Republican Lobbyist Jack Abramhoff Had Ties to the White House & Enter Florida at Your Own Risk in Today's Details 9/23/05

- Rita weakened during the day to a Category 3 hurricane, down from a fearsome Category 5 with 175 mph winds on Wednesday. It was expected to come ashore early Saturday along the upper Texas-Louisiana coast on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit. But it could plow instead into the oil and chemical centers of Beaumont and Port Arthur, about 75 miles east of Houston.

- Hurricane Rita's steady rains sent water pouring through breaches in a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans' flooding nightmare.

- A bus carrying nursing home residents fleeing from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was rocked by explosions Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 24 people, authorities said. "Deputies were unable to get everyone off the bus," Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said.

- Heeding days of dire warnings about Hurricane Rita, as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

- A federal investigation into Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's sale of HCA Inc. stock widened on Friday when the largest U.S. hospital chain said federal prosecutors had subpoenaed the company for related documents.

-Actor Warren Beatty leveled a blistering political assault on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday night, accusing him of governing "by show, by spin, by cosmetics and photos ops" while imposing Bush administration policies on California.

- Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.

- Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.

- Embattled Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford resigned Friday, telling his staff that at age 67 it was time to step aside.

- Enter Florida at your own risk. That's the message supporters of gun control are sending in an ad campaign designed to warn visitors about Florida's new law allowing victims to shoot first in self-defense without fear of prosecution.