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“We will no longer be involved in overall managing of building or financing nuclear plants. This chapter is closed for us,” he said, explaining that Siemens would restrict its activity to dual-use technology.

“We will from now on supply only conventional equipment such as steam turbines. This means we are restricting ourselves to technologies that are not only for nuclear purposes but can also be used in gas or coal plants.”

The decision came Wednesday, the same day three former students launched a petition urging the university to cancel the speech. On Tuesday, a class valedictorian and professor publicly spoke out against the appearance following the resignation of another staff member.

Bush was scheduled to speak Sept. 20 to about 150 people at an invitation-only breakfast hosted by Tyndale University College and Seminary, home to about 1,400 students at two campuses in Toronto’s north end.

Tyndale supporter Prem Watsa, chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings and sometimes referred to as “Canada’s Warren Buffett,” was sponsoring the event, which the administration said was intended to raise the university’s profile. Watsa did not respond to requests for comment.

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Opposition to Bush’s appearance at the non-denominational evangelical university had been growing within the school’s community since Monday after the story ”Bush to make promotional appearance in Toronto for Christian college” was published in the Star.

The following day, a class valedictorian and professor spoke out passionately against the visit. The university also confirmed “a valued employee” quit in protest.

Critics accused Tyndale of sacrificing its peaceful ideals to attract wealthy donors with the exclusive event. Many students and alumni also complained they only heard about the high-profile appearance through the news.

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Market expectations are high that the Fed will announce a new program — dubbed “operation twist” — at the end of its two-day meeting Wednesday.

Saif al-Islam and his close aides oversaw the activities of the fund, and often directed its officials on where they should make its investments, he said.

The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials were told the “ideas” they were ordered to pursue came from Mr Blair as well as one other British businessman and a former American diplomat.

“Tony Blair’s visits were purely lobby visits for banking deals with JP Morgan,” he said.

He said that unlike some other deals – notably some investments run by the US bank Goldman Sachs – JP Morgan’s had never turned “bad”.

But he added: “Saif and his father played these people like musical chairs. At the end the reputation of the LIA was really damaged because of these interventions.”

The leaked report of a government-ordered probe fell like a bombshell on the province on Thursday, dealing a serious blow to Liberal Premier Jean Charest as he tries to persuade a dubious public that his anti-corruption measures are enough to clean house.

“You have a lot of kids graduating college, [who] can’t find jobs,” said Bloomberg, during his weekly radio show on Friday. “That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”

That was the mayor’s response when asked about the poverty rate, which rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993, according to census data released Tuesday. About 46.2 million people are now living in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.

“The public is not happy,” he said. “The public knows there is something wrong in this country, and there is. The bottom line is that they’re upset.”

Riots have gripped various countries in European cities, including Athens and London, fueled by young people infuriated by high unemployment and austerity measures, which in some cases has led to looting. High unemployment among youth is also one of the driving forces behind the Arab Spring, as impoverished protestors in North Africa and the Middle East rose up against their heavy-handed governments.

At issue, of course, is whether 12-year-olds are mature enough to fully analyze the benefits versus risks of vaccination (or any medical treatment for that matter), or recognize the alternatives to STD prevention, such as abstinence. Meanwhile, a child could suffer a vaccine reaction and the parent, not knowing the child had been vaccinated, could mistake it for the flu or another condition, delaying getting help until it is too late.

So far, America’s role is fairly limited. But if the crisis continues to grow and the U.S. takes on a wider role, U.S. consumers and taxpayers could feel a bigger impact. The biggest exposure could come from America’s status as the single largest source of money for the International Monetary Fund.

The latest round of American financial assistance came Thursday with a promise by the Federal Reserve to swap as many dollars for euros as European bankers need. In the short run, those transactions won’t have much impact because the central banks are simply swapping currencies of equal value. If the move helps avert a wider crisis, it could help spare the global economy from another recession.

But over the long term, consumers could feel the impact of central bankers flooding the financial system with cash, according to John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics.

“This is a lender of last resort function,” he told CNBC. “With the dollar injections that the Fed has done, it’s like giving a patient medicine with really bad side effects.” Ryding said the bad side effect in the U.S. has been inflation, which has picked up to 3.8 percent year over year.

The Bank of England joined the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan on Thursday to announce that they would flood money markets with dollars over the coming months.

The move, on the third anniversary of the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers, sent shares soaring in banks heavily exposed to debt default by Greece and the other struggling members of the 17-nation eurozone. The euro, which had been falling in recent days, rebounded, rising roughly 1% in European trading on Thursday.

Speaking in Washington, Christine Lagarde, the president of the International Monetary Fund, said: “They [the banks] are getting together and acting together. To me, that is the most important message.”

Lagarde warned that more action was needed.

“We have entered into a dangerous phase of the crisis,” she said. There is still a path to recovery, Lagarde said, but it is a “narrow” one.

Under the terms of the deal, banks will be able to bid for unlimited amounts of US dollars at fixed interest rates in three separate auctions. The first of these will be on 12 October.

Nick Parsons, head of strategy at National Australia Bank, said the decision to provide unlimited liquidity well into 2012 was a big show of support to the global banking system.