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Houston mayor urges evacuations as Hurricane Rita moves closer to shore Citizens of Houston, Texas are being urged to evacuate as Hurricane Rita, a Category 5 storm, heads towards the city. Jet Blue airliner lands with broken nose gear Jet Blue Flight 292 encountered nose gear malfunctions shortly after takeoff. It safely landed three hours later at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) with no apparent injuries.

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Results of 2005 German federal election According to the preliminary result, the alliance consisting of chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social democrats and the Greens has lost its majority but the future government is still uncertain.

Wikipedia Current Events
Verkhovna Rada (the Parliament of Ukraine) approves Yuriy Yekhanurov as the country's new Prime Minister.

Wikipedia Current Events
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary votes 13 to 5 for the nomination of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States. The appointment needs approval of the entire Senate, and that vote is expected during the week of September 26. Six people die and 20 are injured in two bomb blasts in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

Former 'Dudley Boys' sign with TNA Wrestling

TNAWrestling.com is reporting that the former Dudley Boyz have signed a multi-year contract with Total Nonstop Action. The team, who gained worldwide recognition through their work with WWE, recently left the company after a pay dispute. Their signing with TNA comes as the company prepares to debut their television show TNA iMPACT! on Spike TV in October 2005.

London bomb suspect returned from Italy

The London bomb suspect, Hussain Osman, also known as Hamdi Issac, has arrived in London and been arrested following his extradition from Italy. Allegedly involved in the second set of attacks on London in July, which targeted the city's public transport infrastructure, Osman was arrested in Rome by Italian police on July 29, just one week after the failed attacks.

On September 13, a final appeal against extradition was rejected by an Italian court despite his lawyer's protests that he could not get a fair trial in the UK. Osman is accused of planting the failed bomb at Shepherd's Bush Underground station. His flight subsequent to the attack proved futile as phone records led police to Rome, and a raid on his brother's apartment, where he was captured.

Pending his extradition, he was held at Rebibbia jail, Rome, a high-security facility on the outskirts of the city. He left the jail late on Thursday and the Ethiopian-born terror suspect flew out of Italy at 12pm local time, accompanied by officers from the Metropolitan police. Flying on a chartered private jet, Osman and his escort landed at RAF Northolt, where Osman was charged on arrival. He is expected to be put on trial at the Old Bailey in London, alongside the other suspects involved in the failed attacks.

Google prepares to launch WiFi service

According to several pages on Google’s website, Google is launching a free WiFi service. This program, called Google Secure Access, creates a Virtual Private Network allowing secure access to the Internet. Google Secure Access encrypts all traffic to and from a user’s machine while the user is connected to the wireless access point.

Google provides its engineers with time to work on independent research projects. Google Secure Access was created as an independent research project by a Google engineer after he discovered that WiFi was insecure at most locations.

According to the Google Secure Access FAQ, service is only available at "certain Google WiFi locations in the San Francisco Bay Area". According to some reports, Google Secure Access is working from independent (non-Google) WiFi locations in NYC.

Like many of Google’s other popular services such as Gmail, Google Secure Access is still in the beta testing stage.

Houston mayor urges evacuations as Hurricane Rita moves closer to shore

Houston after Tropical Storm Allison, June 2001.

Traffic is bumper to bumper on Houston interstate highways as citizens try to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita. Houston Mayor Bill White urged citizens in low areas of the city to "begin making their evacuation plans" in preparation for what is currently the 3rd strongest hurricane to ever form in the Atlantic Ocean and the worst to enter the Gulf of Mexico.

Acting U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director David Paulison was quoted saying "I strongly, strongly urge Gulf Coast residents to pay close attention to this storm. It's already a Category 4, a huge storm, it's in warm waters and there's a potential for it to increase more," at a briefing in Washington DC. Since then the storm has been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane, the strongest category of storm.

3 Day Forecast for Hurricane Rita

Houston, Texas lies 50 feet above sea-level on average, but the area is still prone to flooding as the region is very flat and supported by multiple bayous. In 2001, following Tropical Storm Allison, large areas of Houston remained flooded after receiving 10 inches (250 mm) of rain, causing over $US 5 billion in damage. Meteorologists fear that Rita could cause similar, if not worse damage.

Located 50 miles away from the inland city of Houston, and situated on the Gulf’s coastline, lays Galveston, Texas at a mere 8 feet above sea level. The island city, with a population of nearly 60,000, built a 10-mile-long, 17-foot-high solid granite barrier next to the sea as a defense against hurricanes.

The National Hurricane Center currently predicts a storm surge from Rita in the 15 to 20 feet range, along with strong battering waves. The city manager of Galveston, Steve LeBlanc said, "Galveston is going to suffer. And we are going to need to get it back in order as quickly as possible. I would say that we probably have 90 percent of our residents have left the island. It feels like a ghost town to me, and that's a good thing."

Rita is expected slow down and linger after making landfall in the region. That could possibly mean even more damage from heavy rainfall accumulations. The governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, said the rain is a threat to New Orleans. Anywhere from 2 to 4 inches of rainfall are expected there, when earlier predictions estimated that 3 inches of rainfall would be enough to cause more flooding in the city.

South African typhoid outbreak protest dispersed with rubber bullets

In the wake of an outbreak of typhoid-related illnesses in Delmas, north-east South Africa, a protest that forced local council members to lock themselves indoors has been broken up by police.

Rubber bullets were used in an effort to disperse the crowd which was calling for the town's council to resign over the failure to provide adequate and safe services. Authorities report that 4 people are have died from typhoid and over 526 have been stricken since August 22. However, a report by the Treatment Action Campaign (Tac) states that 49 have died. A local undertaker was quoted as saying that burials have increased since the outbreak and that he buried 14 people on the weekend of 17 September alone.

An outbreak of the current magnitude suggests waterborne spread, although health authorities deny finding Salmonella typhi (the causative agent of typhoid fever) in the town's drinking water. Sanitation services in Delmas, only 70 km from Johannesburg, are primitive. In many areas human waste is transported in open buckets and it is believed this may have contaminated the water supply.

Google sued by thousands of authors over Google Print

Google is being sued by the Authors Guild, among others, due to the verbatim publishing of contents of their books in Google Print for Libraries, a search engine for searching books that started in December. The Authors Guild wants Google to make the content from books protected under copyright unavailable, as they claim that they have never given permission for their text to be published. However, Google offers the option of having their text removed from their databases.

Google also claims that the text is used under fair use, as they only include "snippets" of the text, and not the entire book. Also, Google sees Google Print as an incentive to authors, as it could help boost sales. “This ability to introduce millions of users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors’ books, which is precisely what copyright law is intended to foster,” says Google.

The lawsuit was filed by three writers in a New York federal court, and has the support from the U.S.-based Authors Guild. The suit acknowledges that text snippets presented via the internet to users is legal under the U.S. definition of fair use. Rather, the complaint centers on the wholesale copying of a book's text into Google databases.

Another Google Print program, called "Google Print for Publishers", seeks consent from publishers (such as Simon & Schuster, who has given permission) to publish their works. Considering as publishers may be holders of the copyright in book contents, this could be the sole project of Google Print, assuming Google Print for Libraries is deemed "massive copyright infringement" by the District Court in Manhattan where the suit was filed.

Jet Blue airliner lands with broken nose gear

jetBlue 292 touches down safely

Jet Blue Flight 292, en route to New York from Burbank, California, encountered nose gear malfunctions shortly after takeoff. It safely landed three hours later at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) with no apparent injuries.

The pilots first realized something was wrong when the landing gear failed to retract; television footage showed that the plane's front wheels were pointing sideways, perpendicular to the plane's body. The plane was diverted to Long Beach Airport, where it tried and failed to land, and then on to LAX, which has better emergency facilities. The aircraft circled near the airport for several hours to burn fuel; the Airbus A320 aircraft is not designed to dump fuel.

Commentators predicted the nose gear would snap off on landing as designed to do under great stress.

At approximately 6:19PM local time, almost three hours after takeoff, the aircraft successfully managed to touch down. The pilot landed the plane first on its two rear wheels, keeping its nose in the air as long as possible until it slowed enough that the nose could be safely lowered. The front tires were incinerated through the friction. The aircraft successfully stopped. Officials were prepared with a fire engine in case the front wheel ignited. Officials are now considering methods with which to evacuate the aircraft.

Reports indicate that the pilots acted in a "calm and professional manner." There are 139 passengers and 6 crew on board Flight 292.

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Today in History
1459: Yorkist forces led by Richard Neville won the Battle of Blore Heath in Staffordshire, England, the first major battle of the Wars of the Roses.

1845: Origins of baseball: Alexander Cartwright organised the first baseball team, the New York Knickerbockers.

1846: The planet Neptune was discovered by astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, Johann Gottfried Galle and John Couch Adams.

1868: Ramón Emeterio Betances (pictured) led the Grito de Lares, a revolt against Spanish rule in Puerto Rico.

1932: Hejaz and Nejd were merged and renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with Ibn Saud as the first monarch and Riyadh as the capital city.

Quote of the Day

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." ~ George Eliot

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