Florida

United States tennis captain Zina Garrison announced on Monday that Venus Williams, who missed the Australian Open with a left wrist injury, will play in the first round of the Fed Cup on April 21-22 at the Delray Beach Stadium and Tennis Centre.

Serena and Venus Williams did not violate a contract with two promoters by not appearing at a 2001 tennis event, a jury ruled on Thursday. Promoters said they lost millions of dollars because the stars did not play, but jurors agreed with the argument of their attorney that their father, Richard Williams, was not empowered to represent them when he made the deal.

The landing of the beleaguered Discovery space shuttle has been delayed due to low clouds over Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, Nasa announced this morning. The seven astronauts were originally preparing to land on Monday morning, but the bad weather put the landing back to later in the day.

The United States space agency Nasa will hope to lay the ghosts of the Columbia disaster to rest on Monday morning as it guides the shuttle Discovery back to earth at the end of the US’s first manned space mission for two-and-a-half years.

Nasa pledged to press ahead with its troubled space shuttle programme on Thursday night after its decision to ground the ageing fleet over safety fears raised new questions about the agency’s future direction. Shuttle managers now admit they may never be able to solve the debris problem that doomed the Columbia shuttle two years ago.

Nasa was facing fresh questions about the future of its shuttle programme on Wednesday night after it was forced to ground the fleet because the problem with falling debris that doomed Columbia two years ago had struck again during the launch of Discovery.

Nasa’s long-awaited return to manned spaceflight looked in jeopardy on Tuesday night after technicians accidentally chipped part of the space shuttle Discovery less than 24 hours before Wednesday’s scheduled lift off. The space agency worked frantically overnight to assess the damage.

Hurricane Dennis sent Gulf coast residents fleeing on Sunday, but spared the region the worst of the predicted devastation after it weakened shortly before landfall. The hurricane, which left 32 people in Haiti and Cuba dead, arrived in Alabama and northwestern Florida packing 192kph winds, pounding the beachfronts in an area that was hit by Hurricane Ivan just 10 months ago.

Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged woman at the centre of a right-to-die controversy in the United States, died on Thursday in a Florida hospice almost two weeks after her feeding tube was cut off, a spokesperson for her parents said.

The long avenues in West Palm Beach are deserted, stores are closed and shuttered, here and there a man struggles in the damp wind to board up his windows against the impending menace of Hurricane Frances, the worst storm to hit the state of Florida in 10 years. Frances should make landfall in Florida at 8pm local time on Saturday.