Washington 

Washington  - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin lifted traffic blockades Wednesday for people returning from the hurricane evacuation, hours before the previously-set deadline of midnight.

City officials made the decision after traffic backed up on roads leading back to the city, a sort of reverse picture from Saturday and Sunday, when 1.9 million people fled the Gulf Coast, according to the Times Picayune newspaper online..

Washington  - The United States was dispatching a senior envoy to China for consultations following reports that North Korea has begun reassembling its main nuclear facility in violation of a disarmament agreement.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday that Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill will depart Wednesday for Beijing for the discussion with his Chinese counterparts.

Washington  - Kuwaiti-born Sami Al-Arian, a one-time computer engineering professor, was released from jail just hours ahead of a court deadline for US officials to explain why immigration officials still wanted him held, media reports said Wednesday.

Al-Arian, 50, had fully served a five-year sentence that resulted from a plea bargain to charges of conspiring to aid an Islamic group by helping with immigration benefits for a member of the group.

Washington/Mexico City  - At least 19 deaths in Haiti were blamed on the effects of Tropical Storm Hanna, while thousands of people in the Dominican Republic sought refuge Wednesday from the third storm in just weeks.

In Haiti, people climbed to the rooftops of their homes to remain safe in the face of flooding caused by Hanna. Ten people drowned in the central coastal city of Gonaives alone, said the news agency Haiti Press.

Haitian President Rene Preval requested international after the catastrophe in the city of 300,000 people.

In the Dominican Republic, schools remained closed, and the authorities of the country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti declared the maximum alert for 13 provinces.

Washington, September 3: Galaxy Zoo, an online astronomy project that invites people from all walks of life to assist in classifying over a million galaxies, has already got itself a whopping 150,000 members.

Since Galaxy Zoo’s launch in July 2007, some 150,000 members of the public, inspired by the opportunity to be the first to see and classify a galaxy, have helped professional astronomers via this on-line mass-participation project to carry out real scientific research.