Germany's Federal Statistical Office has released data showing exports to Iran increased 10 percent in 2008. Germany's exports to Iran reached $6 billion in 2008, close to the record it set in 2004 and 2005. On November 27, 2008, German and Iranian business leaders began a conference in Hamburg called "Iran Sanctions: Practical Consequence for German Firms." The purpose of the conference was to improve German business relations in Iran as well as the German and Iranian political relationship. Angela Merkel's own administration has subsidized investments in Iran by providing German firms with $400 million in credit guarantees.

Meanwhile, on June 8 2009, German petrochemical company Basell Polyolefine signed a $1.3 billion trade deal with Iran to supply technology to build three plants involving synthetic and plastic material.

New reports also suggest that the Iranian regime is using technology obtained from Siemens, the German energy and engineering giant, and its partner, the Finnish communications firm Nokia, to crack down on internet access, cell phone use, and Twitter accounts of protesters and dissidents.

In a clear reference to Iran, he added, "IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD HAS STATED SEVERAL TIMES THAT THE STATE OF ISRAEL SHOULD BE 'WIPED OUT' and is advancing Iran's nuclear programme", which Israel and much of the Western world fears will ENABLE THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC TO BUILD A NUCLEAR WARHEAD TO BE AIMED AT ISRAEL. Ahmadinejad also is a leader in the movement to deny that the Nazi regime butchered six million Jews.

The Bild newspaper was among those who purchased the blueprints and published their existence after an unidentified person found them last year in a Berlin apartment. Yad VaShem chairman Avner Shalev and director of its archives, Chaim Gertner, were present at a ceremony where the Bild publisher handed the documents to the prime minister.

The blueprints will be displayed at Yad VaShem in January 2010, marking 65 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. "As original plans detailing the construction of Auschwitz, where some one million Jews were murdered, these documents have great historical significance," Shalev remarked. "They constitute concrete illustrations of the Germans' systematic effort to carry out the 'Final Solution'", Shalev added, stating that the documents would be made available to researchers for years to come. The documents will be added to Yad VaShem's archives, which currently holds over 125 million pages of Holocaust records.

"Word went out that there could be reprisals . . . We were told not to go into the centre of Tripoli," said one of the thousands of Westerners who are helping to develop Libya's oil and gas fields. "It's so unpredictable here. You don't know what's going to happen." Expats who have been finding it difficult to get their visas renewed hope that, with al-Megrahi's release, the wheels of bureaucracy will turn more easily.

She said that if the three leaders agree to meet, they will gather at the United Nations when the General Assembly begins its new session. Shalev mentioned the meeting during a press conference at the UN, where she also stated, "We are willing to recognize a two-state solution. While we recognize the Arab state, they must recognize our rights - the Jewish nation - to live in our state. IT MEANS BOTH SHOULD RECOGNIZE EACH OTHER."

Netanyahu is scheduled to fly to Germany for day-long talks following the meeting, and then to return to Israel early Friday. Kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, whose 23rd birthday will be Friday, is expected to be a main topic on the agenda in Germany. German negotiators have been actively involved in assisting Egypt in mediating talks with the Hamas terrorist organization on a prisoner swap deal for Shalit's freedom.

Moreover, growing Jewish families in the existing communities of Judea and Samaria need schools for their children and homes to live in, he added. "This is different from grabbing land," he emphasized, and said he hoped to find a "bridging formula" that would enable Jews living in the regions to live a "normal life." Israel has already removed more than 140 security checkpoints and roadblocks, Netanyahu pointed out, adding that it is now time FOR THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY to exhibit "courageous leadership" and RECOGNIZE ISRAEL AS THE JEWISH HOMELAND.

He also discussed his disappointment with the inflammatory rhetoric that came out of the recent Sixth Annual Fatah General Assembly held in Bethlehem, at which PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was elected to another five-year term as the faction's leader. Fatah, he said, should have adopted a straightforward stance that it is willing and ready for an end to the conflict with Israel and all claims.

Noting that he had come forward and expressed his support for a PA state, Netanyahu said the PA leadership should reciprocate. "We need a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel," he said. "RECOGNITION IS THE PILLAR OF PEACE."

The paper said that the financial support was an attempt to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti was elected to the faction's Central Committee. Delegates to the convention applauded loudly at the mention by Qureia of two terrorists who committed the worst terror attack in Israel's history.

In their final meetings, the delegates approved a resolution stating that JERUSALEM IS AN "INTEGRAL PART OF THE PALESTINIAN HOMELAND AND POLITICAL ENTITY." The holiest city in Judaism is "awaiting our sacrifices," stated the resolution, which Fatah committed itself to carry out "UNTIL JERUSALEM RETURNS TO THE PALESTINIANS VOID OF SETTLERS AND SETTLEMENTS."

Alarmingly, it means a sixth of children, or 1.9MILLION, ARE GROWING UP IN HOMES WITH NO WORKING ROLE MODEL. Such children are far more likely to become benefit-dependent adults - raising fears of a 'jobless generation'. It comes as the Tories warn that the cost of worklessness under 12 years of Labour has reached nearly £350billion.

'Worklessness has become a generational problem - passed from father to son, mother to daughter,' she will say. 'Report after report has laid out the problems children growing up in workless households face: they are more likely to fail at school, become involved in criminal behaviour, develop addictions to drink and drugs and ultimately end up workless themselves. A VICIOUS CYCLE HAS EMERGED.'

The Office for National Statistics said the number of working age people in workless households jumped by 500,000 to 4.8million in the year to June. The proportion of homes in which no one works increased by 1.1 per cent to 16.9 per cent, the highest since 1999 and the biggest year-on-year increase since Labour came to power in 1997. The total has increased by 240,000 to 3.3million. In parts of the UK, the problem is even more acute. In the North East, almost a quarter of homes - 23.2 per cent - now have no one in work.

The birth of four healthy macaque monkeys in the US offers the strongest evidence yet that DNA can be transplanted safely from one egg to another to correct genetic defects that damage health. The successful experiment in a close human relative suggests that it should be possible within a few years to use the method to help women who carry genetic disorders to avoid passing them to their children.

It should allow scientists to replace faulty "cellular batteries" called mitochondria, which affect about 1 in 6,500 births. While most mitochondria defects have mild effects, some can trigger severe brain, heart, muscle and liver conditions, as well as cancer, diabetes, blindness and deafness.

The technique is controversial, however, because the children it creates would inherit genetic material from three parents. The mother and father would contribute most of their child's DNA but a small amount would come from a second woman donating healthy mitochondria. Such children would be the first produced by germline genetic engineering, in which genes introduced by artificial means would be passed to successive generations.

Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T), Nissan Motor Co Ltd (7201.T), Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) capitalized on the program's goal of pushing consumers away from gas guzzling sport utilities and pickups, to more efficient cars and trucks, preliminary sales figures showed on Wednesday. Overseas manufacturers dominate in car sales, while US companies have been stronger in the light truck segment. Cars outsold trucks 2-1 under the "clunker" initiative.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) was the only domestic manufacturer to hold its own in market share compared with its performance so far this year, while GM slipped and Chrysler stumbled noticeably. Transportation Department figures on the "clunkers" incentive, which offered consumers up to $4,500 when they traded in their older vehicles for more fuel efficient new models, showed on Wednesday that total sales amounted to just under 700,000 with $2.87 billion in rebates.

The Electoral Commission in Kabul said that early estimates of voting in the former Taleban stronghold of Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, indicated that few exercised their right to vote last Thursday. Several thousand people could have voted. Four of the ten troops who died in Operation Panther's Claw, the five-week offensive to drive the Taleban out of central Helmand before the presidential election, were killed in or around Babaji.

In the three years that British troops have been fighting the Taleban in Helmand, 202 members of the Armed Forces have died and about 800 have been injured in battle, 235 of them "very seriously" or "seriously". Mr Sedwill warned that even after the combat mission was complete troops would still be involved in dangerous tasks for many more years.

During his 2 pm PDT show, Beck did not address the boycott spearheaded by Color of Change to protest the talk show host's remark last month that he believes President Obama is "a racist." Instead, he spent a large share of his program suggesting that Jones, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005, is a radical. Jones now serves as a special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

During a six-minute biographical profile, set to ominous music, Beck said Jones was twice arrested for political protests and has described himself as a "ROWDY BLACK NATIONALIST." The talk show host cast the piece as part of a broader examination of Obama's "czars," special advisers to the President who "don't answer to anybody."

"WHY IS IT THAT SUCH A COMMITTED REVOLUTIONARY HAS MADE IT SO HIGH INTO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AS ONE OF HIS CHIEF ADVISERS?" Beck asked.

Grassley, speaking about the renomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Fed, asserted that Bernanke's ability to hold down inflation would be the metric by which the Fed's success would be measured.

"We won't know for a year if he's done a good job so far, because he shoveled money out of an airplane to save banks and the financial system," Grassley said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. "But shoveling money out of an airplane to solve problems can be inflationary — IN THIS CASE, HYPERINFLATIONARY — if he doesn't start mopping up some of the money that's out there." Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that inflation as a result from government spending on bailouts could result in inflation rivaling rates in 1980, when it hit a peak of 13.5 percent.

The shutdown will force 81 percent of the roughly 13,550-member state work force, excluding its college system, to stay home a dozen days without pay before the start of the new fiscal year in July. The closures come as the worst recession in decades has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in tax collections and pushed unemployment to 12.7 percent, the second-highest jobless rate in the nation behind Michigan.

Carcieri predicted the state's fiscal future could grow even bleaker. "There are going to be inconveniences for the public, and there are going to be sacrifices, as I said, for state employees," Carcieri said at a Statehouse news conference. "These steps right now are unavoidable if the state is to live within its budget, live within its means."

Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme. The US, along with Britain and France, is planning to push the United Nations security council to expand sanctions to include Iran's oil and gas industry, a move that could cripple its economy.

In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not." A coalition of Arab states, thought to include the Saudis, has been in secret contact with Israel to discuss what they see as a common threat posed by Iran.

Details of the breakthrough deal will be hammered out tomorrow in London, where the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is due to hold talks with the US special envoy, George Mitchell. Netanyahu met Gordon Brown today in Downing Street, where the two discussed both settlements and the Iranian nuclear programme. Although the negotiations are being held in private, they have reached such an advanced stage that both France and Russia have approached the US offering to host a peace conference.

Figures released by the White House budget office foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three-quarters the size of the entire national economy.

Obama economic adviser Christina Romer predicted unemployment could reach 10 percent this year and begin a slow decline next year. Still, she said, the average unemployment will be 9.3 in 2009 and 9.8 percent in 2010. "This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter," Romer said.

Republicans were ready to pounce. "The alarm bells on our nation's fiscal condition have now become a siren," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican for Kentucky, said. "If anyone had any doubts that this burden on future generations is unsustainable, they're gone — SPENDING, BORROWING AND DEBT ARE OUT OF CONTROL."