As Sue Theroux waited for a Greyhound bus, she lamented over the plans thrown into disarray as a powerful Hurricane Dennis barreled toward the Gulf of Mexico.
"This is my wedding night, and I'll be on a bus," she said.
The Point Pleasant, N.J., resident had planned to get married on Saturday. Instead, she and her groom, Tom Theroux, hastily held the ceremony on Thursday after tourists throughout the Florida Keys were ordered to evacuate.
Forecasters warned residents from Florida to Louisiana to be ready this weekend for Dennis, with top winds already at 135 mph. The Category 4 storm was projected to hit the Gulf Coast by Sunday and the National Hurricane Center warned Dennis had become "an extremely dangerous" storm.
Gov. Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency. In addition to tourists, evacuation orders were given Thursday for all mobile home residents and those living in the southernmost part of the island chain.
As thousands fled, lines of cars were seen streaming out of the Keys. Airlines reported that nearly all flights out of Key West were full and Greyhound added buses to help get residents out of the area.
Those who stayed prepared to ride out the storm.
"There's so much stuff to do," said Mark "New" Hackmer, 24, as he put plywood over the windows at MamaJoe's Cycles & Stuff Inc. in Marathon, the midpoint of the Florida Keys. "We get this done early, and the hurricane party starts at 9."
At 5 a.m. EDT, Dennis' eye was about 275 miles southeast of Havana, or roughly 320 miles south-southeast of Key West. It was moving northwest at about 16 mph.
Forecasters said the storm could drop 4 to 8 inches of rain Friday over the extreme end of southern Florida. A storm surge of 3 to 6 feet was possible in the lower Keys.
A hurricane warning was issued for the lower Keys. A hurricane watch was in effect for the middle and upper Keys.
At Cape Canaveral, the space shuttle Discovery was considered to be safe on its launching pad for now, and NASA still aimed for a liftoff next week _ the first shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster.
But shuttle managers decided Thursday evening to begin initial preparations to move Discovery from the pad. A final call on whether to haul the shuttle back to its hangar was expected Friday afternoon.
Four hurricanes battered Florida last year, causing more than $40 billion in damage.
Many in Dennis' projected path already got a wake-up call this week from a surprising Tropical Storm Cindy that caused three deaths, knocked out power to thousands, and spawned twisters that toppled trees and caused up to $40 million damage to a famed NASCAR track, the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
In Louisiana, which was still mopping up after Cindy, officials said they would have a better idea by Friday morning whether evacuations would be needed.
-----------------------------------------------------------
messenger - partitions musique - sonneries
The Taliban claims to have shot down a US helicopter in Afghanistan with 17 people onboard.
The fate of the crew and passengers, which were carrying out a mission against al-Qa'eda operatives in the eastern part of the country, is not immediately known.
Initial reports indicated that yesterday's crash in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan, seem to support the claim that it may have been caused by hostile fire, the military said.
The twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook came down in remote and mountainous terrain west of Kunar's capital Asadabad.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Abdul Latif Hakimi, claimed the guerrillas had shot down the aircraft in the village of Shorak using "a new type of weapon" which he did not describe.
-----------------------------------------------------------
ringtone - horoscope - trucs et astuces - trucs et astuces - pollas grandes - ringetoner
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Transport, mining and car production faltered across South Africa on Monday as workers took to the streets for a one-day strike against unemployment and poverty, although employers said the strike was patchy. Labor federation COSATU -- an alliance partner of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) -- said the government and firms should do more to create jobs, support local industry and buy more South African and less foreign goods.
"We cannot say the economy is booming when we have unemployment at around 40 percent," COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven said. "We want a completely different mindset from business -- saving jobs instead of cutting them for short term commercial gain."
The strike was a show of force ahead of this week's national strategy meeting of the ANC, which critics increasingly accuse of doing too little to help the poor following the end of apartheid in 1994.
Thousands marched through major cities, bringing traffic to a standstill. At the world's second largest gold producer AngloGold Ashanti, a spokesman said most workers had failed to show, but at other mines the picture was mixed.
COSATU had said it expected a strong turnout from the heavily unionized mines sector. Thousands of gold miners have lost their jobs in recent years as the strong rand currency has hit mine profitability.
But at the world's fourth largest gold producer Goldfields, head of South African operations Mike Prinsloo said just 15,000 of 40,000 workers were on strike, far fewer than management had feared.
"We were expecting 100 percent stay-away," he said. At one of its three main mines, almost all miners had reported for work while at another 25 percent were striking. At the third, 90 percent had failed to turn up, he said.
South Africa's Chamber of Mines said it was too soon to estimate the cost to the industry, but that if every single worker had stayed away it would have lost 600 million rand ($89 million) in revenue and 400 million rand in exports for the day.
PARTIAL PRODUCTION
"It is a bit problematic to destroy production for a day... to protest about job losses, because it's just going to make the position of the industry worse," Chamber chief labor negotiator Frans Barker told Reuters.
Carmakers said they were also feeling the pinch, with only "partial production" running at Volkswagen South Africa, which produces vehicles at its Eastern Cape Uitenhage plant for domestic use and global export. General Motors South Africa said it was only able to carry out limited production and training.
-------------
toques - sexo zoofilia - voyeur sexo - lesbianas xxx
