The U.S. economy accelerated sharply in the fourth quarter of 2011, expanding at an annual rate of 2.8%, just as growth in Europe was grinding to a halt.

Official figures showed that GDP expanded by around 0.7% quarter-on-quarter in the last three months, or 2.8% if the growth rate was maintained for a year. Although a slightly weaker performance than Wall Street investors had expected, it was still far stronger than the U.K., where the economy contracted at the end of 2011.

Consumer spending expanded at an annual rate of 2%, according to the US Department of Commerce, and net exports were also positive, helping to offset falling public spending.

However, there were some indications that the strong growth might not be sustained. The department said that almost 2% of the 2.8% GDP growth was accounted for by firms rebuilding their stocks of goods – an effect that is likely to be temporary.

At the same time, consumers were dipping into their savings to maintain spending: the savings ratio declined to 3.7%, its lowest level since the end of 2007.

Antibiotics were once the wonder drug. Now, however, an increasing number of highly resistant -- and deadly -- bacteria are spreading around the world. The killer bugs often originate in factory farms, where animals are treated whether they are sick or not. This article was written by SPIEGEL journalists; their names are listed at the end of this article.

The pathogens thrive in warm, moist environments. They feel comfortable in people's armpits, in the genital area and in the nasal mucous membranes. Their hunting grounds are in the locker rooms of schools and universities, as well as in the communal showers of prisons and health clubs.

The bacteria are transmitted via the skin, through towels, clothing or direct body contact. All it takes is a small abrasion to provide them with access to a victim's bloodstream. Festering pustules develop at the infection site, at which point the pathogens are also capable of corroding the lungs. If doctors wait too long, patients can die very quickly.

This is precisely what happened to Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old student at Staunton River High School in Bedford County, in the U.S. state of Virginia. Ashton spent a week fighting for his life -- and lost. This is probably what also happened to Omar Rivera, a 12-year-old in New York, who doctors sent home because they thought he was exhibiting allergy symptoms. He died that same night.

The same thing almost happened at a high school in the town of Belen, New Mexico. Less than two weeks ago, a cheerleader at the school was hospitalized after complaining about an abscess. Twelve other female students had been afflicted with suspicious rashes. All the students tested positive for a bacterium that the U.S. media has dubbed the "superbug."

Android malware has infected possibly one to five million downloads - "the highest distribution of any malware identified so far this year," a major security company reports.

As posted on its blog, Norton by Symantec identified 13 apps on the Android Market that are all hiding Android. Counterclank, a Trojan horse that steals information, and could also download more files and display ads on the device.

The combined total downloads of those apps could be as high as five million. These are the apps, which are mostly games that appeal to those who like guns and girls (some of them are more risque than others):

Some of these apps are still available on the Android Market, so consider yourself warned if you still want to download anyway.

The U.S. Republican candidates' debate in Florida quickly devolved into a horror show of absurdities on Thursday night as candidates argued about immigration and moon colonies. Mitt Romney was branded the winner, but the real losers were the viewers, the truth and politics in general.

The latest television Republican debate in Florida began with an over-the-top intro that nearly inspired fear for the well-being of the candidates: "The state that wrote the book on election cliffhangers!" the CNN announcer bellowed, as dramatic music played and images flashed from the Florida recount debacle after the 2000 election. "Expect the unexpected!" the announcer continued. "This could be the most important debate yet!"

In fact, there was a lot at stake, much more than the 55 delegates that the sunny American state has to offer at the party convention in August. The debate was really about whether Mitt Romney can secure the nomination now, or if he'll have to endure a long, expensive and punishing primary odyssey.

It was also about his arch-rival, Newt Gingrich, and whether or not he is just a flash in the pan who managed to pull a victory from the swamps of South Carolina. At stake is nothing less than the soul of the party, and the ever widening divide between its Washington elites and the angry rebels at its base.

The Atlantic Monthly predicted that the debate between Romney and Gingrich would "make or break one of them."

It's German Chancellor Angela Merkel's pet project -- a new European Union fiscal pact to ensure members' budgetary discipline through stricter controls. Yet European legal experts have doubts about its viability, while critics say there are more important issues at hand.

The final decision is planned for the next European Union summit on Monday. There leaders from 26 of the 27 member states plan to finalize the new fiscal pact, the agreement pushed hard by Chancellor Angela Merkel requiring signatories to adhere to strict fiscal policy guidelines.

They are, by all accounts, rules that are long overdue. After all, the original common currency agreement, the Maastricht treaty, was signed 20 years ago. Now, it is to be given teeth. Or is it?

Because German Chancellor Merkel pushed the reform through almost entirely on her own, the new accord reflects a number of German suggestions. Each country that signs must introduce legal limits on budget deficits -- a so-called debt brake. If they exceed the structural debt limit of 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the debt brake mechanism will automatically go into effect, and they will face fines from the European Court of Justice.

But the high expectations awakened by Merkel are unlikely to be fulfilled. Several elements in the agreement are of questionable legality. It can't be written as an E.U. treaty because Great Britain won't sign it, which means it will only be an "inter-governmental agreement" between the 17 euro-zone countries and a handful of other countries participating voluntarily.

It is a premiere for Germany. Never before have artifacts from Islam's holiest site, the Kaaba in Mecca, been on display in the country. A new exhibit in Berlin's famous Pergamon Museum traces history on the Arabian peninsula from the birth of civilization to the 20th century.

When it comes to displaying Near Eastern artifacts, the Pergamon Museum has often had a hard time avoiding controversy.

Many of the Berlin museum's dramatic exhibits -- such as the iconic Pergamon Altar from modern-day Turkey -- were taken from their lands of origin long ago. And foreign governments continue to ask for their return.

The current contention is of a different kind. When Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit and Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman inaugurated a special exhibit of Saudi treasures in a cheery -- and consensual -- ribbon-cutting ceremony this week, the museum was criticized for cooperating with and promoting a dictatorship.

Still, the "Roads of Arabia," which opened on Wednesday, is an imposing exhibit, one expected to draw half a million archaeologically inclined visitors to the Pergamon during its three-month run.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 32 people - half of them policemen who were guarding the march - in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Police officials said the blast occurred at 11 a.m. in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 65 people were wounded in the attack, including 16 policemen.

Hospital officials confirmed the death toll.

Salam Hussein, a 42-year-old grocery store owner in Zafaraniyah said he was watching the funeral procession, which was heavily guarded by police, when the blast blew out his store windows and injured one of his workers.

“It was a huge explosion,” said Mr. Hussein. As he took his worker to the hospital, Hussein said he saw cars engulfed in flames, “human flesh scattered around and several mutilated bodies in a pool of blood” around where the attacker's car had exploded.

Pentagon leaders outlined a plan Thursday for absorbing $487 billion in defense cuts over the coming decade by shrinking U.S. ground forces, slowing the purchase of a next-generation stealth fighter jet and retiring older planes and ships.

In a bid to preempt election-year Republican criticism, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the plan shifts the Pentagon's focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to future challenges in Asia, the Middle East and in cyberspace.

More special operations forces like the U.S. Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden will be available around the world, he said.

"Our approach was to use this as an opportunity to maintain the strongest military in the world, to not hollow out the force," he said in a statement prepared for a Pentagon news conference. Some lawmakers were quick to dispute him.

"Taking us back to a pre-9/11 military force structure places our country in grave danger," said senator John Cornyn, a Republican and a member of the Senate Armed Services committee, which will hold hearings on the Pentagon budget plan.

The European Union embargo on Iranian oil will only come into effect in six months, but the leadership in Tehran wants to act first: Exports to Europe are set to be halted immediately. It is a move which could mean added difficulties for struggling economies in southern Europe.

It's a move which has tit-for-tat written all over it, but one which could nonetheless have a serious impact: The Iranian government wants to present a bill to parliament this weekend calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the E.U. agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week.

The sanctions banned any new contracts for buying oil from Iran, but allowed existing deals to continue until July in order to give countries time to find other sources. But that process is now at risk after the latest move from Tehran, a step the Iranian government had already threatened.

"If this bill is passed, the government will be forced to stop selling oil to Europe before the actual implementation of their sanctions," said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's energy commission, reportedly said. The bill is set to become law on Sunday.

The battle for Florida is one between a heavily-funded, well-organized campaign – Mitt Romney's – and the one with the momentum coming out of South Carolina: Newt Gingrich.

Romney has had a big team in place since at least September, knocking on doors, drawing up lists of potential supporters and organizing absentee voters. He has a head-start among the 4 million registered Republicans. About 450,000 absentee ballots have been sent out, of which at least a quarter have been returned. The Romney team has contacted most of them, and according to rough estimates is winning by two to one.

Gingrich had only a token team of 14 in place and is virtually starting from scratch.

But, as Romney has found in 2008 and again in 2012, organization and money do not guarantee success, and Florida has to be viewed as a toss-up.

Canada's federal government disassociated itself on Thursday from an embarrassing official policy paper that said the country’s independent energy regulator, now studying a controversial oil pipeline, is in fact a government ally.

Critics have long charged the right-of-center Conservative government is trying to pressure the regulator – the National Energy Board (NEB) – to approve Enbridge Inc.’s plan to build a pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific Coast.

The NEB this month started hearings into the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline, which the government says is needed to send more oil to Asian markets.

Opponents of the pipeline include green groups and some aboriginal bands, who say they fear the consequences of a spill. Ottawa says some critics are foreign-funded radicals and complains the regulatory process will take too long.

Greenpeace on Thursday released a policy paper from April, 2011, which listed the NEB as one of the government’s allies. The paper was part of a campaign to counter widespread criticism of the oil sands in the European Union.

The Fed-induced stock market rally might be fizzling, but gold is holding onto its recent gains: It rose another $26.60 (U.S.) an ounce on Thursday, to a 2012 high of $1,726.70. That marks an 11.4 per cent gain from its level at the end of December, when it sat at a five-month low.

The most recent uptick came in response to the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy statement on Wednesday, when it extended its timeline for keeping interest rates at exceptionally low levels likely until late 2014. That, of course, gets some people thinking about inflation – and gold is apparently a great hedge against that threat.

But with the Fed expecting that inflation will possibly slide below its newly stated target of 2 per cent, there is probably something else going on here. Ed Sollbach at Desjardins Securities has an interesting theory: With short-term U.S. government bonds yielding less than the rate of inflation and Fed apparently on hold for the next three years, the opportunity cost of holding gold just went down.

“With 3 per cent inflation and accelerating U.S. economic growth, and the Fed at zero for three years, investors in short-term U.S. bonds will lose 9 per cent to inflation over the next three years with zero rates, suggesting a lower U.S. dollar,” he explained in a note.

“Real rates at minus 3 per cent make zero-yielding gold more attractive, which is why gold spiked C$80 and the U.S. dollar fell yesterday. We now believe we may have been too conservative with our C$1,880 gold target for 2012. On the margin, a weaker U.S. dollar and stronger growth is positive for the whole commodity complex, including oil, but negative for defensives, especially low-yielding staples.”

A new consortium of European Union researchers is exploring options for dealing with an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Plenty of ideas are already on the table, such as deflection with projectiles or explosives and using gravity to pull it off course. But the project's complexity and costs are problematic.

Next week, the Earth's residents can once again play the popular game of "What if?" What if a hunk of cosmic rock is out there on a collision course with Earth? At the moment, an asteroid labeled "(433) Eros" is rushing toward our planet on a course that will bring it relatively close, at least on a cosmic scale.

On the one hand, the chunk of rock -- measuring 30 by 13 by 13 kilometers (19 by 8 by 8 miles) -- is approaching Earth closer than any asteroid of this size has for a long time. But on the other, it is currently following a circular path far beyond the moon's orbit.

Many people might shudder to think of these silent giants. But then they will go on about their daily business, forgetting all about (433) Eros and others. After all, in statistical terms, the chances of an asteroid that size hitting the Earth are still rather slim.

Nevertheless, there are still some people who remain focused on this threat. Among them are Alan Harris and his colleagues at a newly formed consortium working on behalf of the European Union to develop "mitigation" strategies against potential cosmic killers. Harris, a planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center's Berlin-based Institute of Planetary Research, is leading the three-year NEOShield project, with "NEO" being the acronym for "near-Earth object."

German Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen has said he wants to cut subsidies on installing solar panels sooner than planned as the number of people taking advantage of the incentives continues to soar. As do costs to electricity customers.

Germany is set to cut incentives for installing solar panels faster than originally planned amid strong criticism of the current subsidy scheme. Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen has said he wants to bring forward the reductions by three months to April 1, with increasing numbers of Germans taking to solar energy.

Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels received more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but contributed only 3 percent of Germany's total energy supply. The incentives, which are written into the country's renewable energy law known as EEG, are being newly scrutinized as Germany phases out its nuclear program and ramps up its production of renewable energy.

Rottgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), told journalists after meeting CDU members of parliament: "My goal is to change the law effective April 1. It's important that we act quickly."

But Environment Minister Rottgen refused to bow to demands from the CDU's junior partner in the ruling coalition, the Free Democrats (FDP), to cap the output of new photovoltaic installations at 1 gigawatt per year. Instead, he said he wants to leave the current figures -- between 2.5 and 3.5 gigawatts per year -- unchanged. In reference to a sector which has seen 100,000 jobs created in the last decade, he added: "A concrete cap would choke off the industry."

An elephant at a Dutch zoo has become the first in Europe to be fitted with a contact lens. The pachyderm had injured her eye in a scrap with a fellow elephant, but her caretakers say it will now be able to heal.

It took a tall ladder and weeks of training, but an elephant at Amsterdam's Artis Zoo has become the first of her species in Europe to be fitted with a contact lens.

Win Thida, a 45-year-old Asian elephant, suffered a scratched cornea during a tussle with another elephant. Her eye started watering and she had trouble keeping it open, so the zoo called in veterinarian Anne-Marie Verbruggen.

Verbruggen had experience fitting horses with contacts, but it was her first attempt on an elephant.

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organizations complain about individual tweets.

The new system, which can filter tweets on a country-by-country basis and has already been incorporated into the site's output, will not change Twitter's approach to freedom of expression, sources there indicated.

In theory it could have been used last year in the U.K. to block tweets exposing details hidden by super-injunctions about celebrities, or in 2010 when Trafigura used a super-injunction to block the Guardian and BBC from revealing details about a report on activities in Africa.

When companies go bankrupt, the misery is shared among many: Bond holders are wiped out, retirees see their pensions and benefits vanish, and employees lose their jobs.

But some feel no pain at all: CEOs and other top executives of companies that go through Chapter 11 receive robust compensation in the form of salary, stock grants and other benefits.

In some cases, they earn even more money than they did before the filing, even while other stakeholders suffer. It's the most unlikely fast-track to a fat payout ever, and it goes on in spite of federal legislation meant to crack down on corporate honchos feasting while everyone else fights over crumbs.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. In the wake of corporate catastrophes such as Enron, Congress passed legislation aimed at preventing companies from paying retention bonuses to executives at firms going through Chapter 11.

"You can't pay someone for just staying at a bankrupt company," said Robert Jackson, an associate professor at Columbia Law School at Columbia University, and former advisory to senior Treasury officials on executive compensation during the financial crisis. "But that's different from paying them from doing well at a bankrupt company," he said.

The casino company run by the principal financial backer of Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, Sheldon Adelson, has been under criminal investigation for the last year by the Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission for alleged bribery of foreign officials, according to corporate documents.

In a separate civil lawsuit, a former executive of the company has alleged that Adelson ordered him to keep quiet about sensitive issues at the Sands casinos on the Chinese island of Macau, including the casinos' alleged "involvement with Chinese organized crime groups, known as Triads, connected to the junket business." The triads -- Chinese organized crime syndicates -- are allegedly involved in organizing high stakes gambling junkets for wealthy Chinese travelers.

In its filings with the SEC, Adelson's company says it became aware of the investigation in February 2011 when it received a subpoena from the SEC requesting "documents relating to its compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." The company said it "intends to cooperate with the investigation," which it said may have been triggered by the allegations in the lawsuit by Steven C. Jacobs, a former Sands executive who says he helped run the Macau operation. The federal investigation was first reported last year by Las Vegas newspapers and the financial press.

At a gaming forum last year, Adelson said the lawsuit "is not a serious case" and that the federal investigations would find no wrongdoing. "When the smoke clears, I am 1,000 percent positive that there won't be any fire below it."

Adelson and his wife have given at least $10 million to the pro-Gingrich Super PAC "Winning our Future" and ABC News political analyst Amy Walter said the Adelsons' money "has been a major factor in keeping Newt Gingrich's campaign alive." The candidate and the Super PAC are not legally allowed to coordinate their efforts, but the political action committee's goals are unambiguous, as they finance ads supporting Gingrich and attacking his opponents.

An attempt by BP to offload a major part of its Gulf of Mexico oil-spill compensation bill on to the U.S. rig-operator Transocean has been thrown out by a U.S. court.

The setback comes in the run-up to the main legal case against BP and its partners on February 27 in New Orleans, which will rule over who is to blame for the Deepwater Horizon accident, in which 11 workers died.

Shares in the oil group fell 2.7% after a federal judge upheld a clause in the drilling contract that shielded Transocean from having to pay compensation for livelihoods damaged by the Macondo blowout in 2010.

But the district judge, Carl Barbier, left open the possibility that Transocean might still have to pay punitive damages or civil penalties imposed by the U.S. government under the federal Clean Water Act.

Greece is struggling to reach an agreement on debt relief with its private-sector creditors. But even if it ultimately does, the country may need vastly more funding than has been envisioned so far. German commentators on Friday say it's time for a bit of honesty from Europe's leaders.

Greece needs more money. That would seem to be the growing consensus in Europe as negotiations over debt relief between Athens and the private sector drag on. On Friday, Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs meetings of euro-zone finance ministers, became the most recent European politician to sound the warning bell.

"If Greece's ability to sustain debt is proven and there is an overall understanding with the private sector, the public sector will also have to ask itself whether it will not provide help," he told the Austrian daily Der Standard in an interview published Friday.

The talks between Greece and the Institute of International Finance, which is representing the country's private creditors in the haircut negotiations, have proven difficult as the two sides have been attempting to come up with an interest rate on the new bonds that will be issued to current debt holders. European politicians have said that this rate should be as low as possible so as to give Greece a shot at meeting its goal of reducing its sovereign debt to 120 percent of its economic output by 2020. Institutional bond holders, however, are holding out for a higher rate and resisting any agreement that could push their losses beyond the 50 percent they had originally agreed to.

A successful conclusion to the negotiations is necessary before a final agreement can be reached on a second bailout package for Greece. With Greece facing €14.5 billion in bond redemptions in March, time is of the essence. The European Central Bank is also currently considering whether to accept losses on the Greek bonds it holds.

The head of the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria has said violence has risen significantly in the country in recent days, as the United Nations prepares to debate a resolution on the crisis next week.

The flashpoint city of Homs has again been the focal point of clashes, which are thought to have killed at least 100 people since Wednesday. Activists in the besieged city reported a massacre had taken place at the hands of regime forces on Thursday.

European and Arab states are frantically drafting a resolution aimed at ending the violence and seizing power from the president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had enjoyed absolute control over Syria until a sustained and increasingly violent challenge to its rule.

However, a key member of the U.N. Security Council, Russia, said it would again use its veto to kill any resolution that calls for Assad to stand down. The stance of Moscow, a staunch ally of the Assad regime, appears to end any notion of a short-term solution to the crisis in Syria, where 10 months of violence has killed at least 6,000 people.

The U.N. said on Friday that 384 children had died since the rebellion began last March. Escalating tensions have since pitted an increasingly armed and organized opposition against a loyalist military.

Solid news on factory orders and strong earnings from U.S. manufacturers highlighted the economy's growing momentum before the market opened. The Dow and broader indexes turned negative after weaker reports on home sales and future economic growth were released in the late morning.

The Dow and other indexes are still up sharply for the year, and the Dow is near its highest level since May 2008. Traders appear less afraid of spillover damage from the European debt crisis, and data on jobs and manufacturing have been consistently strong.

"With global risk off center stage and attention going back to the fundamentals, this market was ready to explode, which is exactly what it is doing," said Doug Cote, chief market strategist with ING Investment Management.

Before the market opened, the government reported that unemployment claims rose only modestly last week after a steep decline the week before. The long-term trend still indicates an improving job market.

The announcement that the U.S. Federal Reserve plans to keep interest rates ultra-low until the second half of 2014 was the talk of World Economics Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday morning.

News that U.S. monetary policy will remain firmly biased towards boosting growth certainly had the effect of taking attention away from the euro, which had been battered by negative comments from George Soros, Nouriel Roubini and other economists attending the World Economic Forum. Not only will the Fed keep interest rates low but its chairman, Ben Bernanke, made it clear he was prepared to turn on the electronic printing presses for a further dose of quantitative easing. With Washington uneasy about the durability of America's economic recovery and monetary policy to remain loose, forex dealers did not need much persuading to dump the dollar.

Even so, the majority of experts at a private discussion in Davos said they thought the dollar would strengthen in the course of 2012. That was not because they were especially bullish about the prospects for the U.S. but rather because they were worried about the possibility of a breakup of the euro.

European policymakers have been insisting in Davos that the single currency will survive in its current form and that the worst is now over: the rest of the world is less convinced.

Still, in the event that Europe did get its act together in the first half of 2012, providing a long-term solution to Greece and giving some real breathing space to Italy and Spain, the dollar bulls could turn out to be wrong. Even tentative signs in the first few weeks of 2012 that the euro-zone crisis is stabilizing has helped the euro to appreciate.

As Newt Gingrich fights to save his political life, locked in a potentially decisive battle in the final days of the Florida primary with his bitter rival Mitt Romney, one man is following the struggle with peculiarly intense and personal interest.

Ben Jones is best known by millions of Americans as the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. But in politics, Jones is credited with having helped destroy Newt Gingrich's Congressional career by leveling accusations of financial improprieties at him, which ultimately led to his resignation from the speakership.

Jones has watched the improbable resurrection of Gingrich as a presidential contender almost two decades later with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. "It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man."

Jones sounded the alarm about Gingrich's dodgy practices in September 1994 at a time when he was locked in his own bitter electoral battle with the speaker over a Congressional seat in Georgia. Jones, who by then had served two terms in Congress as a Democratic member having turned to politics after Dukes of Hazzard went off the air, presented the House ethics committee with 450 pages of documents that proved to be incendiary.

They revealed that Gingrich had used charitable donations that were tax-deductible to fund his own political ambitions to launch a conservative revolution in America – a violation of the law that does not allow political activities to be written off against tax.

Google and other search engines "overwhelmingly" direct music fans to illegal copies of copyrighted tracks online, a coalition of entertainment industry groups has told the government.

In a confidential document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, lobbying groups for the major rights holders claimed Google and Microsoft's Bing are making it "much more difficult" for people to find legal music and films online.

The private document, obtained by the free speech campaigners Open Rights Group and shared with the Guardian, urges the government to introduce a voluntary body that would remove rogue websites from internet search results.

The proposals were made to the culture minister Ed Vaizey as part of a series of consultations on internet piracy between rights holders, search giants and the government in November last year. The nine-page document was submitted on behalf of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the U.K. body for the music majors, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Association and the Pact, the film and TV independent producers' trade body.

Privately, rights holders said there is a "spirit of optimism" between the entertainment groups and search engines as they attempt to usher in more legal media sites, including Google's own fledgling music service.

As fears mount that the euro crisis could trigger a global recession, all eyes are on Germany to take an even stronger lead in the rescue efforts. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has disappointed these expectations, warning against placing too many burdens on Germany.

The World Economic Forum couldn't have found a more suitable keynote speaker. Leading the charge in efforts to save the euro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become the most powerful politician in Europe, and the person expected to save its currency from collapsing and wreaking financial havoc worldwide.

As the country with the deepest pockets in Europe, expectations are high when it comes to Germany's role in the currency crisis. But even though the world is talking about Germany, when Merkel took to the podium in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, she talked about the rest of the world instead.

The first part of the chancellor's speech focused on global issues, such as the sluggish progress in climate protection efforts and World Trade Organization talks. But then she got around to Europe, praising the reforms made so far in the crisis-stricken countries. She also urged more European integration. Without it, she said, "we will remain an interesting holiday destination for a long time, but we won't be able to produce prosperity for the people in Europe anymore."

The security situation in Yemen is fragile -- but in recent days it has been even more so. Al-Qaeda militants seized a city near the capital, threatening plans for President Saleh to step down. Although he has now left the country and the militants have abandoned the city, there is continued fighting and questions about the future.

It wasn't so much the black banner of al-Qaeda that was fluttering in the wind above the old mosque. Far more sinister was the ease with which the dozens of fighters had been able to sneak into the city. But perhaps "sneak" is too strong a word. "It's quite possible that soldiers even welcomed them," says a local journalist, describing the situation in Radda, a city of 60,000 that has been under al-Qaeda control since Jan. 16.

Radda is a two-hour drive southeast of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The tourism ministry promotes the city as a popular tourist destination, with its brick buildings, the country's oldest surviving citadel and the palace-like 16th-century Amiriya Mosque.

On Jan. 14, about 20 visitors unexpectedly turned up at the mosque and began their afternoon prayers. It didn't seem to bother them that the mosque had been closed for years as it underwent renovations for future tour groups. But tourism was not on al-Qaeda's agenda.

"We asked them not to break anything at the mosque and not to break off any branches from the trees. Their leader, Tariq al-Dahab, promised to comply," said Jahiya al-Nusairi, the local official in charge of historic preservation. Al-Nusairi added that the al-Qaeda militants held a Koran reading, hoisted their black flag and then withdrew to the citadel.

Tension between the U.S. government and the Egyptian military authorities has reached a new peak after it emerged that several American non-governmental workers, including the son of a member of President Obama's administration, are being prevented from leaving the country in an ongoing spat over Egypt's recent parliamentary elections.

Sam LaHood, the son of the U.S. transportation secretary Ray LaHood, was turned back at the airport in Cairo on Saturday in a significant escalation of the diplomatic stand-off between the two countries. LaHood heads the Egyptian outpost of the International Republican Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank that had been monitoring the elections held in recent weeks in the wake of the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.

According to Politico, he was placed on a "no-fly list", without explanation, after he tried to board a plane in an attempt to escape rising hostility towards his and other foreign NGOs. LaHood had previously been named in the state-run press in Cairo.

The move follows a raid conducted on December 29 against 17 NGOs by Egyptian security forces in which computers, money and documents were seized. President Obama raised the harassment of U.S. and other foreign NGOs in a phone conversation with the Egyptian military chief Field Marshal Tantawi on January 20.

It is understood that six workers in the Cairo office of the National Democratic Institute, three of them American, have also been told they may not leave the country. NDI was among several groups involved in election monitoring.

The founder of the French firm that produced the faulty breast implants at the center of a global health scare has been arrested in the south of France.

Jean-Claude Mas, 72, head of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) was taken into police custody just before 7am on Thursday morning after police arrived at the home of his partner in Six-Fours in the Var.

The house was being searched by investigators. A deputy chief executive was also arrested at his home.

Mas has given several interviews to French media about the scandal, and was not the subject of a manhunt by police, contrary to some previous reports.

PIP closed down in March 2010 after regulators discovered it was using a non-medical grade silicone in its implants.