Before 10 Americans were arrested trying to take children out of Haiti late last month, the largest pediatric field hospital in Haiti was airlifting 15 injured children aboard private flights to the United States each day.

But since the arrests, it has been able to evacuate only three children on private flights to American hospitals, according to Elizabeth Greig, the field hospital’s chief administrative officer, who has been in charge of trying to get the necessary Haitian and American approval.

At least 10 other children have died or become worse while waiting to be airlifted out of the country, she said. Dozens of children are in critical need of care, and there has been no shortage of American hospitals or pilots willing to take them.

But before being permitted to evacuate the children, some doctors said they were now being asked by American and Haitian officials for documents proving that the children were orphans or that the adult traveling with them was a parent - a challenging task considering that many residents’ birth certificates and other records remained buried under the rubble.

“They’re all at risk of dying, and none of these children should still be here in Haiti,” said Dr. Shayan Vyas, an American pediatrician changing an IV at the pediatric field hospital, which is based here at the Port-au-Prince airport and handles most of the private pediatric airlifts out of Haiti.

Many in Berlin have long viewed Google's Street View service with some suspicion. Now, Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called for better privacy laws. She says that even intelligence agencies wouldn't "collect photos so unabashedly."

Those wishing to peer into German front yards are often disappointed. In cities and towns across the country, tall fences and dense hedges have long been favored as way to ward off prying eyes.

For Google, of course, such barriers are but a trifling annoyance. In gathering photographic data for the Internet service Street View, the company simply installed cameras on car-mounted masts some 2.5 meters (just over eight feet) off the ground - high enough to peer into most domestic fortresses.

In Germany, however, the obstructions aren't just physical in nature. Many have voiced concerns that Street View represents a blatant violation of privacy. Indeed, the company was challenged in Hamburg, being forced last year to agree to erase data depicting people, property and cars upon request.

Now, a German cabinet minister has gone on the offensive. In an interview with the news magazine Focus, Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called for a law to better protect the private sphere on the Internet and has taken Street View to task.

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the European Union Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit.

Greeks aren't very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It's home to Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office. The number crunchers there are deeply annoyed with Athens. Investigative reports state that important data "cannot be confirmed" or has been requested but "not received".

Creative accounting took priority when it came to totting up government debt. Since 1999, the Maastricht rules threaten to slap hefty fines on euro member countries that exceed the budget deficit limit of three percent of gross domestic product. Total government debt mustn't exceed 60 percent.

The Greeks have never managed to stick to the 60 percent debt limit, and they only adhered to the three percent deficit ceiling with the help of blatant balance sheet cosmetics. One time, gigantic military expenditures were left out, and another time billions in hospital debt. After recalculating the figures, the experts at Eurostat consistently came up with the same results: In truth, the deficit each year has been far greater than the three percent limit. In 2009, it exploded to over 12 percent.

Climate scientists who worked on the United Nations panel on global warming have hit out at "sloppy" colleagues from other disciplines who introduced a mistake about melting glaciers into the landmark 2007 report.

The experts, who worked on the section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that considered the physical science of global warming, say the error by "social and biological scientists" has unfairly maligned their work. Some said that Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chair, should resign, though others supported him.

The IPCC report combined the output from three independent working groups, which separately considered the science, impacts and human response to climate change, and published their findings several months apart.

The report from working group two, on impacts, included a false claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035, which was sourced to a report from campaign group WWF. The IPCC was forced to issue a statement of regret, though Pachauri and senior figures on the panel have refused to apologize for the mistake. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, several lead authors of the working group one (WG1) report, which produced the high-profile scientific conclusions that global warming was unequivocal and very likely down to human activity, told the Guardian they were dismayed by the actions of their colleagues.

Over the weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki rebuffed a uranium swap plan proposed by the West. In Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his scientists to begin enriching uranium to 20 percent. It is now time to impose tough new sanctions, say German commentators.

The nuclear dispute between the West and Iran escalated over the weekend after Tehran said it would intensify its nuclear program and effectively rebuffed Western proposals for a deal by restating conditions deemed unacceptable by the international community.

Raising fears that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Sunday that Iran would start enriching uranium to 20 percent for a Tehran research reactor, which Iran claims is for producing medical isotopes used for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

Analysts said that would bring Tehran a big step towards the enrichment of at least 90 percent needed for weapons-grade uranium. Western powers have been trying to persuade Iran to refrain from nuclear enrichment by offering to swap Iran's low-enriched uranium for higher-grade nuclear fuel. But the two sides have failed so far to agree on how to implement the plan.

On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had raised hopes that Iran might be preparing the ground for a deal when he paid a surprise visit to the Munich Security Conference. But he merely restated conditions for the proposed swap - that any fuel exchange must be simultaneous and that Iran would determine the quantities involved.

He died while under treatment for complications of gallbladder surgery, said his office.

The first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress, Mr. Murtha voted in 2002 to authorize use of military force in Iraq. But he evolved into a leading foe of the war as it was conducted under the administration of President George W. Bush.

“The war in Iraq is not going as advertised,” Mr. Murtha said in November 2005, as he demanded an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He called the Iraq campaign “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.”

Before speaking out on the war, Mr. Murtha was not much known outside Washington or his district in southwestern Pennsylvania. But he was alternately respected and feared by his colleagues, as he used his immense power on a military spending panel to funnel hundreds of millions of federal dollars into his hard-luck district, where prosperity had vanished with the decline of the coal and steel industries.

Mr. Murtha’s death came two days after he became the longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania history, his office said, surpassing the record of Joseph M. McDade.

A mixed jobs report from the Labor Department, including a revision that showed that 2009 job losses were far greater than thought, called into question the strength of the U.S. recovery.

In Europe, the European Union's inability to chart a path forward for debt-ridden Greece, Ireland and Spain also led investors to fear a return to the credit freeze of 2008 and scurry for havens. Investors on Friday fled countries from Portugal to Argentina on concerns that their widening deficits could signal future debt defaults.

"Greece's debt problems and the contagion effects to other southern European countries or beyond are real and are likely to stay with us for some time," Barclays Capital Research, a division of the big British bank, warned in a research note.

The potential of new global financial woes piled on top of U.S. employment worries. Shortly after opening, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank below 10,000, at one point down 170 points. It swung 120 points in the final hour of trading, however, as investors repositioned in case of a weekend solution in Europe, perhaps involving a rescue by the International Monetary Fund.

Friday's global stock-market turmoil could continue next week. The downturn in recent weeks has doused investors and hit the retirement plans of ordinary Americans alike, eroding last year's wealth gains.

Military operations usually are intended to catch the enemy off guard, but for weeks U.S. and allied officials have been telling reporters about their forthcoming assault on Marjah, a Taliban-held town of 80,000 and drug-trafficking hub in southern poppy-growing Helmand province.

Senior NATO commanders and top Afghan officials have openly discussed the approximate time of Operation Moshtarak - the Dari language word for "together" - the size of the force and their objectives in news conferences, interviews and press releases that have been disseminated around the world and posted on government Web sites. Leaflets have been airdropped on the town.

Though the exact time of the kickoff hasn't been disclosed, a "news article" posted Thursday on the British Ministry of Defense's site announced that operations involving "elements of the Royal Welsh, Grenadier Guards and Scots Guards" and Afghan forces "in preparation" for the Marjah attack had been underway for 36 hours.

The unusual approach, according to U.S. and British commanders, is intended to persuade Marjah's civilian population to leave or turn against the Taliban, while pressuring the estimated 2,000 insurgents to flee the town or switch sides.

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

The retired members of the force reported that they were aware over the years of instances of “ethically inappropriate” changes to complaints of crimes in the seven categories measured by the department’s signature CompStat program, according to a summary of the results of the survey and interviews with the researchers who conducted it.

The totals for those seven so-called major index crimes are provided to the F.B.I., whose reports on crime trends have been used by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to favorably compare New York to other cities and to portray it as a profoundly safer place, an assessment that the summary does not contradict.

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies - felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat - to misdemeanors, which are not, said the researchers.

Others also said that precinct commanders or aides they dispatched sometimes went to crime scenes to persuade victims not to file complaints or to urge them to change their accounts in ways that could result in the downgrading of offenses to lesser crimes, the researchers said.

The number of people in the United Kingdom at risk from severe and fatal allergic reactions has increased sharply every year for the past 15 years, according to new National Health Service (NHS) figures. The number of adults developing potentially lethal new allergies for the first time has also accelerated dramatically.

The figures reveal an unprecedented year-on-year increase in the number of prescriptions issued to those at risk of the most serious allergic reaction, known as anaphylactic shock. The most common triggers are allergies to eggs, nuts, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, and latex. Potentially fatal reactions to insect stings are also increasingly common, as are dramatically adverse reactions to drugs and medication.

New research obtained by the Observer from the NHS Information Center reveals the number of emergency adrenaline injectors issued by doctors to combat severe allergies rose by 112% in 2008. The tables show that a record 211,040 injectors were issued, compared with 101,032 in 2003 and just 25,320 in 1995 - a rise of more than 700% in 13 years.

Although the number of prescriptions has accelerated to a record high, there has also been an increase of more than a quarter in the number of emergency hospital admissions of people suffering anaphylactic shock.

Experts say that a large proportion of these admissions involving "new onset" patients, who are experiencing a severe reaction to a food, medication or drug with which they have never previously had a problem, or never come into contact before.

Pam Ewan, a consultant allergist at Addenbrooke's hospital in ­Cambridge, and a member of the National Allergy Strategy Group, said: "The rise in numbers is to do with a raised general awareness of allergies, but we are, as a population, becoming more allergic overall.

Landrieu won with 66 percent of the vote. His closest challenger, Troy Henry, a businessman and first-time candidate, had 14 percent.

“We’re all going together, and we’re not leaving anybody behind,” said Landrieu in a victory speech, where he was surrounded by his father, his sister - Mary L. Landieu, the Democratic senator from Louisiana - and a crowd of family members, associates and a even a jazz musician or two.

Landrieu emphasized his campaign theme of common ground in his remarks, saying that the people of New Orleans had decided to “strike a blow for unity, strike a blow for a city that decided to be unified rather than divided, a city that understands where there is equal opportunity there is equal responsibility.”

Given that Landrieu won more than half of the vote, a runoff election is not necessary.

The agency says the earthquake hit at 3:10 p.m. (0610 GMT) and registered magnitude 6.6. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at 6.4.

The Japanese agency says the tsunami is expected to be about 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) high.

Greece is currently facing the prospect of bankruptcy, which could threaten the euro. In an interview with Spiegel Online, Peter Bofinger, a prominent economic adviser to the German government, explains why he believes Europe's common currency would survive a Greek collapse and calls for a new global monetary order.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The European Commission has prescribed a strict program of austerity measure for Greece. The government in Athens needs to cut its budget deficit by 75 percent by 2012, and E.U. aid is not planned. But it is unclear whether Greece will be able to steer its way out of trouble on its own. Is Brussels risking a state bankruptcy?

Peter Bofinger: To the contrary. The tough stance against Greece is the only correct approach. A cash injection from Brussels would have set a dangerous precedent - it would have signaled to other problem countries like Portugal or Spain that when the going gets tough, the European Union will rescue them.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But isn't that precisely what is needed right now? The financial problems of the southern European members are putting pressure on the entire euro zone. Some of your fellow economists fear a crash would trigger a domino effect and cause a rapid plunge in the value of the euro.

Bofinger: Some of my fellow economists are going too far. Compared to other currency zones, the euro zone is doing a lot better than many claim. The national debts and new state borrowing is lower than in the United States. And in an emergency it could also cope with a Greek bankruptcy. The country produces just 2.6 percent of the euro zone's GDP.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, the loss of faith in the euro would be massive. And regarding national debt, debt within the euro zone is currently about 88 percent of its GDP. You call that figure low?

The senator who is shepherding the Obama administration’s package of Wall Street reforms through Congress said on Friday morning that talks with his Republican counterpart have broken down.

The senator, Christopher J. Dodd, indicated that Democrats would forge ahead with their own bill, after months of talks that had been aimed at reaching a bipartisan consensus.

Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has led closed-door negotiations since November over the regulatory overhaul. Throughout the week - which included two hearings on the White House’s latest proposals to rein in the size and activities of banks - Dodd had one-on-one talks with the committee’s senior Republican member, Richard C. Shelby, of Alabama. One particular sticking point has been the creation of a consumer protection agency.“Last night, Senator Shelby assured me that he is still committed to finding a consensus on financial reform, but for now we have reached an impasse,” Dodd said on Friday morning.

He added: “While I still hope that we will ultimately have a consensus package, it is time to move the process forward. I have instructed my staff to begin drafting legislation to present to the committee later this month.”

Senator Shelby, for his part, said he was not obstructing the legislation. While he stopped short of criticizing the Democrats on the committee, Shelby suggested that the plan for a consumer protection agency would interfere with sound banking regulation.

The Catholic Church in Germany has been shaken in recent days by revelations of a series of sexual abuse cases. Close to 100 priests and members of the laity have been suspected of abuse in recent years. After years of suppression, the wall of silence appears to be crumbling.

This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. A "norma interna," or confidential set of guidelines for all bishops, who were required to keep it a secret for all eternity, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession - in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch."

According to the instructions from Rome, the bishops were to deal very firmly with each individual case - so firmly, in fact, that everything would remain within the confines of the Holy Church. After all, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- formerly known as the Inquisition - has centuries of experience in conducting internal investigations. The Vatican has always filled all the positions in such investigations - prosecutors, defendants, judges - from within its own ranks, while the investigation files have been kept in the secret archives of the Roman Curia.

Claim to Moral Authority

On the surface, the Vatican's objective is to protect the sacrament of the confession. In reality, however, it is trying to uphold the Catholic Church's claim to being a superior moral authority.

Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests worldwide; not the secret relationships between pastor and their housekeepers; not the covering-up of priests' children; and not the love affairs between gay clerics. They are all cases of a double standard that arose because it is difficult for people - even priests - to subordinate their human desires to a papal encyclical.

This code of silence has been upheld for decades, in some cases informally and in some cases by virtue of Vatican directives like the 1962 guideline.

But now the wall of silence is coming down here in Germany. It started when Berlin's Canisius College, an elite Jesuit high school, recently disclosed the sordid past of a number of members of the order, who had abused students at the school in the 1970s and 1980s. After that, new victims began coming forward on a daily basis. By last Friday, at least 40 of them had accused three Jesuit priests of molesting children and adolescents, first in Berlin and later at the St. Ansgar School in Hamburg, the St. Blasien College in the Black Forest and in several parishes in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, 74, discusses peace negotiations with Israel and his disappointment with United States President Barack Obama in an exclusive Spiegel interview.

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, the whole world is waiting for you to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks. When is this finally going to happen?

Abbas: That depends on Israel. We Palestinians have always said that we are willing to negotiate, but only if Israel stops settlement construction completely and recognizes the 1967 borders.

SPIEGEL: Why are you standing in the way of talks by setting these preconditions?

Abbas: They aren't preconditions, but steps that are overdue after the first phase of the international roadmap for peace. Unlike Israel, we have met our obligations: We have recognized Israel's right to exist, and we are combating violent Palestinian groups. The Americans, the Europeans and even the Israelis have acknowledged this.

SPIEGEL: At least Netanyahu has ordered a 10-month freeze on settlements, something no other Israeli prime minister has done. Wouldn't it be your turn now to take a step in his direction?

Abbas: It isn't a real moratorium, because a few thousand housing units are still being built in the West Bank, and Jerusalem is completely exempted from the settlement freeze.

SPIEGEL: You negotiated with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, even though settlement construction was continuing without restrictions at the time. Aren't you applying a double standard here?

Abbas: In a way, yes. But I have asked Olmert to freeze settlement construction every time we met. Besides, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in the interim. In his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, he called for a complete freeze on settlements. When the American president does this, I cannot accept anything less.

SPIEGEL: But now Obama is only talking about Israeli "restraint" in building settlements. At his request, you even agreed to a symbolic handshake with Netanyahu in New York.

Abbas: I was initially very optimistic after Obama won the election. His Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, kept coming to us and promised to urge the Israelis to stop settlement construction completely. Mitchell said that the negotiations would only resume after a moratorium. The American government suddenly backed away from this position in September.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that it's the Americans' fault that things aren't progressing?

The Dow Jones industrial average, one of the most watched metrics of the financial world, dipped below the 10,000 threshold on Monday, delivering a psychological setback as investors sought to overcome fears of a faltering global recovery.

At the close of trading on Monday, the Dow settled at 9,908.39, its lowest close in three months.

Lingering fears over a debt crisis in Europe helped trigger the Dow’s fall. As several countries across the Atlantic grapple with swelling deficits, investors spent Monday trying to gauge how seriously American banks would suffer if European governments could not pay back their debt.

Analysts said the Dow’s drop below 10,000 probably did not mean much for the future of the stock market, but they noted it had a deeper psychological effect for Wall Street.

“Investors and traders find solace in 10,000,” said Jeffrey A. Hirsch, editor of "The Stock Trader’s Almanac". “While it may not be important technically, falling below that level indicates that the whole economic picture is not as rosy as everyone had thought.”

As the European Parliament prepares to flex its muscles in the vote on the SWIFT data deal, the U.S. is trying to convince the Europeans of the importance of sharing bank transfer information. U.S. officials say the E.U. and Germany have already benefited from the SWIFT reports in fighting terrorism.

The United States is upping the pressure ahead of a vote in the European Parliament later this week on an agreement that would continue to allow U.S. terror investigators access to bank transfer data. Washington is warning the European Union and Germany that there could be serious diplomatic consequences, as well as security gaps, if the so-called SWIFT agreement gets overturned on Thursday.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions, the company that conducts the majority of the world's banking transfers, recently moved its servers from the U.S. to Europe, raising concern among Washington's terrorism investigators that they may lose access to data on cross border financial transactions.

At the end of November, European governments endorsed an agreement to permit U.S. authorities to access the data. However, under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force late last year, the European Parliament now has the authority to approve or reject such agreements.

Late Monday in Vienna, Austria, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that it had received a letter from Iran declaring its intent to begin enriching uranium up to 20 percent. The agency’s statement gave no date for starting the enrichment, though Tehran said that might come as early as Tuesday.

Tehran’s decision elicited a sharp reaction in the West. In Paris, the visiting United States defense secretary, Robert M. Gates,said the Obama administration and its allies had done all they could to entice Iran to negotiate an end to its nuclear program.

“All of these initiatives have been rejected,” said Gates. While “we must still try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue, ” he said, “the only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track. But it will require all of the international community to work together.”

Even in Russia, which along with China has consistently resisted sanctions against Iran, there were calls for stronger action against Tehran. Konstantin I. Kosachyov, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as urging the international community to prepare “serious measures.”

Ukraine looks to be heading for political stalemate after Sunday's runoff presidential election. With over 95 percent of the votes counted, opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych appears to have won, but he has failed to achieve a convincing lead over his rival Yulia Tymoshenko. She may contest the result in court.

When the White House released its new budget last week, including more spending to create desperately needed jobs, Republican leaders in Congress denounced President Obama for driving up the deficit and demanded that the Democrats halt their “reckless” ways.

The deficit numbers - a projected $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2011 alone - are breathtaking. What is even more breathtaking is the Republicans’ cynical refusal to acknowledge that the country would never have gotten into so deep a hole if President George W. Bush and the Republican-led Congress had not spent years slashing taxes - mainly on the wealthy - and spending with far too little restraint. Unfortunately, the problem does not stop there.

The Republican amnesia and posturing are playing well on the hustings, where Americans are deeply anxious about the economy and fearful of losing their jobs and homes. Far too many Democratic lawmakers are losing their nerve.

Americans should be anxious, for reasons including the huge deficit. But the cold economic truth is this: At a time of high unemployment and fragile growth, the last thing the government should do is to slash spending. That will only drive the economy into deeper trouble.

Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group  convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months.

A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.

A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman - like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment - had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.

After more than an hour of debate, the two sides on the call signed off with nothing settled, according to internal A.I.G. documents and an audio recording reviewed by the New York Times.

Behind-the-scenes disputes over huge sums are common in banking, but the standoff between A.I.G. and Goldman would become one of the most momentous in Wall Street history. Well before the federal government bailed out A.I.G. in September 2008, Goldman’s demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash. That ultimately provoked the government to step in. 

A Shiite militant group in Iraq has posted an Internet video showing an American it says it abducted and who appears to be a contractor reported missing by the U.S. military.

The U.S. Department of Defense said Friday that American contractor Issa T. Salomi, 60, went missing Jan. 23 in Baghdad and that search and recovery efforts were under way, but it released no other details. The U.S. military in Baghdad on Saturday confirmed Salomi is missing but would not provide additional information.

In the video, the man - who did not identify himself - says his abductors from the League of the Righteous are demanding the release of militants and the prosecution of Blackwater security contractors accused of killing 17 Iraqis in 2007 in Baghdad.

"The second demand is to bring the proper justice and the proper punishment to those members of Blackwater company that have committed unjustifiable crimes against innocent Iraqi civilians," the man said. "And to bring justice by proper compensation to the families that have been involved in great suffering because of this incident."

Blackwater security contractors were protecting U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a crowded Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

Yanukovych, a former convict, is likely to emerge as the winner in Sunday's final round of the bitter presidential election. ­Private surveys indicate that he is between three and six points ahead of his rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister. Today's run-off vote follows a preliminary round last month in which Yanukovych had a 10.3% lead.

Victory would allow him to avenge a humiliating defeat in 2004, when his bungling attempts to fix the vote unwittingly provoked the Orange Revolution and propelled his pro-western opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, into power. Since then Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, once Orange allies, have irrevocably fallen out.

In contrast to the existential struggle of 2004, when Ukraine's future as a democratic state appeared at stake, many voters now appear disillusioned with the Orange Revolution and both candidates. A growing number are preparing to vote "against all" - a Soviet-era category allowing them to register a protest vote.

The election follows a brutal ­campaign, poisonous even by the mud-slinging standards of Ukraine's murky politics. Last week Yanukovych's Party of the Regions forced through an amendment in parliament to voting procedures - a move that prompted furious accusations of fraud from both candidates.

Canada's top bankers are pushing the government to clamp down on the mortgage market to cool off the rise in home prices. 

The heads of the country's six largest banks have privately told policy makers that they fear the wide-ranging economic fallout of a U.S. style binge-and-collapse in housing. To head off any chance of that happening, they are willing to accept tighter rules on mortgages that would slow the real estate market, even though it would mean forgoing some short-term profits from giving out ever bigger mortgages as home prices jump.

The chief executives of the Big Six made their point last November, when they met with Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney. The country's top commercial bankers, who between them control more than three-quarters of the country's $940-billion mortgage market, said then that they wanted the government to look at far-reaching options, such as raising the minimum down payment to as much as 10 per cent and shortening the maximum amortization period to 30 years.

Carney didn't disagree, according to people familiar with the November talks.

"We're talking about being pre-emptive here," said a senior bank executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We're not in a bubble yet, or a credit crisis."

John Naisbitt found success with his bestseller "Megatrends." Now, he and his wife Doris have published a new book about China. They argue that the country has developed a new political and social system - and may be more democratic than the West.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Google appears to be pulling out of China, ostensibly the result of hacker attacks and because the company is no longer willing to censor its search results. Are they doing the right thing?

John Naisbitt: They've broken a contract. In order to get a license, they agreed not to allow searches on certain subjects. And now, four years later, they say 'we won't do this anymore because we've been hacked.' In Russia, hackers are much more vigorous and plentiful, but Google has said nothing. The company has a big market share there whereas in China it doesn't. Google is breaking the contract and it's blaming it on something else.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So you think it's a PR stunt?

Doris Naisbitt: We cannot say that, but it's a gift! Look what a wonderful marketing effect this has for Google - being the David fighting Goliath.

John Naisbitt: Say it's a PR stunt - it couldn't have succeeded any better. Because here you have U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton getting on Google's side, not understanding the contractual situation, and making the Internet one of the foreign policy planks of the administration. That's not a bad thing. But it went from a contractual disagreement to the secretary of state becoming a spokesperson for Google.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does the Chinese government respond to external pressure, whether from a company like Google or the U.S. government?

John Naisbitt: They are built to resist outside pressure. They really resent being jerked around. They resent Google putting them in a position where it looks like it's their fault when Google is the one that initiated this challenge. I think they're really pissed off. In China, when you make a deal, you never sign anything, you just shake hands. It's all based on trust. But if you break that, you're dead in the water. This breaking of trust is a really big deal for the Chinese.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: At its core, this is a cultural conflict?

The Dutch professional association of physicists NNV regularly held readings in a small room that was part of the nuclear power plant in the town of Petten. Until July 2008 that was, when the Dutch government instituted an official boycott of Iran. The boycott was supposed to prevent Dutch nuclear secrets from falling into Iranian hands, perhaps through Iranian students visiting the Netherlands.

The boycott meant Iranian national Nasser Kalantar, the chair of the NNV’s nuclear physics section, was no longer welcome at the nuclear plant. “Not even in the cafeteria,” said Kalantar, who is also a professor of experimental physics at Groningen University.

On Wednesday however, the The Hague district court ruled the policy unfairly discriminated against people of Iranian descent, effectively putting an end to Kalantar’s expulsion from Petten.

The spectre of nuclear espionage still lingers in the Netherlands, where Abdul Quadeer Khan learned all he needed about enrichment technology in the 1970s to help his home country, Pakistan, to build a nuclear bomb after he returned there. Khan later admitted to also playing a key role in the proliferation of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, a confession he later recanted however.

However, the effort to remove the 65-year-old exemption is a small step that's unlikely to have much direct impact on consumers, according to independent analysts.

"I don't think this will have much effect. This is strictly political posturing," said Paul Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington research group.

The House action is a way to jump-start Congress' stalled health care effort. The House passed a sweeping blueprint for change on Nov. 7, the Senate approved its version Dec. 24 and the two sides had hoped to fashion a compromise by now.

That effort was derailed on Jan. 19, when Republican Scott Brown won an upset victory for the Massachusetts Senate seat held for 47 years by Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, who emphasized just before he died in August that health care was the cause of his life.