PASADENA, California (Reuters) - Hundreds of worried IndyMac Bancorp Inc customers descended on the company’s branches on Monday to withdraw their money, after regulators seized what was once one of the largest mortgage lenders in the United States.

Regulators took over the Pasadena-based lender on Friday after a bank run in which customers — panicked over IndyMac’s survival prospects — withdrew $1.3 billion over 11 business days, regulators said.

At a branch at IndyMac’s headquarters, customers began arriving at 4 a.m., five hours before the doors opened. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp now operates the thrift’s 33 Southern California branches.
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Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth’s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet’s surface, a new study says.

“What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth’s magnetic field,” said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said.
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NEW YORK - Oil prices shot back past $143 a barrel Wednesday as the government reported a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. crude stockpiles and the threat of a conflict with Iran left traders jittery.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose as high as $143.27 on the New York Mercantile Exchange before easing somewhat to trade at $142.95, up $1.98.

The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said crude oil supplies fell by 2 million barrels last week, or about 800,000 barrels more than analysts surveyed by the energy research firm Platts predicted.
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Oil prices surged past $143 a barrel for the first time ever Monday, and the price for a gallon of gas hit an all-time high in the United States.

Supply concerns and a fragile global economy continue to drive the price of oil to new highs, as well as continued tensions in the Middle East.

“The main factors behind the rise today are the U.S. dollar remains fragile and geopolitical tensions, particularly surrounding Iran,” said David Moore, a commodity strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. “That’s unsettling for the oil market.”
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The largest coordinated global engineering project in the history of our species. People across the world are noticing planes crossing back and forth in the sky leaving in their wake a trail of vapor that does not evaporate. These are not your normal commercial airlines following a preordained path from city to city. The mysterious unmarked planes leave smoke-like trails behind them that spread until by the afternoon they have blossomed and grown until the skies have become overcast. Officials from the Air Traffic Control the EPA and the Air Force will not respond to questions regarding this phenomenon.

Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said the river will crest Friday at about 31.8 feet. It was at 30.9 feet early in the morning. In a 1993 flood, considered the worst in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Officials on Friday issued a voluntary evacuation order for much of downtown Des Moines, Iowa, and other areas bordering the Des Moines River.

Officials recommended that downtown residents and businesses evacuate parts of downtown on both sides of the river by 6 p.m. Friday. Included are all areas in Des Moines’ 500-year floodplain.

The alert was prompted by rising river levels expected to peak at 8 p.m. Friday.
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“I never even thought about flood insurance,” said Mr. Ankum, 33. “They said this place would never flood in 500 years.”

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — They said this city would never flood. They talked about 1993, and 1966 and 1851, years when the Cedar River swelled and hissed but mostly stayed within its banks. They thought they were safe. They were wrong.

Downtown Cedar Rapids was inundated by the raging Cedar River on Thursday. Heavy rain continued to pound parts of Iowa.

Cedar Rapids is experiencing the worst flooding in the city’s history. And the water is still rising. By Thursday afternoon, the Cedar River was about 29 feet deep, or 17 feet above flood stage, according to the National Weather Service. The water was expected to rise another three feet by Friday morning, and reach a record crest, 12 feet higher than the previous record, set in 1851.
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AAM Concerned with CCC Inventories

WASHINGTON - Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), has raised concerns over the issue of U.S. grain reserves after it was announced that the sale of 18.37 million bushels of wheat from USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are o­nly 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be o­nly 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack. “Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The o­nly thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”
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Edward Kennedy is diagnosed with brain tumor - “Hello, can you hear me now?”

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AFP) - Legendary Democratic patriarch Senator Edward Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor, doctors said Tuesday, sending a wave of sadness and shock through the US political establishment.

The 76-year-old liberal lion’s cancer diagnosis, days after he was airlifted to a Boston hospital following a seizure, cast a pall over Congress, where the Massachusetts senator has been a dominant figure for nearly half a century.
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NEW YORK - Oil prices have shot up more than $10 to a new record above $138 a barrel after a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted prices could hit $150 by the Fourth of July. Traders were also rattled by rising tensions in the Middle East.

The meteoric surge builds on a huge jump on Thursday and sets the stage for the biggest two-day gain in the history of the New York Mercantile Exchange. A further weakening of the dollar helped keep prices high.

Light, sweet crude for July delivery jumped as high as $138.36 on the Nymex, then eased to $137.81, up $10.02.

http://news.yahoo.com

In pictures, on CSI Miami, and to the naked eye the sea looks the same today as it ever did: blue, green or blue-green, rolling in glassy crashing curls, tormented then serene. It will look this way tomorrow, next year, arguably for eternity. No matter what freaks us out on earth, our species takes great comfort in knowing that the sea always looks exactly the same.

From up here.

But not down there. Not underneath. Under the swells and the sparkles and the froth, fathoms down, the globe’s oceans have transformed over the last several decades, transforming even as we sit here into wastelands, ghost worlds, desolate deathscapes that could be filmed in situ for sci-fi films about the post-apocalypse. You won’t find this out from a day at the beach. The smiling sea captain depicted on the fish-sticks box is keeping mum. But Canadian food journalist Taras Grescoe tells all in his important new book, Bottomfeeder (Bloomsbury, 2008).
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REYKJAVIK, Iceland - A strong earthquake shook southern Iceland on Thursday, causing more than a dozen injuries as it rocked buildings in the capital, touched off landslides and forced evacuations in outlying towns, officials and local media said.

Government officials reported that 15 to 20 people from Selfoss, 30 miles southeast of the capital of Reykjavik, were injured in the quake, none of them seriously. They were taken to a local health center for treatment.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Selfoss was near the epicenter of the magnitude 6.1 quake, which hit at 3:46 p.m.
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Thousands of half-inch frogs invade the streets and yards of Bakersfield, California. Affiliate KGET reports.

Video

BEIJING (AFP) - Thousands of Chinese fled for cover in fear of an earthquake Tuesday, alarmed not only by warnings from seismologists but also by an unusual mass movement of frogs, state media said.

For the second time this month, residents observed a huge migration of frogs and toads, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

Residents of Zunyi, a southern city that saw little damage in China’s massive earthquake last week, noticed the amphibians’ march on Monday, Xinhua said, quoting Vice Mayor Zeng Yongtao.
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MIANYANG, China (AP) — Chinese officials rushed Tuesday to evacuate another 80,000 people in the path of potential floodwaters building up behind a quake-spawned dam as soldiers carved a channel to try to drain away the threat.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported emergency workers would try to complete the evacuation by midnight Tuesday, taking the number of people moved out of the threatened valley to almost 160,000, from more than 30 townships,

The Tangjiashan lake in northern Sichuan province, formed when a massive landslide blocked a river, is one of dozens of fragile dams created during the earthquake that pose a new destructive threat in the disaster zone.
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BUSKIRK, N.Y. - A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald’s, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world’s oil supply. Now, she’s preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.

Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.
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MORENO VALLEY (KABC) — These unstable and unpredictable weather conditions captivated Southern California residents, stunned at the unusual sight of tornadoes.

Watch the video at http://abclocal.go.com

NEW YORK - Runaway oil prices blew past $130 a barrel for the first time Wednesday and kept going, while gasoline prices persisted in their own relentless climb, rising above $3.80 a gallon. Supply worries, rising demand and a slumping dollar are conspiring to make filling up the car — and paying for just about everything else — a growing burden for Americans.

With gas and oil prices setting new records on a daily basis, many analysts are beginning to wonder whether anything can stop prices from rising. There are technical signals in the futures market, including price differences between near-term and longer-term contracts, that crude may soon fall. But with demand for oil growing in the developing world, and little end in sight to supply problems in producing countries such as Nigeria, few analysts are willing to call an end to crude’s rally.
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VIENNA, Austria - Oil prices spiked to a new trading high Tuesday, sweeping toward $130 a barrel as supply concerns intensified the momentum buying that has lifted crude deeper into record territory.

The June contract for light, sweet crude traded as high as $129.46 on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling back to $129.10, up $2.05.

Prices are currently being driven higher by supply concerns. This latest surge comes after OPEC’s president was quoted as saying his organization won’t increase its output before its next meeting in September.
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May 20 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil was little changed amid skepticism that Saudi Arabia’s decision to increase output by 300,000 barrels a day will be sufficient to reduce prices.

Saudi Arabia will boost production by about 3.3 percent to 9.45 million barrels a day in June, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in Riyadh on May 16. The gain won’t subdue prices because they have been driven higher by the weak U.S. dollar and not supply, OPEC President Chakib Khelil said yesterday.

“OPEC seems pretty happy with production where it is,'’ said Tom Bentz, a broker at BNP Paribas in New York. “The Saudi announcement of a 300,000 barrel-a-day production gain is not enough to send prices lower, it’s not a huge amount.'’
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