The successful case brought by the Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB) is the latest sign of how regulators are taking a harder line on auditors, seen by policymakers as being too soft on banks in the run-up to the financial crisis.

The AADB said PwC, one of the world's "Big Four" auditors, which check the books of nearly all blue-chip companies, admitted it failed to obtain "sufficient appropriate evidence" to report that J.P. Morgan Securities complied with strict client money rules spanning several years.

Most of the client money from futures and options trading was being daily "swept" into interest-bearing, unsegregated accounts overnight at J.P. Morgan Chase bank, the firm's parent, said the AADB.

In June 2010 the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) slapped a record 33.32 million pound fine on J.P. Morgan Securities for failing to keep client money separate at all times from the firm's money over a seven-year period to July 2009.

The oil group has filed a suit in New Orleans seeking "the amount of costs and expenses incurred by BP to clean up and remediate the oil spill, the lost profits from and/or diminution in value of the Macondo prospect, and all other costs and damages incurred by BP related to the Deepwater Horizon incident and resulting oil spill", according to the filing.

BP did not specify the amount of damages it is seeking from Halliburton, which provided cement contracting services on the well in the Gulf of Mexico. But it previously estimated the clean-up will cost $42 billion. It has spent $14 billion in the Gulf coast region cleaning up the spill with another $20 billion set aside for economic claims and restoration work.

The oil firm wants Halliburton to pay damages "equal to, or in the alternative proportional to Halliburton's fault," to cover clean-up costs and any government fines BP may face.

A Halliburton spokeswoman said: "Halliburton stands firm that we are indemnified by BP against losses resulting from the Macondo incident."

Germany's famous Bauhaus school from 1919 to 1933 forged new boundaries in the art and design world and remains highly influential today. But its brand and legacy has been under threat for five decades from a large German-Swiss home goods retailer that took the title and trademark "Bauhaus" in 1960 and now has 190 stores around Europe.

Architect Walter Gropius and his group of communal craftsmen put a radical stamp on architecture, design and art education during Germany's Weimar Period between the two world wars. He even claims he coined the term "Bauhaus" as the name for his atypical art school.

Along the way, though, he forgot an important thing: to protect the name.

As a result, up to 40 companies in Germany and myriad others abroad have taken the word "Bauhaus" as a brand or title. The imitators include a furniture label in the United States, a rumored bordello in Japan, a chocolate variety that touts its form and function, a real estate company and the early British gothic band led by Peter Murphy.

"Bauhaus sells," says Dr. Annemarie Jaeggi, director of the Bauhaus Archive Museum in Berlin. "That's the point." When someone is copying you or your name in a corporate context, she says, "then you see that you really have a brand."

Recent weeks have seen spectacular arrests and mounting tension between those who would like to make it harder to share copyrighted material online and those who champion Internet freedom. Controversial U.S. legislation has been shelved, but the battle continues.

It was roughly 6:30 a.m. when two police helicopters suddenly started circling over the "Dotcom mansion" northwest of Auckland, one of the most expensive estates in New Zealand. By that time, it must have been clear to the mansion's occupant that he was about to say goodbye to his sweet life, at least for a while. Although he locked himself in a safe room with a gun, the authorities eventually managed to reach Kim Dotcom, as the man currently calls himself. He is also known as Kim Tim Jim Vestor, Dr. Evil or simply Kimble. In 1974, he was born Kim Schmitz in the northern German city of Kiel.

Schmitz, probably the most colorful figure in Germany's "New Economy," had moved halfway around the world to escape his reputation. And, at least from his standpoint, he had finally achieved success. With websites like Megaupload and Megavideo, Schmitz had built an enormous Internet empire beginning roughly in the mid-1990s. At times, Megaupload was in 13th place among the most-visited sites worldwide.

According to the U.S. indictment against him, Schmitz and his associates have raked in more than $175 million (€135 million) from their activities. For more than two years, the FBI had investigated Schmitz and his associates, including German nationals Mathias O., Sven E. and Finn B., all of whom have also been indicted.

The Costa Concordia disaster, which has claimed at least 13 lives, has shocked the world. But maritime experts say such a catastrophe was just a matter of time. In recent years, the cruise industry has been building ever-bigger ships in pursuit of profit -- and disregarding the dangers the giant vessels pose. This article was written by Spiegel journalists whose names are provided at the end of the article.

On the Tuscan island of Giglio, the night sky is clear and the stars are out. Three men are sitting among the cacti and lemon trees near the cliffs behind the harbor. When the weather is nice, couples come here at sunset to make out.

It's Thursday night of last week. Seven days have now passed since the Costa Concordia ran aground off the coast of Italy.

The moon is shining as the men stare at the wreckage of the capsized cruise ship, not far from the harbor entrance. Two of the men are local Italians from the island, who have spent the last few days in a desperate struggle, and who have saved many lives in the process. They are comforting the third man, an Indian from Mumbai, who is still hoping for a miracle.

The Indian, Kevin Rebello, misses his brother Russell, 33. Russell was a steward on the Concordia and had been traveling the world's oceans for the last five years. Russell had assured his family that he earned good tips in his job, and told them they shouldn't worry about him -- this type of ship couldn't sink. The brother still believes that Russell survived in an air pocket somewhere in the belly of the ship.

The shipping company flew Kevin Rebello in, as it did other relatives of victims from places like Peru, Hungary and France. He has to be close to his brother now, he says, which is why he is waiting in this spot.

Q: How important is Hawking really within physics? How does he fit into the canon?

KF: He fits in as a person who dares to go out on the leading edge. One of the scientists today at this conference said, thank you Stephen for making life so difficult for us. What he meant by that was coming up with theories that send everybody scurrying, it just throws a spanner into the works. It challenges everybody all the time and that's one of his greatest contributions.

Also the fact that he's been willing, all through his career, to pull the rug out from under his discoveries. He's done this again and again – he's discovered something, then he's discovered the opposite.

He's always flipping around. It's the willingness to do that that is very impressive. He wants the general public to know that scientists change their minds, that scientists can admit they're wrong. It's very important. So many people among non-scientists see science as an unassailable monolith of truth, and it's not. It's an ongoing self-correcting process and that's the way he does it and that's the way he presents it.

That's tremendously valuable, especially to young people who are thinking of going into science or anyone who is thinking of basing their religious or philosophical beliefs on science. And that is an important legacy he has taught and continues to live out.

-- Michael Green, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge  

MG: In a sense, were it not for my predecessor, it would have felt no different from being any other professor.

But the name carries a certain weight with it and it's extremely difficult to imagine one would live up to, not just Stephen but, for example, Paul Dirac, who had the chair in the last century, and all sorts of people before including Isaac Newton.

For years, foreign automobile companies have reaped most of the profits to be had in the enormous Chinese market. But in a largely unnoticed change, Beijing is now ending their preferential treatment of car makers from abroad to focus more on developing domestic technology and brands.

The sea change is coming slowly, as if to protect those affected from being startled out of their festive mood. At the end of last year, the Chinese government's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) approved a new industrial plan that could have a devastating effect on German car manufacturers like Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes once it takes effect in late January.

These companies have worked to make China one of their most important and successful foreign markets, while Beijing industrial planning officials looked on in frustration. In the first 11 months of last year, VW alone sold more than 2 million vehicles in there -- up more than 15 percent from 2010.

But this kind of growth could now be over. To protect the "healthy development" of their domestic auto industry, the NDRC said it would remove car manufacturing from the list of industries where it encourages foreign investment. The goal of the change is clear: Beijing wants to help its own car makers break into the market.

Domestic Manufacturers Suffering  

When compared to foreign manufacturers, domestic Chinese car makers such as BYD ("Build Your Dreams") are suffering from the current slow-down in the market there. After Beijing cut state benefits for car purchases, the entire Chinese auto market grew by only about 3 percent in 2011 -- compared to 30 percent the previous year.

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

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

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

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

Gold surged 2.5 per cent to above $1,700 (U.S.) an ounce on Wednesday, as the U.S. Federal Reserve extended its promise of near-zero interest rates through 2014, much longer than its previous forecast.

Bullion’s rally dwarfed the size of the slight gains in equities and other commodities as the U.S. central bank affirmed a view that the pace of U.S. economic recovery remained sluggish.

Silver also rose nearly 4 per cent on gold’s coattails, while U.S. equities measured by the S&P 500 index and the euro – which gold had traded in lockstep in late 2011 – climbed less than 1 per cent.

“From an equity standpoint, it’s not a good story as the Fed was anticipating a much slower rate of growth than the market was,” said Frank McGhee, head precious metals trader at Integrated Brokerage Services LLC.

“Gold was reacting to the Fed’s guidance of historically low rates all the way until 2014, which suggests that there will be plenty of investment money around for an extended period of time,” he said.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul opened the battle for second place in the New Hampshire primary with an attack on his main rival, the rising star of the party right, Rick Santorum.

Paul, after a couple of days of holiday back in Texas after the Iowa caucuses, returned to the fray Friday, making Nashua his first campaign stop.

Demonstrating his drawing power, hundreds of supporters turned out in the unlikely and awkward setting of an aircraft hanger.

Such was demand to see him that cars quickly filled the parking spaces, and vehicles were left by the side of the highway, with lines running back at least a mile.

Paul, a maverick candidate on the libertarian wing of the Republican party, has a passionate, devoted, and largely young following. His arrival was greeted with chants of "President Paul".

New analysis of oil industry contributions to members of Congress has revealed the level of the oil lobby's financial firepower that Barack Obama can expect to face in the November elections if he refuses to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Obama has until February 21 to make a decision on whether to approve the pipeline, under a compromise tax measure approved late last year. America's top oil lobbyist warned last week that the president would face "huge political consequences" if he did not sign off on the project to pump tar sands crude across the American heartland to refineries on the Texas coast.

The Canadian government is also on the offensive, with an attack this week on "jet-setting celebrities" opposed to tar sands pipelines. At the same time, TransCanada executives have embarked on a letter-writing campaign.

Now Maplight, an independent research group in Berkeley, California, that tracks the influence of money in politics, has conducted an analysis of oil industry contributions to members of Congress supporting the pipeline.

The study, which is due to be published on Wednesday, studied industry contributions to members of the House of Representatives which passed a bill last July that would have forced Obama to speed up approval of the Keystone project.

One year after the Arab Spring, SPIEGEL correspondent Alexander Smolzczyk set out on a journey through the Maghreb to assess the region's transformation. On the second leg of his journey, he travels through post-revolution Libya and finds a country marked by a mixture of hope, desperation and the will to build a new democracy.

On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man in rural Tunisia, poured gasoline on himself -- and ignited an entire region. One by one, the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya toppled their rulers. One year after Bouazizi's self-immolation, much has changed in the Maghreb. But a lot has remained the same. In places where secular rulers prevailed for decades, Islamists are now trying to seize the reins of power. And many people there are just as poor and hopeless as they were before the revolutions.

This is the second article in a series by SPIEGEL correspondent Alexander Smoltczyk as he travels along the Transmaghrébine highway from Morocco to Egypt together with a photographer. On the second leg of his journey, he travels through Libya and finds people who have freed themselves from dictator Moammar Gadhafi, but not from the demons he left behind. Be sure to also read the first part of the series. 

Ben Gardane, the last town before Tunisia's border with Libya, is a hive of smuggling and contraband -- a transit zone consisting of a jumble of unpainted concrete shops, storage sheds, barbecue stands and dirty hotels. Every few hundred meters, illegally imported gasoline is sold in bright red, blue and green bottles. Everyone in Ben Gardane is involved in smuggling, from young children to old men.

After it passes Djerba, the Transmaghrébine, the highway of the revolutions, extends along the flat Mediterranean coast. Youngsters hold up dried fish and crabs. Plastic toys and gutted sheep swing in the gusts of wind from the trucks roaring down the highway.

There they are, behind a bulwark of sand, the camps of those who fled Libya, shortly before the last checkpoint in Tunisia, under the flags of organizations like UNHCR and Islamic Relief. The men here come from countries like Somalia, Niger and Sudan. There are reportedly some 1,400 of them still here.

Abraham came here from Eritrea. "Eighteen days without seeing a tree," he says, describing his journey. The 36-year-old is a teacher and a computer specialist. He purchased his passage through the desert for $1,600 (€1,230) and worked for the Japanese Embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli. Then the revolution began, in the guise of a civil war.

The refugees say that they are afraid of being beaten to death in the new, liberated Libya because they are black. They can't return to their countries or go back to Tripoli, and they don't want to stay in Tunisia either. "They don't like us," says Abraham. "No matter how well you speak Arabic." The camps are slated to be cleared in early January. Only 600 of them have received official refugee status. What can they do but hope for asylum in Canada, Australia or the E.U.? Their only way out is north across the sea.

The beach is just 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is enjoying a bump in the polls in New Hampshire as a result of his success in the Iowa caucuses.

A poll for WMUR, the New Hampshire affiliate of ABC, puts Santorum on 8%, up from only 1% when the last poll was taken in November. More significantly, Santorum – as he did in Iowa – is enjoying a surge, and the poll figures taken in the two days after Iowa show even higher support for him, at 11%.

But Santorum is still well behind the frontrunner Mitt Romney, who is almost certain to add New Hampshire to his win in Iowa. He would then be heading to South Carolina for its 21 January primary with two victories behind him.

The poll carries bad news for Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, who opted not to compete in Iowa and instead concentrate his efforts in New Hampshire. He does not appear to have benefited from that strategy, dropping 1% from November, down to 7%.

The threat of fresh economic turmoil and social upheaval could put at risk the gains produced by globalization, the World Economic Forum said on Wednesday.

In its annual assessment of the outlook for the global economy, the WEF set the scene for its meeting in Davos, Switzerland, later this month by warning that the "seeds of dystopia" are being sown.

The growing number of young people with little chance of finding a job, the increasing number of elderly people dependent on states deeply in debt and the expanding gap between rich and poor were all fueling resentment worldwide, the forum said in its Global Risks 2012 report on Wednesday.

"For the first time in generations, many people no longer believe that their children will grow up to enjoy a higher standard of living than theirs," said Lee Howell, the WEF managing director responsible for the report. "This new malaise is particularly acute in the industrialized countries that historically have been a source of great confidence and bold ideas."

The survey of 469 global experts identified chronic problems with government finances and severe income inequality as the most prevalent risks over the next decade.

The Italian captain, Francesco Schettino, was being interviewed by investigators in Porto Santo Stefano on what happened when the 4,200-passenger Costa Concordia, owned by Genoa-based Costa Cruises, struck shallow water off Italy's western coast, said officer Emilio Del Santo of the Coastal Authorities of Livorno.

Authorities are looking at why the ship didn't hail a mayday during the accident near the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night, officials said.

"At the moment we can't exclude that the ship had some kind of technical problem, and for this reason moved towards the coast in order to save the passengers, the crew and the ship. But they didn't send a mayday. The ship got in contact with us once the evacuation procedures were already ongoing," said Del Santo.

"Fear and panic are comprehensible in a ship long over 300 meters with over 4000 passengers," said Del Santo. "We can confirm that the ship has a breach on the hull of about 90 meters, and that the right side of it is completely under water."

The three persons dead were two French tourists and a crew member from Peru, said Port authorities in Livorno.

Giuseppe Orsina, a spokesman with the local civil protection agency, said 43 to 51 persons were missing, though authorities are reviewing passenger lists to confirm the exact figure.

HSBC and Barclays both cut their 2012 gold price targets by over $100 an ounce after the metal posted a gain of 10 percent last year to extend its run to an 11th consecutive year. It was, however, its smallest annual gain in three years. 

HSBC's chief commodity analyst James Steel slashed his 2012 forecast to $1,850 an ounce from his previous target of $2,025, citing a weak euro, liquidation related to equities' losses and lackluster physical demand from emerging markets. 

Steel also kept its 2012 silver view unchanged at $34 an ounce but he cut his price forecasts for platinum and palladium. 

Bullion has appeared to lose its investment appeal as a safe haven after moving in almost virtual lockstep with the euro and equities in the last two months.  

Instead, at about dinner time, the lights suddenly went out, the ship tilted to one side and an ominous scraping sound was heard.

The 1,500-cabin luxury vessel, also carrying about 1,000 crew, had run aground on a sand bar off the tiny island of Giglio.

Rosalyn Rincon, a member of the cruise ship staff who worked as a dancer, was in the middle of act when the ship ran aground. She was inside a box during a magic show when, she said, "I realized that everything stopped. The music stopped," she said.

Everything on the stage fell on top of people because the ship listed dramatically, said Rincon, 30, of Blackpool, England.

The company's public image took a dive after revelations about working conditions in the factories of some of its network of Chinese suppliers. The allegations, reported at length in the New York Times, build on previous concerns about abuses at firms that Apple uses to make its bestselling computers and phones. Now the dreaded word "boycott" has started to appear in media coverage of its activities.

Apple assembly line at the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, southern China. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty

"Should consumers boycott Apple?" asked a column in the Los Angeles Times as it recounted details of the bad P.R. fallout.

The influential Daily Beast and Newsweek technology writer Dan Lyons wrote a scathing piece. "It's barbaric," he said, before saying to his readership: "Ultimately the blame lies not with Apple and other electronics companies – but with us, the consumers. And ultimately we are the ones who must demand change."

Government officials are upset about material insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Some illustrations have shown Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions and pigs running through Mecca, Islam's holiest city.

On Friday, the federal government told a New Delhi court that there was sufficient material to proceed against 21 social networking sites for offenses of "promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration," according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

The cases, which PTI said name companies including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft, represent a new risk of doing business in the nation of more than 1 billion people, which is looking to technology to boost its economy and standard of living. The dispute highlights India's difficulty in balancing the Internet culture of freewheeling discourse with its homegrown religious and political sensitivities.

Convictions could bring fines and up to five years' imprisonment, through prosecutors have named only the companies involved rather than any executives. Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar on Friday asked India's External Affairs Ministry to serve summons to officials of foreign-based companies for court appearances March 13.

One year after the Arab Spring, SPIEGEL correspondent Alexander Smoltczyk set out on a journey through the Maghreb to assess the changes the region has undergone. On the third and final leg of his journey through North Africa, he ends in Cairo, where the revolution is still underway.

On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man in rural Tunisia, poured gasoline on himself -- and ignited an entire region. One by one, the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya toppled their rulers. One year after Bouazizi's self-immolation, much has changed in the Maghreb. But a lot has remained the same. In places where secular rulers prevailed for decades, Islamists are now trying to seize the reins of power. And many people there are just as poor and hopeless as they were before the revolutions.

This is the third article in a series by SPIEGEL correspondent Alexander Smoltczyk as he travels along the Transmaghrébine highway from Morocco to Egypt together with a photographer. On the third leg of his journey, he travels from the Libyan border, through Alexandria and on to Cairo, where he finds violence flaring up on the streets once again. Be sure to also read the frist and second parts of the series.

The revolution has returned, as our journey ends on the banks of the Nile in mid-December. Revolutions are mysterious events, hard to grab hold of, never quite over and always alarming.

KILOMETER  4,510, Umm Sa'ad, border crossing to Egypt  

On the other side of the border, in Libya, the names of martyrs were written on the walls, but now, in Egypt, it is the names of election candidates. There are symbols printed next to their photos to help voters recognize them. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood has picked a motorcycle as his symbol, while another has chosen a CD, and a third candidate a surfboard. In the more remote cities, the Muslim Brotherhood has set up a service to drive older citizens to the polling places. It also helps them check the boxes on their ballots.

A poster for the Muslim Brotherhood depicts smiling men with impressive facial hair: trapezoid-shaped goatees, with or without moustaches, sometimes as voluminous as a small fur coat. It looks like an invitation to some sort of a contest.

Shortages of a handful of rare minerals could slow the future growth of the burgeoning renewable energy industries, and affect countries' chances of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, business leaders were told at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

Last year, prices of many scarce minerals exploded, rising as much as 10 times over 2010 levels before dropping back, said PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, europium and neodymium are widely used in the manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, electric car batteries and energy-efficient light bulbs. But because these "rare earths" are mined almost exclusively in China, it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to source them in the required quantities.

In a survey of some of the largest clean energy manufacturers, 78% told PwC said they were already experiencing instability of supply of rare metals, and most said they did not expect shortages to ease for at least five years. Currently, 95% of the rare earth minerals needed by clean tech industries come from China which has set strict export quotas. Last year China reserved most for its own for its domestic wind, solar and battery industries, shifting costs to the U.S. and Europe which do not mine any of the minerals.

A German collector has opened a museum to exhibit his treasured vintage microcars. For a while, they were a popular and affordable alternative to motorbikes during Germany's postwar economic miracle. Though long-forgotten, the little wonders of innovation and engineering may soon be reborn.

There's a key advantage to setting up a museum for microcars -- "they take up much less space than big cars," says Stefan Voit, standing in a hall lined with tiny vintage vehicles neatly arranged on shelves and waiting to be restored or polished before being exhibited next door in his museum, located in St. Ingbert, Saarland.

Voit has always appreciated modesty. Here's how the engineer, 68, spent his first vacation: "We went to the Black Forest with camping gear and supplies for more than a week. In an NSU Prinz."

So it's no surprise that his heart beats for microcars like that West German model rather than luxury limousines. Voit has collected a fleet of more than 50 of them over the last two decades. It all began when he bought a Messerschmitt Cabin Scooter. After that, he couldn't stop.

"I read more and more about the subject and kept meeting more people and suddenly there were opportunities all over the place," recalls Voit.

The shadowy Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, has become one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Western world through its dominance of the European cocaine trade. For the first time, local syndicate bosses described their business model to [German news magazine] SPIEGEL. It's a mixture of entrepreneurial talent, skillful management and deadly ruthlessness.

For the meeting with SPIEGEL, Carlo has suggested a café in a town outside Munich. He is sitting in the shade of tall trees, a fit man in his late 50s, with alert eyes and a shaved head. He explains why men like him never go to prison, even though they bring cocaine to Germany by the ton.

Momentarily blinded by the late afternoon sun, he stops speaking in mid-sentence, blinks, moves his chair to the side and shakes his right hand, as if he were trying to shoo the sun away like a fly. A diamond set in a gold ring flashes for a moment, and then Carlo continues where he left off: "I am an 'illuminato'," he says, speaking German with an Italian accent. In mafia circles, a distinction is made between "illuminati" ("enlightened ones") and "manovali" ("henchmen"). The diamond is a sign of Carlo's high rank.

Sources in southern Italy had said that Carlo was in charge of the cocaine trade in Germany. On this afternoon, he leaves no doubt that this is the case. "In the summer or around New Year's, when there is the greatest demand, we bring in a ton of cocaine every few days," says Carlo. Although he is constantly aware of what is happening in the drug scene, he adds, he never touches the stuff himself, preferring to let others get their fingers dirty. This reflects the division of labor between the illuminati and the henchmen.

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has long had its sights set on the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. The 'Ndrangheta was responsible for almost all of the attention-grabbing mafia crimes committed on German soil in recent years.

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.

Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.

"We are inching our way toward a critical tipping point," said Steve Ellis, secretary of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and a beekeeper for 35 years. Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he'll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In addition to continued reports of CCD -- a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind -- bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit.

"In the industry we believe pesticides play an important role in what's going on," said Dave Hackenberg, co-chair of the NHBAB and a beekeeper in Pennsylvania.

Dave Caron is exactly the sort of person whom you might expect to support Rick Santorum, the socially conservative former senator whose strong showing in Iowa has catapulted him to the heart of the Republican race.

Caron, an air traffic controller, is deeply Christian and thoroughly committed. When he heard Santorum would be appearing nearby, he took a day off work, packed his wife and five home-schooled children in a van and drove to Tilton, New Hampshire, where Santorum was visiting a local diner.

The Caron family, with one infant daughter holding a "Welcome to New Hampshire, Mr Santorum" sign, greeted their Republican candidate enthusiastically, and Caron did not hide his reasoning for supporting him. "I have no doubt that religious people are very good people. There is no doubt about that. It shows they have consistent principles," he explained.

Outside the pink and neon Tilt'n Diner the Caron family van was parked, covered with anti-abortion slogans and painted children's handprints. Caron confessed that in hard economic times it had been a tough decision to pay for the petrol to get here. "We are making sacrifices. We are on one income. We had to decide to spend money on gas," he said.

People like the Carons – religious social conservatives – lay behind Santorum's shock success in almost beating frontrunner Mitt Romney in Iowa. But Santorum's problem, as the previous outsider candidate pivots to embrace his moment in the national spotlight, is that they have a much reduced role in the current vital state of New Hampshire.

Tests for a countrywide network aimed at substituting services run through the world wide web have been carried out by Iran's ministry of information and communication technology, according to a newspaper report. The move has prompted fears among its online community that Iran intends to withdraw from the global internet.

The police this week imposed tighter regulations on internet cafes. Cafe owners have been given a two-week ultimatum to adopt rules requiring them to check the identity cards of their customers before providing services.

"Internet cafes are required to write down the forename, surname, name of the father, national identification number, postcode and telephone number of each customer," said an Iranian police statement, according to the news website Tabnak.

"Besides the personal information, they must maintain other information of the customer such as the date and the time of using the internet and the I.P. address, and the addresses of the websites visited. They should keep these informations for each individual for at least six months."

They came to honor one of their own and celebrate the life of the world's most famous living scientist, on an occasion few imagined they would see.

The festivities around Professor Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday saw eminent physicists from around the globe descend on Cambridge to discuss science at the edge of understanding.

The Cambridge cosmologist has worked on the inflation of the early universe and a quantum theory of gravity, and famously suggested that black holes emit radiation and so slowly disappear.

But his fame has brought his field to a vast audience beyond the realms of academia. A Brief History of Time has reportedly sold more than 10 million copies worldwide – more than Madonna's Sex book sold – and Hawking has made guest appearances on The Simpsons and Star Trek.

The conference, entitled "The State of the Universe", has been charting the theoretical frontiers of black holes, cosmology and fundamental physics, but the event is also a tribute to a career that many feared would be short-lived after Hawking was diagnosed with motor-neuron disease at the age of 21.

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

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

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

Countries around the world, particularly in the West, are hopelessly in the red, with debt rising every day. Even worse, politicians seem paralyzed, unable -- or unwilling -- to do anything about it. It is a global disaster that threatens the immediate future. But there might be a way out.

When Carlo Ponzi, a dishwasher from Parma, Italy, immigrated to the United States in 1903, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a million-dollar dream in his head. He was able to fulfill that dream, at least temporarily.

Ponzi promised people that he would multiply their money in a miraculous way: by 50 percent in six weeks. With his carefully parted hair and charming accent, Ponzi beguiled investors and fueled their avarice. The first investors raked in fantastic returns. What they didn't know was that Ponzi was simply using the next investors' money to pay them their profits.

The scheme continued. Ten investors turned into 100, and 100 investors turned into 1,000, until the scam was discovered. Ponzi spent many years in prison, and he died a pauper in 1949. But his name remains important to every criminologist today -- and every economist.

Economists use the term "Ponzi scheme" to describe a disastrous mechanism in which someone pays off old debt by constantly taking on new debt. The repayment of the debt -- the most recent loans, plus interest -- is deferred into the distant future, fueling an eternal process of debt refinancing.

It's the classic pyramid, or snowball scheme, practiced by thousands of con artists after Ponzi. The most spectacular case was that of New York financier Bernard Madoff, who was responsible for losses of about $20 billion by 2008. Snowballs are set into motion, becoming bigger and bigger as they roll along. In the worst case, they end in an avalanche that takes everything else with it.

With his thick black hair and deep tan, captain Francesco Schettino might have stepped straight out of a scene from the 1970s cruise-liner sitcom The Love Boat. The handsome Italian skipper must have prompted more than a few sighs from lonely divorcees on voyages like the one that ended so violently and abruptly on the rocks of Giglio last Friday night.

But Schettino is no matinee-idol matelot. Although widely admired for his professional abilities, new evidence suggests that, in the hours after the Costa Concordia ran aground, he first went into denial and then fell to pieces.

Recordings of radio and telephone calls made by Italian coastguards indicate that they were twice assured the vessel was suffering from only a "small technical failure", that Schettino claimed the evacuation was almost complete when it had scarcely begun, and that he abandoned ship long before the last of his passengers.

"No. I'm not on board because the bows of the ship are coming up. We've abandoned her," he tells an incredulous coastguard, who replies: "What do you mean? You've abandoned ship?" Schettino then appears to do a volte face: "No. No way have I abandoned ship. I'm here."

In one recording, carried by the website of La Repubblica newspaper and made at 1:46 a.m., Schettino speaks indistinctly, as if he was either in tears or had come close to breaking down. He is heard protesting and imploring as the coastguard, Gregorio De Falco, orders him unsuccessfully to return to his vessel.

The future of solar subsidies has pitted members of Chancellor Merkel's cabinet against each other. But instead of politicizing the issue, German commentators on Friday urge the country's leaders to focus on consumers and what best serves Germany's energy needs.

Germany's Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen announced Thursday that he wants to revise the country's renewable energy law to help contain the costs of solar subsidies. The move comes as the future of solar subsidies has been called into question by members on both sides of the country's ruling center-right coalition of conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).

After meeting with representatives of the solar industry in Berlin Thursday, Rottgen, a member of the CDU, said that the law (known as the EEG) will be amended, and he is in favor of doing so quickly. The law itself, though, will remain on the books. "There will be no systemic change to the EEG," said Rottgen.

Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels received more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but contributed only three percent of the country's total energy supply. The future of renewable energy is a major issue in Germany, where the government announced earlier this year that it would be phasing out its nuclear energy program.

Under Germany's renewable energy law, each new energy system qualifies for 20 years of subsidies. A flood of new solar farm operators and private users have pushed up the costs of those subsidies, opponents argue, passing the costs of the government support on to all electricity consumers nationwide.

Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.

A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.

As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.

"His personal finances are a poster child of what's wrong with the American tax system," said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking.

On Tuesday, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage in taxes than most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings. It has been Romney's Republican rivals who have driven the tax issue onto center stage. For weeks, Romney has cited a desire for privacy as his reason for not sharing his tax returns -- a gesture of transparency that is now expected from presidential contenders.

The border between North and South Korea is the last battlefield of the Cold War. Currently, a delegate of veteran German politicians -- from the former east and west -- are advising the government in Seoul on how the country might reunify if the opportunity arises in the future. Some see a door opening for change following Kim Jong Il's death.

A few weeks before North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack during a train journey, Lothar de Maizière, the last prime minister of the former East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR), boarded a Lufthansa flight bound for South Korea to intervene once again in world history. De Maizière was accompanied by Rainer Eppelmann, the last defense minister of the GDR.

Today de Maizière is 71 years old and has put on a few pounds since the tumultuous days in late 1989 that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. Eppelmann, 68, was sporting the kind of peaked cap that former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and German retirees like to wear. De Maizière and Eppelmann looked a bit like they could get lost on the streets of Seoul. But they weren't traveling there alone.

They were part of a 20-member delegation led by Christoph Bergner, the federal commissioner responsible for issues relating to the eastern states and ethnic Germans who have returned to Germany from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Why does one send an aircraft loaded with German former revolutionaries and unification experts to a place like South Korea? The short answer: so history will repeat itself. The somewhat longer answer: It was an idea conceived by Kim Chun Sig, South Korea's deputy unification minister. Korea has been divided since the end of World War II. The communist North has a nuclear weapons program and is supported by Russia and China. The capitalist South is supported by the United States. Korea is the last battlefield of the Cold War, a country that was split in two during the war of ideologies.

Berlin has been unflinching it its efforts to both increase fiscal discipline in the euro zone and to avoid throwing more money at the European debt crisis. Increasingly, though, Germany's E.U. partners are unwilling to play along. Chancellor Merkel now finds herself confronted with powerful opponents. This article was written by SPIEGEL journalists whose names are listed at the end of this article. 

Boyko Borisov cuts an imposing figure. The Bulgarian prime minister has the build of a piano mover, and he used to coach his country's national karate team. He towered over German Chancellor Angela Merkel while walking with her through the Chancellery in Berlin.

Indeed, he almost seemed like a Merkel bodyguard during his visit to the German capital last Wednesday, particularly when the subject of the euro crisis came up. For days, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has been insisting that Germany needed to do more to save the common currency. But Borisov, in contrast, told his audience that he would like to "thank Germany … on behalf of many countries in the European Union." He said that what was important now was budget consolidation, to only spend as much as is brought in and to save, save, save.

"Everyone has to work as much as the Germans," he added.

Merkel nodded with satisfaction. Finally someone was showing some understanding for once. Then she took her earphones off and addressed Monti's repeated demands. "I'm still searching for what else exactly we are supposed to do," she said. And when she figures that out, she added, she'll actively pursue it.

The Russian city of Sovetsk tried for decades to repress its past as the East Prussian town of Tilsit. But now it is embracing its history and has made its most famous son, popular German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl, an honorary citizen. For Mueller-Stahl, returning to his birthplace after 73 years was an emotional journey into his own past.

The situation probably wouldn't have been very different in the Middle Ages if you had wanted to enter a town in the evening through one of the city gates. A grumpy man, in this case wearing the uniform of a Russian border guard, casts one last glance at the passport, grabs a large bunch of keys, shuffles off the bridge that spans the Neman River between Lithuania and Russia, and walks down to an iron gate, where he inserts a key into the lock and pushes both sides wide open.

Suddenly the newcomer finds himself in the center of what must be the ugliest square in all of Russia, even though it was once the finest square in the East Prussian town of Tilsit, now known as Sovetsk.

The splendid Church of the Teutonic Order once stood at this very spot, its spire resting on eight orbs, so beautiful that Napoleon wanted to take it back to Paris. Right behind there is Deutsche Strasse (literally: German Street) -- now called Gagarin Street -- where Czar Alexander stayed in 1807 when he visited Tilsit, as it was known then, to sign a peace treaty with the French. The small house inhabited by the Prussian queen consort, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, no longer exists.

Not a single stone of Tilsit's once grand Fletcherplatz remains. Today, the square is occupied by the border post that separates the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad from Lithuania. Gray, unplastered Soviet-era buildings surround the square. The washing-lines on the balconies are used to dry fish while, down below, trucks line up on their way in the other direction, across the Neman River to Lithuania.

Stocks enjoyed a good start to the year on Tuesday, with North American indexes jumping at the start of trading over upbeat economic readings from Europe, China and the United States.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 12,397.38, up 179.82 points or 1.5 per cent. The broader S&P 500 closed at 1277.06, up 19.46 points or 1.6 per cent. In Canada, the S&P/TSX composite index closed at 12,208.43, up 253.34 points or 2.1 per cent.

Call it the manufacturing rally: Activity in the euro zone was better than expected last month, while a reading from China showed that manufacturing expanded in December following a contraction in the previous month. Meanwhile, the U.S. ISM manufacturing index rose to 53.9 in December from 53.5 previously, beating expectations and continuing to point to expansion despite what has been a pessimistic economic outlook.

While the release of the Federal Reserve’s minutes from its last monetary policy meeting had little impact on the stock market, they did raise some eyebrows among economists: The Fed announced that it would start to release forecasts every quarter for interest rates – essentially giving the central bank the power to telegraph where rates are headed and how dramatic changes are likely to be.

Stock market gains were strong, but U.S. gains were largely confined to economically sensitive areas. Alcoa Inc. rose 6.7 per cent and Microsoft Corp. rose 3.1 per cent. Among banks, Bank of America Corp. rose 4.3 per cent and JPMorgan Chase & Co. rose 5.2 per cent.

Shell is to shut its main U.K. research and development base and transfer the work overseas in a bitter blow to Britain's knowledge economy.

Hundreds of senior scientists working at the center at Thornton in Cheshire will be scattered to other offices in a move that follows the sale of the nearby Stanlow refinery and is seen by some as a more general retreat by Shell from the U.K.

Shell Technology Center Thornton has been the base for developing biofuels and more traditional fuels for customers that include the Ferrari Formula One racing team.

Only 18 months ago the R&D base launched two new FuelSave products using the former England cricketer Andrew Flintoff to lead the marketing effort.

But the facility, where almost 300 scientists work, is to shut completely in 2014 with Shell concentrating its R&D efforts in Germany and other overseas centers.

The Obama administration today formally rejected a bid by Canadian energy company TransCanada to build a $7 billion oil pipeline linking the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Keystone XL project, which was estimated to create thousands of U.S. jobs, became an election-year lightning rod, embroiling President Obama, congressional Republicans, labor unions and interest groups in a heated debate over jobs and the environment.

The State Department, which holds the authority to approve or reject pipelines that cross an international boundary, said in November that it would delay a decision on Keystone to allow for further study of the environmental impact along its 1,700-mile route.

Then in December, Congress tried to force the president to make a decision proposal within two months, tucking the mandate into the payroll tax cut bill that Obama ultimately signed into law.

But the president said today in a statement that the congressionally imposed deadline did not provide adequate time for the State Department to finish a customary review of the pipeline's route through six states.

"The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline's impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment," President Obama said.

They stood in a moment of silent unity, honoring the revolutionary martyrs who helped make this historic dream a reality. Then, one by one, 508 parliamentarians – Egypt's first democratically elected representatives in 60 years – answered their names and pledged to honorably serve the interests of the nation.

And then the cracks began to appear. The first ultra-conservative Salafist Parliament member to go off script was Mamdouh Ismail, who added "… if not in contradiction with God's doctrine" to his oath of office, and others quickly followed suit. Liberals hit back by tacking on their own spontaneous postscripts, promising to serve the nation "in accordance with the demands of the revolution".

Many sported bright yellow "No to military trials" armbands, an emblem of fierce opposition to the ruling generals, and refused to join a bout of collective applause for the army council that still maintains an iron grip on the country's levers of power.

The man charged with keeping control of proceedings, 81-year-old Mahmoud el-Sakka, alternated between verbally castigating his unruly charges and sitting back with a sigh as the fault lines of Egypt's political landscape were wrenched open again for all to see.

The junta that replaced Hosni Mubarak last February hoped that Monday's spectacle would epitomize Egypt's transition to democracy in the eyes of its people and the wider world. Many who crowded around television sets in Cairo's shop windows and pavement cafes to witness the inauguration would concur, but this was an event that symbolized so many other things as well.

Millions of Americans will be forced into poverty in the coming years even as the U.S. hauls itself out of the longest and deepest recession since the second world war.

A study from Indiana University, released on Wednesday, says the number of Americans living below the poverty line surged by 27% since the beginning of what it calls the "Great Recession" in 2006, driving 10 million more people into poverty.

The report warns that the numbers will continue to rise, because although the recession is technically over, its continued impact on cuts to welfare budgets and the quality of new, often poorly paid, jobs can be expected to force many more people in to poverty. It is also difficult for those already under water to get back up again.

"Poverty in America is remarkably widespread," concludes the study, "At Risk: America's Poor During And After The Great Recession". "The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery."

The white paper, drafted by the university's school of public and environmental affairs, which is among the best ranked schools of its kind in the U.S., says that six years ago, 36.5 million Americans fell below the poverty line. By 2010, the number of people living in poverty rose to 46.2 million and continued to grow over the past year.

Beijing is buying less Iranian crude this month, but analysts say China is unlikely to support an oil embargo. Instead, they say, the smaller purchases might be a tactic aimed at obtaining lower prices as the West squeezes Tehran.

The sanctions approved by President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve have highlighted the importance of Iranian oil supplies to East Asia's energy-hungry economies. They have led to a clash of interests between Washington and key commercial and strategic partners over efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program.

"We are considering our response and are closely discussing the matter with the U.S.," a Japanese Foreign Ministry official, Kazuhiro Kawase, said Friday.

A South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said this week Seoul is in talks with Washington aimed at "minimizing the negative impacts" of sanctions. South Korea imports 97 percent of its oil and depends on Iran for up to 10 percent of its supplies.

An E.U.-funded project is developing technology that could make flying cars a reality. But to avoid the inevitable dangers of a crowded sky, researchers are borrowing lessons learned from robots and bats.

It's a special kind of dressage: When Raffaello D'Andrea lifts his right arm, a plate-sized helicopter obediently starts its engine. When he moves his finger through the air, the device follows as if on a horse's lead.

D'Andrea is a drone trainer. The professor is standing in socks with his legs apart on the floor of a gymnasium-like building at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. The floor is covered with mats to soften the impact when the expensive devices crash to the ground. And lest any errant drones escape from the "Flying Machine Arena" in the Mechanical Engineering Department, the 10-by-10-meter (1,075-square-foot) interior space is also surrounded by a net.

Curious students are gathered outside a glass viewing panel. They can hardly believe their eyes when they behold flying robots reacting to hand signs like trained falcons.

"This is actually the easiest exercise," says D'Andrea, one of the directors of the ETH's Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC). He raises his left hand, and the helicopter does a somersault, then another and another, until D'Andrea lowers his hand again. He claps, and the drone promptly lands.

Gen. Ataollah Salehi spoke as a 10-day Iranian naval exercise ended near the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf. Iranian officials have said the drill aimed to show that Iran could close the vital oil passage, as it has threatened to do if the United States enacts strong new sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

The strait, leading into the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, is the only possible route for tankers transporting crude from the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf to markets. A sixth of the world’s oil exports passes through it every day.

Oil prices rose to over $101 a barrel Tuesday amid concerns that rising tensions between Western powers and Iran could lead to crude supply disruptions. By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for February delivery was up $2.67 to $101.50 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The jump came a day after Iran test-fired a surface-to-surface cruise missile as part of the maneuvers, prompting Iran’s navy chief to boast that the strait is “completely under our control.”

The bank's shares fell 2.9 percent in premarket trading. Through Thursday, the shares had climbed 11 percent this year.

J.P. Morgan is the first major US bank to announce results for the period. Its figures show Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are in for a tough quarter as investment banking results suffer.

Others such as Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., which also report results in the coming days, could benefit from the stronger business loan demand that J.P. Morgan experienced, but they continue to face problems in investment banking and housing loans.

The U.S. has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents' agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian newspaper has learned.

According to sources familiar with the talks in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, the handful of Taliban figures will include Mullah Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, and Noorullah Noori, a former governor in northern Afghanistan.

More controversially, the Taliban are demanding the release of the former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund. Washington is reported to be considering formally handing him over to the custody of another country, possibly Qatar.

The releases would be to reciprocate for Tuesday's announcement from the Taliban that they are prepared to open a political office in Qatar to conduct peace negotiations "with the international community" – the most significant political breakthrough in ten years of the Afghan conflict.

The Taliban are holding just one American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old sergeant captured in June 2009, but it is not clear whether he would be freed as part of the deal.

"To take this step, the [Obama] administration have to have sufficient confidence that the Taliban are going to reciprocate," said Vali Nasr, who was an Obama administration  adviser on the Afghan peace process until last year. "It is going to be really risky. Guantánamo is a very sensitive issue politically."

This dangerous game of brinkmanship and perpetual bickering between America and Iran has been played out for over three decades now. Little seems to change in Washington no matter who is in the White House a Bible-thumping gunslinger with an endless wish list of regime change or a messianic rhetorician, who earned himself a Nobel Peace Prize in his first year in office by promising all sorts of Yes-We-Cans to all sorts of folks.

On the other hand, over the past couple of decades we have heard nearly the same monotonous grandstanding against the “Big Satan” from the ayatollahs, which is now beginning to bore even those who are sympathetic to Tehran and believe that it's being unfairly targeted by the West, just as Iraq had been not long ago. 

Every pundit worth his two-bit take has been obsessing over the coming war on Iran for more than a decade now. We in the Gulf have lived with this fear for years now, especially since the Iraq invasion. Indeed, after Iraq, moving next door to Iran wouldn't have been too difficult for the coalition of the willing, if it wasn't for the mess that it unleashed on itself by removing Saddam Hussain. 

With the war of words between Washington and Tehran heating up, coupled with the latest - and toughest - Western sanctions against Iran coming into play, that scenario now looks increasingly plausible.

As if defying the war talk, a totally defiant Tehran launched new war games in the Gulf last week. Ten days of exercises saw Tehran shoot off some of those “long-range” missiles that it claims could hit as far as Israel and U.S. military assets in the Middle East, giving the jitters to an already tense region. 

President Obama has unveiled plans for America's military future, outlining a historic shift towards a smaller and leaner force that will focus on China and move away from large-scale ground warfare that has dominated the post-9/11 era.