Hurricane Rita may have caused more harm to rigs and platforms than any Gulf coast of florida storm, even its formidable predecessor Katrina, oil and gas analysts said on Wednesday.The double-whammy of the hurricanes has already cost the Gulf almost 7 percent of their annual oil production and 5 % of its yearly natural gas output, based on a report Wednesday from the U.S. Minerals Management Service."The effect on the rigs is something that's never been seen by this country before," said Daniel Naatz, director of federal helpful the Independent Petroleum Association of the usa.ODS-Petrodata, which provides data and information for the industry, reported 13 rigs already seriously damaged or destroyed by Rita. Platform damage is still being assessed, said Tom Marsh, ODS analyst."You might imagine that 13 is not a great deal, but this is 10 percent of the contracted fleet out of service for assorted lengths of time or in some cases permanently," Marsh said.Meanwhile, nine of 12 pipelines that move gas and oil onshore remain shut down or operating at less than 100 percent capacity, according to the latest report by the Association of Oil Pipelines.Refineries from the hardest-hit area of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, plus Lake Charles, La., still are not operating, costing about 1.7 million barrels per day of refined products, based on the U.S. Department of Energy.They include:Citgo Petroleum Corp.'s 324,000-barrel-a-day facility in Lake Charles.ConocoPhillips Co.'s 239,000-barrel-a-day refinery in West Lake, La.Exxon Mobil Corp.'s 348,000-barrel-a-day Beaumont plant, the most important producer in that area.A 285,000-barrel-a-day jv between Royal Dutch Shell PLC's Shell Oil Co. and Motiva Enterprises LLC.Total SA's 233,500-barrel-a-day Port Arthur facility.Valero Energy Corp.'s 255,000-barrel-a-day plant in Port Arthur.To be able to offset the damage of not just the 2011 hurricanes, but future storms also, the oil industry is seeking new locations for refineries, CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason reports.In southwest Arizona, Glenn McGinnis, top dog of Arizona Clean Fuels, hopes to build a new refinery, though it will take at least four years and roughly $2.6 billion (video). no previous page next 1/2 ugg trainers uk "When we've 3,000 kids starting to smoke every day, 400,000 people die each year from tobacco, it would be irresponsible for that Congress not to do our job." he explained. The Internet may be steadily changing the way in which people get their news, communicate and shop, but can it also change how they vote?While every person in the House and Senate has an email address, and most have home pages, few politicians have bothered to spend any money on Internet advertising.However the Internet continues to be a deep well of knowledge for curious citizens. Today the World Wide Web contains many more pages on politicians, bills and initiatives than any other time. In addition, many political Web sites offer voters free access to rich databases containing searchable facts about politicians at every level of government, including their voting and attendance records.This all means that, armed with a computer, voters can get their hands on high quality information, and share it quickly with friends, associates, co-workers and, when they choose, hundreds of thousands of users of newsgroup and chat services.But can it be realistic to expect this amount of interest from the average U.S. citizen? In fact, less than half of the eligible voters in the united kingdom made it to the polls throughout the 1996 presidential election ?– the worst turnout since 1924.Experts also point to this year's abysmal primary turnout being a sign that political apathy is showing no warning signs of shrinking. A report by the Committee for that Study of the American Electorate suggests some 12 million registered voters may stay home this Tuesday.The report based its prediction around the scant 17 percent of voters who taken part in the Democratic and Republican primaries this year ?– the worst turnout since 1970, and a 20 percent percent drop from a couple of years ago.In spite of this poor background at the polling booths, many of the Web's most trafficked sites report use of their political resources is showing a solid, continuous surge.Executives at sites like Yahoo and Dejanews are convinced that politics-related traffic exploded during the relieve the Starr report and thus far shows no signs of slacking. Yahoo, the Web-indexing site that currently claims some 40 million worldwide users, says visitors to its politics area is growing steadily over the summer, swelling 90 % in the month of July, and an additional 32 percent in September. Yahoo's special election coverage has rapidly risen to become the fourth most popular news category.Yahoo producer Brad Rubin told CBS.com that his company "wouldn't have built an election resource should they didn't know there was a huge audience because of this kind of content.""In the end, our goal was to give people access to the maximum amount of information as they want. Is spreading cyber democracy? Were they will always politically active, or are they new viewers? We don't know ... Carry out know they want more political information than we've ever delivered before. How bad can that be?" Rubin said.Authored by Sean Wolfe ugg boots cleaning kit Profile: Viacom CEO Redstone Even when he's trying to do good, notorious bad boy Dennis Rodman can't catch a rest from his image.The first kind NBA star and Southeastern Oklahoma standout was pulled over and ticketed twice Tuesday while driving his gold-and-black Lamborghini through Colorado within a charity rally race, in accordance with the Colorado State Patrol. In between he was involved with a minor crash and later charged with stealing a hat of what he says is a "misunderstanding" at a gas station in Glenwood Springs."It's been that type of day for me," Rodman said in the phone interview late Tuesday. The incidents were first reported from the Summit Daily News in Frisco, Colorado.A clerk told police that Rodman tried with a cowboy hat at the Glenwood Springs store, said he liked it, signed an autograph, then put $20 for the counter for gas."Unfortunately $40 importance of gas was put in the car, there was the cost of the hat to take into consideration," Glenwood Springs Police Chief Terry Wilson told the city's Post Independent newspaper.Rodman said he entered the gas station to prepay for his gas, then signed several autographs. A lady employee gave him a hat, he pumped his gas and left."The lady gave it in my opinion," he said, adding he's the gas receipt. "If they desire me to pay for the hat, I'll provide them with double for it."Wilson said Rodman ran up an overall total bill of about $67 at the station, including gasoline and the hat. He paid about $20, Wilson said. Rodman's agent, Darren Prince, said he and Rodman discovered the accusations through the media coupled with not been contacted by authorities.Rodman has spent the past four days driving his performance car — complete with his face painted on each side — in the Bullrun USA 2005, a 3,000-mile, one-week race for charity with celebrity drivers. no previous page next 1/2 tall black uggs The Federal Aviation Administration issued a crisis order Thursday that 747 jumbo jets must carry extra fuel in their center tanks to guard contrary to the threat of in-flight explosions, reports CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr. An order, effective immediately, will likely impact nearly 1,100 Boeing 747s floating the world. The action comes after maintenance checks before ten days uncovered a troubling quantity of problems with fuel pumps within the center tanks of 747s.Greater dozen of the pumps taken out of planes have shown excessive wear -- a condition which the FAA contends might trigger a lethal spark inside a vapor-filled tank.The fuel pumps, two in every center tank, are used to transfer fuel to the jet's engines. If the pumps keep going after the fuel is drawn down, elements of the pumps rubbing against each other "...could cause hot spots and sparks, plus a possible explosion," the FAA warns. Airlines now will have to keep enough fuel in the 747 center tanks to keep the pumps covered. However, the weight of the extra fuel could reduce capacity on cargo planes and limit all the various a few passenger flights.This is the latest safety order to leave the two and half year investigation to the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800. While that jet was downed by a fuel tank explosion, there is no evidence fuel pumps played any role. The TWA explosion, which occurred on the New York-to-Paris flight and killed all 230 aboard, has prompted a debate in the aviation industry about how to handle empty center and other fuel tanks.Boeing, the 747s manufacturer, questions the newest FAA order, saying its testing will not show an explosion risk. But U.S. airlines have zero choice but to make the changes, along with the rest of the world's carriers will probably go along.Under Thursday's emergency airworthiness directive, airlines have two choices to prevent the dry operation in the 17,000-gallon center tank: Load at least 17,000 pounds of fuel into the tank before flight which will help prevent using it when the level reaches 7,000 pounds, or;Load no less than 50,000 pounds of fuel which will help prevent drawing from it when the level reaches 3,000 pounds. A gallon of fuel weighs about seven pounds. Operation of the 3,300-gallon horizontal stabilizer tank, unique on the 747-400, must stop immediately as the pumps in those tanks are invariably drained. It was unclear the way the change would affect long-haul carriers that routinely use the tanks on nonstop flights from your United States to Asia."We operate with the FAA on an inspection tactic to allow them to be able to use that tank," said Boeing spokeswoman Kirsti Dunn.She asserted when Boeing and the part supplier tested a number of the suspects parts over he weekend, "we were not able to generate a sparking ignition source for fuel vapor." When Ernest Avants was acquitted of murdering a black sharecropper, in what allegedly was a failed plot to lure and assassinate Martin Luther King Jr., convictions for white-on-black crimes were rare in Mississippi.On Monday, about 36 years after Avants was found not guilty on state charges, Avants will walk into a federal court that may have trouble finding jurors who don't already think he's doing the highly publicized crime.Prosecutors say, Avants, James Jones and Claude Fuller lured 67-year-old Ben Chester White into the Homochitto National Forest near Natchez, in southwestern Mississippi, in 1966. They allege the 3 repeatedly shot White and dumped his body in the nearby creek, solely as he was black.According to a statement by Jones to a sheriff, Fuller said the killing was meant to "get old Martin Luther King" by luring the civil rights leader to Natchez. King, assassinated a couple of years later in Memphis, Tenn., did not visit Natchez after White's murder.A biracial jury acquitted Avants in 1967. Fuller, now dead, never went along to trial, and the state's case against Jones, also deceased, ended in a mistrial.Avants was indicted on federal charges of aiding and abetting the murder in 2000, after prosecutors realized federal charges may be filed because the killing occurred in a national forest.Jury selection alone could take two days of a trial that legal observers be prepared to last no longer than a week.An issue for both sides will be seating 12 jurors who either aren't informed about the case or who won't prejudge in an effort to right the state's troubled civil rights past.Prosecutors are required to use statements Avants made in 1967 to FBI investigators looking at a separate case. He allegedly said he shot White only after Fuller "had already shot him using a carbine, had emptied the full magazine of 15 rounds into him ... I blew his take off with a shotgun."CBS News Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen notes that federal authorities happen to be successful lately in prosecuting old crimes such as this one, but the trial nonetheless presents significant hurdles to the prosecution."Avants apparently confessed in 1967, but even his confession wasn't enough to convict him," says Cohen. "So prosecutors have to figure out a way to get some corroborating evidence.""This can be a classic case of prosecutors looking to prove that you can't make do with murder, even if the murder took place in 1966," adds Cohen. "The best witnesses are dead, the accused is within his seventies, and has a break down stroke."Avants, who lives about 60 miles south of Jackson in Bogue Chitto, a break down stroke last year. His lawyer has argued that this stroke made his client made him can not stand trial, but a federal judge ruled Avants competent last month. womens uggs on sale Instead of finding stories as most reporters do, CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman utilizes a highly sophisticated piece of newsgathering equipment: a dart. He asks someone on the street to throw a dart at a map to help him choose where he'll go next in search of a story. Once there, he picks an interest at random from the phone book. The premise is that "everybody has a story." He met Tracey Davis in Moab, Utah. Davis continues to be married to Jim for 13 years. By night, she's your basic American homemaker; during the day, your basic Mexican restaurant waitress. I learned her story isn't in regards to the life she has in Moab. It comes down to the life she wishes she'd at the ocean - it could be any ocean.A couple years ago, she saw a painting and simply had to buy it. "There is a girl standing on the beach looking out into the ocean," she says. "It could possibly be anybody. It could be me."Davis is obsessed with the ocean. That's not a really practical obsession, considering Moab is proper smack dab in the middle of the Utah desert. "She just feels that's where her soul needs to be," says, Davis's mom, Dorothy Meisner. But Meisner says she doesn't feel her daughter would find anything on the ocean that she can't find elsewhere: "I think irrespective of where you go you take your baggage together with you," she says.Tracey stood a volatile childhood. The worst experience were only available in high school when she was obviously a naive 17 with a adoration for motorcycles. Davis recalls, "I would say, 'Hey, that's a really nice bike. Can I possess a ride on it?' They will say, 'What are you going to give me in return'?"More StoriesOne day, he wasn't joking, and wasn't taking no with an answer, either. He took Davis in the desert, tied her into a truck and raped her. No person in town ever even knew it happened, until one year later when the guy died automobile accident."I went to the viewing," Tracey says. "I didn't think. I just did it. Just spit on him. That has been it. I didn't even feel unhealthy anymore."Now, 23 years later, Davis doesn't require to ask for rides anymore, doesn't give them, either. In fact, she just place a sticker on her motorcycle. "I won't tell you what it says but it tells everybody what they can do if they're going to ask me for a ride," she says.There comes a time when every victim faces a crossroads, to forever are in the past or to take hold of the wheel. Davis has clearly chose to take hold - not only because she bought her own bike, but because she built her ocean, too. Knowing that family ties may very well always keep her here, Davis hired a designer and spent six weeks worth of tips to brina little ocean to her little corner with the desert. She looks at the painting on the wall and says, "I could just sit here and go, it's my soul's home."(C)1999 CBS Worldwide Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed "One year ago tonight, about this time, Judy and i also walked into a hospital room in Ft. Collins and saw the motionless body of our own oldest son Matthew," said Dennis Shepard with a celebrity-studded rally, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, in support of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. He was recalling the horrifying moment whenever they first saw their fatally injured son, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year old student at the University of Wyoming, was lured from your bar, pistol whipped, tied to a fence and left inside the freezing cold for 18 hours.Monday the trial of Aaron McKinney, the second of two men charged with Shepard's murder begins in Laramie, Wyoming. In April, the first defendant, Russell Henderson, pleaded guilty to avoid any death sentence. He is supposed to testify against McKinney, accusing him of planning the attack and showing up in deadly blows.In a radio interview, McKinney -- who allegedly pretended to be gay to entice Shepard to go away the bar -- denies he was motivated by hate. "I don't hate anybody because of the race or sexual preference or religion or anything like that," he said. "I don't discriminate against anybody."On Saturday night, the categories of Shepard and James Byrd, a black man who was killed in June 1998 when three white supremacists dragged him behind their pickup truck near Jasper, Texas, appeared with Attorney General Janet Reno on Saturday night in a campaign to persuade Congress to include attacks on gays and lesbians among federal hate crimes.Gay rights advocates say the Byrd family's presence was step to building support for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was passed by the Senate and must still be considered by the House. Among other measures, which Reno endorsed, into your market would add "sexual orientation" to the description of peoples protected by federal hate crimes acts. At the dinner, Elizabeth Birch, executive director from the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, praised the Byrd family for lending their support."When the Byrd family had current debts stand with the gay and lesbian community... they provided a moral decision" to do so, Birch said.The death of Matthew Shepard helped spawn a national campaign for brand spanking new hate crimes legislation. To date only one state has passed new laws since Shepard's murder. But supporters of gay and lesbian rights are hoping Congress will in the end act."These kinds of crimes threaten America's most cherished ideals," said Janet Reno in the event. "The proposed law would protect each one of these victims; let's work to understand it passed."The attack on Shepard was certainly one of six hate crimes during the past year in Wyoming - nicknamed the Equality State. ugg kensington boots uk In Italy on Sunday, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he had U.S. and European support for declaring scenario if Israel and the Palestinians failed to reach a last peace by September 13, 2000, the objective date in the Sharm el-Sheikh deal.Arafat, who returned to Italy on Sunday after signing a brand new peace agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was asked if he previously received a "letter of guarantees" from Washington supporting an independent state next year even if Israel couldn't agree by then."There is a very important declaration in the EU and another very important declaration from the Japanese government and also from President Clinton, from Russia and also from China and from the Non-Aligned Movement countries supporting this line," he told reporters.A premier Palestinian negotiator said on Saturday that beneath the terms of the new deal with Israel, Palestinians could not declare an independent state unilaterally until at the very least September 2000 -- the target date for the completion of final status negotiations."If we are not able to reach an agreement, then we hold the full right to declare a state after that," negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters in Jericho.Erekat said Arafat had received a "letter of guarantees" from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright restating U.S. support for your Palestinian people to determine their future "on their particular land."Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, now regional development minister in Barak's government, was also in Cernobbio and briefly met Arafat."It is in our interests to have an independent Palestine and see a democratic state be born in Palestine," Italian news agency ANSA quoted Peres as saying."A democratic state won't attack, does not go to war," he added. "This accord, that we very much welcome, lays on the foundations for a lasting peace."Peres said he told business leaders and politicians in their address to the forum it had become now necessary to ensure economic growth in the Palestinian territory and the development of its infrastructure.An official Syrian newspaper attacked the most recent Palestinian-Israeli agreement. Albright tried in Jerusalem and Damascus on Friday and Saturday to bring back Israeli-Syrian talks deadlocked for three years.Prior to leaving Italy for Gaza, the 70-year-old Arafat spent over an hour with Pope John Paul at his summer residence, south of Rome, to clarify the details of the agreement with Israel.The Pope, who offers to visit Holy Land sites in Palestinian territory during millennium celebrations pick up, told Arafat he hoped the accord would cause a guarantee for peace without delays and obstacles.At mass after his meeting with Arafat, the pope called the agreement a "comforting ray of light" in a troubled world. A dazzling upside to biotech foods can be found in the greenhouses at Cornell University in Ithaca, Ny. mini uggs on sale What ever happened to Michael Dukakis? Back in 1988, the Massachusetts governor was in the political world, with a 17-point lead over George Bush the elder, along with the weeks following the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta were filled with hope. But by that November, Dukakis' wants the White House have been dashed and then-Vice President Bush sailed with a landslide victory. The infamous Willie Horton TV ad, Boston Harbor, the Pledge of Allegiance flap, and Ronald Reagan's legacy become too much for the Democratic presidential hopeful. Go forward twelve years. These days, Dukakis remains passionate about politics as a visiting professor lecturing students at universities and colleges across the nation. "There's nothing more fulfilling or satisfying than in a position where you can make a difference inside the lives of your fellow citizens, and that's what politics and public service ultimately are only for," Dukakis told CBS News' Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel on Tuesday.But the Michael Dukakis of 2000 is around more than politics. He also sits around the board of Amtrak, which come july 1st will roll out a new high-speed rail service within the Northeast. Between trains and teaching, Dukakis is busy - so busy that he hardly seems to miss the existing battles in the political arena."No, I don't miss the publicity. But I would miss it basically didn't have an opportunity in some way, whether in the classroom, on a college campus, about the Amtrak board, to be involved."So, would Dukakis ever reenter active politics? "Not only want to stay married," he was quoted saying with a laugh.Dukakis said he's happy doing what he likes best - teaching the methods of politics. He added he is not ready yet to just sit back, relax, and watch the sunrise and sunset."I like finding yourself in a position where in some way I can use other people to make this a better country. It may sound hopelessly idealistic, but that's me and working with one of these young people, and trying to encourage them to do this. There's nothing like it." And Dukakis kidded you know you're getting old when your students tell you, "I played you within a debate in the fourth grade."
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