support of the members of the euro zone." Any aid provided by the funds would need to be "combined with strict conditions," he said.

Greece has run up a budget deficit more than four times higher than the E.U.'s limit of 3 percent of GDP, sparking market fears that it could default on its debt and threaten Europe's 11-year-old monetary union. The country has announced major spending cuts and tax hikes to reduce its budget deficit. The crisis has caused the euro currency to depreciate by around 10 percent against the dollar since the end of last year.

The earthquake surprised many people as they slept, crumpling buildings into piles of rubble. Panicked survivors fled into the narrow village streets, some climbing out of windows, as more than 50 aftershocks measuring up to 5.5 and 5.3 magnitude rattled the region.

The Kandilli seismology center said the quake hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) near the village of Basyurt in Elazig province, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of Ankara, the capital.

The government initially put the death toll at 57 but later lowered it to 51. It gave no explanation for the discrepancy. In addition to the deaths, about 34 people were being treated for injuries from the quake, said Turkey's crisis center.

The worst-hit area was the village of Okcular, where 17 people were killed. As relatives rushed in for news of their loved ones, authorities blocked off the area so ambulances and rescue teams could maneuver on the village's narrow roads. Residents lit fires to keep warm in the winter cold.

They claim that in 2008 TPI failed to make timely disclosure to investors of material information regarding its earnings and forecasts and that shareholders subsequently suffered big losses when TPI's share price fell.

Investors could seek damages from TPI relating to alleged misleading or deceptive conduct and breaches of the TPI's continuous disclosure obligations.

Maurice Blackburn's New South Wales principal, Ben Slade, said Australian-listed companies were required to make timely disclosure to the market of information that could materially affect their share price.

"We believe that TPI has failed in its responsibility to provide this information to the market," said Slade; adding that some large institutional and professional investors, who had requested that they not be identified, had already expressed an interest in a class action.