The situation looks much different in Phoenix, Arizona, than it does in Albany, New York, and looks much different in Seville, Spain, than in Leipzig, Germany.

Professor Paabo, who is director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institution for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, made the claim at a conference in the Cold Springs Laboratory in New York.

At BMW's Leipzig site, workers are producing cars now on most Saturdays and the factory's traditional one-week break between Christmas and New Year's has already been cancelled.