"We need direction as to where to direct our guests and our employees, as soon as possible," she said An officer told the woman: "We're doing our best .. we're trying to get up to you, dear. "I would wait 'til further notice," came the reply from the officer "OK, all right," the caller then said. "Don't evacuate." He then hung up.The transcripts ­ released last night after a judge agreed to a request from the New York Times that they should be made available ­ are certain to reignite the controversy about the failure to evacuate the second of the towers. No one in the top floors of the tower survived after a second plane hit around the 80th floor shortly after 9am and some survivors who fled before the plane struck said they had been told to stay in the building.The anguish and desperation contained within the 2,000 pages is also certain to horrify many of the relatives of the near-3,000 people who died that morning when 19 al-Qa'ida operatives hijacked four airliners and carried out a devastating terror attack.In another call to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, one man got through to officers from the roof of one building, while the assistant manager of the Windows on the World restaurant called to report that people were stranded on the 106th floor. One man called police from the 92nd floor of the second tower and asked: "We need to know if we need to get out of here, because we know there's an explosion." The officer he spoke to asked if there was smoke on the floor, and the caller replied that there was not "Should we stay or should we not?" the caller then asked. Transcripts of desperate conversations between people trapped in the World Trade Centre on 11 September, 2001, and the emergency services reveal that people in the second tower were told to stay where they were even as the first tower began to smoke and burn after it was struck by a hijacked airliner. While the full impact of that advice will likely never be known, it is likely some people who could have fled, lost their lives when the second plane struck because they had stayed where they were.Transcripts of the increasingly frantic calls to the emergency services make clear the panic of the after the first plane hit at 8.46am. Mr Snyder said he believed this has actually helped to reduce the number being stolen.

He said: "Most hotel towels were more interesting 20 or 30 years ago when they had the name of the hotel on them.". along the way I have lost the girl, but I still have the towel!"Mr Snyder estimated that the Holiday Inn, which traditionally used its green striped logo on its towels, loses about 500,000 such items to light fingers every year. The chain, like most others, has since stopped using the logo. In fact, so long ago I don't remember how I got it, but I suppose it did follow me home," wrote Marcelle Roise, of Alamo, California. "It is my dog's towel, and she is the 3rd generation of dogs to use it."Raul Malacara, from Monterrey, Texas, wrote: "I took my first and only (I swear) Holiday Inn towel from the suite at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Monterrey, Mexico, where I spent my first honeymoon night I took it as a memento ... We don't want people living with guilt, so we're simply letting Americans know that all is forgiven."Since the amnesty was announced earlier this year, the chain has been gathering stories from people who stole towels and felt the need to explain why they took them."I believe my towel comes from the Fifties. But while towel theft may be nothing new, a "towel amnesty" proclaimed by a hotel chain was probably the first such opportunity for the thieves to "fess up" and come clean.Mark Snyder, an advertising manager for the Holiday Inn chain, which organised the amnesty as a piece of self-confessed marketing, said: "Everyone has a Holiday Inn story, and some of those stories involve our towels going home with our guests We're not asking for them back.

One man took his as a souvenir of his honeymoon, another person took one to dry the dog. Yet another ended up being used as a makeshift costume for a child's school play. The murder was said by Italian Mafia-watchers to be a deliberate imitation of the killing of a Mafia boss in the United States, Alberto Anastasia, who was shot dead by mobsters as he sat in a barber's chair in New York in 1957.. The man killed, Carmele Milioti, 51, was believed to be the right-hand man of Leoluca Bagarella, a close lieutenant of Riina's. He was gunned down in a barber shop in Favara near Agrigento last month.

Roberto Centaro, president of the government's Anti-Mafia Commission and a member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, referring to the recent murder of a Mafia-linked businessman, commented: "If the conflicts between Riina and Provenzano have been healed, it's hard to explain that killing."Palermo's chief prosecutor, Piero Grasso seemed to agree and said that the slaying might signal the start of a new bloody mob turf war. One voice immediately cast doubt on the conclusions of the interior ministry report. Non-Italian gangs have also made a strong impact, with North Africans the most numerous, as well as Nigerians, Turks, Chinese and Russians.But the most menacing, the report says, are the Albanians, who moved into Italy in strength a decade ago, following the collapse of Albania's isolationist Communist regime.The ruthless violence of the Albanians is said to have intimidated even Cosa Nostra. The government's report claims that Albanian criminals are now active all over the country, although not in Sicily, dominating the trade in smuggled illegal immigrants.Not everyone accepts that the Sicilian Mafia is poised for a resurgence. But beyond Sicily, Italy has seen the growth of a host of other criminal gangs which have multiplied in power and personnel in recent years, according to the report, at the Mafia's expense.The most powerful gang nationwide, says the report, is the "Ndrangheta", the equivalent of the Mafia based in Calabria, in the far south, who are said to dominate the cocaine trade throughout the country with their close ties to gangs in Colombia.