Mayor Bloomberg Announces Evacuations in NYC

Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered an evacuation by 5 p.m. Saturday for low-lying areas that house about 270,000 people. Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said subways, buses and commuter trains in the city, on Long Island and in the northern suburbs will begin their final runs around noon Saturday.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have said they can’t run the transit system once sustained winds reach 39 mph, and they need an eight-hour lead time to shut it down. Officials have entreated residents to take it upon themselves to get out early, but it remained unclear how many would heed the warnings that subways and buses might not be there for them if they waited.

Meanwhile, shelters were set to open and other preparations continued as the nation’s biggest city faced the likelihood of its first hurricane warning since 1985. A hurricane watch was in effect Friday for New York City and Long Island for Sunday, with storm conditions possible Saturday night.

There have already been cancellations at the U.S. Open Tennis which had hoped to put on their annual Kid's Day on Saturday, but that is now off.  Also the Mets were due to play the Atlanta Braves in a 3-game series, but Saturday and Sunday's games have been postponed.

Moscow Flugtag Thrills Attendees

Thousands gathered on the banks of the Moscow River to watch a colorful array of homemade flying machines competing in the third series of the city's Red Bull Flugtag festival.

The 'aircraft', and i ue that term loosely, ranged from the implausible Flying Dog, to spinning tea cups, and rotating sombreros. 

Thirty different teams of five crew members registered for the event.

If you aren't familar with Flugtag, competition rules state that all 'flying machines' must be engineless, should not be a replica of any sporting flying vehicle, should be made materials that float in water, weigh no more than 100kg, and have a wing span of no more than 10 meters.

Although almost all of the flying machines were destroyed after crashing into the water, the 'Illusion of the Flight' crew piloting a model of an airliner managed to fly a distance of 19 meters.

The best Flugtag flight I can find on Youtube is one from the 2010 Twin Cities competition.

The Moscow Flugtag

Twin Cities record flight

A "Lead" in Finding D.B. Cooper

The FBI says it has a "credible" lead in the D.B. Cooper case, which involved the 1971 hijacking of a passenger jet over Washington state and the suspect's legendary parachute escape.

FBI spokeswoman Ayn Sandalo Dietrich told The Seattle Times that a law enforcement member directed investigators to a person who might have helpful information on the suspect.

Dietrich says an item belonging to the man was sent to a lab in Quantico, Va., for forensic testing. She did not provide specifics about the item or the man's identity.

Federal investigators have checked more than 1,000 leads since a hijacker dubbed "D.B. Cooper" parachuted from a flight with $200,000 dollars in ransom.

His fate remains unknown, although the Seattle Post Intelligencer reports agents have previously said they believe he died the night he jumped.

Space Shuttle Makes Final Landing

The space shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida this morning, completing the last of 135 missions over 30 years that delivered the Hubble telescope into orbit and helped build the International Space Station.

The four astronauts, led by Commander Chris Ferguson, touched down at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 5:56 a.m. New York time, after a 13-day mission.

With the shuttle’s return, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration leaves the business of low-Earth orbital flight and will use U.S. companies to develop spacecraft for taking people and cargo on short trips. It has partnerships with Boeing Co., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and others to build such vehicles as it focuses on missions beyond the moon.

NASA “will take on the difficult and more risky challenges of deep-space exploration,” its administrator, Charles Bolden, said at a Federal Aviation Administration meeting on commercial space transportation May 11 in Washington.

The shuttle program began with the launch of Columbia in April 1981. Two orbiters were lost: Challenger exploded after liftoff in January 1986 and Columbia disintegrated on re- entering Earth’s atmosphere in February 2003.

Atlantis carried supplies and spare parts to the space station in its 12th visit to the orbiting outpost, which currently houses six crew members. U.S. shuttles made 46 trips to the station, built by the space agencies of the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.

The first flight of Atlantis, in October 1985, was a classified mission for the Defense Department. The spacecraft pioneered flights to the Russian space station Mir. In 1989, Atlantis was the first shuttle to launch a planetary probe, sending the Magellan spacecraft to Venus.

Atlantis will remain at the Kennedy Space Center and go on display at the visitors’ center. Discovery will go to a Smithsonian Institution facility in Virginia and Endeavour heads for the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Space Shuttle Blasts Off for Final Time

Less than 10 mins remaining to launch