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While officials at the Royal Canadian Mint have not publicly released a value, insiders have confirmed that auditors are trying to track precious metals, believed to be gold, worth in the “double digits” of millions.

At today’s prices, $10 million worth of gold would weigh more than 250 kilograms.

An external audit, launched in early March, is trying to reconcile the mint’s records with the physical stocks of gold, silver, platinum and palladium, the four precious metals used by the Crown corporation in its production of coins and collector sets.

Mint officials remain confident that bookkeeping errors are to blame. But they haven’t ruled out theft and some at the institution now believe a police probe is inevitable if the review – due to be released in two weeks – is unable to provide good answers.

Given the high value of the missing metals, NDP MP Thomas Mulcair said yesterday that mint staff should be calling on police to immediately launch a criminal investigation.

“There’s no possible way to explain the loss of tens of millions of dollars through simple administrative or bureaucratic foul-ups and missteps,” he said in an interview.

He faulted the Conservative government for not being more forthcoming about the controversy.

“People understand that mistakes happen … but they tried to dismiss the whole thing from the beginning,” said Mulcair (Outremont). “Well, if there’s tens of millions of dollars missing, there’s clearly lots to worry about… This is a really serious amount of money and it deserves really serious attention.”

Liberal MP Joe Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence) said the mint’s international reputation – it produces coins for at least 12 other nations – is taking a battering each day the probe drags on with the prospect security may have been breached.

“How long does it take for this government to figure out what is going on?” Volpe said. “Either money is running out the door or they have a serious problem making two and two add up to four.”

In fact, Volpe suggested the mint and the government already know the results of the audit and are sitting on bad news. “I suspect they have the answer and they have reason for not publicizing it,” he said.

Mint spokeswoman Christine Aquino yesterday declined to comment on the value of the metals or any aspect of the audit.

“We’re going to wait for the review to come out in the next couple of weeks,” she said.

However, last week she said an unprecedented demand for gold in 2008 put pressure on the mint’s internal control systems, which led to the “unreconciled difference” between the gold on hand and the value recorded in the mint’s books.

The No. 1 U.S. automaker, which filed for bankruptcy on June 1, plans to undertake a quick sale process that would allow a much smaller company to emerge from court protection in as little as 60-90 days.

GM said the new chairman will take over when the smaller, restructured company is formed in the next few months. The automaker’s current interim chairman, Kent Kresa, will continue to serve in that position until then.

Kresa, former chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corp, became GM chairman in March when the Obama administration ousted Rick Wagoner, who had been both GM’s chief executive and chairman.

Whitacre and Kresa, along with current board members Philip Laskawy, Kathryn Marinello, Erroll Davis Jr, E. Neville Isdell and Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson, will serve as the “nucleus” of the restructured company’s board, GM said in a statement.

“Arcandor AG today filed with the Essen District Court to open insolvency proceedings due to threatening illiquidity,” the statement said.

Travel agency Thomas Cook, in which Arcandor holds a 52-percent stake, “will remain unaffected by the insolvency proceedings,” the statement added.

The Anglo-Dutch oil giant faced a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan under the Alien Tort Claims Act, on allegations that it was complicit in the 1995 deaths of Mr. Saro-Wiwa and other activists. The lawsuit was brought by family members and surviving activists.

Shell has denied it played any role in the execution of Mr. Saro-Wiwa by the military government. In a statement, Malcolm Brinded, head of the company’s exploration and production unit, said: “Shell has always maintained the allegations were false. While we were prepared to go to court to clear our name, we believe the right way forward is to focus on the future for Ogoni people, which is important for peace and stability in the region.”

A massive oil spill in Ogoniland in 1970 inspired Mr. Saro-Wiwa, founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People to launch two decades later a campaign against Shell’s Nigerian onshore unit. The campaign led to the abandoning of oil production in Ogoniland in 1993.

The Ogonis’ plight was the focus of global criticism of the oil industry when Mr. Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists were executed by a Nigerian military regime in 1995.

Plaintiffs said $5 million of the settlement amount would go into a trust fund for the Ogoni people and the balance for lawyers fees and to the 10 plaintiffs who brought the case.

“It has been a good case to help set the foundation for allowing human rights plaintiffs to get some degree of accountability from corporations,” said Paul Hoffman, the trial counsel for the plaintiffs.

Mr. Hoffman said the plaintiffs decided to settle because “after 13 years, they believed this was a satisfactory result.”

Guo Shuqing, the chairman of state-controlled China Construction Bank (CCB), also said he is exploring the possibility of issuing loans to trading companies in yuan, allowing Chinese and foreign companies to settle their bills in yuan rather than in dollars.

Mr Guo said the issuing of yuan bonds in Hong Kong and Shanghai would help to develop the debt markets in China and promote the yuan as a major international currency.

It was the first time the head of a major Chinese bank has called for the wider use of the yuan, although a chorus of senior government officials have already voiced their concerns about the stability of the dollar and have said the yuan should be used more widely.

“I think the US government and the World Bank can consider the issuing of renminbi bonds,” he said, asking for a “mutual cooperation” between the US and China to promote Chinese financial services. He said bond issuance could be relatively small, at between 1bn and 3bn yuan (£100m to £300m).

HSBC and Standard Chartered have both said they are preparing to issue bonds denominated in yuan.

Of those two, Britain is the only one with its sovereign credit rating on “negative” watch, suggesting if S&P is to cut another sovereign it’s the UK triple-A rating that could go.

The sheer scale of government borrowing and projected deficits over coming years, coupled with the banking sector’s growing liabilities, mean a downgrade could be on the cards if policy steps fail to impress the ratings agencies.

Austria still has its triple-A rating and is on “stable” outlook. But that could change if financial and economic turmoil in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, to which Austrian banks have large exposure, deepens.

“The UK is a point of reference. If S&P is worried about Ireland’s exposure to banks, it could well be worried about UK’s exposure to banks,” said Ciaran O’Hagan, senior strategist at Societe Generale in Paris.

Britain will borrow 175 billion billion pounds this fiscal year and the budget deficit will swell to a record 12.4 percent of GDP.

O’Hagan noted that “contingent liabilities” of the UK financial sector, mostly banks’, are estimated at almost 30 percent percent of gross domestic product and will almost certainly rise this year.

But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.

That’s the Catch-22 threatening to make an awful housing market potentially worse and keep the economy stuck in a funk. Kick-starting the economy requires higher spending, but rising rates mean fewer Americans will be able to refinance their home loans. And some potential buyers will be shut out of the market by higher monthly payments they won’t be able to afford.

The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from “harmful” content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China’s security ministry and military.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Chinese government has a history of censoring a broad range of Web content. The new requirement could force PC manufacturers to choose between refusing a government order in a major market or opening themselves to charges of abetting censorship.

The software needn’t be preinstalled on each new PC — it may instead be shipped on a compact disc — giving users some choice. But if installed, foreign industry officials who have examined the software say, it could transmit personal information, cause PCs to malfunction, and make them more vulnerable to hacking. It also makes it difficult for users to tell what exactly is being blocked, officials say.

Plus, in joining Intel and Hewlett-Packard on the list, Cisco is sure to get a boost in prestige.

But more than anything, experts say, the decision to replace General Motors with Cisco is recognition that technology is a primary innovator and spark plug of the nation’s economy. And that trend is turning heads everywhere from Wall Street to Washington.

“It signals the ascendancy of Silicon Valley and high tech,” said Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “We’re seeing older industries and companies be replaced by a sector that has substantial long-term growth prospects.”

Technology already has the attention of President Barack Obama, who is actively promoting such ideas as smarter electricity grids and computerized health records. And now, with Cisco, HP and Intel on the fabled stock index, along with IBM and Microsoft, elected officials may listen even more closely to the needs of Bay Area businesses, said Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council.

“It certainly cements the tech industry in Silicon Valley as an integral part of the American economy,” he said. “From a public policy basis, it has some impact. I think it makes a stronger case in Washington and maybe in the state capitals.”

Since its debut in 1896, the Dow Jones industrial average has predominately featured so-called smokestack industries, from U.S. Rubber and Bethlehem Steel to Standard Oil and American Smelting. However, reflecting a major shift in the nation’s economy, those types of businesses have gradually given ground to firms offering products centered on computers, software and communications technology.

Officials with the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis say it’s hard to say how much of the gross domestic product is represented by sales of such technology to consumers and the government. But business purchases alone of such goods represented about 3 percent of the GDP in 2008, compared with less than 1 percent in 1968. And one of the biggest up-and-comers in the tech field is Cisco, which was founded in 1984 and earned $8 billion on sales of nearly $40 billion during its most recent fiscal year.

Since the June 1 announcement that Cisco will replace GM, a part of the index for 83 years, the Internet-networking equipment maker’s stock price has risen more? than 7 percent, closing Friday at $19.87.

That kind of increase is common after companies are first selected for the list, in part because some big institutions invest heavily in firms that are on such indexes, said Sybille Reitz, a Dow Jones spokeswoman.

“It certainly does increase your visibility in the market,” she said. “You’re included among the bluest of the blue-chip companies in the United States.”