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.

Like most ambitious federal reforms, the No Child Left Behind Education Act of 2002 will need to be revised, perhaps several times, before it reaches maximum effectiveness. Without formally announcing them, the Obama administration has made clear that it wants changes in the law, which could be reauthorized this year. For starters, it would like more effective mechanisms for intervening in failing schools and ways to reward schools that make rapid improvements.

But it will be no less important to protect what is good in the law and resist pressure from powerful forces - teachers’ unions, state governments and other groups - that may seek to weaken it. In particular, the administration and Congress need to preserve and strengthen provisions that hold states accountable for placing a qualified teacher in every classroom and closing the achievement gap between poor children and their wealthy contemporaries.

Critics like to say that No Child Left Behind, former President George W. Bush’s signature education law, has failed. But for all its flaws, the law has focused the country on student achievement as never before. The program got off to a poor start. States were allowed to keep unqualified teachers and phony up graduation rates, and test scores are still not where they should be. But the achievement gap will continue to narrow if we keep working at it.

Before No Child Left Behind, most states covered up the gap by simply not reporting or analyzing test score data by race, gender or income. The law ended that practice by requiring states to provide yearly breakdowns of student achievement data along racial, ethnic and economic lines. Schools that fail to meet measurable achievement targets in math and reading can be forced into restructuring.

Even so, improvements are in order. Education Secretary Arne Duncan notes that the current law fails to distinguish between schools that miss their targets because they are permanently mired in failure and schools that miss their targets but are still making rapid progress. The administration and Congress should find a way to recognize and reward schools that are moving forward without opening the floodgates to a new round of fraud and evasion.

Still rattled by fears that large deficits in Europe could hobble the global recovery, Wall Street investors were cautious on Friday, even as the United States labor market showed signs of improving.

A global downturn in stocks - the major European and Asian indexes dropped more than 3 percent - brought volatility to American markets on Friday, a day after shares suffered their worst losses in nearly a year.

Investors were concerned that mounting debt in several European countries - Greece, Portugal and Spain, in particular  - could choke off global growth. A government report showing that unemployment was easing in the United States was met with a largely muted reaction. The unemployment rate declined to 9.7 percent in January, from 10 percent in December, and job losses totaled 20,000.

For much of the morning, shares swung between gains and losses. By midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.59 percent, or 58.57 points. The wider Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined 0.39 percent, or 4.15 points, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq fell 0.15 percent, or 3.22 points.

In late afternoon trading, the FTSE-100 had shed 1.5 percent and the CAC-40 3.4 percent. The AEX index shed 2.5 percent in Amsterdam, and the benchmark PSI general index in Lisbon was down 1.5 percent. Major indexes in Asia declined at least 2 percent.

A snowstorm dubbed “Snowmageddon” - not just major, but historically major - was heading to the U.S. capital on Friday, threatening to dump as much as 65 centimeters on a region that rarely gets more than a few dustings a year.

Not a flake had fallen from the sky, however, when schools in the city and its surrounding suburbs announced they were closing early, the mayor of Washington, D.C., declared a snow emergency, airlines canceled flights, airports prepared to shut down and citizens raced to grocery and hardware stores to stock up on supplies.

“We're just preparing, basically, for a three- or four-day sit-in,” said Nancy Mills, 47, as she walked her dog in Silver Spring, Maryland, under menacingly leaden skies.

“Nothing moves when it snows here at all, never mind when there's that much. We just don't have the snow removal equipment to deal with it, so we don't expect to be going anywhere for a few days.”

The storm was said to be in contention to break the record posted by a 1922 blizzard that blew in off the Atlantic.

Family members of the dead were notified about the results of the investigation on Thursday. They were told that “the report also recommended administrative actions for some members of the chain of command to improve command oversight.” Citing privacy reasons, the military did not reveal what those actions were or who was penalized.

The base, Combat Outpost Keating in the Kamdesh District of Nuristan Province, was attacked by insurgent forces on Oct. 3. Because the outpost was located in a deep bowl surrounded by high ground, the attackers were able to pin down defenders and prevent them from using mortars to repel the initial attack. In addition, air support was at least 45 minutes away. A second, smaller outpost nearby was also struck by the attackers.

The insurgents quickly overran the base, entering the perimeter through a latrine area, setting fires that burned down most of the barracks, and managing to kill the 8 soldiers and wound 22. The casualties numbered half of the approximately 60 defenders from Troop B of the Third Squadron, 61st Cavalry.

“The investigation concluded that critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets which had been supporting C.O.P. Keating had been diverted to assist ongoing intense combat operations in other areas, that intelligence assessments had become desensitized to reports of massing enemy formations by previous reports that had proved false, and needed force protection improvements were not made because of the imminent closure of the outpost,” the report said. “These factors resulted in an attractive target for enemy fighters.”

A year after the world's governments agreed to tackle the global financial collapse with a coordinated program of big-budget stimulus spending, their top ministers are arriving in the Canadian Arctic Friday in a desperate bid to keep that unity from falling apart.

Detailed interviews with the British and French finance ministers in Paris and London this week reveal that they and their Canadian, U.S., and German colleagues are headed into Iqaluit for a G7 finance ministers' summit with different and often contradictory proposals to regulate finance and prevent another downturn.

“We're all people of good will, but we need to be very careful … because what works with one set of banks or one country does not necessarily work with another set of banks or another country,” Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, said in an interview at her Paris office.

Alistair Darling, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, warned that this could be the last chance to come up with a new bank-regulation system before the G8 and G20 summits of world leaders this summer, also in Canada, and that there is a wide distance between nations on how to proceed.

“I hope the seven of us this weekend can agree on the urgency of actually implementing changes, and persuading the rest of our G20 colleagues that this is a problem that has not gone away, it needs to be sorted out,” he said in an interview at the British Treasury. “But there are issues where we're going to need some further debate.”

Europe's nightlife is under threat and Amsterdam is no exception. Restricted opening hours, rent hikes and increased policing are all serving to dampen the party spirit in the Dutch capital. But some revelers are fighting back.

Paris' renowned nightlife is on the brink of death - so many locals say. Last Sunday, musicians, hospitality professionals and nightclub owners in the French capital sounded the alarm over the declining quality of Parisian nightlife by handing over a petition to their mayor. The assembled representatives of the town's party crowd collected 14,000 signatures to support their plea to their fellow Parisians, particularly the ones employed in law enforcement, to be more tolerant of the noise that nocturnal frolicking inevitably entails.

The French daily Le Monde went as far as to dub Paris the "European Capital of Boredom." So much for the City of Lights.

Paris is not the only European city where people are worried about their nightlife. Last summer a grassroots group named Ai!Amsterdam, a pun on the Dutch capital's slogan "I Amsterdam," produced a manifesto that reads like a litany of complaints over city policy towards bars and clubs. In recent years, bars have been fined because their patrons were drinking on a terrace while standing, instead of sitting, as the law dictates. Opening hours are being further restricted, the group claimed. A ban on terrace heating is also under consideration. "Just imagine what would happen if we enjoyed ourselves!" the manifesto sardonically ponders.

German tax authorities are preparing to pay a hefty sum for information on tax evaders with accounts in Switzerland, but the deal looks well worth it. The state is expected to recover as much as 400 million euros in back taxes, a German newspaper reported Friday.

The extent of tax evasion by a number of German citizens with Swiss bank accounts appears to be far wider than originally thought. As the German government prepares to fork out a considerable sum for a CD with information about Germans suspected of dodging taxes, a newspaper reports that tax authorities could recover up to €400 million ($500 million) in back taxes.

According to a report in Friday's edition of the Suddeutsche Zeitung, German tax officials are basing their assessment on a sample of data relating to around 100 bank accounts that the informant has already provided them with. The German government has been criticized over the fact that it is willing to pay a large sum, thought to be around €2.5 million ($3.4 million), for the stolen data.

It is still not completely clear which bank the data refers to. Until now speculation had revolved around Swiss banking giant UBS and British-based lender HSBC. However, the spotlight is now focusing on Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second biggest bank, which is active in 50 countries and has over 47,000 employees.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that internal Credit Suisse documents from 2004 suggest that more than 80 percent of German customers who held accounts with the bank in Switzerland were hiding the interest earned on these deposits from tax authorities back home.

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.

The American unemployment rate dipped from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, the Labor Department reported Friday, buoying hopes that the worst job market in at least a quarter-century is finally improving.

The economy shed another 20,000 net jobs during the course of the month, underscoring the considerable strains remaining in millions of American households. Yet that marked a continued decline in the pace of deterioration. Economists focused on a host of encouraging signs that suggested recovery following the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Manufacturing added 11,000 jobs in January, the first monthly increase since November 2007, while factories saw a modest increased in the length of the workweek. Temporary workers grew by 52,000, and the overall American workweek lengthened, reinforcing the view that commercial activity is awakening after more than two years of veritable hibernation.

“It does signal that the economy is continuing to improve,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina. “You don’t have a boom, but you have an economic recovery. It’s a positive sign.”

Dspite the hopeful indications, the government’s monthly snapshot of the labor market came wrapped in an unusual degree of statistical uncertainty, economists said, intensifying the debate about the staying power and vigor of the apparent economic recovery.

President Obama called the idea a “no-brainer” last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from the profits of private lenders and give it directly to students, and many colleges were already moving to get loans directly from the federal government in anticipation of the next move by Congress.

Yet an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation’s biggest student lenders has now put one of the White House’s signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business.

House and Senate aides say that the administration’s plan faces a far tougher fight than it did last fall, when the House passed its version. The fierce attacks from the lending industry, the Massachusetts election that cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and the fight over a health care bill have all damaged the chances for the student loan measure, said the aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

They said the administration had recognized the threat and was beginning to push back in an effort to get the plan approved.

The council on Thursday also rejected a recommendation by lawmakers that it try to overturn the 90-day limit imposed by Alaska voters on how long the Legislature can be in session. And it debated whether to lift the ban on legislators using Facebook in their Capitol offices.

The council is a group of 14 state representatives and senators that handles legislative business. Some had misgivings about the state funding a $1.5 million conference and public relations effort aimed at the Endangered Species Act. But no one tried to stop it.

Senate Majority Leader Johnny Ellis said it could end up giving Alaska a black eye nationally.

"We should be very mindful there's great potential for P.R. damage that could come from this if we let politicians do the science instead of scientists do the science," said the Anchorage Democrat.

At least 22 people were killed and 40 more were wounded in the two attacks, which heightened fears of sectarian strife during an annual Shiite religious observation.

There were conflicting accounts about how the bus was attacked. According to initial reports in local media outlets, a suicide bomber riding a motorbike rammed into the bus on Shahrah-e-Faisal, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Another report suggested that the bomber was on foot and detonated his explosives as he got onboard. Waseem Ahmad, the Karachi police chief, said an explosive device was planted on a motorbike, but he did not confirm a suicide attack.

The bus carrying the Shiite worshipers was on its way to join a bigger procession in another part of the city.

Friday marked Arbaeen, the 40th day of mourning of the death of Imam Hussein, the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who is revered Shiite Muslims.

A small Muslim community in a western German town would like to build a minaret on its mosque. But the plan has triggered passionate opposition from locals, many of whom rely on rhetoric from the extreme right in railing against the "symbol of Islam's quest for power."

"Willkommen," reads the stenciled print on the wall along the riverside boardwalk in the small town of Volklingen. Not content to just welcome its German guests, however, the message is translated into a number of languages. "Bienvenue ... bienvenidos ... velkommen," it reads. And "hosgeldiniz," a nod to the city's substantial Turkish population.

Elsewhere in the city - particularly in the quarter known as Wehrden - Muslim immigrants may not feel quite as welcome. A small mosque on the banks of the Saar River there has applied for a permit to build a small minaret on its roof - triggering a wave of at-times vehement protest reminiscent of the fuss surrounding the November 2009 referendum in Switzerland to ban minarets in the country.

"I am against the Islamification of our fatherland!" reads a message, posted by "Tommy" on the Web site of the local paper Saarbrucker Zeitung. "Islam is the greatest threat facing humanity," he adds.

In a town meeting held on the subject in late January, a number of locals came out against the minaret plan. According to Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung, several expressed fears that Germany was being "infiltrated" by "the Turks."

Toyota's president apologized Friday for the massive global recalls over sticking gas pedals as the auto maker scrambles to repair a damaged reputation and sliding sales.

But Akio Toyoda, appointed to the top job at Toyota Motor Corp. last June, said the company is still deciding what steps to take to fix brake problems in the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid.

Speaking at a hastily announced news conference that lasted an hour, a stern-looking Toyoda promised to beef up quality control.

“We are facing a crisis,” he said, publicly confronting the auto maker's safety problems for the first time since the global recalls were announced Jan. 21.

He said the company is setting up a special committee he would head himself. It would review internal checks, go over consumer complaints and listen to outside experts to come up with a solution to the widening quality problems.

“I offer my apologies for the worries,” he said. “Many customers are wondering whether their cars are OK.”