Latest news about Business And Finance and Computers And Internet

The Chinese government is stirring trade tensions with Washington with a plan to require foreign computer security technology to be submitted for government approval, in a move that might require suppliers to disclose business secrets.

Rules due to take effect May 1 require official certification of technology widely used to keep e-mail and company data networks secure. Beijing has yet to say how many secrets companies must disclose about such sensitive matters as how data-encryption systems work. But Washington complains the requirement might hinder imports in a market dominated by U.S. companies, and is pressing Beijing to scrap it.

“There are still opportunities to defuse this, but it is getting down to the wire,” said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd., a Beijing technology consulting firm. “It affects trade. It’s potentially really wide-scale.”

Beijing tried earlier to force foreign companies to reveal how encryption systems work and has promoted its own standards for mobile phones and wireless encryption.

Those attempts and the new demand reflect Beijing’s unease about letting the public keep secrets, and the government’s efforts to use its regulatory system to help fledgling Chinese high-tech companies compete with global high-tech rivals. Yin Changlai, the head of a Chinese business group sanctioned by the government, has acknowledged that the rules are meant to help develop China’s infant computer security industry by shielding companies from foreign rivals that he said control 70 percent of the market.

The computer security rules cover 13 types of hardware and software, including database and network security systems, secure routers, data backup and recovery systems and anti-spam and anti-hacking software. Such technology is enmeshed in products sold by Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and other industry giants.

Giving regulators the power to reject foreign technologies could help to promote sales of Chinese alternatives. But that might disrupt foreign manufacturing, research or data processing in China if companies have to switch technologies or move operations to other countries to avoid the controls. Requiring disclosure of technical details also might help Beijing read encrypted e-mail or create competing products.

“I think there’s both a national security goal and an industrial policy goal to this,” said Scott Kennedy, an Indiana University professor who studies government-business relations in China. “I’m sure before they came out with this, there was a discussion with industry and industry probably was giving them lots of requests about what should be included.”

American officials objected to the rules in August at a regular meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.

“We don’t believe China imposing these regulations is consistent with its trade commitments,” said a U.S. Embassy spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with official policy. “If there is an international standard that has been agreed upon by the international community, then that’s the standard.”

China agreed to delay releasing detailed regulations pending negotiations, but has not postponed the May enforcement deadline. No date has been set for more talks.

“We don’t really view them announcing a delay in publication as a resolution to the issue,” the American official said.

The agency that will enforce the rules, the China Certification and Accreditation Administration, said in a written statement they are meant to protect national security and “advance industry development.” But it did not respond to questions about what information companies must disclose and how foreign technology will be judged.

An official of one foreign business group said companies were reluctant to talk publicly for fear of angering Chinese authorities while negotiations were under way.

Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems Inc. and security-software makers McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp. did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for chip maker Intel Corp. said it would obey Chinese law but did not respond to questions about how it might be affected. A spokeswoman for personal computer maker Dell Inc. said it could not comment until detailed regulations are released. A spokesman for IBM Corp. said its products are not covered by the rules.

China has one of the largest technology markets, with more than 253 million Internet users and 590 million mobile phone accounts. It has tried to leverage that to promote its high-tech industries, which lag foreign competitors.

China prompted an outcry in 2006 when it tried to require computer and phone companies to use its WAPI wireless encryption standard. That would have given Chinese companies that developed the standard a head start in creating products and let them collect royalties from foreign competitors. Beijing dropped its demand after Washington complained it was a trade barrier.

In 2001, Beijing tried to require computer and software suppliers to disclose how their encryption systems worked. That was scrapped after companies said the demand was too broad and trade secrets might fall into the hands of Chinese competitors.

China also developed its own standard for third-generation mobile phones to compete with two global standards. But it agreed to let Chinese carriers use all three standards after U.S. and European officials expressed concern that it might try to keep out foreign technology.

Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites, whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social, a judiciary official was quoted as saying on Wednesday.”The enemies seek to assault our religious identity by exploiting the Internet,” Abdolsamad Khoram Abadi, an advisor to Iran’s prosecutor general, was quoted by ‘Kargozaran’ newspaper as saying.

The Internet ‘inflicts social, political, economic and moral damage, which is worrying’, he said, adding that’ social vice caused by the Internet is more than that by the satellite network,” Mehr news agency reported.

With about 21 million users, the Internet is widely popular in Iran, which Information Ministry officials say ranks among the top 20 user countries. In recent years, Internet service providers have been told to block access to political, human rights and women’s sites and weblogs expressing dissent or deemed to be pornographic and anti-Islamic.The ban has also targeted such popular social networking sites as Facebook and YouTube, as well as news sites.

Iran’s reformist press was hit by a massive crackdown in 2000, and many journalists turned to blogging after their publications were shut down.

The closures have continued under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected in 2005, and have targeted newspapers and other media, including websites and news agencies, of all political persuasions.

Conservatives have also warned against ‘cyber imperialism’ targeting developing countries.

OPEC President Chakib Khelil said on Wednesday that the cartel must weigh the impact of a prospective decision to cut oil output on both consumers and producers hit by a global financial crisis.

“The decision has to take into account the interests of the consumers but also (has to) take into account the interests of the producers,” Khelil told reporters on arrival in Vienna ahead of Friday’s special meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

OPEC’s member countries are calling for a cut to the cartel’s output of between one and 2.5 million barrels a day to help shore up oil prices. However the cartel’s kingpin Saudi Arabia has yet to reveal its preference.

Crude futures on Wednesday tumbled to 16-month lows, mainly on news that demand for crude is slumping in the United States, the world’s biggest energy consumer.

Prices slid under 65 dollars a barrel in London, down about 56 percent from a record high of 147.5 dollars reached in July.

“This is going to be a very important meeting” in Vienna on Friday, said Khelil, who is also energy minister for OPEC member Algeria.

“It comes in the middle of a financial crisis where lots of countries have been affected,” added Khelil in reference to both oil-consuming and producing nations.

He said that OPEC did not want producers, affected by the financial crisis, to be further hit by “very low” oil prices, which reduce their incomes.

Crude oil prices slumped in trading on Wednesday on news of surging US energy reserves that highlighted a fall in demand caused by a global economic slowdown.

A sharp rise in the dollar also put pressure on the dollar-priced commodity, making it more expensive for buyers using weaker currencies, traders said.

Brent North Sea crude plunged five percent, to a 16-month low of 64.59 dollars a barrel. New York’s light sweet crude slumped to 66.73 dollars — a level last seen on June 14, 2007.

Friday’s “extraordinary” meeting in the Austrian capital, home to OPEC’s headquarters, has officially been called “to discuss the global financial crisis, the world economic situation and the impacts on the oil market.”

It was originally planned for November 18 but has been brought forward, a switch analysts said was because OPEC wanted to quickly bring a halt to tumbling prices.

Khelil on Wednesday noted that crude stocks were currently “very high.”

He added: “There is an excess of supply and some of us are not able to sell the crude. I think the question of reduction has to be discussed” on Friday.

Khelil also said that non-OPEC oil producers should consider cutting output. OPEC produces 40 percent of the world’s oil and its official output quota stands at 28.8 million barrels per day. Russia is the largest non-OPEC oil producer.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday told the cartel’s secretary general he wanted closer cooperation with the organization.

“For our energy institutions, cooperation with OPEC in forming energy policy is a key priority,” Medvedev told OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri in Moscow.

“Russia is also a major producer and exporter of oil and is interested in supporting stable, predictable oil prices,” Medvedev said.

Earlier the OPEC secretary general said he would not be asking Russia to join in any arrangement to support prices.

“I will not ask Russia to cut production. I will request an exchange of information about the situation on the market and the financial crisis,” he said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week said it was “absolutely scandalous” that OPEC members were considering cutting production “so they can push up the price of oil” in times of economic turmoil.

El-Badri on Tuesday hit back, insisting that OPEC had no responsibility to keep production high and oil prices low to ease pain in the West caused by the credit crunch.

On the day she was rescued after six years of jungle captivity in rebel hands, Ingrid Betancourt broke with protocol on the airport tarmac when she was supposed to be taking questions from reporters.

She asked for one journalist by name whose voice was familiar but whom she had never met.

“My brother, forever. Come here for my ‘freedom hug,’” Betancourt said.

As millions watched on live TV, Herbin Hoyos slid through the security cordon, past the defense minister, military chief, Betancourt’s mother and other dignitaries. The two embraced.

For 14 years, Hoyos has hosted “Kidnapped Voices,” a radio program for relatives of Colombian kidnap victims to broadcast messages to their loved ones.

Now Hoyos, a former kidnap victim himself, is being honored for work that has occupied most of the 38-year-old reporter’s adult life.

This month he won Colombia’s highest award for journalists, the Simon Bolivar prize for Journalist of the Year, followed by the National Peace Prize, sharing it with William Perez, a medic held with Betancourt who attended to her and other hostages as they battled tropical illnesses.

“The program has taught me the greatest humility lesson anyone could learn in life,” Hoyos told The Associated Press. “Every day, I experience human drama.”

Since launching the program, Hoyos says, he has received “freedom hugs” from 11,017 people freed or rescued from ransom- and politically motivated kidnappings.

But he worries that after the July 2 rescue of the highest profile hostages — Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors — those they left behind will be forgotten. Mostly soldiers and police officers, some held for as long as a decade, the hostages continue to waste away amid a paucity of efforts to secure their release.

Until recently, Colombia had the world’s highest kidnapping rate, which experts believe has now been surpassed by Mexico. Iraq is also a contender.

According to government figures, Colombia had more than 2,800 unresolved kidnappings through the end of June. The cases date back to 1996 and include people disappeared and presumed dead.

The government attributes 700 kidnappings to leftist rebels. But officials familiar with the issue, speaking on condition of anonymity because superiors will not permit them to publicly clarify the matter, say rebels probably hold no more than a few hundred.

Hoyos was a young reporter when the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the same group that held Betancourt, abducted him in March 1994.

He was rescued by the army 17 days later. But during his short time in captivity, Hoyos met another FARC hostage, Nacianceno Murcia, who “chewed me out because we journalists weren’t doing anything for the kidnapped.”

Murcia was released for ransom in 1996 but died two years later of a pancreatic ailment he’d acquired as a hostage.

As soon as Hoyos was freed, he went to his bosses at Caracol radio in Bogota and asked for air time to give kidnap victims radio messages from their loved ones.

And so began a show that Hoyos says has transmitted more than 328,000 messages to thousands of kidnap victims over its 14 years.

“I respectfully request of ’senores kidnappers’ that you let the kidnapped turn on the radio,” Hoyos says to launch his pre-dawn program every Sunday. “Here begins ‘Kidnapped Voices.’ ”

In their jungle prisons, the kidnapped hear heartwarming tidings of marriages and births, as well as heartbreaking news of a spouse’s or parent’s death.

Betancourt’s mother and children hardly ever missed a week to recount the most minute details of their daily lives.

At the end of each show, Hoyos promises the hostages a “freedom hug” when they are released.

Most family members call in their messages by telephone, though many also knock on the doors of Caracol’s studios and await Hoyos to usher them into the studio.

Hoyos says he has no social life. He works 20-hour days, is separated from his wife and doesn’t drink alcohol. To relax, he flies ultralight planes.

Miriam Torres, whose businessman son, Juan Camilo Mora, has been missing for three years, faithfully sends messages through Hoyos’ program each week — even though she has no confirmation that he was kidnapped.

“The families of rich people and politicians have the power to seek freedom for their kidnapped. We only have Herbin,” Torres said.

For years, Hoyos’ show got little attention.

Then Betancourt, a dual French national, was kidnapped in February 2002 while running for president. A year later, the three U.S. contractors fell into the FARC’s hands when their surveillance plane crashed in rebel territory.

“The subject began to take on international relevance, and people in Colombia began to become a bit more sensitive,” Hoyos said.

Every week, Hoyos repeats that his program won’t go off the air until Colombia’s last kidnap victim is freed.

On the day of her release, Betancourt told him, “Let’s put an end to that program.”

But this weekend, like every weekend, Hoyos once again will be at the mike.

“To us, he’s a part of our families,” Betancourt told the AP in an e-mail from France. “His voice accompanied us for years in the jungle. Friends for always.”

The British Ministry of Defence has reportedly lost a portable hard drive with details of about 100,000 servicemen and women and 800,000 applicants wanting to join the Armed Services.

According to The Times, sensitive details of the family members of personnel were also among the data stored, including bank details and passport numbers.

EDS used the portable hard drive, which is believed to be unencrypted, the MoD’s main IT contractor, to test computer equipment. It could have been missing for several days.

“The matter is being investigated by MoD police,” an MoD spokeswoman said last night.

France’s notoriously divided and ideologically marooned Socialist opposition has long struggled to find a leader capable of selling a modern leftist vision that voters will embrace. Right now, though, conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy may be doing that job for the Socialists. Following his Tuesday address to the United Nations in which he characterized international financial markets as “insane,” Sarkozy Thursday sounded like an indignant leftist when he called for sweeping regulation and “moralization” of international finance, and declared that the era “of the market always being right is over.”

“A certain conception of globalization has closed out: [one that] imposed its own logic on the entire economy and helped pervert it,” Sarkozy said during a speech in Toulon, attacking those who had created the unfolding financial crisis. “Self-regulation as a way of solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.”

That’s pinko talk for a man who came to power promising to liberalize the French economy, free up its markets, and roll back the 35-hour work week imposed by the Socialists. Sarkozy’s new views may be similarly surprising to some of his closest friends, who include several billionaire businessmen and stock market titans - an elite to whom critics have accused Sarkozy of tailoring his policies.

Despite his chumminess with French business big-wigs, Sarkozy on Thursday didn’t restrict his fire to Wall Street. He warned France’s well-heeled CEOs to come up with rules to reel in their own sky-rocketing remuneration packages and to do away with golden parachutes for disgraced executives - or watch him do it for them.

“Either the professionals make an agreement,” Sarkozy warned on soaring executive packages, “or we’ll solve the problem with a law before the end of the year.”

Why such rage over a U.S. provoked financial calamity that poses less threat to France than it does to countries like the U.K. that have more vigorously embraced American-style deregulation and blind faith in markets? First off, as Sarkozy warned in Toulon, because the credit crisis will worsen what had already been a darkening economic outlook, and limit the prospects for the sorts of reforms he’d hoped to pursue. Despite the fact that better-regulated French banks are less vulnerable than many U.S. counterparts, Sarkozy also assured French households that the state would guarantee the totality of their savings in event of any bank failures here.

Leftist and centrist politicians responded by accusing Sarkozy of cynically adopting their own positions in the face of a crisis that challenges the core assumptions of his more traditional free-market crusading. But Sarkozy insists he’s never been a rigid ideologue. In the only private interview he gave to a foreign media as a government minister before being elected president, Sarkozy told TIME of his belief that the “rigidities of ideology limit your choices when the best solutions might involve a mix: more liberalism where best, intervention when necessary.”

And conservatives and leftists alike have applauded his calls for greater regulation, echoing those of fellow conservative, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has long argued that increased regulation of financial markets was vital - and who bristled at the dismissive response such calls drew from her U.S. and British allies. Even Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose British Labour Party is easily the most pro-business of Europe’s social democratic parties, has called for restoring order and decency to markets that have gone wild.

“Along with a few others in Europe, Nicolas Sarkozy incarnates the new voice of a right re-centered halfway between economic liberalism and state-direction, and between odes to business and those to intervention,” Laurent Joffrin, editor of the left-leaning daily LibÉration wrote Friday.

Still, Joffrin demands that Sarkozy’s tough talk be matched by action. “As president of Europe” - France currently holds the rotating EU presidency - “Nicolas Sarkozy proposes no European-level action; eloquent in denouncing money gone insane, he announces no concrete measures for mastering it,” Joffrin writes. “The sound of his speeches are good, but that’s because they often resonate hollow.”

Famed novelist and former British spy John le Carre has said that

itons have been “stripped” of their civil liberties amid an “atmosphere of panic” over the threat from terrorism.

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.

Carre’s 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 Telegraph reported.

The writer, who admitted he has a reputation as an angry old man, 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,” he said.

He added: “We haul our Foreign Secretary back from a mission to the Middle East so he can vote for 42 days’ detention. People call me an angry old man. Screw them. You don’t have to be old to be angry. We’ve sacrificed our sovereignty to a so-called special relationship which has nothing special about it except to ourselves.”

The writer has been an outspoken critic of Labour Party’s erosion of civil liberties.

He was one of several figures from the arts and academia who wrote to Prime Minister Gordon Brown in March to protest at the 42-day detention limit.

The “Dinah-Mite Bursting Breakfast” is popular at the Red Arrow Diner in New Hampshire’s largest city, but politics is also on the menu in the state that could help decide who wins the U.S. presidency.

“People are always talking about politics and who is supporting who — I would say it’s now a nearly even 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats,” said Roy Donohue, general manager at the all-night eatery tucked away on a side street in Manchester, a city of 107,200 people.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are fiercely courting New Hampshire’s famously independent voters as shifting political allegiances in the state make it one of several toss-ups in the tight Nov. 4 election.

President George W. Bush won the Granite State in 2000 by a narrow 7,000 votes. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry carried the state by just 9,000 votes but lost the general election.

While only four electoral votes are at stake, the close fight for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House makes New Hampshire and other “swing” states such as Virginia, Nevada and Colorado critical to both Obama and McCain.

“Unless something changes very radically, it will probably be very close again in New Hampshire,” said Ray Buckley, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party.

McCain, who attended a NASCAR race in Manchester a week ago, enjoys several advantages in New Hampshire. The mountainous state often defies liberal New England stereotypes. It has prohibitions on income and sales taxes and a proud libertarian streak expressed in the motto “Live Free or Die.”

The Arizona senator’s “maverick” persona goes down well in the state of 1.3 million people, which supported Republicans in every presidential election from the mid-1960s until 1992 and helped to launch McCain’s White House aspirations.

McCain came from behind twice to win New Hampshire’s Republican presidential nominating primary in 2000 and 2008. Obama lost his New Hampshire primary bid.

Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center, said McCain appeals to the distinctly northeastern brand of Rockefeller Republicanism, named after former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and espoused by fiscal conservatives with moderate views on social issues like abortion.

‘TOSS UP’

“There’s no question that it is a toss up,” said Fergus Cullen, chairman of the state’s Republican Party. “But McCain has a special relationship with New Hampshire voters, especially with the independents here who drove both of his primary wins in 2000 and 2008,” he said.

An average of polls by the website RealClearPolitics showed Obama leading McCain in the state by 48.0 to 44.7 percent.

Buckley of the state’s Democratic Party said he expects Bush’s unpopularity and the state’s shifting demographics to help Obama, who campaigned in New Hampshire a week ago.

In 2000, Republicans and Democrats each made up about 38 percent of the electorate. Six years later, Democrats expanded to 43 percent and Republicans shrank to 31 percent with both parties chasing independent votes that can swing an election.

Democrats say New Hampshire is moving politically and socially closer to its New England neighbors, citing its support of same-sex civil unions in 2007, a popular Democratic governor and the Democrats’ first sweep of the state legislature in 132 years in 2006.

“We’re very optimistic,” said Buckley, adding the pick of first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain’s No. 2 could hurt his standing with New Hampshire’s many moderate Republicans because of her conservative views, including opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

Obama’s New Hampshire campaign spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya sees McCain’s opposition to abortion rights and Obama’s support for them as a crucial issue in the state along with the economy and pocket-book issues such as rising heating oil costs.

McCain’s New Hampshire campaign manager, Jim Barnett, said he expects McCain’s maverick image as a tax-cutter and crusader against wasteful spending to resonate with voters.

“New Hampshire is largely going to be a replay of what happened in 2000 and 2004 with somebody winning by a percentage point,” said Smith at the University of New Hampshire.

A former student of a Catholic school in Australia has revealed that he was expelled after he witnessed child sex abuse, and reported it more than two decades ago.

Three staff members from St Stanslaus’ College in central west New South Wales in the 1970s and 1980s are facing charges for child sex charges relating to the alleged molestation of boys, reports News.com.au

Catholic Brother John Gaven, priest Peter Dwyer and former priest Brian Spillane face a total of 128 child sex charges.

Spillane, 65, from Narwee in Sydney’s southwest, appeared in Bathurst Local Court today on 93 charges relating to more than eight victims.

The former student now in his 30s told the court that he had witnessed the abuse of up to 60 fellow students, and was expelled from the school after making a complaint in 1986, when he was in Year 7.

However, Spillane’s barrister, Greg Walsh also mentioned the cases of Father Dwyer and Mr Gaven before Magistrate Thomas Hodgson, saying all three men were pleading not guilty to all charges.

Former students of the college have come forward with allegations that boys were sexually abused during hypnotic late-night prayer and chanting sessions.

Gigantic hurricane Ike barreled into Texas early Saturday, bringing a monster ocean surge and flooding coastal areas where tens of thousands remained holed up in their homes.

The center of Ike, which made landfall at Galveston Island at about 0710 GMT, was just 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Houston’s international airport, lashing the fourth largest US city and a major oil hub with rain and gale-force wind.

Massive damage and flooding was reported throughout the region and more than a million people fled inland.

But officials said more than 100,000 residents of low-lying areas decided to ride out the storm despite warnings from the national weather service that a wall of water up to 20 feet (6.0 meters) high could spell “certain death.”

At 1100 GMT, the Category Two hurricane packed sustained winds of 160 kilometers (100 miles) an hour, down from 175 kilometers (110 miles) an hour at landfall, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center announced.

Additional weakening was forecast, but “Ike is expected to remain a hurricane through this afternoon,” the center warned.

As the storm moved northwest at 24 kilometers (15 miles) an hour, gargantuan waves measuring as high as a two-story house smashed over a 17-foot (five meter) seawall in Galveston causing floods.

Strong winds raked Houston, home to a major US port and key refineries.

As Ike bore down on Texas, companies abandoned 13 refineries representing a combined capacity of 3.7 million barrels of crude oil per day — a fifth of US refinery capacity.

In Galveston, power went out across the island just before 0100 GMT Saturday, plunging the storm-stricken city into darkness.

Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew starting Friday and ending Monday morning. Chocolate-colored seawater flooded the streets as the storm surge intensified throughout the day Friday, spoiling the city’s potable water system.

Two blazes broke out in the afternoon. Flames shot out of an unattended Galveston home near the oceanfront, while thick smoke from a ship repair warehouse darkened the sky over the city.

Firefighters, restricted by the high water, had to let the structures burn.

All neighborhoods and possibly entire coastal communities along Galveston Bay, which reaches 25 miles (40 kilometers) inland from its namesake barrier island to the heart of Houston, “will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide,” the National Hurricane Center said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described Ike’s arrival as “potentially catastrophic.”

“This is a monster storm in terms of the flooding potential,” added Chertoff. The storm surge “is going to inundate large parts of the Texas coast.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry described Ike on CNN as “a monster of a storm.”

Referring to the holdouts that refused to flee the coastal area, he said on Fox News: “Individuals who think they are tougher, stronger than Mother Nature — God be with them.”

Perry said some 1.2 million people had evacuated coastal Texas ahead of the storm.

Houston, whose metropolitan area population tops five million people, is just a few miles from the bay, and destruction there and along the coast in the hurricane zone is expected to be massive.

Jack Colley, from the Texas Department of Emergency Management, said officials estimated the storm’s economic impact would be “somewhere in between the 80-billion dollar and 100-billion-dollar range.”

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison also warned of the storm’s economic consequences.

“The economic impact is going to be huge. People are much more concerned about this one than I have seen in a long, long time,” she said on Fox News.

Oil and gas production in the Gulf was largely shut off, though the US Department of Energy said Ike appeared likely to spare most rigs and platforms there.

President George W. Bush, a former Texas governor, said he was “deeply concerned” about the threat the storm posed to the region.

Galveston has faced calamity before. The deadliest hurricane in US history, the “Great Storm” of 1900, killed at least 8,000 people when it smashed into Galveston and Houston.

Ike has left more than 100 dead across the Caribbean and sparked hurricane and tropical storm warnings from Louisiana to Mexico.