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President Felipe Calderon is figuratively going out on a limb _ and literally down a sinkhole, up a river (with a paddle) and over the top of a few pyramids _ in an attempt to boost Mexico’s flagging tourism industry.

The balding, 49-year-old leader is personally trying to change his country’s violent reputation by appearing as a sort of adventure tour guide in a series of TV programs to be broadcast starting in September on Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States.

The president dons an Indiana Jones-style hat and a harness and descends a rope into the 1,000-foot-deep (375-meter) Sotano de las Golondrinas cavern, accompanied by Peter Greenberg, host of the “The Royal Tour” TV series. Calderon also straps on scuba tanks to lead Greenberg into a sinkhole lake known as a cenote in Yucatan. And he helps a Lacandon Indian paddle a boat down a river in a jungle in southern Chiapas state.

In the 30-minute videos, Calderon breaks from his image as a lawyerly policy wonk best known for launching a bloody, controversial offensive against drug cartels. He plans to attend a premiere of the show within a few weeks, according to Tourism Department spokesman Roberto Martinez.

“I have other duties that are more dangerous,” Calderon jokes, dangling midair in a cavern as a rope lowers him hundreds of feet to the bottom. The site is in the Gulf coast region of Mexico known as the Huasteca, which is covered in jungle and dotted with caverns, waterfalls and crystalline pools.

Calderon swaps the explorer hat for a helmet with a headlamp for the descent into the Golondrinas cave, named for the huge flocks of birds that live inside. Calderon also appears in underwater footage from the stalactite-studded cenote in Yucatan, where he flashes the camera an “OK” signal from behind his dive mask.

Analysts say the videos represent a distinct break from the solemn treatment that has long characterized the Mexican presidency but fit in with Calderon, who has emphasized using the media to get his message across, and who has sought to project a forceful image.

“That’s always been his objective, the whole macho thing,” said John Ackerman, of the legal research institute at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. In 2007, soon after putting the army on the front line of his offensive against drug cartels, Calderon departed from presidential tradition by putting on an olive-green army jacket that was a few sizes too big for his short frame, an image that has been widely lampooned in newspaper cartoons ever since.

“From the very beginning, using the military uniforms and saluting, it’s always been his kind of thing,” Ackerman said. “It doesn’t quite fit with his physical appearance.”

Drawing criticism, Calderon’s administration took the image-building a step further this year by funding a privately produced television miniseries glorifying the federal police, which was broadcast by the country’s largest network. On Friday, the navy told local news media that it is letting private producers use navy locations to make a miniseries about the force, but that the navy is not financing any of the production no fax payday loans.

Calderon’s message in the latest videos is that Mexico is safe for tourists.

“This is part of a strategy to promote the country abroad,” said Martinez.

Nobody argues that Mexico’s tourism needs a boost. According to the country’s central bank, overall foreign tourism in 2010, not including border-area visitors, was still 6.3 percent below 2008 levels, and the first half of 2011 saw a 2 percent decline from the same period of 2010.

Cruise ship visits in the first half of the year declined 9.3 percent, after several cruise lines canceled Pacific port calls in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta.

Analysts blame the drops on the world economic downturn hitting many countries’ travel industries, but also pointed to Mexico’s drug violence, which has claimed between 35,000 and 40,000 lives since Calderon took office in late 2006.

While foreign tourists have not been targets of the violence, a point Calderon is eager to make, it has had some undeniable effects. For example, the border highway that many U.S. visitors once used to travel to the Huasteca region where Calderon went cave-diving is now considered so plagued by highway holdups and shootings that the U.S. State Department has issued warnings about traveling there.

The Huasteca remains a beautiful and largely safe region, but most tour operators recommend foreigners fly to a nearby Mexican airport rather than drive down from the border.

Some argue that Calderon’s stint as a television travel guide might be ill-advised, both because it compromises the dignity of the presidency and comes just months before campaigning opens for the 2012 elections to choose his successor.

Mario di Costanzo, a congressman for the leftist Labor Party, says he has requested information on how much Mexico spent to film the series. Calderon’s office said the videos’ U.S. producers paid production costs on the trips, but Mexican presidential and military helicopters can be seen ferrying the ‘presidential tourists’ around.

“We are questioning the legality of the president’s actions,” Di Costanzo said. “Never in the history of the country has the image of the president been used to promote tourism.”

“We see this as a promotion of Felipe Calderon’s own image, for the benefit of his own party, rather than an institutional image of the country as a tourism destination,” Di Costanzo noted.

Greenberg has previously traveled with the king of Jordan, the president of Peru, and the prime ministers of New Zealand and Jamaica on similar programs.

Congresswoman Leticia Quezada of the Democratic Revolution Party said her party objects to Calderon using government vehicles and personnel for the series, and said he has been spending too much time and money on television.

“We’re going to start calling him Felipe Calderon Productions,” she quipped.

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Germany’s economic growth more or less ground to a halt in the second quarter, in another downbeat sign for the global economy.

Its quarterly growth of only 0.1 percent was way below market expectations for a 0.5 percent increase, and follows hard on the heels of similarly disappointing readings for France and the United States.

Until now Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, had been growing strongly as its world-renowned companies tapped export markets all around the world, particularly in faster-growing emerging countries. Its industrial prowess had in many ways cushioned it from a government debt crisis that’s afflicting the 17 countries that use the euro.

Germany’s state statistical agency said Tuesday that lagging consumer spending and construction investment were largely behind the growth slowdown in the April-June period.

As well as being below expectations, the second-quarter figure was way down on the 1.3 percent growth recorded in the first quarter, when the economy was boosted by strong exports of cars and industrial machinery. That figure itself was revised down from 1.5 percent in earlier releases.

Top German corporate executives have cautioned that growth could be less impressive in the second half of the year due to volatile raw material prices and economic and financial turmoil over the heavy levels of government debt in Europe and the U.S.

The second-quarter figure looked better compared with the same quarter a year ago, rising 2.7 percent.

Slowing growth in Germany weighs on overall growth in the eurozone. A slowdown in the zone’s biggest country would give the European Central Bank more reason to avoid more interest rate increases this year. Analysts said the German figures may mean that eurozone economic growth for the quarter _ due later _ could well be below the 0.3 percent forecast.

“The weak data for Germany follow recent numbers showing zero growth in France in the second quarter, and raises concerns that the euro area’s hitherto strong core countries are undergoing a much deeper than previously thought soft-patch,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at financial information company Markit.

It’s not just Europe that’s slowed down. The U.S. economy is growing at a far slower rate than previously thought while figures Monday showed Japan contracted further in the second quarter in the wake of March’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

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Nissan announced an $8 billion expansion plan for China on Tuesday as part of a global strategy to focus on faster-growing emerging markets and reduce reliance on the United States.

Nissan’s plan with its local partner, Dongfeng Group, calls for opening new factories to meet surging demand and introducing 30 new models by 2015. They include a China-produced electric car to be sold under the low-priced Venucia brand that Nissan Motor Co. is creating for the Chinese market.

“China is key to our total growth,” said Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn at a news conference.

Global automakers are looking to China, the biggest auto market by number of vehicles sold, to drive revenue amid weak demand elsewhere. Auto sales in China jumped 32 percent last year to 18 million vehicles, defying global economic malaise.

Nissan hopes to nearly double its annual sales in China to 2.3 million vehicles by 2015, up from 1.3 million last year, Ghosn said.

The Japanese automaker was a latecomer to the Chinese market but has succeeded with a wide range of offerings, from Infiniti luxury models to the cheaper Venucia brand, said Masataka Kunugimoto, auto analyst at Nomura Securities Co.

“Nissan has scored great success in China,” he said. “Its key strategy in recent years has focused on strengthening its lineup and presence in China.”

Ghosn said Nissan’s China expansion is part of an effort to expand in faster-growing markets. It includes new factories and other initiatives in Russia, Brazil, India and Southeast Asia.

“We used to be extremely dependent on one market _ it was the U.S. market,” said Ghosn, who also heads Nissan’s alliance partner Renault SA of France.

The global strategy is “moving Nissan from too much dependence on one region to depending on different pillars and different regions,” he said.

Nissan’s ambitions reflect a broader trend among global automakers, which are creating models for China or incorporating Chinese tastes into global designs. General Motors Co. also has launched its own low-cost China brand, Baojun.

Ghosn said Nissan wants to expand its China market share from 6.2 percent today to 10 percent by 2015. He said its market share has eroded because its factories cannot meet demand despite operating at full capacity.

“I’m afraid that even with the capacity we announced today, we might be short,” he said.

Ghosn said plans to produce an electric car in China were driven both by expected strong demand buttressed by government promises of subsidies to buyers and other support for clean vehicles and by explicit pressure from Beijing on automakers.

The government has told producers “new energy cars should be under a Chinese brand,” he said.

The first Venucia model is due to go on sale next year.

Nissan plans to export about 40,000 Chinese-made vehicles next year to South Asia, Latin America and other developing markets, Ghosn said. He said that should rise to 80,000 by 2015 but exports would be a small share of production because Nissan needs to meet strong domestic demand.

All development of Venucia-brand vehicles will be carried out in China, where Nissan has a design studio in Beijing and 3,500 employees in research and development. Ghosn said that staff should grow to 6,000 in five years.

Nissan’s plans call for building a new factory in the eastern city of Changhzhou in Jiangsu province.

Another factory for passenger vehicles is due to open next year in Guangzhou in southern China, where Nissan already has one factory. A factory for commercial vehicles is slated to open this year in Shiyan, a city southwest of Shanghai in Hubei province.

Nissan also plans to expand its sales network in China from 1,400 dealerships to 2,400 by 2015, Ghosn said.

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Australia will force its 500 worst polluters to pay 23 Australian dollars ($25) for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit, with the government promising to compensate households hit with higher power bills under a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unveiled Sunday.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard sought to reassure wary Australians that the deeply unpopular carbon tax will only cause a minority of households to pay more and insisted it is critical to helping the country lower its massive carbon dioxide emissions. Australia is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters, due to its heavy reliance on coal for electricity.

“We generate more carbon pollution per head than any other country in the developed world,” Gillard told reporters in Canberra as she released details of the tax, which will go into effect on July 1, 2012. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to hold our place in the race that the world is running.”

The government hopes businesses affected by the tax will seek out clean energy alternatives to reduce their bills. The affected companies will have to pay AU$23 per metric ton of carbon, with the price rising 2.5 percent a year until 2015, when the plan will move to a market-based emissions trading scheme.

The carbon tax is the government’s main tool in meeting its pledge to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 to at least 5 percent below 2000 levels. By then, the tax will have helped reduce carbon pollution by 160 million metric tons _ the equivalent of taking 45 million cars off the road, Gillard said.

Critics of the plan say Australian households will be unfairly burdened by higher costs passed onto them by the big polluters. To help compensate for the higher bills, nine out of 10 households will receive some kind of assistance in the form of income tax cuts and payments. Two-thirds of all households will receive enough assistance to cover the entire financial impact of the tax, Gillard said.

Under the plan, the average household will see its costs increase by AU$9.90 a week, which includes an additional AU$3.30 per week for electricity and another AU$1.50 a week for gas. But the government says on average, households will receive AU$10.10 a week in assistance.

Industries affected by the change will get AU$9.2 billion in compensation over the next three years, with the worst-hit businesses expected to be steel and aluminum manufacturers.

Conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott, an outspoken critic of the plan, insisted it will drive up the cost of living for millions of Australians and will do nothing to help the environment.

“It’s socialism masquerading as environmentalism,” Abbott told reporters. “It’s a package which is all economic pain for no environmental gain.”

Environmental groups were cautiously optimistic about the scheme.

“This package is not perfect, but it is absolutely essential Australia gets started,” Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Don Henry said in a statement.

Greenpeace said the package was a good start, but believes the price per ton of carbon should be higher.

“The fact that we have any price at all is testament to all Australians who demanded the government take action on climate change,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO Linda Selvey said in a statement. “But equally, the fact it is such a low price, with such limited coverage is testament to the power of the big polluters to dominate Australia’s political leadership.”

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Borders has reached agreements with landlords to extend the leases on 11 stores it had previously asked bankruptcy court permission to close, according to court filings.

Last week the bookstore chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, asked permission to start liquidating 51 stores because of a condition for its financing. But it said at the time it was actively working to keep them open.

Now Borders Group Inc. has 40 stores remaining on last week’s closing list. However, company said in documents filed Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York that it is continuing to negotiate with landlords and that number will likely shrink.

Borders also canceled an auction to select a liquidator for those stores because it is in talks with its creditors to eliminate the financing condition that requires it to close the stores loans for people with bad credit.

A hearing on the matter will be held June 20.

Borders had 642 stores before it entered bankruptcy protection and has closed 228, leaving just more than 400 in operation.

Earlier this month the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company said it is negotiating to sell some or all of its stores and could file a plan for that process within a few weeks.

Borders, which started with a single store in 1971, helped pioneer the book superstore concept along with Barnes & Noble Inc. but was brought down by heightened competition from discounters and online book sellers.

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OPEC unexpectedly left its production levels unchanged on Wednesday, causing oil prices to jump, as senior officials said their meeting ended in disarray _ a stunning admission for an organization that places a premium on consensus decision making.

OPEC officials said that because of a policy deadlock, the group will maintain present output ceilings with the option of meeting within the next three months to consider a hike.

“We are unable to reach consensus to … raise our production,” OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri told reporters, in comments reflecting unusual tensions in the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Analysts covering OPEC for more than 20 years said they could not remember any other time that the normally closed group had admitted to such divisions in its ranks. Some even saw the abortive meeting as a harbinger of demise for the organization, which produces more than a third of the world’s petroleum.

“OPEC is … on the point of break-up,” said Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities. “A broader perspective is that the post World War II world order is fracturing in a spectacular fashion, be it the EU/Eurozone, the World Bank/IMF, (or) OPEC.”

Other experts were less outspoken but agreed Wednesday’s outcome would weaken the image of OPEC as a major regulator of oil markets.

“I think there were some tensions,” said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. “But everyone has to do business and countries have different views on what the future of demand looks like.”

The news caught markets by surprise, sending oil prices sharply higher. Benchmark crude for July delivery was up $1.25 to $100.34 per barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading lower ahead of the OPEC meeting.

Saudi Arabia and other influential Gulf nations had pushed to increase production ceilings to calm markets and ease concerns that crude was overpriced for consumer nations struggling with their economies. Those opposed were led by Iran, the second-strongest producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

While the Saudis and the Iranians are frequently at loggerheads over pricing, past meetings normally fell in behind Saudi Arabia, which produces the lion’s share of OPEC output. But this time, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry combined with major political and economic uncertainties to lead to deadlock.

Among the biggest worries is that unrest in Libya and Yemen could destabilize larger oil-producing nations in the region. The two countries normally produce less than 4 percent of the world’s oil needs, and Saudi Arabia and others have boosted output to make up for much of the shortfall.

But while the Saudis have served notice that they are ready to further increase supplies to help compensate for the loss of the daily 1.6 million barrels normally brought to the market by Libya, other OPEC nations _ already pumping close to capacity _ cannot contribute much. This appeared to have fueled the strong opposition to an output ceiling hike.

Global economic weakness is also worrying producers and consumers.

Poor housing and employment reports from the United States added to the gloom spread by Europe’s attempts to bail out governments and Japan’s post-Fukushima slump. At its present price of around $100 a barrel, benchmark crude may be too expensive for nations struggling to make ends meet, worsening the economic picture and leading to less oil demand.

But with sputtering economies using less energy, raising output to lower prices also risks flooding the market, leading to a surplus that could drive prices below $80 a barrel. That benchmark, which is preferred by the Saudis and other moderate OPEC members, is considered too low by price hawks Iran and Venezuela.

Tuesday’s sober assessment of the U.S. economy from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke added to concerns, especially as the central banker failed to indicate that more monetary stimulus was likely.

“Despite all their efforts, the Saudis were not able to convince Iran and other countries to increase production,” said Ehsan Ul-Haq, an analyst with KBC Energy Economics. ” It means there is a huge disagreement _ but it also means that it gives the Saudis free space to do what they like.”

Going into the meeting, some OPEC nations had signaled that the ministers could opt to raise the output ceiling to actual production levels of around 26 million barrels a day. Add to that the daily 2.7 million barrels produced by Iraq, which is not bound by quotas, and OPEC would have been bringing more than 29 million barrels a day to the market.

The 11 OPEC members are already exceeding their current production quotas. Their output is an estimated 26.15 million barrels daily _ about 1.3 million barrels above the daily overall OPEC production target of 24.85 million barrels a day agreed two years ago.

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George Jahn is at http://twitter.com/georgejahn

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Toronto has become more of a destination for seasoned world travelers as fewer Americans are driving north for long-gone bargain vacations.

Following a decline over the last three years Tourism Toronto

Federal health officials have expanded approval of an artery-opening stent from Abbott Laboratories to a larger group of patients at risk for stroke caused by plaque in the neck arteries.

The Food and Drug Administration said it approved the Acculink stent for patients who are at moderate risk of complications if they underwent the alternative surgical procedure. The procedure, known as an endarterectomy, involves cutting open the neck artery and scraping out plaque formations that can block blood flow.

Previously Acculink was only approved for patients at high risk for complications if they underwent surgery.

Stents are mesh-metal tubes used to hold open arteries where plaque is beginning to form. They are threaded up into the artery with a catheter through a small incision made in the groin.

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Weariness and anxiety percolated Tuesday among people who left their homes near Japan’s radiation-shedding nuclear complex as the meticulous if urgent work to bring the overheated plant under control dragged on.

Workers, pulled from the complex Monday afternoon after smoke or steam billowed from buildings housing two damaged reactors, resumed their work Tuesday. Their goal is to finish hooking up electrical systems and check and replace damaged pumps and related machinery to power up cooling systems at plant, crippled by this month’s massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami.

Electricity was restored to one of the least troublesome of Fukushima Dai-ichi’s six nuclear reactors. Still a new concern emerged: a storage pool holding 2,000 tons of older, spent nuclear fuel is also heating up, forcing emergency teams to divert water sprayed on other reactors there.

People at Fukushima city’s main evacuation center waited in long lines for bowls of hot noodle soup. A truck delivered toilet paper and blankets. Many among the 1,400 people living in the crowded gymnasium came from communities near the nuclear plant and worry about radiation and weary of the daily routine of the displaced.

“It was an act of God,” said Yoshihiro Amano, a grocery store owner whose house is 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the reactors. “It won’t help anything to get angry. But we are worried. We don’t know if it will takes days, months or decades to go home. Maybe never. We are just starting to be able to think ahead to that.”

Public sentiment is such that Fukushima’s governor rejected a meeting offered by the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the utility that runs the nuclear plant.

“What is most important is for TEPCO to end the crisis with maximum effort. So I rejected the offer,” Gov. Yuhei Sato said on national broadcaster NHK. “Considering the anxiety, anger and exasperation being felt by people in Fukushima, there is just no way for me to accept their apology.”

The nuclear crisis has added a broader dimension to the disaster unleashed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that pulverized the northeast coast, leaving more than 9,000 dead by official count and twice that in police estimates.

Fears about radiation are reaching well beyond those living near Fukushima and the 430,000 displaced by the earthquake and tsunami to encompass large segments of Japan. Traces of radiation are being found in vegetables and raw milk from a swath of farmland, forcing a government ban on sales from those areas.

Seawater near the Fukushima plant is showing elevated levels of radioactive iodine and cesium, prompting the government to test seafood no fax cash advances.

China, Japan’s largest trading partner, has ordered testing of imports of Japanese food. The World Health Organization has urged Japan to adopt stricter measures and reassure the public.

Government officials and health experts say the doses are low and not a threat to human health unless the tainted products are consumed in abnormally excessive quantities. But the government measures to release data on radiation amounts, halt sales of some foods and test others are feeding public worries that the situation may grow more dire.

“We acknowledge this situation has caused anxiety among the general public but even if the accident hadn’t happened we would be monitoring and taking action if the government’s very conservative standards are exceeded,” the government’s spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, said at a briefing.

In the first five days after the disasters struck, the Fukushima complex saw explosions and fires in four of the plant’s six reactors, and the leaking of radioactive steam into the air. Since then, every day that passes without a major accident is a good sign, experts said.

An official of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in Washington that Units 1, 2 and 3 have all seen damage to their reactor cores, but that containment is intact. The commission’s executive director, Bill Borchardt, said that “things appear to be on the verge of stabilizing.”

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said that radiation seeping into the environment is a concern and needs to be monitored. “We are still in an accident that is still in a very serious situation,” said Graham Andrew, senior adviser to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano.

IAEA monitoring stations have detected radiation 1,600 times higher than normal levels _ but in an area about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the power station, the limit of the evacuation area declared by the government last week.

Radiation at that level, while not high for a single burst, could harm health if sustained. If projected to last three days, radiation at those levels would U.S. authorities would order an evacuation as a precaution.

The levels drop dramatically the further you go from the nuclear complex. In Tokyo, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, levels in recent days have been higher than normal for the city but still only a third of the global average for naturally occurring background radiation.

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