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.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued a message to top officials in his administration: Stop hiring.

The governor summoned agency secretaries and department directors after the Sacramento Bee reported Monday that the size of the state work force overall remained essentially flat from January 2009 through June of this year.

Schwarzenegger did not order an official hiring freeze. But he wanted "to reiterate that we should not be hiring unless absolutely necessary," said the governor's spokesman, Aaron McLear.

The Sacramento Bee's report analyzed payroll data from the state controller's office covering an 18-month period that included 17 months that state workers were furloughed a total of 46 working days. One furlough day equals a roughly 5 percent monthly pay cut.

Capt. Paul Starks said that police were in communication with the gunman, and that he was making some demands. The suspect had "concerns" with the Discovery Corporation, he said.

A caller from One Discovery Place, the channel's headquarters, called police about 1 p.m. to report a man with a gun and possible explosives, said Angela Cruz, a police spokeswoman.

The area has been evacuated, she said.

A law enforcement source told CNN that the name of the suspect is James Lee.

Authorities sent a SWAT team and other resources, said Cpl. Dan Friz of the Montgomery County police. The gunman is in the lobby area, said Friz. Authorities were trying to get in touch with him.

U.S. politicians are coming under pressure to increase regulation of the country's largest egg producers after a federal inspection of two companies at the center of a salmonella scare revealed breaches of basic hygiene.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspections of Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, both in Iowa, found piles of chicken manure up to 2.5 meters (8 feet) high beneath the hens' cages. Employees crushed flies underfoot and live and dead maggots were seen in a manure pit.

At Wright County pigeons roosted in an air vent and wild birds flew in and out of the chicken house. Mice were observed at both farms, as were chickens which had escaped their cages and were seen moving between manure piles and caged areas.

Water used to clean the eggs was tested and found to contain the same salmonella bacteria that has been identified as the cause of the largest outbreak of the disease in the U.S. since records began more than 30 years ago, with 1,500 people infected.

Between them, the two farms have recalled more than half a billion eggs, 380 million from Wright County and 170 million from Hillandale. The two producers have almost 8 million hens.

Food safety experts said the massive scale of the two operations was typical in an industry that has seen production concentrated in fewer and fewer gigantic farms. In 1987, 95% of laying hens were in the hands of 2,500 farms. Today, that figure is accounted for by 192 egg producers.

Thilo Sarrazin's comments about Muslims have triggered outrage in Germany and abroad, but have met with willing listeners among the general public. His rhetoric is slowly bringing about change in Germany, transforming it from a tolerant society into one dominated by fear and Islamophobia.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin knew how to fight the plague. He knew catchy, seductive tunes and was successful against the scourge with his unconventional methods. But because society paid him no tribute and refused to pay him the wages he had been promised for his service, he decided to take a radical step and lure away the children of Hamelin. In doing so, he destroyed the very community he had once set out to save.

It is unclear when and why Dr. Thilo Sarrazin, 65, the child of a doctor and a Prussian landowner's daughter, who supposedly did a decent job during his time as finance minister for the city-state of Berlin and who had unusual ideas, became a seducer. Did he see himself as a future chancellor, and was he bitterly waiting in the wings to be nominated by his Social Democratic Party (SPD)? Would he have preferred to become the CEO of Deutsche Bank instead of "merely" a member of the executive board of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank? Does he relish the role of agent provocateur and popular guest on German talk shows? And is he truly worried about the absurd concern that Germany is "doing away with itself" - as the title of his new book claims - by tolerating too many foreign influences in its society?

Opinions may differ among those who seek to interpret Sarrazin's behavior. The important thing is that he is someone who has gone from being a tough-talking, audacious politician and anarchic prankster (see quote gallery) to a racist anti-Muslim who makes up nonsense about the genetic basis of intelligence and the "German-Jewish origins of intelligence research." Those ideas have prompted him to voice his concerns over Germany's "cultural identity" and "national character," and to blame Muslim immigrants and their supposed non-culture for all the problems of integration - ignoring the fact that both the immigrants and the host country have a responsibility.

"We," he says, referring to German society as a whole, are unavoidably becoming less intelligent because Muslims, who Sarrazin characterizes as being unwilling to integrate, alien and cognitively challenged, are producing the most children in Germany. Sarrazin magnanimously allows that there are, of course, exceptions in the Islamic world, perhaps a few intelligent Turks here and there. But his views essentially eliminate the need to even address the issue of a controlled immigration policy, of which Sarrazin himself has been such a vehement proponent in the past. Sarrazin, in one of his typical turns of phrase, said that Muslims ought to "disappear." From that point of view, integration is unimaginable, possible only through death - which is naturally also one way to solve the problem.

Women and girls were raped. Men slaughtered. Refugees killed with machetes and sticks. A new United Nations report describes an orgy of violence in Congo between 1993 and 2003, meticulously documenting how law and humanity were abandoned. It also accuses Rwanda of atrocities in Congo - something that has not gone down well in Kigali.

The report is over 500 pages long. It is one of the most comprehensive investigations into war crimes in the history of the United Nations. Even though it has not even been released yet, it has caused serious diplomatic tensions in New York, Congo and Rwanda.

Two dozen U.N. inspectors meticulously examined the mass murders in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003. They assessed reports, viewed film documents and interviewed thousands of witnesses. They collated everything that was considered significant. The draft report has already been leaked and it is a documentation of horror.

The investigators describe how for years Rwanda-backed rebel groups hunted, tortured and massacred Hutu refugees in Congo, or Zaire as it was then known. Schools, hospitals, refugee camps, children, women, the aged - nothing and no one was safe from the murderous gangs on both sides. By no means were the pursuers from Rwanda the only ones to perpetrate crimes. The report describes the massive country as corrupt and rotten, a place where human rights, justice and humanitarian values had lost any worth decades ago.

Ethnic Conflicts Across Congo

The decline of the country began long before the First Congo War of 1996 to 1998 and the overthrow and exile of the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. At the end of 1991 the Congolese from the copper-rich province of Katanga in the south of the country had started to persecute, displace and murder people who had migrated from the Kasai region. The conflict was fueled by Mobutu, who felt threatened by many opposition politicians from Kasai.

Edgar Valdez-Villarreal, 37, was captured in the town of Lerma in the state of Mexico, about 20 miles from the capital, marking the third major accused drug lord to fall in Mexico in less than a year and giving a boost to President Felipe Calderon.

Government spokesmen said a massive operation with 1,200 officers took part in the culminating moments of a yearlong effort to capture Valdez-Villarreal.

The arrest dealt "a high impact blow to organized crime," said Alejandro Poire, a spokesman for Calderon's national security team. Poire said Valdez-Villarreal had ties to gangs operating in the United States, Central and South America.

More than 28,000 people have died since Calderon came to office in late 2006 and deployed the armed forces to battle drug cartels, and many Mexicans are weary of the soaring human costs of the war.

The CIA is alleged to have been paying an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for information. Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer spoke to Spiegel about why fighting corruption in Afghanistan is all but impossible.

SPIEGEL: The CIA is alleged to have paid Mohammed Zia Salehi, an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, for information. Has the CIA damaged the Americans' credibility?

Michael Scheuer: That's absolutely good recruitment. I think you recruit whoever gives you access to a target. It might be someone who is a terrorist or it might be someone who's a corrupt official. I think any other intelligence agency would be delighted to have someone to give them information about what Karzai is thinking because he's such a dishonest man.

SPIEGEL: The U.S. now has to face accusations that it is financing the very corruption it is promising to fight.

Scheuer: Not really. President Obama knew about this. His intelligence advisers knew about this. If he's smart I'm sure the president would want to have somebody close to Karzai to know what's going on. The U.S.  government and other governments are lying when they say that they can clean up corruption and win the war.

SPIEGEL: Is Washington being energetic enough in trying to fight corruption?

Could stocks be headed for another September swoon?

"If history is any guide, for it's never gospel, we may be in for another rough ride," says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor's.

Mutual fund managers tend to clean house after Labor Day, taking profits on winning stocks and weeding out portfolios before putting out the rosiest possible end-of-quarter reports for their clients.

Workers coming back from summer breaks are also inclined to sell stocks as they get their financial affairs in order. Any festering issues with the economy or stocks during the summer, when trading volume is light, tend to get put off until fall.

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."

U.K. charity Oxfam has been forced to suspend operations in a once-peaceful northern province of Afghanistan  after three of its staff were killed and two injured by a roadside bomb on Monday.

The attack on one of the biggest British aid charities working in Afghanistan came as U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg claimed there was "discernible progress" in the restive southern Helmand province and told British forces they were "turning the corner".

Clegg, visiting Helmand and Kabul, said the "clock is ticking" down to the end of the U.K.'s combat mission in the country in 2015 and that more urgency was needed to pursue a peace process with the Taliban.

But the murder of aid workers in Badakhshan in the north highlighted how insurgents have in the past year dramatically increased their presence in the region.

The figures released Wednesday show the economy expanded 1.2% in the April-June quarter from the previous quarter, accelerating from revised growth of 0.7% in the first quarter.

Australia weathered the global economic downturn better than most developed countries, helped by a A$42 billion (£24 billion) stimulus package and China's ravenous demand for raw materials.

Bob Cunneen, senior economist with AMP Capital Investors, said the numbers were surprisingly robust.

"This sort of GDP result is exceptional and won't be the rule, but it also underscores how well Australia is doing with the China growth story," he said.

The Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 135 mph (215 kilometers), was expected to remain over the open ocean before turning north and running parallel to the U.S. coast, potentially reaching the North Carolina coastal region by late Thursday or early Friday. It was projected then to curve back out to sea, perhaps swiping New England or far-eastern Canada.

"We can't totally rule out a very close approach to either of the Cape Hatteras areas or Cape Cod and southern New England as the storm progresses further," said Bill Read, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Earl delivered a glancing blow to several small Caribbean islands Monday, tearing roofs off of homes and cutting electricity to people in Anguilla, Antigua, and St. Maarten. Cruise ships were diverted and flights canceled across the region. But there were no reports of death or injury.

Thilo Sarrazin's comments about Muslims have triggered outrage in Germany and abroad, but have met with willing listeners among the general public. His rhetoric is slowly bringing about change in Germany, transforming it from a tolerant society into one dominated by fear and Islamophobia.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin knew how to fight the plague. He knew catchy, seductive tunes and was successful against the scourge with his unconventional methods. But because society paid him no tribute and refused to pay him the wages he had been promised for his service, he decided to take a radical step and lure away the children of Hamelin. In doing so, he destroyed the very community he had once set out to save.

It is unclear when and why Dr. Thilo Sarrazin, 65, the child of a doctor and a Prussian landowner's daughter, who supposedly did a decent job during his time as finance minister for the city-state of Berlin and who had unusual ideas, became a seducer. Did he see himself as a future chancellor, and was he bitterly waiting in the wings to be nominated by his Social Democratic Party (SPD)? Would he have preferred to become the CEO of Deutsche Bank instead of "merely" a member of the executive board of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank? Does he relish the role of agent provocateur and popular guest on German talk shows? And is he truly worried about the absurd concern that Germany is "doing away with itself" - as the title of his new book claims - by tolerating too many foreign influences in its society?

Opinions may differ among those who seek to interpret Sarrazin's behavior. The important thing is that he is someone who has gone from being a tough-talking, audacious politician and anarchic prankster (see quote gallery) to a racist anti-Muslim who makes up nonsense about the genetic basis of intelligence and the "German-Jewish origins of intelligence research." Those ideas have prompted him to voice his concerns over Germany's "cultural identity" and "national character," and to blame Muslim immigrants and their supposed non-culture for all the problems of integration - ignoring the fact that both the immigrants and the host country have a responsibility.

"We," he says, referring to German society as a whole, are unavoidably becoming less intelligent because Muslims, who Sarrazin characterizes as being unwilling to integrate, alien and cognitively challenged, are producing the most children in Germany. Sarrazin magnanimously allows that there are, of course, exceptions in the Islamic world, perhaps a few intelligent Turks here and there. But his views essentially eliminate the need to even address the issue of a controlled immigration policy, of which Sarrazin himself has been such a vehement proponent in the past. Sarrazin, in one of his typical turns of phrase, said that Muslims ought to "disappear." From that point of view, integration is unimaginable, possible only through death - which is naturally also one way to solve the problem.

In Baghdad, all leave for Iraqi soldiers and police was canceled and new checkpoints were set up across the city, adding another level of frustration to Iraqis struggling to get through 115-degree heat amid power cuts and water shortages - many of them fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

U.S. forces prepared for a possible wave of rocket and mortar attacks aimed at the American embassy in the protected Green Zone and a former palace that is home to U.S. military headquarters near the international airport ahead of a ceremony Wednesday to mark the end of the U.S. combat mission. Iraqi and U.S. troops have been sweeping through neighborhoods from where rocket attacks have been launched with increasing frequency and numbers over the last several weeks. Most are generally attributed to Shiite militias.

A fleet of military helicopters rumbled over Baghdad neighborhoods carrying U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to his appointments with Iraqi leaders. At least one rocket landed near the Green Zone, though there were no reports of injuries.

The rocket and mortar attacks, which can be launched from miles away and are generally attributed to Shiite militias, have increased in frequency and accuracy over the last several weeks.

The prime minister of Greenland has accused Greenpeace of threatening the safety of oil workers and the environment after four activists forced a controversial deep-sea exploration rig in the Arctic to shut down Tuesday. 

Just before dawn, the four campaigners used three high-speed inflatable boats to evade the Danish navy before clambering on to the British-owned rig and slinging mountaineering-type platforms beneath it about 15 meters above the sea. The raid forced the Edinburgh-based oil exploration firm Cairn Energy to suspend drilling, escalating tensions between the Greenlandic government and Greenpeace.

Kuupik Kleist, the government's socialist prime minister, denounced the campaigners' actions, claiming they were damaging the economy of the country, now largely independent from Denmark, and ignoring the strict environmental and safety regulations Greenland had imposed on oil companies. "This is clearly an illegal act, ignoring the rules of democracy," he said in a statement.

"The cabinet regards Greenpeace's action as very serious and an illegal attack on the country's constitutional rights. It is worrying that Greenpeace, in their hunt for media exposure, violate security rules made to protect human lives and the environment."

The Greenpeace action follows a standoff between the campaigner's ship, Esperanza and an armed Danish frigate and Greenland police vessels in Baffin Bay, west of Greenland, where Cairn Energy is hoping to uncover major new reserves of oil or gas.

Thousands of Germans, including teenagers, were forced to toil in Stalin's labor camps after World War II. When they were finally were released their country had been divided into east and west. Karl Heinz Vogeley and Lothar Scholz recall how no one was interested in their fate when they returned.

Father! When Karl Heinz Vogeley climbs down from the train at 3:30 a.m. clutching his old wooden suitcase, his relatives are there to greet him. He runs toward the man who stands waiting on the platform at the Haldensleben train station - and only then notices that it isn't his father, but his uncle. His father is standing off to one side, he has grown old. And they haven't seen each other for a long, long time. "Papa," the son asks, "where is mama?"

"Just come on home first," his father replies. But when Karl Heinz asks again, he says "mama isn't with us anymore."

Karl Heinz Vogeley had been away for eight long years, most of which he spent in a Soviet labor camp. Now, at a train station in communist East Germany, he learns that his mother died while he languished as a political prisoner. It is Dec. 28, 1953, Vogeley is 24 years old.

At about the same time, Lothar Scholz, just a few months older than Karl Heinz, is still locked up in Camp 14, some 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow. The convoy which eventually carried Vogeley back home left the camp in June 1953. "The others were called and they were taken away. I was the only one left behind," Scholz recalls. It was several months before he too was released. One day, an officer asked him where he would go if he were released, to East Germany or to the West. Scholz thought it was a trap, but then he blurted: "I don't care! Anywhere where there aren't any communists!"

Four Israelis were shot dead near a Jewish settlement on the outskirts of the volatile West Bank city of Hebron tonight, on the eve of the first face-to-face talks between Israel and the Palestinians for more than 20 months.

Gunmen opened fire on a car on a main road close to Hebron, according to the Israeli military. Early reports said that all the victims were from the same family, and included a pregnant woman.

To night Hamas' armed wing claimed responsibility for the attack stating the "Qassam Brigades announces its full responsibility for the heroic operation in Hebron". The group also warned more operations would follow: "This attack is a chain in a series of attacks, some have been executed, and others will follow," spokesman Abu Ubaida told Reuters.

A military spokeswoman said the army was at the scene, evacuating the bodies, and that soldiers were continuing to search the area.

Hebron - a turbulent city in which a core of hard-line ideological Jewish settlers are protected by hundreds of Israeli troops amid a Palestinian population of more than 100,000 - has been the scene of numerous violent incidents.