katrina and rita

KATRINA AND RITA
Developments
NASA's legendary base for astronaut training and Mission Control was empty Thursday as Hurricane Rita aimed for the Texas Gulf Coast and posed a flooding risk to Johnson Space Center. The space center was locked down, with the power turned off, and monitoring duties for the international space station were turned over to Russian flight controllers outside Moscow. The same thing happened in 2002, when another approaching storm threatened the space center. The most important items and work spaces -- shuttle simulators, moon rocks and Mission Control -- are in secure, windowless rooms, in buildings designed to withstand well above 100 mph winds.
The White House and its GOP allies in Congress will have to be creative if they're going to use spending cuts to defray the cost of Hurricane Katrina rescue and recovery efforts. Many of the ideas circulating are likely political nonstarters like delaying the start of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or favorite White House cuts that have previously been rejected by Congress -- some of them several years in a row. Cutting Amtrak subsidies, crop supports, grants to state and local governments and hometown projects may sound like great ideas to some, but they are extraordinarily difficult to get through Congress, even one dominated by supposedly tightfisted Republicans. "So far, to be honest, there is not a working majority in the Congress to do any aggressive activity in the area of spending restraint, especially on this," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Drivers, homeowners, airlines and businesses will end up paying higher fuel bills if Hurricane Rita magnifies the damage last month's Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the oil-refining industry. Most of the refineries on the Texas and Louisiana coasts were shut down Thursday, and oil and natural gas rigs stood empty on the Gulf of Mexico as Rita bore down on the heart of the nation's energy industry. About 5 percent of the nation's oil-refining capacity is still out from Hurricane Katrina's sweep through Louisiana and Mississippi. In the Houston area, representing 13 percent of U.S. refining capacity, every major refinery was closed or set to close. So were most refineries around Port Arthur, Texas, another 7 percent, and some in Louisiana because of Rita, expected to hit shore Saturday. "It's potentially a bigger threat than Katrina because there is more refining capacity in the Houston area," said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petroleum & amp; Refining Association. "This is a double whammy for the industry -- it's an amazing thing to contemplate."