USA
Only a few convenience stores and gas stations were doing business as residents of New Orleans trickled back under Mayor Ray Nagin's plan to reopen the city one Zip Code at a time. But President Bush agreed with the chief of the federal hurricane Katrina response effort that Nagin's timing might not be "realistic" because of the lack of potable water, police, and healthcare services. Bush said he'd intervene personally with Nagin (D) to make sure the mayor understood those concerns.
The Florida Keys were under a hurricane watch as the 17th named storm of the Atlantic season homed in on the area, prompting authorities to order visitors - but not residents - to evacuate. Forecasts called for tropical storm Rita to make its way into the Gulf of Mexico later in the week and then head for Texas or Mexico. The actual path, however, is hard to predict, and along the Katrina-damaged Gulf Coast residents were urged to remain alert.
A private bipartisan commission studying election reform was scheduled to present 87 recommendations to Bush, including that the presidential primary system be reorganized into four regional primaries after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. The Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by ex-President Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, also urges that all electronic voting should leave a paper trail of ballots cast.
"Everybody Loves Raymond," which recently ended its nine-year run on CBS, was the upset winner over trendy "Desperate Housewives" as the best sitcom at Sunday night's annual Emmy Awards ceremonies in Los Angeles. "Raymond" became only the third show in the past 30 years - comedy or drama - to cop an outstanding series honor after leaving prime time, following "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Barney Miller."
NASA unveiled the outlines of a $100 billion effort to put astronauts back on the moon by 2018. The last manned flight to the lunar surface was in 1972. The moon mission could use soon-to-be-retired shuttle and Apollo rocket parts in a spacecraft that one policy analyst said would place the emphasis "on achieving goals rather than elegance."
Based on preliminary "black box" readings, investigators of the Saturday derailment in Chicago that killed two people and injured 83 others estimated that the double-decker train was traveling 69 m.p.h. The limit for that stretch of track south of downtown: 10 m.p.h.
