A total of 5,014 new and resale homes and condos were sold last month in nine San Francisco Bay area counties -- a 40 percent decrease from the same period a year ago, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Last month was the slowest September since the firm began keeping records in 1988.

Sales plunged 31.3 percent from August as lenders, stung by a nationwide credit crunch, put the brakes on many loans above the $417,000 mark, or so-called "jumbo" loans. Some of those jumbo mortgages are being written, but credit requirements have tightened and interest rates have risen, DataQuick reported.

The month before was not much better, NBC11 reported. New home sales in California fell nearly 45 percent in August compared to August 2006. In Santa Clara County sales dropped 39 percent in August. The median price of new homes fell 8 percent statewide.

Another 30 people were injured in Oklahoma late Wednesday when two tents collapsed at an Oktoberfest festival.

The storm packed hurricane-force gusts ranging from 65 mph to near 90 mph, said Steve Piltz, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tulsa. He said Tulsa County was under a tornado watch and severe thunderstorm warning when the storm hit the tents, but Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor said that less than an hour earlier the skies had been clear.

There were more than 7,000 people at the Tulsa, Okla., Oktoberfest when the tents collapsed at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Five of those hurt remained hospitalized Thursday, and three were in serious condition with head injuries, concussions and lacerations, said Tina Wells, spokeswoman for the Emergency Medical Services Authority. "It's easily one of the largest medical emergencies we've had in Tulsa in nearly a decade," Wells said.

"The wind came up incredibly quick and I don't think anyone can prepare for those kinds of winds," said Michael Sanders, the promotions chairman for the Oktoberfest event. Officials said the festival would resume Thursday afternoon with a smaller, more open-air tent.

"In a food surplus country like Myanmar, nobody should be going hungry, but millions are," WFP Regional Director Tony Banbury said. "It used to be the bread-basket of this region. It can produce a food surplus very easily, but it is now failing to provide the food that its population needs."

Given that Myanmar, then called Burma, was one of Asia's brightest economic prospects when it won independence from Britain in 1948, its health statistics are a shocking indictment of the military's 45 years in power. The U.N. estimates one-third of children under five are underweight and 10 percent are classified as "wasted", or acutely malnourished. Child mortality rates of 106 per 1,000 are among the worst in Asia.

"The world now is saying how concerned it is about the people of Myanmar," Banbury said. "But so far, with the exception of Australia, we have not seen that turn into donations."

Around 300,000 people lost their homes or crops after Uganda's heaviest rainfall in a generation. The United Nations says some may not get help before December. The UN World Food Programme's country director, Tesema Negash, told the BBC a conscious effort had been made to reach those most severely affected.

Nevertheless, almost 150,000 people had still received no food or medical assistance following the floods.

Of particular concern is the potential for the spread of diseases as the flood waters recede. Many of those who have lost homes or property were until recently living in camps for the internally displaced.

They had fled fighting in northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army rebels and the Ugandan army but had begun to move back to their villages as peace talks had brought greater security to the area. The effect of the floods has been particularly devastating for them.

"Russia is not really capitalizing on the fact that it is so close to the huge European market," Mandelson said at a conference in Brussels, according to the text of his speech. "In part because it lacks the stimulus of greater trade, the Russian economy is underdiversified." Mandelson also said EU-Russia ties were likely to come under strain over the next year as Russia changes presidents and the Kremlin has the chance to flex its diplomatic muscles over moves by Kosovo for independence and Iran's nuclear program.

"But what is really striking about the EU-Russia relationship is that political and strategic questions like these still share the same political stage with disputes over timber export taxes and the food export ban that is holding up a ... new EU-Russia bilateral treaty," he said. "Regardless of who is right or wrong, issues like these should not be allowed to dominate our relationship," Mandelson told a conference on EU-Russia ties.

"We should strive to resolve the remaining issues between us ahead of next week's EU-Russia Summit in Mafra," Mandelson said, referring to talks in Portugal on Oct. 26.

Katz said the petition drive was intended to send a message to Olmert that he has no mandate to negotiate Jerusalem's future. In a further push to keep Jerusalem on the agenda, the Likud faction will tour the walls of the Old City Tuesday and Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu will brief the foreign press at a strategic site overlooking the city.

Jerusalem city council opposition leader Nir Barkat has also started a campaign to save Jerusalem. The campaign is asking the public to sign a petition supporting keeping Jerusalem united on the website jer.org.il.
Thousands of stickers will be distributed with the slogan "Jerusalem should be strengthened, not divided." The campaign's goals are to push Olmert to remove Jerusalem from the agenda in Annapolis and to push the government and the Jewish world to invest in the city's future.

"There seems to be a feeling among our leaders that they can cut their losses and give up on keeping a united Jerusalem with a Jewish majority," Barkat said. "This feeling of desperation has to be replaced immediately and we intend to help make that happen."

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America has also expressed its opposition to any plans to divide Jerusalem and wrote to Olmert to urge him not to do the "unthinkable" in terms of ceding parts of Jerusalem.

When you listen to a version of the briefing he has been giving recently to President Bush and other top officials, you begin to understand why. He is convinced that al-Qaeda is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that will leave the ultimate terrorist signature -- a mushroom cloud.

We've all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists' job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. But it's worth listening to his warnings.

Mowatt-Larssen argues that for nearly a decade before Sept. 11, al-Qaeda was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As early as 1993, Osama bin Laden offered $1.5 million to buy uranium for a nuclear device, according to testimony presented in federal court in February 2001. When the al-Qaeda leader was asked in 1998 if he had nuclear or chemical weapons, he responded: "Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so."

Al-Qaeda proclaimed a religious rationale to justify the WMD attacks it was planning. In June 2002, a Kuwaiti-born cleric named Suleiman Abu Ghaith posted a statement on the Internet saying that "al-Qaeda has the right to kill 4 million Americans" in retaliation for U.S. attacks against Muslims.

Most chilling of all was Zawahiri's decision in March 2003 to cancel a cyanide attack in the New York subway system. He told the plotters to stand down because "we have something better in mind." What did that mean? More than four years later, we still don't know.

After 2004, the WMD trail went cold, according to Mowatt-Larssen. Many intelligence analysts have concluded that al-Qaeda doesn't have nuclear capability today. Mowatt-Larssen argues that a more honest answer is: We don't know.

The Corps said in a letter to the state's environmental commissioner that it was abiding by federal guidelines but that officials were now "exploring possible drought contingency options." Corps officials say state and federal regulations require them to send water downstream. Gov. Sonny Perdue said he will sue.

"The Corps' nonsensical action to further release vital water from Georgia's already depleted federal reservoirs must not stand," he said. "There is simply no scientific justification to operate these reservoirs in this manner during a historic drought like the one we are experiencing."

Millions of gallons of water are sent downstream to Florida and Alabama. The drought has heightened tensions among the three states, which already disagree on how to manage the region's limited water supply.Florida has complained the state is not sending enough water downstream to protect mussels, and the state's environmental chief sent a letter to the Corps on Wednesday that warned reducing the water flow "would severely impact Florida's natural resources."

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has urged the Corps to release more water from Georgia's lakes to help his state cope with the dry conditions."People in Georgia have been hurting. They've lost businesses, jobs and income. And we don't want to see any more harm come to anyone, but we have obligations to manage this basin." More than a quarter of the Southeast is covered by an "exceptional" drought -- the National Weather Service's worst drought category -- and Georgia is taking extreme measures to conserve water.

Officials last month banned virtually all outdoor watering across the northern half of the state, restaurants are being asked to serve water only at customer request and the governor has called on Georgians to take shorter showers.

With a dry winter in the forecast and an estimated 81 days of stored water left in Lake Lanier, the north Georgia reservoir that supplies water to about 3 million residents, the state is considering more restrictions regardless of the Corps' decision. "The crisis will not end anytime soon," Couch said. "So now is the time for all Georgians to come together as families and communities to be good stewards and be mindful of how they use water."

"The North's food inventory has almost hit the bottom, so unless there's an extraordinary measure to stabilise supply, there may be a situation next year similar to the late 1990s," a study by the Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI) said.

Famine in the late 1990s brought about by flooding, drought and years of mismanagement in the farm sector killed as many as 10 percent of the North's 22 million people, according to some estimates. The KREI study said North Korea will run about 1.4 million tonnes short of the food needed to feed its people and estimated damage to its farming sector at more than $275 million.

North Korea has said flooding in August was some of the worst to hit the country. It killed at least 600 people, left more than 300,000 homeless, destroyed thousands of buildings and wiped out more than 11 percent of its farm land, its official media said.

While Hitler's main legacy -- the murder of 6 million Jews and the destruction caused by the war -- is undisputed, the controversial views of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Eva Herman have grabbed the headlines in Germany for more than a week. Last month, public network NDR sacked Herman, a presenter on a flagship news program for 18 years, for saying she regretted that family values nurtured by the Nazis had been swept away.

The Nazis encouraged women to stay at home, look after their husbands, and produce and rear children. Last week the 48-year-old was thrown off a talk show after refusing to apologise and pointing out Germans were still driving on roads built during the Third Reich.

Many commentators have accused Herman, who rejects any links to far-right parties, of being provocative, dangerous and stupid but a Forsa poll showed a quarter of Germans think the Nazis had some good points. "The insecurity about how to deal with Nazism is huge. As is ignorance. Eva Herman has unwittingly kicked off a long-neglected debate," Stern magazine wrote in a cover story.

That debate is highly sensitive as Germany fights rising right-wing motivated crime and after a spate of racist attacks, especially in the former communist East.

Labor Department figures showed the number of people seeking unemployment benefit had leapt by the largest amount since February. The data boosted expectations that US interest rates could be cut further before the end of the year.

In afternoon trading on Wednesday, the euro hit a high of $1.4305, before pulling back slightly. It broke the previous record, set on 1 October, when one euro bought $1.4282.

The treaty is designed to replace the European Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. It includes plans for an EU foreign policy supremo, a longer-term president and fewer national veto rights. Officials are upbeat that a deal can be clinched in the Portuguese capital, but several countries still have concerns about some clauses of the document. Agreement at the two-day summit would end one of the most serious crises in the EU's history after the rejection of the constitution, the BBC's Oana Lungescu in Lisbon says.

"I hope this will not be the battle of Lisbon," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on the eve the talks. "We have a very good agreement on the table, the best on offer," he said. Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, said EU leaders were "getting very close indeed to a new treaty which will be called the Lisbon Treaty".

If the EU leaders approve the new text by Friday, they could formally sign it in December. Member states will then have a year to ratify the treaty so that it could come into effect, as planned, in January 2009. Despite Mr Brown's pledge to defend Britain's many opt-outs from the treaty, there are growing demands for a referendum. A poll published on Thursday shows that a majority of people in the EU's five biggest countries, including Britain, would like to have a say, although they are unlikely to get it.

The event, taking place in Vienna, then Linz and Graz, will allow would-be divorcees to consult lawyers about their rights and seek advice. The divorce rate in Austria hit an all time high of 50% in 2006, with 66% of marriages in Vienna ending in divorce. The two-day fair is being held under the motto "New beginning".

The Vienna event takes place over 27-28 October, with Saturday reserved for men, and Sunday for women, so couples can avoid awkward encounters and retain a degree of anonymity. Organiser Anton Barz says it is a world first and hopes it will become a twice-yearly event.

"Until now, I organised wedding fairs but while talking to associations and lawyers who told me about the difficulties of divorce, I had this idea," he said. Up to 20 exhibitors have registered so far, not only lawyers and mediators, but also estate agents, life-crisis experts, private detective firms and DNA laboratories offering paternity tests. One company will offer therapeutic package holidays for newly divorced people.

There will also be a series of lectures on subjects like how divorce affects children and coping as a single parent.

Apart from the dollar, the IMF's economists also think sterling is overvalued, while the Japanese yen and the Chinese renminbi remain too cheap compared with other currencies. In some of its strongest language to date, the fund's officials call on China to let its currency appreciate. Repeating its demand for "greater flexibility" of China's managed currency, the IMF added that such action was in China's best interests.

"Further upward flexibility of the renminbi, along with measures to reform the exchange rate regime and boost consumption, would also contribute to a necessary rebalancing of demand and to an orderly unwinding of global imbalances," the World Economic Outlook argued.

Even with slower growth forecast for the US and a weaker dollar, the IMF sees little improvement in the world's huge trade imbalances, embodied in the US trade deficit and corresponding surpluses in Asia and in oil exporters.

THE FUND THINKS THAT THE US CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICIT WILL REMAIN CLOSE TO 1.5 PER CENT OF WORLD OUTPUT UNTIL 2012, RAISING THE LIKELIHOOD OF A DISORDERLY PLUNGE IN THE DOLLAR AND PROTECTIONISM GROWING OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS.

The International Monetary Fund says that British property is even more inflated than in the US before prices plummeted - a disaster that caused turmoil in stock markets and saw many thousands lose their homes. In its half-yearly health check on the global economy, the IMF singles out three nations at severe risk.

"Housing markets have boomed in a number of fast-growing countries, most notably Ireland, Spain and the UK," it says. London would bear the brunt of any crash. The IMF added: "The extent of house price over-valuation may be considerably larger in some national markets in Europe than in the US, and there would clearly be a sizeable impact on the housing markets in the event of a widespread credit crunch."

In America, the collapse in housing prices and a rise in borrowing costs saw many home owners unable to keep up repayments on mortgages.