The Environmental Protection Agency is convening a National Bed Bug Summit this week in Arlington, Va. to address what it considers a growing problem in the United States.

The meetings will focus on the bed bug problem in the housing and hospitality sectors, factors contributing to the problem and "the response of the public health community and government agencies," according to an EPA announcement.

An improperly connected sewer pipe on a government building housing a state environmental regulatory agency was blamed for polluting a nearby creek with raw sewage.

City workers discovered that while half of the building's sewer pipes were correctly hooked up to the city sewer system that the other half were incorrectly hooked up to the city stormwater system, allowing raw sewage to flow into Burnt Bridge Creek.

President Barack Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, on Wednesday attended the first hearing on her appeal not to be deported back to Kenya and was given until February next year to appear in court with her arguments on why she should be allowed to stay in the United States.

The 56-year-old Onyango is the half-sister of the President's father, who is Kenyan. She had applied for political asylum in 2002 but was ordered deported two years later, but has continued living in a public housing project in Massachusetts.

As an indicator of the worsening housing problem in the U.S., more shanty towns were observed to have risen in major American cities the past few months.

Among the cities which are grappling with an increasing number of tent city residents are Fresno, Sacramento and Los Angeles in California, New York City, Seattle and Olympia in Washington, and St. Petersburg in Florida.

An inmate in the Oklahoma State penitentiary was sound beaten to death after being put in a cell with the man he had testified against in a murder trial.

Prison officials said the two should not have been placed in the same cell together, and there will be an investigation.