Kimo, thank you very much. And thank you all of you that have joined us this morning. With adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations of approximately $210 million, second quarter results improved compared to the first quarter of 2008 by over $21 million over 10%. This improvement was despite headwinds from rising raw materials and energy cost, and the further weakening of the US dollar. These factors added nearly $100 million of cost to our second quarter results versus our first quarter. We are pleased with the performance of our industry leading businesses relative to our peers. Just give you some prospective, the price for most of our key raw material were up not only year-over-year, but also sequentially. By way of example, the two key benchmarks; crude oil and natural gas, were up 27% and 52% respectively as compared to first quarter alone. The good news is that the prices of these benchmarks have recently come out sharply from their recent peaks. But the average, thus far, in July remain above the second quarter average prices. So we are keeping a close eye on direct costs and are no way backing away from our aggressive stats on pricing initiatives that we have around the world. As I mentioned, the continued decline in the value of the US dollar relative to the primary European currencies have also impacted our results as US dollar depreciated by 6% and 8% respectively against the Euro and the Swiss Franc during the quarter. This has been particularly apparent in certain of businesses such as Advance Materials, Textile Effects and Pigment with majority of our manufacturing and overhead costs are in European currencies. There were, however, some very positive trends in our businesses. As I mentioned in our release this morning volumes were very strong, up between 7% to 14%, depending on the division. We also announced aggressive action to take our selling prices up across the Board in every division. This obviously differs in amount from products-to-product and region-to-region, but prices are moving up. Also keep in mind that this action occurred in late May and June. So with lags and contractual price protection, we would expect these to meaningfully impact the bottomline beginning in the third quarter. Our Polyurethane business had a very good quarter with MDI volumes up 13% as compared to the first quarter and adjusted EBITDA up by 12%. Demand continues to grow on a global basis, and in particular in the developing economies of Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. In fact, as an industry, we estimate that global MDI growth will be about 6% this year. On a regional basis, Asia continues to grow very nicely with our MDI volumes up 15% as compared to the first quarter. Although, we believe that the market in China has begin to take a bit of breather ahead of the upcoming Olympic due to some of the regulatory issues enacted by the government. In Europe, volumes expanded in the quarter in line with the market primarily due to seasonal factors. We are watching the European market very closely as it is our largest, but haven't seen any major signs of softening. In fact, our core insulation business is seeing strong demand pull in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In the Americas, volumes growth over the first quarter was the strongest in all regions, which is amazing given that this is probably our weakest economic market. We believe that our Oriented Strand Board or OSB volumes bottomed out earlier in the year. Some of this is seasonal of course, but we think that this part of the business is poised to recover, which would be a positive sign, given the stagnant market conditions of the past few quarters. On the pricing side, MDI was up about 2% as compared to the first quarter, which is mostly due to exchange impact. The good news is that we put forth a series of price initiatives and increases across a range of products of up to 15% for third quarter in both Europe and the Americas late in the second quarter. So, we are expecting improvement as we head into the back half of the year. These price increases should offset the higher manufacturing cost we are experiencing, due to high benzene, chlorine and natural gas and other raw materials. In fact, year-to-date our cost to produce MDI is up by 25% versus last year. Finally, profitability in our propylene oxide in MTBE business posted improvement in the quarter as well as last year. Volumes have improved particularly in MTBE. MTBE margins were at very attractive levels in the quarter, in fact, more than double over the first quarter. Our Advanced Materials and Textile Effects results in the second quarter increase from first quarter results. Adjusted EBITDA improved by 26% with higher earnings in each our Advance Materials and Textile Effects divisions. In Advance Materials, we benefited from a 10% sequential increase in volumes together with a 2.3% improvement in average selling price. Volumes in selling prices were also well ahead of last year's level. Direct costs were bit higher during the quarter, but we more than offset this with topline growth and improvement. In Textile Effects, adjusted EBITDA did improve from the breakeven results we saw in the first quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $3.9 million. While prices were up over 6% versus the prior period quarter and over 17% as compared to last year, we continue to experience a very weak demand environment in our textile chemicals and dyes businesses, particularly in our European and America's market. Asia is held about a much better. Our censuses at the traditional garments and home furnishing sectors have softened in the last couple of quarters and this has resulted in a very competitive market environment. In our Materials and Effects division, we were also impacted by the continued weakness of the US dollar compared to European currencies. I am sure you were aware of both of these businesses are headquartered in Europe and have a very significant manufacturing presence in Europe. As a Euro and the Swiss Franc continue to appreciate, our European SG&A manufacturing costs has increased on a reported US dollar basis. We estimate that reported fixed costs in these divisions alone increased by over $26 million as compared to last year, and almost $6 million higher as compared to the first quarter based solely on the translation of non-US dollar cost. In our Performance Products division, our adjusted EBITDA improved relative to last year, but was down slightly from first quarter results. As compared to our first quarter, selling prices were up about 10% on a back of price initiative to recover higher raw material costs and currency effects, while volumes improved by 7%. We also benefited from higher tolling revenues in the second quarter reflecting some of the structural change we have made in this division related to our glycol and surfactant operations. Our core Performance Specialties business performed very well with adjusted EBITDA up by 33% as compared to last year. We did struggle again in the over olefins product category of our intermediate's group. As we surd [ph] with you in the last update, we went through an extended plan maintenance and inspection project that are Port Neches, Texas, olefins and derivatives facility in the first quarter. We brought most of the unit back online late in the first quarter, but we continued to encounter problems with operating reliability with the olefins unit through... much of April and May, which required additional downtime. As a result, this unit operated at 40% of capacity during the second quarter. We've estimated the financial impact of this downtime to be approximately $12 million in the quarter, consistent with higher maintenance expenses and the cost of purchased ethylene versus internally sourced products. In our Pigments division, our earnings declined as compared to the first quarter and a year ago. Although, demand has been good, particularly in Asia with volumes up 9% as compared to the first quarter and flat with last year, we have struggled in the first half of the year to get pricing traction in our core European markets in the North America. Additionally, with higher raw material prices in ores, acid, energy and freight as well as a negative impact of the continued decline in the value of the US dollar versus the primary European currencies, we saw a challenging market conditions in the second quarter. However, producers have implemented a combination of price increases in surcharges in all regions of the world. We did see market improvements in the second quarter in Asia and other regions of the world. Europe and the US have lagged a bit, but prices in July in both of these regions are higher than at anytime in the second quarter, which gives us quite a bit of confidence about profitability for... profitability will improve in the third and fourth quarters. Similar to Materials and Effects, our manufacturing and SG&A centers are based in Europe. There was European currencies have appreciated against the US dollar, our reported fixed costs have increased dramatically. Before we conclude today's call, let me comment briefly on the ongoing litigation with Hexion as it relates to our agreement to the merger. I assume most of you have followed the company's public statements over the past six weeks. So I don't feel it is necessary to rehash all of this. But I will say that we are short and disappointed by the actions of Hexion and Apollo. While repeatedly assuring us and our shareholders that they were working diligently to satisfy the remaining closing conditions and consummate the merger. It appears that Apollo was working with Duff & Phelps and others to scuttle the merger. Without our knowledge or input they retained Duff & Phelps for the sole purpose of rendering an insolvency opinion to support their goal of not closing the merger. This opinion and the underlying analysis was based on a series dubious assumptions. Duff & Phelps was specifically not permitted to discuss any aspect of the report with Huntstman, including the assumptions they made about the Huntsman business. Finally, again without discussing or notifying Huntsman, Apollo permitted Duff & Phelps to finalize the report and then release the findings to public and to the banks. Apollo then filed a lawsuit in Delaware seeking to avoid their obligations under the merger agreement. Apollo's and Hexion's actions over the past weeks represented a knowing and intentional breach of their obligation under the merger agreement, which clearly obligates them to "use its reasonable best efforts to take all actions and to do, or cause to be done, all things necessary, proper or advisable to arrange and consummate the merger and any financing" In addition, the merger also prohibit them from "from taking any action that could reasonably be expected to materially impair, delay or prevent consummation of the financing contemplated by the commitment letter." Clearly, these are obligations that they have chosen to ignore and in fact, have taken a series of actions in direct opposition to them. Furthermore, Apollo and Hexion have also suggested that a material adverse effect under the merger agreement has occurred. We strongly disagree. And our results for the second quarter announced today are confirmation of our view. Finally, Apollo has alleged that there exists a substantial funding gap. In other words, the amount of funds available is not sufficient to close a transaction. We do not believe that any funding gap exists. And any of that Hexion assumed all financing risks in connection with our merger as the merger agreement has no financing conditions. An expedited trial is scheduled to begin in Delaware on September 8. We are confident that a trial based on the merits will reveal that an MAE [ph] has not occurred and that the combined Company is in deep solvent. Huntsman has retained a number of experts in these areas and has begun a period of intensive discovery with regard to Apollo, Hexion and their advisors in preparation for the up coming trial. We would expect the trial to take about a week. And the Judge has indicated that he is willing to render his decision shortly thereafter. We are hopeful that by the middle of September the litigation will be resolved, which will then put us in a position to go about closing the merger as soon as possible thereafter. In conclusion, we have had the opportunity to hear from many of you directly over the course of the past several weeks. We appreciate your support in this matter. With that, I'll turn the call back to John Heskett, our Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations.
