Washington - Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Thursday said she was confident that she could take over the presidency if called upon, in her first interview since accepting the nomination to run as vice president with Republican nominee John McCain.

Palin, governor since 2006, was little-known nationally until she was named two weeks ago as McCain's running mate. She has faced questions from Democrats about whether she has the experience - especially in foreign policy - to be vice president to the 72-year- old McCain.

Havana - Hurricane-hit Cuba on Thursday accused the United States of lying about its conditional offers to help the communist country as it struggles to recover and rebuild.

"The United States government is behaving cynically. It tries to suggest that it is desperate to cooperate with Cuba, and that we refuse. They lie unscrupulously," the Cuban Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike have wreaked havoc in Cuba, displacing more than a million people and destroying tens of thousands of homes. The Cuban government was still to estimate the extent of the damage.

New York - Wall Street stock indices rose Thursday as transportation firms were helped by falling oil prices, and banking shares staged a late-day rally on takeover speculation about embattled Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

US railroad company CSX Corp surged more than 10 per cent as crude oil for October delivery fell another 1.68 dollars to 100.90 dollars per barrel in New York.

Washington - Thousands of residents along the Texas coast were evacuating on Thursday as Hurricane Ike took aim at the US mainland.

Ike, a category two storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, with 160 kilometre per hour winds could strengthen into a major category three hurricane before making landfall late Friday, the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

Thursday afternoon the storm was about 645 kilometres east- southeast of Galveston, Texas and was moving toward the coast at 17 kilometres per hour.

Washington  - The hard-fought presidential campaign was put on ice Thursday out of respect for the seventh anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

But the nominees were participating in some of the formal commemoration activities at the sites where 19 Islamic terrorists crashed hijacked passenger planes into the symbols of America's financial and military might on that September day.

Islamabad, Sep 11 : Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders don’t want to fight the war on terror as the United States want them to fight.

The new Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari will not likely be able to solve the problems in near future, so the next US President will inherit the challenge of persuading the Pakistani leadership that it needs to continue prosecuting an unpopular, but necessary, war, The International Herald Tribune reported.