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But any bailout of Spain — with an economy twice the size of the other three combined — could severely stress the ability of Europe’s stronger countries to help the financially weaker ones, and spell deep trouble for the euro, Europe’s common currency. Even though Spain, like Ireland, has adopted an austerity plan to help it avoid the need for a bailout, it still could need aid if its banking system proves frailer than the government thinks it is, as was the case in Ireland.

U.S. officials say the documents may contain accounts of compromising conversations with political dissidents and friendly politicians and could result in the expulsion of U.S. diplomats from foreign postings.

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A State Department spokesman said Wednesday the release of confidential communications about foreign governments probably will erode trust in the United States as a diplomatic partner.

James Patrick Black, 58, died about a mile from the Destin airport in the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday night, said BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick. Those who knew them said the three were bound for a Thanksgiving holiday gathering in Florida.

Black was director of operations for BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization and had a key role guiding the business unit created after April’s Deepwater Horizon rig fire and explosion and monthslong spill that spewed at least 200 millions of crude oil from a blown-out BP well.

Investigators also said former Texas solicitor general, 47-year-old Gregory Scott Coleman, and his mother-in-law, Charlene Black Miller, 63, died when the Piper Malibu that Coleman was piloting from Texas via New Orleans went down in limited visibility while approaching the airport.

Black had worked for BP for 34 years, Feick said in a statement.

“BP extends its heartfelt sorrow to the family of our friend and colleague, Jim Black,” Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America Inc., said in an e-mail statement.

“Jim was a devoted member of our Gulf Coast spill response team,” the statement added. “He will be missed by all who knew him and worked with him.”

Coleman was a prominent lawyer and Texas’ top appellate lawyer as the state’s first solicitor general, appointed in 1999.

The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Seoul says the cabinet had decided that under the old rules of engagement there was too much emphasis on preventing a military incident escalating into something worse.

In future, the South would implement different levels of response, depending on whether the North attacked military or civilian targets, a presidential spokesman said.

A senior government official told the BBC that Seoul wanted to be more flexible in order to keep the North Koreans guessing as to their response.

The remote north-eastern state adjoins China which claims large parts of it.

The 56th Division will be based in the nearby state of Nagaland to guard the eastern flank of Arunachal Pradesh from Chinese attack through Burma.

The other new formation, the 71st Division, will be based in Assam to protect central Arunachal Pradesh.

There has been no response so far from China to the decision.

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Officials say they were formed at the behest of the Indian army chief, General VK Singh – who said they were necessary to beef up defences against China.

Gen Singh was not available for comment but one of his staff officers, on condition of anonymity, told the BBC that the army chief had “pushed very hard to fast-track the raising of the two divisions”.

He said that they should be “fully operational” by March 2011.

In one report after another, the IAEA has suggested that Iran has failed to cooperate with its inquiry into that alleged research, and that the agency, therefore, cannot verify that it has not diverted nuclear material to military purposes.

That issue remains central to US policy toward Iran. The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had covert nuclear weapons program.

That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications.

The drawings of the Iranian missile warhead that were said by the IAEA to show an intent to accommodate a nuclear weapon actually depict a missile design that Iran is now known to have already abandoned in favor of an improved model by the time the technical drawings were allegedly made. And one of the major components of the purported Iranian military research program allegedly included a project labeled with a number that turns out to have been assigned by Iran’s civilian nuclear authority years before the covert program is said to have been initiated.

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The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to “go nuclear.” By 2003-2004, Mossad’s reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran’s nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service.

In the summer of 2003, Israel’s international intelligence agency, Mossad, had established an aggressive program aimed at exerting influence on the Iran nuclear issue by leaking alleged intelligence to governments and the news media, as Israeli officials acknowledged to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. According to the book, “The Nuclear Jihadist,” as part of the program, Mossad sometimes passed on purported Iranian documents supposedly obtained by Israeli spies inside Iran.

Despite initial reports that Brea’s mother had been decapitated with a samurai sword, the New York Daily News is now reporting that the weapon was actually a ceremonial Masonic sword that the actor allegedly took after a Monday night meeting of Freemasons.

“Something happened that made him do it,” Brea’s uncle told the New York Daily News. “The devil entered him.”

A police source also told the paper that Brea said he saw the devil in his mother and accused her of never accepting Jesus. As he was being led away by police, Brea allegedly yelled, “The greatest architect in the universe!” — a term sometimes used by Masons to represent a supreme being.

“We agreed to expand the possibilities for application of national currencies during trade and economic contacts,” Putin said after talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in the former Imperial capital Saint Petersburg.

“Now the ruble started trading on the exchange in China and the yuan trade will begin in Moscow in early December,” Putin said, hailing the move as a “serious step” on the path to strengthening economic ties.

On Monday, China conducted the first yuan trade with the Russian ruble in order “to promote the bilateral trade between China and Russia” and to reduce the conversion cost among other tasks, said a statement posted on the website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.

Both China and Russia, which both seek to promote their national currencies worldwide, have called for a revamp of the global financial system in the wake of the global economic crisis, saying there is a need for a new supra-national currency besides the dollar.