Hurricane Gustav has strengthened into an extremely dangerous storm and will remain a major hurricane by the time it reaches the central Gulf Coast early in the week. Uncertainty still remains about whether Hanna will add to the misery by late next week.

By early Saturday afternoon, Hurricane Gustav strengthened into a Category 4 storm, packing winds near 145 mph. The dangerous hurricane will slam western Cuba this afternoon.

The AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center reports that Gustav will cross the western tip of Cuba this afternoon as a Category 4 or possibly even a Category 5 storm. Drenching rain of 6 to 12 inches and local amounts of more than 20 inches will fall over western and central portions of the island with winds that could exceed 155 mph. The storm surge could be greater than 20 feet near where the eye crosses the island.

The trek across the western tip of Cuba is not expected to greatly weaken the storm. In fact, Gustav is forecast to maintain Category 4 status through Sunday morning in the Gulf of Mexico.

The current forecast takes the eye of Gustav into the coast of Louisiana, west of the Mississippi Delta, late on Monday or early on Tuesday. However, all interests along the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to South Texas should monitor Gustav and prepare accordingly.

The heavy rain and winds from Gustav will test levees breached during Hurricane Katrina. However, the storm surge will be less across Lake Ponchartrain if the hurricane makes landfall over the southwestern coast of Louisiana.

The track of Hurricane Katrina to the east of New Orleans first caused a storm surge into the city from the south out of the Gulf of Mexico. Then wind out of the north shoved the water south across Lake Ponchartrain. This was the worst-case scenario for New Orleans, since it got a double whammy in regard to storm surge.

Federal, state and local officials are vowing that Gustav will not be a repeat of Katrina. The governors of Louisiana and Texas have issued disaster declarations in their states, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on Thursday declared a state of emergency.

According to the Times Picayune in New Orleans, Gov. Bobby Jindal said that Louisiana will open contraflow traffic patterns on interstates by “early, early Sunday morning”. Preparations are being made to evacuate people out of at least 19 parishes where a state of emergency has been declared.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has positioned personnel and supplies across the South, mindful of the intense criticism leveled at the agency in the wake of Katrina.

FEMA Director R. David Paulison tried to reassure nervous residents that the levees protecting New Orleans are stronger than they were before Katrina. However, he added that dangers remain that make it critical for residents to follow evacuation orders.

On top of the destruction Gustav poses to the land in the central Gulf, the hurricane will have a major impact on oil and natural gas operations in the gulf, as well as refining operations along the Gulf Coast.

Shell and BP are working toward a full evacuation of assets in the Gulf by this afternoon. ExxonMobil has initiated evacuation of nonessential personnel and is “prepared to evacuate remaining personnel from offshore facilities safely in advance of the storm.” Gross production of nearly 3,000 barrels a day of oil and 50 million cubic feet a day of natural gas has been shut in.

Fears of Gustav have caused hikes in global crude prices and wholesale gasoline prices in the gulf region. Analysts say the storm could send pump prices back over $4 a gallon.

According to Bloomberg News, Gulf Coast states contain 56 operable refineries that account for almost half of the U.S. refining capacity.

Katrina, which reached Category 5 before making landfall as a Category 3 storm, closed 95 percent of offshore output in the Gulf of Mexico. Almost 19 percent of U.S. refining capacity was idled because of damage and blackouts caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Gustav will have an impact on agriculture in the Deep South. According to Expert Senior Meteorologist and AccuWeather.com agriculture expert Dale Mohler, it will be bad news for cotton farmers in the Mississippi Delta if the storm tracks into New Orleans. Meanwhile, if it makes landfall farther west, crops in the Delta could be spared.

While the national focus is on Gustav, AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center forecasters are also monitoring Tropical Storm Hanna. This morning the tropical storm is located 240 miles north of San Juan, Puerto Rico, moving to the west at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds estimated at close to 50 mph.

There are two potential scenarios for Hanna early next week. Energy moving over the Atlantic from the East Coast could absorb the storm, taking it north and eventually out to sea. The more likely scenario is that Hanna will move around the belly of high pressure over the East through the Straits of Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico. It could become a major hurricane later next week.

(CNN) — Sen. John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket for the White House, the campaign said Friday.

Palin, 44, is a first-term governor who unseated incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2006 and went on to defeat former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, in the general election.

She will be the first woman to be nominated for vice president as a Republican, and only the second to run for vice president on a major party ticket, after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Palin also will be the first Alaskan to be on the ticket for either party.

Palin made her name in part by backing tough ethical standards for politicians. During the first legislative session after her election, her administration passed a state ethics law overhaul.

Nevertheless, she is under investigation for her firing of a state official, Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. She has been instructed to hand over documents and recordings of telephone conversations as part of the probe, which grew out of allegations she sacked Monegan for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law from the state police.

Palin acknowledged that a member of her staff made a call to a trooper in which the staffer suggested he was speaking for the governor.

Palin has admitted that the call could be interpreted as pressure to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who was locked in a child-custody battle with Palin’s sister.

“I am truly disappointed and disturbed to learn that a member of this administration contacted the Department of Public Safety regarding Trooper Wooten,” Palin said. “At no time did I authorize any member of my staff to do so.”

Palin suspended the staffer who made the call.

McCain is making a concerted effort to reach out to former supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton who are unhappy with the choice of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee.

Reacting to the choice of Palin, Ferraro said, “I believe that people will look back and assess how Hillary was treated by the media during the campaign primaries. And it remains to be seen whether or not the ugly head of sexism — in the media — will raise its head again.”

Most of the speculation about McCain’s choice had focused on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas also had been mentioned as a possible long shot if McCain were seeking a woman as his running mate.

Palin is the youngest person ever elected governor of Alaska and the first woman to hold the job.

She was dubbed “Sarah Barracuda” by opponents when she was mayor of the town of Wasilla, Alaska, resurrecting a nickname she earned as a state champion high school basketball player, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

She was elected mayor of Wasilla at 32, defeating a three-term incumbent. Wasilla had a population of 5,469 in 2000, according to the city’s Web site.

She is married to Todd Palin, an oil production operator on Alaska’s North Slope. They have five children, including a son who enlisted in the Army last year.

Little known outside Alaska, Sarah Palin is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and takes part in two of Alaska’s popular pastimes — fishing and hunting, according to her biography on the state governor’s Web site.

Palin has focused on energy and natural resources policy during her short stint in office, and she is known for her support of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a position opposed by McCain but supported by many grass-roots Republicans.

Born in Idaho, she is a longtime Alaskan and a Protestant. Her biography says she arrived in Alaska in 1964 “when her parents came to teach school in Skagway.”

She graduated from Wasilla High School in 1982 and received a bachelor of science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987.

Congressional Quarterly said her past occupations included being a commercial fishing company owner, outdoor recreational equipment company owner and sports reporter.

Palin also made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor in 2002, Congressional Quarterly said. iReport.com: McCain’s pick called “a stroke of genius”

The last vice presidential nominee from a major party with less than two years’ experience in statewide or federal office was Spiro Agnew 40 years ago. Richard Nixon picked Agnew, who had been elected as Maryland’s governor in 1966 and inaugurated in January 1967, to be his running mate in August 1968. Agnew’s previous experience had been at the county level.

Agnew also was the last sitting governor to be chosen as a major party’s vice presidential nominee.

In a presentation made at Nvidia’s NVISION show this week, Adam and Jamie unveiled a 1100 barrel paintball gun and—in an instant—painted a pretty convincing (if slightly drippy) Mona Lisa. In typical MythBusters fashion, the incredibly elaborate experiment was only tenuously linked to their hypothesis. The presentation was intended to represent the difference in operation between single and multicore processors, referring to current gen CPUs versus GPUs, respectively.

Of course, the reality of parallel computing is much more complex than the MythBusters are making it seem here, but as with many of the experiments on their TV show, the sheer ridiculousness of this demonstration makes its questionable veracity completely, totally, seriously excusable. Now that they’ve built this thing, the MythBusters have a clear and undeniable responsibility to turn it on a human and put the results on TV. Thanks in advance, guys.

Thanks Nick

SOCHI, Russia (CNN) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush — although he presented no evidence to back it up.

“U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict,” Putin said. “They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino blasted Putin’s statements, saying they were “patently false.”

“To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational,” she said.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood concurred, and labeled Putin’s statements as “ludicrous.”

“Russia is responsible for the crisis,” Wood said in an off-camera meeting with reporters in Washington on Thursday. “For the Russians to say they are not responsible for what happened in Georgia is ludicrous. … Russia is to blame for this crisis and the world is responding to what Russia has done.”

When told that many diplomats in the United States and Europe blame Russia for provoking the conflict and for invading Georgia, Putin said Russia had no choice but to invade Georgia after dozens of its peacekeepers in South Ossetia were killed. He told Chance it was to avert a human calamity. iReport.com: First-person accounts from the center of the conflict

The former Russian president, still considered the most powerful man in the country, said he was disappointed the U.S. had not done more to stop Georgia’s attack.

Putin recalled he was watching the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia unfold when he was at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games on August 8.

He said he spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush, also attending, who told the Russian prime minister he didn’t want war — but Putin spoke to CNN of his disappointment that the U.S. administration didn’t do more to stop Georgia early in the conflict.

Also Thursday Putin announced economic measures which he said were unrelated to the fighting with Georgia. Nineteen U.S. poultry meat companies would be banned from exporting their products to Russia because they had failed health and safety tests, and 29 other companies had been warned to improve their standards or face the same ban, Putin said.

Putin said Russia’s health and agricultural ministries had randomly tested the poultry products and found them to be full of antibiotics and arsenic.

While Putin repeated that the bans were not related to the Georgian conflict, they indicate the measures some Western countries — particularly in Europe — fear if Russia goes on a diplomatic offensive.

Russia is trying to counterbalance mounting pressure from the West over its military action in Georgia and its recognition of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But Russia’s hopes of winning international support for its actions in Georgia were dashed Thursday, when China and other Asian nations expressed concern about tension in the region.

The joint declaration from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, said the countries hoped any further conflict could be resolved peacefully.

“The presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of respect for historic and cultural traditions of every country and efforts aimed at preserving the unity of a state and its territorial integrity,” the declaration said, The Associated Press reported.

“Placing the emphasis exclusively on the use of force has no prospects and hinders a comprehensive settlement of local conflicts,” AP reported the group as saying.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had appealed to the SCO at a summit in Tajikistan Thursday to support its actions, saying it would serve as a “serious signal for those who are trying to justify the aggression.”

On Wednesday a U.S. ship carrying aid docked in Georgia, while Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband traveled to the Ukraine, which is worried about Russia’s intentions in the region, to offer the UK’s support.

Miliband equated Moscow’s offensive in Georgia with the Soviet tanks that invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring democratic reforms in 1968, and demanded Russia “change course,” AP reported. iReport.com: Do remember the Cold War?