Today, President Barack Obama will finally meet evangelist Billy Graham. This will be Graham's 12th president to pray with and the first sitting president ever to visit Graham's mountaintop log cabin in Montreat.

A 2008 meeting was scrubbed when the frail and elderly Graham (now 91) was unwell the day that Obama was nearby preparing for the presidential campaign debates.

He takes few visitors beyond family and old friends these days -- with the notable exception of last November when his son and successor, Rev. Franklin Graham, swooped in with Sarah Palin, using a private planes to bring her in from her nearby book tour.

The visit has been sandwiched in between the Obama's weekend getaway in Asheville and before he leaves for West Virginia. president -- 12:30 p.m. Montreat. from Asheville.

Obama and Graham last spoke on the evangelist's birthday. Associated Press recaps Graham's history as pastor to presidents.

But it seems unlikely that Franklin, now head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, will take that role on, at least not during this administration. Last week the Army uninvited the younger Graham, honorary chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, from holding a Pentagon prayer service on May 6th.

Franklin Graham has reiterated his attacks on Islam, while saying he loves Muslim people so much that he wants them to come to Christ. The military, which includes many non-Christians, thought twice about bringing in someone so divisive for a day of prayer that evangelical groups want to claim as their own.
The Obama administration is all for honoring prayer. The Justice Department is appealing a recent ruling that called a government proclaimed Day of Prayer unconstitutional. But Obama is expected to sign a proclamation inclusive of all faiths anyway.

Stay tuned to find out what prayers or scriptures Obama and Graham may share today. What would you suggest?

BANGKOK -- Whether keeping rapacious colonial powers at bay, averting political violence or settling family squabbles, Thais have earned a reputation for deft diplomacy, thwarting confrontation and achieving compromise, or as they proudly say, "bending with the wind like bamboo."

Until now, it seems.

The latest iteration of Thailand's political crisis, which pits a largely rural movement against the government, is in its seventh week. There is no end in sight and seemingly no one able to break the deadlock that has seen protesters occupying key areas of Bangkok for weeks.

Individuals and institutions, including the monarchy, that once played key mediating roles, are either powerless or silent.

Confrontations have so far taken the lives of 26 people and paralyzed central Bangkok, where the protesters, known as the Red Shirts, occupy a square-mile (half-kilometer) of some of the capital's most glamorous shopping areas.

Almost everyone agrees that old-fashioned give-and-take is the best way out of the stalemate, which has crippled Thailand's golden tourist industry and shaken investor confidence.

But three rounds of talks have already failed, and the seemingly intractable standoff even has some worrying publicly about the potential for civil war.

"Every night, the country is sitting on a time bomb, waiting for chaos to occur," says Surichai Wun-gaeo, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

The latest talks broke down Saturday after Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva rejected a Red Shirt proposal that Parliament be dissolved in 30 days, a softening of earlier demands for immediate dissolution to be followed by elections.
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The Red Shirts consist mainly of rural supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and pro-democracy activists who opposed the military coup that ousted him in 2006. They believe Abhisit's government is illegitimate because it came to power under military pressure through a parliamentary vote after disputed court rulings ousted two elected pro-Thaksin governments.
But what really fuels the protesters - and makes reconciliation difficult - are not legal decisions and political wrangling, but deep-seated anger at a Bangkok-based elite they say treats the rural poor as second-class citizens while it fails to alleviate their poverty.

Compromise is hard even for past masters of the art, given the "intensification of polarization" in Thai society, says Surat Horachaikul, another political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.

US rescue teams are fanning out to search isolated rural homes in Mississippi after a tornado swept through, killing at least 10 people.

They are checking areas they were unable to reach in the first hours after Saturday's devastating storm, state Governor Haley Barbour said.

At least 100 houses suffered severe damage in Yazoo County alone, he added.

Meteorologists say it is too soon to tell whether one single tornado or multiple, briefer ones hit the state.

Wind speeds in Mississippi were put at about 150mph (240km/h).

Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to move north-eastward on Sunday, as gusty winds downed trees in north-west Georgia, the Associated Press news agency reports.

In all, eight states were placed on tornado watch.

'I was levitated'

National Guard soldiers patrolled Yazoo City early on Sunday, which dawned sunny and still. Some rode in Humvees, others used a Blackhawk helicopter.


Damaged house in Meehan area in Lauderdale County, Miss

In pictures: Mississippi tornado

Dozens of volunteer state troopers and other law enforcement officers were arriving from other parts of the state to help with the relief operation.

Yazoo, which has a population of 28,000 and is known in the US for blues music, catfish and cotton, was hit particularly badly by the storm.

Governor Barbour, who grew up there, talked of "utter obliteration" among the picturesque hills rising from the flat Mississippi Delta.

"This tornado was enormous," he told AP in Yazoo City. Around him stretched snapped trees, toppled houses and random debris.

Ron Sullivan, who owns a grocery store in Choctaw County's pine forestland, found the building's wooden roof torn off and its cinderblock walls reduced to heaps of stone when he inspected it on Sunday.

At the moment the tornado struck, he had been on the phone to a National Weather Service meteorologist who wanted to know what the conditions were.

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"Something's happening, and it's happening now," he recalled telling the meteorologist.

Then the phone went dead and Mr Sullivan was lifted off his feet.

"I was levitated and flew 15ft [4.5m] over there to the back wall," he said. "The only reason I wasn't killed was the wall was still there. After I hit it, it collapsed."
His wife hid behind a chest freezer which probably saved her life, as a large steel storage tank was uprooted and rolled into the store, coming to rest against the freezer.

Five victims, including three children, were killed in Choctaw County, with four deaths reported in Yazoo County and one in Holmes County.