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Hurricane Rita turns toward Texas-Louisiana border Hurricane Rita weakened to become a Category 3 storm on Friday. The forecast path is centered near the Texas-Louisiana border. India subsidizes girls' education to offset gender imbalance Free and reduced costs for the education for girls announced in India.

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St. Anthony Foundation provides hope On the corner of Golden Gate Ave. and Jones St. in the Tenderloin, San Francisco, right next to the Civic Center you can see a throng of low-income and homeless people lining up outside of St. Anthony’s Dinning Room hall which opens up it’s doors everyday at 11:30 a.m

Wikipedia Current Events
Five Iraqis, including three members of the Turkmen Front, die following a bomb on minibus in the capital Baghdad. 24 mostly elderly people are feared dead after a bus evacuating them away from the path of the hurricane exploded.
Wikipedia Current Events
10 Palestinians die and 80 are injured after a truck carrying home-made explosives accidently blew up in the middle of a Friday salat parade organised by Hamas, just one day after militants agreed to discontinue using weapons in public parades. 3 Palestinian gunmen are killed following an Israeli military incursion into the West Bank. At least 3 Qassam rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip on the Israeli town of Sderot. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for the attack, saying it fired 10 rockets on Israel. A United Nations report highlights that since 2000 sixty-one Palestinian women have been forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints, resulting in 36 newborn deaths. Lester Crawford, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, resigns, citing old age. Earl Krugel, a leader of the Jewish Defence League, is sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a plot to blow up a Mosque in Los Angeles and a Lebanese-American congressman (Darrell Issa)s' office. His co-accused, Irv Rubin, committed suicide in 2002. After talks between CDU/CSU and Alliance 90/The Greens, a "Jamaica coalition" between conservatives, liberals and greens is ruled out.

Ask Jeeves to remove butler from website

The mascot for Ask Jeeves is to disappear over "user confusion" on what the butler actually does. The butler has been known to be a global symbol for the search site. As of September 23 there is no confirmed date of when the butler will be removed from the web site. There is also no decision yet on changing the name of the web site since there will be no "Jeeves" anymore.

It was revealed by owner Barry Diller that the butler will no longer be the icon for the site.

Parts of New Orleans flood again

Rain and the storm surge from Hurricane Rita have overwhelmed one of the fragile levees in New Orleans. The Industrial Canal levee gave way, reflooding parts of the Ninth Ward. There are three significant breaches.

"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.

"We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly," he said. "At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger."

The U.S. Corps of Engineers estimated that 6 inches of rainfall could breach the previously damaged levees. The Ninth Ward, which saw flooding as high as 20 feet during Hurricane Katrina, is currently in waist-high water as the nearby levee was overtopped. Water is spilling over the levee in a section 100 feet wide.

The Gentilly neighborhood has water accumulations of 6 to 8 inches deep as the patched London Avenue Canal has sprung leaks near its base.

Katrina conspiracy meterologist quits Idaho TV News

Scott Stevens, the Idaho meterologist who claimed that a weather manipulating conspiracy (possibly under the control of Japanese Yakuza mafia) caused Hurricane Katrina, has quit his job at KPVI-TV in Pocatello.

Stevens reportedly quit to pursue his weather conspiracy theories full time. According to KPVI's general manager Bill Fouch, Stevens left his job voluntarily.

Wikinews reported on Stevens' theories on Monday September 19, 2005.

Hurricane Rita turns toward Texas-Louisiana border

Hurricane Rita weakened to become a category 3 storm on Friday with sustained winds of 125 mph. The forecast path is centered near the Texas-Louisiana border.

The core of the hurricane is expected to approach the Texas and Louisiana coasts late on Friday.

3-day forecast path.

Rita is expected to produce rainfall accumulations of 8-12 inches, with the storm slowing down and producing a total of as much as 25 inches across eastern Texas and western Louisiana. Bursts of tropical storm winds and rainfall amounts of 3-5 inches are possible in New Orleans.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers estimated that 6 inches of rainfall could breach the previously damaged levees. New Orleans' Ninth Ward, which saw as much as 20 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina, is currently in waist high water as a nearby levee was overtopped. Water is spilling over the levee in a section 100 feet wide.

News of 3 levee breaches in New Orleans are being broadcast in televised reports.

India subsidizes girls' education to offset gender imbalance

In a move aimed at curbing both population growth and preference for male children, the government of India has announced free and reduced cost education for girls.

The new program will offer free education at high school level to all girls of single child families. Those with two girls and no other children may receive discounts of up to 50%. As a continuation of India's policy of promoting education, the program includes provisions for fellowships of US$ 45 per month for those undertaking post-graduate studies.

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India faces problems with the balance of the sexes in the country; some areas have a ratio of 80 girls to every 100 boys due to selective abortions. Boys are more highly prized in Indian society and as a result, many couples will have additional children after a girl in an effort to produce a boy. In cases where the family already has one or two female children the likelihood of a female foetus being aborted is significantly higher.

Indian law already prohibits tests to determine the sex of an unborn child for this very reason; however, it is routine during medical examinations of the mother for the doctor to disclose the sex of the child.

World Food Program told to leave North Korea

North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister, Choe Su-hon, has asked the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to stop providing food aid in the country.

Claiming a good harvest provided the country with sufficient food, and that the US was politicizing the aid issue, the formal request to end all humanitarian aid was made to UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, at a meeting on September 21.

The WFP has been feeding approximately six million of the poorest and most needy in the reclusive communist state. There is much concern its withdrawal will leave many without adequate aid.

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Neighbouring countries, including China and South Korea, will continue to supply food aid to the North Koreans; however, the donors do not manage this aid and international organisations are unable to determine that it is reaching those who need it.

The request for the WFP's withdrawal is suspected by some to be related to the ongoing talks about the nuclear program of North Korea; continued acceptance of aid is seen as a weakness that may influence their negotiating position.

St. Anthony Foundation provides hope

On the corner of Golden Gate Ave. and Jones St. in the Tenderloin, San Francisco, right next to the Civic Center you can see a throng of low-income and homeless people lining up outside of St. Anthony’s Dinning Room hall which opens up it’s doors everyday at 11:30 a.m. Volunteers dressed in St. Anthony Foundation shirts help keep the lines moving as hundreds of homeless and low income people shuffle their way towards the dinning hall underneath the watchful eyes of a small statue of St. Francis of Assisi.

“There’s a lot of people who go hungry out here and it ain’t right.” Says Jimmy Scott, a slightly brawny 44-year-old black man who has been living homeless in San Francisco for the past three years. “There are families out here with kids and everything and they have to walk around all night just to stay awake so they don’t get hurt or killed...Right here in the U.S. this is going on...it ain’t right.”

The dinning hall, which has been open for the past 54 years, is owned by the St. Anthony Foundation which helps low income and homeless people and families in the Civic Center, Tenderloin, and SOMA areas with clothing, shelter, food, drug rehabilitation, and many other services. St. Anthony’s administrative offices are found at 121 Golden Gate Ave. with the majority of the foundation’s buildings on Golden Gate Ave. and Jones St.

“We are right in the heart of the homeless population of San Francisco,” says Barry Stenger, 55, who’s been working for the St. Anthony Foundation for one year and is the Director of Development and Communications, “and people are pushed here because of the economic forces of San Francisco because it’s hard to be upper middle class in San Francisco.”

According to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce “San Francisco’s cost of living remains one of the highest in the country” with the average household income in San Francisco being around $76,400 and the average price of housing being $543,000. Average household income for the United States in 2002, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, was $42,409 and the average price of housing for the United States according to the National Association of Realtors was $185,200 in 2004.

“We served our 32 millionth meal on Tuesday,” said Stenger, “and we serve 2,500 meals a day. Some of our people who work here actually get served [food] here because they spend all their money towards rent and medical costs.”

The St. Anthony Foundation was started by Fr. Alfred Boeddeker in 1950 one year after Fr. Boeddeker became pastor of St. Boniface church on Golden Gate St. where he was baptized as a child. During his lifetime, according to the foundation’s website, he was referred to as the “Patron St. of the Tenderloin” and had Boeddeker park named after him because of his, and his foundation’s, achievements with helping out the homeless and low income community.

“[St. Anthony’s] is a good thing,” said Jimmy Scott, “they provide a good service and they feed people and they cloth them and provide furniture when you get housing and give you groceries when you have AIDS. It’s a good little organization.”

“Our dinning room is open 365 days a year.” Said Stenger. “Our other facilities are open seven days a week. We have a residence for senior women and our [free medical] clinic is open five days a week and we also have a furniture and clothing store. We have 12 programs all together.”

Some of those programs are the Father Alfred Center which provides 61 men two programs for getting out of drug and alcohol abuse, the Employment Program/Learning Center which helps participants in educational and employment opportunities and provides each one with a personal staff advisor, and a Senior Outreach and Support Services center which states its mission is to “promote independence, self determination, and alleviate isolation” for seniors who are 60 and older.

A few homeless people who were interviewed complained that St. Anthony’s had some staff who were rude and that they were kicked out of the dinning hall yet other homeless within the area refuted those claims saying St. Anthony’s has nice staff and only kicks people out who cause trouble.

“It’s a good place and good people. Everybody is so kind and so respectful and everything is under control.” Said John Henderson, a tall and skinny 57-year-old homeless black man who has only been living in San Francisco for close to two months because he recently moved there from Phoenix, Arizona. “It’s pretty cool because they’re under control because yesterday I saw at Glide [Memorial Church which also has services for the poor and low income] and they were handing out food boxes and people were just rushing in and the woman in charge there was freaking out and so she just sat down. That would never happen at St. Anthony’s.

“And they clean too!” Henderson said laughing with a grin on his face referring to the fact that there are no drugs allowed in the premises. “Not that Glide ain’t clean if you know what I mean.”

“We [also] have a whole division that deals with justice education and advocacy to change the system that brings people to our doorstep.” Said Stenger. “We hear a lot of appreciation from the people we serve. We get a lot of testimony from our clients who have become clean and sober. Sometimes we have to push them a little to get them out the door because they love the [foundation] so much because it has changed their lives.”

Sony restructuring plan includes 10,000 job cuts

In a major restructuring plan, Sony announced that approximately 7% of their workforce will be laid off between now and March 2008. Nearly 4,000 of the job losses will be in Japan itself.

The plan to try and revitalise the company is the brainchild of Sir Howard Stringer, the company's first ever non-Japanese CEO. Apart from the job losses, eleven of the company's 65 manufacturing plants will be closed or put up for sale. Restructuring follows considerable stock price falls over the last five years with the share value reduced to less than 40% of the 2000 value.

As well as announcing restructing plans, Sony announced an expected loss of 10 billion yen (US$ 90 million) during the current financial year.

WinMX shut down following RIAA requests

The network run by the file sharing program WinMX, as well as the WinMX homepage, has become the first casualty of a Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) crackdown on file-sharing programs.

In mid-September, the RIAA sent Frontcode Technologies a cease and desist letter asking them to implement filters to make it impossible for users to download copyrighted material from their site, or shut down. Frontcode seems to have shut down the network for now.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that maintainers of a network can be held responsible to the content shared on P2P networks.

Italian Minister of Economy resigns

The Italian Minister of the Economy, Domenico Siniscalco, resigned from his position in the Goverment on Thursday.

Siniscalco cited the handling of a recent banking scandal among the reasons for his resignation. He had sought the resignation of the governor of the Italian central bank, Banca d'Italia, for his alleged involvement in insider trading during an aborted bank takeover bid. The governor, Antonio Fazio, was believed to strongly favour an Italian bid over that of the Dutch bank ABN Amro.

Siniscalco stated in his resignation letter that he was "scandalized" by the state of affairs, and would prefer to return to work as a university professor in Turin. In addition to his issues with the Bank of Italy, his proposed budget had faced considerable dilution by the government coalition.

The Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave the appearance of not being concerned about the resignation, and did not expect to take long to replace the minister. Centre-left opposition leader, Romano Prodi, said the dispute over the budget was a defining part of what made up the government. He called for immediate elections in the wake of the resignation.

Google launches new blog search engine

In mid-September, Google launched a new search engine: Google Blogsearch. The new search engine, whose development was announced over two years ago, allows you to search blogs by dates, date ranges, language, authors, and by the blog itself, in addition to keywords. It is then possible to set up your own custom newsfeed with these search criteria.

Despite the features, there has been criticism related to this new engine. One example is how their index only dates back to March 2005. In addition, flaws in the search algorithm may result in duplicate blog entries, as well as other "blog noise" to receive high results.

This new search engine was made supposedly to help compete with other search engines, such as one by Yahoo!.

Google Blogsearch has joined the group of other Google search engines, including Google Image search, Google Groups, and the famous Google Web search.

Insights on nutrient traffic in living cells

In a new study that may have important applications in medicine, researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara found that cells have evolved a surprising, but efficient, way to regulate the transport of goods to the nucleus and surrounding organelles.

Nutrients and signals outside of a cell get to the cell nucleus by way of carriers called endosomes. Endosomes travel through a cell

on a highway of structural supports called microtubules.

The distribution of nutrient carriers within a cell, overlaid on a diagram of the starburst-shaped microtubules that act as the cell's highways.

Researchers studied the motion of endosomes by putting florescent tags, which glow under certain types of light, on individual endosomes and recording their motion through a microscope. They found that endosomes do not travel straight to the nucleus. Instead, they randomly travel toward and away from the nucleus with no preferred direction.

This is a little like getting in the car to drive to work, but instead of being caught in heavy traffic along the main road, randomly choosing a back road to follow. If you end up being caught in traffic going that way, you can also turn around and travel in the opposite direction for a while. It would make getting to work a little slow, but it leads to an even distribution of endosomes all along the microtubules.

This finding surprised the Santa Barbara group. Endosomes are most concentrated around the nucleus of a cell, so researchers expected that the endosomes would usually travel toward the nucleus.

Computer simulations show that the starburst-shaped layout of the microtubule system is responsible for the high concentration of endosomes at the nucleus. “It’s all in the geometry of the cell,” said Samir Mitragotri, a researcher on the project.

Endosomes randomly travel toward or away from the nucleus and can change direction. But as in Italy where all roads lead to Rome, the endosomes get to their destination because all roads eventually pass the nucleus. This system does not get a particular endosome to its target as quickly as possible, but ensures that nutrient transport is not disrupted if the cell moves or there is increased traffic.

Some heart, neurological, and muscular diseases are caused by the break down of proteins that regulate endosome movement. Scientists are not sure what this does to the cell said Samir Mitragotri, a co-author of the study, but research like this could help them discover the “missing link” between disease and transport properties.

Whalers upset Spirit in opening game for Ontario Hockey League

The 2005-2006 Ontario Hockey League season kicked off to a start Wednesday night at Wendler arena in The Dow Event Center in Saginaw, Michigan, USA with the Saginaw Spirit hosting the Plymouth Whalers, with over 4,600 people attending. The Whalers won 7 – 2.

A faceoff during the game

A power shot by a player sent the game into a 5-minute delay when a piece of glass on the boards was shattered during the first period. The game opened its first period with 4 goals for the Whalers, with right wing player Dan Collins scoring two. Teammates James Neal and John Vigilante picked up the remainder. The Spirit also recieved a goal, made by defenseman Patrick McNeill.

The second period started with an early goal by Michal Birner for the Spirit. Plymouth later rebounded with two goals from players Ryan McGinnis and Dan Collins. Later on in the period, Plymouth member Jared Boll was penalized with a ten minute misconduct. He did not return to play for the remainder of the game.

The third period held a goal made by Plymouth's Mike Letizia, rounding out the final score to 7 - 2. Later on in the period, Plymouth's #2 defenseman Brett Bellemore suffered an injury that left him on the ice. He later was able to skate to the bench, where he was examined by a team trainer.

Today in History
622: Muhammad and his followers from Mecca completed their Hijra to Medina.

1664: Anglo-Dutch Wars: The Netherlands surrendered to England New Amsterdam, a fortified settlement in the New Netherland colony that would later become New York City.

1841: The Sultan of Brunei granted Sarawak to British adventurer James Brooke.

1903: Alfred Deakin became the second Prime Minister of Australia, succeeding Edmund Barton who left office to become a founding justice of the High Court of Australia.

1988: Ben Johnson (pictured) finished the 100 m sprint in a world record time of 9.79 seconds, edging rivals Carl Lewis and Linford Christie at the Seoul Olympics, but was later disqualified for doping.

September 24 is Independence Day in Guinea-Bissau (1973), Heritage Day in South Africa.

Quote of the Day

"I wait... wait for the mists and for the blacker rain— heavier winds that stir the veil of fate, happier winds that pile her hair; Again they tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air upon me, winds that I know, and storm." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

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