"Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie," they sang fervently, a romantic ditty about waiting for the clouds to pass and the sun which will inevitably reappear. It has been the anthem of New York traders for the past 70 years or so, and singing it together on the last day of the year has become a tradition and means of mutual encouragement. Since the days of the Great Depression, its lyrics have never been as appropriate as they are today.

The Dow Jones industrial average has lost almost 34 percent of its value within the last 12 months. Within that time period, investors have lost more than $6 trillion (€4.4 trillion). "It was a horrible year," says trader Roger Volz. "No one was prepared for the pace of destruction." And yet the New York Stock Exchange got off relatively lightly.

No trading center has escaped the turbulence, and no one has been untouched by the financial crisis. It is spreading - from bank to bank, from company to company, from continent to continent - and fast growing into an event of epochal importance: the first global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Documents released Tuesday provided insights into the Fed's historic decision to ratchet down its rate to near zero from 1 percent at its Dec. 15-16 meeting. In the first action of its kind in the Fed's 95-year history, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues created a target range for its rate, putting it at zero to 0.25 percent.

Despite the aggressive action, "the economic outlook would remain weak for a time and the downside risks to economic activity would be substantial," according to the Fed document.

In fact, Fed officials expected the economy would "contract sharply" in the final three months of 2008 and in "early 2009," the document said. Some participants suggested "the distinct possibility of a prolonged contraction, although that was not judged to be the most likely outcome."

Against that backdrop, Fed officials last month signaled rates would stay at record low levels for a while in an effort to cushion the blows from a recession that started in December 2007.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the sudden drop in deliveries, which caused supply disruptions as far away as Italy and Germany, but the two sides appeared set to resume direct talks later this week after six days of finger-pointing in a fuel price standoff with political overtones.

Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey and the Czech Republic said gas shipments coming through Ukraine had stopped or fallen sharply. Germany, Europe's largest consumer of Russian gas, said deliveries had been "massively reduced" and predicted shortages if they were not restored and temperatures remained low.

The Balkans appeared hardest hit, with Croatia saying it was reducing supplies to industrial customers and Slovakia preparing to declare a state of emergency. Bulgaria, which relies on Russia for almost all its gas, said it was preparing to restart a shuttered nuclear reactor because it had enough reserves to last only a few more days.

Two Bulgarian cities were left without gas, including one on the freezing Black Coast in which 12,000 households lost central heating, the Associated Press reported. "We are facing a serious natural gas crisis in which Bulgaria is a victim of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine," said Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev.

Glen Campbell, assistant director of the Bahamian funeral home handling the remains of John Travolta's son, told The Associated Press that the body is in "great condition," despite police officials who had said the teen hit his head on a bathtub.

Authorities didn't release the results of an autopsy performed Monday, but Campbell saw the body and the death certificate, which was based on its findings.

"The only cause of death that was listed was 'seizure'," he said.

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Editor:  I've been really annoyed with the sensationalized stories surrounding the death of young Mr. Travolta.   Now that the official cause of death has been confirmed, and more real details have come out, I can honestly say that I know what John Travolta is going through, as I've been through exactly this myself.   Although the autopsy report hasn't been released to anyone but family (if it has been yet), from my own loss,I can tell you that it doesn't say much of anything.  We had to wait several weeks for the report.  It will be a long document of the tests they performed, measurements and statistics, and if I had to summarize it, it would say "He was a perfectly healthy boy." 

  For the Travolta family, extended family, and friends, they will find themselves asking "if he was healthy, why did it happen."  It's the nature of seizures. Other than a little problem with neurons firing wrong occasionally, the victims are perfectly normal.  Then one day, a seizure happens, and instead of (or in addition to) the outward muscular spasms, it can affect the heart or diaphragm, causing one or both to stop.  Knowing that doesn't make it any easier on the family who just suffered the loss.   

  I had talked with Nathan about his seizures, trying to get an insight into what was happening with him.  He had no memory from several minutes before a seizure happened, until about 30 minutes after.  From what I understand, this is typical, so most likely Jett didn't suffer at all.  He wasn't even aware that his body was failing him.

  Now we know everything we need to about what happened, I sincerely hope the media will drop their sensationalized stories,  and even coverage of this.  It's done.  Let them mourn peacefully.  We know all the facts now, and hopefully some of us will learn a little bit from it.   Maybe someday a good treatment will be made to help others, so no other families have to suffer from this.

  Rest in peace, Jett.  I'm sure you will be remembered, just as we remember Nathan every day.

The figure, which was announced at an official meeting in late December, is nearly double the total of similar arrests for the whole of China in 2007. It has startled outside experts who say the figure has yet to be verified.

The Procuratorial Daily reported that the arrests came as the government made "maintaining social stability" a priority, with Beijing's hosting of the Olympics. A wave of attacks - blamed by officials on Uighur separatists - broke out days ahead of the games.

They included a raid on police headquarters in Kashgar which killed 17 ­officers. Two Uighur men were sentenced to death for the crime last month.

About half of Xinjiang's 19 million inhabitants are Uighur Muslims, who complain that the central authorities have stripped them of religious and cultural freedoms.

The loss-making company, whose brands include Waterford crystal, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton fine bone china, Rosenthal porcelain and Spring premium cookware, ran out of time in its attempt to raise fresh capital.

Politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea warned that the collapse of the company had severe implications for communities where china and glass have been manufactured for generations. The mayor of Waterford said it would be a "national disaster" for Ireland if production at the crystal factory ceased.

It is also a heavy blow to Sir Anthony O'Reilly, who chairs the company. The billionaire media tycoon and his brother-in-law Peter Goulandris have pumped about €400 million (£375 million or $720 million)) into Waterford Wedgwood in recent years, and own 60% of the company's shares.

Deloitte has taken control of Waterford Wedgwood's British and Irish operations. Joint administrator Angus Martin said that several potential buyers had already contacted Deloitte. "These are classic, high-quality, world-recognized brands," he said. "There is potentially a good business here."

When Nena Razmara was laid off in November from her $70,000-a-year job with a high-end residential building supplier, she thought she would be working again by Christmas.

Having worked in residential construction for 20 years, she was used to finding work by flipping through her Rolodex. 

"Usually it's three phone calls, three job offers, and off you go," she said.

The 45-year-old Woodbridge resident made her three phone calls. Then three more, but she still had no leads. For the first time since she graduated from college in the 1980s, she scoured help-wanted ads. She sent out more than 150 résumés and posted one on Craigslist under the heading, "I desperately need a job."

In ordinary times, a college degree goes a long way toward securing employment, even during a recession. It also offers some measure of job security: Workers with at least a college diploma are less likely to lose their jobs in down times; but college grads such as Razmara are now finding that a post-secondary education isn't necessarily enough.

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored - and labeled as terrorists - activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),  calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor.

The magnitude 7.6 quake occurred at about 4:43 a.m. (2:43 p.m. Saturday ET), about 95 miles (150 kilometers) west-northwest of Manokwari, Indonesia, and about 105 miles (170 kilometers) east-northeast of Sorong - two cities in the Indonesian province of West Papua.

Dozens of houses were damaged, with four buildings collapsing, according to a spokesman for the National Disaster Coordinating Agency.

Dozens of military personnel were called up for rescue operations, said Untung.

In a letter to representatives, Michael J. Madigan, the powerful Democratic speaker of the Illinois House, said the chamber might be asked as early as next week to vote on an impeachment committee’s findings against Blagojevich, a Democrat who is charged with corruption and accused of trying to sell the United States Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama.

In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, senior Democratic officials say the party leadership remains determined to prevent Roland W. Burris,a Democrat and former Illinois attorney general, from joining the Senate because he was appointed by Blagojevich. Burris is expected to try to take a seat when the 111th Congress convenes Tuesday.

“This isn’t about Roland Burris,” said Joe Shoemaker, chief spokesman for Senator Richard J. Durbin, of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “This is about whether the governor of the state, who has been accused of trying to sell the Senate seat, made the appointment in an honest, fair and legal way.”

Each time, they were turned back on security grounds, even as relief workers and foreign nationals were permitted to cross the border. On Tuesday the reporters were told not even to bother coming.

So, for an 11th day of Israel's war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it wait in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel.

Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations but, unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one, the government is seeking to control entirely the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.

“This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon War against Hezbollah," noted Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel’s public diplomacy. “Then, the media were everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilized the home front. Today Israel is trying to control the information much more closely.”

Turkey's supplies through a western pipeline have been completely cut, according to Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler. "Gas from the western line was completely stopped this morning," Guler told reporters on Tuesday. "Initially it fell to 32 million cubic meters, then we were informed that it would drop to 17 million cubic meters and then it was completely stopped." Ankara intends to raise supplies from another pipeline that passes under the Black Sea and, according to Reuters, Iran is mulling increasing its gas flows to Turkey.

Earlier on Tuesday, Bulgaria's Economy Ministry announced that all Russian gas supplies via Ukraine to Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Macedonia had been halted on Tuesday morning as a result of the dispute between Moscow and Kiev. "We are in a crisis situation," the ministry said in a statement. Bulgaria relies almost entirely on Russian gas for its needs and has no access to alternative pipeline routes and with temperatures in the country dropping to minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, the government is asking businesses and households to use other fuels.

Burris, who shortly before his arrival had insisted he was “certainly not looking for drama,” found himself caught up in a comedy of sorts. Looking unsettled and with rain glistening on his topcoat, he entered the building to encounter a mob of reporters and photographers in a spectacle that briefly overshadowed the convening of the new House and Senate that will soon take up the ambitious program of President-elect Barack Obama.

Capitol police officers tried to clear a path for Burris. “You can’t keep a regular citizen from walking into the Capitol,” one officer shouted.

Somehow, Citizen Burris made his way to the office of Nancy Erickson, the secretary of the Senate, to whom he presented his credentials, only to have her reject them. Afterward, the aspiring legislator stood in the rain outside and declared, “Members of the media, my name is Roland Burris, the junior senator from the State of Illinois.”

Not yet, he isn’t. The problem for Burris, of course, is that he was named to the seat by the embattled Illinois governor, Rod R. Blagojevich. Erickson had already said that the appointment letter forwarded by the governor’s office did not comply with Rule II of the Senate’s standing rules, which requires signatures of both the governor and the secretary of state.

German industrial mogul Adolf Merckle, 74, committed suicide on Monday after his group of companies got into trouble as a result of the financial crisis, his family said on Tuesday.

Merckle was run over by a train near his home in southern Germany, close to the city of Ulm, said police.

Merckle headed a business group with about 100,000 employees and €30 billion ($40.2 billion) in annual turnover.

Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants fought gun battles in the streets of Gaza City for the first time this morning, leaving at least 10 children dead as the offensive against the Palestinian territory continued.

Gaza health officials reported 537 people dead, including some 200 civilians, since Israel embarked on its military campaign against Hamas Islamists on December 27. A further 2,300 people have been reported injured.

Monday's fighting, with Israeli troops now going house to house searching for Hamas fighters, came as Israeli forces seized control of large parts of the Gaza Strip, dividing the territory and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes under relentless artillery and gunfire.

The Israeli Foreign Minister and prime ministerial candidate, Tzipi Livni, appeared to rule out an imminent end to the conflict Monday, describing her country's actions as "an ongoing, long battle/war against terror".

She said Israel was seeking to avoid civilian casualties, had "nothing against the Palestinians" and was acting on behalf of moderate regimes in the region as well as Palestinians who wanted peace.

According to their most detailed measurements yet, scientists admitted to have grossly underestimated the mass of the Milky Way, and so the gravitational pull it exerts on our cosmic neighbors, including the giant Andromeda galaxy.

The oversight means that the two galaxies, which are on a cataclysmic collision course, will slam into one another earlier than scientists had previously predicted.

When the two galaxies meet, powerful shockwaves will compress interstellar gas clouds within them, triggering a dazzling flourish of newborn stars, in a last heavenly hurrah before the giant wreckage slowly dims and dies out.

Fortunately the galactic disaster still lies unfathomably far into the future.

In a news conference at Midway airport in Chicago before his scheduled 2:20 p.m. flight to Baltimore, Maryland, a defiant Burris told reporters that he was not concerned about the fact that the Illinois secretary of state, Jesse White, has rejected the paperwork that would officially send Burris to the Senate.

“Why don’t you all understand that what has been done here is legal?” he said. “I am the junior senator from Illinois, and I wish my colleagues in the press would recognize that.”

He later added, “This is all politics and theater, but I am the junior senator according to every law book in the nation.”

Senate leaders have repeatedly said that they intend to block Burris from joining the chamber, given his appointment last week by this state’s embattled governor, Rod R. Blagojevich.Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, has said that the Senate has the legal right to bar Burris from the new session, which begins Tuesday. CNN reported Monday that an aide to Nancy Erickson, the secretary of the United States Senate, said that Erickson had rejected Burris’ certificate of appointment because, though it was signed by Blagojevich, it was not cosigned by White, as the Senate’s rules require.

Some retreat was to be expected after investors sent the Dow Jones industrial average to a two-month high on Friday; investors are wary about pouring more money into the battered market with economic data still generally weak.

Monday was the first real test of Wall Street in 2009 after many traders were on vacation last week, leading to light volume that may have exaggerated the market's move upward. Investors are still contending with fears about everything from the state of corporate earnings to consumers' willingness to spend during a recession.

''There is some optimism out there that there is going to be a massive stimulus package by Obama that is going to get passed and that will help the economy,'' said Greg Church, chief investment officer of Church Capital Management in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

Church warned, however, that a recovery will be difficult.

Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, was secretary of energy and U.N. ambassador during Bill Clinton's presidency, and also the first high-profile Latino named to Obama's Cabinet.

A grand jury in New Mexico is currently looking into charges of "pay-to-play" in the awarding of a state contract to a company that contributed to Richardson.

The importance of the inquiry was apparently dismissed when Richardson was first nominated, but it may have taken on more weight in light of the "pay-to-play" allegations involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"It is with deep regret that I accept Governor Bill Richardson's decision to withdraw his name for nomination as the next Secretary of Commerce," the president-elect said in a statement released early this afternoon. "Governor Richardson is an outstanding public servant and would have brought to the job of Commerce Secretary and our economic team great insights accumulated through an extraordinary career in federal and state office.

One Israeli soldier was killed in "a heavy exchange of fire" involving mortars and guns during a battle close to the Jabalya refugee camp, a Hamas stronghold. Another Israeli soldier was severely wounded in the same incident, which unfolded around 1 p.m. Sunday, an Israeli military spokesman said.

It was Israel's first fatality in the ground invasion, which began Saturday night and followed a week-long air assault on Gaza. Five other Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded Sunday afternoon, and 30 other troops had been wounded overnight, including an officer and a soldier who received severe injuries. The Israeli military said "dozens of Hamas" fighters had been hit since the ground offensive began.

Israeli military officials said forces were taking over strategic areas in order to decrease attacks on southern Israel, where more than 500 rockets have landed over the nine days of fighting. A senior Israeli military officer, speaking to foreign journalists in a conference call, said Israel was prepared to control those areas as long as needed to stop the rocket launches.

"We are not speaking about recapturing the Gaza Strip," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This is not our objective. If we have to hold those areas, to stop the rockets, we will do this."

Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. As a candidate, Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local governments complained of being blindsided by Rey's negotiating the policy shift behind closed doors with the nation's largest private landowner.

The shift is technical but with large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads passing through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

As Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company's 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.

Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services, and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

It is only fair to note that President Bush can also lay claim to some signal achievements in health care - achievements that we urge President-elect Barack Obama to continue and develop further.

As we have argued in the past, Mr. Bush deserves high praise for significantly increasing American support for the global effort to control AIDS. We were pleased that Congress has now authorized even more money than Mr. Bush proposed: almost $50 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world over the next five years. But there is little doubt that the president has played a key role in providing drug treatments or supportive care to millions of patients who would otherwise have gone untended.

It is a remarkable record for the leader of a party that had been reluctant in the Reagan era to deal with a disease whose victims at the time in this country were primarily gay men and injection drug users.