That will be tough for Axel Weber.


He is an economics professor and central banker, not a conventional banker, and clearly would need some time to adjust.


All at once, he is taking on responsibility for the strategy of a bank that has once again proven that it has long deserved the title of "Europe's biggest banking scandal."


UBS is both huge - it was the biggest asset manager in the world until recently - and has been struggling from one scandal to the next for years.


The proud Swiss bank, it seems, is to be spared nothing.


It began in the financial crisis.


UBS had an excellent reputation until 2007.


The bank combined the image of the secretive and solid, but equally savvy asset manager with ambitious targets, aiming to become a major player in investment banking.


As a result, in 2007 UBS was managing 1.6 billion, thereby managing more more money from wealthy clients than any other bank in the world,


and had risen to the league of the world's biggest banks as an investment bank.


That made an impression.


The former banker and long-standing banking professor at the Swiss Institute of Banking of the University of Zurich, Hans Geiger, explains: "I always presented UBS to my students as the model of a good bank."


"From what we know today, you have to ask how I could be so wrong."


He was very wrong indeed.


It only became clear in 2007 that something was really going very wrong at UBS.


In the middle of the year, CEO Peter Wuffli - considered a highly intellectual and equally brilliant banker - suddenly stepped down.


Some months later we could guess at why he had left.


The investment division of the bank had gambled on subprime securities and was forced to write off billions.


UBS announced a capital increase, believe it or not, of 13 billion Swiss francs to face the crisis.


The bank actually managed to find investors, but investors many bankers would have respectfully declined a short while earlier - a less than transparent Asian sovereign wealth fund from Singapore and an Arabic sovereign wealth fund that was so secretive, even its name was not disclosed.


That was just the first blow.


It got a lot worse in April 2008.


The bank was forced to announce new losses running into the billions and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Marcel Ospel - the second best paid chairman in Switzerland in 2006 - resigned.


Catastrophe followed in October 2008. UBS faced collapse from a lack of investment during the financial crisis and had to be saved by the state.


The National Bank bought up toxic securities from UBS for untold billions and the Swiss Confederation paid six billion Swiss francs for a mandatory convertible bond to become part owner of the bank.


The whole of Switzerland was shocked - the country recognised the dramatic consequences for a small country of being home to such large banks.


After all, the balance sheet total for UBS in 2007 was more than five times the economic output of Switzerland (see chart).


"We would not be able to save the UBS for a second time," says banking researcher Geiger.


The second catastrophe followed closely on the heels of the first.


A few months later, UBS capitulated in the tax dispute with the USA and declared that it was prepared to hand over the data of wealthy clients who had potentially avoided paying tax with the help of the bank.


UBS also agreed to pay 780 million dollars consisting of repayment of unjustified profits from the business and a penalty.


UBS therefore more or less admitted having been an accessory to tax evasion.


At the same time, UBS lost something that had always been its advantage when competing for rich clients - the fog of secrecy.


Swiss banking secrecy was not the same after the scandal.


The CEO and the Chairman then resigned and


the exodus of client money began.


The bank had lost its credibility in both of its core business divisions within a few months - in investment banking thanks to bad speculation and in asset management by aiding and abetting tax evasion.


And just as things had calmed down and UBS looked like it would start to turn things around, along came a disastrous rogue trader. A single trader gambled away 1.7 billion Euros before the bank noticed something was wrong.


One thing is clear - risk management in the investment banking division is still not working.


"The Adoboli incident clearly showed that risk control had changed too little," says Martin Janssen, economic and professor of finance at the Swiss Banking Institute of the University of Zurich.


The CFO of one major German bank also has no doubts: "The problem facing UBS is that it does not having a handle on risk control."


It was precisely the concept of caution that had long ago made Swiss bankers the guardians of the world's major assets - no excessive risk, but security for money, whether the world fell apart outside the Alpine republic or not.


The safes of Swiss banks had become a symbol of unshakeable reliability, just as Lindt and Sprüngli had come to symbolise sophisticated chocolate.


The UBS headquarters in Zurich still fit the cliché of the dignified Swiss private bank - just a bit bigger.


The location alone is classic.


The bank has its head office on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse that leads from the main station directly to Zurich Lake, surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of the Swiss mountains.


The buildings are ostentatious and the shop rates are among the highest in Europe.


Jewellers such as Tiffany's are to be found here between traditional Swiss shops such as Confiserie Sprüngli.


The Swiss banks have resided here for hundreds of years - from the National Bank to the palace of Credit Suisse and elite private banks such as Julius Bär.


A heavy revolving door opens onto the UBS reception.


The walls within are clad in marble behind vast leather armchairs. There is a large sign to the "Safe" next to the bank's logo.


UBS knows that its clients are looking for - security.


But both the major Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, at some point ousted the Swiss banking concept - or betrayed it, as the head of one small Swiss private bank believes.


He would prefer not to see his name in the newspaper - he too, like all Swiss bankers, does business with the two major banks.


He believes UBS has grown too big - particularly in investment banking where the Anglo-Saxons are also very active.


In his opinion, the Swiss have nothing to add.


"And if they do, they have adapted to the customs of the Anglo-Saxons long ago."


It was in fact Anglo-Saxon investment banking that changed UBS, brought in its first big profits - and then the debacle. No other European financial institution has lost as much money in the subprime jungle as the major Swiss bank.


The catastrophe became evident on 15 October 2008.


"That Wednesday, the government coalition of a small country with a population of seven million undertook the largest rescue operation in the history of the nation," writes author Lukas Hässig in his book The UBS Crash.


The politicians approved up to 68 billion Swiss francs (around 45 billion Euros) to save the bank from bankruptcy.


How could it have come to that?


Talking to Swiss banks, they see the issue mainly in the size of UBS.


Two of the three major Swiss banks consolidated into a single, vast group in June 1998.


A bank was created that was already too big for small Switzerland when the merger was agreed - and a bank that continued to grow.


The fact that the two banks that went to form UBS complemented each other helped. One was a wealthy but sedate bank specialising in asset management in Zurich and the other was less wealthy, but much more internationalised.


The internationalised investment bankers suddenly had access to a lot of money that they could use to turn an almighty wheel.


Two names are connected with the rise of UBS: Peter Wuffli, Group CEO of UBS from 2001 to 2007, and Marcel Ospel, Chairman of the Board of Directors.


"I always thought that Wuffli and Ospel were a dream team," says the banking research, Hans Geiger.


"Wuffli, highly intellectual, modest, with a deep understanding of models and statistics, and Ospel, with gut instinct who had worked his way up from being a banker's apprentice."


But Ospel in the end relied on Wuffli.


And Wuffli ultimately may have made a critical error. "He thought his models were reality," says Geiger.


"That is tragic."


Tragic it may be.


Pride comes before a fall.


Employees of UBS clearly remember the management meetings where CEO Wuffli always repeated the same slogan - dethrone Goldman Sachs.


The American bank was the world's most powerful investment bank.


It led the "league tables" that documented the success of the banks at that time.


UBS wanted to get to the very top of the league.


It managed some of the way.


UBS was a major player in foreign exchange and stocks.


Commissioned management consultants, however, pointed out a weakness. In terms of what in banking terminology is referred to as "fixed income," UBS was far behind the very largest banks.


UBS had gaps in its US mortgage products.


To plug the hole, UBS entered on an adventure that almost cost it its existence.


Hungry for growth, the bank itself and a hedge fund founded by the bank invested in US subprime securities.


It developed into a vast machine that packaged up securities based on US mortgage credit and passed them on - while itself continuing to bear risks.


Even when other banks had long been looking for a way out, UBS carried on.


"UBS was buying as late as the summer of 2007 when the US housing market was in flames," says banking expert Geiger.


The greater the rise, the greater the fall.


One manager after the next had to go as the attempts to clean up proved more difficult than anticipated.


Posts at UBS became a game of musical chairs and remain uncertain to this day.


Any head of the major bank now has an almost impossible job.


He must find a strategy for a bank that has turned its back on all existing business models.


Banking expert Geiger already has an idea - quit investment banking, focus on asset management and turn back to Swiss roots.


The bank, however, is not (yet) prepared to go that far.


It is clear, nonetheless, that investment banking must shrink significantly.


The new head of the bank, Sergio Ermotti, plans to present his future strategy to the world on Tuesday.


The 51-year-old Italo-Swiss banker was actually only imagined as a transitional solution when the bank parted ways unexpectedly with his predecessor Grübel.


Since then, he has proved his mettle and is now to head UBS permanently, the Zurich-based bank announced on Tuesday.


Ermotti plans to take the investment bank back to where it was in the mid-90s.


He is cutting 3500 jobs.


But that will not be enough.


UBS needs a vision.


What is UBS?


How does it plan to make money?


Those are the questions Axel Weber is definitely already asking himself.


Publicly, he has only so far that he and his wife will look for a flat in Zurich.


Next year.


Fear of recession in Europe depresses US stock exchange


The impending recession in Europe has depressed the mood of US investors at the start of the week.


The change of government in Athens and Rome had little impact.


Curbed industrial production on the continent nipped hopes that the debt crisis might stabilise in the bud.


The general relief following the change of government in Rome and Athens was not sustained.


The Euro fell against the dollar.


The Italian and Greek glass was still considered half full last week, not half empty - now the problems are coming to the fore once again, said Mark Luschini of Janney Montgomery Scott.


Financial stocks in particular were on the sales receipts.


The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed business at 12,078 with a fall of 0.6 percent.


The market barometer fluctuated between 12,027 and 12,170 points in the course of trading.


The broader S&P 500 index closed at 1251 point, down one percent.


The Nasdaq Technology Index lost 0.8 percent and closed trading at 2657 points.


In Frankfurt, the Dax fell 1.2 percent closing at 5985 points.


Industry in the 17 Euro countries has significantly reduced production and is adjusting to the end of the upturn.


The Eurostat statistics office announced that, in September, companies produced two percent less than in the previous month.


The announcement made US investors sceptical. "We are not an island. We are dependent," said Steve Goldman of Goldman Management.


He also claimed that Europe is not likely to shake off a recession quickly and that there are further signs of weakness in the banks.


The investment legend, Warren Buffett, could only support such caution. In a CNBC interview, he said that it was not yet clear whether Europe is strong enough to do all that is needed to end the crisis.


In his opinion, it is therefore too early to invest in European government bonds or banks.


Instead, Buffett threw a decades-old principle out of the window to invest in the US technology industry.


His investment of more than ten billion dollars in IBM boosted the veteran company's share price by almost one percent against the trend during the course of trading.


The shares closed almost unchanged at 187.35 dollars.


Buffett claims to have paid 170 dollars on average per share and now has a 5.5 percent stake.


The share price of his investment company Berkshire Hathaway fell 1.3 percent.


Bank of America share certificates fell significantly more strongly than the market by 2.6 percent.


The bank is converting almost all its remaining shares in the China Construction Bank into cash, bringing in 6.6 billion dollars.


The bank primarily plans to bolster its capital quota with the net profit from the sale to meet tougher regulations.


The aircraft manufacturer Boeing gained, limiting losses on the Dow.


The share price went up 1.5 percent after the corporation picked up the biggest order in its history.


The Emirates airline ordered 50 long-range type 777 aeroplanes on Sunday with an order value of 18 billion dollars.


Including options to buy 20 more planes, the total volume is in fact 26 billion dollars.


Around 710 million shares changed hands on the New York stock exchange.


719 shares rose, 2281 fell and 79 remained unchanged.


630 shares finished up, 1913 down and 82 unchanged on the Nasdaq on turnover of 1.38 billion shares.


Intelligent crows are spreading in cities


Rooks are considered problem birds in many places. Experts now say the highly intelligent animals can no longer be driven from cities.


Some like the birds, others would like to get rid of them as fast as possible. Crows have been part of the cityscape for hundreds of years, but residents complaining about the filth and noise the animals create are increasing in number in many communities.


A solution to the problem birds, however, is far from within reach.


Experts at the first crow symposium in the East Frisian town of Leer have said that rooks can no longer be forced out of cities.


Specialists from all over Germany discussed possible solutions.


Looking for alternatives in the cities


Conservationists stated that migration of specially protected rooks was the root of the problem in cities, pointing out that the use of chemicals in agriculture was increasingly destroying traditional habitats.


Hunting, increasing development and felling of typical breeding trees was making life hard for the birds.


Crows are protected.


There are large colonies with more than 600 breeding pairs in the Westphalian town of Soest and in the north-west in Jever, Diepholz, Achim bei Bremen and Leer.


A controversial project to cull crows in Leer was behind negative headlines in 2005.


Critics described the capture of the birds in bird traps and how they were beaten to death with clubs as particularly brutal.


"Normal displacement and deterrence does nothing," said town and country planner Werner Klöver from Leer.


Spraying off nests with water or felling trees often has undesired consequences, said environment expert Manfred Kaiser from Lahr in Baden-Württemberg.


"The animals disperse and large colonies split up and spread to other areas."


Deterrence would only be conceivable as an exception in hospitals, retirement homes and schools.


"We have to live with them. Getting rid of them is not an option."


Without the surrounding area, the problem in the cities will not be solved, said Leer's mayor, Wolfgang Kellner.


A combination of deterring birds from sensitive residential areas and offering incentives for them to move back to other areas would be an option.


"Information boards instead of chain saws" was the slogan proposed by the psychologist and ethnologist Uta Maria Jürgens, who argued for a totally different approach to the birds. "We should have the self-confidence to live with this problem."


Jürgens was a co-founder of the Ascherberg crow educational trail in Schleswig-Holstein, where notice boards provide information about the life of the highly intelligent rook.


The project is already attracting interest from tourists.


Jürgens also expressed her opinion on the criticism of the noise the birds make. "The noise conveys a lot of information. They have a lot to say to each other."


The intelligence and skill of the birds are legendary. Rooks often do not just use tools to get hold of a choice morsel, but create tools themselves.


Behavioural researchers at the University of Cambridge recently tested the extent of the birds" intelligence on four rooks.


In one experiment, the birds quickly learnt that they had to knock over a platform to get to a moth larva.


They recognised the size and shape of stone needed to collapse the platform without much training.


In a second experiment, the canny crows had to solve a trickier problem.


The researchers put a small bucket with a moth larva in a vertical cylinder.


The birds could not reach their prey with their beaks.


However, the researchers had provided pieces of wire.


All four birds used the wire to form a hook and used the hook to fish the bucket out of the tube by its handle.


Three of the four rooks even managed it at the first attempt.


Ronaldo rockets Portugal to Euro 2012


The hopes of Bosnians and Turks for a last minute win were short-lived.


The favourites Portugal, Croatia and the Czech Republic, plus Ireland, will be at the 2012 European championship.


Portugal, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Ireland have got the final spots for the Euro 2012 championship in Poland and Ukraine.


Led by superstar Cristiano Ronaldo who scored in the 8th and 53rd minutes, Portugal beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 6:2 (2:1), rounding off their fifth Euro appearance perfectly after 0:0 in the first leg.


The Czechs only needed 1:0 (0:0) in the playoff second leg against outsider Montenegro after a clear win in the first leg (2:0).


Croatia did not miss a trick with 0:0 against Turkey and Ireland managed an easy 1:1 (1:0) against Estonia.


Nani (24th minute), Helder Postiga (72nd and 82nd) and Miguel Veloso (80th) scored the other goals for Portugal.


The former Wolfsburg Bundesliga professional Zvjezdan Misimovic and captain Emir Spahic evened the score with a converted 41st-minute penalty and a goal in the 65th for Bosnia.


Sena Lulic got a second yellow card in the 54th minute.


Bosnia had already been knocked out of the World Cup 2010 playoffs in South Africa against Portugal.


Portugal got off to a perfect start in Lisbon's Estadio da Luz.


Ronaldo pounded a free kick into the nets from about 30 meters to take an early lead.


A good quarter of an hour later, Nani displayed his long-range abilities, raising the lead to 2:0 from the 25 metre line.


The Bosnians, with no opening in the first half hour, had their first opportunity with goal scorer Edin Dzeko.


The former Wolfsburg player from the English championship leader Manchester City put a header onto the bottom edge of the crossbar in the 33rd minute, but the ball did not go over the goal line.


Jiracek scores for the Czech Republic


The referee Wolfgang Stark from Ergolding then garnered some attention.


Following an attack on Helder Postiga in the Bosnian penalty area in the 36th minute, Stark decided the Portuguese player had simulated and gave him a yellow card.


Stark also awarded a controversial penalty for handball after a foul by Fabio Coentrao - Misimovic converted.


After half-time, the vice-European champions of 2004 settled the score with four more goals.


Petr Jiracek cleared up any remaining doubt for the Czechs in the 81st minute.


The European champions of 1976 are going to the Euro Championship for the fifth time in a row.


Luck also smiled on trainer Michal Bilek's team and Bundesliga legionaries Michael Kadlec (Bayer Leverkusen) and Tomas Pekhart (1st FC Nuremberg) with a potentially catastrophic error early on.


Goalie Petr Cech prevented a potential own goal from Tomas Sivok in the 9th minute with a split-second reflex.


Montenegro had its best opportunities when the Stevan Jovetic and Dejan Damjanovic duo were on the field.


Damjanovic took a shot from the edge of the penalty area that just missed Cech's goal in the 40th minute.


After half-time, the crossbar saved the Czechs" already battered world-class goalie after the forward from FC Seoul retreated in the 50th minute.


The winning goal was scored just before full-time.


Turkey, meanwhile, was lacking football genius in Zagreb.


Four days after losing 0:3 in Istanbul, the Turks could do no better than a 0:0 draw in Zagreb.


While it is now virtually a certainty that national trainer Guus Hiddink must now give up his place on the bench of the team that reached third place in 2002, the Croatians are through to the final round of a European championship for the fourth time.


The Turks almost managed the perfect start in front of 31,000 spectators at the Maksimir stadium.


Selcuk Inan's long-range shot hit the post in the seventh minute and striker Kazim Kazim was unable to put the rebound into the net.


Croatia then woke up, taking more and more control of the game.


The Croatians continued in fine form after half-time.


The Budesliga legionaries Danijel Pranjic (Bayern Munich) and Gordon Schildenfeld (Eintracht Frankfurt) were on the field alongside Mario Mandzukic from VfL Wolfsburg, who made space for Ivan Perisic from Dortmund from the 62nd minute.


Trapattoni going to Euro 2012


The Irish in Dublin were celebrating their first appearance at the European championship since 1988 in Germany.


Trainer Giovanni Trapattoni's team - already looking assured of a place following the 4:0 victory in the first leg - took the lead in the 32nd minute thanks to a goal from Stephen Ward.


Konstantin Vassiljev equalised for the away team in the 57th minute.


Ireland kept up the pace, but had to wait until the 23rd minute when Robbie Keane from Los Angeles had the first clean shot on goal.


The Estonian rearguard prevented him at the last moment from taking Ireland into the lead.


The goal came in the 32nd minute.


After a failed defence by goalie Pavel Londak, Ward was on the spot and pushed the ball over the line to bring the score to 1:0.


Woman critically injured after falling over in tram


A 52-year-old woman was critically injured in Berlin-Lichtenberg on Monday after falling over in a tram.


The police announced in a statement on Tuesday that she had undergone an emergency operation in hospital.


The tram was forced to break abruptly on Herzbergallee when a vehicle stopped suddenly in front of it.


The car then turned off and drove away - the driver is being traced.


The other passengers on the tram were unhurt.


Armed man holds up chemist's in Friedenau


An armed man held up a chemist's on Bundesallee in Berlin-Friedenau on Monday evening.


The police announced in a statement that he had threatened a 25-year-old employee with a firearm and demanded money be handed over.


After the cash draw was handed over, the robber fled unrecognised and with an unknown amount of money.


The female employee suffered from shock.


Drunk driver seriously injured


A 21-year-old drunk driver was seriously injured early on Tuesday morning on Märkische Allee in Berlin-Marzahn.


He attempted to swerve out of the way of a van with trailer that shot out onto the road from a petrol station.


His vehicle skidded, crossed the centre strip into oncoming traffic and crashed into several trees.


The 21-year-old was taken to hospital.


The 40-year-old van driver was unhurt.


Cyclist knocked down and seriously injured


A 61-year-old female cyclist was knocked down and seriously injured by a car in Berlin-Mitte on Monday.


The police announced in a statement on Tuesday that she had attempted to cross the road on her bike at the pedestrian crossing on the Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse/Alexanderstrasse crossing.


A 72-year-old driver drove into her as he was turning off.


The woman was knocked down and taken to hospital for inpatient care in a critical state.


On the run: car thief turns ghost driver


A man was driving a stolen car in Charlottenburg at night.


He rammed a parked vehicle and pushed it up against two other cars and three bikes when turning around.


A police pursuit began.


The fugitive sped onto the motorway -


against oncoming traffic!


He scraped against a concrete crash barrier and lost parts of the car.


The car came to a halt and the man fled on foot.


Pedestrian shot with an air rifle from a balcony


A female pedestrian in Schwedt has been shot with an air rifle from a balcony.


The police announced in a statement that the 32-year-old was out and about on Sunday in the vicinity of her flat when she was shot in the back.


She was taken to hospital to treat a laceration.


The police identified four suspects - a 19-year-old is the primary suspect.


A police spokesman said there is no connection between the woman and the suspects.


25-year-old seriously injured in a car accident


A male driver has been seriously injured in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district in a head-on collision with a lorry.


The police announced in a statement that the 25-year-old mini van driver came off the road on Monday afternoon on an A road near Wiesenburg and skidded into a crash barrier. The cause of the accident is not yet known.


The car was hurled onto the opposite side of the road by the violence of the impact and collided with a lorry.


The 25-year-old had to be cut out of his vehicle by the fire service.


He was taken to hospital in a rescue helicopter.


Fire in cinema on Alexanderplatz


A fire broke out in Kino Cubix on Alexanderplatz on Sunday night.


The police announced in a statement that around 70 cinema-goers at a late night viewing had to leave the cinema on Rathausstrasse shortly after midnight.


No one was hurt.


The fire was probably caused by a technical failure in the electricity system according to the investigations so far.


The power failed at the same time and powerful fumes developed.


Woman seriously injured by attempted handbag robbery


A woman has been seriously injured by an attempted handbag robbery in Niedergörsdorf in the Teltow-Fläming district.


The police announced in a statement that the hooded perpetrator surprised the woman on Friday at a parking space in front of a shop and tried to grab her handbag.


When the victim defended herself, he struck her hands and head with a truncheon.


He then fled empty-handed.


The woman was admitted to hospital with serious injuries.


Grave-tenders robbed


Elderly people have repeatedly been robbed in recent weeks at a cemetery in Fürstenwalde.


The police announced in a statement that bags, money, mobile phones, bank cards and bunches of keys have been stolen in a total of twelve thefts since mid-October.


The victims were mainly elderly women tending the plots of relatives.


They had left their bicycles or Zimmer frames with valuables nearby.


The most recent theft of several hundred Euros in cash occurred last Friday.


Six graffiti sprayers arrested


The police have caught six graffiti sprayers.


The police announced in a statement that the six youths were arrested on Sunday in Marzahn.


The men, ranging in age from 15 to 25, had sprayed a railway carriage at Hohenschönhausener-Grenzgraben.


They had used a ladder to climb onto the carriage and had smashed a window.


A witness notified the police.


The offenders initially fled when officers arrived.


However, they were arrested shortly after at a stop on Landsberger Allee.


Wheelchair user hit by a car and seriously injured


A male wheelchair user has been seriously injured crossing a road in Schwedt.


The police announced in a statement that the man attempted to cross a street at the pedestrian crossing on Saturday and was not spotted by a female driver.


The vehicle hit the wheelchair and the man fell onto the road and suffered head injuries.


He had to be taken to hospital for inpatient treatment.


Seven-year-old hit and injured by a car in Wedding


A seven-year-old boy was knocked down and seriously injured by a car on Tegeler Strasse in Berlin-Wedding on Sunday evening.


The police announced in a statement that he was taken to hospital with injuries to the face and leg.


The child ran out onto the road in front of a car driven by a 53-year-old woman.


The driver was not able to brake in time and the car hit the boy.


The boy was not accompanied by adults.


Cyclist seriously injured in Kreuzberg


A 46-year-old male cyclist was knocked down and seriously injured by a car in Berlin-Kreuzberg late on Sunday evening.


The police announced in a statement on Monday that he had been taken to hospital with head injuries and could not be questioned.


The cause of the collision with the vehicle driven by a 22-year-old man is not yet clear.


Burnt out car in Köpenick


A car was burnt out early on Monday morning on Dregerhoffstrasse in Berlin-Köpenick.


A police spokeswoman said a 34-year-old man attempted to put the fire out.


He was unsuccessful and the fire brigade had to bring the fire under control.


The vehicle was an older model.


Arson is suspected, but without a political motive.


Hit and run after accident in Lichtenberg


A driver fled after a serious accident in Lichtenberg on Saturday night without helping his wounded passenger.


The police announced in a statement that the man had skidded on Möllendorfstrasse, crashed into a tramway pylon and had landed on the trackbed.


A female tram driver was able to brake in time and saw the driver flee.


The fire brigade was informed and had to free a seriously injured 23-year-old from the car wreck and take him to hospital.


The owner of the vehicle later stated that her car had been stolen some time earlier.


Fire in a cellar in Tempelhof


There was a fire in a part of a cellar on Monday night in a house in Tempelhof.


The police announced in a statement that tenants of the building on Marienfelder Allee noticed smoke on the staircase and contacted the fire brigade.


An 18-year-old who had shown conspicuous interest in the fire-fighting operation was initially arrested.


However, he was released as suspicion was not confirmed.


Injured people at punch-up in fast food restaurant


Two people at a fast food restaurant in Pankow were injured in a punch-up on Saturday night.


The police announced in a statement that four men aged between 18 and 21 began arguing with two restaurant workers on Prenzlauer Promenade at around 01:20.


Two 19-year-olds attempted to help, but were immediately punched and kicked by the four men.


Both suffered head injuries.


The four assailants were arrested in the restaurant.


Courageous bystander attacked at underground station - offender arrested


A courageous bystander leapt to help girls being bothered at Gesundbrunnen underground station and was beaten up.


Three hooligans attacked the 41-year-old man on Saturday and sprayed pepper spray into his face after punching him.


The three then fled the scene.


The police announced in a statement that one 19-year-old has been arrested subsequently on suspicion.


A female passer-by called the police from her mobile.


Officers found the pepper spray in a bin near the underground station.


The courageous bystander was taken to hospital for outpatient treatment.


Construction pit in flames in the embassy quarter


A fire broke out in a construction pit in the embassy quarter of Tiergarten on Saturday.


The police announced in a statement that construction materials set on fire at around 12:00 during welding work on Tiergartenstrasse.


The fire caused a large cloud of fumes that could be seen clearly from some distance.


The fire brigade arrived with four crews and was able to bring the fire under control quickly.


A district heating pipe and a power supply line were also affected by the fire.


The structural stability of the construction pit would now also have to be checked, said a fire brigade spokesman.


No one was hurt during the fire.


Tiergartenstrasse was closed to car and bus traffic during the fire-fighting operation.


40-year-old seriously injured during robbery


Unknown assailants robbed and seriously injured a 40-year-old man on Friday evening in Berlin-Mitte.


The police announced in a statement on Saturday that the man was out and about on Martin-Opitz-Strasse at around 23:30 when he was approached by the three offenders and asked for the time.


The men then followed him, punched and kicked their unsuspecting victim and fled with his wallet and mobile.


Police officers found the seriously injured man lying on the street and called casualty.


The man was taken to hospital.


Father attacks tram driver - child looks on


A drunken father verbally abused and then hit a female tram driver on Friday evening in front of his four-year-old son.


The police announced in a statement on Saturday that the 49-year-old Berlin Transport Authority (BVG) worker had to stop on Seestrasse in Wedding when she was suddenly attacked by the 30-year-old man.


The man punched her in the face while his son looked on.


Police officers quickly arrested the drunken man. The boy had to be picked up by his grandfather.


The tram driver was slightly injured.


Rubbish bins set alight in Wedding


Unknown persons set rubbish bins on fire in a back yard in Wedding on Friday night.


The police announced in a statement that a resident noticed the fire at around midnight and also saw two darkly dressed men fleeing across the adjacent cemetery wall on Steegerstrasse.


The fire brigade was notified and quickly put out the fire.


Hungry Labrador turns on hotplate - apartment fire


A hungry dog is believed to have started a fire in an apartment in Brandenburg/Havel.


The police announced in a statement on Friday that the Labrador is thought to have leapt onto the cooker to get to its food.


The dog then must have pushed a switch and turned on the hotplate.


Paper on the cooker caught fire.


The fourth floor flat was set alight on Thursday afternoon.


The dog died of smoke intoxication.


The 18-year-old tenant who was not in the flat at the time of the fire is being investigated for negligent arson.


Star-studded Twilight world premiere in Hollywood


A flurry of flashing cameras, screaming fans and beaming Twilight stars. Thousands of curious onlookers gathered on the black-coloured carpet in front of the Nokia theatre in Los Angeles at the world premiere of Breaking Dawn Part 1.


The procession of stars lasted several hours.


The fans of the vampire saga were not disappointed. Vampire actor Robert Pattinson, his werewolf rival Taylor Lautner and "Bella" beauty Kristen Stewart signed autographs and posed with fans.


Bella finally gets to marry her true love in part four.


SAP plans to double workforce in China


Europe's largest software producer, SAP, plans to invest billions and almost double its workforce in China in the next few years.


The Dax-listed company announced on Tuesday that around two billion dollars (around 1.5 billion Euros) is to be invested by 2015.


"We will create more research and development facilities and hire thousands of people," Bill McDermott, co-chief executive of SAP, said in a statement at a consumer show in Peking.


The 2500-strong workforce is to grow to 4500.


The world market leader in enterprise software plans to double its number of offices from five to ten or eleven.


SAP is currently located in Beijing, Shanghai, Guanzhou, Chengdu and Dalian.


Around 4000 SAP customers are in the boom country compared to the company's more than 176,000 customers worldwide.


The plans for growth in China are also an important pillar of the Dax-listed company's 2015 strategy.


SAP plans to increase turnover to 20 billion Euros by 2015.


The company from Walldorf made around 12.5 billion Euros last year.


Business for the software provider is looking better than ever, with 55,000 employees worldwide.


SAP has been in China for 20 years.


"We now want to scale our operations," McDermott said.


"Our aim is to drive sustainable growth through informisation in China."


Mass Slaughter on a Personal Level


Peter Englund's intense and bighearted new book, "The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War," begins with a long dramatis personae of the sort that can make your heart sink.


Here is advice for proceeding: Gently excise this page and make it your bookmark.


You will be getting to know these people very well in Mr. Englund's novelistic telling, and this dramatis personae will function as your GPS, a beacon during those few moments when, like one of his men and women, you are confused and bereft in the fog of war.


Mr. Englund is a Swedish historian and journalist.


He is also the new permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature.


What he has written here is an unusual book, one he describes, not inaccurately, as "a work of anti-history."


It contains few big names, major treaties or famous battles; there are almost no ambassadors, dashing journalists or discussions of tactics and materiel.


It's not so much a book about what happened, he explains, as "a book about what it was like." It's about "feelings, impressions, experiences and moods."


"The Beauty and the Sorrow" threads together the wartime experiences of 20 more or less unremarkable men and women, on both sides of the war, from schoolgirls and botanists to mountain climbers, doctors, ambulance drivers and clerks.


A few of these people will become heroes.


A few will become prisoners of war, or lose limbs, go mad or die.


Their lives flicker here like votive candles lighted in a church; new ones are added to the mix while some wink out.


Mr. Englund's book is a deviation from standard history books.


It is a corrective too to the notion that World War I was only about the dire trench warfare on the Western Front.


"The Beauty and the Sorrow" expertly pans across other theaters of war: the Alps, the Balkans, the Eastern Front, Mesopotamia, East Africa.


Soldiers in this book have beehives fall on them; one has Christmas in Egypt under the pyramids; tsetse flies are an intractable problem.


This is a moving book, almost from the start.


War floods these people's lives like a natural catastrophe, a Hurricane Katrina that reeks of cordite.


When cannon fire is heard in the distance, and you are a woman at home with your children, do you stay or flee?


Who is coming, anyway?


Almost no one understands what's happening, even why this war is to be fought.


"Lack of facts," Mr. Englund observes, "has been padded out with guesses, suppositions, hopes, fears, idées fixes, conspiracy theories, dreams, nightmares and rumors."


"The Beauty and the Sorrow" follows individuals like Florence Farmborough, an English nurse in the Russian Army, and Richard Stumpf, a young German high-seas fleet seaman.


Their stories are mostly taken from memoirs, letters and other already published material.


The accounts of their lives can be terrifying or stirring, but are most fully alive in Mr. Englund's accumulation of small moments, stray details.


Many of these are about deprivation and making do.


In telling a German schoolgirl's story he says: "Ersatz, everywhere ersatz."


"Substitute coffee, fake aluminum, imitation rubber, paper bandages, wooden buttons."


He goes on about the ersatz food in Germany.


He describes "meat made of pressed rice boiled in mutton fat (and finished off with a fake bone made of wood); tobacco made of dried roots and dried potato peel; shoes soled with wood."


There are, he notes, "837 registered meat substitutes permissible in the production of sausages, 511 registered coffee substitutes."


Some stories are about honor and bravery.


One American recognizes his own impulse toward savagery and declares about war: "You feel that, after all, this is what men were intended for rather than to sit in easy chairs with a cigarette and whiskey, the evening paper or the best seller, and to pretend that such a veneer means civilization and that there is no barbarian behind your starched and studded shirt front."


Conversely a British soldier realizes that he will most likely die, and that no one will notice or care.


"Once one is resigned to the thought of sacrificing oneself, one would like to think that it might happen in front of an audience," he writes.


Instead, it is horribly like "a condemned man being strangled secretly."


Other observations are about an old Europe falling away, and about new types of terror.


"The conflict has increasingly become an economic competition," Mr. Englund writes, "a war between factories."


He catches the arrival of what he calls "a new species in the bestiary of the young century: the articulate and ideologically convinced mass murderer in well-cut clothes who performs his butchery while sitting behind a desk."


People behave in unanticipated ways; there is as much base behavior as heroism.


Mr. Englund discussed the soldiers who actively tried to catch a venereal disease from prostitutes as a way to evade service at the front.


"The most grotesque expression of this can be seen in the trade of gonococcal pus, which soldiers buy and smear into their genitals in the hope of ending up in hospital," he writes.


"Those who are really desperate rub it into their eyes, which often results in lifelong blindness."


In this translation from the Swedish by Peter Graves, Mr. Englund's prose is supple but unshowy, perfectly suited to his humane task.


In dozens of small scenes he catches the way the war has "unleashed uniquely uncontrollable forces: extreme nationalism, social revolution, religious hatred."


People begin to ask why their leaders are making them fight.


The best books about World War I have often been oblique, like Paul Fussell's "Great War and Modern Memory," or novels, like Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," rather than comprehensive histories.


Mr. Englund's volume joins an unconventional pantheon.


His book has the most devastating ending I can remember in a piece of nonfiction.


I won't give it away.


But it's as if he has reached from his book, snatched that dramatis personae page from your fingers, and lighted it with a match.


After an Earlier Misstep, a Minutely Planned Raid


Hundreds of police officers were involved, some of them wearing riot helmets.


The overnight hours of Monday into Tuesday were chosen because Zuccotti Park would be at its emptiest.


The operation was kept secret from all but a few high-ranking officers, with others initially being told that they were embarking on an exercise.


Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly was at the center, his presence underscoring how the operation was fraught with challenges for the Police Department.


There could be no repeat of episodes in recent weeks, like the pepper-spraying of protesters, that violated department rules and created a firestorm of public sympathy for the squatters.


And so the police operation to clear Zuccotti Park of protesters unfolded after two weeks of planning and training.


Officials had prepared by watching how occupations in other cities played out.


A major disaster drill was held on Randalls Island, with an eye toward Zuccotti.


Officials increased so-called disorder training - counterterrorism measures that involve moving large numbers of police officers quickly - to focus on Lower Manhattan.


The last training session was on Monday night, on the Manhattan side of the East River.


The orders to move into the park came down at the "last minute," said someone familiar with the orders, which referred to the assignment only as "an exercise."


"The few cops that I know that were called into this thing, they were not told it was for going into Zuccotti Park," said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.


"The only people who were aware of them going into Zuccotti Park were at the very highest levels of the department."


One reason for the secrecy was a lesson learned by the city.


On Oct. 14, officials wanted to clear the park, but then backed off as hundreds of protesters streamed in ahead of time after hearing of the plans.


The operation on Tuesday involved officers from various police units, including boroughwide task forces - scores of mobile officers who are usually used to flood high-crime neighborhoods.


Mr. Kelly said many people, almost like commuters, had been coming and going from the park during the day, making 1 a.m. a good time to move in.


"It was appropriate to do it when the smallest number of people were in the park," he said.


Emergency Service Unit trucks with klieg lights and loudspeakers gathered at Pike Slip and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, near the Manhattan Bridge, before moving out.


The lights and prerecorded messages booming from the loudspeakers seemed to cow many protesters.


As the community affairs officers moved into the park in their light-blue windbreakers, many protesters simply gathered their belongings and left.


No tents were touched until 1:45 a.m., the police said, giving the protesters time to gather their belongings.


Other teams of officers were seen gathering on the perimeter to move in if arrests were needed in the park.


Reporters in the park were forced to leave.


Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said it was for their safety.


But many journalists said that they had been prevented from seeing the police take action in the park, and that they had been roughly handled by officers.


Mr. Browne said television camera trucks on Church Street, along the park's western border, were able to capture images.


As the police moved west through the dense tangle of protesters" personal belongings, including luggage and plastic lawn and leaf bags stuffed with clothing, crews from the Sanitation Department followed, scooping up what was left behind.


Some protesters who refused to move were dragged out, the images appearing on the Internet soon after.


A core group of protesters took up positions close to the encampment's kitchen area, near the center of the park.


Some made a barrier, and the police moved in to methodically arrest them.


About 10 people in the epicenter of the encampment locked themselves together by their arms.


And two people chained themselves to trees, Mr. Kelly said.


Emergency service officers were called in to cut the locks.


No arrests were made in the park until about 3:30 a.m., Mr. Kelly said.


The clearing operation was complete about 75 minutes later, the police said.


Mr. Browne said about 142 people were arrested in the park.


Most of the arrests were for "disorderly conduct and resisting arrest," he said.


The highest-ranking officer on the scene was Joseph J. Esposito, the chief of department, the top uniformed officer in the department.


Phil T. Pulaski, the department's chief of detectives, was also there.


Mr. Kelly, while present, was "not directing operations," Mr. Browne said.


A second group of officers waited along the eastern side of Broadway, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, in case they had to move in.


Barricades were set up at Cortlandt Street, a block north of the park, and at Pine Street, a block south.


From those positions, the police were seen expanding the perimeter even farther outward from Zuccotti Park.


At one point, several officers, many with shields, were seen pushing people farther out.


About 28 people were on the northern perimeter.


Some of the rowdiest action of the night took place south of the park.


Around 5 a.m., south of Pine Street, one protester jumped on the hood of a police car, and others were seen releasing the air from the tires of a police van.


At one point, a piece of plywood came flying from the crowd.


In the end, one officer and one protester were hospitalized.


Support Workers' Union Will Sue City Over Layoffs


The union representing hundreds of school support workers who lost their jobs last month plans to sue the city on Wednesday, claiming the layoffs were unnecessary and discriminatory because of their disproportionate impact on schools that serve poor students.


The lawsuit is possibly the last weapon available to the union, District Council 37, in its effort to reverse the layoffs.


Six hundred seventy-two school aides, parent coordinators and other employees who were among the city's lowest paid lost their jobs on Oct. 7, in a move union leaders have described as political payback for their refusal to let the city access a health care fund run by labor groups to close its budget gap last spring.


City officials have categorically denied that accusation.


At a City Council hearing last month, Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott said the layoffs were a part of the budget they signed off on in June.


One council member fired back, telling him that nothing in the budget specified that school support staff members would be laid off.


District Council 37 officials said they filed a notice of claim, warning the Department of Education that it would be sued; it will hold a news conference on Wednesday to announce the lawsuit's filing formally, in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.


The suit will list Mr. Walcott and the city's Department of Education as defendants, and counts eight laid-off workers as plaintiffs, all of them black or Latino women, as were most of the aides who lost their jobs.


Elizabeth Thomas, a spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, said the city had not seen the lawsuit and therefore could not comment on its specific allegations.


According to a draft of the complaint obtained by The New York Times, the union has zeroed in on the number of layoffs at schools in poor parts of the city to support a claim of inequitable treatment, saying poor schools lost more aides because they had been chronically underfinanced.


It points out that while there were no layoffs on Staten Island and few layoffs in schools in the Upper East Side or TriBeCa, 17 school aides lost their jobs in District 23 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and 46 were let go in Districts 8 and 9 in the South Bronx.


Noting the loss of five out of eight school aides employed by Public School 36 in Harlem, where 68 percent of the students live in poverty, the lawsuit says, "This is not a neighborhood of well-heeled parents who can fund-raise to make up the budget shortfalls."


P.S. 36"s budget was cut by 3.26 percent this year, and it also lost money when the city changed the way it calculates the extra financing for each poor student schools enroll.


The union also claims that high school principals may have been misled by the language in a memo authorizing the dismissal of parent coordinators.


The memo used the word "excess" to describe the action, even though "excess" more commonly describes the act of moving a teacher from a school's payroll into a pool of available workers whose salaries are paid by the central office.


"Sixty-six parent coordinators were laid off," the draft complaint says, "and not merely excessed."


Mission over, Congress ready to agree on Libya


It finally looks like Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are ready to agree on something related to the uprising in Libya.


All it took was for the revolt to succeed, longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi to be captured and killed and American involvement to end.


On Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is to consider a resolution, sponsored by Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), along with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), applauding Libyans for their successful rebellion and U.S. troops for their "bravery."


"This resolution is about honoring the courageous people of Libya as they begin to rebuild their country," Kerry said.


"It's an affirmation of bipartisan support for their democratic aspirations."


The language may sound innocuous, but nothing about the Libya debate has been easy so far.


This summer, lawmakers from both parties squabbled with each other and the White House over the wording of a series of resolutions to approve or disapprove of the U.S. military's role in the NATO mission in Libya.


In June, Kerry and McCain introduced a resolution authorizing the limited use of U.S. military forces in Libya.


The bill was defeated in the House by a wide bipartisan margin, and it never came up for a vote in the Senate.


But on the same day that bill failed in the House, the chamber also voted down a measure that would have cut funding for American operations in Libya.


That left the U.S. mission in a form of legislative purgatory - with Congress upset enough to criticize Obama's handling of the mission but not so angry as to actually pull the rug out from under it.


Then Congress's indecision was overtaken by events.


Tripoli fell to Libyan rebels in August, and Gaddafi was killed Oct. 20.


The NATO mission officially ended Oct. 31.


Now the Senate may be ready to act.


The Foreign Relations Committee resolution "congratulates the people of Libya for their tremendous courage and extraordinary resilience in liberating themselves" and "commends the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and their coalition partners who engaged in military operations to protect the people of Libya for their extraordinary bravery and professionalism."


The resolution also "affirms the national interest of the United States in a successful and irreversible transition to democracy in Libya."


Will the new measure earn the full support of the Foreign Relations panel, or will it split lawmakers like the June bill did?


The last version was opposed by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the committee's top Republican.


Lugar's spokesman said Monday that he had not seen the final version of the new bill yet.


Across the Capitol, the House is to vote this week on a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, a top legislative priority of nearly every congressional Republican and some Democrats.


The measure, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), will be the first constitutional amendment on the budget or any other topic to actually get a floor vote in the House or Senate this Congress.


Other lawmakers have been unsuccessful so far in bringing their amendments to the floor, but not for lack of trying.


Goodlatte's is just one of 68 constitutional amendments that have been introduced this Congress, spanning a wide range of topics.


Some are duplicates - the same bill offered in both the House and Senate - and others are slight variations on each other.


There are at least 15 versions of the balanced budget amendment in the House alone, and another handful that would "control federal spending."


Some of those bills are identical too, but they give their sponsors - particularly freshmen Republicans looking to burnish their resumes - the chance to brag that they "authored" such a measure.


The Budget Control Act, which passed in August, required that both the House and Senate vote on a balanced budget amendment.


In March, 58 senators voted in favor of a non-binding resolution supporting the idea of such an amendment.


Beyond the budget, several members want to limit the number of terms members of Congress can serve, while Rep. José E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) wants to lift the two-term limit for presidents.


Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has offered a host of amendments guaranteeing the right to quality education and health care, among other subjects.


An amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage is a perennial offering, as is one prohibiting flag-burning.


Some lawmakers also want to allow for the nullification of federal laws if they are opposed by two-thirds of the states.


As eager as members have been to offer amendments, they're not moving at any faster pace than in past years.


In the 111th Congress, lawmakers offered 77 such amendments, and they introduced 66 in the 110th.


The pace pales in comparison to that of the early 1990s, when members regularly offered more than 150 amendments every two years, according to numbers provided by the Senate Library.


But they weren't much more successful then than they are now.


The last amendment to be added - the 27th - was ratified in 1992, but it was actually proposed by Congress in 1789.


"Beat up but not beaten," Giffords speaks in first TV interview since shooting


Ten months after a gunman shot her at point-blank range at a constituent event in Tucson, Rep. Gabrielle Gifffords (D-Ariz.) appeared on national television Monday night, sang along to the Broadway show tune "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" and said she wanted to get better more than she wanted to return to Congress.


Appearing on ABC News's "20/20" with Diane Sawyer, Giffords struggled to formed sentences and needed help walking.


The show documented her difficult journey back from the damage inflicted by a bullet that fractured her skull and pierced the left side of her brain, passing from the front to the back of her head.


Three months ago, she made a surprise return to the House to triumphantly cast her vote on the debt-ceiling deal.


In her first television interview since the January shooting that killed six and wounded 13, Giffords smiled, laughed and sang - and described her recovery as "difficult."


Asked by Sawyer how she feels, Giffords, 41, responded, "Pretty good."


The interview with Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, was part of an hour-long "20/20" special that aired on the eve of the release of the couple's new book, "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope."


The special traced Giffords's recovery since the Jan. 8 shooting.


In videos shot by Kelly in the first few weeks, she is seen in her hospital bed, her head shaved and a long scar across her forehead.


She is capable only of holding up one or two fingers as her husband encourages her.


Months later, Giffords is seen sitting up in a wheelchair as therapists teach her how to perform simple actions.


A nod of the head.


A pucker of the lips.


And then, her first word: "What."


Within days, Giffords uttered another word - "toast," a request for a change in her breakfast menu.


Videos aired by ABC show that music played a central role in Giffords's recovery: The congresswoman is seen singing along with therapists to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and Tom Petty's "Free Fallin." "


In the interview with Sawyer, Giffords, who goes through two hours of therapy every day, said she has no memory of the day of the shooting.


Her husband said that he was reading Giffords a newspaper story about the shooting on March 12 when she stopped him to ask for the first time about the six who had been killed in the incident.


Suspected gunman Jared Lee Loughner is being held at a Missouri prison and is being forcibly medicated as he awaits trial.


"A lot of people died," Giffords told Sawyer.


"Tough, tough, tough."


At one point in his wife's recovery, Kelly told Sawyer, she said, "I've been beaten."


"So, I would say, "Gabby, you have not been beaten," " Kelly said.


You've just been beat up.


And you're going to get through this, and you're going to recover and you're going to come back stronger than ever.


Troops feel more pity than respect


The event was a Wall Street gala that raised millions of dollars for homeless veterans in New York City.


Kid Rock sang a ballad about helplessness, frustration and loss.


On cue, several hundred soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines strode into position around him.


The black-tie crowd rose to its feet and cheered.


"The servicemen and women were regarded as heroes," said David Saltzman, who organized the spring fundraiser.


A senior military officer at the gala, also attended by the Joint Chiefs then-chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, saw the troops" role differently.


"They were rolled out like some sort of orphan kid," the officer wrote in an e-mail.


I'm sure the organizers meant well.


I know they did.


But it wasn't respect, really. It was pity.


The starkly conflicting impressions illustrate the uneasy relationship that has taken hold between the military and an often distant, sometimes adoring American public.


The troops are lavished with praise for their sacrifices.


But the praise comes with a price, service members say.


The public increasingly acts as if it feels sorry for those in uniform.


"We aren't victims at all," said Brig. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, who commanded troops in Iraq and will soon leave for Afghanistan.


"But it seems that the only way that some can be supportive is to cast us in the role of hapless souls."


The topic is a sensitive one for military leaders, who do not want to appear ungrateful or at odds with the public they serve.


They also realize that the anger that returning troops faced in the latter years of the Vietnam War was far worse.


As a result, most of the conversations about pity take place quietly and privately among combat veterans.


After his two sons returned from combat tours with the Marines, retired Col. Mark Cancian warned them that people outside the military would view their service from two perspectives.


Some would look at them with a sense of awe because they faced down insurgents and traveled to exotic places.


Others would wonder whether there was an "angry, violent veteran beneath the surface," said Cancian, who fought in Iraq and returned to a senior government job in Washington.


During his job search, he said, he sensed that some interviewers had subtly inquired whether he would be able to hold up under the strain of a demanding Washington job immediately after his combat tour.


"When you talk about your service, you need to counter the negative impressions," Cancian recalled telling his sons.


The military's unease springs, in part, from American indifference to the wars.


Battlefield achievements are rarely singled out for praise by a country that has little familiarity with the military and sees little direct benefit from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.


"We, as a nation, no longer value military heroism in ways that were entirely common in World War II," said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan.


Instead, praise from politicians and the public focuses largely on the depth of a service member's suffering.


Troops are recognized for the number of tours they have endured, the number of friends they have lost or the extent of their injuries.


Military Faces Mounting Pressure to Crack Down on Rape


This week, a landmark hearing will decide whether 28 women and men have a case against the military for alleged inaction on rape.


If not, hundreds of plaintiffs are lining up for the next one.


Pfc. Elizabeth Lyman was 25 years old and 11 weeks pregnant the night she says she was raped by a fellow soldier.


It was October 2008, and she was heading back to her barracks at Miramar Air Station, just north of San Diego, after dinner with a friend when she ran into a male colleague carrying a 12-pack of beer.


He asked if he could join her in her room for a drink.


"A red flag went up," Lyman says.


But the Texas native brushed aside her concern.


I thought, no, he's 19.


"He's from Texas," she says.


"I wish I had listened to my instincts."


Within minutes of entering Lyman's room, the man came up from behind her, throwing her down and raping her, she alleges.


This week, on Nov. 18, Lyman and 27 other current and former military personnel will anxiously await a court ruling in a historic hearing to be held in Arlington, Va., that will decide whether a suit they have brought against former defense secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, will go to trial.


The suit alleges that Gates and Rumsfeld failed to curtail widespread rape within the military, in violation of soldiers" constitutional rights.


Filed in February by Susan Burke, a Washington, D.C., attorney, the suit initially involved 17 plaintiffs but grew to 28 in the following months - 25 women and three men, all of whom allege that they were raped or sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers, and that the military failed to investigate, prosecute, or provide adequate justice after the alleged attacks.


Burke says she is going after the military's top brass because the problem begins with them.


"The military is a top-down structure," she says.


"Who are the individuals who are in the position to eradicate the culture of retaliation? The top leadership."


Burke also says that since February, she has been contacted by nearly 400 other survivors, many of whom could be part of future suits.


Her strategy: rather than piling all the plaintiffs into this case - putting all her eggs in one basket, so to speak - she will file multiple cases, if need be, to keep the pressure on.


The defense team for the Department of Defense, led by United States Attorney Neil MacBride, has filed a motion to dismiss the case.


The court papers, obtained by Newsweek, detail the defense strategy - essentially, that the military cannot be sued by current or former soldiers for injuries incurred in the armed forces.


Per a 1950 Supreme Court ruling called the Feres Doctrine, the federal government is not liable for injury sustained by active-duty personnel.


"The alleged harms are incident to plaintiffs" military service," the documents say.


The Department of Defense declined to comment for this story.


Things have changed since the '50s.


While women are still officially prohibited from serving in combat, that distinction is in name only: modern wars rarely have clear front lines.


In both Iraq and Afghanistan, teams of female soldiers are playing increasingly important roles, especially in reaching out to local women in war zones.


The result: between those two wars, 150 female soldiers have died - two thirds of them during combat situations.


It's time for the military to modernize as well, Burke says.


She isn't alone in her fight; three other lawsuits are under way in addition to hers.


At Yale Law School, the Veterans" Legal Services Clinic is preparing a case against the four major military academies for allegedly fostering a misogynistic atmosphere.


Separately, the nonprofit Vietnam Veterans of America is assembling a suit against the military that focuses on the "personality disorder" diagnoses assigned to rape victims in order to discharge them from service - a common occurrence, according to activists such as Anu Bhagwati of the Service Women's Action Network, a human-rights group.


Her group filed a suit in December against the Veterans Administration, charging it with discriminatory practices in the way it handles benefit claims for people who say they were sexually assaulted in the service.


Nine separate bills have been introduced in Congress by a bipartisan mix of senators and representatives, proposing a range of fixes.


In 2010 there were 3,158 sexual assaults reported, according to the Department of Defense's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.


But assaults are notoriously underreported, and by the Pentagon's own estimate, that figure accounts for approximately 13.5 percent of the estimated 19,000 incidents that occurred that year.


The report, released in March, also examines prosecution rates: in 2010, 20 percent of reported cases in the military went to trial - half the rate of the civilian justice system.


The plaintiffs in Burke's case describe their attacks as just the first of a series of traumas.


In Lyman's case, she reported the alleged rape to military police less than an hour after it occurred.


That night, she says, she was asked to recount the details of her rape 11 separate times to a stream of police, doctors, and commanders.


She did a rape kit, and her assailant's blood - from a cut on his arm - was found in her bed.


Six months later, in April 2009, Lyman sat through a hearing before a judge, during which she was questioned about having had sex with her boyfriend earlier on the day of the attack.


Six people testified as character witnesses on behalf of the alleged perpetrator, who was eventually acquitted.


"I remember the day when the verdict was read," Lyman says.


"I thought I was going to go into labor - I ran screaming from the courtroom."


"They put me into the psychiatric unit, and when I got out, I remember saying to my command officer, "That wasn't his trial. That was my trial.""


Lyman was ordered to visit a military psychiatrist, who eventually diagnosed her with a personality disorder, rendering her unfit for service.


In January 2010 she was discharged under less-than-honorable terms, preventing her from receiving any benefits.


As for whether the case filed by Lyman and her fellow plaintiffs moves forward, it's a long shot, says John Turley, professor of law at George Washington University Law School.


However, he notes, "In my view they should be able to move forward."


What stands between them and a verdict is this doctrine that has been criticized since it was first issued.


I've been a lifelong critic of the Feres Doctrine.


The military is decades behind because they don't have the same incentive and deterrent posed by liability.


He adds, "The odds are heavily against them ... but it's important for them to try."


These things only change when good people are willing to fight.


If the hearing doesn't go their way, Burke, the plaintiffs" lawyer, will cue up her hundreds of other plaintiffs for future cases.


"We will continue battling the military on this issue until reform occurs," she says.


Or until we die, whichever comes first.


Walls Have Eyes: How Researchers Are Studying You on Facebook


Before he became the new face of right-wing extremism in Europe, Anders Behring Breivik was just another guy airing his anti-immigration views online.


On Monday, Breivik, who admitted to a killing spree in Norway in July which left 77 people dead, faced his first public court hearing.


While Breivik may have acted alone, he was far from alone in cyberspace: he had spent much of the time leading up to his attack at his computer, chatting with some of the millions of nationalists who support right-wing groups on social-networking sites.


After this summer's tragedy, researchers wanted to find out more about these people.


But how to find them?


Easy - just log on to Facebook.


"We realized that it wasn't that difficult to get to them at all," says Jamie Bartlett, the lead author of a recently published report on European digital populism by British think tank DEMOS.


Facebook's stash of personal information is so encyclopedic, says Bartlett, that the researchers could simply use the site's advertising tool to pinpoint their desired demographic with scientific accuracy - the way marketers have been doing for years.


Bartlett's team found half a million fans of right-wing groups across Europe and then targeted them with ads, but instead of linking to a new band or diet product, the ads invited users to complete a survey that asked questions about their education level, attitudes towards violence and optimism about their own future.


By reaching out through Facebook, Bartlett and his colleagues were able to survey over 10,000 followers of 14 far-right parties in 11 European countries - all without ever leaving the office.


"It's quite a new way of doing research," Bartlett says.


Some of the results aren't all that surprising: online supporters of right-wing groups tend to be young, male, and vexed by immigration.


But in something of a twist, "those who combine their online activism with offline activism are more reasonable, more democratic and less violent than those who just remain behind the computer screen."


DEMOS's work is just one example of how Facebook is becoming a hot new tool in the hands of scientists.


Think tanks, medical researchers and political scientists are using the site to study everything from health issues to social trends as expressed in 'Likes', wall posts and status updates.


With over 800 million active users adding an average of three pieces of content per day, the Facebook "data supernova" is generating a research boom, driving the number of academic papers with the site's name in the title up almost 800% over the past five years.


For some researchers, the beauty of Facebook is that it lets you study people you couldn't approach with a clipboard on the street.


"Before, when you tried to survey people from the British National Party, it would be very difficult to identify them."


"You'd have to go through the party and they would never allow you access," says Bartlett.


"Facebook cuts all that out - you go to them directly."


Others say the site could offer a way to identify and tackle social-health problems.


A recent study by Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her colleagues found that undergraduates who discussed their drunken exploits on Facebook were significantly more at risk for problem drinking than students who were silent on the topic.


Moreno suggests that students' peers, such as residential advisors, could monitor the site and intervene to help a student who posts one too many boozy status updates.


"You can't treat a problem if you can't diagnose it," Dimitri Christakis, Moreno's co-author and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children's Research Institute, told the Washington Post.


"We've found a way to identify kids at risk who would not otherwise be diagnosed."


Facebook, too, is constantly tapping into its own population for data.


The site's Data Team has worked up stats on relationship status and Valentine's Day, voter turnout in the 2010 midterms, and a National Happiness Index (mainly using information only it can access - champions of digital freedom have long held that the site should make its vast trove of data available to others for research.)


But Facebook's users know the site is watching them, whether they like it or not - the trade off for being able to play Scrabble with a friend thousands of miles away is allowing the site to mine your personal information.


But what about when Facebook users become part of a survey they don't even know about?


While researchers have well-defined guidelines about how they collect their data offline, online it's a free-for-all.


"I don't think a lot of users had even thought about the fact that a researcher could be looking at their profiles," says Neil Selwyn, a sociologist at the London Knowledge Lab, of a 2006 study he conducted using students' public Facebook walls.


"As far as they were concerned, it was just between them and their friends."


Then there's the question of methodology.


Even offline, there's no guarantee that a research subject is being completely honest.


On Facebook, it's impossible to know how much of a user's profile information and wall posts are true.


"What you say on Facebook and what you do outside of Facebook are two completely different things," says Selwyn.


Which is why, despite his years as a technology researcher, Selwyn thinks a clipboard and a pen are still the best research tools anyone can use.


"There's no substitute for going into the real world and speaking to real people," he says.


"Social research is supposed to be about the social - and a hell of a lot of the social still takes place offline."


"Cold and Inhuman": Anders Behring Breivik Makes First Public Court Appearance


Anders Behring Breivik, the man who confessed to masterminding twin attacks that killed 77 people in Norway this summer, has described himself as a "resistance" fighter during his first public court appearance in Oslo.


"I am a military commander in the Norwegian resistance movement and Knights Templar Norway," he said before a courtroom packed with 500 people.


"I object to the court because you received your mandate from organizations that support hate ideology and because it supports multiculturalism."


"I acknowledge the acts but I do not plead guilty."


Judge Torkjel Nesheim interrupted Breivik during that monologue because he "did not want to give Breivik the opportunity to use this hearing as a platform for him to express his views."


For the same reason he refused to allow Breivik, who brought a pre-written speech with him, to address the relatives of his victims at the end of the hearing.


Nesheim also ordered police to hold Breivik in custody for 12 more weeks, banned him from accessing media for four weeks, and said that authorities will have tight control over all visits and correspondence for eight weeks.


Around 30 survivors and victims" relatives attended the hearing.


Some came hoping to look Breivik in the eye, others to confirm that he is being held under lock and key.


All attended with the goal of moving toward closure.


"I thought he seemed cold and inhuman," one Utoya survivor told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.


"It was uncomfortable, but for me I moved on a little bit after seeing and hearing the suspect."


Dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, Breivik remained calm and professional throughout the hearing and looked journalists and survivors in the eye as he entered and exited the building.


Despite Breivik's bizarre notion of being part of a larger "resistance" movement, the judge determined that he is not insane, and said that there is no evidence he acted with accomplices.


It may comfort some that the July 22 attacks seem to be the work of one extremist rather than a group of radicals.


But that doesn't automatically ease the grief and confusion that an entire nation still feels.


"I wish he looked like a monster, but he doesn't," a relative of one victim said.


"It would be so much easier if he did."


7 Lessons From the Lost Steve Jobs Interview, Showing at a Theater This Week


Following the death of Steve Jobs on Oct. 5, there were some who compared him to Henry Ford - singling out the tech genius as the Great Modern Inventor.


But what Apple fans might find most revealing in a recently rediscovered Jobs interview dusted off in advance of special movie screenings in major markets this week, is how much this creative mind understood about business processes and product workflows.


He was certainly a designer, dreamer and self-identified hippie, but he was also a meticulous organizer and flow-chart tweaker - a man who believed that many business executives suffered from "a disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work... [but] there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product."


Back in 1995, Bob Cringely was developing the TV series Triumph of the Nerds about the dawn of the personal computer, and he sat down for more than an hour with Jobs for a rare, extended conversation.


At that point in time it had been roughly 10 years since Jobs had been forced out of Apple, and he was already hard at work at his new computer company NeXT, looking forward to the popular adoption of the Internet.


While a small portion of Cringely's interview was used in Nerds, he says that the interview's master copies went missing in shipping.


It was only following Jobs" death that a complete VHS copy was discovered in the director's garage.


This footage, slightly re-edited, is the basis of the 68-minute Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, coming to Landmark Theaters this Wednesday and Thursday.


For someone known to loathe in-depth interviews, Jobs seems surprisingly eager here to expound on his technological philosophies and business strategies.


And incredibly thoughtful.


At four different points during the interview, there are major gaps between questions and answers - 10 to 15-second ruminations, where Jobs is clearly weighing his thoughts, aiming for precision.


There are also moments where Jobs" perfectionism rises to the surface, where he seems impatient about Cringely's questions, nudging him to move faster towards issues or subplots of greater import.


Filmed before the era of Pixar, the iPod or the iPhone, there's something eerily prescient about the Lost Interview, as Jobs assesses what he sees other companies doing right and wrong, and offers his own vision of the future of computing.


It's one thing to read posthumous appraisals of Jobs" career, but there's something raw and inspiring about the Jobs we see here, the anxious dreamer on the brink of greatness.


He has a vision for the way things could be and should be.


Not long after spelling it all out here he went and did it.


A quick rundown of seven notable Lost Interview sequences:


On how he learned to run a business:


"Throughout the years in business, I'd always ask: "Why do you do things?" and the answers you invariably get are: "Oh, that's just the way it's done.""


Nobody knows why they do what they do, nobody thinks about things very deeply in business.


That's what I found.


Jobs goes on to detail his efforts to streamline accounting at Apple.


Baffled by the way costs were recorded - often beginning with a "standard cost" that amounted to a blind guess, which was then adjusted with a "variance" - he developed an automated factory that ensured they could determine business costs down to the second.


On pranking the Pope:


Jobs recounts the "Blue Box" that he built with Steve Wozniak - a device that allowed people to effectively hack the phone company and make long distance calls for free.


The device has been widely written about before, but Jobs" euphoria here in describing the Blue Box as an act of empowerment is infectious.


He describes how he and Wozniak would test the box by using a pay phone, placing a call, and then connecting from one AT&T network to another while looping in as many satellites as possible.


"We were wrapping things around the globe a half dozen times and you would yell through the pay phone and it would come through a minute later in the pay phone next door," Jobs says with a giggle.


"We were young and what we learned was that we could build something ourselves that could control billions of dollars of infrastructure around the world."


Us two, we didn't know much, but we could build a little thing that could control a giant thing - it was an incredible lesson, and I don't think there would have ever been Apple without it.


Jobs goes on to detail one glorious prank that he and Wozniak nearly pulled of, ringing the Vatican via the Blue Box in the middle of the night and requesting to speak to the Pope, while doing their very best impression of Henry Kissinger.


As various members of the Catholic hierarchy were summoned in the middle of the night to talk to the American diplomat, the two burst into giggles just before the Pope himself was roused to come answer the phone.


On falling in love with technology (and cold-calling Bill Hewlett):


At the age of 12, on the hunt for spare parts to build a frequency counter, he looked up Bill Hewlett in the phone book and gave him a call.


Not long after their 20-minute phone conversation, Jobs landed a part-time summer job at Hewlett-Packard.


"That made a remarkable influence on me, it was the only company I had seen at that age and it formed my view of what a company was and how well they treated their employees."


Jobs later became one of the HP employees to visit the company's Palo Alto research labs, where he saw "the first desktop computer ever made."


It was as big as a suitcase, had a small cathode ray tube display, and I fell in love with it.


I would get a ride up to HP as a teenager and hang around that machine and write programs for it.


On improvising innovation:


At several points in the interview, Jobs talks about inventing new products on the fly.


Early in his career, as he set out to sell a handful of circuit boards, he was asked by a customer to assemble the full computer.


Working on only 30 days of credit, he had to figure out both the assembly and delivery of the finished devices.


Later while at Apple, he recalls the struggles he faced in developing a computer mouse:


"I remember having dramatic arguments...they were screaming at me that it would take five years [to build a mouse that would cost $300], and I got fed up and went outside and found a designer."


Ninety days later, we had a mouse we could build for $15 that was incredibly reliable.


On great companies losing steam:


Long before he led the revival of Apple, Jobs presciently foresaw the ways in which so many industry leaders would stumble in their vision, and lose control of their market share.


"Say you work at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or printer, so what?"


You have a monopoly of the market share, so the company's not more successful.


Sales and marketing makes it more successful, so [it's those kinds of people] who end up running companies and the product people get driven out of the decision-making forum.


The product genius that led to that monopolistic position is rotted out by people who have no conception of good products vs. bad products - the craftsmanship required.


That's what happened at Xerox...


Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry.


It could have been ten times its size, could have been the Microsoft of the 90s...


They grabbed defeat from victory.


On innovation as art form:


"There's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product... as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows."


You learn a lot about the subtleties of it.


There are tradeoffs you have to make - certain things you can't make electrons do, glass do, robots do, factories do.


You have to keep 5,000 things in your brain - these concepts - fitting them all together...


Ultimately it comes down to taste - it comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best stuff humans have done, and then trying to bring those things in to what you're doing.


Picasso said that good artists copy, great artists steal.


We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas.


It's part of what made the Macintosh great, was that the people who were working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists, historians who just happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.


If not for computer science, they would be doing amazing things in other fields.


Scalia and Thomas dine with healthcare law challengers as court takes case


The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama's healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.


The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pour over the petitions for review.


One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.


The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court's decision is released.


The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.


Clement's law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles.


Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.


Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation.


The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court's conference over the case.


In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate's top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.


The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.


It's nothing new: The two justices have been attending Federalist Society events for years.


And it's nothing that runs afoul of ethics rules.


In fact, justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct that governs the actions of lower federal justices.


If they were, they arguably fell under code's Canon 4C, which states, "A judge may attend fund-raising events of law-related and other organizations although the judge may not be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such an event."


Nevertheless, the sheer proximity of Scalia and Thomas to two of the law firms in the case, as well as to a company with a massive financial interest, was enough to alarm ethics-in-government activists.


"This stunning breach of ethics and indifference to the code belies claims by several justices that the court abides by the same rules that apply to all other federal judges," said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause.


"The justices were wining and dining at a black-tie fundraiser with attorneys who have pending cases before the court."


Their appearance and assistance in fundraising for this event undercuts any claims of impartiality, and is unacceptable.


Scalia and Thomas have shown little regard for critics who say they too readily mix the business of the court with agenda-driven groups such as the Federalist Society.


And Thomas" wife, Ginni, is a high-profile conservative activist.


Moreover, conservatives argue that it's Justice Elena Kagan who has an ethical issue, not Scalia and Thomas.


Kagan served as solicitor general in the Obama administration when the first legal challenges to the law were brought at the trial court level.


Her critics have pushed for Kagan to recuse herself from hearing the case, saying that she was too invested in defending the law then to be impartial now.


Kagan has given no indication she will do so.


Boeing gets record $18-billion jetliner order


Emirates airline orders 50 twin-aisle Boeing 777 jetliners with an option for 20 more.


Boeing also sells six Boeing Dreamliners to Oman Air, a deal worth more than $1 billion.


It's rarely news when a company gets an order for 50 units of its product.


But it's a big deal when the company is airplane-maker Boeing Co. and the list price for those 50 airplanes totals a record $18 billion.


Just as big is where Boeing got the order: the Middle East, a growing gold mine of future airplane orders.


In a forecast released Monday, the Chicago company estimates that airlines in the Middle East over the next 20 years will need 2,520 airplanes worth $450 billion.


Boeing over the weekend announced its biggest-ever order by dollar value for commercial airplanes - 50 twin-aisle Boeing 777 jets.


The blockbuster order came from Emirates airline in Dubai.


The airline also has an option to buy 20 more planes, which would push the total list price to $26 billion, Boeing announced at the 2011 Dubai Air Show.


Then on Monday, Boeing said Oman Air ordered six Boeing 787-8s, the so-called Dreamliner, which boasts dramatically better fuel economy and passenger amenities.


List price for six of those is more than $1 billion.


"This is clearly a huge positive for Boeing," Morningstar analyst Neal Dihora said.


"The quality of these particular customers is pretty strong."


Many Middle East airlines are owned by their oil-producing nations.


So, not only do they have the money to pay for planes, but a surge in fuel prices - usually damaging to airlines because it's one of their biggest costs - is not as detrimental because the country is making money on the higher price of oil.


That's important because they will be less likely than other airlines to cancel or delay airplane orders when fuel prices rise, Dihora said.


"They have a natural hedge," he said.


The Emirates order solidifies Boeing's lead in the market for wide-body planes and helps hold at bay competitor Airbus SAS' attempt to encroach on its dominance with the A350 airliner.


Boeing's win at the air show comes four months after Airbus said it would push back the debut of the largest A350, which competes directly with the 777-300ER.


It delayed the debut to add more thrust after customers demanded more payload and range.


Boeing Co shares rose 1.5% to $67.94.


Mexico president's sister apparently defeated in Michoacan vote


Luisa Maria Calderon alleges that drug traffickers helped opponent Fausto Vallejo of the PRI in the governor's race.


President Felipe Calderon's sister appears to have lost her bid for governor of Michoacan during violent state elections, and she alleged Monday that drug traffickers helped tip the race in favor of one of her opponents.


Preliminary results gave the lead in the race for governor of the western state to Fausto Vallejo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.


"The intervention by organized crime during the entire election process and especially yesterday is alarming, not just for Michoacan but for the entire country," Luisa Maria Calderon said in a radio interview a day after Sunday's vote.


"They threatened our candidates, our poll workers.... They seized ballot boxes, set up roadblocks ... and ordered people to vote" for the PRI.


The PRI ruled Mexico for seven decades until losing the presidency in 2000.


But it is staging a comeback, and victory in Michoacan is an important step in that effort.


The PRI is hoping to win the presidential election in July.


Vallejo appears to have only narrowly edged out Calderon, who had led polls before election day.


Calderon, a candidate for her brother's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, refused to recognize Vallejo as the winner.


Silvano Aureoles, the candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which currently holds the governorship, came in third, a bad defeat for the divided and hapless left ahead of the 2012 presidential vote.


Aureoles also refused to recognize the preliminary results.


Vallejo, former mayor of the state capital of Morelia, denied ties to drug traffickers and urged the other candidates to accept the results.


Michoacan has long been dominated by drug cartels specializing in marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines.


It is President Calderon's home state, and he chose Michoacan to launch a military-led offensive against traffickers in December 2006.


Yet violence has persisted.


A PAN mayor was assassinated a week before the election as he campaigned for Luisa Maria Calderon, and numerous candidates quit local races out of fear.


For the PRI, though, however nasty the Michoacan election looks, a win will help the party's momentum.


The man expected to represent the PRI in the presidential race, Enrique Pena Nieto, speaking from Washington, congratulated Vallejo and said, "I think this victory should be very encouraging, looking ahead to next year."


ADB urges Asia to help rescue eurozone


The Asian Development Bank has called for India and China to be ready to help rescue the eurozone from its sovereign debt crisis to avoid a long-term downturn that will stunt the growth of Asian economies.


Rajat Nag, the managing director of the Manila-based ADB, said the world's two fastest-growing large economies had to "do all they can" to speed the recovery of the the currency bloc either through the International Monetary Fund or direct bilateral arrangements.


He warned against Bric [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries looking at Europe's difficulties in a "dispassionate way" and said that Asian financial assistance alongside European leadership and resources would help avoid a long-term breakdown in the global economy.


"We are all in this together."


"So anybody who can help Europe get out of the crisis is useful," he told the Financial Times in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Mumbai.


"Asia may be shielded to some extent but it cannot be immune."


"So if China and India can help, by all means."


Europe's monetary union has been badly undermined by a sovereign debt crisis in past months.


In recent days, Italy's borrowing costs have soared dangerously and the prime ministers of both Italy and Greece have resigned.


The unfolding sovereign debt crisis in Europe has raised fears that it could push the global economy back into recession and prompted calls for leading emerging economies to band together to help the eurozone find a solution.


Mr Nag predicted that any Asian support would be channelled through the IMF, but said bilateral assistance -- like buying the bonds of the EU's bail-out fund, the European financial stability facility -- offered greater bargaining power to Europe's Asian partners.


Anand Sharma, India's minister of trade, said that "India will do whatever it can" to help the eurozone as its own economy was now suffering falling exports and a drying up of foreign capital inflows.


"Nobody wants the eurozone to remain unstable and turbulent," he said.


"We have monumental challenges and we have to sustain a high level of growth."


"It is not an option, it is an imperative, because where do we find employment for tens of millions of our young men and women."


Others argue that developing economies like India have no business helping wealthy Europeans when they face their own profound economic challenges.


Ashutosh Varshney, a professor at Brown University in the US, said it would be politically very difficult to sell assistance to Europe to India's 1.2bn people, of whom as many as 800m live on about $2 a day or less.


"Sometime they will find out that Greeks retire at the age of 50 and go on holiday to beaches and it won't go down well," he said.


Lee Howell, the managing director of the World Economic Forum, likewise questioned why India's reserves should be used to keep Greece's numerous and well-paid public sector workers in jobs in poorly managed, loss-making utilities like the railways.


Mr Nag said that the eurozone crisis threatened "significant knock-on effects" across Asia.