* Fred's top winds drop to below hurricane status * Forecasters see storm gradually fading (Updates with downgrade to tropical storm) MIAMI, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Hurricane Fred weakened to a tropical storm in the eastern Atlantic on Friday and forecasters expected it to fade in the coming days. Fred's maximum sustained winds fell to 70 mph (110 kph), meaning it was no longer a hurricane. The storm has been deteriorating gradually since Thursday due to high wind shear -- a difference in wind speeds at different altitudes -- that sapped its strength, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. "Weakening is forecast and Fred will gradually fade," the Miami-based center said. Fred, the sixth storm of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season, was thousands of miles (km) east of the populous U.S. East Coast and the storm-vulnerable oil and gas fields of the Gulf of Mexico, and was expected to die by Tuesday without affecting land. Fred, which was meandering slowly north, peaked on Wednesday when its top winds reached 120 mph (195 kph), making it a "major" Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale. It was the second major hurricane of the Atlantic season. Elsewhere, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said a low pressure system near the Texas Coast had a low chance -- less than 30 percent -- of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours. The energy market was watching the low because it formed in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico. (Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Peter Cooney)
Police and rescue team members storm a Boeing 737 plane at the international airport in Mexico City, September 9, 2009. Hijackers seized the AeroMexico passenger plane in Mexico with more than ...
