BEIJING - US TREASURY Secretary Timothy Geithner, aiming to persuade China that its US investments were safe, pledged that the Obama administration was firmly committed to ratcheting down huge deficits as quickly as it can once economic recovery is assured.
'No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are,' he told reporters while en route to Beijing for two days of meetings on Monday and Tuesday with top Chinese officials including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIA'S opposition won an easy victory on Sunday in a special election in a northern state after the ruling coalition declined to contest the vacant seat.
The opposition People's Alliance, led by former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, won the seat in the northern Penang state assembly with more than 6,000 votes.
JERUSALEM - ISRAEL began its largest-ever exercise on Sunday to test the response of emergency services to a 'doomsday' mix of missile attacks, suicide bombings and natural disasters.
The five-day exercise will simulate simultaneous rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and missile attacks from arch-foes Syria and Iran.
WASHINGTON - THE once mighty US auto industry faces a day of reckoning on Monday with the looming bankruptcy of General Motors and an expected court ruling on the sale of Chrysler to a group led by Italy's Fiat.
The global economic crisis has hit the US industry hard, prompting massive intervention by President Barack Obama's administration to prevent total collapse and a new blow to the nation's economy, which is already in recession.
