VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican plans to respond positively and very soon to an appeal by Muslim scholars for an unprecedented dialogue between Christianity and Islam, Roman Catholic cardinals and Islam experts say.
The Catholic Church, representing more than half the world's two billion Christians, has not yet officially answered the call made last month and hailed by most other Christian leaders.
 But cardinals in Rome and Vatican officials told Reuters many Catholic leaders wanted a serious dialogue with Muslim leaders to help overcome misunderstandings.
"The Vatican will respond positively, and quite soon," said Dakar Cardinal Theodore-Adrien Sarr, whose homeland Senegal is 95 percent Muslim. "We will not miss this opportunity."
"Watch out for this week," said a veteran cardinal, who asked not to be named. The prelates were in Rome for a ceremony to install 23 new members of the College of Cardinals.
Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois said a serious and broad Christian-Muslim dialogue would help inter-faith relations in France, which has Europe's largest Muslim minority.
"This is a significant step," he said of the Muslim appeal. "I remember that only a few years ago, we regretted there weren't any Muslim leaders who could take a public stand, ...   more »

By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO, Nov. 22 — Many in Japan are starting to speak of “quitting America,” but they are not talking about a rise in anti-American political fervor. Rather, they mean a move away from American investments that is altering global capital flows and helping to weaken the dollar.
The move is seen in decisions of individual investors like Daijo Okudaira, a 66-year-old clerk at a Tokyo consulting company. Like many Japanese, Mr. Okudaira had long limited his overseas investments to the relative safety of securities from developed countries, particularly the United States.
Starting late last year, however, Mr. Okudaira made drastic changes to his portfolio, putting $50,000 into mutual funds focusing on stocks in China and other emerging economies. He said he had been drawn to these countries because they seemed to hold much brighter growth prospects than the United States.
“People say the engine of the global economy is shifting from the United States to emerging countries,” Mr. Okudaira said. “Emerging countries have growth and energy that America and Europe lack. They remind me of Japan 40 years ago.”
Japan’s legions of individual investors like Mr. Okudaira have emerged as a global financial force to be reckoned ...   more »