The match in Columbus is the first of five qualifiers in the Final Round to be played in the United States. Ticketing details will be announced in the near future.

“We are very excited about returning to Columbus,” said U.S. head coach Bob Bradley, who guided the U.S. to a 7-1-0 record through the first two rounds of FIFA World Cup qualifying. “The national team has enjoyed a great history there, and the team has always appreciated the fantastic support from the fans. We are looking forward to an incredible atmosphere as we continue the difficult task of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.”

Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Arkansas, and charitable efforts to reduce poverty and treat AIDS. Other foreign government givers include Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy and Jamaica.

The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on a Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying the sources of its money. While the list is heavy with international business leaders and billionaires, some 12,000 donors gave $10 or less.

Troops rescued the Chinese-owned Zhenhua 4 on Wednesday, a sign that foreign navies patrolling the shipping lane linking Europe to Asia are adopting tougher tactics.

A Kenyan maritime group said the crew on the Chinese vessel had locked themselves in their cabins and radioed for help.

A warship and two helicopters came and fired on the pirates, but did not kill them, it said.

Chinese state media said a “multilateral” force with helicopters hovered over the ship and successfully fought off the pirates.

The Chinese boat was one of four vessels captured by pirates on Tuesday.

Shortly after noon, IAF aircraft launched an airstrike against two Kassam rocket launchers - one had been used moments earlier to launch a rocket, while the other was said to be loaded. Both were destroyed in the attack, the IDF said.

The arrests, confirmed by officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security as well as the prime minister’s office, included four generals. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The involvement of the counterterrorism unit speaks to the seriousness of the accusations, and several officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security said that some of those arrested were in the early stages of planning a coup.

According to media reports from the Gulf state, the attacks were planned to take place on the anniversary of the king’s coronation.

It is not clear how many people were arrested in Tuesday’s operation.

Today, with the global economy once again in a tailspin, European workers have remained conspicuously quiet. Germany’s most powerful union, IG Metall, reached a modest wage deal with employers in record time last month, avoiding crippling strikes and reflecting, perhaps, a national predilection for caution. Yet even in France, where there have been scattered protests over factory closings and job cuts, there is little evidence of a unified labor reaction. Tellingly, efforts by the CGT to organize a nationwide protest before Christmas have fizzled, prompting union leaders to postpone the initiative until next year.

In part, that suggests that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has had some success in taming his country’s notoriously rebellious unions, even if this month he made some tactical retreats. But it also shows how fragmented the labor movement has become and how much heavier the pressures of globalization and competition from low-cost countries weigh on the European economy.

Indeed, as some of the biggest French multinationals, including PSA Peugeot Citroën, the country’s No.1 carmaker, have temporarily halted production in dozens of factories across the country, the unions’ most powerful weapon has become increasingly impotent.

But one thing is missing from the repertoire of Salvation Army bands this year - the percussion of rattling tins.
Members have been forbidden to shake their charity tins - even if it’s done in time to the music - in case it harasses or intimidates people. One said she had been told it might also offend other religions.

Deloitte, the accountancy firm in charge of managing the collapsed chain, will now abandon its attempts to sell either the Woolworths’ retail group or the distribution business, Entertainment UK, as a going concern.

Neville Kahn, a partner at Deloitte, said: “We are now moving to the closing-down sale period.”

The stores will be shut down in groups of 200 stores a day on December 27 and 30 as well as January 2 and 5. Overall, the retail arm’s 22,000 full-time staff will be made redundant and an additional 5,000 temporary workers will lose their positions.

The monitors dispatched by the Kremlin did not report anything like that. Nor did they raise concerns about Belarus’s security service, still called the KGB, which had exerted harsh pressure on the opposition, imprisoning several of its leaders over the last year and thwarting their campaigns. Or about state-controlled television broadcasts repeatedly branding opposition leaders as traitors.

Or, for that matter, about the final results: a sweep of every single seat in the 110-member Parliament for supporters of President Aleksandr Lukashenko, often described as Europe’s last dictator.