By many measures, 2004 was a tumultuous and high-profile year for science around the world. The US Congress, faced with an increasingly expensive war in Iraq and the biggest deficit in history, limited science-budget increases and cut funding to the National Science Foundation. In Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Switzerland passed legislation specifically supporting stem cell research, but German scientists were still limited to using first-generation stem cell lines created before Jan. 1, 2002.