"It was like a freight train running through the house," said Chris Monroe, operations manager for the New Zealand Fire Service.

The quake had a magnitude of 7.0, down from an initial assessment of 7.4, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It struck about 35 miles from Christchurch, a city of about 386,000 people.

An aftershock with a magnitude of 5.7 struck not far from the epicenter about 20 minutes later, the survey said.

Power was out to much of Christchurch "because of extensive damage there," Radio New Zealand reported.

One person said the quake "turned his house upside down, with crockery breaking," the station reported, citing Orion, a power company. Sewer lines and water pipes have ruptured, a company spokesman told the station.

When natural disasters, like floods in Pakistan or earthquakes in Haiti, strike, Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance company, ends up paying part of the bill. Munich Re offers capitalism a safety net, and no other company is more familiar with life's risks.

The low pressure front that brought flooding to the city of Gorlitz on Germany's eastern border with Poland developed over the Mediterranean, bypassed the eastern flank of the Alps, headed for Poland and finally came to a stop at the Erzgebirge (Iron Ore Mountains) along the German-Czech border. But Angelika Wirtz wasn't worried yet.

When the rains came and fell along the Neisse River, on ground that was already saturated and on steep hillside, Wirtz began to take notice. The flood reached Gorlitz on the evening of August 7, when the river rose four meters (about 13 feet) in the space of three hours. Parts of the city were underwater and a state of emergency was declared throughout the entire district. When Wirtz found out about it, she typed a note into her computer. It wasn't a particularly long note. Wirtz had seen worse.

On the weekend when the flooding reached Gorlitz, Pakistan reported more rainfall of apocalyptic dimensions, more than 800 fires were burning in Russia, a storm in Finland had cut off the power supply for 70,000 people, and at least 80 were killed and hundreds were missing following mudslides in China.

Wirtz diligently entered all of this information into her computer on the morning of Aug. 9. She is accustomed to the trials life has in store for human beings. She has been the head of the situation room at Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance company, for 17 years, and in those 17 years she has repeatedly entered data that represent the catastrophes of the day into the company's databases.

It's the first time in decades a lawman has refused to cooperate in one of the agency's probes, said the department.

The Arizona sheriff had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents the federal government first asked for 15 months ago, when it started investigating alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and jail policies that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department's civil rights division, said it's unfortunate the department had to sue to get the documents, which neither the agency nor Arpaio would describe.

But Arpaio called the lawsuit "a ruse" and said the federal government is just trying to score a win against the state, which has found itself at the center of the nation's argument over illegal immigration since passing a law that mirrors many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to produce a framework for a permanent peace deal and to hold a second round of direct talks this month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet again on September 14 and 15 in the Middle East, likely at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, with an eye toward forging the outline of a pact that could lead to a final agreement in a year's time.

The United States' special Middle East envoy George Mitchell announced the agreement after several hours of talks between Netanyahu and Abbas at the State Department at which the two leaders pledged to work through the region's deeply ingrained mutual hostility and suspicion to resolve the long-running conflict.

"I believe these two leaders - President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu - are committed to doing what it takes to achieve the right results," said Mitchell. He refused to discuss specifics of what the framework agreement would entail but said it would lay out the "fundamental compromises" needed for a final settlement.

Those compromises will involve the thorniest issues that have dogged the parties for decades: the borders of an eventual Palestinian state, the political status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and security.

The U.S. Coast Guard reported a sheen on the water about 100 feet wide and perhaps a mile long near the rig, which is west of BP's blown-out well but operates in much shallower water than the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon.

Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau told The Miami Herald that the Coast Guard was still assessing the accident but did not believe there was a continuous flow from the rig, which sits about 90 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The sheen, she said, was "very light".

"It looks like the tree has actually shut it in," she said. A tree, also known as a Christmas tree in industry parlance, is a fitting that regulates the flow of gas and oil from wells.

The Coast Guard and the company that owns the platform, Houston-based Mariner Energy, said all 13 people aboard at the time of the morning blast had been rescued with no injuries.

As the first direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians in two years get underway in Washington, President Barack Obama says he is "cautiously hopeful" about finding a solution for the Middle East. German editorialists on Thursday, however, are more circumspect about his chances.

The scene is familiar. Amid a flurry of photo opportunities and hand shakes, the latest round of U.S.-mediated Middle East talks get underway.

Following the failed negotiations brokered by his predecessors, President Barack Obama urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seize this chance to secure peace in the violence-torn region. "This moment of opportunity may not soon come again," Obama said at the White House on Wednesday night ahead of the start of the talks. "Too much blood" has been spilled in the Middle East, he added.

"Do we have the wisdom and the courage to walk the path of peace?" Obama asked, challenging the participants.

Both Mideast leaders outlined their hopes for a breakthrough within the one-year time-frame envisioned by Obama.

Four Greenpeace activists who halted drilling by a British-owned oil exploration rig off Greenland have been arrested after they abandoned their occupation because of severe weather.

Greenlandic police arrested the four after high winds buffeted the Stena Don drilling rig overnight, forcing them to abandon mountaineering-style platforms they had suspended by ropes underneath the platform less than 48 hours earlier.

The activists' arrest is a setback for Greenpeace, which believed a longer-term occupation of the rig would be a serious blow to attempts by the Edinburgh-based exploration firm Cairn Energy to strike oil or gas before the intense Arctic winter sets in.

However, sources in the region had predicted when the four protesters clambered on to the platform at dawn on Tuesday that severe weather forecast for early this morning would cut short their occupation.

Greenpeace has warned that if Cairn strikes oil or gas, it will provoke an "oil rush" in the vulnerable and unspoiled waters of the Arctic.

"We've been here before, and we know how difficult the road ahead will be," Clinton said, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the State Department's ornate Benjamin Franklin Room.

The two men and President Barack Obama have set a highly ambitious one-year timetable to solve long-intractable disputes over the borders of a Palestinian state, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the fate of Palestinian refugees and other issues.

The talks face a potential crisis point in little more than three weeks, when Netanyahu's moratorium on new settlement construction expires. Abbas, backed by Arab nations, says he'll abandon the talks if Israel resumes settlement construction.

They also face threats from hard-liners on both sides. Jewish settlers vowed this week to renew construction on Palestinian-claimed lands, while the militant Palestinian group Hamas has promised more attacks like the one that killed four settlers Tuesday.

Germany's national railway has long resented the fact that its high-speed ICE trains are not allowed to operate through the Channel Tunnel. But a test run is planned for October and, if rules are eased, the company could be on track to introduce passenger services direct from Cologne to London in time for the 2012 Olympics.

In October, German national railway operator Deutsche Bahn will take its high-speed InterCityExpress (ICE) trains through the Channel Tunnel for the first time. Those trips will only be trial runs and will include the testing of evacuation procedures. But if all goes according to plan, official permission for German ICE trains to operate through the Channel Tunnel could be given as early as 2012.

Up until now only the Eurostar trains, which are operated by an international consortium including British, French and Belgian railways, have been allowed to pass through the 50.5 kilometer (31.4 mile) undersea tunnel. This is due to safety regulations which stipulate that trains entering the tunnel must be 375 meters (1,230 feet) long so that each end of the train is aligned with an emergency exit. The third-generation German ICE trains - known as ICE 3 - are only this length when two trains are coupled together, which makes it impossible for passengers to walk the entire required length. The Eurostar trains currently operating in the tunnel can also be split in two in the event of a fire or emergency and driven in separate directions out of the tunnel. Since the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, three fires have led to the temporary closure of the line, including two major fires.

Safety Regulations Re-Evaluated

This has meant that those traveling from Germany to Britain had to change trains in Brussels before continuing on to London through the Channel Tunnel. However, those safety regulations are currently being re-evaluated and it is likely that, in the future, trains that are only 200 meters long will also be allowed to travel through the tunnel. This would allow not only Deutsche Bahn access to the potentially lucrative route to Britain, but also the French high-speed TGV trains operated by national railway SNCF. The move is possible following European Union rules introduced in January that open up international train lines to greater competition, effectively ending Eurostar's monopoly.

Deutsche Bahn has long sought access for its trains to the Channel Tunnel. Earlier this year in a Spiegel interview, Bahn CEO Rudiger Grube, who will be on board for the Oct. 19 test run, pleaded for "a truly European rail system," noting that "the ICEs are permitted to travel through every Alpine tunnel - but, funnily enough, they're not allowed through the Eurotunnel."

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document - leaked on the Internet - shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The term "peak oil" is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis - and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.

The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further.

The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.

The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to Spiegel Online by sources in government circles, was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies.

The lead author, Will, has declined to comment on the study. It remains doubtful that either the Bundeswehr or the German government would have consented to publish the document in its current form. But the study does show how intensively the German government has engaged with the question of peak oil.

With so many of their media sources controlled by the state or government-friendly oligarchs, Russians have turned to their bloggers to keep informed and give voice to their grievances and concerns. But many of those in power are now seeking to impose rigid limits on online freedom.

One sunny June day in California, Rustem Adagamov was rushing without his glasses on when he literally ran into Russia's president. "I simply didn't see Dmitry Medvedev," Russia's most influential blogger says, "and I bumped right into him."

Adagamov, 48, uses his blog to report on a range of grievances, including the arrests of opposition members and "unparalleled police brutality." Each day, his blog gets around 600,000 page views, making it more widely read than many of Moscow's daily newspapers. Adagamov has even made fun of Medvedev on his blog by posting photographs of cups bearing the portraits of Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the caption "They all lie anyway" printed in bold.

Acts like these make it all the more astonishing that Medvedev agreed to submit to an interview with the Kremlin critic. And that's not all: The president also invited Adagamov to accompany him to California for a meeting with Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple.

Medvedev, 44, is an avowed fan of the Internet, writes his own blog and uses Twitter. The president, for example, recently wrote an article - entitled "Forward, Russia!" - that garnered global attention for its ruthless analysis of Russia's economic backwardness. But instead of distributing it via a government newspaper or state-run television, he had it published on Gazeta.ru, Russia's best-known online newspaper. And, just last week, Medvedev halted a controversial highway construction project near Moscow via video blog.

Child pornography planted on a work computer, a house break-in and illegal wiretapping: The leadership of Germany's HSH Nordbank stands accused of going to great lengths to rid itself of unwanted senior officials. Prosecutors in both New York and Germany have launched investigations.

The memo from top management, issued at 4:18 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 20, was sent to everyone in the company. Reading it today, one has to wonder what is more shocking about the 22 lines in that note addressed to the bank's "dear employees," the chutzpah that led HSH Nordbank to take its employees for fools, or the cynicism that prompted it to claim that it loves its employees.

The memo, after all, was coming from a bank that apparently had no scruples about lambasting its employees, both professionally and personally.

The internal memo was HSH management's way of preparing employees for the story Spiegel would publish the following Monday: Before the bank fired Chief Operating Officer Frank Roth in April 2009 without notice or compensation (the same Frank Roth CEO Dirk Jens Nonnenmacher had long been trying to get rid of), Roth's office was allegedly bugged and his apartment broken into. Moreover, the evidence that led to his immediate dismissal, namely that Roth had revealed bank secrets to the press, was presumably false. Indeed, it appears that he was framed.

According to the HSH internal memo, management had only learned of these charges 14 days earlier, but now it was looking into the allegations. And to ensure that everything would take its proper course "under these circumstances," the bank's legal adviser, Wolfgang Gossmann, had been "relieved of his duties." The "circumstances" in question were that Gossmann, who reported to Nonnenmacher, had supposedly been involved in the smear campaign.

The body of Gareth Williams, the MI6 employee found dead in his flat last week, was discovered in a large sports holdall which was secured shut by a padlock, an inquest heard Wednesday.

His body was in an advanced state of decay and is believed to have lain undiscovered for some days in a bath.

The cause of his death is yet to be established and the bizarre circumstances of his demise, added to his work for the intelligence services, have led to speculation about his lifestyle and how he came to die. The opening of the inquest was the first chance for details of his death to be made public officially.

Williams, 31, was found on August 23 at his flat in Pimlico, London, half a mile from the headquarters of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service. He was an expert in codes and was on secondment to MI6 from his usual job at GCHQ, the government's "listening post" based in Cheltenham.

Coroner Dr. Paul Knapman, sitting at Westminster coroner's court, said: "I have a resumé here which says to me that on Monday August 23rd police were called to check on the welfare of Gareth Williams at his home address as he had not been seen at work.

"At about 6.30 p.m. that evening, I understand police entered the premises. They found a large holdall in the bath in the en suite bathroom of the main bedroom.

Ferrari recalled more than 400 luxury Italia cars Wednesday after reports that a design fault could cause them to catch fire.

The first incident occurred in July, when the driver noticed the rear panel of his 458 Italia was on fire while he was driving in Paris. A passerby used a fire extinguisher to douse the flames.

A few days later the engine of an Italia driving up a mountain pass in Switzerland caught fire. Last month a 458 in China and one in the U.S. burst into flames.

After sending its engineers around the world to investigate the reports of "thermal incidents", Ferrari asked the owners of more than 1,200 of the supercars, including around 50 in Britain, to bring them in for modification work. Louis Saha, the Everton footballer, Eric Clapton, the rock star, and Chris Evans, the broadcaster, are among the car's owners.

Ferrari said the problem had been traced to adhesive used in the wheel-arch assemblies. In certain circumstances the glue can begin to overheat, smoke and even catch fire. In extreme cases, the melting of the adhesive can lead the heat shield - the liner protecting the engine - to deform and move closer to the exhaust, causing the lining to catch fire.

Former Lehamn Brothers boss Dick Fuld delivered a defiant defense of his management of the defunct Wall Street bank today, telling an official inquiry that the firm's 2008 bankruptcy was down to false rumors about a solvency crisis, uncontrollable market forces and a refusal by the U.S.  government to come to the rescue.

Appearing in front of the bipartisan U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington, D.C., Fuld was only willing to accept very limited blame for the implosion of the bank, which sent financial markets into the worst global panic since the second world war.

"I clearly made mistakes," said Fuld, conceding that Lehman had too many illiquid assets, such as commercial property, on its books, and insufficient capital. But he said these issues were addressed before bankruptcy as the bank raised $3.8 billion in equity capital and "de-risked" by shedding 50% of its less saleable investments.

"Did we do everything right? We clearly did not," said Fuld. "I myself did not see the depth and violence of the crisis. I did not see the contagion. I believe we made poor judgments in timing for the assets we bought and for the businesses we supported. Would I love today to be able to reach back and [re]take those? Yes."

The premium hike, up 14 percent from last year, means that workers are paying nearly all of a $495 increase in the average cost of family coverage this year.

Employers' contributions to family coverage showed no increase at all in 2010, according to the Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

Drew Altman, the president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said it was the first time he could remember employers moving so boldly to shift health costs to workers.

"Added health costs for workers means added economic insecurity for working people in tough times," Altman said. He called the move a "recession survival tactic" for struggling employers, who provide coverage for about 157 million Americans.

"It speaks to the pressure that companies are under from the recession," he said.

There's no question about it: The 20th century was America's era. The United States rose rapidly from virtually nothing to become the most politically powerful and economically strongest country in the world. But the financial crisis and subsequent recession have now raised doubts about its future. Are we currently witnessing the beginning of the end of the American era?

A firm belief in the individual's ability, ideas, courage, will and a reliance on one's own resources brought the U.S. to the top. The American dream promised everyone the chance of upward mobility - literally from rags to riches, from minimum wage to millionaire. The individual's pursuit of happiness was seen as the crucial foundation for the well-being of society, rather than the benevolent state which cares for its subjects - and certainly not the welfare state, which provides a social safety net for its citizens.

In the American system, every man was responsible for himself - in good times and bad. No one could count on government assistance, not even the wannabe millionaire who did not make it and ended up homeless.

For many U.S. citizens, the financial crisis has turned the American dream into a nightmare. Millions of Americans are struggling with high levels of debt, and not only because they bought overpriced houses during the housing boom and can no longer afford their mortgages. Often families are burdened with loans they took out during better times for cars, furniture, electronic gadgets or university tuition. Uncertainty and worries about the future are keeping many families awake at night.

Former Lehman chief Richard Fuld suggested Wednesday that the Fed could have given him a lifeline in September 2008 and spared the world the subsequent chaos. That view is wrong, Bernanke, a former Princeton economist, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Thursday.

"Before I came to the Fed chairmanship, I was an academic, and I studied for many years the Great Depression, financial crises, and this is my bread and butter. And I believed deeply that if Lehman was allowed to fail or did fail that the consequences for the U.S. financial system and the U.S. economy would be catastrophic," Bernanke said emphatically. "And I never at any time wavered in my view that we should do absolutely everything possible to prevent the failure of Lehman."

The problem, he said, was that Lehman lacked the sufficient collateral to provide to the Fed for any loans it would have received. Lehman was under the modern equivalent of a bank run, where investment firms on the other end of deals with it simply refused to lend it any more money, pulled out of existing deals and demanded immediate repayment from it.

The hurricane's leading edge brought on-and-off light rain in the afternoon to the long ribbon of barrier islands, which were likely to get the full brunt of the storm around midnight.

Earl's arrival could mark the start of at least 24 hours of stormy, windy weather along the East Coast. During its march up the Atlantic, it could snarl travelers' Labor Day weekend plans and strike a second forceful blow to the vacation homes and cottages on Long Island, Nantucket Island and Cape Cod.

It was unclear exactly how close Earl's center and its strongest winds would get to land. But Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate said people shouldn't wait for the next forecast to act.

"This is a day of action. Conditions are going to deteriorate rapidly," he said.

Officials from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (DMR) took oyster fishermen out on the reefs off the Pass Christian Harbor on Wednesday to give them a preview of what to expect from the upcoming oyster season.

Catches resulting in an abundance of empty oyster shells led some fishermen to doubt the viability of the season, which typically begins in September or October.

“We’ve lost this season,” said oyster dredger Loe Nguyen. Nguyen said he’s also a shrimper, but that shrimping season hasn’t been good, either, since the oil spill.

He said he had a negative feeling about the upcoming oyster season when DMR officials dredged for oysters and pulled up catches with about 80 to 90 percent of the oysters dead.

“It’s bad news for the oyster fishermen,” said Nguyen.

A new round of Middle East peace talks began Thursday in Washington. Expectations have never been so low, but that also presents an opportunity for progress between the Israelis and Palestinians. German news Web site Spiegel Online analyzes the main issues at the talks.

Is it possible to reach peace in the Middle East? Israelis, Palestinians and negotiators from around the world - and the United States, in particular - are making another go at it. Still, expectations have never been lower. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ceremoniously opens the talks on Thursday, she will be flanked by two men who don't trust each other, but who at least have one thing in common: The status quo has been good for them both, bringing a degree of calm and economic growth.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are in no way the dream team for peace. The former leads a governing coalition made up of committed settlers and Arab-haters; the other rules over only 60 percent of his people - Abbas is only in charge of the West Bank, while the militant Hamas movement controls the Gaza Strip - and has already announced his plans to retire.

Given these circumstances, what can we expect from the talks in Washington? Spiegel Online analyzes the risks and opportunities and provides answers to the most important questions related to the peace process.

Environmental groups said it was the first time a court had demanded restrictions on selenium, a trace mineral commonly discharged from Appalachian surface mines, where the tops of mountains are blown away to expose coal.

Too much selenium in streams kills or deforms fish and other aquatic life, and in high doses it can damage human health. Selenium is one of a number of contaminants - including arsenic, cadmium and lead - that are discharged from mining operations and also are found in coal ash and other wastes from coal-fired power plants.

The ruling, filed Wednesday, applied to only two mines. Environmental groups that are fighting the spread of mountaintop mining said that if it became a precedent, however, it might make some mines too expensive to operate.

Judge Robert Chambers of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia gave Patriot about two years to get its selenium discharges down to the limits specified in its mining permits. He also ordered the company to post a $45 million letter of credit to ensure that it installs the equipment at the two mines.

The German central bank has formally asked German President Christian Wulff to remove controversial executive board member Thilo Sarrazin from the bank leadership following his disparaging comments about Muslim immigrants and his claim that all Jews share a specific gene.

Germany's Central Bank doesn't want him either. Just days after the Social Democrats announced that they would pursue an effort to throw Thilo Sarrazin, a former finance minister for the party in the government of the city-state of Berlin, out of the party, the Bundesbank announced on Thursday that it has sent a formal request to German President Christian Wulff to remove Sarrazin from his position on the bank's board.

"The executive board of the Deutsche Bundesbank Thursday took a unanimous decision to submit to the federal president an application for the dismissal of Dr. Thilo Sarrazin from the executive board," reads a brief statement on the bank's website.

The move comes just a day after Wulff had pressured the Central Bank to take action against Sarrazin. "I believe that there is much the executive board of the Bundesbank can do to ensure that the debate doesn't harm Germany - particularly internationally."

The 50 U.S. chief executives who laid off the most employees between November 2008 and April 2010 eliminated a total of 531,363 jobs, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, a research group that works for social justice and against wealth concentration.

In “CEO Pay and the Great Recession,” the institute said the $598 million in combined pay for the 50 executives would have paid one month’s worth of average-sized unemployment benefits for each of the laid-off workers.

The top 50 layoff firms reported a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009, the report said.

“These numbers all reflect a broader trend in Great Recession-era Corporate America: the relentless squeezing of worker jobs, pay and benefits to boost corporate earnings and maintain corporate executive paychecks at their recent bloated levels,” the authors wrote.

A mysterious accident in which one of Russia's most powerful spies was found dead on a Turkish beach has provoked speculation that the deputy head of the country's foreign military intelligence service had been murdered.

The badly decomposed body of Yuri Ivanov washed up last month on the shore of the Mediterranean, and was discovered by Turkish villagers in the province of Hatay, Turkish newspapers reported today. Reports suggest that he was quietly buried in Moscow over the weekend.

Ivanov was the second in command at Russia's foreign military intelligence unit, the GRU. The general had last been deployed to review military installations in Syria, amid Kremlin attempts to reassert its influence in the Middle East, reports suggested.

Major General Ivanov's body was found on August 16 but was only identified last week. Russia's Red Star newspaper confirmed his death on Saturday in a brief obituary. Russia's Defense Ministry declined to comment further.

Wednesday, however, the Russian media questioned the official version Maj. Gen. Ivanov's death - that he had died while going for a swim - and pointed out that, as a top-ranking spy, he would have been accompanied everywhere by bodyguards.

Iraq's poorest people live on trash heaps, sleep amongst the rats and drink polluted water. In the country with the world's third largest oil reserves, a million people live in misery, despite the fact that the U.S. has spent $53 billion on the country's reconstruction efforts.

The rats come at night, when the Saads are sleeping. They force their way through the spaces between the thrown-away household appliances that Saad Kadi Saad has piled up to form a wall around his part of the rubbish dump. They scamper around the shredded double mattress where the five-member family is crowded, and make their way to the outhouse that the family uses to relieve itself, which is just a few steps away from their outdoor bed.

Sadr City is Baghdad's poorhouse. Around 3 million impoverished people are crowded into the Shiite Islamist-controlled suburb in the eastern part of the Iraqi capital. The streets all have the same checkerboard pattern; and, in the 1960s, farmers from the Iraqi provinces were meant to find new and modern living spaces here. Instead, as many as five families live together in the small apartments at times today, and the sewage runs in the street. But for some it is even worse: The Saads would consider themselves lucky if they actually lived in Sadr City.

Instead, they live in and around the trash that is produced in the impoverished area. In order to get to their dwelling, they have to crawl through a hole in a blast wall on the edge of Sadr City. The slum located directly behind that hole could easily be in, say, Calcutta. Those who live here have fallen as far as one can.

Built on Waste

The settlement on the dump, in which the poorest of the poor in Baghdad live, is called Teneke Village. Teneke is the Arabic word for the metal canisters that motor oil is sold in. In Germany, the empty cans are considered hazardous waste which need special disposal. But in Iraq, the country with the world's third-largest oil reserves, residents of the slums use them to build shacks, and old oil leaks down the side of the wall. In this way, the Saads, for once in their life, come into contact with Iraq's black gold.

The two-thirds decline marks the first significant turnaround in two decades, researchers with the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center say. As a result, the U.S. illegal immigrant population may have fallen as much as 8 percent from 2007 to 2009.

"We've seen a reversal in what had been the long-term growth in the illegal immigrant population," researcher Jeffrey S. Passel said Wednesday.

An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants live in the United States. Possibly because of tighter enforcement measures and economic circumstances driving some immigrants back home, the total population is down from its estimated 2007 peak of 12 million.

The British prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques while editor of the News of the World and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in the illegal interception of voice-mail messages, according to allegations published by the New York Times. 

Coulson, who resigned as editor of the News of the World in January 2007 after its royal correspondent was jailed for intercepting voice-mail messages, has always insisted that he had no knowledge of illegal activity when he edited the paper or at any time as a journalist. He told a Commons select committee last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

The New York Times website published a trail to a story due to appear in its Sunday magazine. It made detailed allegations likely to bring intense new pressure on Coulson and the Metropolitan police force, which stands accused of favoring Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group by cutting short its investigation, withholding crucial evidence from prosecutors and failing to inform victims of the newspaper's crimes against them. Coulson declined to comment on the allegations. The News of the World and Scotland Yard have denied all the charges.

Coulson resigned after the imprisonment of his royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, for "hacking" into the voicemail messages of eight public figures. When the Guardian revealed last year that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims, Coulson said he had nothing to add to earlier denials of involvement, and the Conservative leader stood by him. David Cameron said: "I believe in giving people a second chance."

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said it's gaining ground against the insurgents, but violence is rising across the country, including in areas that were considered relatively safe.

Five more U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday, while three Afghan workers for the British charity Oxfam were killed by a roadside bomb in Badakhshan, which had been one of the safer places in the country.

The coalition says that casualties are rising as they push against the strongholds of the Taliban in the south and the allied Haqqani network in the east. The majority of casualties - some 60 percent - this year and in 2009 came from improvised explosive devices planted on roads and paths.