Along the Pacific coast near San Diego in recent days, lots of nature lovers have been gathering to watch for sharks — including great whites. Several sightings have experts saying that great white population in the waters off southern California may be on the rise, the Los Angeles Times says.

The Pima County (Arizona) Republican Party's decision to raffle off a Glock 23 .40-caliber handgun has generated some sharp criticism because not only is Pima County part of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' district, but also because the gun used in January to kill six people and wound 13 others, including Giffords, was a Glock.

A slow-moving depression strengthened into a tropical storm as it slogged toward the Gulf Coast on Friday, packing walloping rains that could drench the region with up to 20 inches.

Tropical Storm Lee, the 12^th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, moving northwest at just 2 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The storm's center is expected to approach the Louisiana coast over the weekend.

There was no net growth in jobs in August and the nation's unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported.

Good morning.

The most anticipated story of the day, which we reported about earlier, is the 8:30 a.m. ET release of the August employment report.

We've also already posted about a strong earthquake that was detected in the last hour off the Aleutian Islands.

This just happened:

A strong earthquake (preliminary magnitude of 7.1 later revised to 6.8) has been detected in a remote area of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska, about 1,000 miles west southwest of Anchorage, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.

The August employment report, due for release at 8:30 a.m. ET, is expected to show that the jobless rate stayed at 9.1 percent, or ticked higher, and that fewer jobs were added to payrolls than in July, both Reuters and Bloomberg News are reporting.

Each news service is basing their forecasts on surveys of economist.

Nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says that terrorists have been dealt a serious blow by the United States.

But he also cautions Americans not to worry so much about terrorism that "we start to lose the essence of who we are as an open, freedom-loving people, welcoming to the rest of the world."

People living in Afghanistan 10 years ago had little electricity, few radios and almost no televisions to alert them of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington. The news didn't really reach across the country until the American bombing campaign and invasion began a month later. The fall of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001 and the flood of international aid raised hope in Afghanistan.

Cuba's capital, Havana, has good public safety and terrible public transportation. That has led to a curious form of travel, especially for young women in the city: urban hitchhiking.

At major intersections, women climb in and out of strangers' cars, commuting to work or running errands in a way that would be almost unthinkable in any other Latin American capital.