US President George W. Bush has urged leaders of the Asia Pacific region not to abandon the pursuit of free trade in the face of a worsening global economic crisis. Addressing the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru, Bush said that one of the enduring lessons of the Great Depression was that global protectionism was a path to global economic ruin. He told the summit that he understood that countries were being hurt by the financial crisis which started in the United States but said that because the economic problems were so widespread, developed and developing nations must work together to find solutions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that 2009 will be "a year of bad news" for the economy. She told the German newspaper "Welt am Sonntag" that the Berlin government's financial rescue package had stabilised financial markets but that it was important that trust was re-established and that inter-bank lending functioned properly again. She added that the European Union's planned stimulus package should be used to promote innovation and make Europe more competitive, especially in those areas where technological improvements were necessary.

The struggling US auto giant General Motors says it will neither sack workers nor close or sell factories at its German Opel unit. The president of GM Europe, Carl-Peter Forster, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Opel had sought loan guarantees from the German government but was not bankrupt. Opel's directors have said that the company plans to cut output next year and is mulling a 30-hour work week. The automaker, which has some 26,000 employees in Germany, has been hit by a slump in sales and financial problems at its parent company. GM has said it will run out of cash as early as January if it does not get help from the US government. 

US President-elect Barack Obama says he will sign a sweeping two-year stimulus plan to revive the troubled economy soon after taking office next January. Obama said in the Democratic Party's traditional radio address that his administration would make an effort to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. He pledged long-term investments in the country's economic future, including alternative energy technologies and fuel-efficient cars. His address came after an additional 540,000 jobless claims were filed last week, the highest in 18 years. The US economy has shed 1.2 million jobs this year alone.

German police have carried out raids in three states in search of suspected supporters of a terror cell whose plans to attack US targets in Germany were foiled last year. The raids were jointly conducted by investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office and police from the respective states but no arrests were made. A spokesman for the federal prosecutors said police raided the residences of several people suspected of acquiring detonators for the alleged terror plotters. However, he did not say where the raids had been conducted. The three suspected plotters who are standing trial allegedly operated as a German cell of the radical Islamic Jihad Union.

Media reports say that three Germans arrested in Kosovo on suspicion of involvement in a bomb attack on the offices of the European Union's envoy there are spies. A spokesman for the German intelligence agency refused to comment on the report published in the German media. An explosive device was hurled at the Pristina headquarters of the EU special envoy to Kosovo, Peter Feith, on November 14. No one was injured in the blast, which shattered the windows of the International Civilian Office. According to the Spiegel magazine, the three Germans had told interrogators they were inspecting the premises after the explosion. The report said the incident had caused friction between Berlin and Pristina as the agents had not been officially accredited to operate in Kosovo.

In France, supporters of Segolene Royal have accused opponents within the Socialist party of fixing a bitterly contested leadership vote and demanded a re-run. Earlier, party officials said Martine Aubry, architect of the controversial 35-hour work week, defeated her arch rival Royal by just 42 votes in Friday's ballot of the party's 233,000 members. The results have plunged France's main opposition party into crisis, prompting outgoing leader Francois Hollande and Royal's former partner to call an emergency meeting of the party's national council for Tuesday.

Russia's Gazprom has threatened to cut off gas deliveries to Ukraine on January 1 unless a new contract is signed. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are being held up by a large debt, according to a Gazprom spokesman. The comments came two days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded that Kiev repay 2.4 billion dollars of debt to Gazprom. Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz has disputed the size of its bill to the Russian state-controlled gas giant. An earlier dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas prices led to a brief interruption of supplies to several European countries in January 2006. Most of the European Union's gas imports from Russia go through Ukraine.

Pakistani television channels are reporting that Rashid Rauf, a British Islamist militant with al Qaeda links, has been killed in northwestern Pakistan. Rauf, who escaped from a Pakistani jail last December, was the alleged mastermind of a 2006 plot to target transatlantic airplanes with liquid bombs. Pakistani officials said a suspected US drone demolished the house of a local Taliban leader in a village in the tribal district of North Waziristan killing at least four militants, including Rauf. Saturday's airstrike came two days after Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned the US Ambassador to lodge a formal protest over cross-border attacks by US forces stationed in Afghanistan. Pakistan is an ally of the United States in its war on terror, but it opposes any violation of its territory. 

Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan and ex-US president Jimmy Carter have cancelled a planned visit to Zimbabwe because they were denied travel visas. The two former world leaders had planned to go to Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission along with rights activist Graca Machel, the wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela. Robert Mugabe's government had voiced objections to the visit, accusing the three, who belong to a group of statesmen known as the Elders, of trying to support the opposition in power-sharing talks.