Germany

Vertigo. For most people, the word summons images of Jimmy Stewart dangling from high places in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller by the same name. It means something else, however, to hundreds of thousands of people who experience the strange, dizzying affliction. The most common cause of vertigo, known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, usually can be treated with one visit to the doctor.

LONDON - With investor confidence draining away and the value of the euro plunging, Europe struggled anew Wednesday to come up with a united game plan to keep its currency union intact and its economies from collapsing. Competing visions embraced by the continent's political heavyweights, France and Germany, clashed at an informal summit of European Union leaders with little chance of reconciliation even as fears grew that Greece could be forced out of the Eurozone and into a chaotic default.

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

PARIS - France's new president, Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have opposing ideas of how to solve Europe's crippling public debt crisis - she austerity, he spending and growth - so a clash was in the cards Tuesday. Instead, Hollande's welcome to Berlin just hours after he took office was brisk but warm, even if he was late for dinner. Hollande - whose initial flight to Berlin was hit by lightning, causing him to briefly return to an air base outside Paris to switch planes - and Merkel met for an hour before dining together.

It's another drizzly, dreary day in eastern Germany -- oddly perfect, it turns out, for demonstrating the potential of solar energy. Despite the rain, hundreds of thousands of photovoltaic panels still gaze skyward here at the country's biggest solar farm, like a field of huge silvery sunflowers planted in neat rows marching toward the horizon. Raindrops splotch their faces, and the steely gray clouds curtain the sun. But the panels remain busy absorbing solar radiation to convert into electricity.

German authorities on Monday pardoned and released a former terrorist convicted of killing three people in a 1975 attack on an OPEC oil ministers' meeting. A Frankfurt court in 2001 convicted Hans-Joachim Klein of three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder and hostage-taking after a trial in which German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer -- a friend of Klein's from their student radical days 30 years ago -- appeared as a witness. Klein was sentenced to nine years in prison.

The forecast called for heavy snow on the route home, so the three pilots who had just flown a covert CIA-sponsored "extraordinary rendition" flight were forced to stay an extra night at the Gran Melia Victoria, a luxury hotel overlooking the marina on the island of Majorca. Up in Room 552, the pilot who called himself Capt.

It already seems like 2013 is shaping up as a great year for ride enthusiasts around the world, as a number of new theme parks are planned for Asia and several major attractions are in the works for Europe. > Photos: Best new international theme park rides for 2013 Consider this a tentative and fluid list of new attractions on tap at international parks (outside the United States). A number of oft-delayed projects have been given new 2013 opening dates that could get postponed again, while several recently announced theme parks may never advance past the planning stages.

If you go THE BEST WAY TO ELMAU, GERMANY From LAX, Lufthansa offers nonstop service, and United, Lufthansa, KLM, Air France and British offer connecting service (change of planes) to Munich. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $416. The spa is about 80 miles southwest of Munich via the A95 highway. Schloss Elmau Luxury Spa & Cultural Hideaway , 82493 Elmau/Oberbayern; (49) 8823-180, http://www.schloss-elmau.de/english/index.html. It has three swimming pools, six restaurants, two concert halls, a spa and a range of summer and winter sports.

Why did it take four months for Europe's parent nations -- Germany and France -- to prop up the continent's prodigal son, Greece? And what can the European Union do when it comes to coping with such behavior with its other children? There is little doubt Greece needs to face up to the part it played in its current financial mess -- in which its ballooning deficit threatened the stability of the nation and the euro. But it now appears that in the case of Germany, at least, the slow response was more than meets the eye. Chancellor Angela Merkel was not simply pandering to her fragile coalition and frustrated electorate.

Sunday was a big day for hockey's Jordan family, which spent the day thousands of miles apart because of — what else — hockey. Youngest son Jordan Nolan , 22, scored his first NHL playoff goal in the 3-1 victory over St. Louis that launched the Kings to the Western Conference finals. The same day his father, Ted , the former coach of the Buffalo Sabres and New York Islanders, coached the Latvian national team to a victory over Germany at the world hockey championships in Stockholm.

PARIS - Exuberant supporters were still out celebrating Francois Hollande's election as president of France when the first fissures began opening up in the Franco-German motor that drives the rest of Europe. Although officials on both sides of the Rhine vowed to continue their close political cooperation, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a blunt rejection Monday of Hollande's pledge to renegotiate a Europe-wide fiscal treaty to rein in public debt. Nor would she countenance deficit spending to boost the economic growth that Europe so desperately needs, pouring cold water on another of Hollande's campaign promises.

The Times' Mike Bresnahan reports that Lakers center Andrew Bynum won't play in the 2012 Olympics so he can get rest and receive an innovative procedure on his surgically repaired right knee in Germany. Bresnahan says it's similar to the procedure Kobe Bryant had on his right knee and left ankle last summer. Game stories -- The Times' Bresnahan observes the Lakers didn't do much to complement Kobe Bryant in his return to the lineup in the Lakers' 121-97 loss Friday to the San Antonio Spurs.

SAN ANTONIO -- Lakers center Andrew Bynum is not interested in playing in the Olympics because he wants extra rest and also plans to undergo the same innovative knee procedure that Kobe Bryant had in Germany last summer. "I've got to take care of my legs in the off-season," Bynum said Friday. "I've got some things planned for my knees.... I've got to do some therapy that I'm going overseas to do. " Bynum has undergone surgical procedures on each of his knees in recent years.

KLEINENSIEL, Germany - When the German government shut down half the country's nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, followed two months later by a pledge to abandon nuclear power within a decade, environmentalists cheered. A year later, however, criticism of the nuclear shutdown is emerging from a surprising source: some of the very activists who pushed for the phaseout. They say poor planning of the shutdown and political opportunism by the government have actually worsened the toll on the environment in Germany, and Europe, at least in the short term.

Blaming a "fundamentally changed" solar industry and plunging business in Europe, panel maker First Solar Inc. is cutting 2,000 jobs and closing a factory. The layoffs represent 30% of the workforce of the Tempe, Ariz., company, which is the leading U.S. manufacturer of photovoltaic solar panels — the type commonly found on rooftops. The factory being closed is in Frankfurt, Germany. In addition, the company will indefinitely idle four production lines at its facility in Kulim, Malaysia, as of May 1. Some U.S. employees of the company will also be cut, though First Solar did not disclose how many.

World Cup 2010: GERMANY FIFA ranking: 6 Overall World Cup record: 37-12-9 Coach: Joachim Low Best performance: Winner, 1954, 1974, 1990 Overview: It will be difficult for Low and his team to recapture the magical summer of 2006, when Germany, playing at home, finished third after a series of better-than-expected performances that won over the fans. The team has no out-and-out star, but it was unbeaten at 8-0-2 in qualifying and has reached at least the quarterfinals of every World Cup since 1982.

Reporting from London -- John Demjanjuk, a retired Ohio autoworker convicted of serving as a guard at a Nazi extermination camp and being complicit in the deaths of more than 28,000 people, died Saturday in Germany. He was 91. Demjanjuk died in a nursing home in southern Germany as a prisoner of failing health but not of the justice system that found him guilty last year of being an accessory to mass murder. A German judge had sentenced him to five years behind bars, but he was allowed his freedom while he launched an appeal.

Javier Conde is an aerospace engineer, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was time to pack up and move to a foreign land hundreds of miles away. Back in Madrid, where he worked at the Spanish equivalent of NASA, Conde knew that government funding cuts were about to hit the agency and that his position was unlikely to survive. Add to that the fact that already nearly 1 in 4 Spaniards is looking for work, and a man used to complex calculations did a bit of simple math.