...Devastating damage expected...

.Hurricane Katrina...a most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength...rivaling the intensity of Hurricane Camille of 1969.

Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks...perhaps longer. At least one half of well constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail...leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed.

The majority of industrial buildings will become non functional. partial to complete wall and roof failure is expected. All wood framed low rising apartment buildings will be destroyed. Concrete block low rise apartments will sustain major damage...including some wall and roof failure.

High rise office and apartment buildings will sway dangerously...a few to the point of total collapse. All windows will blow out.

Airborne debris will be widespread...and may include heavy items such as household appliances and even light vehicles. Sport utility vehicles and light trucks will be moved. The blown debris will create additional destruction. Persons...pets...and livestock exposed to the winds will face certain death if struck.

Power outages will last for weeks...as most power poles will be down and transformers destroyed. Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards.

The vast majority of native trees will be snapped or uprooted. Only the heartiest will remain standing...but be totally defoliated. Few crops will remain. Livestock left exposed to the winds will be killed.

An inland hurricane wind warning is issued when sustained winds near hurricane force...or frequent gusts at or above hurricane force...are certain within the next 12 to 24 hours.

Once tropical storm and hurricane force winds onset...do not venture outside!

Maximum sustained winds at flight level during the 7am Hurricane Hunter mission into Katrina were 153 knots, which translates to 160 mph at the surface, making Katrina a minimal Category 5 hurricane. The winds are likely to increase to "catch up" to the rapidly falling pressure, and could approach the all-time record of 190 mph set in Camille and Allen. Winds of this level will create maximum storm surge heights over 25 feet, and this storm surge will affect an area at least double the area wiped clean by Camille, which was roughly half the size of Katrina. Katrina has continued to expand in size, and is now a huge hurricane like Ivan. Damage will be very widespread and extreme if Katrina can maintain Category 5 strength at landfall.

The storm caused widespread damage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. High winds "shredded" the pedestrian canopy between Terminals 2 and 3, said Roger Desjarlais, the county administrator.

The winds knocked over a small private plane, overturned an 18-wheeler truck, knocked down power lines on the west side of the airport and flattened fences along the south side. -- David Fleshler at the Broward Emergency Operations Center

Other living species that could "stand in" for Pleistocene-era animals in North America include feral horses (Equus caballus), wild asses (E. asinus), Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus), Asian (Elephas maximus) and African (Loxodonta africana) elephants and lions (Panthera leo).

"Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators," said lead author Josh Donlan, of Cornell University. "There are going to have to be some major attitude shifts. That includes realising predation is a natural role, and that people are going to have to take precautions."

However Americans might do more than put up with their new compatriots - they might actually welcome them.

According to Dr Donlan and his colleagues, the re-wilding plan would offer ecotourism and land-management jobs to help the struggling economies of the Great Plains and Southwest.

Gerstenmaier said the foam investigation was making "very good progress," but that it was still unclear exactly what had gone wrong.

In addition to the foam repairs, NASA said the delay would allow it to shift the shuttle order around so that Atlantis would not be forced to make two missions in a row, with a quick turnaround. Now that there's a seven-month delay, Discovery will take on STS-121, the next scheduled mission, and Atlantis will take the one after that, STS-115, currently set for May 2006.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said he did not think the delays would greatly impact the five-year plan to finish building the international space station and then retire the shuttle. "We need to view shuttle missions as a process," he said, instead of focusing on individual missions in isolation.

In Israel, scientists have created the world's smallest computer by engineering DNA to carry out mathematical functions.

J. Craig Venter, the entrepreneurial scientist who mapped the human genome, announced last month that he intends to string together genes to create from scratch novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol.

With a $42.6 million grant that originated at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Berkeley researchers are creating a new malaria drug by removing genetic material of the E. coli bacterium and replacing it with genes from wormwood and yeast.

For example, national security experts and even synthetic biologists themselves fret that rogue scientists or "biohackers'' could create new biological weapons -- like deadly viruses that lack natural foes. They also worry about innocent mistakes -- organisms that could potentially create havoc if allowed to reproduce outside the lab.

Until they are around three months old, cats are indifferent to catnip. And many cats--as many as half, says McDaniel--never develop catnip sensitivity. The sensitivity is inherited: A kitten with only one catnip-sensitive parent has a one-in-two chance of inheriting the catnip sensitivity, and a kitten whose parents both exhibit sensitivity has a three-in-four chance. McDaniel says there is no correlation between catnip sensitivity and sex, color, or breed.

Because nepetalactone is volatile and will degrade over time, cat owners should store catnip in a freezer to preserve its potency. That way, kitty's next 'nip trip will be as wild and crazy as ever. Party on, cats!

The global conservation organization?s report, Europe feels the heat - Extreme weather and the power sector, shows London is the city where average maximum summer temperature increased the most, up 2?C over the last 30 years, followed by Athens and Lisbon (1.9?C), Warsaw (1.3?C), and Berlin (1.2?C).

Meanwhile, the increase in average summer mean temperature was highest in Madrid - up by a staggering 2.2?C, followed by Luxembourg (2?C), Stockholm (1.5?C), and Brussels, Rome, and Vienna (1.2?C). In the last five years, average summer temperatures in 13 of the 16 cities looked at were at least 1?C higher than during the first five years of the 1970s.

"Summer temperatures in Europe's cities are heading for an 'unbearable' reading on the thermometer," said Imogen Zethoven, Director of WWF's Global PowerSwitch! Campaign. "Scientists estimate that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are doubling the risk of more record-breaking hikes in temperature."

The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 1343 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel. The unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars's far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5º North and 103º East.

The crater is 35 kilometres wide and has a maximum depth of approximately 2 kilometres beneath the crater rim. The circular patch of bright material located at the centre of the crater is residual water ice.

Discovery spent two weeks in space, where the crew demonstrated new methods to inspect and repair the Shuttle in orbit. The crew also delivered supplies, outfitted and performed maintenance on the International Space Station. A number of these tasks were conducted during three spacewalks.

In an unprecedented event, spacewalkers were called upon to remove protruding gap fillers from the heat shield on Discovery's underbelly. In other spacewalk activities, astronauts installed an external platform onto the Station?s Quest Airlock and replaced one of the orbital outpost?s Control Moment Gyroscopes.

Inside the Station, the STS-114 crew conducted joint operations with the Expedition 11 crew. They unloaded fresh supplies from the Shuttle and the Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. Before Discovery undocked, the crews filled Raffeallo with unneeded items and returned to Shuttle payload bay.

Shortly after Discovery lifted off July 26, a 1-pound chunk of foam insulation fell from the fuel tank ? the very thing that doomed Columbia. The foam missed Discovery, but NASA grounded all shuttle flights until engineers fix the problem.

"We're going to try as hard as we can to get back in space this year," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said at a post-landing news conference. "But we?re not going to go until we're ready to go."

Much of the scientific establishment says that intelligent design is not a tested scientific theory but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious -- especially Christian -- thinking to students. Opponents say that church groups and other interest groups are pursuing political channels instead of first building support through traditional scientific review.

The White House said yesterday that Bush's comments were in keeping with positions dating to his Texas governorship, but aides say they could not recall him addressing the issue before as president. His remarks heartened conservatives who have been asking school boards and legislatures to teach students that there are gaps in evolutionary theory and explain that life's complexity is evidence of a guiding hand.

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world," Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used," said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag and holding a colorful fan.

The final issue of concern -- a torn thermal blanket just below the cockpit window that might shed bits of debris during the shuttle's descent -- was cleared off the table Thursday morning after a series of wind-tunnel tests, said deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale, who heads Discovery's mission management team.

The tests indicated that even if pieces of cloth debris blew off and struck the aft section of the orbiter, it would be "of negligible concern" and pose no threat to Discovery's safe landing, he said. Under those circumstances, sending spacewalkers out to snip away the torn section would have violated the "first, do no harm" rule, Hale said.

Local emergency crews have put together a policy to help with the arrival of the bees. They will only handle situations that involve multiple bee stings, not just the presence of the bees.

Many local beekeepers said they began preparing for the arrival of the killer bees years ago.

"So if we find a very aggressive colony, we're going to kill out that colony and replace it with a European queen," beekeeper Billy Hummer said.

The bees were found in a trap last week.

For the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season the outlook calls for an extremely active season, with the seasonal ACE index forecasted to range from 180%-270% of the median. This range is above the 175% baseline that Goldenberg et al. (Science, 2001) use to define a hyperactive season. The outlook also calls for a seasonal total of 18-21 tropical storms, with 9-11 becoming hurricanes, and 5-7 of these becoming major hurricanes [categories 3-4-5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale]. Because the ACE index does not directly account for the numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes, the predicted ACE range can verify even if these numbers fall outside their predicted ranges.

This forecast reflects NOAA?s highest confidence of an above-normal hurricane season since their outlooks began in August 1998. This prediction also reflects a continuation of above-normal activity that began in 1995, and will likely be the seventh extremely active season since 1995.

Even though there has already been considerable early season activity (7 tropical storms, with two becoming major hurricanes), most of the activity is still expected to occur during the climatological peak months of August-October. Many of the storms during this period will develop from disturbances moving westward from the west coast of Africa, and will likely form over the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea in the region between 9?N-21.5?N (black box). Historically, tropical storms that first form in these areas account for 55% of all hurricanes and 80% of all major hurricanes. They also account for nearly the entire difference in hurricanes and major hurricanes between above-normal and below-normal hurricane seasons.

In the future, ads will pop up in our cereal bowls
Our dreams will be interrupted by commercials
But we'll still look to magazines when we don't want to be found.