From the Southeast Asian capital city of the Philippine Islands, 7,107 of them, I bid you good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever the case may be, and all those time zones, covered ever so well by this program, coast to coast a.m. I'm Art Bell. And with the Mayan volcano to the south of me, ready to blow its top, we'll first take a look at the news. And the news around the world is certainly not good, and it's going to lend itself very well to tonight's guest in the next hour, Howard Bloom. This hour, we are going to do open lines, and I will get as many of them as I can

in during the hour.

However, the world news, I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being bad, this rounds

out neatly at about 8, maybe 8, and 1 half.

Israeli warplanes, pound Beirut's suburbs.

This whole thing is in the process of a gigantic escalation right now.

A defiant Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with rocket Sunday after rejecting U.S. French truce proposals, killing at least 15.

Israel also struck hard, killing at least 14 in Lebanon,

as both the sides tried to take advantage of days, of the days, that is, to say, before a UN

resolution is to be put to a vote. But that's, I don't think it's going to end anything, and I don't

think anybody

thinks it will.

At daybreak Monday, Israeli warplanes pounded Beirut's southern suburbs with eight

airstrikes, stepping up bombardment of the Hespa La stronghold.

It was not immediately clear what was targeted.

And in a fuel-starved, heat-rich country, this is certainly not good news.

Major Alaskan oil field shutting down.

Anchorage, in a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, we really need that, right?

Half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP

Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered, get this, severe corrosion in a Prudo Bay oil transit line. BP

officials said they didn't know how long the Prudo Bay field would be offline. They didn't even

know how long it's going to take to shut it down.

...