The formal transfer of power doesn't take place until Jan. 20, but don't tell that to financial markets. They are already taking their cues from Obama and his team.

Wall Street surged by nearly 500 points on Friday after reports that Obama would pick Timothy Geithner, the well-respected head of the New York Federal Reserve, to be his Treasury secretary.

Obama was to formally present his economic team on Monday and elaborate on his weekend call for a sweeping economic stimulus to save and create 2.5 million jobs over the next two years.

It is not that Bush did not have his own successes in Lima at his eighth and final summit of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

The leaders of Pacific Rim countries endorsed the action plan drafted a week ago in Washington by the Group of 20, representing the world's richest nations and major developing countries such as China, Brazil and India.

In May 2006, IKEA recalled 133,000 packages of outdoor candles in the United States. The company had received at least 32 reports of problems with these candles worldwide, including 12 reports of injuries.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said IKEA did not promptly report the problems, as the law requires.

The candles were available at IKEA stores around the country between February 2001 and July 2005.

In the settlement agreement with the agency, IKEA North America Services denied that it knowingly broke the law.

This fine comes on the heels of the company's Thursday recall of 670,000 blinds in the United States. The window dressings were recalled after a 1-year-old girl died when she got caught in the inner cord of a set of IKEA Roman blinds over her playpen.

A telephone message left Sunday for spokesman at IKEA USA offices in Conshohocken, Pa., was not immediately returned. E-mail requests for comment from that spokesman and a second representative were not immediately answered.

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have been in discussions over the weekend to devise a strategy to stabilize the company, according to people familiar with the talks. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were ongoing.

One option being considered is taking some of the risky assets held by Citigroup off its balance sheet, a move that would give the company more breathing room and put it in a better position to raise capital. It was unclear, however, exactly how that option might be structured, the people said. Another option would be for the government to make another cash injection into the company.

A spokesman for New York-based Citigroup declined comment.

The company has seen its shares lose 60 percent of their value in the past week, reflecting a crisis of confidence among skittish investors. They are worried all the risky debt on Citigroup's balance sheet will turn into losses as the economy worsens and the markets stay turbulent — losses that could be nearly impossible to reverse.

Citigroup is such a large, interconnected player in the financial system that if it were to collapse it would wreak havoc on already fragile financial and economic conditions. The company has operations stretching around the globe in more than 100 countries.

Analysts consider Citigroup the most vulnerable among the major U.S. banks — especially after it failed to nab Wachovia Corp., which was bought instead by Wells Fargo & Co. That was a missed opportunity for Citi to gets its hands on much-needed U.S. deposits that would bolster its cash position.

The gunman opened fire just before noon Sunday inside the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church in Clifton, in northern New Jersey.

Officials say some 200 people were attending a service inside the house of worship.

The New Jersey State Police and Passaic County law enforcement agencies say they are hunting for the gunman.

A law enforcement official says said the shooting may be a result of domestic violence.

Members of the church are mostly first-generation immigrants and their children from Kerala, India.

The Seoul Central District Court absolved former finance ministry official Byeon Yang-ho and former Korea Exchange Bank chief Lee Kang-won of breach of trust charges over allegations they conspired to understate the lender's value, according to Ma Yong-joo, a court spokesman.

Dallas, Texas-based Lone Star took over KEB in late 2003 by purchasing a controlling stake. The fund has long battled allegations that it was able to acquire the then distressed lender at a bargain price.

In clearing the men, Presiding Judge Lee Kyoo-jin said that there were few other options available to KEB at the time than the purchase by Lone Star, according to Ma.

Prosecutors had contended that Byeon and Lee worked with Lone Star to intentionally understate KEB's assets, thus arranging for the bank to be sold at a price that was up to 825.2 billion won cheaper than it should have been valued.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a prosecution spokesman as saying prosecutors would appeal the ruling.

Ali al-Marri has been held in virtual isolation in a Navy brig near Charleston, S.C., for nearly 5 1/2 years. He is challenging President George W. Bush's authority to subject a legal resident of the United States to indefinite military detention without being charged or tried.

The justices are expected to consider al-Marri's case when they meet in private on Tuesday. If they agree to hear arguments, over the Bush administration's opposition, they could say so the same day.

Bush's legal team has claimed authority for such detentions and has argued aggressively for it in court papers.

But the case would not be scheduled for argument until sometime in the late winter or early spring, during Obama's first months in office.

Al-Marri's fate will wind up in Obama's hands in any event, but a decision by the court to hear his challenge would force the new president to confront the issue quickly.

In the event the dispute makes it as far as a court hearing, the new administration's lawyers would have to argue the same basic position urged by Bush's team, despite Obama's repeated criticism during the presidential campaign that Bush was too aggressive in asserting executive authority.

The Red Army Faction, which emerged from German student protests against the Vietnam War, killed 34 people before disbanding in 1998. It subscribed to Marxist-Leninist ideology and sought to overthrow the capitalist West German government and fight perceived U.S. imperialism.

The Stuttgart state court ruled that it found no grounds for Christian Klar, 56, to remain behind bars any longer, spokeswoman Josefine Koeblitz said. After his Jan. 3 release he will remain on probation for five years, the court ruled.

The judges found "no evidence of a continued threat," Koeblitz said.

The court noted that Klar had shown himself "completely changed," urging against armed struggle.

Klar was convicted of involvement in nine murders, including those of federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, industrialist Hanns-Martin Schreyer and Dresdner Bank chief Juergen Ponto — all in 1977, when the movement was at its peak.

He was sentenced to six concurrent life sentences, as well as individual 15-year, 14-year and 12-year sentences.

Before the ruling, Buback's son Michael called on Klar to divulge all the details of the killing, including who fired the fatal shots.