OMAHA, Neb (Reuters) – Nebraska may try to draw a line in the sand when it convenes a special session of the state legislature on Tuesday to debate whether to seek changes to a planned $7 billion oil pipeline traversing the state.

At issue is whether TransCanada's Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas should cross the ecologically-sensitive Sand Hills region of Nebraska, which sits atop a major source of the region's water, the Ogallala aquifer.

Opposition to the pipeline has grown so much in Nebraska that Republican Governor Dave Heineman, who once said a special legislative session would be a waste of time and money, changed tack last month and called just such a conclave.

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BERLIN – A German company has canceled a major advertising contract with an Italian-American model after she described her passionate relationship with Moammar Gadhafi’s son Muatassim and praised his family.

Telecommunications firm Telefonica Germany and its subsidiary Alice will stop working with 23-year-old model Vanessa Hessler and remove her face from its website within hours, spokesman Albert Fetsch said Monday.

“Vanessa Hessler has failed to distance herself from her comments on the conflict in Libya,” Fetsch said.

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PHILADELPHIA – Three decades after hundreds of strange wire-bound oddities were saved from the trash heap, an art gallery eight blocks from where they were dumped at a curb is featuring a selection of works made by a mystery artist dubbed the Philadelphia Wireman.

“What was unique about this was the discovery, how it was found, and how many there were,” said John Ollman, an expert in self-taught art whose Fleischer/Ollman Gallery has 29 Wireman works on view through Dec. 10. “They’re like a Western interpretation of what you’d find in western Africa. They’re personal power objects.”

They were found in the late 1970s or early 1980s by Robert Leitch, an eagle-eyed passer-by who spotted them curbside in bags and cardboard boxes on a run-down block of homes and rooming houses. Leitch loaded up his car with what had been apparently set out as trash, and turned out to be 1,200 pieces of wire-wrapped cocoons containing broken reflectors, mirror shards, crumpled cigarette packs, junk jewelry, coins and nails.

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WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner said Monday that he has high hopes that a congressional “supercommittee” will be able to reach common ground on a plan to cut the deficit by at least $ 1.2 trillion over a decade.

But the most powerful Republican in Washington says that finding common ground doesn’t necessarily mean compromising one’s principles, a none-too-subtle hint that he remains strongly opposed to increasing taxes as part of the solution to deficits exceeding $ 1 trillion a year.

“Common ground doesn’t mean compromising on your principles,” Boehner said in a speech to a group of students at the University of Louisville. “Common ground means finding the places where your agenda overlaps with that of the other party.”

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PARIS (Reuters) – Efforts to coax China into throwing the euro zone a lifeline will dominate this week's G20 Summit and leave Beijing holding the cards as world leaders try to restore market confidence with pledges to reduce economic imbalances.

Heads of state and finance chiefs from the 20 leading economies want to use the November 3-4 meeting in Cannes, France, to send a message that Europe has its debt crisis under control and any risks to the world economy are being taken care of.

Yet simmering tensions, which flared up at recent talks in Brussels and Paris, and bleak economic prospects may make it harder to stage a convincing show of unity than in 2008, when the G20 pulled together to fix the financial crisis.

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