Hurricanes have sustained wind of at least 74 mph; Category 1 storms have top sustained wind of up to 95 mph.

It was still too early to tell if it would hit the United States, Willis said.

At 11 a.m. EDT, the storm was centered 935 miles east of the Lesser Antilles and was moving west at about 12 mph, forecasters said. Its tropical storm-force wind extended 115 miles from its center.

Florence developed at the peak of the hurricane season over warm Atlantic water, the source of energy for storm development, Willis said.

"It's nothing like we saw last year, but the waters are still warm enough to favor tropical storms and hurricanes and intensification," Willis said.

The storm follows on the heels of Tropical Storm Ernesto, which was briefly the season's first hurricane before hitting Florida and North Carolina last week as a tropical storm.

At least nine deaths have been attributed to Ernesto, and the aftereffects were still being felt Tuesday with about 60,000 people - some 15,000 homes and businesses - remaining without power in New York's Westchester County.

In Huntington, N.Y., a tree that was believed to be about 550 years old was weakened by the storm and fell Sunday. It was believed to be the oldest black oak in North America and once stood 90 feet high.

In North Carolina, the overflowing Northeast Cape Fear River began to recede Monday, although forecasters said it probably would not be back to its normal level until the end of the week. About 140 people were evacuated in Duplin and Pender counties.

Last year's Atlantic storm season set a record with 28 named storms and 15 hurricanes, including Katrina, which devastated the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.

The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season has not been as rough as initially feared. The National Hurricane Center lowered its Atlantic storms forecast in August to between 12 and 15 named storms and seven to nine hurricanes. Forecaster William Gray downgraded his expectations for the season Friday to 13 named storms and five hurricanes, which would be a slightly below-average season.

But William Pearce, who holds his PHD in Astronomy and teaches at Bismarck State College says this was probably just one peice of three from the same meteor.

It's not every day you see meteors falling from the sky.

But Pearce says most of the time, they break up as they're falling into the atmosphere.

No worries according to Pearce.

Once they are in the atmosphere, they fall very quickly.

The fireballs seen about 8:30 this evening are already on the ground.

Pearce says it's even possible the peices burnt up before ever reaching the ground.

Usually meteors that land on the surface of the earth are stony meteors. It's only in 8 per cent of the cases that scientists find a meteor made up of iron and nickel like this one.

"The meteor is exciting because of its rarity. If I go to sell it in the international market, I will get $1 billion. This is rarer than gold and diamonds," said Dinkar Srivastava, Director Petrology Department, Geological Survey of India.

Solar system

Scientists are especially interested in the study of meteors because they are made up of matter that originally went into the making of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

This particular meteor is believed to have broken away from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

"From this, we can study the minerals that went into the making of our solar system. From where this meteor has come, man cannot even dream of reaching there," said Dr R S Goyal, Director, Geological Survey of India.

The Geological Survey of India is now contacting international institutes so that space scientists from all over the world can study the meteor, which perhaps carries with it many secrets of our solar system.

In an interview published in the Belgrade media, Mr Dodik, prime minister of what is known as the Serbian Republic, comprising 49% of Bosnia, said a referendum on independence for his mini-state was "inevitable" since Bosnia-Herzegovina had no long-term future.

As a result of the wars of the 1990s in Kosovo and Bosnia in which Serbia tried and failed to maximise its territorial gains, Kosovo is under UN administration and poised to obtain independence from Serbia, while Bosnia is also in the final year of international governorship and struggling to become a functioning country.

Under the deal, the Pakistani army will end its military campaign against the self-declared "Pakistani Taliban" - a loose alliance of tribal militias with strong links to the Afghan Islamist guerrillas - in the North Waziristan tribal agency. In return, the rebels undertake to halt all attacks on the Pakistani army, which have resulted in 350 deaths over the past three years, and prevent cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

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President Pervez Musharraf hopes the deal will restore order to the most turbulent corner of the tribal belt, where his forces effectively lost control last spring.

The militants also imposed strict social edicts reminiscent of the Afghan Taliban such as preventing men from shaving their beards, forbidding shops from selling movies and publicly executing accused criminals. But after failing to defeat the rebels by force, the military agreed to a ceasefire last May and turned to peace talks. By yesterday Pakistani army troops had started to return to base and 132 detainees were released from jail.

The deal was struck in advance of today's visit by Gen Musharraf to Afghanistan, with whom relations reached a new low this year amid mutual recrimination. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of allowing the Taliban to organise, arm and mount cross-border attacks from bases in areas such as North Waziristan.

The study is meant to cast light on possible links between immigrant communities and problems at school, but opponents says it is a breach of a 1978 law which makes it an offence "to compile or study personal information which directly or indirectly reveal racial or ethnic origins".

"Whatever precautions are taken, this type of initiative merely sustains prejudices that exist towards certain populations - and offers no guarantee of results in the treatment of academic failure," the Movement Against Racism (MRAP) said in a statement.

Unlike other countries in Europe, France has banned studies based on racial, religious or ethnic origin on the grounds that they undermine the principle of equal citizenship.

* 5 million immigrants living in France: census

As a result there are no figures for example on the numbers of people of immigrant origin in French prisons or on unemployment lists, though anecdotally both statistics are believed to be disproportionately high.

Recently the National Information and Freedoms Commission (CNIL) - which vets demographic studies - refused to allow the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) to carry out an investigation into the state of Jewish opinion in the country.

However there is growing pressure from the government - whose Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is a champion of "positive discrimination" to favour ethnic minorities - to move away from the blanket ban on "profiling".

Some academics also favour loosening the rules, arguing that after last year's rioting in high-immigration suburbs an accurate picture of France's ethnic mix is increasingly urgent.

But Samuel Thomas of SOS-Racisme said: "Studies based on blood-lines may be interesting in order to analyse various types of discrimination ... but we have to be on guard against abuses of interpretation.

"There is a temptation to lay everything at the door of ethnic origin and ignore social factors, family and working environment."

Under the French study, demographers in Paris and Strasbourg will identify 250 people who have at least one parent born on Morocco, 250 with at least one parent born in Turkey and 250 with both parents born in France.

The subject families will then be questioned on a range of issues - including income level, professional status, linguistic and cultural habits, religion, housing and experience of discrimination.

Because of the lack of existing personal data, the subjects will be chosen at random from the telephone book - with demographers seeking out names that look Moroccan or Turkish.

Alsamani also clarified that it was the African Union's choice to ask its peacekeepers to leave Darfur by the end of the month, stressing they are free to remain in Darfur if it withdraws the transfer of Darfur mission to the United Nations.

"It's the African Union choice to leave Darfur. The AU said they would not be able to continue to be in Darfur after the 30th of September without getting finance. It's their choice. It's not our choice but if they changed their mind they can carry on with their mandate," the minister told reporters on the sidelines of an Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) forum on Somalia in Nairobi.

The UN Security Council last Thursday voted by 12 votes to none to create a UN peacekeeping force of up to 22,500 in Darfur.

The UN resolution is intended to give more power and funding to a 7,000-strong force, now run by the AU, which has been unable to stop the crisis in the troubled region.

But the Khartoum government who has vehemently opposed the deployment of UN troops in its western region said the Security Council hastily passed the resolution without consulting the Sudanese.

Alsamani said Khartoum submitted plans to the UN for the deployment of its own troops to replace AU monitors in Darfur, but the idea was rejected by the United States and infuriated rebel movements.

Government troops have already started massing in some parts of Darfur and AU officials reported renewed fighting that threatened to plunge the region back into chaos, four months after a fragile peace agreement was signed.

There are thousands of UN peacekeepers already deployed in southern Sudan to monitor a January 2005 peace deal that ended two decades of north-south civil war.

But the minister said the UN peacekeepers in southern Sudan has different mandate, adding that the situation in the vast region cannot be compared with that in Darfur.

"The UN peacekeepers in the south have got nothing to do with the one in Darfur. The one in the south came after the invitation of the Sudanese government, has got a different mandate and the situation in the south cannot be compared because the south may go after few years as a separate country," Alsamani told reporters after attending the IGAD consultative forum.

Analysts say the UN cannot take any significant action on the resolution until Sudan reverses its opposition to the proposed UN force of more than 20,000 military and police.

The United States and Britain, the two original sponsors of the resolution, said they hoped that the vote would help put new pressure on Sudan's president to agree.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and up to 2.5 million forced from their homes since Darfur rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing Khartoum of marginalizing the region.

Despite a peace deal last May signed by one of the three rebel factions and the government, the violence has increased.

In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Annan described a multi-stage process in which French, Italian and Greek vessels would patrol Lebanese waters until a promised German fleet arrived.

Israel imposed the blockade in July when its military and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah began a month-long conflict. Since a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting on Aug. 14, Israel has refused to lift the blockade, saying it must prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah.

Annan, who talked to a Times reporter on a flight from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, said the first step to end Israel's blockade would be an announcement from French President Jacques Chirac about deploying French ships.

That announcement would trigger the dispatch of French, Italian and Greek vessels, who would hold the line until German replacements arrived about two weeks later, the Times said.

The deployments would be part of the ceasefire agreement, which commits the UN to boosting its forces in southern Lebanon to as many as 15,000 troops from about 2,000. The Lebanese government has pledged to deploy a force of a similar size to help ensure peace and stability in the region long dominated by Hezbollah.

Israel, Hezbollah agreed to talks: Annan

On Monday, Annan said that both Israel and Hezbollah have accepted his offer to mediate in a dispute over two captured Israeli soldiers.

Hezbollah's abduction of the soldiers in a cross-border raid touched off 34 days of Israeli military offensives in Lebanon and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel.

Speaking in Egypt during his 11-day Middle Eastern tour, Annan said the UN would attempt to broker a settlement on the issue of prisoners held by both sides.

"I will work with the parties and I will designate someone to work quietly and discreetly with them to find a solution ... and I will not even tell you the name of the person either today or tomorrow because I want him to be able to work discreetly," he said.

Annan said Israel has already named its representative to the talks and Hezbollah is in the process of selecting someone.

While Hezbollah has expressed interest in swapping prisoners, Israeli officials would not comment on Annan's statement. Their official position is to have no directions with Hezbollah because Israel - along with many other countries - considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist group. Yet the two sides have had dealings in the past. Two years ago, for example, Israel freed Lebanese men in return for the bodies of soldiers killed in battle.

No progress in dispute in Gaza

Annan also reported no progress in resolving a separate dispute between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas over a captured Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

He was snatched two months ago in a cross-border raid by Hamas militants based in Gaza.

The raid spurred Israel to launch repeated offensives in Gaza, leading to several hundred Palestinian deaths and Israel's detention of many Hamas members. A number of them are legislators who belong to the political wing of Hamas, which won the Palestinian Authority election in January.

A Cairo newspaper reported that Shalit is now being held in Egypt and could be freed soon as part of a larger prisoner exchange.

"These actions, while difficult, are essential to Intel becoming a more agile and efficient company, not just for this year or the next, but for years to come," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief executive officer.

Intel said its workforce would decline to 95,000 by the end of this year as a result of staff reductions, attrition and previously announced layoffs.

By mid-2007, the Intel workforce would drop to about 92,000 employees, 10,500 fewer than the company's staffing level at the end of the second quarter of 2006.

The chip maker also planned to cut costs in merchandising, capital and materials, according to Intel spokesman Mark Pettinger, to generate savings of approximately two billion dollars in 2007. In 2008 the company expects savings from this restructuring to grow to approximately three billion dollars annually.

In July Intel announced a management shake-up on the heels of a lackluster earnings report and the laying off of 1,000 managers at its facilities worldwide.

The job cuts and re-shuffling of executives resulted from an internal efficiency study the company began in April, according to Otellini.

"It is streamlining the bureaucracy," Pettinger told AFP. "It wasn't just about cutting headcount; it was about making Intel a leaner, more efficient company in terms of everything."

While the deepest cuts are now finished, Intel would remain on watch for ways to reduce costs, Pettinger said.

"Intel will stay on top of this," Pettinger said. "There is going to be more monitoring. Intel will be diligent in looking for other ways to reduce costs."

Intel's drive to trim costs and improve efficiency came as it waged a price war with Silicon Valley rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

AMD had begun eating away at Intel's market share before Intel unveiled its family of speedy, power-sipping dual-core Xeon processors in July.

Intel cut prices on earlier model processors to clear the way for millions of Xeon chips being pumped out of its facilities worldwide.

AMD responded in August by unveiling its latest entry in its race with Intel to build faster, energy-efficient multi-core computer chips.

AMD's dual-core Next-Generation Opteron processor was billed as setting the stage for an AMD quad-core chip to be released in the middle of 2007.

Intel has announced it will begin selling quad-core processors by the end of this year.

Santa Clara, California-based Intel reported a 57 percent dive in its second quarter earnings this year on weaker demand. It scored a 13 percent drop in revenue from the same quarter last year.

Total company revenue worldwide in 2005 was 38.8 billion dollars.

Materazzi said that when Zidane offered to give him his France jersey after the final whistle in response persistent shirt-tugging by the Italian, he had replied: "I would prefer your sister."

Materazzi insisted however that he should not blamed for sparking the incident. "I did not cause it," he told Gazzetta. "I answered verbally with a provocation to defend myself.

"Yes, I was tugging his shirt, but when he said to me scornfully 'If you want my shirt so much I'll give it to you afterwards,' is that not a provocation? I answered that I'd prefer his sister, it's true.

"It's not a particularly nice thing to say, I recognise that. But loads of players say worse things ... I didn't even know he had a sister before all this happened," added Materazzi, who is suspended for Italy's Euro 2008 qualifying rematch with France in Paris on Wednesday.

Zidane was given a three-match ban for his part in the spat, but as he had retired from football he was made to do three days of community service instead.

Materazzi said he would have been happy to do three years of community service if it meant he could play against France on Wednesday before criticising FIFA for what he felt was favouritism shown towards Zidane.

"I only know that I was the one head-butted and I got a two-match ban," said the Inter Milan defender.

"I would have done three months or even three years of community service to be on the pitch at Saint Denis. But I definitely count less than Zidane."

Zidane has never specified what Materazzi said to him and has pointedly refused to apologise to his opponent.

Asked on July 12 what exactly Materazzi had said, Zidane would only offer that it was "very personal and concerned his mother and his sister."

"You hear those things once and you try to walk away. That's what I wanted to do because I am retiring. You hear it a second time and then a third time ..."