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The number of homes scheduled for auction in Los Angeles rose 14,505 compared with 3,797 in the same period a year earlier, PropertyShark said in a report distributed by e-mail. In Miami-Dade County, the number climbed to 2,677 from 1,282.

“The foreclosure chart for Los Angeles is unfortunately starting to look like a ski jump,” Adina Dumitru, a member of PropertyShark’s foreclosure products team, said in the statement.

From this, his foes inferred that since it was Hitchens’ belief that America did not stoop to the latter, the practice of waterboarding – known to be perpetrated by US forces against certain “high-value clients” in Iraq and elsewhere – must fall under the former heading.

Enraged by what they saw as an exercise in elegant but offensive sophistry, some of the writer’s critics suggested that Hitchens give waterboarding (which may sound like some kind of fun aquatic pastime, but is probably best summarised as enforced partial drowning) a whirl, just to see what it was like. Did the experience feel like torture?

And amazingly, he has done just that. In August’s edition of Vanity Fair, you can read all about it, and see more photographs of the “wheezing, paunchy, 59-year-old scribbler”, his head hooded, being subjected to this most terrifying of ordeals by veterans of the US Special Forces. A video is due to be posted soon at vf.com, though that may be a bit too much to bear.

So what did it feel like? Hitchens recounts how he was lashed tightly to a sloping board, then, “on top of the hood, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose … I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and – as you might expect – inhale in turn.”

That, he says, “brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, flooded more with sheer panic than with water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal” and felt the “unbelievable relief” of being pulled upright.

The “official lie” about waterboarding, Hitchens says, is that it “simulates the feeling of drowning”. In fact, “you are drowning – or rather, being drowned”.

Rights group Liberty and its Irish counterparts British Irish Rights Watch and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties said Britain set up an eavesdropping facility in northwestern England that intercepted much of the telephone, fax and e-mail traffic between Britain and Ireland in the 1990s.

The Defence Ministry site in Capenhurst, Cheshire, intercepted all public telecommunications carried by microwave radio between two British Telecom radio stations between 1990 and 1997, the rights groups said.

Much of their communications would have passed through those radio stations and would therefore have been picked up by the Capenhurst Electronic Test Facility, which was designed to intercept 10,000 simultaneous telephone channels, they said.

For security reasons, Britain neither confirmed nor denied the statements made about its surveillance activities, but it agreed that the court could presume some of the civil liberties’ groups communications were intercepted.

“The court recalled that it had previously found that the mere existence of legislation which allowed communications to be monitored secretly had entailed a surveillance threat for all those to whom the legislation might be applied,” the court said in a statement.

“In the applicants’ case, the Court therefore found that there had been an interference with their rights as guaranteed by Article 8,” the court said referring to the article in the European Charter of Human Rights on the right to privacy.

The 1985 Interception of Communications Act gave British authorities “extremely broad discretion” to intercept communications between Britain and another country, it added.

Times were tough enough in Detroit before gasoline hit $4 per gallon, but in the past two months the outlook has taken a turn for the worse.

Shares of General Motors are trading at prices last seen in the 1950s, their value cut in half in just eight weeks. Ford and Chrysler are in even worse shape, analysts say.

The sobering implication: The Big Three may have to become the Big Two, and even survivors will have a tough road ahead.

Bankruptcy is not a near-term threat, but the three carmakers are fast burning through cash reserves. And while government assistance – or perhaps an energy policy that supports new automotive technologies – could become a lifeline, it can’t substitute for the hard work of transforming product lines.

“The rate of cash usage is alarming,” says Gregg Lemos Stein, an auto analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York, which has put all three carmakers on “credit watch” to review the default risk on their debts. “They’ve never been lower than this,” he adds, referring to S&P’s current B rating on their debt.

The current debt ratings place the Detroit automakers in what’s known as “junk bond” status, below the typical quality range known as investment grade. The good news: Bankruptcy or default isn’t an imminent risk, Mr. Lemos Stein says, because the companies headed into this crisis with cash on hand.

But the credit watch, in place as of June 20, means that analysts are concerned about a deteriorating outlook.

“We believe all three companies currently have ample liquidity for at least the rest of 2008 as measured by cash balances, available bank facilities, and … unencumbered assets” that could be sold, S&P analysts said in their recent report.

The case began like hundreds of others filed since the U.S. housing boom spawned a rise in sales of adjustable rate loans. Susan and Bryan Andrews of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, claimed that lender Chevy Chase Bank FSB had hidden the true terms of what they believed was a good deal on a low-interest loan.

In their 2005 lawsuit, the couple said the loan’s interest rate had more than doubled by their second monthly payment from the 1.95 percent rate they thought was locked in for five years. The interest rate rose well above the 5.75 percent fixed-rate loan they had refinanced to pay their children’s college tuition.

The Andrews filed the case seeking class action status; and in early 2007, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that the bank had violated the Truth in Lending Act, or TILA, and that thousands of other Chevy Chase borrowers could join them as plaintiffs.

The judge transformed the case from a run-of-the-mill class action to a potential nightmare for the U.S. banking industry by also finding that the borrowers could force the bank to cancel, or rescind, their loans. That decision was stayed pending an appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to rule any day.

The idea of canceling tainted loans to stem a tide of foreclosures has caught hold in other quarters; a lawsuit filed last week by the Illinois attorney general asks a court to rescind or reform Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) mortgages originated under “unfair or deceptive practices.”

‘MASSIVE CLASS SUITS’

“Somebody is going to end up getting hurt,” resident Andrea Fine said. “The homeowners are tense. We are all on edge. For the first time in my life I’m really scared to live in my home.”

Homeowners living near and on Sanford Avenue in Sanford said crime is so bad that some of them have been robbed three times.

“We were told they would come back and they came back,” homeowner Pat Doughty said.

She is one of several residents who have armed themselves and plan to go to extremes to protect their property.

“My next thing is to put electric and probably some barbed wire or something,” Doughty said. “I’m shooting the next person who comes in. Don’t come on my property anymore.”

Doughty said she is moving because of the crime.

“My kids call every day to make sure we are safe,” Doughty said. “They want us to move and we are going to move because we can’t put up with the crime.”

Families said they want more police patrolling. But plans to add 10 more Sanford police officers could be in jeopardy because of budget cuts, Local 6’s Erik von Ancken reported.

About 14.197 million acres were sown in April and May, up 6.8 percent from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a report. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected 14.312 million acres. Wheat futures have tumbled 35 percent from a record $13.495 a bushel on Feb. 27.

“When prices get that high, you find every nook and cranny to plant on,” said Darrell Holaday, the president of Advanced Market Concepts in Manhattan, Kansas. “This report sets a negative tone for the week.”

Starbucks shares, which have been falling steadily for nearly two years, jumped 72 cents, or 4.6 percent, in extended trading after the announcement. They had lost 12 cents to close Tuesday at $15.62.

Seattle-based Starbucks did not say which stores will be closed, only that they are spread throughout the country. But it did say 70 percent of those slated for closure had opened after the start of 2006.

To put it another way, Starbucks is closing 19 percent of all U.S. company-operated stores that opened in the last two years, Chief Financial Officer Pete Bocian said during a conference call.

About 12,000 workers, or 7 percent of Starbucks’ global work force, will be affected by the closings, which are expected to take place between late July and the middle of 2009, spokeswoman Valerie O’Neil said.