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The next bomb from this chain reaction of bailouts and blowups will be credit-card debt. Hardly anybody is talking about it yet, but banks and consumers are laying the ground for a wave of credit-card defaults, bankruptcies and asset write-offs for 2009 or so.

Regulators and investors have discouraged excessive mortgage lending, so banks are turning to credit cards as the next growth business. They’re starting to raise credit limits, lower lending standards and increase recruitment. And now that they can’t borrow against homes so easily, consumers are borrowing more against plastic – even to meet higher, adjustable mortgage obligations that they can’t handle from their income.

This can end only one way. The only question is how bad it will be.

The percentage of banks tightening credit-card lending standards is hovering near its lowest levels in a decade, according to a Federal Reserve survey.

Junk-mail credit-card solicitations jumped late last year, although they’re still below the levels of 2005, according to the Tower Group, a financial services research firm. But more importantly, the percentage of people responding to credit-card come-ons has risen steadily and nearly tripled since mid-2005.

“It doesn’t mean that banks are giving the store away, but they’ve eased their lending standards to be able to grab [market] share” in credit cards, says Dennis C. Moroney, a senior analyst at Tower.

The first drill of it’s kind at Chandler Regional Medical Center will involve 100 hospital personnel administering flu vaccines to adults through car windows, said Kimberly Day, a spokeswoman for Chandler Regional Medical Center.

The incentive for patients: free flu vaccines. The goal for health officials: give 1,000 shots in three hours to simulate the need for a mass vaccination in the event of a bio-terrorism attack or naturally-caused outbreak.

“Every city state and county government has an emergency operations plan,” said said Kerry Cassens, a registered nurse with occupational health with the city. “This is a partnership with Chandler Regional and the city to test our ability to respond should there be a need for mass vaccination.”

The Oct. 27 flu drill will follow the largest ever nationwide terrorism drill based at Chandler’s Crowne Plaza San Marcos Golf Resort next week, but the “drive-flu” event is separate from the federal authorities’ drill, Cassens said.

“I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.”

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

“I’d never seen anything like it in my life,” the Washington lawyer said. “They were large for dragonflies. I thought, ‘Is that mechanical, or is that alive?’ ”

S&P expected the world economy to grow 3.6 percent in 2007 and 3.5 percent in 2008, with emerging market economies driving growth. The U.S. economy would lag at 2 percent in both years, down from 2.9 percent in 2006.

Housing was the major weakness in the U.S. economy and the subprime crisis — which roiled global markets in late July and August — was far from over, although its shock value was wearing off, David Wyss, S&P’s chief economist, said in Mumbai.

“We underestimated the extent to which fraud was occurring in the industry,” he said.

“It looks, based on some surveys that had been done, the extent of frauds increased sharply in 2006.”

S&P said the U.S. Federal Reserve had estimated that subprime losses could reach $150 billion, and Wyss said that would feed through to unemployment and remain a brake on growth.

“We think in the United States the housing market is not going to bottom until winter. We think the losses in these sectors won’t really hit their peak until 2009,” Wyss said.

Across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants have drawn concern and criticism through their use of an unusual recruiting tool: the immersive and violent video game Halo.

The latest iteration of the immensely popular space epic, Halo 3, was released nearly two weeks ago by Microsoft and has already passed $300 million in sales.

Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game consoles so dozens of teenagers can flock around big-screen televisions and shoot it out.

The alliance of popular culture and evangelism is challenging churches much as bingo games did in the 1960s. And the question fits into a rich debate about how far churches should go to reach young people.

Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.

Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Press reports initially cited the Air Force mistake of flying nuclear weapons over the United States in violation of Air Force standing orders and international treaties, while completely missing the more important major issues, such as how six nuclear cruise missiles got loose to begin with.

Opinion columns and editorials appeared in America’s newspapers, some blasting the Air Force for flying nukes over the U.S. and some defending the Air Force procedure. None of the news reports focused on the real questions of our nuclear security.

Let me be very clear here: We are not talking about paintball cartridges or pellet gun ammo. We are talking nuclear weapons.

There is a strict chain of custody for all such weapons. Nuclear weapons handling is spelled out in great detail in Air Force regulations, to the credit of that service. Every person who orders the movement of these weapons, handles them, breaks seals or moves any nuclear weapon must sign off for tracking purposes.

Two armed munitions specialists are required to work as a team with all nuclear weapons. All individuals working with nuclear weapons must meet very strict security standards and be tested for loyalty — this is known as a “Personnel Reliability Program.” They work in restricted areas within eyeshot of one another and are reviewed constantly.

All security forces assigned are authorized to use deadly force to protect the weapons from any threat. Nor does anyone quickly move a 1-ton cruise missile — or forget about six of them, as reported by some news outlets, especially cruise missiles loaded with high explosives.

Scott A. Masters, 41, of Park Hills, Missouri, has been charged with felony second-degree robbery in the theft of a 52-cent doughut from a Country Mart in Farmington, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of St. Louis. Store employees said he slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying last December, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store.

A weekend visit to “Donna Blue Aircraft Inc” of Coconut Beach FL., the company which FAA records show owned the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) which crash-landed with 3.7 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico’s Yucatan two weeks ago, has revealed that the company’s listed address is an empty office suite with a blank sign out front.

There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at the Florida Dept. of Corporations, 4811 Lyons Technology Parkway #8 in Coconut Beach FL.

However, there were, oddly enough, a half-dozen unmarked police cars parked directly in front of the empty suite.

Phone calls to Butters Development, the industrial park’s leasing agent, went unreturned.

Moreover the brief description of Donna Blue on its Internet page, apparently designed to “flesh out the ghost a little,” is such a clumsy half-hearted effort that it defeats the purpose of helping aid the construction of a plausible legend, or cover, and ends up doing more harm than good…

For example, the website features a quote from a satisfied Donna Blue Aircraft customer. Unfortunately his name is “John Doe.” And the listed phone number is right out of the movies: 415.555-5555.