Afternoon Edition

The Vatican joined Muslim leaders in expressing dismay after a referendum on Sunday voted for a constitutional ban on the construction of towers attached to mosques from where the faithful are traditionally called to prayer.

Some 57.5 percent of those who cast ballots supported the measure amid a high turnout by Swiss standards of 53 percent.

Demjanjuk, 89, charged with helping to kill 27,900 people while a guard at the Sobibor death camp in 1943, appeared for the first session in a wheelchair, keeping his eyes mostly closed and moaning as he left the room.

In the second 90-minute session, Demjanjuk was carried in on a stretcher covered head-to-toe in a white blanket, writhing about and waving his arms before the judge suspended proceedings for close to half an hour.

The White House said Obama delivered the fateful orders, marking the most crucial leadership test of his presidency so far, on Sunday, after telling top aides of his decision following an exhaustive months-long policy review.

“The president communicated his final decision on the strategy in the Oval Office and issued orders on the strategy’s implementation,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Dubai’s benchmark DFM Index closed at 1,940.36 points, down 152.80 points from Wednesday, just before Dubai announced it wanted to freeze debt repayments by its huge Dubai World conglomerate for at least six months.

Leading securities, particularly in the construction and finance industries, plunged almost by the maximum-allowed limit of 10 percent after the bourse reopened following a four-day holiday.

But the United States, seen as critical to breaking the eight-year stalemate in the Doha round of global trade talks, assured the Geneva meeting that it was prepared to “move into the end game” of the negotiations.

World leaders have pledged to conclude the Doha Round of global trade negotiations by 2010, but little progress has been made.

This marked the debut of an ambitious biodiversity project launched by pioneering French vintners in a bid for sustainability.

The biological diversity of Saint Emilion’s 8,000-hectare vineyard landscape, intertwined with wine since Roman times and protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage site since 1999, has been precariously reduced by urbanization, chemical vine treatments, and one-crop farming.

Japan, which has this year been digging itself out of its worst post-war recession, now faces the threat of the yen trading at a 14-year high against the dollar, which hurts the profits of exporters such as Toyota and Sony.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at the weekend ordered his cabinet to work out measures to cope with the surging yen and its effects on the stock market.

“We cannot solve the climate challenge to mankind without China taking on leadership and responsibility,” Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said in his capacity as EU president at a summit in the eastern city of Nanjing.

“So far our belief is the global effort put on the table for mitigation is not enough… more needs to be done,” he said in a post-summit address with host Premier Wen Jiabao and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Related article: Barroso calls for more effort

“There’s no time for more divisions,” a beaming Lobo said late Sunday to crowds cheering his nickname “Pepe,” after the controversial polls for which turnout was more than 60 percent, according to electoral officials.

The polls divided the Americas and further polarized Honduras after five tense months including a heavy-handed military crackdown and several rounds of crisis talks following the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya.

Dubai last week raised fears of a second bout of global financial turmoil by asking for a six-month repayment freeze on debt issued by Dubai World and its unit Nakheel, a property developer at the heart of the emirate’s boom.

Analysts said a statement by Dubai’s leading finance official shed little light on how much investors could lose in the process. Financial markets in Europe continued to slide afterwards.

Sunday’s election is likely to set Washington against emerging Latin American power Brazil, which says the vote was invalid and handed victory to the coup leaders who overthrew leftist President Manuel Zelaya on June 28.

The United States has tried and failed to have Zelaya reinstated and now looks resigned to backing the election as the best way for Honduras to get out of political gridlock and diplomatic isolation.

Lying on a mobile hospital bed, the expressionless 89-year-old former U.S. carworker complained of pain to medics in the afternoon session and was given an injection, causing a 30-minute delay in the proceedings.

German state prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk, who was top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted war criminals, of assisting in killings at the Sobibor death camp in Poland, where prosecutors say at least 250,000 Jews were killed.

That was before the Taliban took over the west side of the river and blew up the telephone relay tower, cutting off the entire valley north of Kandahar from communication with the outside world.

Militants have been making startling gains in the area around Afghanistan’s second largest city, which is the birthplace of both the Taliban movement and President Hamid Karzai.

The lackluster spending could pressure retail stocks on Monday as some investors were looking for a stronger showing compared with a year earlier, when consumers were being hammered by the recession and credit crunch.

“There may be a bit of a pullback, a little disappointment,” said Patricia Edwards, chief investment officer at Storehouse Partners.

Obama is outlining his decision to an increasingly skeptical U.S. public on Tuesday night in a nationally broadcast address from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. The strategy will include deploying thousands more American forces to Afghanistan, clarifying why the U.S. is fighting the war and laying out a path toward disengagement.

He first told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton his decision by phone on Sunday afternoon, and then informed other key administration advisers such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an early evening Oval Office meeting.

While majority Democrats will need 60 votes to finish, some in the party say they’ll jump ship from the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. Others say they’ll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the party’s heart and soul.

There’s no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to steer legislation through Congress to the president’s desk. You can’t make history unless you reach 60 votes, and don’t count on Republicans helping him.

The Treasury Department said Monday it will withhold payments from mortgage companies that aren’t doing enough to make the changes permanent. Officials will monitor the largest of the 71 participating mortgage companies via daily progress reports.

The goal is to increase the rate at which troubled home loans are converted into new loans with lower monthly payments. At the end of October, more than 650,000 borrowers, or 20 percent of those eligible, had signed up for trials lasting up to five months.

The 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker arrived at the opening of the trial in a wheelchair to face the final chapter of some 30 years of efforts to prosecute him, wearing a navy baseball cap and covered in a light blue blanket.

After the first 90-minute session, Demjanjuk was returned to the courtroom lying flat on his back on a gurney, covered in blankets.

Election officials said Monday that the conservative rancher had a strong lead in Sunday’s presidential contest and his rival conceded defeat.

Election organizers also said that more than 60 percent of registered voters cast ballots – an increase from the last election – indicating that most Hondurans rejected calls by toppled President Manuel Zelaya to boycott the vote.

While markets around the world continue to assess the fallout from Dubai’s worrisome debt problems, investors trying to get a handle on the global economy will also factor in some encouraging U.S. retail sales over the Thanksgiving weekend. The question for many is whether they should focus on the possibility of another spreading credit crisis, or signs that consumer spending in this country may indeed be stabilizing.

News that Dubai’s investment arm, Dubai World, could default on $60 billion in debt sent world markets skidding on Thanksgiving, and U.S. stock markets initially followed when trading resumed Friday after the holiday. Wall Street regained some ground as overseas exchanges stabilized and as analysts reported that U.S. banks had relatively limited exposure to the problems in the Persian Gulf city-state.

In a movement that seems ripped from the pages of Comedy Channel writers, John Marcotte wants to put a measure on the ballot next year to ban divorce in California.

The effort is meant to be a satirical statement after California voters outlawed gay marriage in 2008, largely on the argument that a ban is needed to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage. If that’s the case, then Marcotte reasons voters should have no problem banning divorce.

Many watching the high-stakes roll of the dice shudder at the thought that nearly 5,900 rooms in three hotels will be awaiting guests when CityCenter’s crown jewel – the 4,004-room Aria Resort & Casino – opens Dec. 16. That will increase Las Vegas’ already saturated inventory by more than 4 percent at a time when fewer visitors are coming and room prices have fallen 25 percent from last year.

CityCenter’s debut might pull rates even lower, but state leaders hope the complex leads Nevada out of two years of economic misery that has hit the state with record unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies.

In this neighborhood awash in woe, there’s no shortage of tasks for Page, better known as “General Jeff” – Skid Row’s go-to-guy who’s made it his mission to turn the squalid, square-mile neighborhood into a decent place to live.

“The bottom of the barrel doesn’t have to be that deep,” said Page, whose 6-foot-4 frame makes him easy to spot as he strides down the sidewalk where’s he constantly stopping to greet people with a knucklebump and a “how ya doin,’ brother?” “We’re trying to get people to see this is a community, that people are putting down roots.”

It’s a unique effort at this sprawling base on the Tennessee-Kentucky line that fits with broader Army initiatives to deal with a rise in suicides among troops. The Army has bolstered suicide prevention since February after a record 140 cases in 2008, but this month said the number may rise again this year. It had recorded 140 suspected cases as of Nov. 11.

The brigade teams are part of Fort Campbell’s plans that also include moving counselors and social workers out of hospitals and clinics and embedding them in the brigades to break down barriers and overcome the stigma of seeking help.

The Swiss justice minister also said the European Court of Human Rights could strike down the Sunday vote, which incurred swift condemnation at home and abroad for banning the towers used to put out the Islamic call to prayer.

The 47-nation Council of Europe said that banning “new minarets in Switzerland raises concerns as to whether fundamental rights of individuals, protected by international treaties, should be subject to popular votes.” Switzerland presides over the council, which is associated with the European Court of Human Rights. The court rules on breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed down 55.05 points, or 1.1 percent, at 5,190.68 while Germany’s DAX ended 59.66 points, or 1.1 percent, lower at 5,625.95. The CAC-40 in France was 41.30 points, or 1.1 percent, lower at 3,680.15.

Earlier, European stocks had steadied as concerns about the fallout from Dubai’s debt woes were soothed by the UAE central bank pledge to stand behind local and foreign banks.

Bioculture Ltd., with facilities at 19 sites around the world, has secured construction permits and hopes to begin operating next summer in Guayama, a small, depressed mountain district in southeastern Puerto Rico.

They want to turn the Caribbean territory into a major supplier of primates, much to the dismay of islanders already dealing with a plague of patas monkeys – descendants of lab escapees that run though backyards, stop traffic and destroy crops.

So far, it hasn’t worked that way. A month into her second term, Merkel has presided over public squabbling on tax plans, a spat rooted in World War II history, and a hasty Cabinet reshuffle triggered by fallout from an airstrike in Afghanistan.

“This isn’t a stumbling start, it is a belly flop,” the deputy editor of the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Michael Backhaus, wrote this week.

The one-day summit with the 27-member European Union was the most substantive dialogue between China and its largest trading partner, a market of more than 500 million people, in more than two years.

It ended with the signing of five mostly technical agreements on energy, environmental cooperation, trade and investment, but no fresh initiatives on pressing global issues such as climate change.

Lying on a mobile hospital bed, the expressionless 89-year-old former U.S. carworker complained of pain to medics in the afternoon session and was given an injection, causing a 30-minute delay in the proceedings.

German state prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk, who was top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted war criminals, of assisting in killings at the Sobibor death camp in Poland, where prosecutors say at least 250,000 Jews were killed.

The unexpected vote and high turnout in Sunday’s referendum gives a boost to the right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a relatively new political force that has shaken up the country’s traditionally cozy power-sharing system.

“It could well be the beginnings of a new right-wing surge,” said Clive Church, a Swiss politics expert from Kent University.

Serbia is hoping the report by the court’s chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, will help accelerate its long-stalled progress toward European Union membership.

“The Office of the Prosecutor is satisfied with the current level of efforts undertaken by Serbia’s authorities in their cooperation,” Brammertz wrote in a draft of the report he is due to submit to the U.N. Security Council this week.

Lobo became the third leader at play in the deep turmoil set off by the June 28 coup after claiming victory in Sunday’s elections, which took place under a de facto regime criticized for its heavy-handed control of dissent.

The conservative Lobo must now convince backers of Zelaya, and the world, that he was legitimately elected as the new president of Honduras.

Although the government has plans to extend the network of cameras, ground sensors and radars along most of the border, officials said they’ll draw on lessons from the first two segments in southern Arizona as they contemplate if and where to build more sections and how fast to complete them.

The government estimated it would cost $6.7 billion to cover most of the Mexican border by 2014.

The maker of Samuel Adams beer has released an updated version of its biennial beer Utopias – now the highest alcohol content beer on the market. At 27 percent alcohol by volume and $150 a bottle, the limited release of the brandy-colored Utopias comes as more brewers take advantage of improvements in science to boost potency and enhance taste.

“Just part of trying to push the envelope,” said Jim Koch, founder and owner of the Boston Beer Co. the maker of Sam Adams. “I’m pushing it beyond what the laws of these 13 states ever contemplated when they passed those laws decades ago.”

These are bodies donated to science, awaiting one of the most sensitive rites in becoming a doctor. Before first-year medical students lay their hands on the living, they learn anatomy from the dead.

Week after week, for six months, teams of students will file into in a laboratory at Georgetown University to slowly take apart “their” body.

A Texas researcher has found a way to reduce toxin in cottonseed that until now could only be eaten by cattle. The bovines’ multiple stomachs gradually digested the poisonous substance called gossypol.

The new seeds can be eaten by pigs, chickens, fish and humans and could show up in protein bars, shakes, breads, cookies and other foods within about 10 years. The amount of cotton already grown worldwide contains enough protein to feed 500 million people per year, researchers said.

On the eve of a WTO meeting of ministers, President Barack Obama’s trade envoy Ron Kirk stressed that Washington remained committed to bringing the elusive Doha Round of trade negotiations to a successful conclusion.

“The United States engages with other economies and plays a leadership role at the World Trade Organization in order to boost American exports and grow the well-paid jobs Americans want and need,” Kirk said in a statement.