TX Reverse Mortgage in Texas

Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

In the days before and after the deadly storm, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Louisiana and Texas. The hardest hit places were industrial centers near Houston and Port Arthur, Texas, as well as oil production facilities off Louisiana's coast, according to the AP's analysis.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office is searching for a man it says killed and then mutilated another man by scalping him and cutting away portions of the victim's face. Mark Andrew Boyd, 37, is accused of killing Wilbur L. Ake, 47, at Ake's north Houston apartment on Sept. 23. He faces capital murder charges.

"Apparently the men would party together," said Lt. John Denholm of the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Ake was found about 5:30 p.m. in his apartment at 14619 Ella, dead from multiple sharp force injuries of the head, neck, torso and extremities, according to the Harris County Medical Examiner's report.

After Ake was dead, authorities said Boyd took Ake's ATM card and withdrew about $1,000 in several transactions.

Boyd, described as a crack cocaine user, should be considered dangerous, the Sheriff's Office said. He is believed to be homeless and is likely in north Harris County, near Ella and FM 1960. Boyd also has family in the Willis area.

Boyd is 6 feet tall and 165 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. He may be armed.

Police ask anyone with information about Boyd's whereabouts to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.

The final hours brought the awful realization to victims of Hurricane Ike that they had waited too long. This storm wasn't like the others, the ones that left nothing worse than a harrowing tale to tell.

George Helmond, a hardy Galveston salt, watched the water rise and told a buddy: I was born on this island, and I'll die on this island.

Gail Ettenger, a free spirit who adopted the Bolivar Peninsula as her home 15 years ago, told a friend in a last phone call: I really messed up this time.

Within hours, the old salt and the free spirit were gone as the powerful Category 2 hurricane wracked the Texas Gulf Coast on September 13, flattening houses, obliterating entire towns and claiming at least 33 lives.

The dead -- as young as 4, as old as 79 -- included lifelong Galvestonians firmly rooted on the island and transplants drawn by the quiet of coastal living.

Seven people drowned in a storm surge that moved in earlier and with more ferocity than expected. Nine others died in the grimy, sweaty aftermath, when lack of power and medicine exacted its toll. Eleven people were poisoned by carbon monoxide or killed in fires from the generators they used in their own attempts to survive.

Hundreds of people remain missing three weeks after Ike's assault on Texas. Local and city officials are no longer keeping their own count of missing residents, and the estimate varies wildly from one agency to another.

According to the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center, about 300 people are missing. Of those, about 200 from Galveston. However, the number "goes up and down by the minute" as people call in to remove or add names, cautioned Executive Director Bob Walcutt.

Some vanished during the evacuation of towns in the storm's path. Many were last heard in desperate, last-ditch calls for help.

Immediately after the hurricane, Galveston officials conducted door-to-door searches for survivors and possible victims. But the city is no longer taking an active role in the search, spokeswoman Alicia Cahill said.

Instead, search teams of sheriff's deputies, volunteer firefighters and special K-9 search and recovery units have been using airboats and all-terrain vehicles to sift through debris fields, tangled and fetid marshlands, and the rubble left behind by Ike.

A Texas woman has been arrested on suspicion of robbing a Lincoln credit union. Lincoln police said Deborah Keahl, 49, of Dripping Springs, was arrested Friday afternoon on suspicion of robbery and use of ...

British fashion designer John Galliano poses after his spring-summer 2009 ready-to-wear collection presented in Paris, Saturday, Oct.

President Bush almost made it through his two terms without visiting his boyhood hometown.

Texas' House members who voted against the financial rescue package were headed back to Washington Thursday with the possible repercussions of a new vote churning in their minds and constituents' complaints ...

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Millions of taxpayers, thousands of businesses and groups as diverse as solar power developers and natural disaster victims will see tax relief with the House vote Friday to approve and send to the president a ...

A judge ordered a Texas doctor and his wife on Friday not to distribute videotaped footage of Anna Nicole Smith's breast augmentation surgery in 1994.

The order settles alawsuit filed last year by Howard K. Stern, the executor of Smith's estate, who was trying to stop Dr. Gerald Johnson and his wife from distributing the tapes of the former Playboy Playmate.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff issued preliminary injunctions against the Johnsons more than a year ago before issuing his final decision.

Four Texas congressional Democrats and two Republicans have switched their votes to help pass the $700 billion bailout bill.

A 7-year-old Texas boy found dead hanging from a hook in a school bathroom may have been playing a game students call "run and jump," according to police reports released Thursday.

Three Texans accused of accidentally starting a 2,000-acre wildfire near the Grand Canyon in April have pleaded guilty to leaving a campfire unattended.

The world's longest undeveloped barrier island now looks as if people have been living and dumping their things on it for decades.

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AUSTIN A lawsuit Moncrief Oil International has filed over its interests in one of Russia's largest natural gas fields could benefit the University of Texas.

The Texas Attorney General's Office is taking a hard stance against businesses involved in price gouging during Hurricane Ike.

Portable toilets are seen in front of an abandoned Wal-Mart store in Tyler, Texas, that has been converted to a emergency shelter housing Hurricane Ike evacuees from Beaumont, Texas, as storm clouds move in, ...

Scientists from Texas universities on Tuesday denounced what they called supernatural and religious teaching in public school science classrooms and voiced opposition to attempts to water down evolution ...

Nearly one out of three Texans speak Spanish at home, a rise attributed to an increasing number of immigrants coming from Mexico, according to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau.