The real estate slump here and elsewhere is likely to worsen, given that most of the adjustable rate mortgages written in the last three years will be reset with higher interest rates, said Christopher F. Thornberg, an economist with Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. As a result, borrowers of an estimated $800 billion in loans will be forced in the next 12 months to 18 months to make bigger monthly payments, refinance or sell their homes.

A big reason the fallout is occurring faster here is a Georgia law that permits lenders to foreclose on properties more quickly than in other states. The problems include not just people losing their homes, but also sharp declines in property values, particularly in lower-income and working-class neighborhoods.

For example, a three-bedroom house near Turner Field, where the Atlanta Braves baseball team plays, fetched a high bid late last month of $134,000 at an auction by the bank that took possession of it. Almost three years ago, the new home was bought for $330,000.

While the surge in foreclosures in other big cities like Cleveland, New Orleans and Detroit can be attributed to local economic challenges, Atlanta more closely reflects the nation. Its unemployment rate, 4.9 percent in May, is low and close to the national average of 4.5 percent. And businesses here are adding jobs, albeit at a slower pace than they were last year.

Like others across the country, homeowners here took out aggressive mortgages in the last few years when interest rates were low and housing prices were soaring. Now many are falling behind — some have lost jobs or experienced other financial difficulties, but many others are not able to refinance because their homes are worth less than they paid for them and their credit is now too weak for them to qualify for another loan.

So far, the pain has been limited to those on the financial margins, but as more loans are reset to higher rates and home prices continue to slide, more homeowners will be unable to meet rising payments or to refinance. “This is a process that is starting low and will go high,” said Mr. Thornberg, the economist in Los Angeles.

Atlanta also serves as a microcosm for some broader national trends: wages have been stagnant for much of this decade, homeowners have taken on record amounts of debt, and mortgage fraud has been on the rise.

“We are a very affordable place,” said Mike Alexander, the chief of research at the Atlanta Regional Commission, an organization that serves local governments. “But our incomes are very low, and if anything went wrong, it would be very hard for people to maintain their homes.”

An estimated 2.7 percent of all housing units in the region were in foreclosure at the end of last year, up from 1.1 percent in 2000, according to an analysis by the commission. Nationally, less than 1 percent of all housing units were in foreclosure, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Census Bureau.

Though Atlanta has added jobs in recent years, they pay less than the jobs the region lost after the technology boom of the late 1990s ended. The median household income was only 7.6 percent higher in 2005 than in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. That is about half the rate of inflation during that period, and it mirrors what has occurred nationally.

While wages have languished, average Atlanta families are shouldering more debt. As of March, residents had bigger credit card balances, mortgages and car loans relative to their income than average Americans, according to data compiled by Moody’s Economy.com. And the equity that Atlanta residents have in their homes — the value of their house minus what they owe — has dropped 14 percent since peaking in late 2005.

By comparison, in California — the state where mortgage lending was most aggressive, real estate prices climbed fastest and homeowners have the highest debt burdens — home equity values have dropped about 10 percent from their peak in 2005.

Georgia’s foreclosure laws have also accelerated a process that can drag on for months in legal proceedings in other states. Lenders can declare a borrower in default and reclaim a house in as little as 60 days.

“Because of the foreclosure laws, it may be that people go from delinquency into foreclosure much more quickly in Georgia,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

That still would not explain why so many people fall behind on house payments in the first place.

Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations.

That conclusion was echoed in interviews over the past few days by administration officials in the Pentagon, State Department and White House, as well as by outsiders who have been consulted about what the administration should do next. “Sept. 15 now looks like an end point for the debate, not a starting point,” the official said. “Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.”

In a sign of the concern, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates canceled plans for a four-nation tour of Latin America this week and will stay home to attend meetings on Iraq, the Pentagon announced yesterday.

Last week, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, called in from a brief vacation to join intense discussions in sessions that included Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s longtime strategist, and Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff.

Officials describe the meetings as more of a running discussion than an argument. They say that no one is clinging to a stay-the-course position but that instead aides are trying to game out what might happen if the president becomes more specific about the start and the shape of what the White House is calling a “post-surge redeployment.”

The views of many of the participants in that discussion were unclear, and the officials interviewed could not provide any insight into what Vice President Dick Cheney had been telling President Bush.

They described Mr. Hadley as deeply concerned that the loss of Republicans could accelerate this week, a fear shared by Mr. Rove. But they also said that Mr. Rove had warned that if Mr. Bush went too far in announcing a redeployment, the result could include a further cascade of defections — and the passage of legislation that would force a withdrawal by a specific date, a step Mr. Bush has always said he would oppose.

“Everyone’s particularly worried about what happens when McCain gets back from Iraq,” one official said, a reference to the latest trip to Baghdad by Senator John McCain, who has been a stalwart supporter of the “surge” strategy. Mr. McCain’s travels, and his political troubles in the race for the Republican nomination for president, have fueled speculation that he may declare the Iraqi government incapable of the kind of political accommodations that the crackdown on violence was supposed to permit.

Officials say that Mr. Gates has been quietly pressing for a pullback that could roughly halve the number of combat brigades now patrolling the most violent sections of Baghdad and surrounding provinces by early next year. The remaining combat units would then take up a far more limited mission of training, protecting Iraq’s borders and preventing the use of Iraq as a sanctuary by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni Arab extremist group that claims to have an affiliation with Osama bin Laden’s network, though the precise relationship is unknown.

President Bush has repeatedly said that he wants as much time as possible for his 30,000-troop increase to show results. And publicly, administration officials insist that the president has no plans for a precipitous withdrawal — but the key word seems to be “precipitous,” and they appear to be recalibrating their message.

“I think it shouldn’t come as any surprise that we here in the administration, and in our conversations with Congress, and in our conversations with generals on the ground and policy makers in Iraq, are thinking about what happens after a surge,” Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday, at a briefing where he was peppered with questions about the defection of Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico.

That defection followed a similar move by Senator Richard G. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

In the meetings last week, officials say, there was frustration that Mr. Bush’s statements were being drowned out by a presidential race that has created a forum for daily critiques of his policies, past and present.

Moreover, the dynamics inside the administration have changed. The hawks who once surrounded Mr. Bush have been replaced by pragmatists like Mr. Gates, who has made it clear that he wants to lower the political temperature of the Iraq debate at home, and has joined with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to gradually shift White House strategy.

When it came time to pick a new “Iraq czar,” the choice was a general who had been openly skeptical about the prospects of the troop increase strategy. Mr. Bush will get a chance to make his case later this week, when he presents an interim report, required by law by Sunday, on the status of 18 “benchmarks” of progress.

The calendar may be working in Mr. Bush’s favor. If he can get through the next three weeks without more defections, Congress will recess until September, returning just as the report from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker arrives in Washington.

Also, the Republican defectors have not agreed on what different strategy they would prescribe, giving the president some negotiating room. But Senator Lugar said yesterday on CNN that he would support a significant withdrawal that left “residual forces” in Iraq to ensure that “the whole area does not blow up.”

That approach would mean abandoning the current mission of using those forces to patrol Baghdad and try to reimpose order, which was Mr. Bush’s stated goal in January.

Asked whether he could support an amendment proposed by Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, that would put in legislative language the Iraq Study Group’s call for a withdrawal of combat units by March 31, 2008, Mr. Lugar said it was “worthy of a lot of discussion.”

John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was headed to Baghdad over the weekend to begin preparing another Congressionally mandated report, an independent assessment of the Iraqi military, said, “The political power of Salazar’s amendment is its ambiguity.”

“What does it mean?” Mr. Hamre asked. “That we will immediately implement all 76 provisions? I doubt it. It’s a way to give political cover.”

Senior officials involved in preparing the report Mr. Bush must deliver to Congress this week say he will be able to praise the Iraqi government for delivering the troops it promised — if a little late — and for removing the restrictions on arresting or killing violent members of Shiite militias. But on the critical issue of political compromise, Mr. Bush will be able to report little progress.

Paris Hilton zaliczyła w ten weekend pierwszą od czasu wyjścia z więzienia imprezę w nocnym klubie.

Dziedziczka pojawiła się w piątek krótko przed północą w hollywoodzkim klubie Les Deux w towarzystwie swojej siostry, Nicky i Erin Foster, córki producenta muzycznego Davida Fostera.

Paris, ubrana w szarą bluzeczkę z krótkim rękawem i czarny kapelusik, siedziała z dziewczynami przy stoliku, ochraniana przez dwóch mężczyzn, którzy powstrzymywali fanów od robienia jej zdjęć. W pewnym momencie Paris stanęła na kanapie i zaczęła uwodzicielsko tańczyć, ocierając się o ścianę, śpiewając teksty wszystkich piosenek, które puszczał DJ, włącznie z jej własną - Stars Are Blind.

Paris była bardzo szczęśliwa. Cały czas się uśmiechała - wspomina świadek. Bawiła się, piła, tańczyła, śpiewała, rozmawiała ze wszystkimi i przytulała się co chwilę z dziewczynami przy swoim stoliku.

Ojciec Lindsay Lohan stara się zmusić jej matkę Dinę do poddania się testom na obecność narkotyków.

Był makler giełdowy, Mike Lohan, który wyszedł ostatnio z więzienia, gdzie odsiadywał dwuletni wyrok za prowadzenie samochodu bez ważnego prawa jazdy oraz próbę pobicia, poprosił sąd w Nowym Jorku, by nakazał jego byłej żonie, Dinie Lohan, udowodnienie, że nie zażywa narkotyków.

Mike twierdzi, że alkoholizm matki i jej uzależnienie od narkotyków miały wpływ na Lindsay i jej obecne problemy, m.in. pobyt na odwyku oraz wypadek, jak spowodowała będąc pod wpływem alkoholu. Sam również nie uważa się za niewinnego i twierdzi, ze jego wcześniejsze przygody z narkotykami mogły negatywnie wpłynąć na córkę.

Ojciec Lindsay walczy o prawo do widzenia się z jej młodszym, niepełnoletnim rodzeństwem - córką Alianą i synem Dakotą.

Uważam, ze Dina nie powinna pić w obecności naszej córki - powiedział. Jeśli będzie robiła tak dalej, jestem pewien, że Lindsay znowu się załamie.

Mike twierdzi, że sam pokonał już swoje uzależnienie od kokainy i w tej chwili jest gotów poddać się testom na alkohol i narkotyki. Dina jednak odmówiła takich badań.

Ja i Dina poznaliśmy się w latach 80-tych, kiedy wszyscy imprezowali i brakli kokainę - powiedział Mike. Teraz jestem czysty i trzeźwy. Jestem poddawany testom na alkohol i narkotyki trzy razy w tygodniu, bo jestem na zwolnieniu warunkowym i pomagam nastolatkom uzależnionym od narkotyków.

Mogę być poddawany testom przez sąd każdego dnia, przez cały tydzień - wiem, że jestem czysty. Ale Dina z jakiegoś powodu nie chce poddać się testom. Czego się boi?

Wczoraj miałam gorszy dzień - ciągle myślami w programie. Nie wiedziałam, co ze sobą zrobić. Poszłam na zakupy, ale to nic nie dało. Beznamiętnie przesuwałam rzeczy na wieszakach - wyznaje Natasza Urbańska w wywiadzie dla Dziennika.

Jak długo będzie jeszcze rozpamiętywać swoją porażkę? Ciekawe, czy zdaje sobie sprawę z tego, że to właśnie jej reakcja na zajęcie drugiego miejsca w Jak ONI śpiewają uczyniła z tego klęskę. Gdyby Natasza się cieszyła, większość osób uznałaby to za sukces. Oto przykład, jak można zakląć rzeczywistość przeciwko sobie.

W tym samym wywiadzie Urbańska wspomina też, jak poznała swojego chłopaka - Janusza Józefowicza:

Patrzyłam na niego jak na Boga, a on zapytał, ile mam lat i powiedział: "Dziecko, skończ szkołę". (...) Po spektaklach słyszałam: "Źle, źle, wszystko źle". Właściwie nie wychodziłam z teatru. Maturę zdawałam w czasie prób do "Tyle miłości". Uczyłam się w garderobie.

Związek z facetem, którego poznała jako dziewczynka, i który przez wiele lat był jej treserem (bardzo wymagającym i nie znoszącym sprzeciwu) jest złamaniem tabu. Tylko wzmaga to nasze zainteresowanie Nataszą, szukać będziemy śladów ręki mentora.

Nie potrafię ukryć uśmiechu. W niedzielę pracuję w bieliźnie i udzieliło mi się podniecenie.

John Legend liczył na to, że pobudzi widownię, jednak natura nie dała się ujarzmić i zagrała mu na... nosie. Zobacz:

Nie przypuszczaliśmy, że Eva Longoria będzie tak podejmowana w Paryżu. Może to europejskie kompleksy, każące, nawet Francuzom, traktować po królewsku każdą gwiazdę zza oceanu.

Na zdjęciach nie widać zbyt dużo Evy (dwa przebłyski - w czerwonym dresiku). Chcemy tylko pokazać, jak wyglądał Paryż w trakcie przygotowań do ślubu znanej pary. Zainteresowanie mediów (widać ekipy telewizyjne) przekroczyło stosowne granice, policyjna ochrona dla amerykańskiej aktorki serialowej (!) to zaś utrwalanie poglądu, że żyją one na wyjątkowych prawach. W duchu liczyliśmy na chłodną neutralność Francuzów.

Za zdjęcia dziękujemy naszej czytelniczce Natalii, spędzającej wakacje w Paryżu.