Gilchrist, Texas  - The sunset is beautiful in Gilchrist - within just a few minutes the sky goes from red to indigo and then to a wide range of grey before turning the black of night.

The sunset is, indeed, almost the only thing left unchanged in what was until the arrival of Hurricane Ike a tourist village south- east of Houston with some 750 residents.

The storm only left three to eight houses standing, and they all suffered severe damage. There is no trace of the remaining 200 homes in the village whose population swelled in the summer.

La Marque, Texas - Hurricane Ike Friday stalked hungrily across the Gulf of Mexico with its victim firmly in its sights.

By early Saturday morning, Galveston, a barrier island of 60,000 residents, faced certain devastation from Ike's 165-kilometre-an-hour winds. Those who refused to evacuate faced nearly certain death, forecasters warned.

"Galveston could disappear," said John Dennis, who was waiting in line at one of the only operating petrol stations in La Marque, the first town on the Texas mainland from Galveston.

La Marque, Texas - It was still a half day before the eye of Hurricane Ike was due to make landfall, there was little more than a strong breeze and the sky seemed reluctant to turn from white to grey, but the picture Friday had elements to promote panic.

Many roads and streets in Galveston, Texas, were already under water. And high tide was still hours away.

"Galveston could disappear," said John Dennis.

He was not joking - his jeans, wet to his knees, spoke for themselves.

"I just picked up my wife, and now I have to return to pick up my in-laws," he added. "They don't want to go, but we are going to get them out whatever it takes."

Houston/Washington - National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters issued ominous and unusually blunt warnings about the storm surge heading for the Texas coast Friday ahead of Hurricane Ike.

The local statement issued by NWS for Houston and nearby Galveston, Texas, with Ike threatening a direct hit, warned of storm surge on the Galveston Bay shoreline of more than 6 metres with "life threatening inundation likely!"

Waves atop the storm surge could push water several metres higher still.

London, Aug 23 : Prosecutors in Texas are trying to decide how to take into custody and bring to court a nearly half-tonne, bedridden woman accused of killing her two-year-old nephew.

The bedridden Mayra Lizbeth Rosales is facing charges for murdering her two-year-old nephew.

A grand jury charged the 27-year-old women for first-degree murder and ordered her bail be set at 150,000 dollars.

However, Lupe Trevino, Hidalgo County Sheriff, said holding Rosales at the county jail for the duration of her trial would be impossible because she needs extensive medical care.

"She would die," the Telegraph quoted Trevino, as saying

London, August 14: Policemen from a city in Texas, US, have claimed to have caught on film a mystery creature believed to be the legendary “Vampire Dog”.

According to a report in The Sun, two cops - Sheriff Brandon Riedel and officer Ellie Carter, chased the beast after spotting its strange elongated nose and fangs.

Saying they have never seen an animal like it, the policemen are convinced it was El Chupacabra, a “vampire dog” that feasts on goats’ blood.

The animal has been a popular Latino legend since the mid-1990s and is regarded in a similar way to Bigfoot in the US.