A massive relief and rescue operation began last night after Hurricane Rita smashed into the US Gulf Coast, blasting communities along the Texas-Louisiana border with raging winds, sheets of rain and storm surges, which left many inland areas under feet of water. Experts are predicting still more hurricanes, in what could be the worst year for the storms since records began. The US government’s official National Hurricane Center and scientists at Colorado State University, who predicted both Katrina and Rita, expect several more named storms in the remaining two months of the hurricane season. And the World Meteorological Organisation believes that the record of 21, set in 1933, may be beaten. Some of these storms could hit the US, and experts say New York could be the next city to be devastated. The area around the Big Apple is listed by the Center as the fifth most vulnerable in the country, after New Orleans, the Florida Keys, Tampa in Florida and Galveston in Texas, all targeted by hurricanes in the past two years.

Max Mayfield, director of the Center, told Congress that Katrina “will not be the last major hurricane to hit a vulnerable area, and New Orleans is not the only location vulnerable to a large disaster from a land-falling hurricane”.Local experts say that such a catastrophe is “inevitable”, and the New York City authorities warn that it could bring a 30ft-high storm surge crashing into Manhattan.The city says at least a million New Yorkers are at risk, and has drawn up plans to evacuate those within 10 blocks of the water. In late summer, children of Russian diplomats were mugged in Warsaw, an incident which brought a harsh reaction from the Kremlin and which was followed by attacks in Moscow on two Polish diplomats and a journalist..

A Law and Justice victory on Sunday could thus leave Poland in a state of limbo, waiting to see who would become president, and consequently, prime minister.Having the Kaczynskis in power would probably mean a tougher line towards Russia, with whom relations recently have been strained. The party came to power with 41 per cent support in 2001, but its popularity has plummeted amid a string of scandals and its failure to tackle the EU’s highest jobless rate, now nearly 18 per cent.If the outcome is very close, the choice over who will be prime minister could be complicated by the fact that Poland also faces presidential elections on 9 October, with a likely run-off vote two weeks later. Warsaw’s mayor Lech Kaczynski, the identical twin brother of the Law and Justice leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is one of two leading candidates in the presidential race.Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said that if his brother becomes president, he would renounce the premiership in order to spare Poland the confusion of two major leaders who look alike. But an earlier survey gave Law and Justice a slight edge, suggesting Poland could mimic Germany, where voters last weekend got cold feet about pro-market changes at the ballot box.The poll gave the governing Democratic Left Alliance only 4 per cent.

But it remains unclear if pro-market economic liberals devoted to reducing state bureaucracy, or a socially conservative party determined to preserve welfare-state protections, will emerge with the upper hand.
The pro-market Civic Platform had 34 per cent support in a poll published on Friday, ahead of the conservative Law and Justice party on 29 per cent. Two centre-right parties are set to deliver a stinging defeat to Poland’s governing ex-Communists in today’s general election, touching off a struggle over economic policy in the EU’s biggest new member. The front-running parties say they will form a coalition, which polls suggest could control two-thirds of Poland’s parliament. He was last seen on a street in Damascus in 1992, and was believed to be living in a guarded apartment in the Syrian capital. He would now be aged 92.* Aribert Heim, 91, “the butcher of Mauthausen”. A former concentration camp doctor who injected petrol into Jewish prisoners and amputated body parts without painkillers, he is believed to live among the many German pensioners on the Costa Blanca in Spain There is a £95,000 bounty on his head..

Brunner is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of 130,000 Jews. “That’s why I find the term ‘truth warrior’ more accurate than Nazi hunter.” When there are no more Nazis left to hunt, Mr Zuroff says he will turn his efforts to rebutting historical revisionism and Holocaust denial.Despite Mr Zuroff’s work, the 50-year-long crusade of Simon Wiesenthal, who survived 12 concentration camps and Nazi prisons, and lost 89 members of his family, will remain unequalled.AT LARGE: THE TWO MAIN TARGETS* Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man. Wiesenthal kept track of sightings of former Nazis by sticking drawing pins in a map hung above his desk, and relied on a network of informants and personal contacts.But with time running out, Mr Zuroff has decided to throw money at the problem. Since many of Germany’s high-profile cases have been solved, his attention is on eastern Europe and the Baltic states, where many locals collaborated with the Nazis, believing it would bring them independence. Aided by a Miami-based Jewish charitable foundation, Mr Zuroff descends on east European capitals, holds high-profile press conferences, buys advertising space in newspapers and on billboards, sets up local hotlines and offers rewards of around £100,000 for tips that lead to prosecution.The initiative, which Mr Zuroff says is working “extremely well”, has spread to nine countries, including Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Romania, and was extended to Germany last year. It has thrown up the names of 380 suspects, some 79 of whom are under investigation by local prosecutors.”The truth is we have maybe five or six years left to get these former Nazis before they’re all dead,” admitted Mr Zuroff.

It was a surreal, amazing encounter.”The meeting prompted Mr Zuroff, 57, to ditch his academic career and become a full-time Nazi hunter. His approach is radically different to that adopted by Wiesenthal, who died in Vienna aged 96, but Mr Zuroff sees it as the most effective way of continuing his legacy.Operating on a shoestring in a cramped Vienna office, Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor, tracked down more than 1,100 fugitive Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for the death of millions of Jews. “I like to think that’s what he would have wanted.”The pair met in 1978 in Los Angeles at the premiere of the Wiesenthal-inspired film The Boys From Brazil “I was just so struck by him,” said Mr Zuroff. “He was this lonely fighter for justice, with incredible wit and perseverance in his crusade. Efraim Zuroff is putting cash bounties on the heads of fugitives accused of war crimes in an attempt to bring them rapidly to justice.