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Katrina survivor searchers prepare for the worst Workers are scouring New Orleans for any remaining survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and are vigorously searching for dead bodies. 25,000 body bags have been prepared in advance, in the event that the death toll from Katrina is that high. Panic-buying as petrol protests sweep Britain Three days of fuel tax protests are starting today as panic buying causes shortages at petrol stations.

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US peace activist to be deported from Australia A US peace activist and history teacher, Scott Parkin, has been arrested in Melbourne after his visa was revoked on grounds of character. He was deemed "a threat to national security" by the Australian Department of Immigration, according to a spokesperson from Anti-Deportation Alliance

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17 people die in the town of Taji, near Baghdad when gunmen storm their homes.

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Two American air carriers, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Delta has lost over six billion USD since the start of 2001. Ugandan Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army cross the White Nile for the first time to carry out attacks near Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan. Hamas blows a hole through the wall between Egypt and Gaza, allowing free passage for Palestinians to and from Egypt for the first time since 1967. 114 people die when a Car Bomb explodes in a Shia district of Baghdad called Kadhimiya.

Lexmark releases printer with built-in CD burner

Lexmark P450

Lexmark International introduced the Lexmark P450 in the USA yesterday, the first printer to have a built-in CD burner. The CD burner allows users to copy photos from their camera directly to CD without requiring the printer to be connected to a computer.

The P450 is a small, portable printer that can print 4in by 6in photos. Photos can be printed from USB flash drives, memory cards, Bluetooth devices and PictBridge compatible digital cameras. The printer includes a 2.4-inch color LCD from which users can perform basic editing tasks such as cropping, rotating, and removing red-eye.

"The Lexmark P450 brings more photo processing functions to the home. People can now save and organize their digital photos on CD, print from a cell phone, view their photos on a television and much more. The Lexmark P450 is quite intuitive, easy to use and affordably priced," said Najib Bahous, president of Lexmark’s Consumer Printer Division.

This printer will compete with many other portable printers such as the popular and slightly cheaper HP Photosmart 375.

The Lexmark P450 is scheduled to be released in the USA in October, with an estimated retail price of $199USD, and Canada in November, with an estimated retail price of $299CAD. It is scheduled to be released in other countries shortly thereafter.

Panic-buying as petrol protests sweep Britain

Long queues outside a Birmingham petrol station, 12 September 2005.

Long queues are forming outside UK petrol stations as motorists rush to buy fuel ahead of protests against fuel tax.

Consumer groups such as 'The Fuel Lobby', the group behind the fuel protests in 2000, have given conflicting reports on plans to blockade refineries to prevent supply of petrol stations. Action started at 6am this morning, with a low turnout of protesters at refineries. Further protests are planned at forecourts and on various roads for the remainder of the week. Welsh protesters plan a 20mph rolling roadblock on the M4 motorway, starting at 7am on Friday, September 16.

The government has told the public there are enough petrol supplies to last for 80 days, but petrol stations themselves may be set to run out much faster as large numbers of people fill up their tanks in anticipation of shortages. An eyewitness has said that as well as filling up their vehicle tanks, people are taking spare tanks.

Bill Johnson, a petrol station manager in Cornwall, told the Guardian that he found it necessary to restrict petrol supplies to account holders only. He said: "They were shouting, 'You fucking bastards, I've got to get to work.' It wasn't pretty, people are just getting greedy."

Matthew Carrington of the Petrol Retailers' Association called on Gordon Brown to reduce tax. "His tax take goes up as the price goes up, " he said.

Wal-Mart accused of workers rights violations

A class-action suit has been filed with the Superior court of the state of California accusing Wal-Mart of failing to ensure their suppliers' employees work in acceptable conditions.

The suit, representing workers from six countries across four continents, conceals the identities of 17 workers from China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Swaziland and Nicaragua in addition to four Californians cited as also representing others from the state.

The complaint accuses Wal-Mart of failing to adequately police garment suppliers and ensure that workers are not kept in sweatshop conditions, and that this is in breach of their own Code of Conduct for foreign suppliers. Wal-Mart counters that they have an extensive programme to ensure suppliers adhere to their Code of Conduct; that 200 full-time inspectors are employed to check supplier factories, and 108 factories have been permanently banned as suppliers. However, this is mainly for child labor violations.

This is part of an ongoing campaign against Wal-Mart by the International Labor Rights Fund [1]; a labor rights group opposed to many of the business practices of Wal-Mart that they claim encourage unacceptable working conditions and salaries in developing countries.

MAME arcade machine emulator has milestone release

The popular arcade machine emulator MAME has reached its milestone 0.100 release.

MAME is an emulator, which means it is capable of making an ordinary P.C. run games which were designed for another computer system. The project aims to make a perfect reproduction of many historical arcade machines which users can play on their home P.C.s. Supported games include such classics as Space Invaders, Pacman and Donkey-Kong as well as many lesser-known titles.

From its initial release in February 1997, MAME has grown to support over 5700 different arcade games from the early days of the 1970s through to today's high-action 3D games, meaning it is the largest arcade machine emulator project in the world.

The 0.100 release has been humourously titled "1.00", poking fun at the MAME team's statement that as long as new arcade machines are being released, their emulator will never be finished.

Light stopped for over a second, breaking record

Light has been stopped in its tracks for more than one second, a thousand times longer than the previous record.

Researchers at the Australian National University used a technique called electromagnetically induced transparency, in which a beam of laser light puts the atoms in a solid sample into a state in which a signal light pulse can be trapped.

Most previous stopped-light demonstrations have used gases, rather than solid materials. Light had previously been stopped in a solid (yttrium-silicate doped with atoms of praseodymium), but only for a few milliseconds.

Although the efficiency of the storage was low in this experiment, the researchers believe they can improve the efficiency by using a thicker sample and by increasing the concentration of praseodymium in the sample. The technique could be useful in quantum information processing applications such as quantum computers.

Caged children well fed, behaved

Clarksfield Township, Ohio - The children looked ordinary enough to neighbors and seemed polite, well-behaved, well-dressed. They spent their apparently carefree days playing in a toy-filled yard.

But at night, the 11 children were not treated like ordinary children, authorities say. Their adoptive parents allegedly forced several of them to sleep in homemade cages about 3 1/2 feet high.

Their adoptive parents, Michael Gravelle, 56, and Sharen Gravelle, 57, denied in a custody hearing Monday they abused or neglected the children, aged one to 14, who have conditions that include autism and fetal alcohol syndrome.

The cages had mats and the house smelled of urine. They also had alarms that sounded when they were opened.

Neighbors said that the children were polite and well-behaved. They never saw any signs of abuse.

The children have been placed with foster families and appear to be doing well, authorities said. Charges have yet to be filed.

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Today in History
1644: Giovanni Battista Pamphili became Pope Innocent X.

1835: Aboard the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin reached the Galápagos Islands, where he began to develop his theories of evolution.

1916: Tanks, the "secret weapons" of the British Army during World War I, were first used in combat at the Battle of the Somme.

1935: Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived German Jews of citizenship, and adopted a new national flag emblazoned with a swastika.

1950: Korean war: U.S. armed forces landed at Incheon, Korea.

September 15 is Independence Day for Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador (1821)

Quote of the Day

"Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions." ~ Agatha Christie

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