CenterPoint Energy Inc, the power company for most of the Houston area, still had about 767,000 customers in Texas without power early Monday, down from 2.15 million at the height of the storm.

CenterPoint predicted its team of 11,000 restoration workers would return power to most of the Houston area by Thursday. The company could not estimate when it will return service to homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast, including Galveston where the storm made landfall early on September 13.

Entergy Corp, the other hard-hit power provider in Texas, said 52,000 customers were still without power in eastern Texas, down from the 392,000 affected.

George W Bush, in his last speech to the assembly as US president, is expected to focus on his rescue plan for US financial institutions. Tensions between Russia and the West in the wake of the Georgia conflict are also expected to come up. Mr Bush will speak shortly after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opens the session. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also due to speak later on Tuesday.

THERE IS AN UNUSUAL AIR OF ANXIETY AT THE UN THIS YEAR, BBC's Bridget Kendall reports. Leaders have been hastily rearranging meetings so that they can focus on the financial crisis. Mr Bush is expected to discuss his administration's $700bn plan to buy back much of the bad debt held by US banks and financial institutions.

African leaders are concerned that the crisis means less funding for fighting poverty. Friction between Russia and the West, mounting violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and concerns over nuclear work in North Korea have all added to a sense of crisis, our correspondent adds.

In a rare public intervention, the spy author criticised ministers for voting to extend the time limit that terror suspects can be held without charge to 42 days. His comments come only weeks ahead of a key vote in the House of Lords that could see peers throw out the Government's controversial 42-day proposals. The writer said he was furious that the Government had been allowed to get away with a sustained attack on civil liberties.

"PARTLY, I'M ANGRY THAT THERE IS SO LITTLE ANGER AROUND ME AT WHAT IS BEING DONE TO OUR SOCIETY, SUPPOSEDLY IN ORDER TO PROTECT IT," said the 76-year-old in an interview in Waterstone's magazine. "WE HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO WAR UNDER FALSE PRETENCES, AND STRIPPED OF OUR CIVIL RIGHTS IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF PANIC. Our lawyers don't take to the streets as they have done in Pakistan."

"OUR MPS ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE DELUDED BY THEIR OWN SPIN DOCTORS, AND END UP BELIEVING THEIR OWN PROPAGANDA."

In a week, the financial crisis of 2008 changed everything — and now comes the cleanup: if the Administration's $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan is approved by Congress, the United States will see changes to its political economy that were unimaginable a week ago. Among them:-

A MASSIVE TRANSFER OF POWER TO THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT.
Secretary Henry Paulson is requesting unprecedented powers to resolve and dispose of billions of dollars of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities that would turn the Feds into the liquidator of last resort for business deals gone bad. Those powers, should Congress grant them, would come on top of authority Paulson was quietly granted earlier this summer to resolve the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac messes.

A SUDDEN SHIFT IN TAXPAYERS' FINANCIAL PRIORITIES.
To put the bailout plan in some kind of perspective: Paulson would rule over a pile of assets that exceeds the annual Pentagon budget of $507 billion by nearly 50%. For at least the next year, and perhaps for years after, Treasury's spending authority will make it harder for the next President to fulfill campaign promises and pump money into new priorities.

AN ABRUPT REFOCUSING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE.
Once again it's about the economy, and financial markets and how they are best regulated. There will also be discussion of whether anyone on Wall Street will be forced to pay a price for the wreckage taxpayers are now being told they will have to clean up. What seems more certain is this: though virtually no one was calling for it, A NEW ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT HAS ARRIVED.

A DISMAYING FINAL CHAPTER FOR GEORGE W. BUSH.
Conservatives who hoped the Bush team would leave a legacy of smaller government, freer markets and fewer regulations can officially kiss that hope goodbye. Government officials report that the President, whatever his ideological reservations about the Treasury's next move, cleared the way for the bailout in the face of what looked like certain economic meltdown. Congress must still approve the bailout — but no one wants to take responsibility for what may come in the absence of action; the plan is likely to go through.

OF COURSE, THESE CHANGES ARE JUST FOR STARTERS. THERE IS NO TELLING WHAT THIS WEEK MAY BRING.

"The big detail we want to know is how is the government going to buy these securities, and what they will pay, how that reverse auction will work," said Giri Cherukuri, head trader at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois. "AND THE BIG QUESTION IS, 'WILL THIS BRING US OUT OF THE WOODS?'"

A day after America's last two big investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, ended Wall Street's swashbuckling era by securing Federal Reserve approval to become commercial banks, all eyes shifted to Washington. U.S. lawmakers and Bush administration officials were hammering out details of a deal they hope will end the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But with one-third of the U.S. Senate and the entire U.S. House of Representatives up for re-election on November 4, lawmakers will want to sound tough on such hot-button issues as the pay of reckless executives.

The Hong Kong Observatory raised its strong warning wind signal number 3 with Typhoon Hagupit edging west-northwest at about 30 kph toward the south China coast. "The observatory will consider the need for the No. 8 gale or storm signal around dusk today," it said. The highest signal is 10.

Hong Kong kindergartens were closed for the day and the city's bustling container ports and terminals were due to suspend operations in the afternoon. In the Philippines, the coastguard rescued 21 people from three cargo and fishing vessels that sank in rough waters as Hagupit passed the north coast on Monday. In total, three people were killed and four were missing.

Tropical storms in the region gather intensity from the warm ocean waters and frequently develop into typhoons that hit Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and southern China during a season that lasts from early summer to late autumn.

BUT ON WALL STREET, SPECIALIZED INSURANCE KNOWN AS CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS ARE TURNING A BAD SITUATION INTO A CATASTROPHE. When historians write about the current crisis, much of the blame will go to the slump in the housing and mortgage markets, which triggered the losses, layoffs and liquidations sweeping the financial industry. But CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS - complex derivatives originally designed to protect banks from deadbeat borrowers - are adding to the turmoil.

"This was supposedly a way to hedge risk," says Ellen Brown, the author of the book 'Web of Debt'. "I'm sure their predictive models were right as far as the risk of the things they were insuring against. But what they didn't factor in was the risk that the sellers of this protection wouldn't pay… That's what we're seeing now."

Brown is hardly alone in her criticism of the derivatives. FIVE YEARS AGO, BILLIONAIRE INVESTOR WARREN BUFFETT CALLED THEM A "TIME BOMB" AND "FINANCIAL WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" and directed the insurance arm of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc to exit the business. Recent events suggest Buffett was right. The collapse of Bear Stearns. The fire sale of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc. The meltdown at American International Group Inc. IN EACH CASE, CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS PLAYED A ROLE IN THE FALL OF THESE FINANCIAL GIANTS.

VIRTUALLY NO SEGMENT OF THE U.S. ECONOMY HAS BEEN SAFE from a rolling tide of job losses, stock market declines and home foreclosures that have knocked a range of industries to their knees. "We are certainly seeing more companies, particularly among insurance and financial institutions, going through unprecedented times fighting for survival," said Randall Eisenberg, senior managing director for restructuring advisor FTI Consulting.

Companies in more industries than ever are finding themselves in distress, ranging from retailers, home builders and restaurants, to financial firms, transportation providers and energy companies. But at the same time, the turmoil has created unprecedented opportunities for distressed or vulture investors, and those attorneys, consultants and other experts who help companies sort out their problems.

"We're going to take those assets which are probably very valuable, but can also be digested by buyers in relatively manageable bites, and we will simply start to market them," Edward Liddy, who was appointed AIG's chief executive last week, said in an interview on the CNBC financial news channel.

"I hope within the next seven to 10 days to be out there with a plan that lists everything that's for sale and maybe even execute some of those transactions by then," said Liddy, a former CEO of insurer Allstate Corp. He said he hoped AIG would be able to pay back the Federal Reserve loan "as quickly as possible." If the loan is not repaid, the U.S. government has the right to take an almost 80 percent stake in the company.

The jump to an intraday high of $130 a barrel – a rise of about $40 a barrel from last week's low – was exacerbated by a weakening US dollar and data showing weaker supplies from Mexico, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks and surging imports by China.

Investors who had bet that oil prices would continue falling were forced to close their positions ahead of Monday's expiry of the October oil futures contract at the New York Mercantile Exchange, traders and analysts said. THE PROCESS IS KNOWN AS SHORT COVERING. THE INVESTORS HAD LITTLE OPTION BUT TO COVER THEIR SHORT POSITIONS AT ANY PRICE. IF THE POSITIONS HAD NOT BEEN CLOSED, THEY WOULD HAVE TO TAKE PHYSICAL DELIVERY OF BARRELS OF OIL.

But in a highly unusual statement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main regulator of US commodity markets, said it was "closely monitoring" the large surge in oil prices for signals of market manipulation. "CFTC enforcement staff will scour today's trading activity to determine whether anyone engaged in illegal manipulation activity," said Stephen Obie, head of the regulator division of enforcement. Traders in New York said at least one hedge fund was facing losses after being caught on the wrong side of the oil price move.

The White House says Congress must back the proposed bail-out to prevent wider economic harm. But doubts over the speed at which it can be introduced have emerged from both Democrats and Republicans. MANY POLITICIANS APPEAR ALARMED BY THE SCALE AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS. While most are anxious to find bi-partisan ways of getting behind the bail-out, others are critical of what they see as a waste of taxpayers' money, correspondents say.

WITH THE IMMEDIATE SENSE OF IMMINENT COLLAPSE NOW PASSING, DISSENTING VOICES ARE BEGINNING TO EMERGE, says the BBC's Kevin Connolly in Washington. Contentious issues include limiting compensation for executives of rescued firms, wider help for American homeowners at risk of losing their homes and demands for oversight.

"The Bush Administration has called on Congress to rubber stamp its bail-out legislation without serious debate or efforts to improve it," said US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "That will not happen," he said. Richard Shelby, a senior republican on the Senate Banking Committee, also hit out at the plan. "It would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted," he said. President George W Bush has warned that "failure to act would have broad consequences".

The lift's carriages, which will themselves require new feats of engineering, would move up and down 22,000 mile-long cables. Those cables would need to be stronger and lighter than any material ever woven. They would be anchored to the ground and disappear into the sky, eventually reaching a satellite docking station orbiting above the Earth.

Scientists hope that as well as carrying human passengers, the carriages could also haul huge, solar-powered generators that could power homes and businesses back on Earth. It could also remove barrels of nuclear waste, dumping them into space. "Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space," Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, told The Times.

Japan's promise to spend £5 billion on the project has sparked swift reaction from other quarters: several competing space lift projects are now believed to be under way, with Nasa among those involved. It is thought the concept of the lift was first envisioned by the great sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, in his 1979 book The Fountains of Paradise.

The commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc "MAY AUGUR AN EVEN LARGER IMPENDING GLOBAL 'FINANCIAL TSUNAMI'". The People's Daily is the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, and the overseas edition is a smaller circulation offshoot of the main paper.

"The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States' financial oversight and supervision," writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun. "The world urgently needs to create a DIVERSIFIED CURRENCY AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM AND FAIR AND JUST FINANCIAL ORDER THAT IS NOT DEPENDENT ON THE UNITED STATES."

But Vice Premier Wang Qishan, on a visit to the United States, told U.S. trade officials in a meeting on Tuesday that China and the United States needed to maintain close economic ties with global markets going through such turbulence.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a proposed legal framework which is expected to open the market to meat and milk produced from modified animals, which detractors have already termed "Frankenfood". Such creatures, which could include new hen breeds capable of laying healthier eggs and cows that are immune to mad cow disease, have been developed already. But producers have been discouraged from marketing their creations by the absence of clear rules governing such a controversial issue.

The government wants the guidelines to resolve questions such as whether altered animals are safe for human consumption or whether they pose a risk to the environment. "Genetic engineering of animals is here and has been here for some time," said Larisa Rudenko, a science policy adviser with the FDA's veterinary medicine centre. "We intend to provide a rigorous, risk-based regulatory path for developers to follow to help ensure public health and the health of animals."

Consumer groups welcomed plans to regulate the area but were alarmed by apparent gaps in the proposals. They pointed out that the FDA does not, for example, plan to insist that all such meat, fish and poultry be labeled as genetically-engineered. "THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT PIGS THAT ARE GOING TO HAVE MOUSE GENES IN THEM, AND THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE LABELED," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy for Consumers Union. "We are close to speechless on this."

Genetic engineering is already widely used in agriculture to produce higher-yielding or disease-resistant crops. However, all sides are aware that consumers may be rather more alarmed by the idea of eating GM meat.

In fact, this is a quintessential characteristic of economies run by fascist regimes. For example, historian Gaetano Salvemini argued IN 1936 THAT FASCISM MAKES TAXPAYERS RESPONSIBLE TO PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana