PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - "The tightening of the credit markets and fears of a global liquidity crunch have turned a normal summer slowdown in mergers and acquisitions into a deep freeze.

      Fears that deals may fall apart or their prices may go down escalated this week after home-improvement retailer Home Depot Inc. (HD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said the sale of its wholesale business might bring less than the agreed-upon $10.3 billion.

      Analysts and traders said the Home Depot situation might be more related to the decline in the supply business amid the housing slump rather than a symbol of a bad merger market. Still, that news could spook an already skittish market.

      "Home Depot put fear in people, for sure, but it's a company-specific and industry-specific situation," said a trader who requested anonymity. "You aren't going to see that happen with TXU (TXU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) or other large, solid companies."

      Fortis' (FOR.BR: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Jean-Paul Votron dismissed new concerns on Friday over the Belgian-Dutch bank's capacity to fund its part of a 71 billion euro takeover of Dutch rival

      "We are very comfortable about our financing," Votron told reporters in Edinburgh. "We have always been comfortable about the financing, and there's no reason why we should not be today."

      But financing for other deals has run into trouble.

      The Bottom Line:  Credit?  I think this should be called No-Credit, because that would be a more fitting title.

       WASHINGTON (AP) -- "Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

      "I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

      "And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," said Lute, who is sometimes referred to as the "Iraq war czar." It was his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

      President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a "major policy shift" and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.

      "The president's position is that the all-volunteer military meets the needs of the country and there is no discussion of a draft. Gen. Lute made that point as well," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

      In the interview, Lute also said that "Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well."

      Still, he said the repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan affect not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military.

      "There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families," he said. "And ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions."

      The military conducted a draft during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. The Selective Service System, re-established in 1980, maintains a registry of 18-year-old men.

      Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, has called for reinstating the draft as a way to end the Iraq war.

      NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- "India asked doctors to cancel vacations Friday and rushed food and medicine to flooded regions where disease has stricken thousands of people. A wild storm hit Pakistan's largest city, pushing the death toll from a particularly calamitous South Asia monsoon season past 2,000.

      Relief workers said there was an acute shortage of clean drinking water and medical supplies parts of northern India, where storms have been heavier than usual this year.

      With flooding from two weeks of rains finally receding in northern India, monsoon storms moved west. Heavy winds and rains lashed the Pakistani city of Karachi, destroyed homes and flooding streets.

      At least 22 bodies were pulled from collapsed homes, said Anwar Kazi, a spokesman for the private relief service Edhi Foundation. Residents waded through waist-deep water in parts of the city of 15 million people, local television showed.

      Vital to farmers whose crops feed hundreds of millions of people, the monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It's a blessing and a curse: At least 2,090 people have died this year, double the number killed last year. Nearly 600 people have died in the past two weeks alone.

      The rainfall has been unevenly distributed across India this year due to unusual monsoon patterns, according to the country's Meteorological Department. While parts of central India received less rain, the north faced stronger storms for longer than usual.

      The reprieve in the monsoon rains created ponds of stagnant water in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, and aid workers struggled to stave off a disease epidemic.

      In Uttar Pradesh, "paramedics visiting affected villages don't have adequate supplies of medicines," said Ramakant Rai, chief of state's Voluntary Health Association. He said clean drinking water was running low.

      NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- "Stock slumped Thursday, with the Dow suffering its second worst session of the year as worries about the global credit market sparked a broad selloff in equities, following a three-session rally.

      Bond prices rose as jittery investors dumped stocks in favor of the so-called safer haven of Treasurys.

      The Dow Jones industrial average (down 387.18 to 13,270.68, Charts) tumbled 387 points, or 2.8 percent, its biggest one-day point and percentage loss since Feb. 27, when it plunged 416 points on worries about a global growth slowdown.

      The blue-chip barometer had opened weakly on Thursday, briefly pared some losses in the morning after the New York Stock Exchange instituted trading curbs, but then resumed its downward path.

      The broader S&P 500 (down 44.40 to 1,453.09, Charts) index dropped almost 3 percent. The tech-fueled Nasdaq Composite (down 56.49 to 2,556.49, Charts) index fell nearly 2.2 percent.

      Fears about the subprime mortgage market and the credit crisis resurfaced Thursday after BNP Paribas, France's biggest bank, said it was halting withdrawals from three of its top funds because it can't value their assets in the current market.

      Additionally, AIG, one of the world's largest insurance companies, warned Thursday morning that it is seeing mortgage delinquencies spreading from subprime to prime. The company also reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings late Wednesday. AIG (down $2.18 to $64.30, Charts, Fortune 500) lost 2.5 percent, recovering from a 5 percent plunge at the open.

      The news sent stocks tanking, however, equities were already vulnerable to a decline, following a robust three-day market surge earlier this week, that followed a big selloff.

      "We had a market that was deeply oversold, had an enormous rebound, and then was vulnerable to a setback," said Steven Goldman, market strategist at Weeden & Co. "Today's news is acting as a catalyst for that setback."

      Seeking to calm credit worries, the European Central Bank (ECB) added cash to money markets. However, the move seemed to have the opposite effect, increasing investor concerns rather than easing them.

      The ECB loaned at least $130 billion in overnight funds to banks at a 4 percent rate. The Federal Reserve added $24 billion to temporary U.S. reserves in its regular overnight operations, an amount that some traders said was larger than usual, but not comparable to an infusion of money along the lines of the ECB, Reuters said.

      Stocks have seesawed dramatically over the last few months on worries about the tightening of credit after a period of widespread liquidity. The continued fallout from the subprime mortgage market - loans made to consumers with less than ideal credit - has been an ongoing worry on Wall Street this year, amid the slumping housing market.

      While the credit worries are legitimate, the stock reaction has been intensified by an already choppy market, said Ron Kiddoo, chief investment officer at Cozad Asset Management.

      "We're in a volatile place," Kiddoo said, "and there's an overreaction to the news and rumors here that's feeding into that volatility."

      Concerns about credit and the housing market aren't likely to disappear anytime soon, Goldman said. Yet, going forward, the equity market is probably in a better place to absorb the unrest than it was a month ago, since many of the stock indexes are well off their 2007 highs.

      Additionally, the "financial underpinnings of the market remain positive in the long term," Kiddoo said.

      The Bottom Line:  It's really starting to look ugly.  I wonder when the mass-media will see the writing on the wall and even make mention that the Credit system is tanking.

       Guam (BBC) - "Russian bombers have flown to the US Pacific island of Guam in a manoeuvre reminiscent of the Cold War era.

       Two Tu-95 turboprops flew this week to Guam, home to a big US military base, Russian Maj Gen Pavel Androsov said, a story confirmed by the US.

       They "exchanged smiles" with US pilots who scrambled to track them, he added.

       The sorties, believed to be the first since the Cold War ended, come as Russia stresses a more assertive foreign policy, correspondents say.

       The flight is part of a pattern of more expansive Russian military operations in recent weeks, says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.

Old practice

       Gen Androsov said the strategic bombers had flown 13 hours from their base in the Russian Far East during the exercise.

       "It has always been the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far into the ocean, to meet [US] aircraft carriers and greet [US pilots] visually," he said at a news conference.

       "Yesterday [Wednesday] we revived this tradition, and two of our young crews paid a visit to the area of the base of Guam," he said.

       "I think the result was good. We met our colleagues - fighter jet pilots from [US] aircraft carriers. We exchanged smiles and returned home," he added.

       A spokesman for the Pentagon confirmed that the Tu-95s were spotted heading to Guam, adding that US fighter readied themselves to repel them.

       "We prepared to intercept the bombers but they did not come close enough to a US Navy ship or to the island of Guam to warrant an air-to-air intercept," the spokesman said.

       During the Cold War, Soviet bombers regularly flew long-haul missions to areas patrolled by Nato and the US.

       The bombers have the capability of launching a nuclear strike with the missiles they carry..."

      ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- "Temperatures reached record highs across much of the Southeast on Thursday, while rainy weather cooled off many of the mid-Atlantic states.

      The National Weather Service reported record highs of 103 in Atlanta, nearby Athens, Georgia, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Charlotte, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina, both saw 102-degree readings.

      A 104-degree reading set a record in Columbia, South Carolina. The state capital's previous record of 100 was set in 1954.

      In Louisville, Kentucky, meanwhile, a 101-degree reading tied the city's record for the date.

      The weather service urged people to stay inside air-conditioned rooms or out of the sun when possible and drink plenty of fluids.

      Atlanta also set a record Wednesday morning for the highest overnight low recorded in the city's history. Overnight temperatures only dropped to 82 degrees, according to the weather service.

      Forecasters issued excessive heat warnings from Columbus, Georgia, to Norfolk, Virginia, warning that prolonged, dangerous high temperatures and high humidity would make heat-related illnesses likely. Highs in the upper 90s or above were expected to continue into Friday before the heat wave eases.

      NEW YORK (CNN) -- "Strong winds and heavy rainstorms tore through the Big Apple early Wednesday, killing one person and wreaking havoc on the region's transit system and causing delays at two major airports.

      Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a woman died after her car became stuck in high water under an overpass on Staten Island and it was hit by another car.

      Five other people have been injured throughout the city, most as a result of falling trees and flying objects when a tornado swept through Brooklyn shortly before 7 a.m. ET, Bloomberg said.

      The National Weather Service confirmed the twister winds were up to 135 mph.

      The Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn lost as many as 40 percent of its trees, according to Commissioner Joe Bruno of the city Office of Emergency Management.

      Many of them fell on vehicles and homes.

      One official said as many as 150 trees were reported down in the city.

      Bloomberg said he had visited a Nissan dealership in Brooklyn that lost part of its roof. He saw several churches missing parts of their roofs or windows.

      The NWS said the tornado first touched down about 6:30 a.m., damaged trees, then lifted, tearing off the roof of the Nissan dealership. It returned to the ground farther northeast, the weather service said, causing more tree damage.

      It touched down a third time in another area, ripping the roofs off five homes and causing more tree damage. By that point, meteorologists said, its winds had died down to 100 mph.

      A National Weather Service tornado warning was in effect until 7:15 a.m. ET after Doppler radar reported a strong signal in the area, which includes JFK Airport. The warning was issued at 6:20 a.m., the NWS said.

      Flash flooding warnings were briefly issued in New York City and surrounding areas after a strong thunderstorm moved through the region around 7 a.m., dumping up to 3 inches of rain in less than an hour over Manhattan and western and central Long Island.

      Bloomberg said some area beaches might have to be closed later due to the runoff from the storm mixing with sewage.

      The extreme weather caused delays of up to one and a half hours at JFK -- which got 3.47 inches of rain -- and at LaGuardia International Airport -- which got 2.54 inches of rain and had some flooding on the roads in and around the facility.

      No flooding has affected the runways, a Port Authority spokesman said.

      The flooding disrupted service for commuter trains and the metro as well.

      "Due to severe flooding throughout the subway system, there are extensive delays on all subway lines," said a statement from the Metro Transit Authority. "Customers are advised when at all possible to use bus service."

      The Long Island Rail Road had delays of up to 30 minutes system-wide officials said..."

      The Bottom Line:  Too many people living in such tight confines equals a real clusterf**k when a nasty storm shows up.

      WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "The United States on Wednesday condemned what it termed "a rocket attack" against Georgia this week, and called on Moscow and Tbilisi to seek a peaceful resolution in Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region.

      A missile, weighing about a metric ton, landed in a farmer's field about 65 km (40 miles) west of Tbilisi on Monday. It did not explode but sparked a war of words between Georgia and Russia, reigniting old tensions between the two former members of the Soviet Union.

      "The U.S. condemns the August 6 rocket attack against Georgia," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a strongly worded statement issued late on Wednesday.

      "We praise Georgia's continuing restraint in the face of this air attack and call for the urgent clarification of the facts surrounding this incident."

      Russia has continued to deny any involvement in the incident, while the United States and the European Union have called on both sides to show restraint.

      Earlier on Wednesday, a Georgian official who wished not to be identified said the missile was ditched by a Russian jet trespassing in Georgian air space after friendly forces in South Ossetia fired an anti-aircraft missile at the jet by mistake.

      South Ossetia, the Russian-backed breakaway province of Georgia, is a deep cause of friction between the former Soviet states.

      "The proximity of this attack to Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region and the violation of Georgia's airspace over the zone of conflict underscore the pressing need for progress toward peaceful resolution of the South Ossetia conflict," the State Department's McCormack said in the statement.

      JAKARTA, Indonesia  (Fox) —  "A powerful earthquake under the Java Sea shook Indonesia's capital early Thursday, violently shaking tall buildings and panicking residents.

      The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake, which struck at 12:04 a.m. (1:04 p.m. EDT Wednesday) had a preliminary magnitude of 7.5 and was centered about 66 miles east of Jakarta at a depth of 180 miles.

      Residents said tall buildings and single story homes in Jakarta shook violently.

      Because of the earthquake's depth, there was little risk of a tsunami, said Robert Cessaro, a geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

      None of the instruments closest to the earthquake indicated that a tsunami was triggered, Cessaro said, although he added that there were no instruments "very close" to the quake's epicenter.

      The depth of the earthquake "suggests there will be no tsunami," he said.

      Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin..."

      London (Reuters) - "With both their houses and their stocks worth seemingly less day by day, U.S. consumers will just have to tighten belts.

      And if Americans do cut back spending, corporate profits and employment will be hit, dealing in turn a further blow to asset prices.

      Recent signs of consumer vigor have been, to say the least, conflicting.

      Growth in consumer spending slowed to 1.3 percent in the first quarter, down from 3.7 the quarter before, but Conference Board figures released last week had consumer confidence at its highest level since just before the September 11 attacks.

      An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that more than two thirds of Americans believe the U.S. economy is either in recession now or will be in the next year.

      There are real signs that the distress now showing in asset markets is registering with consumers. Auto sales have been weak and a number of lenders have upped their loss allowances for unsecured consumer loans.

      This despite the fact that lending conditions in consumer and auto finance have not tightened abruptly as in housing finance.

      Mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW) -- borrowing money against the value of your home -- was a big boost to consumer spending as U.S. home values spiraled.

Fed gives no hint it plans to bail out lenders

      The Bottom Line:  The Fed has its hands tied.  They're damned if they raise rates, they're damned if they lower them.  Leaving them alone is the only logical choice, but in the end their damned in that route as well.

      If you cannot put the pieces together at this point and see the writing on the wall, it's too late for you to every grasp the implications of what is going on.

      SYDNEY (Reuters) - "U.S. oil was little changed at around $72 a barrel on Wednesday after news of U.S. refinery outages and expectations of declining crude stocks halted a two-day rout that wiped nearly $5 off prices.

      U.S. crude for September delivery fell 15 cents to $72.27 a barrel by 0130 GMT. The contract rose 36 cents or 0.5 percent on Tuesday, clawing back into positive territory after touching an intraday low of $71.14, the weakest since July 5.

      London's Brent crude fell 37 cents to $71.43, reversing half the previous day's 63-cent gains.

      Gasoline futures led Tuesday's gains, ending a two-day losing streak after traders said that ConocoPhillips had shut down a 130,000 barrel per day (bpd) gasoline-making fluid catalytic cracker at its Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, just over a week after its restart.

      Conoco had also shut a crude unit at its 190,000 bpd oil refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania, on Friday, and the unit was still not back, the trade sources added.

      "Prices have bounced back slightly on Conoco's problems... The market is now taking positions ahead of the U.S. stocks data," said Tony Nunan, a risk manager at Mitsubishi in Tokyo.

      "Investors are a lot less bullish now after the recent sharp drop in the market."

      Concerns about a possible slowing in the U.S. economy, the debt market squeeze and falling stock prices have shaved about 8 percent off last Wednesday's record price of $78.77, shaking out some of the speculative length built up during July's rally.

      ST. LOUIS (Fox) —  "Hot, humid air is blanketing wide areas of the nation this week, and Missouri health experts have been urging people to stay in air-conditioned buildings and take it easy.

      Temperatures in much of Missouri are expected to reach well into the upper 90s — and in many cases above 100 degrees — through much of this week. The heat index, calculated from a combination of temperature and humidity, is predicted to climb above 105.

      Highs in the 90s were expected from the western Plains to the East Coast.

      "People don't realize it but heat is generally the number-one killer" among weather-related causes, said Ben Miller, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in the St. Louis area. "We've gone all year without a serious heat wave so we want people to be aware of what to do to keep themselves safe."

      "It's just that time of year," he said.

      The weather forced the St. Louis Rams inside for daytime workouts this week.

      "You don't want anybody overheating and passing out," rookie defensive tackle Keith Jackson said..."

      TSITELUBANI, Georgia (Reuters) - "Jets flown from Russia fired an air-to-surface missile at Georgian territory in an "act of aggression", Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told Reuters on Tuesday.

      Russia, which has a long history of tense relations with the former Soviet republic, denied that its airforce had flown missions in Georgian air space.

      "Our radars show that these jets flew from Russia and then flew back in the same direction that they had come from ..." Merabishvili said.

      "I assess this fact as an act of aggression carried out by planes flown from the territory of another state," he added.

      Georgian officials say the ordnance hit the village of Tsitelubani, about 65 km (40 miles) west of the capital, Tbilisi, but did not explode.

      Shota Utiashvili, the head of the Georgian interior ministry's public relations department, earlier told Reuters that the Russian jets had dropped a 700 kilo (1,543 lb) bomb.

      "Fortunately it didn't explode. If it had exploded it would have been a disaster," he added. He said nobody was hurt.

      Russia's airforce denied that it had bombed Georgia, and said it had not violated its airspace.

      The Bottom Line:  It's not really an "attack" if the 1 bomb you claim they dropped on you was a dud.

      NEW YORK (AP) -- "HBO's disturbing documentary on survivors of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan didn't make the 50th anniversary of the event.

      There's apparently enough emotional scar tissue built up to allow the television premiere of "White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" on Monday (7:30 p.m. Eastern), exactly 62 years after the United States detonated the first-ever nuclear bomb over Hiroshima. The second, and so far last, atomic bomb was dropped three days later. It ended World War II.

      The uncomfortable footage of cities reduced to rubble and grotesquely deformed survivors has received relatively little circulation because -- unlike the well-recorded Holocaust -- this was something done by Americans, Sheila Nevins, head of HBO's documentary unit, said.

      Steve Okazaki's film is built on stories told by 14 survivors, with children's pictures depicting the bombing and footage of the injured that was banned from the public for 25 years. The American-born Okazaki interviews crew members who dropped the bombs and wondered whether they would escape before their planes were engulfed in the mushroom cloud.

      Everyone at the meeting agreed Okazaki should make a film about their stories.

      He made a short film and others that showed his interest in the era, including the Oscar-winning "Days of Waiting," about one of the few white Americans held in custody with Japanese-Americans during World War II.

      Okazaki wanted to make a comprehensive documentary about the experience of living through the bombings and began doing it for PBS in the mid-1990s. But the project fell through. He instead made a more personal film, "The Mushroom Club," figuring his dream was dead.

      That's when he heard from Nevins.

      "I was shocked when they called and said they wanted to do this film and when they described it, I realized it was the film I had wanted to do for 25 years," he said.

      When he attended a festival of bombing-related films in the 1980s, Okazaki was struck by how little survivors were heard from. People had an aversion; it was much easier to debate whether dropping bombs that instantly killed more than 200,000 people was right or wrong.

    Antarctica (National Geographic) - "Imagine sticking some bacteria in the freezer and taking them out millions of years later to find that they are still alive. That would be similar to what happened recently, when scientists brought eight-million-year-old microbes back to life—simply by thawing them.

      The ancient bacteria were found frozen in the world's oldest known tracts of ice, the debris-covered glaciers of Antarctica.

      "We think that they were pretty much locked in a frozen, inanimate state for that period of time," said lead study author Kay Bidle, a marine microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

      It's also possible that some of the microbes were capable of maintaining their metabolism within tiny droplets of water suspended in the ice, Bidle said.

      Bidle and colleagues retrieved and revived two samples of bacteria from the glacial ice. The first was a hundred thousand years old, and the second was around eight million years old.

      The eight-million-year-old bacteria were alive, but barely.

      Their genes were severely damaged from long exposure to cosmic radiation, which is higher at Earth's poles.

      The radiation bombarded the bacteria's DNA with high-energy particles, which broke apart the DNA's chemical bonds and hacked it into shorter pieces.

Big Bacterial Thaw

      Most of the bacteria in the samples probably blew over from African deserts, said study co-author Paul Falkowski, a biochemist at Rutgers.

      NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bear Stearns Cos (BSC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) co-president and co-chief operating officer Warren Spector resigned on Sunday, becoming a casualty of a credit risk crisis at the investment bank.

      Bear Stearns said that, effective immediately, Alan Schwartz has been named the company's sole president.

      Spector's departure follows Bear Stearns' assertion on Friday that it is weathering the worst storm in financial markets in more than 20 years after a major rating company warned mortgage credit problems could hurt the investment bank's profits.

      Standard & Poor's warned that the recent collapse of two Bear Stearns-managed mortgage funds could hurt the company's performance and reputation for an extended period.

      The collapse of the funds triggered a downturn across credit markets, put a damper on corporate buyout financing and sparked fears about Wall Street's trading and banking profits.

      Spector's departure is a blow to Bear Stearns because he was regarded as a possible successor to Chairman and Chief Executive James Cayne. One analyst said Schwartz is now a strong contender to succeed Cayne.

      Cayne said in a statement on Sunday: "In light of the recent events concerning BSAM's high grade and enhanced leverage funds, we have determined to make changes in our leadership structure."

      Bear Stearns also said that chief financial officer Samuel Molinaro will also become chief operating officer, and that Jeffrey Mayer, co-head of the fixed income division, has been named to the Bear Stearns executive committee.

      The Bottom Line:  Like rats off of a sinking ship.

      Washington (ajc.com) — "Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

      A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.

      None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war," the ex-Georgian told a group of about 300 students attending a conference for collegiate conservatives.

    HELENA, Mont. (Fox)  —  "A state of emergency was declared in Montana on Sunday because of wildfires, including one that more than doubled in size and crept to within a mile of some of the 200 nearby homes that were evacuated.

      Lighter wind and higher humidity were expected at the fire northeast of Missoula on Sunday, and the wind was now largely blowing the blaze back onto itself, said Pat Cross, fire information officer.

      However, wind-blown embers were still sparking spot fires up to 2 miles ahead of the main blaze near the popular getaway spots of Seeley and Placid Lakes, authorities said.

      "We're focusing on structure protection, establishing some anchor points and trying to get some fire line in on the south and east flanks," Cross said.

      The wildfire started Friday and exploded to 8,000 acres, about 12 square miles, by late Saturday. On Sunday, it more than doubled to 18,000 acres — about 28 square miles.

      Cross estimated containment at zero percent, "only because there isn't a lower number."

      NEW YORK (Reuters) - "The unraveling U.S. subprime mortgage market is causing other markets to fray around the edges faster than anyone expected.

      As the Federal Reserve convenes for its latest meeting on Tuesday, the corporate credit markets are grinding to a halt. About $90 billion of bonds and nearly $250 billion of loans are still awaiting buyers, several high-profile hedge funds from the U.S. East Coast to Australia have failed, and a major U.S. mortgage lender this week closed its doors.

      "All these people saying there is no credit crunch and no economic impact - 'Are you kidding me?'", said Jeffrey Gundlach, chief investment officer at TCW Group in Los Angeles, which manages assets worth $160 billion.

      "Ask Goldman if there is no credit crunch, ask Bear Stearns if there is no credit crunch, call up American Home Mortgage and ask them if there is no credit crunch. Come on! It is staring you in the face," Gundlach added.

      On Friday, shares in Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) dropped as much as 7.85 percent after credit rating agency Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook on the bank's debt to negative, citing problems at Bear's managed hedge funds.

      In a conference call, Bear Stearns Chief Financial Officer Samuel Molinaro said: "It's as been as bad as I've seen it in 22 years. The fixed income market environment we've seen in the last eight weeks has been pretty extreme."

      His comments on Friday helped cause the biggest one day fall in the benchmark S&P 500 stock index since February 27.

      The volatility in global financial markets this month resulting from rising default rates on U.S. subprime mortgages has led to a risk reappraisal across credit and stock markets, which some say can be seen as good news for the Fed as it cools a takeover boom fuelled by excessive global liquidity.

      The Bottom Line:  You should know the bottom line by now.

      HOUSTON (Reuters) - "Researchers have found 9,650 square miles of "dead zones," or oxygen-depleted water, in the Gulf of Mexico this summer, the biggest area since tracking of the annual phenomenon began.

      They say humans are mostly to blame for the dead waters, and that increased planting of corn to make ethanol is adding to the problem.

      The dead zones, which have been appearing each summer since at least 1970, threaten marine life and over time have altered the gulf's ecology, scientists say.

      Usually researchers, who began measuring the dead zones in 1985, find only one large zone each year, just off the Louisiana coast where the Mississippi River empties into the gulf.

      But this summer, for the first time, a separate zone has developed off Texas, Texas A&M University oceanographer Steve DiMarco said this week.

      Recent measurements taken in separate studies show the Louisiana dead zone covered about 7,900 square miles (20,461 sq km), while the Texas zone was 1,750 square miles, for a total of 9,650.

      The previous largest amount was 8,495 square miles found in 2002, Nancy Rabalais, chief scientist for the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said on Friday.

      The Louisiana dead zone is caused mostly by nitrogen-based fertilizers carried by the Mississippi from America's farm belt into the Gulf, she said. The nitrogen feeds the growth of algae, which depletes oxygen from the water.

     
       GAUHATI, India (MSNBC) - "Hospitals in eastern India were packed on Saturday with people suffering from waterborne diseases, and marooned villagers clashed with police as some of the worst floods in living memory ravaged South Asia.

      More than 230 people have died over the past 11 days after torrential monsoon rains lashed the region, including much of Bangladesh, causing rivers to burst their banks.

      About 10 million people are homeless or cut off in their villages, with little or no access to food and health care.

Working around the clock
      Health workers and aid groups in Assam in northeast India were working around the clock to treat and feed many of the 3 million people displaced or surrounded by flood waters in the state with the limited medicines and supplies available.

      Elsewhere, villagers were getting desperate and hungry.

      "Our family survived for a week on buffalo milk but now the animal has stopped producing milk as it has gone without food for days," said Meghu Yadav, a villager in the Samastipur district of impoverished Bihar state.

      Many people were suffering from diarrhea, dysentery and fever, and in Assam hospital wards in affected areas were full.

      Officials have warned of outbreaks of malaria. On Friday the United Nations Children's Fund said the scale of the disaster posed an "unprecedented challenge" for aid workers.

      "The victims are left to survive on their own," an aid worker with an Indian voluntary agency that is supervising relief work in Assam told Reuters in Guwahati, the state's main city.

More rain expected
      Although it had stopped raining in the state on Saturday, further downpours were forecast for early next week.

      And for many farmers the end of the floods is only the beginning of their misery: receding water has left a thick layer of silt over thousands of hectares of land and no new rice crop will be possible until next year.

      Every year monsoon rains leave a trail of death and destruction across South Asia, but much of the economy of a largely agricultural region depends on the downpours..."