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.

Houston, Texas- Soaring oil prices have pushed Exxon Mobil to a record profit for the second quarter of 2008, with the world's largest publicly-traded oil company on Thursday posting a 14-per-cent rise in net income to 11.7 billion dollars.

Representing the largest-ever quarterly profit for a US company, the rise mirrors strong quarterly performances by European competitors BP and Shell.

Revenue meanwhile climbed to 138.1 billion dollars for the period, up 40 per cent on Q2 2007, the Houston-based energy giant said in a statement.

The figures however come in below analysts' expectations, with Exxon shares remaining under pressure.

Washington - Texas officials removed 52 girl children from the walled compound of a polygamist sec