3 DEAD - 4 MILLION WITHOUT POWER SO FAR

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FIFTH ANGEL: TO DOCTOR DOCTORIAN

Then I saw the last angel flying over North and South America - all the way from the North Pole down to Argentina. From the east of the U.S.A. to California. I saw in his hand a bowl. The angel said he would pour out over these countries the judgments that were in the bowl. Then I heard the angel say, No justice anymore. No righteousness. No holiness. Idolatry. Materialism. Drunkenness. Bondage of sin. Shedding of innocent blood - millions of babies being killed before they are born. Families are broken. An adulterous generation. Sodom and Gomorrah is here. The days of Noah are here. False preachers. False prophets. Refusing of my love. Many of them have the imitation of religion, but denying the real power.

When I heard all that, I begged the angel, Can you not wait for a little while? Don't pour it. Give a chance for repentance. The angel said, Many times God has spared and has spoken, but they have not listened. His patience has come to an end. Beware, the time has come. They have loved money and pleasure more than they have loved Me. As the angel began to pour from the bowl in his hand, I saw tremendous icebergs melting. When that happened I saw floods all over Canada and North America -all the rivers flood; destruction everywhere. I heard the world market collapsing with mighty earthquakes, and New York skyscrapers were tumbling - millions dying.

I saw ships in the ocean sinking. I heard explosions all over the north country. I saw the angel pouring over Mexico and two oceans joining together- the Atlantic and the Pacific. A great part of north Brazil covered with water, the Amazon River turning into a great sea. Forests destroyed and flooded. Major cities in Brazil destroyed; earthquakes in many places. As the angel poured, great destruction took place in Chile and Argentina as never before. The whole world was shaking. Then I heard the angel say, This will happen in a very short time. I said, Can't you postpone? Don't pour these things out all over the globe. And suddenly I saw the five angels standing around the globe lifting up their hands and their wings towards heaven and saying, All glory to the Lord of heaven and earth. Now the time has come and He will glorify His Son. The earth shall be burned and destroyed. All things shall pass away. The new Heaven and New Earth shall come. God shall destroy the works of the devil forever. I shall show My power - how I will protect My children in the midst of all this destruction.

ISAIAH 13:6-7 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)

2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

AT LEAST 3 PEOPLE ARE DEAD AND 4 MILLION WITHOUT POWER AS IKE SWAMPED TEXAS WITH 10-20 FOOT WAVES, FIERCE WIND AND RAIN. AND THE STORM IS NOT OVER YET AS OF 9:30 AM.

WELL I'D SAY GODS WORDS ARE COMING TO PASS BIGTIME. GAS EVEN WENT UP 50-60 CENTS A GALLON IN SOME PLACES OVER NIGHT.

Nearly 3M people without power as Ike hits Sat Sep 13, 4:05 AM ET 9:30 AM UPDATE

HOUSTON - Nearly 3 million people are without power in the Houston area as Hurricane Ike slams the Texas coast. It will likely be a while before electricity returns. CenterPoint Energy says it could take weeks before all the power in the nation's fourth-largest city was restored.Utility spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said 1.3 million customers — or about 2.9 million people — had lost power by the time the storm made landfall at Galveston early Saturday. Work crews were coming in Monday to restore power, and priority will be given to hospitals, fire and police departments and water and sewage treatment plants.The city's last direct hit from a hurricane came from Alicia in 1983, when 750,000 CenterPoint customers lost power. It took 16 days to restore all service.

Hurricane Ike slams Texas coast with major floods By JUAN A. LOZANO and CHRIS DUNCAN, Associated Press Writers SEPT 13 AM 9:30 AM UPDATE.

GALVESTON, Texas - Massive Hurricane Ike ravaged southeast Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and ferocious wind gusts as residents who decided too late they should have heeded orders to evacuate made futile calls for rescue. It remained unclear before daybreak how many people may have perished as the worst of Ike was passing over the Houston-Galveston area. But even before the storm had passed and daylight had arrived, damage was already considered extensive. Thousands of homes and government buildings had flooded, roads were washed out, 2.9 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated as crews could not reach them. But the biggest fear was that tens of thousands of people had defied orders to flee and would need to be rescued from submerged homes and neighborhoods.The unfortunate truth is we're going to have to go in ... and put our people in the tough situation to save people who did not choose wisely. We'll probably do the largest search and rescue operation that's ever been conducted in the state of Texas, said Andrew Barlow, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry.Several fires were burning untended across Houston and 911 operators received about 1,250 calls in 24 hours, said Frank Michel, spokesman for Houston Mayor Bill White.Streets around the city's theater district became rushing streams and shards of glass fell from the sparkling skyscrapers that define the skyline of America's fourth-largest city. Winds were estimated to be 20-30 mph faster at the top of the steel and glass towers than at ground level.

The stubborn storm remained a Category 2 hurricane with winds topping 100 mph, but started moving away from Houston on Saturday morning. It was about 15 miles east-northeast of Houston Intercontinental Airport at 7 a.m. EDT and was expected to turn toward Arkansas later in the day.The eye of the storm powered ashore at 3:10 a.m. EDT at Galveston with 110 mph winds, just shy of a Category 3 storm. Because Ike was so huge — nearly as big as Texas itself — hurricane winds pounded the coast for hours before landfall and would continue through much of the morning, with the worst winds and rain after the center came ashore, forecasters said.For us, it was a 10, Galveston Fire Chief Mike Varela said when asked to compare Ike to earlier hurricanes like 2005's Rita. Varela said firefighters responded to about 60 rescue calls before suspending operations around 8 p.m. Friday.More than 1.3 million customers — or 2.9 million people — had lost power, and suppliers warned it could be weeks before all the service was restored. The only parts of Houston with power were downtown and the massive medical center section.Though 1 million people fled coastal communities near where the storm made landfall, authorities in four counties alone said roughly 140,000 ignored mandatory evacuation orders. Other counties were unable to provide numbers but officials were concerned many had stayed behind.We don't know what we are going to find, Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. We hope we will find the people who are left here alive and well.As the front of the storm moved into Galveston, fire crews rescued nearly 300 people who changed their minds and fled at the last minute. Six feet of water had collected in the Galveston County Courthouse in the island's downtown, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston was flooded, according to local storm reports on the National Weather Service's Web site.Even before Ike made landfall, Coast Guard helicopters had rescued 103 people in the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston Island, some from roofs and others from cars, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ayla Stevens.Some 30 miles inland, storm surge pushing up through Galveston Bay was sending water into a neighborhood near Johnson Space Center where White, the Houston mayor, had made rounds earlier with a bullhorn trying to compel people to leave. Nearby, the popular Kemah Boardwalk at the mouth of Galveston Bay, ringed by million-dollar homes, was submerged, state officials said.Thousands of homes could be damaged, a spokesman for the mayor said, but it was too dangerous to go out to assess the neighborhood at the height of the storm.Across Houston's downtown, car alarms screeched and light poles swayed like small trees.The restaurant Brennan's of Houston, a downtown institution for more than four decades, was destroyed by flames when firefighters were thwarted by high winds. Fire officials said a restaurant worker and his young daughter were taken to a hospital in critical condition with burns over 70 percent of their bodies.

On the far east side of Houston, 34-year-old Claudia Macias was awake with her newborn and trying not to think about the trees swaying outside her doors or the wind vibrating through her windows. I don't know who's going to sleep here tonight, maybe the baby, she said. Before it came ashore, the storm was 600 miles across. Because of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its largely unprotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall of water two stories high — 20 to 25 feet — at the coast. But there was some good news: a stranded freighter with 22 men aboard made it through the brunt of the storm safely, and a tugboat was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County gave birth to a baby girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades. It's kind of like riding a bike, Dr. Mark Burns told the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung after he helped Ku Paw welcome her fourth child. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5 million prepackaged meals were being sent to the region, along with more than 230 generators and 5.6 million liters of water. At least 3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana. If Ike is as bad as feared, the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston. The port is the nation's second-busiest, and is an economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products. The storm also could force water up the seven bayous that thread through Houston, swamping neighborhoods so flood-prone that they get inundated during ordinary rainstorms. The oil and gas industry was closely watching Ike because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages. Ike is the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane. On its way through the Gulf toward Texas, Ike spawned thunderstorms, shut down schools and knocked out power throughout southern Louisiana on Friday. An estimated 1,200 people were in state shelters in Monroe and Shreveport, and another 220 in medical needs shelters. In southeastern Louisiana near Houma, Ike breached levees, and flooded more than 1,800 homes. More than 160 people had to be rescued from sites of severe flooding, and Gov. Bobby Jindal said he expected those numbers to grow. In some extreme instances, residents of low-lying communities where waters continued to rise continued to refuse National Guard assistance to flee their homes, authorities said.

No deaths were officially reported, but crews expected to resume searching at daybreak near Corpus Christi for a man believed swept out to sea as Ike closed in.
Juan A. Lozano reported from Galveston. Chris Duncan reported from Houston. Associated Press writers Jim Vertuno and Jay Root in Austin, Eileen Sullivan in Washington, Schuyler Dixon and Paul Weber in Dallas, John Porretto, Monica Rhor and Pauline Arrillaga in Houston, Michael Kunzelman in Lake Charles, La., Brian Skoloff in West Palm Beach, Fla., April Castro and Andre Coe in College Station, and Allen G. Breed and video journalist Rich Matthews in Surfside Beach also contributed.

Hurricane Ike punishing Texas coast By Chris Baltimore and Anna Driver
SEPT 13,08 9:30 AM UPDATE.

HOUSTON, Sept 13 - (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike barreled into the densely populated Texas coast near Houston early on Saturday, bringing with it a wall of water and ferocious winds and rain that flooded large areas along the Gulf of Mexico and paralyzed the fourth-largest U.S. city. Ike, which has idled more than a fifth of U.S. oil production, came ashore at the barrier island city of Galveston as a strong Category 2 storm at 2:10 a.m. CDT (3:10 a.m. EDT) with 110 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said.Ike barreled through the Gulf of Mexico for days and covered a vast area extending hundreds of miles (km) when it slammed into the Texas coast. It is the biggest storm to hit a U.S. city since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.The hurricane drove a wall of water over Galveston and submerged a 17-foot sea wall built to protect the city after a 1900 hurricane killed at least 8,000people. More than half of its 60,000 residents had fled and emergency operations were suspended through the storm.About 50 miles inland, Ike lashed downtown Houston's glass-covered skyscrapers, blowing out windows and sending debris flying through water-clogged city streets.The storm was downgraded to a Category 1 on the hurricane intensity scale at 8 a.m. CMT (9 a.m. EDT) carrying top sustained winds near 90 mph and moving north, but officials said it was too soon to assess the damage.Texas officials were waiting for a break in the weather to deploy a search and rescue operation.

We expected a major storm and our expectations unfortunately came true, said Mark Miner, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The weather needs to clear up a little bit to see just what the devastation was.The hurricane has shut down 17 oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, the heart of the U.S. oil sector where 22 percent of fuel supplies are processed. Energy experts said it would take at least a week for the refineries to get back to normal.Houston was dark Saturday morning except for downtown and the Texas Medical Center, which are fed by underground power sources, Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said in an e-mail. Nearly all 2 million customers, or 4.5 million people, in the Houston-Galveston area were without power, he said.This is a huge storm that is causing a lot of damage, not only in Texas, but also in parts of Louisiana, U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday.He said the government would monitor gas prices to prevent extraordinary price increases because of Ike.(Additional reporting by Eileen O'Grady, Erwin Seba and Bruce Nichols and Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Writing by Mary Milliken; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Bush: Hurricane Ike is huge storm By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
SEPT 13,08 9:30 AM UPDATE.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday that Hurricane Ike was a huge storm that had caused extensive damage in Texas and parts of Louisiana. The storm has yet to pass and I know there are people concerned about their lives, Bush said in remarks from the South Lawn of the White House after he participated in video conference with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and David Paulison, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Some people didn't evacuate when asked, Bush said about the tens of thousands of people who may have to be rescued. I've been briefed on the rescue teams there in the area. They're prepared to move as soon as weather conditions permit. Obviously, people on the ground there are sensitive to helping people and are fully prepared to do so.Ike ravaged southeast Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and high wind. Thousands of homes and government buildings are flooded, roads are washed out, nearly 3 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated.Though roughly 1 million people fled coastal communities, authorities in four counties alone said roughly 140,000 ignored mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind. Other counties were unable to provide numbers but officials said they were concerned that many decided to brave deadly conditions rather than flee.Bush said that the government has suspended Environmental Protection Agency waivers on some reformulated gasoline to make it easier for foreign imports to reach the U.S. market.In the meantime, the Department of Energy and state authorities will be monitoring a gasoline crisis so consumers are not being gouged, Bush said.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush says Hurricane Ike is a huge storm that has caused a lot of damage in Texas and parts of Louisiana.Bush said Saturday morning at the White House that he just had a video conference with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and disaster relief agency chief David Paulison. He says Chertoff will go to Texas when weather permits to help coordinate state, local and federal recovery efforts.The president noted that some people did not evacuate ahead of the storm even when authorities recommended it. He says rescue teams are prepared to get started once conditions are better.Bush also says officials are keeping tabs on a gasoline crisis so consumers are not gouged at the pump.

Bush lifts restrictions on imported fuel due to Ike SEPT 13,08

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush announced on Saturday restrictions on imported gasoline had been suspended in response to Hurricane Ike which had forced companies to abandon oil refineries off the coast of Texas. Last night we suspended EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) waivers on certain reformulated gasoline, which will make it easier for imports from abroad to make it into our markets, Bush told reporters outside the White House as the powerful hurricane caused flooding on the Texas coast.

SoCal train wreck death toll rises to 17 By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press Writer SEPT 13,08

LOS ANGELES - Emergency crews found more victims early Saturday, boosting the death toll to 17, as they delicately picked apart the mangled wreckage of a commuter train that collided head-on with a freight train on the same track. More victims were feared trapped in the wrecked Metrolink commuter train. About 135 people were injured.The impact rammed the Metrolink engine backward into a passenger car, which rested on its side with the engine still inside it early Saturday, and accordioned the freight train cars. Two other Metrolink cars remained upright. Crews had to put out a fire under part of the train.It was the deadliest U.S. passenger train accident in 15 years,During the night, the teams used hydraulic jacks to keep the passenger car from falling over and other specialized rescue equipment to gently tear apart the metal.Fire Capt. Steve Ruda said the goal was to eliminate every piece of metal and gradually work down into the passenger spaces, but by midnight crews were just getting through the top deck of the double-decker train.There's human beings in there and it's going to be painstaking to get them out, Ruda said. They'll have to surgically remove them.His firefighters had never seen such carnage, he said. The crews would have to work carefully to document the incident for investigators and so relatives could identify bodies, Ruda said.Officials say there were 222 people on the Metrolink train and four Union Pacific employees aboard the freight train.The cause of the collision had not been determined.This is the worst accident I've ever seen, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. Clearly the injuries are going to mount and so are the fatalities.

Asked how the two trains ended up on the same track, Steven Kulm, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration: We are nowhere near having any information on that.Kulm said the federal investigation will be headed by the National Transportation Safety Board, while his agency will conduct a review of whether any federal rail safety regulations were violated.Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said it is common in California for freight and commuter trains to be on one track.

You see it a lot in California where commuter trains share tracks with freight trains," Richmond said, adding she couldn't speculate about the cause of the crash.

Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director for the city Fire Department, said 135 people were taken to hospitals — about 85 of them in serious or critical condition.In the initial hours after the disaster, firefighters treated the injured at three triage areas near the wreck, and helicopters flew in and out of a nearby landing area on evacuation flights. Dazed and injured passengers sat on the ground and wandered about.Leslie Burnstein saw the crash from her home and heard screams of agony as she ran through a haze of smoke toward the wreckage. She pulled victims out one by one.

It was horrendous, said Burnstein, a psychologist. Blood was everywhere. ... I heard people yelling, screaming in pain, begging for help.Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said the Metrolink train left Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and was headed northwest to Moorpark in Ventura County. The trains collided at about 4:30 p.m. in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley, near a 500-foot-long tunnel underneath Stoney Point Park. On the north side of the tunnel, there is a siding, a length of track where one train can wait for another to pass, Tyrrell said. I do not know what caused the wreck, said Tyrrell who broke down crying and was shaking. Obviously two trains are not supposed to be on the same track at the same time.Until Friday, the worst disaster in Metrolink's history occurred on Jan. 26, 2005, in suburban Glendale when a man parked a gasoline-soaked SUV on railroad tracks. A Metrolink train struck the SUV and derailed, striking another Metrolink train traveling the other way, killing 11 people and injuring about 180 others. Juan Alvarez was convicted this year of murder for causing the crash. That was the worst U.S. rail tragedy since March 15, 1999, when an Amtrak train hit a truck and derailed near Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 11 people and injuring more than 100. The Sunset Limited was involved in the worst accident in Amtrak's 28-year history. On Sept. 22, 1993, 42 passengers and five crew members died when the train plunged off a trestle into a bayou near Mobile, Ala. The trestle had been damaged minutes earlier by a towboat. Associated Press writers Greg Risling, Denise Petski, Josh Dickey, James Beltran, John Rogers and Michael R. Blood contributed to this report.

Russians troops pack up, leave western Georgia By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer SEPT 13,08

TBILISI, Georgia - Hundreds of Russian forces packed up and withdrew from positions Saturday in western Georgia, and a Georgian official said Russia had met a deadline for a partial pullout a month after the war between the two former Soviet republics.

Russian soldiers and armored vehicles rolled out of six checkpoints and temporary bases in the Black Sea port of Poti and other areas nearby, Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said.They have fulfilled the commitment to withdraw from the area by Sept. 15 under an agreement European Union leaders reached with Russia last week, Lomaia told The Associated Press.But he stressed that Georgia — like the West — demands a full Russian withdrawal to pre-conflict positions, in accordance with a cease-fire deal brokered by the European Union a month ago.Adding to tension, Georgian authorities said a Georgian policeman at a post near Abkhazia was killed Saturday by gunfire that came from the direction of a position where Abkhazian and Russian forces have been based.Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko confirmed the pullback in western Georgia.Right now the withdrawal of our peacekeeping forces is happening from these posts, Nesterenko said in televised comments.Lomaia said some 1,200 Russian servicemen still remain at 19 checkpoints and other positions, 12 outside South Ossetia and seven outside Abkhazia. Russia said it would pull them out by Oct. 11 as long as 200 European Union observers are deployed to strips of territory surrounding the two separatist regions by Oct. 1.

Russia is pushing to keep Western monitors outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia themselves, saying the EU observers' job is to protect the regions against Georgian aggression. The United States and EU, however, want to ensure security amid high ethnic tensions following the war.The presence of Russian troops deep in undisputed Georgian territory more than a month after the fighting ended has deeply angered Georgians and been an enormous sore point between Russia and the West.Russia's military campaign in Georgia and its subsequent recognition of Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent nations has plunged its relations with the United States and Europe into their worst crisis since the Cold War.An Associated Press television crew saw Russian soldiers pack military trucks before dawn Saturday with blankets and other supplies at a post by a road leading to Abkhazia province. Among the items taken down — the Russian tricolor flag.Four trucks stood packed and ready to leave the post in the village of Pirveli Maisi, along with an armored personnel carrier. A Russian column about the same size rolled past on a road leading to Abkhazia.Russian forces left the two posts they had maintained for weeks on the outskirts of Poti, one by a bridge on a main road leading into the city and one a few kilometers (miles) from Georgia's main port and devastated naval base, Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said.Russian forces have withdrawn completely from Poti, he said.

A third Russian post established more recently by the port of Poti had also been vacated, Lomaia said. He said some 250 soldiers and 20 armored vehicles pulled out of their positions and headed toward Abkhazia.Near the de facto border with Abkhazia, an Associated Press photographer saw several small columns of Russian armor crossing a bridge leading toward the breakaway region and military trucks heading across another bridge at a separate location.The brazen presence in Poti has been particularly galling for Georgia because it is hundreds of kilometers (miles) from South Ossetia, where the war broke out and where most of the fighting occurred.

In Vienna, confidential OSCE documents seen by The Associated Press revealed that Russian forces and their separatist militia allies were deliberately keeping OSCE monitors — who are separate from the planned EU mission — out of South Ossetia, where large numbers of Georgian homes have been looted and burned down. Russia has also said the EU observers will not be welcome inside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, only in the strips of land surrounding them. The EU and Georgia want the observers to have access to the separatist regions themselves. Western governments also say Moscow's plans to maintain 7,600 troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for the long term violates a provision in the cease-fire calling for both sides to return to positions held before the conflict erupted. Georgian troops tried to retake South Ossetia by force on Aug. 7, but were quickly repelled by Russian tanks, troops and warplanes. The Russian military then drove deep into Georgia, occupying large swaths of territory before an initial withdrawal in late August. The five-day war killed hundreds of people and drove nearly 200,000 people from their homes.

PALIN TOUGH ON IRAN, RUSSIA

ISAIAH 13:6-7 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)

2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

JOEL 3:2
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

ISLAM AND BRITAIN PROBLEM IT DOES NOT ACCEPT ISLAMIC LAW
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1848.htm

FRC ACTION SUMMIT (CHRISTIAN VALUES)
http://www.afa.net/vvs_2008/watch2.aspx

ITS A CATEGORY 3 NOW AND WILL BE ON LAND AT 2 OR 3 AM EASTERN TIME. THE WINDS ARE FIRECE ALREADY I HATE TO SEE WHEN IT GETS TO LAND.

Catastrophe looms as Hurricane Ike pounds Texas coast by Virginie Montet SEPT 12,08 11:20 PM UPDATE.

GALVESTON, Texas, (AFP) - Gigantic Hurricane Ike pounded the Texas Gulf coast on Friday, flooding parts of Galveston and threatening catastrophic destruction as it heads on a path towards Houston, the fourth largest US city. Gargantuan waves smashed over the city's sea wall as the center of the storm at 0100 GMT Saturday was about 115 kilometers (70 miles) southeast of Galveston, moving at near 20 kilometers (13 miles) an hour.Ike, a sprawling system the size of Texas itself, was packing winds of 175 kilometers (110 miles) an hour, just shy of becoming a powerful Category Three storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, the National Hurricane Center reported.Ike was expected to plow ashore early Saturday, with a direct hit on Galveston and Houston.In Galveston , the power went out across the island just before 0100 GMT Saturday, plunging the storm-stricken city into darkness.Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew starting Friday and ending Monday morning. Chocolate-colored seawater flooded the streets of Galveston as the storm surge intensified throughout the day, spoiling the city's potable water system.

Expect the unexpected, said city manager Steve Le Blanc. The worst is yet to come.

Despite the dire warnings, only 38,000 of Galveston island's 58,000 residents evacuated, Mary Jo Naschke, who works in the city's mayor's office, told AFP.Two blazes broke out in the afternoon. Flames shot out of an unattended Galveston home near the oceanfront, while thick smoke from a ship repair warehouse darkened the sky over the city.Firefighters, restricted by the high water, had to let the structures burn.We can't get close enough, Galveston fire chief Michael Varela told AFP. We have no knowledge of anybody being there.All neighborhoods and possibly entire coastal communities along Galveston Bay, which reaches 25 miles (40 kilometers) inland from its namesake barrier island to the heart of Houston, will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide, the Hurricane Center said.Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family, one- or two-story homes will face certain death, it added.Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described Ike's arrival as potentially catastrophic.This is a monster storm in terms of the flooding potential, added Chertoff. The storm surge is going to inundate large parts of the Texas coast.

Texas Governor Rick Perry described Ike on CNN as a monster of a storm, and compared the storm surge Ike will generate -- high enough to engulf a two-story home -- to a tsunami.Referring to the holdouts that refused to flee the coastal area, he said on Fox News: Individuals who think they are tougher, stronger than Mother Nature -- God be with them.Perry said some 1.2 million people had evacuated coastal Texas ahead of the storm. Houston, the fourth largest US city with a metropolitan area population topping five million people, is just a few miles from the bay, and destruction there and along the coast in the hurricane zone is expected to be massive. Jack Colley, from the Texas Department of Emergency Management, said officials estimated the storm's economic impact would be somewhere in between the 80-billion dollar and 100-billion-dollar range.With Houston being home to some of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world, there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure there, Colley said. Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison also warned of the storm's economic consequences, saying it's not just a regular rain and wind hurricane.The economic impact is going to be huge. People are much more concerned about this one than I have seen in a long long time, she said on Fox News. Around 5.6 million people live in the Houston metropolitan region, which stretches down to the coast. Oil and gas production in the Gulf was largely shut off, though the US Department of Energy said Ike appeared likely to spare most rigs and platforms there. President George W. Bush, a former Texas governor, said he was deeply concerned about the threat the storm posed to the region.

Galveston has faced calamity before. The deadliest hurricane in US history, the Great Storm of 1900, killed at least 8,000 people when it smashed into Galveston and Houston. Ike has left more than 100 dead across the Caribbean and sparked hurricane and tropical storm warnings from Louisiana to Mexico. Separately, US Coast Guard rescuers called off an attempt to rescue 22 sailors stranded aboard a Cyprus-flagged freighter that lost power in the Gulf of Mexico as it tried to steam out of Ike's way, but added they would seek to remain in radio contact with the crew.

Ike nears major hurricane status as it closes in on Texas coast
By Juan A. Lozano And Pauline Arrillaga, The Associated Press 11:15 PM UPDATE

HOUSTON - Hurricane Ike, a colossal storm nearly as big as Texas itself, began battering the coast Friday, threatening to obliterate waterfront towns and give the skyscrapers, refineries and docks of the fourth-largest U.S. city their worst pounding in a generation. But even as towering waves started crashing over the five-metre Galveston seawall and floodwaters rose in low-lying areas, it became clear that many of the one million coastal residents who had been ordered to get out refused to do so and were taking their chances. Authorities in three counties alone said roughly 90,000 stayed behind, despite a warning from forecasters that many of those in one-or two-storey homes faced certain death.I believe in the man up there, God, said William Steally, 75, a retiree who planned to ride out the storm in Galveston without his wife or sister-in-law. I believe he will take care of me.At about 965 kilometres across, the hurricane was a monster, taking up almost the entire northern half of the Gulf of Mexico. As it zeroed in on the coast, it trapped 60 people who had to be rescued from the floodwaters near Galveston by helicopter, breached levees in rural Louisiana, and tossed around a disabled 178-metre cargo ship in the Gulf. As of 9 p.m. ET, Ike was centred about 112 kilometres southeast of Galveston, moving at 20 kilometres an hour. It was close to a Category 3 storm with winds of 177 km/h and was expected to strengthen by the time the eye hit land.

Forecasters predicted it would come ashore somewhere near Galveston early Saturday and pass almost directly over Houston. Because of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its largely unprotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall of water two storeys high - six to eight metres - at the coast. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5 million prepackaged meals were being sent to the region, along with more than 230 generators and 5.6 million litres of water. At least 3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana. To avoid highway gridlock, authorities instructed most of Houston's two million residents to just hunker down. Still, authorities warned that the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston, the country's second-busiest port, an economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products. The oil and gas industry was also closely watching Ike because it was headed straight for the country's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around US$4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages. The storm could also force water up the seven bayous that thread through Houston, swamping neighbourhoods so flood-prone that they get inundated during ordinary rainstorms. Bachir Annane, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division, said Ike's surge could be catastrophic, and like nothing the Texas coast has ever seen. Wind doesn't tell the whole story, Annane said. It's the size that tells the story, and this is a giant.

Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane. In southwestern Louisiana near Houma, Ike breached levees, threatening thousands of homes of fishermen, oil-field workers, farmers and others. Crews struggled to plug four breaches. We've got a bad situation, said Windell Curole, levee manager for Terrebonne Parish. Though Ike was heading for Texas, it spawned thunderstorms, shut down schools and knocked out power throughout southern Louisiana on Friday. An estimated 1,200 people were in state shelters in Monroe and Shreveport, and another 220 in medical needs shelters. Rescue crews were being tapped before the storm even arrived on shore. Because of high winds, the air force and coast guard aborted plans to send aircraft to the Gulf of Mexico in a daring attempt to rescue 22 crewmen adrift on a stalled freighter in rough seas 145 kilometres off Galveston. And coast guard helicopter crews plucked 60 people from the town of High Island on the Bolivar Peninsula, a 51-kilometre spit just up the coast from Galveston, after rising waters covered the only road. In Galveston, a working-class town of about 57,000, waves crashed over the 18-kilometre seawall built a century ago, after the Great Storm of 1900 killed 6,000 residents. That hurricane remains the country's deadliest natural disaster. A boat and yacht repair warehouse caught fire and burned to the ground on Galveston Island because the streets were under at least two metres of water, too flooded for firetrucks to reach it, Galveston Fire Chief Michael Varela said. No one was believed hurt. While the Galveston beachfront is dotted with new condominiums and some elegant beach homes on stilts, most people live in older, one-storey bungalows. The National Weather Service warned widespread and devastating damage was expected. The sight of the storm's fury frightened some people who initially intended to stay.

We started seeing water come up on the streets, then we saw this. We just loaded up everything, got the pets. We're leaving, 33-year-old Tony Munoz said in Galveston. I've been through storms before, but this is different.In Surfside Beach, a town of 800, the police chief asked one stubborn couple, David and Dondi Fields, to write their names and Social Security numbers on their forearms with a black marker in case something bad happened to them. Dondi Fields, 50, wrote I heart U and for my kids on her arm. But the couple finally decided to leave. Police used an aluminum boat to reach them, and a National Guard truck carried them to safety. In Freeport, Drew Ryder, 47, took no chances. He left his plywood-covered home, heading north with coolers filled with food. It's coming, so I'm going, he said. It's not smart to be here.

Hundreds of homes flood as Ike passes Louisiana By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer SEPT 12 11:15 PM UPDATE.

LAKE CHARLES, La. - Storm surge driven by Hurricane Ike breached levees in coastal Louisiana Friday and flooded hundreds of homes in areas along the Gulf of Mexico still recovering from Gustav. About 1,800 homes and business flooded in coastal Cameron Parish as the storm churned toward expected landfall in Texas, said Gov. Bobby Jindal, and he expected water to eventually inundate all 2,900 homes in the area. Flooded homes were reported in other parishes, though numbers were sketchy at nightfall.Flooding was reported in areas from Plaquemines Parish in southeast Louisiana to Cameron Parish on the Texas line.It's going to be devastating for people, said Cameron Parish emergency preparedness director Clifton Hebert. We don't have the wind that Rita brought, but we have at least the same storm surge, if not a little more.In nearby Terrebonne Parish, crews worked to plug at least four breaches. Officials said areas in which Rita inundated 10,000 homes in 2005 were vulnerable again.More than 160 people were rescued from flooding Friday, Jindal said.

About 130 people remained in the fishing community on the barrier island of Grand Isle after storm surge cut off the only road to the mainland, said Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Jindal said search and rescue teams would head to the island as soon as wind abated and water receded.He told residents they could break into a state wildlife and fisheries lab that was deemed a safe structure. He called it the most unusual piece of advice I might give.More than 100,000 customers were without electricity Friday night, a number that also included some customers who lost power in Gustav, the Louisiana Public Service Commission said.

Hurricane Ike could be potential catastrophe By Tim Gaynor
5:30 PM UPDATE

GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) - Massive Hurricane Ike bore down on the Texas coast on Friday with a wall of water that threatened a potential catastrophe for the United States. Waters rose rapidly as Ike moved within hours of striking low-lying areas near Houston with a possible 20-foot (6-metre) storm surge in what may be the worst storm to hit Texas in nearly 50 years.Our nation is facing what is by any means a potentially catastrophic hurricane, said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, warning that Ike's storm surge could present the gravest danger.This certainly falls in the category of pretty much a worst case scenario.The National Weather Service warned that people in coastal areas could face the possibility of death from a massive storm surge. Officials said Ike could flood as many as 100,000 homes.Crude oil markets nervously watched to see how the hurricane would affect low-lying coastal refineries in Ike's path that collectively process 20 percent of U.S. fuel supplies.Although Ike is weaker than 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the last storm to pummel a U.S. urban area and a major disaster, its large scope gives it more water-moving power.Ike was a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds as it moved on a course to pass directly over Houston -- the fourth-largest city in the United States.

Ike was expected to come ashore overnight, possibly as a dangerous Category 3 storm on the five-step intensity scale with winds of more than 111 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.At 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, Ike was about 135 miles southeast of Galveston, the hurricane center said. It was moving west-northwest at 12 mph.

WATER LEVELS ALREADY CLIMBING

In Galveston, water levels had already climbed more than nine feet, forecasters said.

About 13 million people in 132 counties along the Gulf coast could face hurricane and tropical storm conditions, the U.S. National Census Bureau said.Millions of coastal residents could be left without power, authorities said.U.S. crude oil futures rose 31 cents to settle at $101.18 a barrel after dropping below $100 for the first time since early April as concerns over U.S. economic weakness outweighed storm disruption fears.Low-lying, flood prone refineries in the region lie in Ike's path and weather forecasters at Planalytics saw major and long-term damage likely at the major refining cities.Ports were closed and the Coast Guard said a 584-foot freighter with 22 people aboard was stranded without power 90 miles southeast of Galveston. Conditions were too treacherous to attempt rescue. The storm's wide reach means that it will pack an unusually strong punch, taking the form of a huge wave of water it is pushing ahead of it. This is a Category 5 hurricane, said Jeff Masters, co-founder of meteorological Web site The Weather Underground. I don't care what the Category 2 rating says, he said. Category 5 storms are the most dangerous. Ike's storm surge could push as far inland as NASA's Johnson Space Center south of Houston, Masters said.

LAST-MINUTE DASH

About 600,000 Texas residents fled the island city of Galveston and low-lying counties under mandatory evacuation orders and authorities urged holdouts to move before Ike's winds started to make car travel dangerous. The Coast Guard had to rescue 65 people from rising waters on the Bolivar Peninsula, located east of Galveston. Some who had thought they would stick it out instead made a last-minute exit from Galveston. The city was hit by a hurricane in 1900 that was the deadliest weather disaster in U.S. history, with a death toll of at least 8,000. The water got to coming over the sea wall, we were scared, said Charlotte Pines, who was fueling up an SUV filled with relatives. It's going to be bad.Katrina swiped New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast in August 2005, killing 1,500 people. That storm was the costliest in U.S. history, causing at least $81 billion in damage. Katrina also damaged President George W. Bush's standing. He and his administration were strongly criticized for the slow federal response to the disaster. (Additional reporting by Anna Driver and Bruce Nichols; writing by Chris Baltimore and Mary Milliken; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Frances Kerry)

Ike floods roads, whips waves along Texas By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press Writer 5:30 PM UPDATE SEPT 12,08

HOUSTON - Hurricane Ike, a colossal storm nearly as big as Texas itself, began battering the coast Friday, threatening to obliterate waterfront towns and give the skyscrapers, refineries and docks of the nation's fourth-largest city their worst pounding in a generation. As the storm closed in, it trapped 60 people who had to be rescued from the floodwaters by helicopter, sent towering waves smashing over the 17-foot Galveston seawall, breached levees in rural Louisiana, and tossed around a disabled 584-foot cargo ship in the Gulf of Mexico.About a million people in low-lying coastal areas were ordered to get out well ahead of the storm. But authorities in three counties alone said roughly 90,000 of them refused, despite a warning from forecasters that those staying behind in Galveston faced certain death.I believe in the man up there, God, said William Steally, a 75-year-old retiree who planned to ride out the storm in Galveston without his wife or sister-in-law. I believe he will take care of me.At about 600 miles across, the hurricane was one of the largest in recent memory, taking up almost the entire northern half of the Gulf of Mexico.

As of 5 p.m. EDT, Ike was centered about 135 miles southeast of Galveston, moving at 12 mph. It was a Category 2 storm, with winds of 105 mph, but was expected to strengthen to a Category 3, or at least 111 mph, by the time it hit land.Forecasters predicted it would come ashore somewhere near Galveston late Friday or early Saturday and pass almost directly over Houston.Because of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its largely unprotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall of water two stories high — 20 to 25 feet — at the coastline.To avoid highway gridlock, authorities instructed most of Houston's 2 million residents to just hunker down.Still, authorities warned that the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston, the nation's second-busiest port — a complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products.The oil and gas industry was also closely watching Ike because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages.The storm could also force water up the seven bayous that thread through Houston, swamping neighborhoods so flood-prone that they get inundated during ordinary rainstorms.Bachir Annane, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division, said Ike's surge could be catastrophic, and like nothing the Texas coast has ever seen.Wind doesn't tell the whole story, Annane said. It's the size that tells the story, and this is a giant.

Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage.In southwestern Louisiana near Houma, Ike breached levees, threatening thousands of homes of fishermen, oil-field workers, farmers and others. Crews struggled to plug four breaches. We've got a bad situation, said Windell Curole, levee manager for Terrebonne Parish.Before the storm even arrived, rescue crews were being tapped. Because of high winds, the Air Force and Coast Guard aborted plans to send aircraft to the Gulf of Mexico in a daring attempt to rescue 22 crewmen adrift on a stalled freighter in rough seas 90 miles off Galveston.And Coast Guard helicopter crews plucked 60 people from the town of High Island on the Bolivar Peninsula, a 32-mile spit just up the coast from Galveston, after rising waters covered the only road. In Galveston, a working-class town of about 57,000, waves crashed over the 11-mile seawall built a century ago, after the Great Storm of 1900 killed 6,000 residents. That hurricane remains the nation's deadliest natural disaster. The sight of the storm's fury frightened some people who initially intended to stay. We started seeing water come up on the streets, then we saw this. We just loaded up everything, got the pets. We're leaving, 33-year-old Tony Munoz said in Galveston. I've been through storms before, but this is different.While the beachfront is dotted with new condominiums and some elegant beach homes on stilts, most people live in older, one-story bungalows. The National Weather Service warned widespread and devastating damage was expected.

In Surfside Beach, a town of 800, the police chief asked one stubborn couple, David and Dondi Fields, to write their names and Social Security numbers on their forearms with a black marker in case something bad happened to them. Dondi Fields, 50, wrote I heart U and for my kids on her arm. But the couple finally decided to leave. Police used an aluminum boat to reach them, and a National Guard truck carried them to safety. In Freeport, Drew Ryder, 47, took no chances. He left his plywood-covered home, heading north with coolers filled with food. It's coming, so I'm going, he said. It's not smart to be here.Houston's streets were eerily quiet, emptied of the usual weekday traffic. Skyscrapers were darkened, and sandbags protected the lobby doors to some. At the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, a bartender secured plywood over windows as two dozen customers drank beer, ate burgers and watched scenes of Galveston on giant TV screens. Andy Weeks, a retiree who serves as the homeowners association president in the eight-story building, spent the morning knocking on doors and reminding neighbors to bring their patio furniture and plants inside. The windows were bare of any plywood or other protection. It's pretty tough to get outside to board up your windows, said 64-year-old Weeks, who lives on the sixth floor. Gloria Dulworth, who lives on the seventh of a high-rise apartment building, refused to let the storm dampen her plans to celebrate her 81st birthday. We're surrounded by glass, so I'm taking my crystal candlesticks down. It's been suggested that we roll the rugs away from the door, in case water seeps in. Other than that, said Dulworth, I'm going to get some fresh veggies. I have cereal and canned milk. I anticipate being without air conditioning for a couple of weeks, but you can't do much.Associated Press writers Kelley Shannon in Austin, Paul Weber and Regina L. Burns in Dallas, John Porretto, Andre Coe and Pauline Arrillaga in Houston, Diana Heidgerd in Dallas, and Allen G. Breed and video journalist Rich Matthews in Surfside Beach contributed to this report.

WHO seeks $4.2 million for Haitian flood victims SEPT 12,08

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The U.N.'s World Health Organization is appealing for US$4.2 million to help treat injured and sick Haitians in the wake of a devastating string of storms. The WHO warns of a shortage of medical supplies, especially in the flooded northern city of Gonaives. Insulin, anesthetics, surgical material, antibiotics and emergency kits are running low.As floodwaters recede, hundreds of Haitians have made their way to mobile clinics with stomach ailments, respiratory problems and cuts and infections from days walking in flooded streets.WHO coordinator Dana van Alphen said Friday the agency doesn't have a clear picture of the extent of the problems. Aid workers still have been unable to reach some flooded villages outside Gonaives.

Flash floods hit Iran and Iraq by Rob McElwee SEPT 12,08 BBC

Thunderstorms and downpours across northern Iraq and parts of Iran late on Wednesday and into Thursday have led to flash floods that killed 16 people and forced hundreds out of their homes.Some of the worst hit places in Iran were Bazoft and Lebed, where muddy floodwaters inundated roads and fields, drowning livestock and submerging homes. Gale force winds accompanied the torrential rains, downing trees and power lines.In the Choman district of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, flooding left roads impassable and destroyed several hydroelectric generators in mountainous areas near the Iranian border.The summer months in Iraq and Iran are usually very hot and dry and run from May to September, and are virtually rainless, with the heaviest precipitation falling between December and March.The recent heavy rain and flooding is thus a rare occurrence at this time of the year. A deep area of low pressure generated over the eastern Mediterranean was responsible for the intense downpours.

Over the next few days both Iran and Iraq can expect their more usual warm, dry and sunny weather, which is good news for the flood victims.

POSSIBLITY OF 20 DEAD IN THIS TRAIN CRASH.

Three killed in Los Angeles commuter train crash.Three people have been killed and dozens more injured when a commuter train and freight train collided west of Los Angeles. By Sarah Knapton 2:10AM BST 13 Sep 2008

Wreckage on the track after a freight train and a MetroLink commuter train collided near Chatsworth Photo: REUTERS .The crash near the town of Chatsworth caused a fire and at least one commuter train carriages and seven cars from the freight train to derail. Firefighters battled a fire under part of the wreckage and pulled people from the commuter carriage, which was partly torn open after toppling onto its side.

As many as 350 people were on the Metrolink train. The Sheriff’s Department confirmed three people had been killed. I’m sure there are a lot of injuries, said Ron Haralson, an inspector with the Los Angeles County Fire Department. At least 23 people were injured when the trains collided at 4.32pm in the San Fernando Valley.

A spokeswoman for Metrolink, Denise Tyrrell, said the train left downtown Los Angeles and was headed northwest to Moorpark. We don’t know if we hit another train or another train hit us, Mr Tyrrell said. Firefighters pulled passengers out a rear door and down a ladder from the commuter car, which had been separated from the rest of the train by several feet. Crumpled and charred freight cars were strewn across the tracks. Dazed and injured passengers sat on the ground and milled about on both sides of the tracks. The worst disaster in Metrolink’s history occurred on January 26 2005, in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, when a man parked a gasoline-soaked truck on railroad tracks. A Metrolink train struck the vehicle and derailed, striking another Metrolink train traveling the other way, killing 11 people and injuring about 180 others. The driver, Juan Alvarez, was convicted this year of murder for causing the crash.

Gasoline rises on Ike, but crude dips below $100 By MADLEN READ, AP Business Writer SEPT 12,08

NEW YORK - Gasoline prices jumped at the wholesale level Friday as Hurricane Ike swept through Gulf of Mexico, prompting companies along the Texas coast to shut down refining and drilling operations. Crude oil on the futures market, however, briefly sank below the psychologically important $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since April 2 — showing that investors believe a worsening global economy will continue to drive down demand for some time in the United States and elsewhere.The fact that U.S. fuel demand is so weak right now might mean the recent surge in the wholesale price of gasoline — which rose to about $4.85 a gallon in the Gulf Coast market Friday — might not be passed along to consumers unless Ike's impact is severe and long-lasting.Major oil companies are sensitive to raising prices in this environment, said Ben Brockwell, director of data pricing and information services at the Oil Price Information Service.Ike is forecast to land early Saturday as a Category 3 hurricane near Galveston, a barrier island about 50 miles southeast of Houston. The Houston region is home to about one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity, and the site of a major fuel and grain distribution channel.Wholesale gasoline prices on the Gulf Coast moved further into uncharted territory Friday, as refineries anticipated that Ike would lead to at least a significant pause in their operations, and at worst damage to their facilities. On Thursday, the Gulf Coast wholesale price of gasoline last traded at around $4.75 a gallon, according to OPIS, up substantially from about $3.25 Wednesday and less than $3 Tuesday.

Wholesale prices were much lower in other regions such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, but even those areas saw prices rise.Hopefully it's a temporary phenomenon, but we won't know until next week, Brockwell said.Wholesale prices are determined by major players in the supply chain including refining and trading companies, which constantly buy and sell barrels. These prices end up deciding what refineries charge distributors, before they get marked up further at the retail level for the consumer.

The average U.S. retail price for gasoline edged up less than a penny to $3.675 Friday from Thursday, according to auto club AAA, OPIS and Wright Express.On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude for October delivery rose 31 cents to settle at $101.18 a barrel, after briefly sinking to $99.99.October gasoline futures climbed 2.08 cents to settle at $2.7696 a gallon on Nymex.All week long, it's been a gasoline story more than anything. If you just looked at the crude market independently, you wouldn't know that we had a couple of hurricanes, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates, referring to Ike and last week's Gustav.This dichotomy could persist for a few more days next week, he said. But once the storm factor subsides, we'll see a much higher correlation between gasoline and crude oil.Also, the demand for crude tends to fall off when refineries shut-in, as the have done this week, because they are not taking new crude shipments.Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil Co. have begun halting operations as the Category 2 hurricane headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. U.S. wholesale gasoline prices spiked 30 percent Thursday.As of Friday, nearly 98 percent of crude production and more than 94 percent of natural gas production in the Gulf were shuttered, according to the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service.By Friday afternoon, Ike was a Category 2 storm centered about 165 miles southeast of Galveston, moving to the west-northwest at nearly 12 mph. Forecasters warned it could become a Category 3 storm with winds of at least 111 mph before the eye strikes land. Ike is huge, taking up nearly 40 percent of the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center said tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph extended across more than 510 miles. Ike and last week's Hurricane Gustav have helped to stanch a sharp downturn in oil prices. Concerns over slowing economic growth on a global scale and a strengthening U.S. dollar have led funds to liquidate their commodities holdings, pushing crude prices down about 30 percent from their record $147.27 set on July 11. U.S. fuel demand in June was down 5.6 percent from the same period a year ago, according to a recent report from the Energy Department, so many market watchers are expecting oil prices to resume their tumble. With demand being down as much as it is, the market, some argue, is a bit oversupplied, said Stephen Maloney, a senior consultant in energy risk management at Towers Perrin. When you ask, how does Ike affect things? Its impacts are going to be in the context of lower demand for products than a year ago.In other Nymex trading, October heating oil futures rose 2.36 cents to settle at $2.9391 a gallon. Natural gas for October delivery rose 11.8 cents to settle at $7.366 per 1,000 cubic feet. In London, October Brent crude fell 6 cents to settle at $97.58 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange, after closing at a six-month low in the previous trading session. Associated Press writers Alex Kennedy in Singapore and Louise Watt in London contributed to this report.

China blames dairy farms for tainted baby formula By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer SEPT 12,08

BEIJING - Investigators believe dairy farmers added a dangerous chemical to milk that has been linked to kidney stones in dozens of babies and one death in China's latest product safety scandal. The government vowed serious punishment on Friday after China's biggest milk powder producer recalled 700 tons of baby formula. The official Xinhua News Agency said the powder was tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical used in plastics that contaminated pet food last year.U.S. authorities warned American consumers to avoid all Chinese infant formula. Although Chinese formula is not approved for import into the United States, it might be sold at ethnic grocery stores, the Food and Drug Administration said.A New Zealand company that owns a stake in the Chinese producer said it believed none of the powder was exported from China.The producer, Sanlu Group, knew about the contamination Aug. 6 but refrained from telling the public, said a company manager, Su Changsheng, quoted on the Web site of Caijing, a leading Chinese business magazine. Su said Sanlu kept silent because some grocers refused to return tainted powder.A separate Xinhua report said investigators believed dairy farmers were to blame. People who answered the phone at Sanlu said managers were not available to comment.Authorities are questioning 78 people suspected in the contamination, Xinhua said.The suspects added water to the milk they sold to Sanlu to make more money, Xinhua said, citing deputy mayor Zhao Xinchao of Shijiazhuang, the city where Sanlu is based. They also added melamine so that the diluted milk could still meet standards.

Su, the Sanlu manager, said the chemical might have been added to make the milk's protein content appear higher, according to Caijing. Melamine is nitrogen-rich, and standard tests for protein in bulk food ingredients measure levels of nitrogen.Those responsible will face serious punishment, said a Health Ministry spokesman, Mao Qunan, quoted by Xinhua.The tainted formula sent 59 babies in northwest China's Gansu province — most less than a year old — to the hospital and one baby died, Xinhua reported. Other cases were also being reported across the country.

Investigators found melamine in the urine and kidney stones of the sick babies, Xinhua said, citing a government investigation team.Lu Yuan, a urologist with the No. 1 Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, told Xinhua that 14 sick babies were brought into her facility in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province.Most of the babies looked worn-out and had a fever when they arrived at the hospital. Some didn't produce any urine for two to three days and were in very serious condition, she was quoted as saying. She said eight babies remained hospitalized, while six had been treated and released.It was the second prominent case involving harmful baby formula in China in recent years. In 2004, more than 200 Chinese infants suffered malnutrition and at least 12 died after being fed phony formula that contained no nutrients. Some 40 companies were found to be making phony formula and 47 people were arrested.The reputation of Chinese exports was battered last year by deaths and injuries blamed on tainted toothpaste and other products. The incidents damaged faith abroad in Chinese goods and sparked an overhaul of its regulatory system.Sanlu has 18 percent of China's market for milk powder, according to government data. The company says it produces 6,800 tons of milk a day and buys milk from suppliers that include 60,000 farming households.Sanlu became the dairy supplier to China's space program in June and might provide milk for astronauts on the country's upcoming third manned space flight. The Health Ministry said Friday it was launching a nationwide investigation. It told local officials to report all possible cases and said it is is urgently organizing experts to conduct research and treatment. The milk powder is sold in China under the name Sanlu Bei Bei Infant Powder. We understand that the product involved is only sold in China, Fonterra Co-operative Group, a New Zealand dairy farmers' group that owns 43 percent of Sanlu, said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. Associated Press researcher Bonnie Cao in Beijing contributed to this report.On the Net: Sanlu Group, http://www.sanlu.com
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, http://www.fda.gov Fonterra Co-operative Group, http://www.fonterra.com

Solana meets Abbas in Ramallah Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:50:03 GMT Author : DPA

Ramallah - European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana discussed the peace process in Ramallah Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Solana arrived in Ramallah coming from Israel, where he met Foreign Minister Tsibi Livni. In Ramallah, Abbas told Solana that he is working to reach a final peace agreement on all the core issues. He said he would never accept a partial agreement, or postpone any of the core issues or a declaration of principle, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters after the meeting. Either an agreement on everything, and particularly on Jerusalem, or no agreement at all, Abbas told Solana according to Erekat. Solana said the EU will continue to work with the parties to push forward peace solution before the end of this year. Abbas will meet US President George W Bush in the White House on September 25. The quartet, which includes the US, the EU, Russia and the United Nations, will hold a meeting on the Middle East peace process on the next day, said Erekat. He said Abbas may take part in the quartet meeting as well. Solana earlier held a separate meeting with Fayyad, who thanked the EU for its financial support for the Palestinian budget. news agency

THE GODLESS AND LUKEWARM LIBERAL MEDIA AND ANALYSTS MOCK SPEAKING IN TONGUES AND HATE SARAH PALIN BECAUSE SHES A TRUE CHRISTIAN, WELL LOOKOUT GODLESS AND DEMOCRATIC LUKEWARM LIBERALS IF GOD WANTS A TRUE CHRISTIAN IN AMERICA TO CLEANUP THE IMMORAL UNGODLINESS HE WILL PUT SARAH PALIN IN.

AND PRAISE KNG JESUS SARAH IS A ISRAELI SUPPORTER AND IF SHE GOES BY SCRIPTURE SHE WILL GET AMERICA OUT OF THE ISRAELI-ARAB PEACE PROCESS AND LET THE EUROPEAN UNNION TAKE ITS LAST DAYS POWER IN THE PEACE PROCESS INSTEAD. I MIGHT ADD THE HURRICANE SEASON WOULD BE NON EXISTANT ALMOST ALSO.

SARAH PALIN VIDEO - INTERVIEW
http://video.google.ca/videosearch?hl=en&q=palin%20interview%20from%20abc&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#

CAMPAIGN '08 Palin talks tough on Iran, Russia in ABC interview SEPT 12,08By Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Sarah Palin took a hard line on Russia and Iran on Thursday as she fielded questions on foreign affairs for the first time since Republican presidential candidate John McCain named her his running mate two weeks ago.The Alaska governor also reversed her stand on the cause of climate change, telling ABC News that she believes man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming. Less than a year ago, she said the opposite.By turns tense and combative, Palin, 44, used two interviews with ABC anchor Charles Gibson to display her grasp of issues central to the vice presidency.She acknowledged that, other than a trip last year to see troops in Iraq, Kuwait and Germany, her only visits abroad were to Mexico and Canada. And she said that she had never met a head of state but that she did speak last week with President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.The interviews, conducted in and around Fairbanks, Alaska, did not go without a hitch. Palin called the Russian incursion into Georgia last month unprovoked, a view at odds with that of U.S. officials who have reviewed events leading up to the military action.Putin: Bush not in charge of U.S. policy -- and looked the other way on Georgia Famously, George W. Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's soul seven years ago and said of the Russian president: I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.She also appeared stumped when Gibson asked whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine, which holds that the United States can wage preemptive war against hostile nations.And Palin, whose critics see her as unqualified for the vice presidency, said she was thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War. The Soviet Union collapsed three years after Ronald Reagan left the White House.The interviews were Palin's first since she spoke with People magazine on the day McCain put her on the Republican ticket. Top McCain advisors -- including chief strategist Steve Schmidt -- traveled with Palin to Alaska on Wednesday to brief her for the two Gibson interviews on Thursday and one today.Palin has proved a powerful asset for McCain, giving him a sudden boost in the polls, and advisors were determined to avert any misstep that could change those dynamics.

Palin's shift on global warming aligns her more closely with McCain, who has long believed that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. In December, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner quoted her as saying, I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.Palin, in speaking to ABC, chose her words carefully, saying that some of man's activities could be potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now.As governor, Palin has named an advisory panel to help Alaska adapt to the consequences of climate change, such as melting ice sheets that have changed fish and wildlife migration patterns. But her views on the cause probably have significant bearing on whether, like her running mate, she favors steps to curb carbon emissions that cause global warming. John McCain and I are going to be working on what we do about it, she said.On foreign policy, Palin largely echoed McCain. She said she favored bringing Ukraine and Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for instance -- though Russia would consider such a move a threat to its security. So under the NATO alliance, Gibson asked, would the United States have to go to war in response to a Russian invasion of Georgia? Perhaps so, she responded. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.Gibson alluded to McCain's recent statement that Alaska's proximity to Russia lent Palin some expertise on that nation, asking Palin to explain.They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska -- from an island in Alaska, she said.As for Iran, Palin said nuclear weapons under the control of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe. She called for a hands-off approach to Israel if it decided to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.We cannot second-guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself, she said.Palin's interviews took place on the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes. McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama observed the occasion with a rare break in their daily exchange of campaign attacks.As part of her first Alaska homecoming since McCain introduced her as his running mate, Palin went to an Army base outside Fairbanks on Thursday to attend an Iraq deployment ceremony for a brigade of soldiers, including her 19-year-old son, Track.

In the sit-down with Gibson, she faced questions about statements on the Iraq war that she made at an Assembly of God church that she sometimes attends in her hometown, Wasilla, of which she is a former mayor.A video shows Palin asking a group to pray that the nation's leaders were sending troops to Iraq on a task that is from God.Gibson, however, mischaracterized her as simply asserting that the nation's leaders were sending troops to Iraq on a task from God.

Are we fighting a holy war? he asked.

After Palin disputed his characterization, she paraphrased Abraham Lincoln, saying she meant, Let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.Gibson went on to take a second part of her comments out of context. Palin had asked the group to pray that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan.But Gibson dropped her reference to praying -- and instead quoted Palin as saying the war was God's plan. He asked if she believed the country was sending her son on a task from God.I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie, she responded, adding that she was proud of Track for serving something greater than himself.Palin's most visible stumble came when Gibson asked whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.In what respect, Charlie? she asked the anchor, who sat directly across from her in a matching upright armchair.Gibson then asked what she interpreted the Bush Doctrine to be.His worldview, she answered.Once Gibson explained that the doctrine meant preemptive wars, Palin used the opportunity to take veiled shots at President Bush, whose unpopularity has weighed on McCain's candidacy.I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hellbent on destroying our nation, she said. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made.

With new leadership comes opportunity to do things better, she said.On the question of whether she was ready to step in as president if needed, Palin said she was. She also said she had not hesitated to accept McCain's offer to join the ticket.I answered him yes, because I have the confidence in that readiness, and knowing that you can't blink, she said. You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink. So I didn't blink then, even when asked to run as his running mate.michael.finnegan@latimes.com Times staff writers Matea Gold, Peter Spiegel and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.

Putin warns West against starting arms race By Janet McBride
Thu Sep 11, 1:48 PM ET

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned the West on Thursday against starting an arms race in Europe by stationing a U.S. missile defense shield near Russia's borders and said there was no basis for a new Cold War. Putin, who has taken a robust stance on Russia's conflict with Georgia over the region of South Ossetia, blamed Washington rather than Moscow for resurrecting Soviet-style rhetoric.

Today there are no ideological contradictions, there is no basis for a Cold War, Putin told a group of reporters.There is no basis for mutual animosity ... Russia has no imperialist ambitions, Putin said at a three-hour lunch briefing at his retreat in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.Russia was criticized by the United States and European governments for sending troops into Georgia last month and then recognizing the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.Some Western leaders accused Moscow of using Soviet-style tactics in dealing with its neighbor over South Ossetia. Others feared Moscow might take similar steps to reassert its influence over other countries it long dominated in the Soviet Union.

Vice President Dick Cheney charged Moscow earlier this month with using intimidation and brute force.There is no more Soviet threat but they are trying to resurrect it, Putin said.He questioned criticism of Russia for crushing Georgia's bid to retake South Ossetia by force, which prompted concern over energy security in the region and rattled Russian markets with shares losing more than 40 percent of their value since May.

PUNCHING THE AGGRESSOR

What did you expect us to do? Respond with a catapult? ... We punched the aggressor in the face, he said, adding that falls in the stock market were due to the global credit crisis not to Russia's intervention in Georgia.Putin, his speech peppered with strong language, has spearheaded criticism of the United States, accusing the U.S. administration of stoking the conflict to help the Republican candidate in the race for the White House.His successor, President Dmitry Medvedev, once thought to be firmly in his mentor Putin's shadow, has steered a more balanced course, setting up a diplomatic good cop, bad cop routine.In Sochi, Putin accused the United States of acting like a Roman emperor, but also said Moscow would maintain relations with the next U.S. president due to be elected in November.We'll see how actively they use anti-Russian rhetoric. This is a sign of the weakness of the candidates, he said. Whatever the result of the elections we will speak and maintain relations with the next U.S. president.Putin again warned Poland and the Czech Republic against hosting the U.S. missile shield -- a contrast to a slight softening of position by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Warsaw, where he said Moscow remained open to talks.Washington says the shield is aimed against what it calls rogue states, like Iran, but Moscow fears it will pose a direct threat to Russia's security.Our targeting of these countries will happen as soon as these missiles are brought, Putin said. Please do not instigate an arms race in Europe. It is not needed. What should we do? Sit pretty while they deploy missiles?

He also said if Ukraine, a neighboring former Soviet republic, joined NATO, it would be very detrimental.Putin showed little concern about sanctions, which had been raised by some members of the European Union, including the Baltic States. The bloc was unable to reach a consensus on whether and how best to punish its largest energy supplier, but Washington is holding out the prospect of sanctions. In the global context it is better to support one another, he said. Risks are reciprocal. We are taking risks when we invest dozens of billions of dollars in the U.S. economy.

Reporting by Janet McBride; writing by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Diana Abdallah)

Experts say Iran resumed nuke weapons plan
Published: Sept. 12, 2008 at 8:12 AM

TEHRAN, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Nuclear experts say they believe Iran has renewed work on developing nuclear weapons and removed euranium from its nuclear production facility.

Nuclear experts responsible for monitoring Iran's program said they've discovered that enough uranium, which if enriched could make up to six bombs, was no longer at the Isfahan nuclear production facility, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.Spy satellites identified suspicious sites that Iran hasn't declared to nuclear inspectors, the British newspaper said.The Isfahan facility, where raw uranium is enriched so it can be used for either nuclear power or atomic weapons, is subject to International Atomic Energy Agency supervision. Iran, however, has given IAEA inspectors access only to the final stage of the production process, where the uranium in a gaseous state is stored.Nuclear experts said they've determined that 50-60 tons of unprocessed uranium is missing, the newspaper said.The inspectors only have limited access at Isfahan and it looks as though Iranian officials have removed significant quantities ... at a stage in the process that is not being monitored, a nuclear official told the Telegraph. If Iran's nuclear intentions are peaceful, then why are they doing this? IAEA officials told The Daily Telegraph they suspect the missing uranium is being stored in installations spotted by U.S. spy satellites.The Iranians will be asked to account for missing enriched uranium when the IAEA's board of governors meets in Vienna this month, officials said.

The CARMEL ALERT Sept 12th 2008 A compilation of news reports from the past week for the information of those committed to praying for Israel and the salvation of the Jewish people.Stefan's Comment: Behold Our Bridegroom Cometh.

John 14:2-3 In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (NKJ)

As most of you know, I am now a married man. During my time of preparation for our marriage I spent a lot of time reading books on relationships and searching the scriptures as to the roles of the husband and the wife and the relations between them in all the different aspects of married life. I also began to do some research on weddings (mainly Jewish weddings) and the many customs that are embedded in them, in order to find out their origins and meaning. For example, why does the bride veil herself, why do we get married under a Huppa (canopy) and why is a Ketuba (the Jewish wedding agreement) written , all of it made me curious and so began my search. I figured that if I am going to be doing all these customs I might as well know what they mean and why we do them. In my search into the Jewish wedding I found an amazing parallel between the ancient way that a Jewish betrothal and marriage was conducted and what our God and his Son, Yeshua our bridegroom has, and is going to do for us. Many of these ancient customs and procedures are still embedded in the wedding ceremony today but have less meaning because of the way our modern world functions.

First the betrothal. When a young man found a young maiden that he liked he would approach his father and inform him of the matter. They would then make a contract (which is in fact the Ketuba) together, where the terms of the marriage and the price that was to be paid to the young woman's father were stated. Then the young man and his father would go to the young woman's father's house and sit down with her and her father. Once the young woman's father agreed to the terms of the marriage and the price to be paid the ultimate decision was left to the young woman as to wether she wanted to marry the young man or not - she would not be forced to. If she agreed, she would take a cup of wine that was placed on the table at the beginning of the meal, and would take a sip, after which the young man would also drink thus sealing the betrothal. This is where the first cup of wine comes from in a Jewish wedding ceremony - the cup of betrothal.

After this happened the price would be paid to the father of the bride and from that point on the two were considered husband and wife, however the marriage was not yet consummated. Today the price paid for the bride can be seen symbolically in an engagement ring that usually is not very cheap. The young man would then leave and return to his fathers house where he would begin to prepare a place for himself and his bride to live together. The young woman would begin to prepare her belongings and herself for the return of her bridegroom who would come at a time unknown to her - therefore she had to always be ready to go. The young man also did not know the time of his return to take his bride. This was because the place that the young man was preparing had to be inspected and authorized by his father first. In the young man's eagerness to return for his bride the father had to make sure that everything was done properly and that no corners were cut. The place that was being prepared had to be beautiful and perfect, therefore only the father of the groom knew when he would send his son to take his bride away.

The veil - Once the young woman was betrothed to her husband she was taken. No other man could have her. In order to make that fact known to all, the young woman would veil herself when being out doors so that all would know that she belongs to someone. The veil also is a sign of being in submission, in this case the woman coming under the covering and the submission of the man she is betrothed to. A modern Jewish bride will not have the veil over her face as she approaches her husband to be, as he awaits her under the Huppa (canopy) - he will place the veil over her face once she is standing before him. The reason for this is traditional, so the husband to bee can be sure it is his bride and no one else, it comes from the story of Jacob marrying Leah, when it was supposed to be Rachel.

When the father gave the order to his son to go and take his bride, the bridegroom would take a party of friends, usually at midnight, and with torches blazing walk to the house of the bride. Upon arriving, they would blow the Shofar and let out a shout thus notifying the arrival of the bridegroom and his party.The bride and her party had to quickly gather their things together and leave with the bridegroom back to the fathers house. Upon arriving all the guests that had assembled there for the celebration would shout and clap. The bride and bridegroom would enter the wedding chamber where the marriage was consummated and there they would stay for a week in romance. The Huppa (canopy) under which Jewish weddings are held represents the wedding chamber and the bed that had four poles, one off each corner, and a covering over the top. During those seven days the wedding feast was held and consisted of dancing, eating and drinking. After the seven days had ended the bride and bridegroom would come out of the chamber and were officially known as husband and wife.

Yeshua has done the same thing for us. We have been purchased for a price, the price of His own blood (Acts 20:28, 1Cor 6:20, 7:23) that washes our sins clean and justifies us before God. He has departed from us to prepare a place for us (John 14:2-3) but will return at an unknown time (2 Pet 3:10, Matt 25:13) with a shout and the sound of the Shofar (1 Thess 4:16), and of that day no one knows, not even Yeshua, only God the Father (Mark 13:32). We the bride are to prepare ourselves for His return and be ready for Him when He comes. A wonderful picture of this is the story of the 10 virgins in Matt 25:1-13. He will then take us to Himself, change us and we will dwell with Him for eternity (1 Thess 4:17, 1 Cor 15:51-52)

I have been to a number of weddings during this past year and every one I go to reminds me again and again of God's goodness to us, His promises to Israel that are being fulfilled before our eyes, and the work that He is completing in each of us as every day goes by. Let us remember these things and act like a bride who is preparing herself for the return of her bridegroom. Behold the Bridegroom Cometh !

The Lord bless you as you bless Israel by standing in defense of her right to exist on the land given to the Jewish people by the God of Israel Lets pray that Israel will turn back to their God. Do not be silent, but share this with your fellow Christians, share it with your pastors, and with anyone you have a chance to speak to. Lets also pray for that breakthrough to the Muslims, and please remember to pray for our son Jordan, and all of his fellow soldiers in the IDF.

Shabbat Shalom ............. David & Josie.

* * * * FLASH TRAFFIC: WASHINGTON UPDATE * * * * BIN LADEN SEEKS A NUCLEAR 9/11 Never forget. Never get fogged. By Joel C. Rosenberg

(Washington, D.C., September 11, 2008) -- During his military tribunal at Gitmo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM)-- al Qaeda's chief of external operations until he was captured in Pakistan -- admitted that he was not only responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He also the mastermind of second wave attacks and other mega-attacks in the United States, Israel and around the globe. In a written statement given to interrogators, KSM went on to confess no fewer than thirty-one separate terrorist attacks. Some had already been carried out. Others were foiled by U.S. and foreign security forces, or by the fact that KSM had been arrested. Each provided a sobering insight into what Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network really want.

1. I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation.

2. I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z.

3. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jews, Daniel Pearl….

4. I was responsible for the Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.

5. I was responsible for the Filka Island Operation in Kuwait that killed two American soldiers.

6. I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals.

7. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11:

a. Library Tower, California

b. Sears Tower, Chicago

c. Plaza Bank, Washington State

d. The Empire State Building, New York City

8. I was responsible for planning, financing & follow-up Operations to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers in the Straights of Hormuz, the Straights of Gibraltar, and the Port of Singapore.

9. I was responsible for the planning, training, surveying, and financing for the Operation to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal.

10. I was responsible for the planning, training, surveying, and financing for the assassination of several former American Presidents, including President Carter.

....[NOTE: For the full list of KSM's confessions, see weblog]....

The Ultimate Objective

As horrifying as these operations were, however, they pale in comparison to what al Qaeda has been praying and planning for a decade at least: acquiring weapons of mass destruction - ideally nuclear weapons - to be used against the United States to kill between four and ten million Americans. Asked in 1998, for example, if al-Qaeda had nuclear or chemical weapons, bin Laden told Time magazine that acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, than I thank God for enabling me to do so. The timing of that statement was significant, for 1998 was the year that Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. Since then, many more disturbing details have emerged about bin Laden's feverish hunt for WMD and his deep-rooted belief that Allah has commanded him to use them to kill Christians and Jews. In the summer of 2002, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti-born spokesman for al Qaeda posted the following statement on the internet: Al-Qa'ida has the right to kill four million Americans, including one million children, displace double that figure, and injure and cripple hundreds of thousands.In May 2003, al-Qaeda unveiled a fatwa or religious ruling from a leading Saudi cleric that sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. and permitted the killing of up to ten million Americans. By some estimates, there is enough highly enriched uranium in global stockpiles to construct thousands of nuclear weapons, and it is safe to assume that there are many individuals who would not think twice about using such weapons. FBI Director Robert Muller told a conference on nuclear terrorism in 2007. The economics of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere, will provide nuclear material to the highest bidder, and that material will end up in the hands of terrorists. Al Qaeda has demonstrated a clear intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 1993, Osama bin Laden attempted to buy uranium from a source in the Sudan. He has stated that it is Al Qaeda's duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And he has made repeated recruiting pitches for experts in chemistry, physics, and explosives to join his terrorist movement.

Former CIA Director George Tenet was skeptical, at first, about how seriously to take bin Laden's WMD threats. But over time, he became a believer. He is now absolutely convinced that bin Laden's top priority is to acquire nuclear weapons and detonate them inside the United States. Of all al-Qa'ida's efforts to obtain other forms of WMD, the main threat is the nuclear one, Tenet stressed. I am convinced that this is where [bin Laden] and his operatives desperately want to go. They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains, and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure. But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history. Such an event would place al-Qa'ida on a par with the superpowers and make good on Bin Ladin's threat to destroy our economy and bring death into every American household. Even in the darkest days of the cold war, we could count on the fact that the Soviets, just like us, wanted to live. Not so with the terrorists. Al-Qaida boasts that while we fear death, they embrace it.Never forget the evil done to us seven years ago today. Never get fogged about the evil that will be done to us if we get distracted and confused.

GEORGE W WAKE UP CALL

ISAIAH 13:6-7 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)

2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

JOEL 3:2
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

THIS STORM IS TAKING UP THE WHOLE MEXICAN GULF. ITS THE BIGGEST JACQUI JERAS HAS EVER SEEN SHE MENTIONED ON CNN. THESE WAVES AND WIND WILL BE BASHING TEXAS HARD. ALREADY THERES WAVES AND LAND FALL IS AT LEAST 10 HOURS 200 MILES AWAY YET.

NOTICE THIS TIME ITS TEXAS GEORGE W COUNTRY. GOD IS GIVING GEORGE A LAST SECOND LESSON ABOUT DIVIDING JERUSALEM AND SCATTERING ISRAELIS FROM THEIR GOD GIVIN LAND.

I BELIEVE GEORGE W AND AMERICA IS PRESURRING ISRAEL SO BAD RIGHT NOW GOD HAS TO SCATTER AMERICANS TO GET GEORGE W AND CONDIS ATTENTION. SINCE THE ADMINSTRATION IS ALMOST DONE WITH, GEORGE W AND CONDI THINK THEY CAN LEAVE A PEACE LEGACE, LITTLE DO THEY KNOW IT COULD BE TEXAS WORST LEGACE IN HISTORY DUE TO THE ADMINISTRATION FORCING ISRAEL TO DIVIDE JERUSALEM GODS HOLY CITY HE GAVE TO ISRAEL (ISAAC) NOT ISHMAEL (ARABS).

Forecaster warns of certain death as Ike looms By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer SEPT 12,08

HOUSTON - A sprawling and strengthening Hurricane Ike steamed through the Gulf of Mexico on Friday on a track toward the nation's fourth-largest city, where authorities told residents to brace rather than flee. Closer to the coast, small towns were mostly empty after forecasters issued dire warnings the storm could kill.

Ike's 105-mph winds and potential 50-foot waves stopped the Coast Guard from attempting a risky helicopter rescue of 22 people aboard a 584-foot freighter that broke down in the path of the storm about 90 miles southeast of Galveston, Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said. The ship was hauling petroleum coke used to fuel furnaces at steel plants.Ike's eye was forecast to strike somewhere near Galveston late Friday or early Saturday, but the massive system was already buffeting Texas and Louisiana, causing flooding along the Louisiana coast still recovering from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav.The National Weather Service warned residents of smaller structures on Galveston they could face certain death if they ignored an order to evacuate; most had complied, along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Texans in counties up and down the coastline.But a stubborn few decided to stay. Emory Sallie, 44, said he had ridden storms out in the past and didn't think Ike would be any different. He didn't believe the dire warnings — he was more worried about the wind, not the flooding.If the island is going to disappear it has to be a tsunami, he said, as he walked along the block where his home is located, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. If it ain't your time you ain't going anywhere.In Surfside Beach, a small coastal town of about 805, construction worker Bobby Taylor decided to stay, even though his wife, Elizabeth, was leaving and the waves had already been whipped up so high their home was flooded. Police there were using a dump truck to try to reach flooded residences.There's no changing his mind so I just have to pray for him and hope for the best, she said, her green eyes misting. I just worry about him. I think it's going to get a lot worse than he realizes, and then there's no way to get out of here.President Bush was briefed on the storm Friday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and spoke with Texas Gov. Rick Perry Thursday.I'm deeply concerned about Hurricane Ike. It's a large storm headed to a major population center, Bush said during a visit to Oklahoma Friday.Officials said inland residents should not flock to the roadways en masse, creating the same kind of gridlock that cost lives — and a little political capital — when Hurricane Rita threatened Houston in 2005. Some evacuation orders were in effect for low-lying sections of the Houston area, but for the most part, people stayed. Large hospitals in the city moved some patients away from windows, but they did not flee.

It will be, in candor, something that people will be scared of, Houston Mayor Bill White said. A number of people in this community have not experienced the magnitude of these winds.The decision is a stark contrast to how emergency management officials responded to Hurricane Rita in 2005. As the storm closed in three years ago, the region implemented its plan: Evacuate the 2 million people in the coastal communities first, past the metropolis of Houston; once they were out of harm's way, Houston would follow in an orderly fashion.But three days before landfall, Rita bloomed into a Category 5 and tracked toward the city. City and Harris County officials told Houstonians to hit the road, even while the population of Galveston Island was still clogging the freeways. The evacuation itself wound up far more dangerous than the storm: 110 people died during the effort, while the eventual Category 4 storm killed nine.Residents were scurrying to get ready for Ike, and hardware stores put limits on the number of gas containers that could be sold. Batteries, drinking water and other storm supplies were running low, and grocery stores were getting set to close.We're faced with devastation of a catastrophic range, said Randy Smith, the police chief and a waterfront property owner on Surfside Beach, just down the coast from Galveston and a possible landfall target. I think we're going to see a storm like most of us haven't seen.Friday morning, Houstonians streamed in and out of a Randalls grocery store near downtown, carts filled with last-minute supplies such as water and Wheat Thins. Ken Wilson, 51, cut short a vacation to California to return home and ready for Ike. He loaded eight gallons of water into his car trunk before heading home to ride out the storm with his wife.Wilson said it was too late for him to board up his house, though he had stocked up on ice and batteries. We'll just tape up to keep things from flying around. I'm apprehensive about how high the winds are going to be, and windows breaking, he said, but still: What's the philosophy? Run from the water, shelter from the wind? If it's wind: Hunker down.

Texans were getting hit from both sides, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lowell, a Pacific system, dumped nearly 8 inches of rain on Lubbock in 24 hours, flooding homes and roads. Some businesses closed, and Texas Tech University and other schools canceled Friday classes. Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston — a city filled with gleaming skyscrapers, the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center — it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage. Galveston, a barrier island and beach town about 50 miles southeast of downtown Houston, was the scene of the nation's deadliest hurricane, the great storm of 1900 that left at least 6,000 dead. Ike swelled into a huge storm, slinging 75 mph winds up to 120 miles from its center. That meant a direct hit on Galveston could still mean hurricane-force winds affecting a stretch of coast halfway to Corpus Christi and well into Louisiana. The storm is so big, it could inflict a punishing blow even in those areas that do not get a direct hit. Forecasters warned because of Ike's size and the shallow Texas coastal waters, it could produce a surge, or wall of water, 20 feet high. It could also dump 10 inches or more of rain.

If the storm stays on its projected path, it could head up the Houston ship channel and through Galveston Bay, which Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called a nightmare scenario. At 11 a.m. EDT Friday, the storm was centered about 195 miles southeast of Galveston, moving to the west-northwest near 12 mph. Hurricane warnings were in effect over a 400-mile stretch of coastline from south of Corpus Christi to Morgan City, La. Tropical storm warnings extended south almost to the Mexican border and east to the Mississippi-Alabama line, including New Orleans. The oil and gas industry was closely watching the storm because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. The upper Texas coast accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity. Some service stations in the Southeast were limiting customers to 10 gallons of gas to guard against running out.
Associated Press writers Kelley Shannon in Austin, Paul Weber and Regina L. Burns in Dallas, Juan A. Lozano in Galveston, John Porretto and Pauline Arrillaga in Houston, Diana Heidgerd in Dallas, and Allen Breed and video journalist Rich Matthews and Allen Breed in Surfside Beach contributed to this report.

Why Ike Could Be Texas' Worst Nightmare Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer LiveScience.com SEPT 12,08

As Hurricane Ike revs up again over the Gulf of Mexico, residents of coastal Texas, especially Houston and Galveston, are preparing for the arrival of the monstrous storm, which could be the most devastating that the Lone Star State has seen Hurricane Alicia came ashore in 1983, causing nearly $6 billion in damage and 21 fatalities. Ike is huge. Hurricane-force winds extend out 120 miles (195 kilometers) from the storm's center, and tropical storm-force winds reach out 275 miles (445 km), both measurements exceeding what's seen with many storms. Ike could reach major hurricane status as a Category 3 before it makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday morning somewhere along the Texas coast.And right now it looks like that somewhere will be the Houston/Galveston area.

Will the sea wall hold?

Galveston sits on a barrier island between the Gulf and Galveston Bay. The city was devastated by a major hurricane in 1900, still the deadliest in U.S. history. Galveston officials have already ordered a mandatory evacuation of the island as they keep a wary eye on Ike's progress.Galveston sits right at sea level and so is vulnerable to the mound of water that a hurricane can push in front of it.Our biggest concern for this storm is the tidal surge, said Mary Jo Naschke, the public information officer for the City of Galveston. As a hurricane travels over the ocean, its strong winds push against the water's surface, causing it to pile up higher than the sea's ordinary level. As the hurricane makes landfall, the water is pushed onshore and can quickly wash many miles inland, destroying homes and businesses. This so-called storm surge, or tidal surge, accounts for the majority of deaths and damage caused by a hurricane.Naschke said yesterday they are already seeing a rise in water levels, with the tide coming further up along the beaches and water bubbling up through storm sewers. Storm surge can build for hours as a hurricane approaches, but the bulk of it usually comes as a sudden rush of water that can quickly submerge low-lying coastal areas, washing away cars and trees and flooding buildings.The most vulnerable part of Galveston Island is the western end, which isn't protected by the 18-foot sea wall that the city erected after the catastrophe in 1900, Naschke told LiveScience. A tidal surge of just 5 feet above normal will inundate the roads in that part of town, she said.Ike's storm surge could reach 20 feet, which could cause water to spill over the walls. But Naschke isn't worried about a Katrina-like flooding disaster.

We feel confident that the sea wall will hold, she said.

Naschke said mainland coastal areas, particularly those near bayous behind Galveston, are more at risk for flooding because they have no sea walls. Most of these areas have also been under evacuation orders, she said.

Winds and rain

Houston's downtown area, meanwhile, sits about 50 feet above sea level. The biggest concerns for this, the fourth most populous city in the United States, is high winds, along with flooding from rain if Ike decides to hang around for awhile.Major flooding occurred in Houston in 2001 when Tropical Storm Allison dumped more than 30 inches on parts of the city.It caused a lot of areas to be overrun with water, said Joe Laud, a spokesman for Houston's Office of Emergency Management.Wind could prove damaging to high-rise buildings. Hurricane Alicia, in 1983, was the last hurricane to make a direct hit on the city. It shattered many downtown windows by picking up debris with its ferocious winds. High-rises are particularly vulnerable to a hurricane's winds because they are so high up; a study conducted when Hurricane Georges hit Mississippi in 1998 showed that the winds 1,000 feet (305 meters) above the surface were 23 mph (37 kph) faster than those at ground level, putting the tops of skyscrapers more at risk, said Matt Moreland, a forecaster with the National Weather Service's Houston/Galveston office. Laud said that changes had been made to window materials to make them more resistant to storms but that in a major storm, the winds could still find some piece of debris and inflict damage.Disaster planners in other cities know that buildings under construction, along with their scaffoldings and any construction materials lying around, are particularly vulnerable.While most of Houston's high-rises are office buildings, some contain apartments, and everyone has been asked to evacuate high-rise buildings. Apart from one low-lying area to the southeast of the city, no other evacuations have been called.We're just on standby, getting ready for the storm, Laud said.Back in Galveston, Naschke said the town was already starting to feel the touch of the storm. The winds have picked up considerably, she said late yesterday.But residents seemed to be heeding the evacuation calls, she said: The town's pretty dead.

Taiwan braces for Typhoon Sinlaku Thu Sep 11, 11:45 PM ET

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan is bracing for Typhoon Sinlaku as the storm gains strength while approaching the island. The Central Weather Bureau says that at 8 a.m. local time Friday, Sinlaku's center was about 200 miles southeast of Hualien, in eastern Taiwan.It says the typhoon is packing winds of 115 mph, up from 109 mph. The storm is moving northeast at a speed of 5 mph.The bureau says that if Sinlaku stays on its current course, it will brush past Taiwan's eastern coast Saturday.

FAMINE

REVELATION 6:5-6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.(A DAYS WAGES FOR A LOAF OF BREAD)

FAMINE

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

Gas prices shoot up across Canada on Friday as U.S. refineries affected by Ike By The Canadian Press SEPT 12,08

TORONTO - Motorists across Canada were hit with sharply higher gasoline prices Friday as hurricane Ike shut down some refineries on the U.S. Gulf coast, a jump that Prime Minister Stephen Harper said suggests gouging may be going on in some markets. The price for gas at stations throughout southern Ontario soared by about 13 cents a litre at midnight to more than $1.36 a litre. Prices in Ottawa were also up by 13 cents. In Vancouver, prices rose to more than $1.40 a litre at some stations, while Montreal prices jumped about a dime to $1.38 a litre. Halifax prices were up to about $1.33 a litre. GasBuddy.com, a website that monitors North American fuel prices, said the average price Friday in Canada was nearly $1.33 a litre, compared with $1.05 a litre a year ago. At a federal election campaign stop in Halifax, Harper said it appeared to be the case, when asked if there was price gouging going on. Earlier this summer, criminal charges were laid against 13 people and 11 companies for fixing gasoline prices in Quebec. Three of the companies pleaded guilty and were fined a total of $2 million. Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who has gained a reputation for predicting pump price increases based on the wholesale market in the United States, predicted more increases for Canadian motorists later Friday.

News of the looming increases had motorists lining up past gas stations in several Canadian cities as they tried to beat the jump in price. The threat of hurricane Ike to Gulf Coast oil refineries, mostly in Texas, sent wholesale gasoline prices in the U.S. soaring Thursday over supply concerns. As well, U.S. gasoline supplies have dropped by several million barrels over the last week, according to data released by the U.S. Energy Department. While McTeague said the threat posed by the hurricane was the spark that triggered the increase, he also pointed the finger at the Canadian oil industry. The proverbial fuel on the fire is in fact the distortions by an unresponsive, uncompetitive market that has actually been diminishing its output, McTeague said in a phone interview from his Toronto-area riding where he was campaigning for re-election Thursday night. Federal competition reviews of the Canadian industry have repeatedly determined it is highly competitive and reacts to changes in the continental market for gasoline, which is traded as a commodity just like wheat, grain, nickel and oil. Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM), Valero Energy Corp., ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) and Marathon Oil Co. were among the companies halting operations at refineries on the Texas coast as Ike churned toward the state.

Refineries along the upper Texas Gulf Coast account for about one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity. Exxon Mobil's refinery in Baytown, outside Houston, is the largest in the United States. In a related development Friday, a North Carolina-based convenience store chain asked U.S. customers in 11 states - mostly across the Southeast - to limit gasoline purchases to 10 gallons to avoid a run on supplies.

Another veteran gas-price watcher, Jason Toews, who runs GasBuddy.com, said fear of Ike carried over the border to Canada. With the hurricane in the gulf certainly going to cause some problems with supplies of crude oil and gasoline, mostly refined gasoline, in the U.S... it may have ripple effects all the way up to Canada, Toews said. What they have to do to fill that void is bring in gas from neighbouring states, and it has a ripple effect because those neighbouring states all of sudden don't have enough gas and they have to bring in gas, he said. Gas is trucked in from across the region, and across the country (United States), and from Canada.

Lehman shares fall amid race to find buyer By JOE BEL BRUNO, AP Business Writer SEPT 12,08

NEW YORK - Lehman Brothers' shares sank further on Friday as top executives raced to put a sale of the beleaguered investment bank in place and Washington indicated that taxpayers would not foot the bill. Confidence has waned that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. will emerge from the financial crisis as an independent franchise, and the No. 4 U.S. investment bank is scouring Wall Street for a financial lifeline. Executives worked feverishly in the past two days to find someone willing to buy all or part of the company, bankers and industry executives close to the situation said.

In midday trading, Lehman shares fell 43 cents, or 10.2 percent, to $3.79. The stock is down more than 96 percent from its 52-week high of $67.73 one year ago.Bank of America Corp., Japan's Nomura Securities, France's BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank AG and Britain's Barclay's Plc have been mentioned this week as potential buyers. All have declined to comment.Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is against any use of government money in whatever deal comes together for Lehman, a person close to his thinking said Friday.The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of negotiations, said Paulson, who played a major role in engineering the government-back Bear Stearns bailout, believes the Lehman situation is different in two critical aspects.Financial markets have been aware of Lehman's troubles for a long time and have had time to prepare. And the Federal Reserve is now allowing investment banks to borrow directly from the Fed just as commercial banks can do. It opened the borrowing spigot for investment banks after the near collapse of Bear Stearns in March.Given those two things, he is adamant that there be no government money in the resolution of this situation, the person said.Taxpayer money may already be on the line for the government's takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the government-brokered sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in March. The Federal Reserve put up $29 billion in loans to help that deal.The final cost of both actions is impossible to know. It will depend on how much the U.S. economy weakens and how much the housing market sinks. One guess was made earlier this year by the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that a rescue of Fannie and Freddie could cost taxpayers around $25 billion.

Some economists believe the government's actions ultimately could be more costly to taxpayers than the savings and loan crisis, when the failure of more than 700 S&Ls in the 1980s and early 1990s cost taxpayers around $125 billion.Without the government's financial backing, there's more pressure on Lehman Chief Executive Richard Fuld, who joined the company in 1961 as a college student and now serves as Wall Street's longest-serving CEO. He has tenaciously resisted putting the company up for sale, but finally relented after a free-fall in its stock price and growing doubts about its survival, according to bankers and industry executives. They asked not to be named because they are not authorized to comment publicly.Lehman's losses soared to almost $7 billion in the last two quarters alone, primarily because of wrong-way bets on mortgage securities and other risky investments.It's not alone. Global banks have lost more than $300 billion since the subprime mortgage crisis spread to the credit markets one year ago. And the International Monetary Fund has suggested total losses globally could hit $1 trillion.Lehman Brothers hunted for months for a deep-pocketed investor to pump fresh capital into the firm, a move that would help restore confidence and replenish its broken balance sheet. Some analysts said Lehman was asking too high a price, others guessed that potential investors found too much risk on its books in the current environment.Fuld tried to assuage nervous investors on Wednesday by announcing a plan to sell a 55 percent stake in its prized investment management business and spin off its commercial real estate holdings into a publicly traded company.

Channel Tunnel inferno leaves thousands facing travel chaos by Gael Branchereau SEPT 12,08

CALAIS, France (AFP) - French and British firefighters on Friday extinguished a 1,000-degree inferno in the Channel Tunnel but tens of thousands of travellers faced more infuriating delays as they waited for the undersea link to reopen. A hundred firefighters were still at the site of the fire carrying out procedures to cool down the rail tunnel that links Britain to the European mainland, officials said.The firefighters battled through the night in relay teams against flames and heat which they said reached around 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,830 degrees Fahrenheit) after the blaze began Thursday afternoon.Almost all the 27 trucks on board a 700-metre-long freight train bringing them from France to Britain had burned, said Jacques Gounon, chairman of the Eurotunnel company that operates the tunnel.Tens of thousands of would-be rail travellers have been left stranded in Paris, London and Brussels and hundreds of trucks were stuck on each side of Channel.Teams of Eurotunnel inspectors began examining the 50 kilometres (30 miles) of the tunnel Friday for fire damage, the company said in a statement.A spokeswoman said traffic could possibly start resuming late Friday in the south tunnel, which was not damaged in the blaze, if safety inspectors deliver a green light.Eurostar trains will be given priority, followed by shuttles carrying trucks and cars between Folkestone in England and Calais.There are two tunnels for passenger trains and shuttles, linked by a service tunnel for maintenance and safety operations.Traffic was expected to resume in the least-damaged sections of the north tunnel in one or two weeks, the Eurotunnel spokeswoman said. She could give no date for the worst-hit parts of the tunnel.We need to redo the electricity, the concrete, everything you do when a house burns down, she said.

Eurostar said around 30,000 passengers had been due to travel on 50 Eurostar trains going through the tunnel on Friday.Kirsty McIntyre, 28, struggling to get to France for a weekend with friends, was stuck at London's St Pancras terminal. We're going to see if we can get a bus to Dover and a ferry to Calais, he said.Channel ferry companies have laid on extra boats.The train was about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the Calais exit on the French side of the 50.5-kilometre (31.4 mile) tunnel when it caught fire, officials said.Thirty-two truck drivers on the shuttle smashed windows to escape and get into the service tunnel from they were evacuated. Six people were injured in the third major blaze since the tunnel under the Channel opened in May 1994.Officials said they suspected the fire started in a truck's braking system that overheated and spread to a tyre, but Eurotunnel's Gounon said it was too soon to say with any certainty what the cause was.One of the 30 trucks on the shuttle was carrying phenol acid, but this did not catch fire. Gounon said safety precautions had worked perfectly.Asked about the truck drivers smashing windows to escape the shuttle, he said this was a normal reaction by the men who may have been stressed and perhaps wanted to get out faster than necessary from the pressurised cabin.

He told French radio the automatic doors on the shuttle only function when it is certain that safety fans are working so there is no risk of anyone being overcome by fumes. It takes a few seconds. One can imagine that in the stress of the moment they took the red hammer to get out through the window. A few seconds later they would have got out more easily through the door. It doesn't matter, it worked.In the first serious incident in the tunnel on November 18, 1996, a fire broke out on a late-night shuttle train carrying trucks. Eight people were injured and the service was disrupted for several months. On August 21, 2006, the tunnel was closed for several hours after a truck engine caught fire, sending smoke through the tunnel.