But on Nov. 30, for millions of people here in Orange County, pulling the lever will be the start of a long, intense process to purify the sewage into drinking water - after a hard scrubbing with filters, screens, chemicals and ultraviolet light and the passage of time underground.

On that Friday, the Orange County Water District will turn on what industry experts say is the world's largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water to increase drinking water supplies. They and others hope it serves as a model for authorities worldwide facing persistent drought, predicted water shortages and projected growth.

The process, called by proponents "indirect potable water reuse" and "toilet to tap" by the wary, is getting a close look in several cities.

There is rising concern that the U.S. economy will slip into recession next year dragging many Western economies - including Britain - down with it as the global credit crisis worsens. The Washington-based International Monetary Fund has warned of a "perfect storm" caused by surging oil prices and the turbulence on the world's financial markets.

Its chief economist, Simon Johnson, said: "The combination of the global credit crunch and high oil prices could bring a big reduction in international trade from which no one would be immune." Mr Johnson cautioned that the current projections for the American economy and those of Europe are "too optimistic" and would have to be downgraded.

"The Annapolis conference was already a failure," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told journalists after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday. The U.S. could sponsor a hundred such meetings, he added, and the result would be the same. In Gaza, which is effectively ruled by the fundamentalist Hamas group, anti-Annapolis protesters filled the streets. "They can go to thousands of conferences and we will say in the name of the Palestinian people that we do not accept," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told the demonstrators.

The warnings are not to be taken lightly, if history is anything to go by: Iran and Hamas have played a spoiler role in the past, and they could well do so again. In 2000, the once-promising Oslo Accords signed at the White House in 1993 collapsed. The blame was put on a failed attempt to negotiate a final historic peace deal at Camp David, which resulted in a new Palestinian uprising and fierce Israeli counterattack.

But the peace process was effectively derailed three years earlier by Iran and two groups to which it supplies political, diplomatic, financial and military support. In 1996, Hamas launched its first major wave of suicide bombings in Israel. At the same time, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hizballah escalated attacks on Israel.

The violence helped defeat then Prime Minister Shimon Peres, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the Oslo Accords, giving victory to hard-liner Benjamin Netanyhu, a staunch opponent, like Iran and Hamas, of that peace deal.

Since then, Iran, Hamas and Hizballah have grown even stronger. Capitalizing on the failure of the Fatah party of Yasser Arafat to deliver a Palestinian state in negotiations, Hamas triumphed in parliamentary elections last year. For its part, Hizballah not only drove Israeli forces out of Lebanon after a 22-year occupation, but was hailed in the Arab world last year for resisting a massive Israeli incursion into Lebanon.

But in Juarez's neighborhood, as elsewhere, the militia retains an insidious weapon: a presence within the Iraqi government's security forces. On a recent night patrol Juarez and his men went door to door, discussing everything from electricity to security with residents. One home had a picture of Sadr, the militia chieftain, on display in the living room. It turned out that the man of the house was a member of the Iraqi security forces.

The militia continues to intimidate civilians, a situation made worse by residents' lack of faith in their own police and army. The danger is that once the U.S. military begins reducing its presence over the next several months Baghdad's civilians will once again find themselves at the mercy of the militia.

On the same patrol where Juarez and his men ran across the soldier with militia ties, they stopped by the home of a man who had occasionally filled them in on developments in the neighborhood. He told the Americans they needed to contact him less frequently; their visits were attracting attention and he feared he'd be killed as a collaborator. He said he could not rely on the Iraqi police or the government for protection, since he believed they were all part of the militia.

The American asked for the names of policemen working with the Mahdi Army. "You need to narrow it down, make a list," he said. "It's all," the man replied, as the Americans prepared to depart. "All. Not one, two, three. All."

A Slovak police spokesman told journalists that the authorities in Slovakia and Hungary had been monitoring the activities of the alleged nuclear traders for several months before arresting them. They were detained in eastern Slovakia and eastern Hungary, near the common borders with Ukraine.

Police declined to provide any details of the radioactive substance, but said they had seized the material and sent it for examination. The location of the operation suggested that the material had been smuggled from the former Soviet Union, either Russia or Ukraine.

Slovak police said that the detained men had been attempting to sell the radioactive material for $1m (£480,000).

Toy makers and retailers are filling shelves with new tech devices for children ages 3 and up, and sometimes even down. They say they are catering to junior consumers who want to emulate their parents and are not satisfied with fake gadgets. Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes magazine and an industry analyst for 24 years, said there had been "a huge jump in the last 12 months" in toys that involve looking at a screen.

"The bigger toy companies don't even call it the toy business anymore," Mr. Silver said. "They're in the family entertainment business and the leisure business. What they're saying is, 'We're vying for kids' leisure time.'"
Technology has been slowly permeating the toy business for a number of years, but the trend has been accelerating. On Wednesday, six of the nine best-selling toys for 5-to-7-year-olds on Amazon.com were tech gadgets. For all of 2006, three of the top nine toys for that age group were tech-related.

Donald L. Shifrin, a pediatrician based in Seattle and the spokesman for the academy, said tech toys cannot replace imaginative play, where children create rich narratives and interact with peers or parents.

"Are we creating media use as a default for play?" Dr. Shifrin asked. "When kids want to play, will they ask, 'Where's the screen?'"

"It is now vital to act seriously to put peace talks back on track. The alternatives to this are dangerous to the region and the entire world," the paper wrote. "When Syria announced that it would attend [the conference], it wanted to prove to the world that it is a peace-loving nation, and that it would go with Arab consensus and the Arab peace initiative and make the greatest efforts in order to return its rights and its stolen lands," the editorial continued.

The piece was not without criticism. Attacking US policy in the Middle East, the editorial claimed Arabs no longer trusted the administration. "The Annapolis conference was perhaps the last chance for the American government to demonstrate the sincerity of its intentions and to improve its image to Arab citizens. Arabs have always doubted the neutrality of the American position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the past seven years the Bush administration has supported Israeli policy and repeated Israeli statements like a parrot," the editorial stated.

In an extremely brief ceremony in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, capping three days of intense diplomatic wrangling, Bush pledged to bring the full bearing of the United States to the peacemaking efforts.

"The US will be actively engaged in the process," Bush told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as they stood by his side following a three-way meeting in the Oval Office. "We will use our power to help you."

Such an emphatic declaration of American support has until recently been lacking in efforts to reconcile Israelis and Palestinians, and both sides said they welcomed the involvement as an important component to achieving peace.

Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican's office for migrants, said an agreement to restart peace talks, reached Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland, was encouraging and that he hoped by this time next year concrete measures would be under way. "It is my hope that all the parts of the problem are taken into consideration such as that of the Palestinian refugees, who like all other refugees, have the right to return to their homeland," Martino said.

The Palestinian refugee issue, which has bedeviled previous Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, was not directly mentioned in the Annapolis statement, though the agreement pledges to resolve all "core issues" by the end of next year. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would agree to a return of the refugees only within the borders of a future Palestinian state.

The French president vowed that those responsible for violence against officers would be brought to justice. Police warned they were dealing with "urban guerrillas" - with guns - after rioting which began in suburbs north of the capital spread to other parts of the country following the deaths of two teenagers in Paris in a crash with a police car.

Fears that violence could erupt in other parts of France were realised last night as unrest hit the southern town of Toulouse. A fire broke out at a library in the Reynerie neighbourhood of Toulouse and about a dozen cars were set on fire.

Six Socialist mayors, including the mayor of Villiers-le-Bel, launched an appeal for calm, asking for parents to keep their children indoors after dark. But they gave warning that the violence could spread. Forty per cent of Villiers-le-Bel's population of 27,000 are under 25 and 40 per cent of them are unemployed.

Sanders said Muslim claims to Jewish holy sites including the Western Wall were preposterous, and he voiced dismay over the Israeli government's willingness to overlook these remarks. "What bothers me is that Israel does not take a strong stance against these allegations," he said.

The rare criticism from some of the country's staunchest political supporters comes amid burgeoning relations between Israel and the predominantly pro-Israel evangelical Christian community around the world.

State officials in Des Moines confirmed to WND that at least 80 children whose parents were alarmed by the "Gender-Bender Day" during homecoming week at the city's East High School have moved their children from the various districts in the area into homeschooling plans. Several parents told WND that the number could be in the hundreds.

State Education Department officials said they had provided information to the church members about their rights and responsibilities should they choose to start a private school, or pursue homeschooling options.
"Let us see what the word of God says about the matter" wrote the parent blogger. "Deut. 22:5. The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."

A mother whose children were taken out of the public schools because of the cross-dressing promotion didn't want to be identified, but told WND she knows of probably 200 families who filled out state-required paperwork to withdraw their children from public schools. "What it is, is that we're following the Bible," she told WND. "There was a situation that took place, which was the gender bender day. Our children were to participate in the cross-dressing. When they refused they were told they would get a bad grade... The situation came out, and everybody was disgusted," she said. "Well, we're not doing it. All we did was pull our kids out. Nothing more to be said or done."

"These groups are planning to come to Tehran within the next week or two and they are all the Palestinian groups that are struggling for the freedom of their land," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters. Iran is one of the most vocal backers of Palestinian militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad and pledged millions of dollars in 2006 to the then Hamas government crippled by a Western aid cut.

The Islamic republic does not recognise Israel and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has provoked outrage by calling for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map. Elham indicated the Tehran meeting would be a riposte to the conference bringing together Israeli and Palestinian leaders which started in Annapolis outside Washington on Tuesday. "It means that the Annapolis conference is not representing the Palestinians and not talking on their behalf, but on the contrary is moving against their rights," he said.

More than a dozen Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran's top regional ally Syria, have sent representatives, leaving Tehran conspicuously isolated. On Monday Ahmadinejad told Saudi King Abdullah in a telephone call that he "wished" the kingdom was not taking part in the peace conference. Tehran's arch foe Washington, which is hosting the meeting, dismissed the Iranian criticism as "not surprising," and charged that Tehran backs the extremists sidelined by the talks.

Bush cautioned it would take time for Israelis and Palestinians to reach an agreement. The goal is to reach an accord within 14 months by the end of Bush's presidency. "I don't think it's a risk to try for peace," the president said in an Oval Office interview with reporters from The Associated Press. "I think that's an obligation." Bush said a vision of the outlines of a Palestinian state would help settle the divide between Abbas' Fatah Party and the militant Hamas movement that governs the Gaza Strip.

"One of the powers of having a state defined is that it'll serve as a catalyst to marginalize extremists who have no vision; at least they don't have a positive vision," he said. "What you're watching is the development of a state which becomes something that people like Abbas and reasonable moderate people can say, 'Support us and this is what you'll end up having; support the other bunch and you'll have war.'"

He said there was little possibility of a state, though, if the Palestinian territories remain divided between governance by Fatah and Hamas. "There can be a vision for what a Palestinian state would look like," Bush said. "But it's going to be very difficult for that Palestinian state to come into being so long as there are terrorists who are able to exploit a weak government and launch attacks against their neighbors."

As the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with assets estimated at $650 billion, it poured money in the past into low-return, low-profile investments or small emerging market deals, unlike its flashy emirate neighbor, Dubai. But a falling dollar and a growing cash pile are spurring Abu Dhabi to change strategy, according to analysts, economists and deal makers, who said that more big-ticket deals might be ahead.

Flush with cash from its oil exports, Abu Dhabi turned to Wall Street, using a complicated transaction late Monday to buy 4.9 percent of Citigroup, acquiring high-yield, convertible stock that must be exchanged for common stock between March 2010 and September 2011. Abu Dhabi is the largest oil producer of the seven United Arab Emirates and is eager to spend its petrodollars.

The Abu Dhabi fund had recently been searching for potentially undervalued banks in which to make a large investment. Citigroup's shares had dropped to just above $30 Monday from $57 in late December. The shares remained weak Tuesday, even as the Dow Jones industrial average rose nearly 200 points.