The top U.N. climate official said Saturday she is confident industrial countries will renew their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions after their current commitments expire next year.

Further commitments under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an unshakable demand by poor countries, would avert a feared derailment of U.N. negotiations, but would mark little advancement toward the goal of a rapid and steep drop in worldwide carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

Zara, an Afghan mother of seven, doesn't know what to tell her children when they ask about dinner.

"I simply tell them that we must wait until their father gets home to see if he's going to bring anything," she said, speaking from under a dusty blue burqa covering her from head to toe.

Accepting widespread criticism of the Jabulani's movement at last year's World Cup, Adidas has completely redesigned the ball that will be used at the 2012 European Championship.

The swerving Jabulani angered several coaches in South Africa and was even cited as a possible cause for "inexplicable" goalkeeping mistakes in an official FIFA report.

Spain avoided its biggest challengers in the first round of the 2012 European Championship, leaving Germany and the Netherlands in the toughest group of the competition.

Spain, which beat Germany to win the Euro 2008 title and then defeated the Dutch in last year's World Cup final, was drawn Friday in Group C with Italy, Ireland and Croatia for next year's tournament in Poland and Ukraine.

Billed as the nation most capable of ending Spain's reign as European champions, Germany could have an unusually tough time just getting out of the group stage at Euro 2012.

In one of the most anticipated matchup of the tournament's first phase, Germany was handed a tantalizing duel against its fiercest and nearest rival, the Netherlands, in Friday's draw. If that wasn't a big enough challenge, next June, three-time champion Germany was also pooled with Portugal and Denmark in Group B — widely seen as by far the toughest of the tournament.

Hoping to harvest some fresh cash, the online game company behind "FarmVille" said Friday that it plans to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering of up to 100 million shares.

Zynga Inc. is the latest in a spate of IPOs by Internet companies this year, ranging from professional networking service LinkedIn Corp. to the online deals site Groupon Inc.

China's commerce minister says his government wants to convert some of its huge holdings of U.S. government debt into investment in American roads and railways.

Chen Deming told a business group Friday his government wants to expand commercial and investment cooperation with the United States in infrastructure, clean energy and technology industries.

Experts have reclassified a painting of an old man long thought to have been made by one of Rembrandts' students as having come from the hand of the Dutch master himself, after X-ray analysis revealed outlines of a self-portrait of the artist as a young man underneath.

Ernst van de Wetering of the Rembrandt Research Project cited the new X-ray scans of the painting "Bearded Old Man," in addition to stylistic analysis and circumstantial evidence in support of the conclusion.

Can you crack the code?

That's the question Britain's electronic listening agency, GCHQ, is asking in an online campaign to find the next generation of cyber specialists.

Research In Motion Ltd., the struggling maker of the BlackBerry phones, is writing off much of its inventory of PlayBook tablets, since it has to sell them at a deep discount.

The Canadian company on Friday said it's taking a pre-tax charge of $485 million in the just-ended quarter to account for the declining value of the tablets. The model originally priced at $500 now costs $200.