"Cars were forced to the other side of the road, bins went through car windows. Leaves, tiles and glass were all across the road," Hockley resident Estelle Skidmore said.

"I got home to find one tree crashed onto the front of my house, another crashed from my garden into my neighbour's garden, and chimneys smashed to smithereens after falling off my neighbour's house," said Liz Munro from Moseley.

"Neither of us saw anything really alarming," station astronaut John Phillips told NASA mission control.

Until the foam issue can be fixed, shuttles will not lift-off, Nasa says.

Tuesday's shedding foam is not thought to have hit Discovery, but two heatshield tiles do appear to be broken underneath the vehicle.

However, the first reports of the ISS investigation indicated there were no major areas of damage to contend with.

It was a suitcase-sized piece of foam that fell off the Columbia shuttle during its launch and punched a hole in the wing.

Solid Rocket Booster separation was triggered 2-minutes and 5-seconds into the flight after burnout of the putty-like fuel packed inside each rocket. The firing of explosive bolts freed the twin boosters from the side of the External Tank, allowing them to peel away from the Space Shuttle. Parachutes were then automatically deployed from the boosters, allowing them to slowly descend into the Atlantic Ocean where they will be towed back to shore.

A biologist that works with the animal said it has been curious since birth.

He said the lid-removing octopus is probably the most intelligent animal at the aquarium.

"I don't know why I'm not burnt to pieces," said Chris Cruse, 48, after taking refuge in a shelter.

Four more bodies were found Wednesday. Fourteen of the victims were thought to be homeless. Authorities did not know if a man found by the side of a road Sunday had a permanent residence.

The other three victims were elderly women, including one whose home cooling system was not on, police said.

"Most of us just run from air-conditioned box to air-conditioned box, so it's hard to imagine how omnipresent the heat really is for the homeless here," said Phoenix police Sgt. Randy Force.

Gary Patterson, the center's information services director, said Tuesday that there is a "significant probability" that a major trembler could rock the region.

"There's always reason to be aware when you're in an area that has the probability to have a magnitude 6 or greater," Patterson said.

There have been six earthquakes measuring 2 or above along the southern part of the New Madrid fault zone since May 1, and four earthquakes near a 4 magnitude since February, he said.

"It is unusual to have that many fours, but we're only basing that on 30 years worth of data we have to compare it too," Patterson said. "Earthquakes are kind of like hundred-year floods, these things don't follow like clockwork."

In a paper in the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, a team of scientists, including University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, propose two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - lab grown -- meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat.

"There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat.

"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat."

The scare was triggered a few weeks ago when several research groups visiting Vietnam filed preliminary reports that many people with mild cases of influenza - and those in contact with them - were testing positive for the deadly avian flu strain H5N1. This suggested that there was widespread human-to-human transmission of the virus.

Subsequent tests have so far failed to confirm this, and WHO spokesman Dick Thompson is keen to play down the incident. "It was just unpublished information provided to us in preliminary form that spurred an investigation," he says. "We thought about upgrading the alert. We looked at it fast and strongly, and based on that decided not to upgrade."

On Sunday, the Johnsons, who live on Surf Avenue in Panacea, a town of 2,100, found surf inside their house.

"We had 4-foot breakers coming through our living room," said Noel Johnson, 43, a construction superintendent. The waves battered down sliding glass doors facing the bay and destroyed their furniture and appliances. Johnson, his 45-year-old wife and their two grandchildren fled in his truck.

Professor Dawkins' opening talk, in a session called Meme Power, explored the ways in which humans invent their own realities to make sense of the infinitely complex worlds they are in; worlds made more complex by ideas such as quantum physics which is beyond most human understanding.

"Are there things about the Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle, ungraspable in any mind, however superior?" he asked.

Events of 7/7 and 9/11 remind us that we do not live in three different worlds. We live in one world Ashraf Ghani, former Afghan finance minister "Successive generations have come to terms with the increasing queerness of the Universe."

Each species, in fact, has a different "reality". They work with different "software" to make them feel comfortable, he suggested.

Because different species live in different models of the world, there was a discomfiting variety of real worlds, he suggested.

NASA said the sensor device was showing low fuel levels despite the exterior tank having been filled just hours before.

"It will take some time really to understand what to do to remedy the situation," NASA spokesman George Diller said.

"There are long faces here in the control center and around the site. Everybody was so looking forward to flying today," Diller said.

Crew members were already aboard the orbiter when the launch was canceled.

Aircraft recon just measured a central pressure of 947 mb at 5:15pm, an 11 mb drop in 90 minutes--a rarely observed rate of intensification. The eyewall shrank from 15 miles in diameter to 12 miles, and the satellite presentation confirms that the storm is undergoing explosive deepening. Dennis will surely be a strong Category 4 storm in about 6 hours, when the winds have time to catch up to the pressure falls, and Category 5 is not out of the question. Satellite imagery shows an outer wind maximum is probably forming, meaning Dennis will enter another eyewall replacement cycle tonight after this phase of explosive deepening is over.

Filmer-Sankey describes the lobster as a "strange beast ... as big as a rabbit".

"It's a stridulatory cray, which means it makes a noise like a cricket by rubbing parts of its anatomy together, probably it's back legs," he says.

It's not clear why the lobster makes this sound, but scientists say it may be for mating or defending their territory.

"It's also furry. If you pick it up and handle it, the shell doesn't feel like hard and spiny like a typical lobster, it actually feels like felt," Filmer-Sankey says.

"We hit it just exactly where we wanted to," said an ecstatic Dr Don Yeomans, a Nasa mission scientist.

"The impact was bigger than I expected, and bigger than most of us expected. We've got all the data we could possibly ask for."

Comets - giant "dirty snowballs", as some have called them - are believed to contain materials that have remained largely unchanged since the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago.

Scientists hope that by getting "under the skin" of Comet Tempel 1, they can gain new information on the Solar System's original composition and perhaps even how life emerged in our corner of the Universe.

Earlier this week, a panel monitoring Nasa said the agency had failed to meet three of 15 recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (Caib) for the safe resumption of shuttle flights.

But Nasa Administrator Michael Griffin said Discovery was fit for launch.

"Based on a very thorough and very successful flight readiness review, we're currently 'go' for launch of Discovery on 13 July," he announced.

"After a vigorous, healthy discussion our team has come to a decision: we're ready to go," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said after the meeting. "The past two and half years have resulted in significant improvements that have greatly reduced the risk of flying the Shuttle. But we should never lose sight of the fact that space flight is risky.

"The Discovery mission, designated STS-114, is a test flight," Griffin said, noting that astronauts will try out a host of new Space Shuttle safety enhancements. In addition, Discovery will carry 15 tons of supplies and replacement hardware to the International Space Station. July 13 is the beginning of three weeks of possible launch days that run through July 31.