YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio: The giant, crumbling steel mills sit dark and idle, their smashed windows a silent reminder of the broken dream that ordinary Americans could earn a good life working a blue-collar job.

Jon Sustachek is a casualty of his home states drinking culture, but he also may be counted among its facilitators. He and his friends at once enabled and were influenced by one anothers drinking.

Chinese soldiers are hiking across washed-out roads and mud-blocked passageways in a desperate effort to get to survivors in the worst hit areas of this week's earthquake.

Oil money from the Gulf states is being invested in the creation of new cities – technological hubs, leisure paradises, ecological experiments – which are also attracting international speculation, says Akram Belkaïd .

Sections of the nation are seeing heavy, sustained population losses, reflecting the decline of family farming and the lack of rural jobs and economic opportunities.