Reconstruction

This city is a rarity in 2009: a place full of hard hats and big building projects and subcontractors roaring around in pickup trucks. A city where home prices have dipped only slightly, and where the unemployment rate is 5.3% -- compared with 8.1% nationwide. New Orleans, it seems, has largely dodged the Category 5 recession pummeling the rest of the country, thanks to its unique post-Katrina economy. For locals accustomed to bad luck and trouble, the good news can feel a little strange.

Brother Nicholas Radelmiller tolled the bell amid the ruins of the Mt. Calvary Monastery, but no worshipers were there to hear it. Down the mountainside, workers revved up their chain saws as homeowners burned out by November's devastating Santa Barbara wildfires prepared to rebuild. But at the monastery on a promontory 1,250 feet above the sea, acres of rubble awaited the bulldozers that are to arrive this week. The fire that swept through on the night of Nov.

Night after night, hour after hour, Hussein Ali Mohammed sits alone in the medical clinic that employs him as a guard. It is not the job the 26-year-old envisioned when he earned his teaching degree, but it's the best he can do for now in a country teeming with educated, ambitious people -- but sorely lacking in suitable jobs that pay living wages. Years of political turmoil, U.S.-imposed sanctions and war have devastated Iraq's workforce.

Mississippi's plan to divert $600 million in hurricane housing relief to a port expansion project won federal approval Friday, despite vigorous opposition from those who said the needs of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina had not been met. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson, in a letter to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, said he was concerned that Mississippi's plan would shift money from "more pressing recovery needs."

Mohammed Jabiry charts the progress of Iraq through the colors of its walls. Institutional white is soooooo Saddam Hussein, Jabiry said Sunday, pointing to the colorful squares on a sample chart from Modern Paint Industries, a state-run enterprise. Nowadays, juicy-fruit colors such as clementine orange and jasmine yellow are growing popular, a sign not only of Iraqis' changing tastes but perhaps of their brighter mood, said Jabiry, who is Modern Paint's chief engineer.

This struggling town along the Euphrates River may long be remembered as the place where U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians in 2005, an incident that led to troops being charged with murder and their superiors accused of dereliction of duty for failing to properly investigate.

Southern California small-business consultant Phil Borden went to Iraq with high hopes for playing a small part in rebuilding the tattered economy. The yearlong venture shredded that dream. Charged with taking over a failed effort by a State Department contractor to create a national model of a profitable small-business development center, Borden expected to use his considerable stateside experience helping entrepreneurs.

Alvin Hewitt was the first baby born at Kiowa County Memorial Hospital after it opened in 1950. Today, the hospital is gone. So are the red brick high school, the single-screen movie theater, the soda shop, City Hall, the county courthouse. Like 95% of this little town on the prairies of southwest Kansas, they were destroyed by a tornado that struck a year ago Sunday, killing 11. Hewitt could have taken his insurance check and moved away, as about half the town's residents did. He didn't.

China's central government Friday ordered its wealthier provinces and cities to give immediate financial and technical aid to communities devastated by last week's earthquake. The order, which pairs cities such as Shanghai and Beijing with less-developed areas in Sichuan province, highlights China's awareness of the enormous task ahead, of rebuilding entire towns and resettling about 5 million displaced people. Banks were ordered to forgive debts owed by earthquake victims.

A small sign taped to the glass front door of the town's hardware store still pleads for donations to the victims of the tornado. Less than four weeks ago, a funnel cut down the northern edge of this farming town of nearly 650 people. The wind flung tractors more than a mile, crumbled Civil War tombstones and killed two people. Then, before the white roses had wilted in their cemetery urns, the rest of the town was destroyed -- by a flood.