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PORT-AU-PRINCE-Tropical Storm Gustav drifted away from Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday after killing 22 people and was set to become a dangerously powerful hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields.Oil prices rose as Gustav appeared likely to be the first serious storm in three years to threaten U.S. energy facilities in the Gulf, home to a quarter of U.S. oil production and 15 percent of its natural gas production.While the storm's eventual U.S. landfall could be anywhere from the Florida panhandle to Texas, Gustav's most likely track is directly toward New Orleans, the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Gustav was projected to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast around Monday, two days after the third anniversary of Katrina, which killed 1,500 people and caused at least $80 billion in damage in several states. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal put New Orleans residents on alert, saying evacuations could begin as early as Friday. Energy companies began ferrying workers from offshore oil rigs.The seventh storm of what experts have predicted will be an unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season lingered for a day near Haiti, an ominous development for the impoverished nation of 9 million people where hillsides have been stripped of trees and heavy rains frequently cause disastrous mudslides.Gustav's torrential rains triggered floods and mudslides that killed at least eight people in the Dominican Republic and 14 in neighboring Haiti, officials said.Among the dead in Haiti were at least three people killed in a mudslide, a woman who died trying to cross a river and another person hit by a falling tree, officials said.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
