(Charles Abbyad, 58, is the maitre d' at Arnaud's, a classic creole restaurant in the center of New Orleans. With his wife, Jill, he keeps a guesthouse called The Chimes in the city's historic Garden District. While thousands of residents are packing their cars and fleeing Hurricane Gustav, Abbyad is staying behind with Reuters reporters Matt Bigg and Tim Gaynor to ride out the storm.

It's 4 p.m. Charles has been up a stepladder most of the day, putting up shutters and preparing for the gathering storm. This is probably his last post for today.)

"In the last couple of days we didn't have a speck of wind, but now it's starting. It's overcast, and the outer reaches of the storm are with us. Most people don't realize it, but when they are dealing with a storm, they're on edge. I want it to come and get it over with."

"I've shuttered the four big windows on the front of the house, the small windows on the side and now I'm putting in some extra screws. Last time, when we came back after Katrina, my palm tree was leaning into the guest house. I've tied it to another tree, and this will hopefully keep it in place.

"Am I ready? Well, as an innkeeper I am ready. As a new steam helper, I'm not sure. If the Reuters news team do an excessive amount of driving, I don't know if the 21 gallons of gasoline I bought will be enough."

Follow Abbyad and Reuters reporters Matt Bigg and Tim Gaynor here as they weather the storm in New Orleans. 

Above: Charles Abbyad holds a plank of wood he plans to nail to the outside of his home to protect it against Hurricane Gustav. Photo by Matthew Bigg/REUTERS.

TOLEDO, Ohio - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden commented on Sunday on the attractiveness of Republican John McCain's new running mate, Sarah Palin. 
 Campaigning with Barack Obama in the industrial state of Ohio, Biden digressed as he was drawing a contrast between his party's approach on the economy and that of McCain's party.

"There's a gigantic -- gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama, and between me and, I suspect, my vice presidential opponent," Biden said.  "Well there's obvious differences -- she's good looking," he said of Palin, a 44-year-old Alaska governor and former beauty queen. 

 When a woman in the audience shouted out that she thought Biden was "gorgeous," he drew laughter from the crowd when he asked her to make sure his wife heard that. 
"I haven't heard that in a long, long, long time," said Biden, 65, who has thinning gray hair. 

Referring to the 47-year-old Obama, he added, "Hanging around a lean, young-looking guy is making me feel pretty old, you know, what I mean? I thought I was in pretty good shape until I hung out with this guy."

Photo: Reuters/Jim Young (Biden and Obama) Reuters/John Gress (Palin and McCain)

ST. PAUL - Barack Obama wants the country to know that he's a regular, beer-drinking guy. But don't count on him to throw the first punch in a bar brawl.

During an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes" that aired on Sunday, the Democratic presidential nominee bristled when his interviewer implied that he had recently sipped a beer to gain favor with blue-collar voters. CBS's Steve Kroft added, "I know you don't particularly like..."

Obama cut off Kroft, saying, "Steve, I had a beer last night. I mean, where do these stories come from man?"

This wasn't the first time in his presidential campaign that the Harvard-educated Obama has had to fend off suggestions that he might be too erudite for Joe Six Pack.

It's an impression he'll want to shake if he hopes to win enough votes in important blue-collar states like Pennsylvania and Ohio this fall.

In support of that effort, Obama went bowling during one campaign appearance and at the beginning of a foreign tour in July he grabbed a basketball and sunk a now-famous "three-pointer."

Even so, Kroft was compelled to ask Obama whether he lacked a "killer instinct" and if being confrontational was just not in his DNA -- something voters might be weighing with so many bad guys lurking out there in the world.

"The fact that I don't go out of my way to call people names, or try to take cheap shots, and that I try not to throw the first punch," Obama said, "sometimes leads people to underestimate what I've got." 

The 47-year-old senator from Illinois then issued a warning: Not only can he take a punch, occasionally he throws one.

Otherwise, "I wouldn't be sittin' here" as the first black major party presidential nominee, Obama said.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed.  Sen. Barack Obama drinks a beer at the Raleigh Times Bar in Raleigh, North Carolina, May 6, 2008

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

Dear Patty, I'm afraid Mom has had another setback in the area of hallucinating.

She has been doing so well, but today at breakfast she dropped her fork, crawled over to the next booth to get it, and claimed she saw the Obamas and the Bidens. Like all they have to do with their time is have waffles and patty sausages here at the Yankee Kitchen!

You may disagree, Patty, but I consider this to be even worse than last month, when she saw all four Beatles over there at Applebee's!

Anyways, we wouldn't play along with her. Doc told us to just ignore her, and she'll soon stop making up this hogwash!

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A woman kneels to get her picture taken beside the table of the Obamas and the Bidens at Yankee Kitchen Family Restaurant, during a campaign stop in Boardman, Ohio, August 30, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Young

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Acclaimed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has fallen foul of the public in Venice after his latest picture "Shirin" screened at the annual film festival. While some critics were relatively kind to one of "arthouse" cinema's leading lights, the public was less forgiving.

On the "Give Us Our Money Back!" notice board outside the festival, where people vent their spleens with small notes containing their rants/musings, "Shirin" features far more than any other film so far as Venice reaches its halfway stage.

He was slammed for being pretentious, wasting audience's time and producing a truly boring piece of cinema. One cartoon features the drawing of a man watching the movie trying to hang himself.

"Shirin" is 92 minutes long. It is a sequence of shots of Iranian women's faces as they watch a film which the audience never sees. Clever device? Perhaps, but many felt that 114 actresses including French star Juliette Binoche, was a little, shall we say, over the top.

Charles Abbyad, 58, is the maitre d' at Arnaud's, a classic creole restaurant in the center of New Orleans. With his wife, Jill, he keeps a guesthouse called The Chimes in the city's historic Garden District. While thousands of residents are packing their cars and fleeing Hurricane Gustav, Abbyad is staying behind with Reuters reporters Matt Bigg and Tim Gaynor to ride out the storm.

"We learned from Katrina that if the city is going to be closed up for any period of time, the food would spoil in the refrigerators at the restaurant. Last time we would have opened much sooner if we had prepared better. This time, we threw some food away on Saturday, and gave the rest to the fire department. By the time we walked out of the restaurant yesterday, it was locked up, all the computers were put away and then I came over here to get everything ready."

"I am staying behind because my bed and breakfast is my life. Tonight the winds are supposed to come, and so we are shuttering up the windows. I made a commitment to Reuters during Katrina, that the next storm if there was one, they were going to be taken care of. So, we have enough food to feed you for a week. I also have a shotgun and a .38 so that if someone is going to loot the house, they have to get by me -- If I dare to use them!"

Follow Abbyad and Reuters  reporters Matt Bigg and Tim Gaynor as they weather the storm in New Orleans.

Above: Charles Abbyad holds a plank of wood he plans to nail to the outside of his home to protect it against Hurricane Gustav. Abbyad is seen carrying the plank in the second photograph. Photos by Matthew Bigg/REUTERS.

LIMA, Ohio - Democratic White House contender Barack Obama said on Sunday he would tap his e-mail list of volunteers and donors to help with the relief effort if Hurricane Gustav wreaks havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there, if it becomes necessary," Obama told reporters after attending a church service in Lima, Ohio. "We can activate an e-mail list of a couple million people who want to give back."

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain flew to Mississippi to view the preparations for the storm. 

With the Republican convention scheduled to begin this week in St. Paul, Minnesota, President George W. Bush said he would not attend the that event and will instead address the assembly via satellite so he can oversee the federal response to Hurricane Gustav.

Obama said he was wary of visiting the Gulf Coast region right away because of the disruption his entourage of security officials might cause. 

But he declined to criticize McCain for his visit to Mississippi.

"I think that a big storm like this raises bipartisan concerns and I think for John to want to find out what is going on is fine," Obama said, adding that he assumed McCain would steer clear of places where his entourage might get in the way.

The Bush administration was widely criticized as having botched the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Obama, who spoke on Saturday with David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the agency seemed to be better positioned this time to grapple with the storm.

"Having said that, even if some of those lessons have been learned, it's still very unpredictable what the course of the storm is going to be and what its magnitude is," he added. 
     
  Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young.  Sen. Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally in Beaver, Pennsylvania,  Aug. 29, 2008    

Ministers and officials from more than 100 countries, as well as representatives of multilateral development and financial agencies, are meeting in Accra, Ghana this week (Sept. 2-4) to discuss ways of making development aid more effective. 

At its best, development aid from rich countries to help the world's most needy can really touch the poor, giving them the means and the know-how to transform their lives and future in self-sustaining projects that profitably plug their labour and activities into the globalised world.

A project I visited in Senegal is helping Senegalese peasant farmers to become international exporters of melons.

But horror stories abound in the international aid community about wasteful proliferation, confusion and overlap of aid projects -- the so-called "Tower of Babel" syndrome in which aid projects sometimes go ahead without the full collaboration of host governments and may even compete with each other.

If badly conceived and applied, aid projects can squander hundreds of millions of aid dollars in costly "white elephants" that end up providing uncontrolled funds and expensive SUVs to a handful of corrupt officials, while leaving the intended recipients as poor as they were before. 

President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, the African country which has received one of the highest levels of aid per capita on the continent since independence, has criticised some aid NGOs as being "greedy gobblers of aid resources, absorbing the best part of this through all kinds of schemes, in administration, travel and luxury hotel costs for so-called experts -- rather than spending on actions".  He recommends innovative aid initiatives that "help people to stand up".

Some might ask what Senegal really has to show for this aid influx over the years, when we see an exodus of many young Senegalese risking their lives every year in rickety, open boats to try to reach Europe to seek a better life.

Many economists believe the stress should very much be put on trade rather than aid.

What do you think a "good" aid project should consist of? Do you know any examples of failed aid projects and why do you think they failed? What changes should be made in the way the rich world delivers aid to the poor?

Italy settled its colonial era dispute with Libya at the weekend with $5 billion in compensation for wrongs done during colonial rule. The money will be invested in a major new highway as well as used for clearing mines and other projects. Both sides say that will allow them to make a new start.

Relations between Libya and Italy had been especially difficult and this was a very specific dispute, but Italian colonialism did not last all that long in Africa - even if there were episodes of particular nastiness while it did.

What about the far more important colonial players in Africa: Britain, France and Portugal? Not only was their presence far longer lasting, but they were more heavily involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade, which sapped the strength of west and central Africa for centuries and forced millions of its people into death or slavery. Calls for reparations from some quarters have never died down.

The colonial powers later carved up the map of Africa for their own administrative convenience and with little regard for those living there. Independence movements were often suppressed with heavy force -- including in Algeria, the former Portuguese colonies and Kenya.

Since independence, the former colonial powers have given billions of dollars in development aid and other assistance. They generally have far better relationships with former colonies than Italy had with Libya.

But is it time for other former colonial powers to apologise and pay up for misdeeds on the continent? Or should the past be left for the history books?

For more regular technical updates please see my website www.reutersindia.net
The SENSEX moved up off longer term support at 14,097 to bump up against resistance at 14,645 on Friday. You can see these levels marked on the two charts on the left the first is short-term, the second longer-term. The short-term trend indicators we have had are marked with arrows on the first chart and the latest ones on the Parabolic-SAR and MACD studies are now bearish as you can see. The Alpha Beta trend is now neutral from bullish. So, the near-term indicators are pointing down and we need to keep a close eye on these supports carefully as it might mean this small downtrend we are currently seeing may be short-lived. So far, they are holding well.
The second chart shows the longer term chart support being the 38.2 pct Fibonacci retracement of the entire SENSEX upmove. We are on very significant support and this is why the market is holding up despite the bearish indicators.

DECOUPLING
While the SENSEX decoupled quite nicely from the other Asian markets following the government victory at the vote of confidence and the associated politics. It was clear investors took this outcome positively and bullish for economic reforms. However, given the inflation and growth backdrop at least some of this enthusiasm has evaporated and the negativity elsewhere on the Asian stock markets has begun dragging on the SENSEX again.
That said, at 12.40 percent inflation number for mid-August was lower than expected by the market and indeed moderated slightly and the 7.9 percent GDP number was taken calmly by the market despite being slightly lower than anticipated.
The third chart is a correlation chart of the SENSEX versus the MSCI Asia stocks index ex-Japan which shows the India market decoupled form the Asia markets since the beginning of the month but you can see the line is turning less negative so the Asia market are starting to have more influence and the SENSEX moving less under its own steam. The correlation index is still negative as per the sub-chart but less so in the past few days. It seems the drag of the Asian markets is starting to exert more influence over the SENSEX.

WATCH THE RUPEE
The fourth chart has the 10-day correlation study of the SENSEX vs INR and this is turning down quite sharply so the link is clearly breaking down now. A very high correlation between the two has existed for around a month and the SENSEX moving in lockstep with the INR. If you watch one, you must watch the other.

GOLD – HITTING RESISTANCE
And finally a look at gold. Gold has seen an excellent bounce off the strong 785 support level, a level that has been evident on the chart for weeks now. It was very strong support in Q4 last year.
But, 835 is the big resistance level and as you can see from the chart is providing a solid barrier to further gains. All the recent closes have been below and US trading on Friday did not break the pattern. One to watch for sure, and a break above would set up a move to the next two resistance points as marked on the chart at 850 and 859. But 835 is the key overhead resistance level being around the peaks reached in 2007.
The Commodity Channel index has broken up through the negative 100 line which is a bullish signal. The Parabolic-SAR has also switched to bullish and the MACD lines have crossed.
But the signals are not that strong and we should continue to not yet be looking too much to the upside and there is need for caution. The start of the bearish move is marked with the latest set of black arrows the MACD and P-SAR flagged it very well.
. Gold’s negative correlation to the USD. As we all know the dollar movements affect the gold price but at the moment this negative correlation is strong and risingThe last chart is a very long-term chart of the gold price versus the oil price.

This is a long 100-day correlation and as you can see historically the linkage goes from positive to negative with slightly more bias to the positive. At the moment the correlation is very high. If you watch gold you currently have to keep a close eye on oil.