ChristiansUnite Forums

This is something, I have given much prayer, and though over. 2nd Timothy, and myself haven't done much in this area.

Luke 21:25 "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth the distress of nations, with great perplexity, over the sea and the roaring of the waves."      

Matthew 24:3-8  "And you will be hearing of wars an rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines, and pestilence's and earthquakes. "But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs."
___________________________________________________

The storm waves ripping boulders from our shores
By Nic Fleming
(Filed: 18/08/2004)

Giant storm waves already over 65ft high are getting bigger, occurring more frequently and eroding Britain's Atlantic coast, according to new research.
   

Rocks the size of Transit vans are being ripped from cliff faces and transported up to 50 yards inland in exposed areas such as Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles.

Piles of large boulders found inland behind cliffs were displaced by storm waves rather than by tsunamis (a series of waves generated by volcanic eruptions or earthquakes), landslides or sea level changes, as previously believed.

Jim Hanson, a coastal geomorphologist at the University of Glasgow, told delegates at the International Geographical Union congress in the city yesterday that the erosion was expected to accelerate because sea levels are rising and the coastline is sinking.

Mr Hanson said: "The distance these large boulders are being moved is spectacular. They are being ripped from cliffs up to 120ft above sea level and thrown about to form boulder beaches.

"These giant storm waves have either been overlooked to date, or interpreted as the products of tsunami.

"But the boulder ridges were formed in recent times and there are no records of recent tsunamis. Because sea levels are continuing to rise and larger waves are hitting the cliffs, the rate of modification of the coastline and creation of these boulder ridges is increasing."

The giant boulder beaches occur only in exposed, remote areas where sea levels are deep because the waves become smaller in shallower depths. The researchers examined sites such as Esha Ness and the Grind of the Navir in Shetland.

In the north Atlantic, waves in excess of 65ft occur more than 100 times a year, and 95ft waves occur on average once every 100 years.

The average winter wave height increased 15 per cent between 1985 and 1995 in the area to the west of the Shetland, and global sea levels have increased by a millimetre per year over the past century.

At 160ft above sea level, two ton rocks are displaced, at 65ft, five ton rocks are seen above the cliffs and 100 ton boulders have been moved at 40ft above sea level.

The research, a joint effort between the universities of Glasgow, St Andrews and Strathclyde, found that many of the boulder beaches have been formed relatively recently because of human debris found below them and lichen patterns on the rocks.

Stone huts on the Aran islands positioned 95ft above sea level were buried by boulders during a storm in 1839 known as the "Night of the Big Wind".

Previous research in Australia and the Caribbean has suggested similar effects there were caused by tsunamis. However, the last known tsunami in the North Atlantic occurred 4,900 years ago and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 produced only slight waves in Scotland.

The drilling ship Schiehallion based to the west of Shetland has been damaged several times recently by giant waves. It is now being designed with tougher plates.

Mr Hanson's team now plans to place pressure pads at the Grind of the Navir to measure the forces created by the giant waves.

He said: "We aim to install a test cliff with remote recording instruments, but we will not be hanging around there waiting. These places are definitely not the place to be hanging around having a picnic when these giant waves occur."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=0LV2EIZY1KADPQFIQMGSNAGAVCBQWJVC?
xml=/news/2004/08/18/nwave18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/18/ixhome.html
Please C&P the link to your browser window. I didn't like it when I had to move the scroll bar on the bottom.

Bob

Ship-sinking monster waves revealed by ESA satellites
 
21 July 2004
Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings. Results from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these 'rogue' waves and are now being used to study their origins.
 
Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in many such cases.

Mariners who survived similar encounters have had remarkable stories to tell. In February 1995 the cruiser liner Queen Elizabeth II met a 29-metre high rogue wave during a hurricane in the North Atlantic that Captain Ronald Warwick described as "a great wall of water… it looked as if we were going into the White Cliffs of Dover."

And within the week between February and March 2001 two hardened tourist cruisers – the Bremen and the Caledonian Star – had their bridge windows smashed by 30-metre rogue waves in the South Atlantic, the former ship left drifting without navigation or propulsion for a period of two hours.
 
 
   
Damage done by a rogue wave
   
"The incidents occurred less than a thousand kilometres apart from each other," said Wolfgang Rosenthal - Senior Scientist with the GKSS Forschungszentrum GmbH research centre, located in Geesthacht in Germany - who has studied rogue waves for years. "All the electronics were switched off on the Bremen as they drifted parallel to the waves, and until they were turned on again the crew were thinking it could have been their last day alive.

"The same phenomenon could have sunk many less lucky vessels: two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather'."

Offshore platforms have also been struck: on 1 January 1995 the Draupner oil rig in the North Sea was hit by a wave whose height was measured by an onboard laser device at 26 metres, with the highest waves around it reaching 12 metres.
 
 
Merchant ship
   
Giant wave in Bay of Biscay
   
Objective radar evidence from this and other platforms – radar data from the North Sea's Goma oilfield recorded 466 rogue wave encounters in 12 years - helped convert previously sceptical scientists, whose statistics showed such large deviations from the surrounding sea state should occur only once every 10000 years.

The fact that rogue waves actually take place relatively frequently had major safety and economic implications, since current ships and offshore platforms are built to withstand maximum wave heights of only 15 metres.

In December 2000 the European Union initiated a scientific project called MaxWave to confirm the widespread occurrence of rogue waves, model how they occur and consider their implications for ship and offshore structure design criteria. And as part of MaxWave, data from ESA's ERS radar satellites were first used to carry out a global rogue wave census.
 
 
ERS-1 and 2
   
ERS satellite
   
"Without aerial coverage from radar sensors we had no chance of finding anything," added Rosenthal, who headed the three-year MaxWave project. "All we had to go on was radar data collected from oil platforms. So we were interested in using ERS from the start."

ESA's twin spacecraft ERS-1 and 2 – launched in July 1991 and April 1995 respectively – both have a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) as their main instrument.

The SAR works in several different modes; while over the ocean it works in wave mode, acquiring 10 by 5 km 'imagettes' of the sea surface every 200 km.
 
 
   
Example of an imagette from ERS-2
   
These small imagettes are then mathematically transformed into averaged-out breakdowns of wave energy and direction, called ocean-wave spectra. ESA makes these spectra publicly available; they are useful for weather centres to improve the accuracy of their sea forecast models.

"The raw imagettes are not made available, but with their resolution of ten metres we believed they contained a wealth of useful information by themselves," said Rosenthal. "Ocean wave spectra provide mean sea state data but imagettes depict the individual wave heights including the extremes we were interested in.

"ESA provided us with three weeks' worth of data – around 30,000 separate imagettes – selected around the time that the Bremen and Caledonian Star were struck. The images were processed and automatically searched for extreme waves at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR)."
 
 
   
Giant wave detected in ERS-2 imagette data
   
Despite the relatively brief length of time the data covered, the MaxWave team identified more than ten individual giant waves around the globe above 25 metres in height.

"Having proved they existed, in higher numbers than anyone expected, the next step is to analyse if they can be forecasted," Rosenthal added. "MaxWave formally concluded at the end of last year although two lines of work are carrying on from it – one is to improve ship design by learning how ships are sunk, and the other is to examine more satellite data with a view to analysing if forecasting is possible."

A new research project called WaveAtlas will use two years worth of ERS imagettes to create a worldwide atlas of rogue wave events and carry out statistical analyses. The Principal Investigator is Susanne Lehner, Associate Professor in the Division of Applied Marine Physics at the University of Miami, who also worked on MaxWave while at DLR, with Rosental a co-investigator on the project.
 
 
"Looking through the imagettes ends up feeling like flying, because you can follow the sea state along the track of the satellite," Lehner said. "Other features like ice floes, oil slicks and ships are also visible on them, and so there's interest in using them for additional fields of study.

"Only radar satellites can provide the truly global data sampling needed for statistical analysis of the oceans, because they can see through clouds and darkness, unlike their optical counterparts. In stormy weather, radar images are thus the only relevant information available."

So far some patterns have already been found. Rogue waves are often associated with sites where ordinary waves encounter ocean currents and eddies. The strength of the current concentrates the wave energy, forming larger waves – Lehner compares it to an optical lens, concentrating energy in a small area.
 
 
   
Giant wave in a wave tank
   
This is especially true in the case of the notoriously dangerous Agulhas current off the east coast of South Africa, but rogue wave associations are also found with other currents such as the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, interacting with waves coming down from the Labrador Sea.

However the data show rogue waves also occur well away from currents, often occurring in the vicinity of weather fronts and lows. Sustained winds from long-lived storms exceeding 12 hours may enlarge waves moving at an optimum speed in sync with the wind – too quickly and they'd move ahead of the storm and dissipate, too slowly and they would fall behind.

"We know some of the reasons for the rogue waves, but we do not know them all," Rosenthal concluded. The WaveAtlas project is scheduled to continue until the first quarter of 2005.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html

Toll in Philippine Floods Tops 1,000
Thu Dec 2, 2004 07:42 AM ET

By Erik de Castro

REAL, Philippines (Reuters) - More than 1,000 people have been killed or are missing after mudslides and flash floods devastated three coastal towns in the Philippines, a military spokesman said Thursday.

Residents of towns hit by floods have now fled to higher ground to escape an approaching powerful typhoon whipping them with rain and wind and threatening more destruction.

"Based on reports from our troops in the field, they have listed 479 dead and 560 missing in three towns in Quezon province," said military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Buenaventura Pascual.

Typhoon Nanmadol had gained strength and was expected to make landfall close to the worst flood-affected areas on the eastern coast late Thursday, packing winds of 115 mph and on course to sweep through the main northern island of Luzon.

With flying conditions treacherous and roads cut off, disaster officials said they could do little to protect thousands of people made homeless by this week's floods and who were running short of food and drinking water.

"We are very concerned and we are not sure how we can avoid further casualties in these areas," Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman told Reuters.

"If you go on the slopes, the ground is very loose. If you go on (lower) ground, the water can rise and you might have mudslides."

Airlines canceled several domestic and international flights and thousands were stranded at ports after ferries halted services. Schools, government offices and Manila's foreign exchange market closed early.

Officials say at least 421 people have died and nearly 200 are missing after landslides and floods hit several areas of Luzon Monday. Illegal logging was blamed for exacerbating the disaster in which three coastal towns were devastated by a torrent of mud and logs in the wake of heavy rains.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said 37,400 families, or 168,000 people, had been affected.

The agriculture department said this week's storm and two others that hit the northern and central Philippines last month had caused an estimated 830 million pesos ($14.7 million) in damage to crops, livestock and fisheries.

Soliman said the government, deep in debt and struggling to cut its budget deficit, would have to spend 90 percent of the 1 billion pesos it sets aside annually for disaster relief.

APPEAL FOR HELP

Hundreds of people from the town of Real, where more than 100 people died, trudged through deep mud to try to reach higher ground before the typhoon hit.

Swathes of Real and two nearby towns, mostly inhabited by fishermen and farmers, were buried under chocolate-colored mud.

"We are very scared, that's why we are walking again to a higher area," said Lolita Serrano, 53, from the coastal area in Quezon province east of Manila.

"We haven't eaten in two days and haven't received anything from the government."

The government said it could not cope alone with the disaster and appealed for international assistance.

Japan said it would provide 15 million pesos worth of aid in the form of tents, generators, water tanks and other items. The U.S. Embassy announced it would give $100,000 to the Philippine Red Cross to provide assistance to flood victims.

Elma Aldea, an official at the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), said the U.S. military had promised to provide engineers to help to clear roads and build bridges.

"There is no potable water in these areas and we are afraid there will be an epidemic," she said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Restituto Padilla told Reuters that air force pilots had seen dozens of bodies floating in swollen rivers or buried in waist-deep mud.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered a nationwide crackdown Wednesday on illegal logging, blamed for several landslide disasters in recent years.

But many were skeptical, given that previous crackdowns had failed to stamp out the practice, which experts say is worth millions of dollars a year to smugglers and corrupt politicians.

"The problem is that after the public weeping and gnashing of teeth, everyone goes back to sleep," the Philippine Daily Inquirer said in an editorial.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6977413

Avoiding a Mideast Water War
By Mark Zeitoun
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page A23

JERUSALEM -- Last summer was long and hot in the West Bank. It was also very dry. Palestinian summers typically are dry, and water for crops and drinking has always been scarce. But for Palestinians suffering under a double yoke of drought-level rainfall and the Israeli occupation, these years are drier and thirstier than ever. The only permanent surface watercourses in the area are the Jordan River and the Lake of Tiberias. The waters are allocated, under the terms of a 1996 agreement, between Jordan and Israel. The Palestinians living along the Jordan River's west bank are entitled to not a drop of it.

Apart from springs, the only source of water available to Palestinians is the water in underground reservoirs (aquifers) directly under their feet. These aquifers also are a prime water source for Israel -- providing 40 percent of its groundwater requirements. The groundwater of the Gaza Strip is shallow and easy to pump but increasingly contaminated by untreated sewage and seawater. The groundwater in the West Bank is relatively "sweet" (of good quality) but -- as it is often located as deep as 1,500 feet below the earth's surface -- an enormous amount of energy is required to drill and pump it out. Of the aquifers that lie mainly under Israel, Israel draws 100 percent. Of those that lie mainly under the West Bank, Palestinians draw 20 percent, Israel 80 percent. The average Israeli uses roughly 350 cubic meters of water per year -- four times the amount used by the average Palestinian.

Most of this water is consumed for agricultural purposes. The agricultural sector represents 2 percent to 3 percent of the Israeli gross domestic product but 24 percent to 30 percent of the Palestinian GDP. A critical natural resource that is both scarce and unfairly distributed is a catalyst for conflict. And while the root of the conflict here has been over land, water is playing a growing role. The establishment of the Joint Water Committee (JWC) between Palestinian and Israeli technicians under the Oslo Accords seemed a step toward cooperation. But the power asymmetries between the two sides reflected in the JWC's structure contributed to the ineffectiveness of the JWC, and well before the Oslo Accords were dead, unregulated pumping and crippling destruction of the aquifers were underway. The "separation barrier" being built inside the West Bank is testament to just how bad things have become. The wall's effective annexation of the land in this prime water territory has put at least 50 wells out of service, so that about a third of the water once available to Palestinians from the Western Aquifer is now in Israeli hands. The result is felt both by the farmers who lose their crops and by all concerned about the viability of a future Palestinian state.

The illegal settlements, so costly to maintain and scorned by the mainstream Israeli public, make things worse. The construction of settlements and the deep wells necessary to sustain them continues. Private (Palestinian) water-tankers lumber up to the settlements every summer, looking for water to take back to villagers who are immobile in their sealed-off villages -- and thirsty. At a price between five and 15 times that charged by the Israeli government, there is always a settler willing to make the deal. The irony of this lucrative, illegal business is not lost on the Palestinian farmer: Not only is the water "stolen" from under his feet, he is then actually forced to buy it back from the "thief." Many farmers have reverted, in turn, to digging their own unregulated shallow wells. The end result: The aquifers are being pierced and overpumped at rates unparalleled in history. Meanwhile, Palestinian water infrastructure continues to suffer targeted destruction in various Israeli military operations.

While the situation is not sustainable, there is a way out. Israel's great advantage in political, military and economic power actually offers it the opportunity and responsibility to avoid more conflict. Water in this tiny, dry land must be managed by all parties concerned and can no longer be held hostage to destructive military, political or religious interests. Both sides must have rights to their resources, and a reformed cooperating institution must be established to allow for equitable joint water management. The situation could change from one of theft and finger-pointing to one of equal use and responsibility. Unless this happens, a technically resolvable issue will continue toward the sphere of unavoidable conflict.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/Avoiding%20a%20Mideast%20Water%20War.htm

EarthQuakes from my own study, show the average, has gone up. From http://forums.christiansunite.com/index.php?board=4;action=display;
threadid=3762
Post number 7

I am still keeping track, of earthquakes. The site I use is,
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/

Most earthquake activeity is centered around the "Ring of Fire" area. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/

Right as I checked, they have had an earthquake in Mexico. Less then 1 hour ago, so I guess you will hear, about it in the morning.
________________________________________________
Northern Japan hit by new powerful quake
Mon Dec 6, 2:11 PM ET
Science - AFP

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido was jolted by a new powerful earthquake registering 6.9 on the Richter scale, lightly injuring four people, days after a tremor of similar magnitude.

The quake struck a relatively deep 46 kilometers (28 miles) below sea level in the ocean just east of the island's tip, the Japan Meteorological Agency said in revised measurements.

The agency issued a warning for tsunami tidal waves which it called off 40 minutes later at 11:55 pm (1455 GMT).

Two men, a nine-year-old boy and a 77-year-old woman suffered minor injuries from the impact felt in towns in Hokkaido, Kyodo News agency reported, quoting local rescue and hospital authorities.

Train services were temporarily called off as inspectors looked to see if the rail lines sustained any damage, Kyodo News said.

An earthquake of 7.1 on the Richter scale hit Hokkaido on November 29, injuring 17 people in a new sign of seismic activity in tremor-prone Japan.

On October 23, the central region of Niigata was rocked by a temblor registering 6.8 on the Richter scale followed by hundreds of aftershocks, killing 40 people in Japan's deadliest quake in a decade.

The Niigata quake caused so much devastation because it struck a shallow 13 kilometers (nine miles) under the surface near population centers.

Next month marks the 10th anniversary of the earthquake in the western city of Kobe, which killed 6,433 people and prompted Japan to re-examine the way it conducts relief operations for major disasters.

Experts said Japan had a quicker response time after the Niigata quake, with relief supplies expedited and temporary shelters set up.

Tokyo, which felt the impact of the Niigata quake, has set up a computer program that will automatically identify areas to halt trains and vehicular traffic in the event of any tremor of 4.0 on the Richter scale or higher.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1540&ncid=1540&e=6&u=/
afp/20041206/sc_afp/japan_quake_041206191113

THREE VOLCANOES STIRRING
11.9.2004 17:02:43
No less than three of Icelands most active volcanoes seem to be winding up for action. The three sites are Mt. Hekla, probably Icelands most famous, Katla and Grímsvötn, which are both subglacial, the former under Mýrdalsjökull and the latter under Vatnajökull, and when they blow their tops vast flooding sweeps all before it over the vast black sands on the south coast.

According to geologists, all the sites show distictive details that point to looming outbursts, all have had the usual consistent tremors, all have had the usual "landris" as we call it, when the earths surface creeps upward, pointing to great pressure from lava beneath. And, as far as Hekla is concerned, streams at the foot of the mountain that usually dry up before eruptions, have been dry all summer.

The geologists are not saying that the volcanoes will erupt tomorrow or even in half an hour, but they are not saying either that they will not. But something is brewing, no doubt about that.

http://www.lax-a.is/news/default.asp?id=138

Also, to keep up on volcanic eruptions.
www.swvrc.org/

Has several different links, on site useful for beginners.

Global warming induces more typhoons
By HENRYLITO D. TACIO

The four typhoons - Unding, Violeta, Winnie and Yoyong - that stormed the Philippines recently were just a foretaste of forthcoming disasters. Some experts claim the typhoons could be clear signs of the effects of global warming.

"I believe that the weather-related disasters we are having are due to global climate change," says Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, the executive director of the Laguna-based Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development. "The unusual heavy rains we are experiencing are an indication of this."

Elisea Gozon, former environment secretary, also blamed global warming for the series of landslides and floods that wrought death and destruction in the central and southern Philippines shortly before Christmas last year.

"One should, however, point out that this unusually heavy rain is one concrete manifestation of climate change," Gozun said. "Indeed, weather patterns all over the world have been changing - brought about by man's excessive release of greenhouse gases."

Climate change has been blamed for the increasingly erratic weather patterns being seen around the world. "The recent typhoons should serve as a wake-up call for everyone to prepare for the impact of climate change," Dr. Guerrero said.

Dr. Ute Collier, head of the climate change program of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, said the evidence to show recent extreme weather events are the result of global warming was overwhelming.

"We got leading scientists to investigate (the evidence) - we wanted scientists because they're often reluctant to link events such as more floods and the disappearance of Arctic ice to climate change - and they've said that climate change is clearly having an impact on the frequency and intensity of natural disasters," Collier said.

Climate change is indeed bad news for the Philippines. A humid tropical country, it is highly dependent on rainfall and its distribution for agricultural production. "The present day variability of rainfall is very high with projected increase in the frequency of severe weather distortions like typhoons, floods, storm surges, and expected sea level rise," says the Tata Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)

According to the New Delhi-based TERI, rich rice- and corn-producing plains of several major river basins of the country, like Cagayan, the Ango, and Pampanga, are now becoming highly vulnerable to floods. Equally vulnerable are the multi-purpose water reservoirs where sedimentation would be accelerated, thus escalating the cost of hydroelectric and irrigation dam management.

"Flooding in the Philippines is brought about by intense precipitation," says TERI, a developing-country institution deeply committed to every aspect of sustainable development.

Extreme dry conditions in the country prevail during the dry season, especially, during El Niño Southern Oscillation episodes. Scientists claim that global warming also triggers the El Niño phenomenon.

During the first half of 2005, the country will experience "a weak but still substantially disruptive" El Niño, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA).

"(This) El Niño is considerably weaker than the 1997-1998 episode, hence the impact is expected to be lesser," said Prisco D. Nilo, of the weather bureau's Operations and Services.

Scientists say worldwide impacts of global warming - rising sea levels, volatile climate changes with increased El Niños and La Niñas, flooding and droughts, coral bleaching, and shifts in crop productivity - are now unstoppable even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically cut.

"It's not a pretty picture," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy adviser with Greenpeace in Amsterdam.

Already, scientists are predicting more extreme rainfall and greater flooding in this century. To substantiate this claim, a research reviewed data on 100-year floods that occurred in the last century for 29 major river basins around the world.

"By definition, a 100-year flood is really extreme and rare," said Dr. Christopher Milly, an atmospheric scientist at the US Geological Survey, who headed the study. "What we can observe when we look at those records is that the number of these extreme flooding events occurred disproportionately in the last decades of the 20th century. The difference is large enough to make you raise your eyebrows. It's hard to believe it could happen by chance, enough that it's worth looking for other reasons why there were so many floods in the last few decades."

Scientists use computer models to predict possible changes in climate. The models use a variety of data on various conditions, such as atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and ocean circulation patterns. By changing these variable conditions, scientists can simulate what might happen in the real world when climate conditions change.

"Our models suggest that instead of the chances of a 100-year flood occurring once every 100 years, which is what you would expect, the risk will increase in the 21st century to somewhere between 3 to 6 chances in 100, which is a manifold increase," said Dr. Milly.

http://www.malaya.com.ph/dec11/envi1.htm

I can see the Hand of God, using mankinds inventions. Can you?

Wars

Just look whats happening right now. Theres a war in Iraq, Afghanistan. The EU is involved in Bosnia
(CNN) -- The European Union has formally taken over peacekeeping duties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, replacing NATO's Stabilization Force.

A new force called EUFOR that numbers about 7,000 troops will enforce the Dayton peace agreement that ended the bloody Bosnian war in 1995.

The change from NATO to EU on Thursday begins nearly nine years after NATO deployed 60,000 forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in what was the alliance's first peacekeeping operation.

British Maj. Gen. David Leakey, the EUFOR commander, said the situation in Bosnia remained "volatile" despite the fact that the environment had stabilized and the number of peacekeepers in the area had declined greatly.

"There are the ingredients which could cause inter-ethnic tensions and so there needs to be a military force here to deter anybody from resurrecting the war," he said.

"My job here with EUFOR is to make sure that we never, never again have a war in Bosnia."

Leakey is taking over from U.S. Brig. Gen. Steven Schook, the last commander of the NATO-led mission, but the alliance will continue its presence in Bosnia through a NATO headquarters in Sarajevo.

The takeover ceremony in Sarajevo was attended by dignitaries including the Bosnian three-member presidency, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, Javier Solana.

During their time in Bosnia NATO peacekeepers seized 28 people indicted for war crimes by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

However, they failed to catch the most wanted war crimes suspects, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander General Ratko Mladic.

NATO's failure to arrest the two was often strongly criticized by the ICTY.

About 150 NATO troops will stay to help EUFOR capture war-crimes suspects and help the government build its military force.

NATO leaders, meeting this summer in Istanbul, agreed to end the operation because of the "improved security situation in the country."

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously authorized the establishment of the force.

Before that the UN.
http://www.debate-central.org/topics/2004/LINKS/Peacekeeping_Operations/Operations_in_Europe/

Your first link here says it doesn't exist on th boards?

One of the least known volcanoes in the U. S. is in Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. It is a Super Volcano. The caldera of this volcano has shown significant activitiy in the last several decades.

This area is also dotted with swarms of earthquakes. These earthquakes have an effect on the volcano activity. Scientists  believe that these eartquakes could either set off the volcano or if fissures are opened in the right area could relieve pressure on the caldera. Scientists do not fully understand the network under Yellowstone Park but they do believe that earthquakes occuring in Alaska have caused earthquakes to increase in the Yellowstone area.

If and when this volcano goes off it could effect an area up to 600 miles away and create a dust cloud that would darken Americas skies for years.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs100-03/

Pastor, some of the links, I broke down. Look underneath, the link, you have to C&P the whole link. A few of the links streached the messgae board window. So it should read link this,
http://forums.christiansunite.com/index.php?board=4;action=display;threadid=3762
When you C&P. By the way, this is the link you were refuring to.

Oh I was going to post about Yellowstone. I have more information about it. I finally got to sleep this morning about 6:30.

As of the 4th of December, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), reported that during the month of November 2004, 42 earthquakes were located in the Yellowstone region. The largest of these shocks was a magnitude 1.9 on November 27, 2004 at 1202 AM MDT, located about 21.7 miles east northeast of Fishing Bridge, Wyoming. No earthquakes in this period were reportedly felt. Earthquake activity in the Yellowstone region is at relatively low background levels.

SWVRC wishes to inpress that it is important that everyone understand that current geologic activity at Yellowstone has remained relatively constant since earth scientists first started monitoring some 30 years ago. Prospects of renewed volcanism are still far away. Although another caldera-forming eruption is theoretically possible, it is very unlikely to occur in the next thousand or even 10,000 years. Smaller eruptions are more likely, but even so, we see no signals of any impending volcanic unrest. YVO maintains an array of instruments that monitor activities at Yellowstone around the clock.
http://www.swvrc.org/restless.htm

Praising God, for he is worthy.
Bob

Alaska Weather Stymies Oil Spill Cleanup
Sun Dec 12,12:12 PM ET
U.S. National - AP
By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - With 24-foot seas and 50-knot winds continuing to pound the Aleutian island where a soybean freighter cracked in half, officials Saturday could take only a few small steps toward cleaning up the massive oil spill left behind.

Three days after the 738-foot Selendang Ayu wrecked on the west side of Unalaska Island, Coast Guard officials still didn't know how much of the more than 400,000 gallons of thick oil had spilled because they hadn't been able to board either half of the wreck.

The agency's first priority is avoiding more casualties. Six crew members from the ship were lost when a helicopter crashed after lifting them off the vessel Wednesday; four other people were rescued. A search for the missing crew — five from India and one from the Philippines — was suspended Friday night.

Capt. Ron Morris, the Coast Guard's incident commander, said salvage efforts Saturday were limited to just three missions, including a flight by a Coast Guard helicopter to survey the broken freighter.

A private vessel was to attempt to lay more protective boom in front of streams within Makushin Bay, and a ship hired by the Selendang Ayu's owner was to leave Dutch Harbor, on the other side of Unalaska Island, to bring wildlife experts to the island Sunday to survey and rescue oiled birds.

The Coast Guard had brought in a cutter, the Sycamore, that carries equipment to skim oil in open water. However, oil released so far already has been pushed into surf where contractors will perform the cleanup.

Oil has reached the headlands east of the wreck. Northwest winds also have pushed oil into Skan Bay a few miles north of the wreck. The Coast Guard has unconfirmed reports of a sheen about 10 miles north of the wreck in the much larger Makushin Bay.

The freighter lost power in its main engine Tuesday. Tugs and Coast Guard cutters were unable to halt its drift to Unalaska Island, where it grounded Wednesday and broke apart.

The ship was carrying 440,000 gallons of heavy bunker oil and about 30,000 gallons of fuel. It split in two over the No. 2 tank, which had a capacity of 140,000 gallons. Coast Guard officials say that is the oil that apparently flowed out of the ship.

Morris said incident commanders were planning for one catastrophic release. However, since the initial surge when the ship broke up, oil streaming from the wreck has diminished.

That could mean other tanks on the Selendang Ayu remain intact, but no one will know until the bow and stern pieces are reboarded, said Howard Hile of Gallagher Marine Services, the incident commander for the vessel's owners.

"There is no way to determine what is still there," Hile said.

As of Friday, the two parts of the ship remained upright a couple of hundred yards apart off the rugged island beach, Hile said.

In other developments Saturday, the cutter Alex Haley returned the final 10 survivors rescued from the freighter to Dutch Harbor. Morris said representatives of the National Transportation Safety Board had begun questioning crew about the cause of the wreck.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041212/ap_on_re_us/freighter_aground

Tks DW. I see what I did wrong on that link now. Tks also for the update on yellowstone. I don't agree with their estimated timeframes though because the same people estimated three major blasts by it at 650,000 years apart and that it is overdue for another one by their own estimates.

As with all, it is in the hands of the Lord.

 

Earthquake Shakes Caribbean Territories

Sat Dec 11,10:52 PM ET
   
Add to My Yahoo!    World - AP Latin America

ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands - A magnitude 5.7 earthquake jolted the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Saturday, the Puerto Rico Seismic Network said.

   

Police and rescue officials in all three Caribbean territories said there were no reports of injuries or damage.

The epicenter was 27 miles northwest of the main British Virgin Island of Tortola and 70 miles east of Puerto Rico.

A magnitude 5 quake can cause considerable damage in populated areas.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=734&e=1&u=/ap/20041212/
ap_on_re_la_am_ca/british_virgin_islands_earthquake

Please C&P the whole link above.

Resting in the Lord's arms.
Bob


I don't agree with their time table either. If Yellowstone did blow, that would make the USA inpotent for Israel. meaning that, the USA wouldn't be able to help herself.

One earthquake would finally break the layer of rock that holds the magma in and all the pressure the Earth. Has builded up in the past years would be unleashed in a destavetion event.
Magma would be flung 30 miles into the sky. Within a 600 miles, virtually all life would be killed by falling ash, lava flows and the sheer explosive force of the eruption. Volcanic ash would coat places as far away as Iowa and the Gulf of Mexico. 600 cubic yards of lava would pour out of the volcano, enough to coat the whole of the USA with a layer 5 inches thick. The explosion would have a force 2,500 times that of Mount St. Helens. Within minutes of the eruption tens of thousands would be dead.

The long-term effects would be even more devastating. The ash that would shoot into the atmosphere could block out light from the sun, making global temperatures plummet. This is called a nuclear winter. As during the Sumatra eruption a large percentage of the world's plant life would be killed by the ash and drop in temperature. Also, virtually the entire of the grain harvest of the Great Plains would disappear in hours, as it would be coated in ash. Similar effects around the world would cause massive food shortages. If the temperatures plummet by the 21 degrees they did after the Sumatra eruption the Yellowstone super volcano eruption could truly be an extinction level event.

Sounds Biblical I would say, Pastor Roger...........

A reason the U.S. is not mentioned in the end times??

My own opinion, is yes. But we will see what God has planned. When that happens, I doubt we will be here.

I have wondered the same thing PR.

Grace and Peace!

looding hits eastern Malaysia
By Jonathan Kent
BBC, Kuala Lumpur

Eleven people are reported to have died and more than 10,000 have been evacuated after flooding hit the east coast of peninsula Malaysia.

Heavy rain left towns and villages in the states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang under up to 2m of water.

Meteorologists are predicting the situation - already described as the worst flooding in more than a decade - is likely to get worse.

The city of Kota Baru has been one of the worst hit.

Five people died after the Kelantan river burst its banks, while some 5,000 are sheltering in government reception centres.

Seven other rivers in the region are reported to be nearing danger levels.

Terrible choice

In the state of Terengganu, almost 4,000 people have been moved from their homes as roads have been washed away.

One man described how he was faced with the choice of rescuing his two young sons or his wife after their car became trapped in rising flood waters.

He took his children to safety but when he returned, his car and his wife had disappeared.

In Pahang, the most southerly of the three states, the government has opened 10 centres to receive evacuees.

Weather forecasters are warning that the situation is likely to get worse as more heavy rain is expected.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4091169.stm

 Massive quake hits off Tasmania

24dec04

THE world's biggest earthquake in almost four years has struck 800km off the coast of Tasmania, Australian seismological officials said.

Geoscience Australia said the quake, measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale, hit the Macquarie Rise in the Pacific Ocean at 1.59am (AEDT).

The earthquake, which occurred half-way between Australia and Antarctica, was felt throughout Tasmania, seismologist Cvetan Sinadinovski said.

It caused buildings in parts of the state to shake for up to 15 seconds, he said.

No one was injured in the quake and structures were in no danger of collapsing because it struck so far off the coast.

“If it happened underneath a population centre in Australia, this would probably have destroyed a whole city,” Dr Sinadinovski said.

“In terms of size, this could have been more than 30 times stronger than the Newcastle event of 1989.”

It was the biggest quake since one occurred off the coast of Peru in early 2001, Dr Sinadinovski said.

He said large earthquakes were common in the Macquarie Rise region, occurring every one or two years.

“This was an inter-plate earthquake between Indo-Australian and Pacific plates,” he said.

”The last earthquake of similar magnitude in the Macquarie Rise region was in 1924.

The quake originally registered as 7.8 on the Richter scale but had been upgraded to 8.1 this morning, he said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,11775215,00.html

Update on the earthquake. Now they are saying it was a bigger quake than originally thought, 8.9 magnitude. A tsunami has been caused by this earthquake that has caused at least 9,000 deaths with the death toll still rising.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a48dxp8vQKKg&refer=top_world_news

UN Warns of Possible Epidemics in Quake-Hit Asia

1 hour, 11 minutes ago
By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites) warned on Monday of epidemics within days unless health systems in southern Asia can cope after more than 14,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands left homeless by a giant tsunami.

Aid agencies round the world rushed staff, equipment and money to southern Asia after huge waves, triggered by a massive underwater earthquake, pummeled and swamped coastal communities in at least six countries on Sunday.

"This may be the worst national disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas ... so many vulnerable communities," the U.N.'s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland told CNN.

"The longer term effects may be as devastating as the tidal wave or the tsunami itself ... Many more people are now affected by polluted drinking water. We could have epidemics within a few days unless we get health systems up and running.

"Many people will have (had) their livelihoods, their whole future destroyed in a few seconds."

Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia suffered the highest death tolls but Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and Bangladesh were also hit by the surging walls of water. Government officials estimate in Sri Lanka alone, 800,000 people were forced from their homes.

Experts said the top five issues to be addressed were water, sanitation, food, shelter and health.

"ROTTING BODIES"

"We've had reports already from the south of India of bodies rotting where they have fallen and that will immediately affect the water supply especially for the most impoverished people," said Christian Aid emergency officer Dominic Nutt.

Some affected areas have had communications cut. Others are so remote it is impossible to know the extent of the damage.

"This is a massive humanitarian disaster and the communications are so bad we still don't know the full scale of it. Unless we get aid quickly to the people many more could die," said Phil Esmond, head of Oxfam in Sri Lanka.

The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking an immediate $6.5 million for emergency aid funding.

"This is a preliminary appeal. It will be revised after exact needs are evaluated," said Simon Missiri, head of the federation's Asia Pacific department.

Earlier, the federation released $870,000 from its disaster relief emergency fund to get assistance moving to the region.

"The biggest health challenges we face is the spread of waterborne diseases, particularly malaria and diarrhea, as well as respiratory tract infections," said the Red Cross Federation's senior health officer Hakan Sandbladh.

The federation said it would send an assessment and coordination team to Sri Lanka, and had on standby several emergency response units specialized in water and sanitation as well as field hospitals.

The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance" to Asian countries, with some aid already on its way to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

"We're prepared to be very responsive," said State Department spokesman Noel Clay.

The European Union (news - web sites) pledged an initial three million euros ($4 million) and local news agency Belga said Belgium had allocated its own 500,000 euros in emergency aid to be distributed by Red Cross bodies and the EU.

Britain said it had offered what it called practical help.

"What we don't know is the number of people who've been displaced, and what infrastructure has been affected. That's the critical point," said Titon Mitra, emergency response director for the CARE aid agency in Geneva. (Editing by Ralph Gowling, additional reporting by Ruth Gidley in London, Marie-Louise Moller in Brussels; Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem; Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations; Jim Wolf in Washington)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041227/wl_nm/quake_aid_dc

See next post for more, on this.

Asian Tsunami Kills 14,425, Rush to Identify Dead

1 hour, 15 minutes ago
World - Reuters
By Chamintha Thilakarathna

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Soldiers searched for bodies in treetops, families wept over the dead lined up on beaches and rescuers scoured coral isles for missing tourists as Asia counted the cost on Monday of a tsunami that killed up to 14,425.

Idyllic palm-fringed beaches across southern Asia were transformed into scenes of death and devastation by the waves unleashed by the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday.

"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"

The wall of water up to 10 meters (30 feet) tall flattened houses, hurled fishing boats onto coastal roads, sent cars spinning through swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucked sunbathers and fishermen off beaches and out to sea.

Worst affected were Sri Lanka where 4,890 were killed, the southeast coast of India where officials reported as many as 4,600 could be dead, northern Indonesia with up to 4,500 drowned and the southern tourist isles of Thailand where as many as 400 were feared dead.

"We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who declared a national disaster and appealed for donor aid, said from holiday in Britain.

It was the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka in recorded history. Officials the death toll could rise substantially as troops recovered bodies dragged out to sea or smashed on golden beaches.

Indonesian soldiers searched for bodies in tree tops and in the wreckage of homes smashed by the tsunami, triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Sumatra island killing at least 4,448 people there.

"It smells so bad, fishy. The human bodies are mixed in with dead animals like dogs, fish, cats and goats," said marine colonel Buyung Lelana, head of an evacuation team in Lhokseumawe in Sumatra's Aceh province.

"There are still a lot of bodies under the wreckage of collapsed houses and in rivers and swamps that we have not yet evacuated. Most of them are children and their mothers," he said.

International aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.

The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.

BATTERED BY ROCKS

"Many of the dead bodies were found in houses. Their heads were cracked, probably battered by rocks," said Mustofa, mayor of Bireuen regency on the north coast of Sumatra.

The head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Los Angeles said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.

But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.

"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said.

"We tried to do what we could. We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," he said.

The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest since 1900.

Hundreds of thousands left homeless in Sri Lanka and fearing another devastating wave sheltered in temples and schools. The southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub famed for its historic fort, had been submerged by a 9-meter (30-ft) wave.

Wailing relatives scrambled over hundreds of bodies piled in a hospital in nearby Karapitiya, searching for loved ones.

Residents milled in streets outside the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital, shirts or handkerchiefs clutched over their noses against the overpowering stench of decaying bodies.

"We have got hundreds of dead that we have dealt with," said a hospital official. "I don't know what to do."

Corpses of hundreds of those drowned lay bloated and disfigured in the lobby and corridors. A stream of cars, ambulances and trucks arrived, bringing more dead.

The body of a pregnant woman lay in the lobby. Nearby, a woman collapsed as she identified a relative. Many of the dead were children. A nurse wept as she picked up the body of a baby.

Officials said 800,000 people had been forced from their homes.

On India's southeast coast, thousands of villagers huddled inside emergency shelters, too scared to sleep in case of another tsunami.

"I could see dead bodies all around and the devastation is of colossal proportions," Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said after touring the worst hit areas of her state.

"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 600 km (375 miles) south of Hyderabad, capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state.

"I am not sure they will come back," she said. On the horizon, the wreckage of wooden fishing boats dotted the sea.

TOURIST ISLE DEVASTATED

The tourist islands and beaches of southern Thailand lay in the path of the wave that had killed up to 400. On the Patong tourist beach in Phuket, hotels and restaurants were wrecked and speed boats were rammed into buildings. "I was sitting on the first floor of a bar, not far from the beach, watching cricket," said Australian tourist, Stephen Dicks, 42. "And suddenly all these people came screaming from the beach.

"I looked around and saw a massive wall of water rushing down the street. It completely wiped out the ground floor of my bar ... It happened very fast, in a matter of minutes."

The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 6,000 km (3,728 miles) away. In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were vacationing in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be limited.

With communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster, aid agencies said.

The Indian air force was trying to reach the remote Nicobar and Andaman archipelagos near the heart of the quake where officials said as many as 2,000 were feared dead.

A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.

It is not a single wave, but a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of more than 800 km (500 miles) an hour. As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases and it can strike with devastating force.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041227/wl_nm/quake_dc

Tsunami Waves Kill Over 19,930 in Asia

7 minutes ago
World - AP Asia
By DILIP GANGULY, Associated Press Writer

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - A military spokesman raised the estimated number of deaths in Sri Lanka caused by devastating tidal waves by more than 5,000 people on Monday, raising the death toll from the regional catastrophe to just under 20,000 people.

Thousands of soldiers scoured Asia's coastlines for survivors of the walls of water that obliterated seaside towns in nine countries, killing more than 19,930 people. Aid poured into the region, and parents in India mourned as hundreds of children were buried in mass graves.

The death toll began climbing sharply after Sunday morning's 9.0-magnitude quake that struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean off the coast of Indonesia, the most powerful temblor in four decades.

The waves sped away from the epicenter at over 500 mph before crashing into the region's shorelines without warning, sweeping people and fishing villages out to sea. Millions were displaced from their homes and thousands were missing.

Officials said the death toll would continue to rise and warned that disease outbreaks were possible.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead, and Thailand — a Western tourist hotspot — said hundreds were dead and thousands missing. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives, Mayanmar, Bangladesh and even in Somalia, 3,000 miles away in Africa.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ ap/20041227/ p_on_re_as/indonesia_earthquake

Listening to the news, it's just been reported that over 20,000 have been killed. :'(

Mon Dec 27,11:13 PM ET

LOS ANGELES, (AFP) - An earthquake that unleashed deadly tidal waves on Asia was so powerful it made the Earth wobble on its axis and permanently altered the regional map, US geophysicists said.

The 9.0-magnitude temblor that struck 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of Sumatra island Sunday may have moved small islands as much as 20 meters (66 feet), according to one expert.

"That earthquake has changed the map," US Geological Survey expert Ken Hudnut told AFP.

"Based on seismic modeling, some of the smaller islands off the southwest coast of Sumatra may have moved to the southwest by about 20 meters. That is a lot of slip."

The northwestern tip of the Indonesian territory of Sumatra may also have shifted to the southwest by around 36 meters (120 feet), Hudnut said.

In addition, the energy released as the two sides of the undersea fault slipped against each other made the Earth wobble on its axis, Hudnut said.

"We can detect very slight motions of the Earth and I would expect that the Earth wobbled in its orbit when the earthquake occurred due the massive amount of energy exerted and the sudden shift in mass," Hudnut said.

Another USGS research geophysicist agreed that the Earth would have got a "little jog," and that the islands off Sumatra would have been moved by the quake.

However, Stuart Sipkin, of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden Colorado, said it was more likely that the islands off Sumatra had risen higher out of the sea than they had moved laterally.

"In in this case, the Indian plate dived below the Burma plate, causing uplift, so most of the motion to the islands would have been vertical, not horizontal."

The tsunamis unleashed by the fourth-biggest earthquake in a century have left at least 23,675 people dead in eight countries across Asia and as far as Somalia in East Africa.

The tsunamis wiped out entire coastal villages and pulled beach-goers out to sea.

The International Red Cross estimated that up to one million people have been displaced by the natural calamity.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...ft_041228041350

By the Grace of God, you are saved.
Bob

Asia Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 77,000

1 hour, 18 minutes ago
World - AP Asia
By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - As the world scrambled to the rescue, survivors fought over packs of noodles in quake-stricken Indonesian streets Wednesday while relief supplies piled up at the airport for lack of cars, gas or passable roads to move them. The official death toll across 11 countries soared past 77,000 and the Red Cross predicted it could exceed 100,000.

Bodies were piled into mass graves in the belief that burial would ward off disease. Paramedics in southern India began vaccinating thousands of survivors against cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and dysentery, and authorities sprayed bleaching powder on beaches where bodies have been recovered. In Sri Lanka, reports of waterborne disease such as diarrhea caused fears of an epidemic.

President Bush announced the United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to coordinate relief and reconstruction of the 3,000 miles of Indian Ocean rim walloped by Sunday's earthquake and the tsunami it unleashed.

"We're facing a disaster of unprecedented proportion in nature," said Simon Missiri, a top Red Cross official. "We're talking about a staggering death toll."

On hundreds of Web sites, the messages were brief but poignant: "Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak," or simply, "Where are you?" All conveyed the aching desperation of people the world over whose friends and family went off in search of holiday-season sun and sand and haven't been heard from for four days.

But even as hope for the missing dwindled, survivors continued to turn up Wednesday. In Sri Lanka, where more than 22,000 died, a lone fisherman named Sini Mohammed Sarfudeen was rescued by an air force helicopter crew after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days.

Indian air force planes evacuated thousands of survivors from the remote island of Car Nicobar. Some of them had walked for days from their destroyed villages to reach a devastated but functioning airfield, where they were shuttled out 80 to 90 at a time.

Journalists were not allowed to leave the base to verify reports that some 8,000 people were dead there, but at the base alone, 67 officers and their families were missing and feared dead.

India's death toll rose to nearly 7,000, while Indonesia's stood at 45,268, but authorities said this did not include a full count from Sumatra's west coast, where more than 10,000 deaths were suspected in one town alone.

UNICEF said Thursday that the death toll in Indonesia could rise to as high as 80,000 with nearly a million children in need of assistance. The international children's agency estimated that 60 percent of Banda Aceh, the main town of Sumatra's Aceh province, was destroyed.

"It's going to be 75,000 to 80,000 no question," said John Budd, a UNICEF spokesman in Jakarta who got the information from government sources in Aceh.

In Sumatra, the Florida-sized Indonesian island close to the epicenter of the quake, the view from the air was of whole villages ripped apart, covered in mud and seawater. In one of the few signs of life, a handful of desperate people scavenged a beach for food. On the streets of Banda Aceh, the main town of Sumatra's Aceh province, the military managed to drop supplies from vehicles and fights broke out over packs of instant noodles.

Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya, military commander of Aceh province, said after flying over the stricken region that 75 percent of the west coast of Sumatra was destroyed.

Footage shot by an Associated Press Television News cameraman on the military helicopter showed town after town covered in mud and sea water. Homes had their roofs ripped off or were flattened.

A solitary mosque and green treetops were all that broke the line of water in one town.

Thailand said it had 1,975 dead and a total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday that he feared his nation's death toll will soar to nearly 7,000 dead.

With tens of thousands of people still missing across the entire region, Peter Ress, Red Cross operations support chief, said the death toll could top 100,000. More than 500,000 were reported injured.

"We have little hope, except for individual miracles," Jean-Marc Espalioux, chairman of the Accor hotel group, said of the search for thousands of tourists and locals missing from beach resorts of southern Thailand — including 2,000 Scandinavians.

The State Department said 12 Americans died in the disaster — seven in Sri Lanka and five in Thailand. About 2,000 to 3,000 Americans were unaccounted for.

Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, talked by phone Wednesday with leaders of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India.

"We're still in the stage of immediate help. But slowly but surely, the size of the problem will become known, particularly when it comes to rebuilding infrastructure and community to help these affected parts of the world get back up on their feet," Bush said afterward.

The Pentagon says it will divert several U.S. warships and helicopters to the region, some of which can produce up to 90,000 gallons of drinking water a day.

Without clean water, respiratory and waterborne diseases could break out within days, putting millions at "grave risk," the U.N. children's agency said. "Standing water can be just as deadly as moving water," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "The floods have contaminated the water systems, leaving people with little choice but to use unclean surface water."

Near Banda Aceh, trucks dumped more than 1,000 bloated, unidentified bodies into pits. Military Col. Achmad Yani Basuki said there was no choice, given the danger of disease and the difficulty of identifying any of the dead.

But Dana Van Alphan of the Pan American Health Organization issued a statement declaring there was no danger of corpses contaminating water or soil because bacteria and viruses cannot survive in dead bodies. The organization said it issued the statement, hoping to avert mass burials of tens of thousands of unidentified victims.

Van Alphan said it was important for survivors to be allowed to identify loved ones and urged authorities in tsunami-stricken countries to avoid burying unidentified corpses in mass graves.

"I think that psychologically, people have to be given the chance to identify their family members," she said. "Whatever disease the person has while still alive poses no threat to public health in a corpse."

The World Health Organization has also said dead bodies are not an immedieate threat to health.

"The health hazard associated with dead bodies is negligible. The collection, disposal, burying and/or cremation of corpses requires important human and material resources which should instead be allocated to those who survived and remain in critical condition," the organization said in a news release after the 1999 earthquake in Turkey.

In Sri Lanka, four planes arrived in the capital bringing a mobile hospital from Finland, a water purification plant from Germany, doctors and medicine from Japan and aid workers from Britain, the Red Cross said.

Supplies that included 175 tons of rice and 100 doctors reached Banda Aceh but officials said they were having difficulty moving it out.

Widespread looting was reported in Thailand's devastated resort islands of Phuket and Phi Phi, where European and Australian tourists left valuables behind in wrecked hotels when they fled — or were swept away.

An international airlift was under way to ferry critical aid and medicine to Phuket and to take home travelers, some with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. France, Australia, Greece, Italy, Germany and Sweden were sending flights.

The world's biggest reinsurer, Germany's Munich Re, estimated the damage to buildings and foundations in the affected regions would be at least $13.6 billion.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20041230/ap_on_re_as/tsunami

this is in my neck of the woods, about 100 miles away as the crow flies. I know we got over 1 inch here.
Bob

Storm Spawns Tornado, Flooding in West

1 hour, 6 minutes ago
U.S. National - AP
By ANABELLE GARAY, Associated Press Writer

SEDONA, Ariz. - A powerful storm battered the West for a third straight day Wednesday, forcing dozens of people from their homes, sending recreational vehicles floating down a flooded creek in Arizona and turning Southern California freeways into a virtual demolition derby.

The storm spawned a tornado in Southern California and left 140,000 customers without power in the area while making for treacherous driving conditions. The California Highway Patrol logged 220 crashes between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning — more than three times the normal amount.

Authorities also reported hundreds of crashes around Las Vegas, and firefighters rescued several stranded motorists — including a police officer whose patrol car was swamped by rising water. The storm dropped 1.58 inches of rain; Las Vegas normally receives 4.43 inches a year. No property damage or serious injuries were reported.

Several neighborhoods were evacuated because of flooding in low-lying areas of Sedona, where Oak Creek rose about 12 feet to about a foot above flood stage. The storm dumped up to 2 1/2 inches of rain there within a few hours early Wednesday.

Later, as showers decreased, the creek receded to 9 1/2 feet and Sedona authorities said the threat of further evacuations had diminished.

"I've been here since 1977. ... This is the worst," said Marc Spector, owner of the Hideaway Restaurant, which is perched on a cliff overlooking Oak Creek.

Some homes had minor flooding and people were stranded in water-logged vehicles in Sedona, a town of some 10,000 people surrounded by towering red rock formations that draw hundreds of thousands of tourists.

Large RVs were seen floating down Oak Creek southwest of Sedona. The rain also caused rock slides, authorities said.

Sedona fire officials initially said 300 residents were being evacuated, but later Wednesday said they were unsure on the number.

Sixty miles away in Prescott, authorities searched for two missing college students after their canoe capsized in a flooded creek, said Susan Hampton, a spokeswoman for the city. A third student got out of the water to look for help, and part of the missing canoe was recovered. The search was expected to resume at dawn Thursday.

The California tornado struck two Los Angeles suburbs after midnight, ripping the roof off a house, snapping trees and damaging cars, but causing no injuries.

"I heard sort of a low rumbling noise, sort of like a freight train and shortly after that, I heard a ripping noise — obviously, that was my roof," resident Derek Williams told KCAL-TV. "Thank God everyone was OK in the house."

Storm-related deaths since Monday mounted to five in California, and several highways were closed because of flooding and mudslides, officials said. High wind in San Diego County snapped off the top 200 feet of the KSON radio tower in National City.

By early Wednesday, downtown Los Angeles had logged 6.37 inches of rain since late Sunday. Tuesday's total alone was 5.55 inches, the city's rainiest December day since record-keeping started in 1877. On Monday, San Francisco was hit by more than 3 inches of rain and suburban Marin County got more than 7 inches.

In Utah, 19 inches of snow fell at the Brian Head Resort, but skiers couldn't take advantage of it because 70 mph wind prevented the resort from starting its chair lifts.

In Colorado, several people were injured and parts of three highways were closed Wednesday as the storm moved in. Interstate 70 was closed in two places due to accidents, but was reopened by early Wednesday evening.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=5&u=/ap/20041230/ap_on_re_us/western_storm

I'm  honestly  beginning  to  think  that  the  end  is  near.

There have been people in every generation since the one contemporary with Jesus that have said the same thing!

They have all been wrong, for the last two thousand years.

The doomsayers of this generation who say we are in the "End Times" are wrong too!

Mar 13:32  But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Mar 13:33  Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.

 

I can't find a link to it right now but I just heard that the United Arab Emirates received their first snowfall ever for the desert country in the mountains of Ras al-Khaimah. It was supposedly a very significant snowfall that blanketed the whole area on 30 Dec 04 and 01 Jan 05.

Anyone else hear anything about this?

I just found a link for it on the Aljazeera.net


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/669DA83D-AA88-4426-BB8B-76D0928B0A51.htm



Snow has fallen over the United Arab Emirates for the first time ever, leaving a white blanket over the mountains of Ras al-Khayma.

With the desert country experiencing a cold spell and above-average rainfall, Dubai airport's meteorology department said on Thursday that snow fell over the al-Jiys mountain range in the most northerly member of the UAE federation.

 

The Gulf News daily reported that the mountain cluster, 1737 metres above sea level, "had heavy night-time snowfall for the past two days as a result of temperatures dropping to as low as -5C".

 

On Monday, 12.6 millimetres of rain fell on the desert emirate of Dubai, where it hardly ever rains.

 

Unused to the conditions, over 500 accidents were reported to police within 24 hours.

 

A cold spell has hit the country this week, with the mercury plunging to 12C in Dubai on Wednesday night.

 

The meteorology department said the chilly weather in Dubai, where summer temperatures can reach 50C, will probably end by next week

2Pe 3:3
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
:4And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as [they were] from the beginning of the creation

So far the scoffers have been right, every single one of them, for the last two thousand years!

So maybe these aren't the last days. Sometime people scoff because the thing they're scoffing need to be scoffed at.

I suspect that when the end actually does draw near, there won't be too much doubt about it.

::) Well because you don't see any signs. I would suggest you search the Bible.

Still scoffing!

One suggestion I would have would be to educate yourself a little about the Scriptures, particularly Daniel & Revelation.

Anyway time will tell.

No my friend, I see you are scoffing. Talking about Daniel and Revelations, you need to reread them. The only things that have nnot happened yet.
Russia becoming a major power again.
The Temple in Jerusalem being rebuilt.

One thing I do agree with.... Time will tell...... :)

2Pe 3:3  Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
2Pe 3:4  And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

Mat 24:42  Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

Mat 24:44  Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.


Are you ready, are you watching?

Luke 21:25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring

This happened while I was gone.

Solar Tsunami Alert As Giant Sunspot Erupts

Three days ago the sunspot numbered 10720 barely rated a mention. But as it rotated into an earth-facing position, the boiling solar cauldron quickly mushroomed in size to over seven times the diameter of our own planet. Now experienced observers say it has explosive potential for massive solar eruptions aimed at Earth.

By late yesterday, the sunspot was large enough to be seen with the unaided eye, and SpaceWeather.com was warning the sunspot posed a threat for strong M-class solar flares. However early today, solar watcher Jan Alvestad reported that the sunspot has already produced an even stronger X-class 1.2 flare at 00:43UT.

It's been a busy 24 hours on the sun. A total of 28 C-class events were recorded yesterday --the most C flares in a single day during the current solar cycle 23.

Alvestad also noted that Sunspot 10720 now had the largest penumbra observed in solar cycle 23. In his 5am report he wrote:

"Within this penumbra [is an] extremely strong positive polarity field in the south. That positive polarity area has the longest and largest umbra I have ever observed."

Not only that, but the internal structure of the sunspot is capable of producing spectacular effects, according to Alvestad's evaluation.

Alvestad says the western end the positive umbra is actually in contact with the negative polarity umbra --causing exceptional magnetic shear. When the structure of the magnetic field around a sunspot becomes twisted and sheared, then magnetic field lines can connect with explosive results.

The size of 10720 and its observed structure have significant implications: "Extremely energetic flares, above the X10 class level, are possible," writes Alvestad "This region has the potential to generate flares similar to those observed in October/November 2003."

Such an X-class 10 flare would certainly rank along with the historic flares of late 2003, when a series of nine massive X-class solar eruptions in only 12 days all largely missed Earth.

Coronal mass ejections move like a three-dimensional wave, sweeping outward from the epicenter at the Sun. Even though Earth was not directly struck, two Japanese satellite failures and a power outage in Sweden were blamed on the solar storms.

Those outbursts culminated in an X20 --the largest ever recorded. That remarkable flare emanated from a region of the Sun about 15 times the size of Earth. The sunspot had already rotated around to the back side of the Sun, so the massive outburst was thankfully not pointed at Earth.

We will need the same luck again, as Sunspot 10720 will be aimed towards Earth for the next few days.

Commercial space weather forecast center Spacew.com notes that should eruptions occur, they are : "likely to be associated with Earthward-directed coronal mass ejections."

The estimates of the risk of a significant eruption are taking place against a backdrop of Solar Radio Flux measurements showing a significant rise in recent days.

Should an Earth-directed eruption occur, its effects will depend in part on the orientation of the magnetic field of the ejected solar material. A southward orientation would more deeply penetrate Earth's northward-facing magnetic ionosphere. Despite the massive explosive power of such sunspots, our protective magnetic field means significant effects are unlikely to be felt at the surface of Earth.

In severe storms, people in high-altitude airliners can be exposed to the x-ray component of the eruptions. Owners and insurers of earth-orbiting satellites have the most to loose. They hope to be breathing easier by the end of the coming week, when Sunspot 10720 will no longer have Earth in its sights.

Fast-developing sunspot could match historic flares of Nov. '03
(http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/anewspic/Sunspot720_strip.gif) (http://www.space.com/images/031104_cme_anim_03.gif)
The sunspot grew quickly over the last four days -Image Spaceweather.com

http://www.breakfornews.com/articles/SolarTsunamiAlert.htm

While I don't agree, all the time with this source. Sometimes they do have useful information.

Bob

I wonder what the effect would be if the magnetic effect of one of these were to reach the surface of earth?

The last one that hit earth (Nov. 03), messed up 2 satellites, and a few other things. That is if the old grey matter remembers right. ::)  It wasn't as strong as these are.

I remember there being a high amount of sunspot activity in the mid to late 1980's that disrupted military satellite communications. The article said that:


So I am wondering what would happen if they were strong enough to penetrate the earths magnetic field.

Well, I guess it would be a HOT time on the earth, when it happens. :)

Praise God, for he is worthy.
Bob

Just guessing but I would think that it would disrupt all communications, computers, power plants, etc. Anything that relies on magnetics fields or could be destroyed by magnetic fields. Possibly throw the earth's magnetic field out of kilter?

If it did happen, I wouldn't want to be here.  :D  I think that could be (in my opinion) Rev. 16:8-9
Rev. 16:8-9 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.  And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

Ah, but see we are nearing the end times.

http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion02151.shtml
<snip>
Reading the 'Signs'
For centuries, theologians and authors have made the mistake of predicting when these events might occur. The fact is, nobody knows when these things will happen. However, we do have the "signs of the times" that Jesus Christ warned about in Matthew, Chapters 24 and 25.

There are two common mistakes that people making when reading these signs of the times. One is to dismiss them entirely and say that "these things have always happened." To a certain degree that is true.[/b] However, there is one important exception: Israel did not exist as a nation for almost 2,000 years.[/b] In 1948 Israel was re-formed as a nation, and the Jews began to return to their land from around the globe as the ancient Hebrew prophets existed.

<snip>

Resting in the, embrace of the Lord.
Bob

Ahhhhh....just about the same as putting a litter of mice in a microwave.  :P

Actually, the best description occurs in
Rev 16:9
And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

Exactly and I have a big feeling that A/C units won't be of any help even if they work, which I doubt they will as strong magnetic fields will have an effect on the motors. There will be no relief.

Brothers and Sisters,

I will simply say that the Bible prophecy in Revelation is not just a tale or something to be explained away. Revelation involves facts, and everything there will be fulfilled to the letter at God's appointed time.

Nobody will be laughing at Almighty God at His appointed time. There will be many times of terror and horror beyond human description. The Great Wrath of an ALL POWERFUL ALMIGHTY GOD will be poured out upon the earth, not just once or twice, but each and every PROMISE that has already been made in the Holy Bible. The only Salvation is JESUS CHRIST, and tomorrow might be too late to accept HIM. This minute is the right time to find out about JESUS.

Love In Christ,
Tom

I Peter 3:15  But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

Ephesians 2:1-7  And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)  And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

I've been noticing this too.I don't like it.It's kinda freakin' me out and wondering if the end id coming

Shemaya,

For those with JESUS in their hearts:

Any trials or suffering during this short life is nothing compared to the GLORY that WILL BE in CHRIST FOR ETERNITY.

There are various opinions about the RAPTURE of the CHURCH WHICH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST, but I believe that HIS CHURCH will be RAPTURED prior to the Tribulation Period. If so, Christians will already be home with JESUS in Heaven during this horrible time. I have many firm reasons why I believe this, so I don't fear the Tribulation Period at all.

If I'm wrong about the RAPTURE of HIS CHURCH, Christians will face physical death. We face physical death every day anyway, but "Absent from the body, present with the LORD! So, if we die today, are killed today, or we are killed in the Tribulation Period, we will simply go home to spend eternity with JESUS. Every man has a fear of physical death in varying degrees. BUT, a Christian's greatest joy is finally realized when they go home to spend eternity with JESUS!

Love In Christ,
Tom

Colossians 1:12-14  Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:

Mat 10:28  And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.


Rev 2:10  Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

Pastor Roger,

AMEN BROTHER!!!

The mighty words of the Holy Bible are always the best answer. Thank you brother.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Matthew 5:14-16  Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Comet strike surprisingly more likely  
For immediate release
20 October 2004
Research conducted by a Cardiff University astronomy scientist suggests that a comet colliding with Earth is actually more likely than was previously believed.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Honorary Professor Bill Napier and research student Janaki Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University&#8217;s Centre for Astrobiology believe that some comets are not visible using current astronomical scanning equipment. They argue that if this is the case, international programmes designed to detect near-Earth asteroids, and ways to reduce the worst effects of them colliding with Earth may need to be urgently reviewed.

Professor Wickramasinghe said, "It&#8217;s possible that we are missing many of these Earth-threatening objects and we need to think again about mitigating strategies - some of which assume decades or centuries of warning before impact."

The team has found that the surfaces of inactive comets, if composed of loose,

fluffy organic material like cometary meteoroids, develop such small reflectivities - they appear invisible. The near-Earth objects may therefore be dominated by a population of fast, kilometres-wide bodies, too dark to be seen with current surveys.  

A new NASA mission will scan the entire sky with an infrared telescope - like a powerful set of night vision goggles to search for cool, or failed, stars, called brown dwarfs, and also dark comets and cometary fragments, of the type proposed by Professor Wickramasinghe and his team, that pose a previously unrecognised threat to our planet.

~ends~

PS.
Mysak writes: it looks in Revelation as if 2 such things will hit earth, one will destroy many ships, the other poisen waters.

 It is going to happen, and there's not a thing anyone can do about it.
Thank God we will not be here to suffer the consequences.

Rev 8:8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;  

Rev 8:9 And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.  

Rev 8:10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;  

Rev 8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.  

Rev 8:12 And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.  

Rev 8:13 And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!  

Scofers only scoff until they scorch!

Bronzesnake

Well Bronzesnake
 I really do wish you are right when you wrote:"Thank God we will not be here to suffer the consequences."
But as I wrote in disscusion concerning pre trib. ruption, the only clear time indication I found in Bible for pre trib. rup. is the last trumpet Paul talks about.
All the other reasonings I read there are only POSSIBLE explanations, nothing that is supported with such a direct word from bible as the last trumpet. If you can ignore that last trumpet as meaning something else, than you can ignore almost anything quoted from Revelation for support of pre trib. rupt.
Mysak
P.S. I do not say I am right, But in absence of clear evidence I respect the only clearly time indicating written word. If that is not correct, than even antichrist defeating saints might refer to the Church, in such a case.

 My friend.

If you read the Rapture verses carefully, you will see the Trump described as - the last trump of God. Look anywhere else in Revelation for God's trump and you will not find it. All other trumps are sounded, not by God, but by angels.

This is a very important distinction which clearly marks the signal from God to begin the Rapture. Therefore, we do not have to confuse the "last trump" which is at the end of Revelations, with "God's last Trump" which is prior to the Tribulation.

Bronzesnake

Yes Bronzesnake,
You realy could be right about that trump, and I might be wrong.
But for me, that was the only clear word indicating that rupture would come before antichrist, beast and tribulation.
All the other explanations and " proofs" I have ever heard (or read here) "Church age" , stop of "clock" counting weeks from Daniel and so on, are only asumptions, speculations and possible explanations, very much the same sort of argumentation as Wittness of Jehova use.
I am not in any way looking down, or dissregarding such studies and attempts to find the truth, ( some of them might hit the nail) but I do not like when those are presented as sure evidence, insted of POSSIBLE , with such a poor evidence ( no evidence only indicie, that can be explained aither way)  at hand.
Mysak

Yellowstone Rated High for Eruption Threat

Sat May 7, 3:30 PM ET

The Yellowstone caldera has been classified a high threat for volcanic eruption, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Yellowstone ranks 21st most dangerous of the 169 volcano centers in the United States, according to the Geological Survey's first-ever comprehensive review of the nation's volcanoes.

Kilauea in Hawaii received the highest overall threat score followed by Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainer in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount Shasta in California.

Kilauea has been erupting since 1983. Mount St. Helens, which erupted catastrophically in 1980, began venting again in 2004.

Those volcanoes fall within the very high threat group, which includes 18 systems. Yellowstone is classified with 36 others as high threat.

Recurring earthquake swarms, swelling and falling ground, and changes in hydrothermal features are cited in the report as evidence of unrest at Yellowstone.

The report calls for better monitoring of the 55 volcanoes in the very high and high threat categories to track seismic activity, ground bulging, gas emissions and hydrologic changes.

University of Utah geology professor Robert Smith, who monitors earthquakes and volcanic activity in Yellowstone, said more real-time monitoring should be helpful.

"We've really been stressing over the last couple of years that the USGS should consider hazards as a very high priority in their future," he said. "We need to get the public's confidence and the perception that we're doing it right."

The university has joined the Geological Survey and Yellowstone National Park in creating the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, which uses ground-based instruments throughout the region and satellite data to monitor volcanic and earthquake unrest in the world's first national park.

The USGS report recognizes Yellowstone as an unusual hazard because of the millions of people who visit the park and walk amid features created by North America's largest volcanic system, Smith said, a status he has been advocating for years.

Smith does not paint the devastating picture portrayed in a recent TV docudrama but said smaller threats exist. For example, a lower-scale hydrothermal blast could scald tourists strolling along boardwalks.

Emissions of toxic gases from the park's geothermal features also pose a threat. Five bison dropped dead last year after inhaling poisonous gases trapped near the ground due to cold, calm weather near Norris Geyser Basin.

Stepped up monitoring and a new 24-hour watch office could lead to more timely warnings and help avoid human catastrophes at Yellowstone and nationally, according to the USGS.

Forty-five eruptions, including 15 cases of notable volcanic unrest, have been documented at 33 volcanoes in the U.S. since 1980, according to the report, released April 29.

____

On the Net:

U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov

Volcano Threat Report: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1164

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/index.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050507/ap_on_sc/yellowstone_volcano_threat&printer=1

I've forgotten where, I had posted on Yellowstone before. So I am posting this here now. About  months ago, I had posted about this. I wouldn't worry about this yet. Only those that miss the rapture, should worry.
Bob

Acts 2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come:

Yes Dreamweaver, I've been reading about Yellowstone for some time now, scientists are at a loss to predict exactly what will or will not happen. It could be a huge disaster.
I think there are many explosive events just waiting for the Rapture to occure before they will begin to go off.

On a lighter side - Yogi and Boo-Boo are reporting that Jellystone Park is safe and want visitors to come and visit. Yogi says each visitor must bring a "pic-a-nik basket!"  ;D

Bronzsnake

On a lighter note BRNZ, Yogi and Boo-Boo have enought "pic-a-nik baskets!" I'll bet you they have enought, to build a mansion.  ;D


On a more serious note.
One of the sites I visit reguarly, I e-mailed the director. Here is what he had to say;
Hi Bob -
 
Thank you for your e-mail and the USGS reference.
 
Actually that was USGS Report 2005-1164 that was just released and yes, I have read it in detail.  As a matter of fact, I just sent an e-mail the other day to the USGS with the probability calculations as a result of Eruption Pro 10.5 on all the volcanoes cited.
 
With regard to Yellowstone -- the short answer is that it is acting completely normal for the moment.  An update of Yellowstone can be gleaned from our SWVRC website in the "Restless Volcanoes Status Report" section.
 
Again, many thanks.
 
Respectfully,
 
SOUTHWEST VOLCANO RESEARCH CENTRE
 
"R. B."
 
************, Ph.D.
Director & Principal Research Volcanologist
 
Note:  All SWVRC e-mails have been screened for viruses prior to sending for your protection.
_________________________________

Here is the report.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1164/

An Assessment of Volcanic Threat and Monitoring Capabilities in the United States:
Framework for a National Volcano Early Warning System

A National Volcano Early Warning System – NVEWS – is being formulated by the Consortium of U.S. Volcano Observatories (CUSVO) to establish a proactive, fully integrated, national-scale monitoring effort that ensures the most threatening volcanoes in the United States are properly monitored in advance of the onset of unrest and at levels commensurate with the threats posed. Volcanic threat is the combination of hazards (the destructive natural phenomena produced by a volcano) and exposure (people and property at risk from the hazards).

The United States has abundant volcanoes, and over the past 25 years the Nation has experienced a diverse range of the destructive phenomena that volcanoes can produce. Hazardous volcanic activity will continue to occur, and – because of increasing population, increasing development, and expanding national and international air traffic over volcanic regions – the exposure of human life and enterprise to volcano hazards is increasing. Fortunately, volcanoes exhibit precursory unrest that if detected and analyzed in time allows eruptions to be anticipated and communities at risk to be forewarned with reliable information in sufficient time to implement response plans and mitigation measures.

In the 25 years since the cataclysmic eruption of Mount St. Helens, scientific and technological advances in volcanology have been used to develop and test models of volcanic behavior and to make reliable forecasts of expected activity a reality. Until now, these technologies and methods have been applied on an ad hoc basis to volcanoes showing signs of activity. However, waiting to deploy a robust, modern monitoring effort until a hazardous volcano awakens and an unrest crisis begins is socially and scientifically unsatisfactory because it forces scientists, civil authorities, citizens, and businesses into “playing catch up” with the volcano, trying to get instruments and civil-defense measures in place before the unrest escalates and the situation worsens. Inevitably, this manner of response results in our missing crucial early stages of the volcanic unrest and hampers our ability to accurately forecast events. Restless volcanoes do not always progress to eruption; nevertheless, monitoring is necessary in such cases to minimize either over-reacting, which costs money, or under-reacting, which may cost lives.

Along the same lines:
New Madrid Fault Averages Over 200 Events Yearly
Most people think that destructive earthquakes only occur in the western United States. To the contrary, St. Louis is located in the most active seismic zone east of the Rocky Mountains. In the winter of 1811-1812 the Central Mississippi Valley was struck by three of the most powerful earthquakes in U.S. history. The Great New Madrid Earthquake was actually a series of over 2000 shocks in five months, five of which were 8.0 or more in magnitude. Eighteen of these rang church bells on the Eastern seaboard. The very land itself was destroyed in the Missouri Bootheel, making it unfit for farming for many years. It was the largest burst of seismic energy east of the Rocky Mountains in the history of the U.S. and was several times larger than the San Francisco quake of 1905.  

As has been shared; there will be no place to hide...

Sure there is  ;)

Psa 17:8  Keep me as the apple of the eye; Hide me in the shadow of Your wings


Grace and Peace!

Well - slap me hard and call me stupid!  DOH!   :D  :D  :D  :D
Of course, you are right, 2ndT.  :)  Squeeze some smarts out of my poor depleated brain...
(http://www.roadogz.com/images/stories/stooges.jpg)

ROFL  

didn't mean to sound sarcastic JN...I knew I had seen you around in the feathers of His wings at some point before...thus the wink.   ;D

;D

 ;D   ;D   ;D   I can't remember - doesn't Curly's head break the clamp?

No, it doesn't break his head. I think it cured his headache. ;)

Just a couple thoughts here..........

1.  The "end-time signs" have been taking place throughout history....there have always been wars, famines, earthquakes, etc., etc. However, these things did not all take place within a "single generation," they were spread out over history.

2.  NOW, ALL of these things are taking place in THIS PRESENT generation.
Something to think about.

Matthew 24:32-34.....KJV

   32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

   33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

   34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

Excellent observation. Add the fact that these events are far more powerful and devastating than in any other time in history - as well as all the related non-catastrophic prophecies, which are concurrently occurring, such as the Jews returning back to Israel.

Bronzesnake

Sumatra Quake Shook Earth's Total Surface

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

WASHINGTON (AP) - December's great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake - the most powerful in more than 40 years and the trigger of a devastating tsunami - shook the ground everywhere on Earth's surface. Weeks later the planet was still trembling.

The quake resulted from the longest fault rupture ever observed - 720 miles to 780 miles, which spread for 10 minutes, also a record. A typical earthquake's duration would be 30 seconds.

The December quake was the first of its size to be measured and studied by the new worldwide array of digital seismic instruments.

Those results are starting to come in, with a special section of a half-dozen research papers on the quake appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

``This is really a watershed event. We've never had such comprehensive data for a great earthquake because we didn't have the instrumentation to gather it 40 years ago,'' said Thorne Lay, professor of Earth sciences and director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

``It is nature at its most formidable,'' Lay said in a statement.

The earthquake and resulting tsunami, which swept across the Indian Ocean, killed more than 176,000 people in 11 countries and left about 50,000 missing and hundreds of thousands homeless.

The quake occurred where two of the giant plates that form the surface of the Earth grind together.

At that spot the Eurasian plate was being pulled downward by the descending Indo-Australian plate. The quake released the edge of the Eurasian plate, which sprang up, lifting the ocean floor and sending the sea water off in the giant wave that killed so many, the researchers reported.

They said the higher sea floor displaced so much water from the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea that sea level worldwide was raised 0.004 inch.

``No point on Earth remained undisturbed,'' wrote Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.

Indeed, ground movement of as much as 0.4 inch occurred everywhere on Earth's surface, though it was too small to be felt in most areas.

And the temblor ``delivered a blow to our planet'' that was felt for weeks, noted a team of researchers led by Jeffrey Park of Yale University.

His group calculated that the quake caused the planet to oscillate like a bell, at periods of about 17 minutes, which they were able to measure for weeks afterward. A similar phenomenon was first noted in the 1960 quake in Chile.

The initial Dec. 26 Sumatra quake is estimated to have had a magnitude of 9.1 to 9.3 and a second quake to the south on March 28 registered 8.6.

By comparison, the 1960 Chile earthquake was magnitude 9.5 and the 1964 Alaska earthquake was magnitude 9.2. California's 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake had a magnitude of 6.9.

Among the other findings reported in the various papers:

In Sri Lanka, more than 1,000 miles from the epicenter, the ground moved nearly 4 inches.

The rupture spread from south to north, resulting in a Doppler effect in instruments measuring it. Seismometers in Russia recorded the quake at a higher frequency because it was moving toward them, while those in Australia measured a lower frequency as it moved away.

When the surface waves from the Sumatra quake reached Alaska they triggered a swarm of 14 local earthquakes in the Mount Wrangell area.

In addition to Lay, Bilham and Park, the lead authors of the articles were Charles J. Ammon of Pennsylvania State University, Michael West of the University of Alaska and Roland Burgmann of the University of California, Berkeley. Burgmann's article was published in Science Express, the journal's online edition.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/308/5725/1125

And now, Hurricane Adrian....the first ever to hit Guatemala...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7896963/
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2005-05-19-evacuations-adrian_x.htm

Nexxxt?????

Colombian Volcano Eruption Expected In Coming Weeks

May 21, 2005 1:40 p.m. EST

Hector Duarte Jr. - All Headline News Staff Reporter

Bogota, Colombia (AHN) - A volcanologist said Saturday that an eruption of the Galeras volcano in southwest Colombia is likely in the coming days or weeks.

The prediction comes after a surge in seismic activity and higher temperatures inside the crater.

Last April,  The Galeras Volcano Observatory set its new warning system at level two, which indicates an eruption "in the short or medium term," according to director Diego Gomez.

The volcano last erupted in November, throwing rocks and ash for a distance of two miles, causing no injuries.

In 1993, nine were killed during an eruption. Five of the casualties were international scientists who were inside the crater sampling gases


http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/2233394428

I just had to go and ask what's next, didn't I???  :P
If Israel begins rebuilding the Temple, I'm heading for the Rockies!  :)

That won't do any good either.  ;)

The rockies will probabbly be destroyed by a volcano eruption also.

Ummmm, ok, how about Mt. Zion?  Erk, guess I'd better get a passport!! ???

Seriously, it is hard to imagine that the "end times" are not upon us, and "THIS" will be the last generation!

Brothers and Sisters,

I believe firmly that Jesus will catch us up to meet Him in the air (RAPTURE) before wrath is poured out on the earth. This does not hint that I feel any urge to argue with Christians who believe that the CHURCH WHICH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST will be here for all or a portion of the 7 year Tribulation Period.

Regardless, our time of eternity with JESUS appears to be drawing nearer. In fact, it could be any day, hour, or second.

Love In Christ,
Tom

II Timothy 3:15  And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Mexico's famous "Volcano of Fire" erupted Monday, sending clouds of ash two miles into the air.

http://www.nbc6.net/news/4529259/detail.html


Scientists Discover Underwater Volcano
University of Oregon biologists on the first-ever manned submersible expedition to a newly discovered undersea volcano near Samoa report that warm water emanating from the volcano's summit supports a remarkable eel population.

http://www.physorg.com/news4256.html


There are a lot more at this time that are becoming more active. There are some that believe that this is a chain reaction that may be caused by the massive Sumatra-Andaman earthquake.

 

Here is a video of a recent eruption of the Colima Volcano.

http://resco.ucol.mx/Docs/Volc%E1nDeColima_10Marzo2005.mpe

Pastor Roger,

Brother, I've spent considerable time in studying God's WORD the last few days, and I feel refreshed. I was just reflecting on nature being God's Creation and only the tiny hint that we have of HIS awesome might and power. All that mankind has seen put together in all history is nothing compared to what will be in moments or hours.

It will be simply a time of joy for all who love HIS appearing. I'm smiling and thinking about being caught up to meet the LORD in the air. I'm also giving thanks that my entire family will also be brought home to Heaven with the LORD. That time may be soon or even today.

I tremble to think about what those who remain will see, hear, feel, and experience. Those who don't love God will at least soon learn to fear HIM. I hope and pray that many of the lost seek HIM before it's too late. If they only knew - the world's greatest volcanic eruption in history is like the lighting of a single match in comparison to what will be. All of the wars in history put together will be nothing in comparison to what will be. Our all loving and Most Powerful GOD will pour out His wrath on this unrepentant earth.

1 Corinthians 1:18  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

Proverbs 15:3  The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

Romans 8:26-28  The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.

Jude 1:3  Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

Ephesians 1:12-14  That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Love In Christ,
Tom

1 Thessalonians 2:2-4  But even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Amen Brother. I love looking at these acts of "nature" as they remind me of just that. Yes, these things are infinitesimally small in comparison to the power of God and I am reminded of just that each time I see such things. It is a wonder of wonders and I too thank God for His wonderful mercies.

These are all the signs of the times that we're going through.
Read Mathew chapter 24

Matthew 24:7-8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.   All these are the beginning of sorrows

So yes, we are in the times, of sorrows. That is what this thread is about.

Resting in the hands, of Jesus.
Bob

Hosea 13:13 The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an unwise son; for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children.

El Salvador volcano kills two, thousands flee
Sat Oct 1, 2005 11:35 PM ET

By Rene Tobar

PALO CAMPANA, El Salvador (Reuters) - El Salvador's largest volcano erupted for the first time in a century on Saturday, killing two people and forcing thousands to flee their homes.

The Ilamatepec volcano, also known as Santa Ana, hurled out hot rocks, ash and boiling water on Saturday morning and a massive plume of smoke rose more than 10 miles into the air.

Two people were killed under a landslide caused by the volcano's eruption in the small community of Palo Campana, near the crater, the government said.

A few homes were destroyed. "I have lost everything. I have no money, nothing, just my children and my husband," said 73-year-old Rosa Flores, whose small home was set ablaze by a red-hot rock as she made breakfast.

A 12-year-old boy, Fernando Gonzalez, was desperately looking for his parents. "I'm scared. I saw big stones fall and one had smoke coming from it."

El Salvador's government declared a red alert and evacuated more than 4,000 people by late afternoon with 3,000 more expected to be moved out.

"The important thing is to save people, that is the first phase of this emergency," President Tony Saca told reporters.

Ilamatepec is the largest of El Salvador's 23 volcanoes and stands 7,800 feet above sea level in a major coffee-growing area about 40 miles west of the capital.

Its last eruption was in 1904 but it has been increasingly active since last year.

Homes and vehicles were covered in a thick layer of ash, and some of the area's coffee plantations were damaged.

"Many trees have been burned, for sure," said Sergio Gil, who leads the Procafe coffee institute. "It is a delicate situation, the ashes have reached as far as Apaneca, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the crater."

The coffee-growing region around Ilamatepec accounts for a large chunk of El Salvador's coffee output.

The nearby city of Santa Ana escaped damage from the volcanic eruption.

Light earthquake hits near Steamboat Springs
   

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 1, 2005

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS - A light earthquake hit near Steamboat Springs late Friday, knocking things off shelves and skewing wall hangings but not causing any other damage, the U.S. Geological Survey said Saturday.

The earthquake, measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale, occurred at 11:57 p.m. about 14 miles northeast of Steamboat Springs. The Routt County sheriff's office didn't receive any reports of damage but dispatchers reported receiving up to 300 phone calls Friday and Saturday from people about the quake.

Respiratory therapist Jimmy Menk, who was working overnight at the Yampa Valley Medical Center, told Denver's KUSA-TV that it felt like a semitrailer had hit the building. He said the quake roused patients from their rooms as everyone tried to figure out what had happened.

The area usually experiences a couple of minor or light quakes, categories which range from 3.8 up to 4.9 magnitude, each year, said Waverly Person, a geophysicist with the USGS in Golden.

"We have no history of any large, destructive earthquakes in that area," he said.

The largest quake in Colorado's recorded history was a 6.8 temblor that hit west of Fort Collins in 1882.

Earthquake off PNG's south coast not expected to cause damage:

CANBERRA, Sept. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The strong earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale recorded in the seas off the south coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG) earlier Friday is not expected to cause any damage or major wave, a spokesman of the Geophysical Observatory in Port Moresby said.

    The Geophysical Observatory said a few aftershocks were expected after the strong quake, of which epicenter was initially determined to be about 140 kilometers south of Rabaul on PNG's island of New Britain with a population of about 20,000, Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio reported.

    The quake comes three weeks after a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the east coast of Papua New Guinea causing a "small tsunami" in Rabaul harbor.

    Rabaul was destroyed in the September 1994 eruption of Tuvurvurvolcano.

Strongest earthquake in 15 years hits Cascade

10:29 AM MDT on Friday, September 30, 2005

Associated Press

CASCADE -- The quake that rattled the area around Cascade in central Idaho was the strongest one there in at least 15 years .

The estimated 4.0 temblor Thursday was the largest thus far in a swarm of small quakes that began September 22nd and now number more than 1,000.

Most have been too small for people to feel. But seven so far have been over magnitude 3.

There have been no reports of injuries, but there has been an epidemic of knick-knacks falling from shelves and tipped coffee cups around the rural mountain community.

4.4-strong earthquake jolts Northern Islands

By John Ravelo
Reporter

Friday, September 30, 2005

A regional earthquake with a magnitude of 4.4 occurred in the Northern Islands, while Anatahan's volcano continued to show signs of reawakened activity.

In a joint report, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Emergency Management Office said the regional quake was located between Agrigan and Pagan. It occurred on Sept. 20, two days after a 4.7-intensity temblor occurred south-southwest of Guam.

The agencies said seismicity on Anatahan remained at low levels amounting to a few percent of peak levels recorded last June. They said the volcano had not emitted significant amount of ash.

The agencies maintained, though, that long-period earthquakes continued to occur, albeit sparsely. The volcanic earthquakes indicate magmatic movement that may lead to another eruption.

The agencies noted no volcanic activity on Anatahan beginning Sept. 3, after about eight months of continuous eruptive activity. The situation lasted only several days.

The volcanic activity displayed its strongest historical eruption last April 6, with the volcano spewing out ash to 50,000 feet. The USGS and the EMO estimated the volume of ash emissions in that eruption at about 50 million cubic meters.

The volcano first erupted on May 10, 2003 after centuries of dormancy, with ash plume rising to an altitude of over 30,000 feet and covering over 1 million square kilometers of airspace above the Pacific Ocean. That eruption, which ceased by mid-June that year, deposited about 10 million cubic meters of material over Anatahan island and the sea.

USA TODAY ... Link: Mutated bird flu (http://www.worthynews.com/zone.cgi?http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-09-29-flu-pandemic_x.htm?csp=34)

Hello At_The_Cross,

WOW! - This is horrible. I will be praying that health agencies can bring this under control. 5 to 150 million deaths - All Christians should be praying about this.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Galatians 6:9-10 NASB  Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.

Amen! This flu virus has no known preventative innoculation for humans at this time and it will take several years at the very least to obtain such an innoculation once the virus shows itself in the mutated form.

No one saw massive slide in vast state

Published: October 2, 2005
Last Modified: October 2, 2005 at 02:31 AM

Jackie Caplan-Auerbach was checking earthquake activity around Alaska volcanoes from her Anchorage office on Sept. 14, a routine she performs every day at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, when she noticed a strange seismic signal on Mount Spurr.

A large shock to the Earth -- not as abrupt as an earthquake -- had happened somewhere in Alaska. When Caplan-Auerbach saw the odd signal was even stronger on Mount Wrangell, she suspected there was a great avalanche somewhere in the restless corner of Alaska where the Panhandle of Southeast meets the rest of the state.

There was. A good chunk of Mount Steller, a razorback 10,000-foot peak about 80 miles east of Cordova, had collapsed onto Bering Glacier. Rocks and ice from the mountain tumbled 8,000 vertical feet, spilling out in a chunky black delta that reached six miles from the mountain. Christian Huggel, a Swiss avalanche specialist who happened to be visiting the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage, estimated that the amount of rock and ice that shook loose was equal to a pile one mile long, one-third mile wide and 50 yards high.

Scientists at the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer also noticed the avalanche when it happened. They called the Alaska Earthquake Information Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to confirm.

"It showed on all our instruments on mainland Alaska," Natalia Ruppert of the earthquake information center said, adding that the amplitude of the event was about equal to a magnitude 3.8 earthquake and more than 200 seismometers all over the state picked up its vibrations.

In her studies of Iliamna Volcano, Caplan-Auerbach has found that avalanches like the one on Mount Steller sometimes rumble one-half hour to two hours before they collapse, possibly due to the fracturing of ice at the base of the avalanche material. She just submitted a paper on the curious tendency of some avalanches to move before they collapse.

"I don't think anyone's ever seen avalanches that give warnings," she said.

One of the unique features about the giant avalanche of Sept. 14 on Mount Steller was that perhaps no one saw it or felt it. The nearest settlements, tens of miles away, were too far for people there to feel the rumbling.

"It shows how wonderful Alaska is," Caplan-Auerbach said. "Places like Iliamna could break in half and nobody would be killed."

Another Typhoon hits Taiwan and China. Taiwan experiences an earthquake at the same time. It is also a very busy Typhoon season this year. Eaiwan has not fully recovered from a typoon that hit there less than a week ago.

Typhoon, minor quake strike Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Typhoon Longwang struck Taiwan Sunday, but only after a moderate earthquake shook the island.

CNN quoted local media as saying 36 people were injured in the storm, though no one was injured in the 5.4 magnitude quake.

The typhoon made landfall early Sunday with gusts topping 125 mph and heavy rains.

The storm shut down public transportation, and forecasters said up to 16 inches of rain fell along the northern and central portions of the eastern coast of the island, CNN said.

Longwang -- which means "dragon king" in Chinese -- was expected to hit the mainlaid after crossing the Taiwan Strait.

UK's Silent Epidemic, Hepatitis C Expected to Kill 150,000

Up to 150,000 people in Britain are expected to die over the next 20 years from a treatable disease that most do not know they have.
A silent epidemic of hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus, has infected an estimated 500,000 people in the UK and new cases are rising faster here than in other European countries, specialists said yesterday.

Typical victims of the illness are middle-class professional men and women who dabbled in drugs in their youth and contracted the infection through sharing needles. Other people became infected through contaminated blood transfusions before testing for hepatitis C was introduced in 1991.

The disease is already the main reason for liver transplants, and it will kill more people than Aids by 2020.

The scale of the problem has been recognised by the Government, which published an action plan to tackle it last year. But in a report published yesterday, the Hepatitis C Trust, a charity for sufferers, said that Britain was at the bottom of the European league on treatment, with fewer than 2 per cent of cases receiving drugs, compared with 15 per cent in France.

Drug treatment costs £6,000 to £12,000 per case, and cures more than half of sufferers. It has been approved for use on the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), but the disease has no symptoms in its early stages and only one in 10 sufferers knows they are infected.

Charles Gore, chief executive of the Hepatitis C Trust, which produced the report, Losing the Fight Against Hepatitis C, said: "We have a dreadfully poor track record at diagnosing the disease. More than 400,000 people in the UK with the virus are completely unaware that they have been infected. As a consequence, they are not in a position to make lifestyle decisions that could reduce liver damage, and may inadvertently be putting others at risk of infection."

The disease can be spread through sharing needles in drug use or tattooing, snorting cocaine through a shared straw or banknote (the drug irritates the mucosal lining of the nose, making it bleed), sharing razors or toothbrushes, rarely through sex, and in childbirth (one in 20 infected mothers passes it to her baby).

Up to 30 per cent of those infected will suffer severe symptoms caused by chronic inflammation of the liver, including cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death over two or three decades.

William Rosenberg, professor of hepatology at the University of Southampton, said: "My hepatitis C clinic is full of lawyers, doctors, accountants and shopkeepers - responsible, professional middle-class people - who in their teens in the 1960s dabbled occasionally in drugs, for example by taking speed at weekends.

"There has been a major failure in the UK to address a public health epidemic. In France they diagnose five times more cases and treat 10 times more than we do. It is the same in Germany, Italy and Spain. Awareness of the problem is woefully low in the UK. Probably over 150,000 people in the UK will die unless they are treated."

The disease carried a stigma because of its association with drug use, he said. "That prejudice is very common. It is perceived as a low-life disease. People who are leading upstanding lives in the community with hepatitis C don't want to speak out about it, in the same way as people with cancer felt stigmatised 20 to 30 years ago."

Drug treatment with interferon and ribavirin can clear the virus from 40 to 80 per cent of patients, the report says.

Neil Hudson, 35: 'I was lucky I was diagnosed by accident'

Neil Hudson, 35, had to fight for treatment after discovering he was infected with hepatitis C during a routine test in 1999.

He contracted the virus through a blood transfusion nine years earlier when he was 20, seriously ill with pneumonia and septicaemia.

In intensive care and fighting for his life, he received 164 units of blood, one of which was contaminated with the virus. "I had to wait four months to see a liver specialist. I felt very isolated. I changed my diet, stopped drinking alcohol and made sure I had enough rest. In March 2000, seven months after finding out I had a fatal illness, I had a liver biopsy [test] which confirmed that the damage to my liver warranted treatment."

He then had to wait for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to approve drug treatment with interferon. He wrote letters to his health authority and MP but they refused to sanction treatment before the NICE decision in January 2001.

His first round of treatment failed to clear the virus from his blood and he had to wait another 15 months before being offered a second chance with a different form of the drug. The second round of treatment finished in June 2004 and tests showed he was free of the virus earlier this year.

He said: "I was lucky I was diagnosed by accident. I feel better now at 35 than I did at 25 because I had this disease eating away at my liver day by day. We have inferior treatment in this country. We should be ... preventing the spread of hepatitis C, but we are not."

Global dengue pandemic alert as mosquito mutates

THE world is seeing an explosion in dengue infections as the virus-carrying Aedes mosquito adapts to cities and grows immune to old methods of population control.

"It's a global pandemic," said Dr Duane Gubler of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hawaii. "It's quite clear that the disease has evolved. There just is more dengue in the world."

Dengue causes severe joint pain, high fever, nausea and a rash. It can lead to internal bleeding. There is no cure or vaccine.

All across Asia, governments are scrambling to contain the virus, with Singapore alone recording more than 11,000 cases this year.

"Guerrilla" mosquitoes were the world's new enemy, said Dr Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in France. He and Dr Gubler were among seven experts invited by Singapore's Ministry of Health to investigate the city-state's current spike in infections.

El Salvador volcano kills two, thousands flee
Sat Oct 1, 2005 11:35 PM ET9

 By Rene Tobar

PALO CAMPANA, El Salvador (Reuters) - El Salvador's largest volcano erupted for the first time in a century on Saturday, killing two people and forcing thousands to flee their homes.

The Ilamatepec volcano, also known as Santa Ana, hurled out hot rocks, ash and boiling water on Saturday morning and a massive plume of smoke rose more than 10 miles into the air.

Two people were killed under a landslide caused by the volcano's eruption in the small community of Palo Campana, near the crater, the government said.

A few homes were destroyed. "I have lost everything. I have no money, nothing, just my children and my husband," said 73-year-old Rosa Flores, whose small home was set ablaze by a red-hot rock as she made breakfast.

A 12-year-old boy, Fernando Gonzalez, was desperately looking for his parents. "I'm scared. I saw big stones fall and one had smoke coming from it."

El Salvador's government declared a red alert and evacuated more than 4,000 people by late afternoon with 3,000 more expected to be moved out.

"The important thing is to save people, that is the first phase of this emergency," President Tony Saca told reporters.

Ilamatepec is the largest of El Salvador's 23 volcanoes and stands 7,800 feet above sea level in a major coffee-growing area about 40 miles west of the capital.

Its last eruption was in 1904 but it has been increasingly active since last year.

Homes and vehicles were covered in a thick layer of ash, and some of the area's coffee plantations were damaged.

"Many trees have been burned, for sure," said Sergio Gil, who leads the Procafe coffee institute. "It is a delicate situation, the ashes have reached as far as Apaneca, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the crater."

The coffee-growing region around Ilamatepec accounts for a large chunk of El Salvador's coffee output.

The nearby city of Santa Ana escaped damage from the volcanic eruption.

(Additional reporting by Alberto Barrera in San Salvador)

El Salvador volcano kills two, thousands flee (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-10-02T033513Z_01_SPI166447_RTRUKOC_0_US-SALVADOR-VOLCANO.xml&archived=False)

Ethiopian volcano erupts again
04/10/2005 18:07  - (SA)  

Addis Ababa - An 11th earthquake, measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, jolted northern Ethiopia on Tuesday, triggering another eruption of the previously dormant Mount Arteale, which has been spewing lava for several days, geologists said.

The quake, which struck the remote region of Afar, about 980km northeast of the capital, is the 11th temblor to rumble across the region since last month, they said.

"A quake, measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, occurred in Teru (in Afar) and was followed by volcanic eruption," said Manahlo Belachew, an expert in the seismology department of Addis Ababa University.

"Quakes and eruptions have been monitored since September 18 at a small scale," he added.

amage

On September 24, a quake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale caused the same volcano to erupt.

The earthquakes have damaged roads in the region's Teru and Dubti districts, making transportation difficult in a region largely inhabited by salt-mining Afar pastoralists, Ethiopian News Agency reported.

The only active volcano in Ethiopia has been largely dormant for the past six decades, but has been spewing molten lava since a series of earthquakes began rattling the region on September 18.

Large portions of Mount Arteale's slopes and its surrounding areas are covered in a thick blanket of ash and plumes of smoke, resulting in the displacement of more than 50 000 Afar nomadics and the death of hundreds of livestock.

"This may complicate the plan for relocation and resettlements of affected people as the quake and volcano eruption is expanding or stretching further in all directions," Manahlo added.

Experts have said the tremors and eruptions are being caused by the expansion of tectonic plates under the Great Rift Valley, an area considered to be highly susceptible to earthquakes and volcanic activity.

Strong earthquake rattles Indonesia's Aceh
Wednesday, 05 October , 2005, 02:19
Jakarta: An earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale rocked the Indonesian province of Aceh but caused no damage or casualties.

The earthquake struck at 5:09 am (2209 GMT Monday) on Tuesday and was centered 60 kilometres under the seabed and 68 kilometres southwest of the Acehnese capital Banda Aceh, said the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta.

The agency said the tremblor was felt quite strongly in Banda Aceh but caused no casulaties or damage.

Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.

A 9.3-magnitude quake off the west coast of Aceh on Sumatra island triggered the December 26 tsunamis that left at least 217,000 people dead around the Indian Ocean, including 131,000 in Aceh alone.

Earthquake hits Great Nicobar Islands


      
Port Blair, Oct 4 (PTI) An earthquake of moderate intensity shook the Great Nicobar Islands in the wee hours today.
The temblor, measuring 5.3 on the Richter Scale hit the region at 03:39 a.M., a Met department statement said.

The epicentre of the quake was at 6.4 degrees north on the Latitude and 93.6 degrees east on the longitude.

Hurricane Stan Slams Into Mexico's Gulf

By MIGUEL HERNANDEZ, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 1 minute ago

VERACRUZ, Mexico - Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's Gulf coast Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and spawning related storms across the region that left at least 66 people dead, most from landslides in
El Salvador.

Stan, which whipped up maximum sustained winds of 80 mph before weakening to a tropical storm, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a major port 185 miles east of Mexico City.

The storm's outer bands swiped the city, knocking down trees and flooding low-lying neighborhoods, authorities said. State officials said four people were injured, including a child, but gave no details.

All three of Mexico's Gulf coast crude-oil loading ports were closed Tuesday as a precaution, authorities said, but the shutdowns were not expected to affect oil prices.

Meteorologists said Stan was driving separate storms across Central America and southern Mexico, provoking flooding and landslides. Some 49 people had been killed during two days of flooding in El Salvador, Interior Secretary Rene Figueroa said Tuesday night. Nine people died in Nicaragua, including six people believed to be Ecuadorean migrants killed when their boat ran ashore.

Four deaths were reported in Honduras and three in Guatemala. In Costa Rica, a 36-year-old woman was killed when her home was buried by a landslide early Tuesday.

In Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, a river overflowed its banks and roared through the city of Tapachula, carrying away ramshackle homes of wood and metal.

Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar said four people were missing and could have been swept away. He said 600 families had been evacuated from homes around Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. Three bridges in the area were destroyed by floodwaters.

"Sadly, we know it's going to keep raining," Salazar said.

At Chachalacas beach, 20 miles north of Veracruz, Celestino Criollo struggled amid rising winds and intermittent rains to clear equipment from his beach-side, thatched-roof seafood restaurant.

Criollo said the storm's rapid approach had caught many beach dwellers by surprise.

"We knew it would be strong and the tide high, but we didn't think it would come this quick," he said. "They advised us, but they could have done it sooner."

Rain was falling Tuesday in much of Central America, forcing thousands from their homes. Among those evacuated were residents of San Salvador's Santa Tecla neighborhood, where an earthquake-triggered landslide in January 2001 killed some 500 people.

Officials have worried the mountain running alongside the neighborhood might collapse again with heavy rains or another quake.

Honduras and Mexico offered to send aid to El Salvador, if needed.

In the southern state of Oaxaca, also affected by heavy rains and wind, officials opened 950 shelters and were keeping an eye on 80 communities considered to be vulnerable.

In Veracruz, schools canceled classes and officials at a nearby nuclear power plant had readied the facility for the category 1 hurricane's strong winds and rains. Flooding washed out at least one major highway.

Some 38,000 people abandoned their homes statewide and stayed in some of the 2,000 shelters set up all along the coastline.

The closed crude-oil loading ports — Coatzacoalcos, Dos Bocas and Cayo Arcas — handle most of the 1.8 million barrels a day of crude oil exported by state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

Five exploratory oil platforms also were evacuated, but so far the storm had not affected the company's production of 3.4 million barrels a day of crude oil, Mexico's Communications and Transportation Department said. Pemex is the world's third-largest oil producer, and most of its exports are sent to the United States.

Before reaching the Gulf, Stan raced across the Yucatan peninsula on Sunday, buffeting the region with wind and rain, but apparently causing no major damage.

Hurricane Stan Slams Into Mexico's Gulf (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051005/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_hurricane_stan)

Note; We are seeing more of this kind of things. Happening more, and more, in this last year. Then in previous years, Drought, Earthquakes, Famine, Pestilence, War, and Strange Weather.

Firefighters Battle Calif. Fires, Wind

1 hour, 32 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - Firefighters were on high alert Tuesday as winds gusting up to 50 mph threatened to flare up hot spots from three Southern California wildfires.

The winds and forecasts of low humidity prompted the National Weather Service to issue a red flag warning until Wednesday afternoon. The warning advises that conditions could lead to explosive fire growth.

The region's largest blaze, at more than 24,000 acres on the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, was fully contained, officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The blaze destroyed three homes.

Inspector Ron Haralson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said he was worried about the weather forecast.

"You have to have a watchful eye over the whole area right now," he said.

Firefighters surrounded a 1,100-acre fire in rugged terrain in the hills above Burbank, said Capt. Ron Bell of the Burbank Fire Department. Crews remained on the scene to tamp down hot spots from the blaze that started Thursday.

In San Bernardino County, a 935-acre fire was 85 percent contained, said Carol Beckley, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service.

The fire was burning in steep, rugged terrain in and around San Bernardino National Forest, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles.

Firefighters Battle Calif. Fires, Wind (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051005/ap_on_re_us/socal_wildfires)

Ten people dead as mystery virus hits Toronto home
Tue Oct 4, 2005 6:44 PM ET163

By Matthew Chung

TORONTO (Reuters) - Ten people have died from a mystery viral outbreak at a Toronto nursing home and another 40 are in hospital, public health officials said on Tuesday as they raced to contact anyone who visited the home recently.

The outbreak, an unidentified respiratory virus, has sparked memories of the SARS outbreak two years ago that killed 44 people in Canada's largest city.

But health officials said the latest outbreak, which was first detected on September 25, is under control although they warned that more deaths could be expected.

Four new deaths were added to the toll on Tuesday, all of them elderly residents at the Seven Oaks Home for the Aged. All of the dead were aged between 50 years to 95 years.

"Although the condition of some ill residents has worsened and unfortunately four more have died, others are improving and we are confident this outbreak is under control," said David McKeown, Toronto's medical health officer.

"Given the age of the population...it's not at all unexpected to see more deaths."

Health officials have ruled out SARS, avian flu and influenza and are awaiting lab results.

But McKeown said it is possible they may never be able to identify the virus, which has infected 70 residents at the home as well as 12 employees and two visitors.

Forty people have been put into isolation in hospital. Residents with less severe symptoms are recovering at the nursing home which is closed to visitors and new patients.

Hospitals and emergency rooms were operating normally but medical staff at hospitals with infected patients are donning gowns, masks and gloves when handling patients.

Ten people dead as mystery virus hits Toronto home (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-04T224356Z_01_YUE479794_RTRUKOC_0_US-HEALTH-VIRUS.xml)

WHO sees 'global epidemic' of chronic disease
Tue Oct 4, 2005 8:10 PM ET

 By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - Developing countries can tackle a "global epidemic" of chronic disease by adopting cheap measures that have helped cut heart disease deaths in some rich nations by up to 70 percent, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

In a report published on Wednesday, the WHO said nearly half of all deaths from heart disease, cancer, respiratory infections, strokes and diabetes -- to which about 35 million people will succumb this year -- were preventable.

The report, "Preventing Chronic Diseases -- a Vital Investment", said developing countries, where most such deaths occur, must copy Western nations by discouraging tobacco use and curbing salt, sugar and saturated fats in food.

"Today we have a major epidemic and we know that if nothing is done, it will evolve rapidly and even more dramatically," Catherine Le Gales-Camus, WHO assistant director-general of non-communicable disease, told a news briefing.

The WHO, a United Nations agency, said its goal was to prevent the deaths of 36 million people by 2015, by reducing death rates from chronic disease by 2 percent each year.

"It is achievable. We want to stop people dying at an early age, prematurely and painfully, from a preventable condition," said Robert Beaglehole, WHO's director of chronic diseases and health promotion.

Eighty percent of all heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes cases, and over 40 percent of cancer cases, could be prevented, the report said.

Chronic disease also has a huge economic impact. The WHO estimates that such illnesses will cost China $558 billion over the next decade, the Russian Federation $303 billion and India $237 billion.

Low and middle income countries, where the epidemic is worst, need to look to the example of industrialized nations. Some 80 percent of deaths from chronic diseases occur in developing countries, and half are women.

"There is a very pervasive misunderstanding that chronic diseases affect only wealthy men in wealthy countries," Beaglehole said.

Alerting the public to the dangers of high cholesterol levels or blood pressure have paid off in Western countries, the report said. Heart disease death rates have fallen by up to 70 percent in the last three decades in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States.

Poland lowered death rates among young adults by 10 percent per year in the 1990s at low cost, mainly by ensuring fruits and vegetables were available and by removing subsidies on butter which made it competitive with healthier vegetable oils, according to Beaglehole.

Over one billion people worldwide are overweight or obese -- putting them at risk of deadly heart disease --- and the figure could rise to 1.5 billion in a decade, the report warned.

About 22 million children under age five are overweight.

Child obesity was "a number one public health problem," and talks are scheduled next week with the food and beverage industry to discuss a "plan of action", Le Gales-Camus said.

"Reports of type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents -- previously unheard of -- have begun to mount worldwide," the WHO report said, referring to a form of the disease previously known as adult-onset diabetes.

Wang Longde, China's vice-minister of health, said in an introduction to the report: "We have an obesity epidemic, with more than 20 percent of our 7-17 year old children in urban centers tipping the scales as either overweight or obese".

WHO sees 'global epidemic' of chronic disease (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-05T001046Z_01_KWA500528_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHRONIC.xml)

Believe it or not, I am not looking for these. They are reaching out, and slapping me in the face saying Look.  So as brother Tom says, KEEP LOOKING UP!

Tropical Storm Tammy follows Florida coast
05 Oct 2005 15:55:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Updates storm position, movement throughout)

MIAMI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The 19th tropical storm of an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season formed north of the Bahamas on Wednesday and was expected to dump heavy rain on Florida and Georgia as it hit the U.S. East Coast.

Tropical Storm Tammy took shape near the same area where hurricanes Katrina and Rita formed over the past two months, but it was not expected to steer into the Gulf of Mexico nor to become a hurricane.

At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Tammy was about 40 miles (64 km) north-northeast of Cape Canaveral, the base for NASA's space shuttle fleet, and about 130 miles (208 km) southeast of Jacksonville, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm was moving north at 14 mph (22 kph). It was traveling almost parallel to the Florida coast and was expected to move ashore over northeast Florida and Georgia by Thursday.

Maximum sustained winds had reached 40 mph (65 kph) and Tammy could bring up to 5 inches (13 cm) of rainfall to north Florida, southeast Georgia and parts of the Carolinas. Rainfall could reach 10 inches (25 cm) in places, the hurricane center said.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June to the end of November, has been one of the deadliest in U.S. history, and the costliest in terms of insured damages.

Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,100 people after coming ashore over Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29 and flooding the city of New Orleans. Rita added to the misery.

Climate experts say the Atlantic has swung into a period of heightened storm activity that could last another 20 years.

This system, according to TV sources, is expected to turn into a hurricane no later than Mon, Oct 10th.


Weather system near Bahamas could become depression

From staff and wire reports

A low-pressure weather system over the Bahamas is expected to begin its crawl over Florida late today, bringing gusty weather and possibly dumping five to seven inches of rain over the region through Saturday.

A hurricane hunter reconnaissance plane was scheduled to fly this morning into the system, which on Monday became more organized near the central Bahamas, the National Hurricane Center said.

Vertical wind shear -- the winds that can sometimes rip up a storm before it intensifies -- is expected to weaken today, said Richard Pasch, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center.

He said the system could strengthen into a tropical depression.

But Pasch stressed it was too soon to pinpoint a precise track or timeline for intensification.

"It certainly has the possibility to become a tropical cyclone; it could even become one as it approaches South Florida," he said. "There are a lot of possibilities."

It's not known yet what effect the system could have on the coastal Carolinas. The area already is forecast to have a soggy week, according to the National Weather Service.

There's a 30 percent chance of rain today, increasing to 50 percent by Wednesday night and 70 percent by Thursday. The likelihood of rain drops to 60 percent Friday and 30 percent Saturday.

Highs locally will be in the low 80s through Friday. Highs Saturday through Monday will be in the mid-70s, with nightly lows in the upper 50s.

Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday October 6, 2005
The Guardian

Scientists have recreated the 1918 Spanish flu virus, one of the deadliest ever to emerge, to the alarm of many researchers who fear it presents a serious security risk.

Undisclosed quantities of the virus are being held in a high-security government laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, after a nine-year effort to rebuild the agent that swept the globe in record time and claimed the lives of an estimated 50 million people.

The genetic sequence is also being made available to scientists online, a move which some fear adds a further risk of the virus being created in other labs.

The recreation was carried out in an attempt to understand what made the 1918 outbreak so devastating. Reporting in the journal Science, a team lead by Dr Jeffery Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland shows that the recreated virus is extremely effective. When injected into mice, it quickly took hold and they started to lose weight rapidly, shedding 13% of their original weight in just two days. Within six days, all mice injected with the virus had died.

In a comparison experiment, similar mice were injected with a contemporary strain of flu, and although the mice lost weight initially, they recovered. Tests revealed that the Spanish flu virus multiplied so rapidly that after four days, mice contained 39,000 times more flu virus than those injected with the more common strain of flu.

The government and military researchers who reconstructed the virus say their work has already provided invaluable insight into its unique genetic make-up and helps explain its lethality. But other researchers warned yesterday the that virus could escape from the laboratory. "This will raise clear questions among some as to whether they have really created a biological weapon," said Professor Ronald Atlas at the centre for deterrence of biowarfare and bioterrorism at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

Publication of the work and the filing of the virus's genetic make-up to an online database followed an emergency meeting last week by the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which concluded that the benefits of publishing the work outweighed the risks. Many scientists remained sceptical. "Once the genetic sequence is publicly available, there's a theoretical risk that any molecular biologist with sufficient knowledge could recreate this virus," said Dr John Wood, a virologist at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Potters Bar.

Six more seniors dead from mystery T.O. outbreak

CTV.ca News Staff

Six more residents of a Toronto seniors' residence home are dead from a mystery respiratory illness, raising the death toll to 16.

"It's obviously something new," infectious disease specialist Dr. Neil Rau  told CTV News. "It's either a new virus, or it's a play on an old virus that's become a little more virulent to the point of causing very significant disease in elderly people."

Toronto's medical officer of health, Dr. David McKeown, said there have been no new reported cases in the last 24 hours.

Public health officials say the cause for the outbreak at the Seven Oaks Home for the Aged in the city's east end remains unknown but that they are continuing testing. However, they maintain that the situation is under control.

"I think that if in a week we can't figure this out, it's time to get some international help," Dr. Rau said.

"What we are seeing is a pretty virulent pathogen that is causing this outbreak," said Dr. Donald Low, medical director of the public health laboratories branch in the Ministry of Health, appearing on CTV Newsnet.

Low has analyzed tissue samples from one of the victims who just died. Health officials have have ruled out influenza, avian flu, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and Legionnaire's disease.

"So our task right now is to find out...what the cause is," Low said. "And that's what we are doing... literally working day and night with clinical specimens to find out what is causing this."

A total of 38 people are in hospital; 34 of them are residents, two are staff, and two are visitors to Seven Oaks.

Since the outbreak began on Sept. 25, 70 residents, 13 employees and five visitors have become ill.

"The majority of cases are improving but some have worsened as the illness takes its course," a statement released by the city's public health officials said Wednesday.

"What is reassuring, despite the fact that the number of deaths are going up is that the number of new cases per day is dropping," said Dr. Rau. "We have to watch a little longer, but it looks like that is a favourable trend."

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman urged caution, saying there is no evidence to suggest the outbreak has spread beyond the seniors' home.

Smitherman noted Wednesday that respiratory illnesses afflicting vulnerable patients such as seniors are not uncommon.
"These are not circumstances that are new," he said. "We're struggling with circumstances like this always in the institutional environment."

Dr. Low agreed, saying such outbreaks have been around for decades.

"It is just now that we have the technology that we can actually identify them, and hopefully actually tell you what is causing them," he said.

Anxiety over the outbreak has been aggravated by fears of SARS in Toronto, a city still reeling from the effects of the respiratory illness.

In 2003, two SARS outbreaks in the Toronto area killed 44 and sickened hundreds. Worldwide, more than 8,000 people contracted the illness and 774 people died.

Meanwhile, the Greater Toronto Hotel Association has released a confidential memo to hotels in the city, urging them to be on alert that visitors and foreign media may pick up on the story and draw unwarranted comparisons to the SARS outbreak.

Among a list of bulleted recommendations, officials are warned that speaking out on the issue may make them appear "defensive."

"The only threat here is if people get carried away with hysteria (or if the outbreak escalates significantly, but there appears no reason to suspect it will)," the memo says.'

"We can inform anyone who asks that we are monitoring the situation closely. Of course we can't appear to be dismissing it out of hand.

"But the biggest threat to tourism is not a respiratory outbreak, it's a hysteria outbreak. That's what we need to contain. We certainly do not want to make any comments that refer to SARS or "last time."

Hotel officials are urged to limit any comment to the theme: "Toronto is one of the safest cities in the world, and that's as true today as ever."

The memo follows in the footsteps of increasingly intense media coverage on the outbreak, including on CNN.

The city's tourism and hospitality industry was hard hit by the SARS crisis after the World Health Organization put Toronto on a list of areas fighting SARS in 2003, thus driving away potential tourists leery of becoming infected.

Earthquake Rattles Three Argentine Provinces

Buenos Aires, Oct 5 (Prensa Latina) A 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit Wednesday the northern Argentine province of Tucuman and was felt in neighboring Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, with no human losses.

According to the National Institute of Seismic Prevention (INPRES) the trembling registered at 07:59 local time and its epicenter was located 50 kilometers southeast of San Miguel de Tucuman city.

The quake intensity reached 3 or 4 degrees on the Mercalli Modified Scale in Tucuman capital, and 3 degrees in Estero and Catamarca, noted the INPRES.

The seismic activity, which lasted less than 10 seconds, caused a big shake and alarm among the people, although calm quickly returned after verifying there were no human or material losses.

Experts said that Tucuman is an active zone, crossed by an important geological fault.

Earthquake Hits Indonesia's Aceh Province
Earthquake Strikes Indonesia's Tsunami-Ravaged Aceh Province; No Reports of Serious Damage
The Associated Press

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - A strong earthquake rocked Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged Aceh province on Wednesday, causing panicked residents to flee their homes and run to higher ground for fearing a tsunami. But there were no immediate reports of serious damage or threat of tsunami.

The magnitude 5.6 quake was centered about 30 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics office said on its Web Site.

State news agency Antara reported that scores of people ran to higher ground, fearing an impending tsunami.

"It caused panic among people. Some ran out of houses," said local seismologist Erida Wati.

Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra Island, has seen almost daily earthquakes since the massive temblor on Dec. 26 that produced a deadly tsunami, killing more than 176,000 people in 11 countries. Aceh was the hardest hit spot with more than 130,000 dead.

Earthquakes of magnitude 6 and below are not considered strong enough to trigger a tsunami.

 Toll of storms and landslides tops 160 in Central America
The Associated Press

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2005
GUATEMALA CITY Rescue workers on Thursday searched for victims of a mudslide near a volcano-ringed lake in Guatemala that is popular with tourists, as the death toll from heavy rains and flooding in Central America climbed above 160.
 
Downpours have battered Central America since the weekend, causing rivers to overflow and huge chunks of land to give way. Most of the deaths have reportedly come from landslides triggered by the heavy rains.
 
The storms killed at least 79 people in Guatemala and 62 in El Salvador. Nine people died in Nicaragua, four in Honduras and one in Costa Rica. Six people died in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
 
Forecasters at the U.S. Hurricane Center said that the rain was likely to continue for several days.
 
The hardest hit area appeared to be a town in Guatemala that is close to Lake Atitlán, a freshwater reserve situated approximately 150 kilometers, or 95 miles, west of Guatemala City.
 
Emergency officials said that 15 bodies had been pulled from the mud in the lake area, and that the death toll likely would rise when authorities were able to step up search efforts. Search and rescue efforts have been hindered by the continued rainfall.
 
"We have 79 deaths, but we have not finished a final count," Benedicto Girón, a spokesman for Guatemala's emergency response officials, said late Wednesday.
 
In El Salvador, President Tony Saca said 62 people had died, mostly from landslides caused by several days of nonstop rain throughout the country. Some 40,000 people in El Salvador fled their homes.
 
In southern Mexico, the states of Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca suffered flooding caused by Hurricane Stan, which hit the Mexican coast early Tuesday and brought more rain to areas that had already been flooded by previous storms.
 
In the Mexican city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, flood waters destroyed bridges, engulfed highways and left the area mostly without electricity and phone service.
 
Governor Pablo Salazar of Chiapas warned that continued rain meant it was likely that the worst was yet to come.
 
President Vicente Fox of Mexico visited the state and asked that families in Chiapas "first dedicate all of their attention to protecting their lives, their health and their family members."
 
In the neighboring state of Oaxaca, personnel from the Mexican Army and Navy were mobilized Wednesday to help evacuate eight cities near a river that was close to unleashing floodwaters.
 
Authorities in the Mexican state of Veracruz, which took a direct hit from Hurricane Stan, said three people were killed and seven injured in the state. About 38,000 people in the state were forced to leave their homes, moving temporarily to higher ground.
 
 

 Northern Plains Recover From Winter Storm

By JAMES MacPHERSON, Associated Press Writer

Roads reopened and the lights came back on for thousands of customers Thursday as the northern Plains recovered from a storm that blasted in from the Rockies.

Travelers were trapped as the snowfall reached as high as 24 inches in a band stretching across North Dakota, from Dickinson in the southwest to Langdon in the northeast. Winds gusted to 50 mph in Minot.

The National Weather Service said the wintry weather was among the earliest on record in the state.

Interstate 94, the state's main east-west artery, was reopened west of Bismarck at midmorning, but authorities warned that many other roads remained coated in ice.

National Guard soldiers worked with state troopers and other workers to rescue stranded motorists using snow plows, buses, heavy trucks and bulldozers, along with a piece of utility equipment that runs on tank-like tracks. No injuries were reported.

About 60 bus passengers who had been stuck for hours got hot meals, free T-shirts and cots in the Dickinson State University student union, courtesy of student volunteers.

William Jordan, of Conway, N.C., said he was grateful for the help but added, "This place, North Dakota, is terrible, man. It's cold."

At least 11,000 customers lost electricity, but most had it back by Thursday morning.

The Red Cross opened a shelter in Minot, the first time it had done so there because of weather, said Allan McGeough, the city chapter's executive director.

Crews trying to clean up fallen trees in Minot were hampered by snow and ice. "A lot of the stuff is frozen to the ground," said Alan Walter, the city's public works director.

A lineman for an electric cooperative was reported missing for hours after he ventured out on a snowmobile to check on a power outage. He was found at a farm and "he's fine," said Janice Koeser, an assistant at McKenzie County Electric Cooperative in Watford City. The cooperative had no more details, she said.

The storm came just a few days after North Dakota had temperatures in the 90s. Warmer weather was forecast to return in the coming days.

Though Peace Holds, Famine Threatens Southern Sudan

Haider Rizvi, OneWorld US Thu Oct 6, 7:04 AM ET

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 6 (One World) - Extreme hunger and malnutrition could take the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in southern Sudan if the world fails to take immediate action, humanitarian aid activists are warning.

Nearly 300,000 children under the age of five are malnourished, according to a recent nutritional survey that shows that more than 20 percent of southern Sudan's seven million people are already facing extreme hunger.

Alarmed by the report's findings that predicts a possible famine in the region, aid and relief groups are calling for urgent coordination among the various United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations.

"There is still no concentrated effort to stop extreme hunger, despite unacceptably high rates of malnutrition," says Onesmus Muinde, a nutritionist for Action Against Hunger, an international relief network, also known by its French name Action Contre la Faim, or ACF.

ACF's report on southern Sudan shows a speedy increase in the level of malnutrition. Last year it stood at 19 percent, which is already four points above the emergency level. But this year's figures show 20.7 percent of the population suffering from malnutrition.

This is a kind of malnutrition that "can kill if not treated," say ACF researchers.

The report identifies "erratic and unevenly" distributed rainfall and inter-clan conflicts as major factors responsible for the worsening food security situation.

Last month, a severe shortage of jet fuel forced the UN's food agency to reduce its deliveries of food aid to southern Sudan by half. UN officials said insufficient contributions and the late arrival of donor funds prevented them from pre-positioning food early this year.

In addition to southern Sudan, tens of thousands of internally displaced people in the Darfur region are also becoming increasingly vulnerable to the deadly threat of hunger and starvation caused by disruptions in food supply by militia groups.

"Life in Western Sudan has become more and more desperate," says a statement from Christian Aid, a U.K.-based aid group, which is actively taking part in relief efforts in the region.

Last week, three Christian Aid workers were kidnapped at gunpoint while visiting an internally displaced people's camp. The group says such incidents are taking place frequently as security situation in the region continues to worsen.

"The situation is deteriorating and this is making it hazardous for non-governmental organizations to operate in the region," says Stephanie Brigden, Christian Aid's senior policy officer. "As a result, many people in Darfur are not getting the assistance they need."

UN officials monitoring the situation in Darfur are equally concerned about relief efforts. During the past two weeks, more than 30 civilians have died and thousands have fled makeshift camps in the Darfur region as a result of attacks by armed Arab men on horses and camels.

Last week, Jan Egeland, the UN's top relief coordinator, told reporters that if the violence continued to escalate and if it continued to be "so dangerous to the 11,000 unarmed humanitarian workers, the UN might not be able to sustain their operations.

"As we speak, we have had to suspend action in many areas, tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance because it is too dangerous," he said.

"My question is, is this a repeat of the so-called safe areas of Bosnia again?" Egeland asked. "We keep people alive, we give them food, we give them medicine, but we do not protect them, or protect our own unarmed staff."

Since such security obstacles are not prevalent in southern Sudan, where an agreement signed by the government and rebels in January provides some hope for relative peace, activists like Muinde say they see no reason for delay in taking action against hunger.

The peace agreement, according to ACF, gives non-governmental organizations the momentous opportunity to end malnutrition in Sudan, as well as to start long-term programs to build up food availability, increase access to clean water, and improve childcare practices.

Immediate steps are needed to address the problem of hunger because now it is threatening to turn an already "horrible cyclical problem" into a "severe malnutrition emergency," the group says.

"Why must we wait for the future?" asks Muinde. "We have the means to stop this crisis; but not the resources."

Though Peace Holds, Famine Threatens Southern Sudan (http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/45361200331128596690;_ylt=ArNmXSECTo93Oybs44U_gB5vaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl)

Breaking News


Earthquake Rocks El Salvador, Guatemala

The Associated Press

A strong undersea earthquake rocked El Salvador and Guatemala on Friday. It was not immediately known if there were damages or injuries.

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.5. A magnitude-5 earthquake can cause considerable damage.

Salvadoran government officials warned people to evacuate areas made vulnerable by five days of heavy rains blamed for 67 deaths.

The quake also was felt in neighboring Guatemala, where 150 people have died from flooding and landslides caused by heavy rains.

The earthquake was centered in the Pacific Ocean, 35 miles southwest of San Salvador, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

Earthquake Kills 1,700 in 3 Asia Nations
7.6-Magnitude Earthquake Kills More Than 1,700 People in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
The Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake near the Pakistan-India border Saturday reduced villages to rubble, triggered landslides and flattened an apartment building. More than 1,700 people were killed in both nations, and a Pakistan army spokesman called the devastation "a national tragedy."

In the capitals of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, buildings shook and walls swayed for about a minute, and panicked people ran from their homes and offices. Tremors continued for hours afterward. Communications throughout the region were cut.

About 1,000 people were killed in Pakistani Kashmir, said Sardar Mohammed Anwar, the top government official in the area.

"This is my conservative guess, and the death toll could be much higher," Anwar told Pakistan's Aaj television station.

He said most homes in Muzaffarabad, the area's capital, were damaged, and schools and hospitals had collapsed.

Big quake rocks Indian subcontinent
Sat Oct 8, 2005 1:29 AM ET

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A major earthquake with a magnitude of at least 7.6 struck Pakistan on Saturday and was felt across the Indian subcontinent, sending people fleeing from their homes into the streets.

There was no immediate word of any serious casualties.

Pakistan's private Geo TV channel reported that the top floors of a 12-storey apartment block in Islamabad had collapsed and an unknown number of people were trapped inside.

The quake was also felt in the Pakistani and Afghan capitals.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) highlighted a large earthquake on its Website between Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir with a magnitude of 7.6.

It described the quake as "major", saying it took place at 0350 GMT at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles). It was centered 95 km (60 miles) northeast of Islamabad and 125 km (75 miles) northwest of Srinagar.

The USGS's David Applegate told CNN that because the epicenter was relatively close to the surface, the quake was likely to have been felt over a large area.

Japanese quake experts put the magnitude at 7.8. Tokyo measures earthquakes according to a technique similar to the Richter scale but adjusted for Japan's geological characteristics.

"We can say that it was one of the strongest earthquakes (ever) felt in Islamabad," said Mohammad Hanif, an official at the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

SCREAMING IN FEAR

Witnesses and Reuters correspondents could hear people screaming in fear inside their houses in Islamabad during the quake -- which lasted for about a minute -- and car and house alarms were set off by the shaking.

Minutes later sirens could be heard as the emergency services began racing through Islamabad, a city of close to a million people.

The situation was still tense, witnesses said, with residents listening and watching the crows -- which are believed to fall silent immediately before an earthquake.

In Lahore, closer to the epicenter, at least nine people were injured, including eight officials of the paramilitary rangers, who were caught when the roof of their office collapsed, police said.

Screaming people rushed out of apartment buildings in the Indian capital, New Delhi, as the tremors began, a Reuters reporter said.

Indian government officials and the meteorological office said earlier that the quake measured 6.8, and was centered west of Muzaffarabad in Pakistani Kashmir.

Reuters reporters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, also felt the tremors.

Indian officials said the quake was felt throughout northern and central India.

"People are still gathered outside their homes and buildings," a resident of Delhi told Reuters. "They are a bit scared to go back into their homes at the moment.

The area where the quake took place is known for its frequent seismic activity and experts have long predicted an imminent major earthquake in the Himalayan region.

Subtropical depression forms near Bermuda; could become Vince

MIAMI A subtropical depression formed today in the open Atlantic, prompting Bermuda to issue a tropical storm watch.
The system could strengthen into Tropical Storm Vince later in the day, which would make it the 20th named storm in one of the busiest hurricane seasons on record.

At 10 a-m today, the depression's center was about 450 miles southeast of Bermuda. It was moving toward the northwest at about 15 miles an hour. It had top sustained winds of about 35 miles per hour, but was expected to strengthen even if it didn't become a tropical storm.

Long-term forecasts showed the system either reaching the United States mainland in about five days, or curving farther out to sea after passing Bermuda. But hurricane specialist Jack Beven says it appears the system might not survive if it gets closer to the U-S because of other weather in the area.

(http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/428-07TanagaIsland-loc.gif)


Aleutian volcano begins to quake

TANAGA: Temblors are far too tiny to be felt on the surface.

By DOUG O'HARRA
Anchorage Daily News

Published: October 7, 2005
Last Modified: October 7, 2005 at 12:48 AM

A sleepy volcano in the western Aleutian Islands began stirring this month, trembling with tiny earthquakes six to 12 miles underground, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The swarm beneath 5,925-foot Tanaga marks the first sign of unrest since the observatory wired the rugged cone with its own network of sensors two years ago, said volcanologist Rick Wessels of the U.S. Geological Survey. The volcano was last known to erupt in 1914.

Like other Aleutian Arc volcanoes, Tanaga gapes beneath one of the world's busiest airline routes, with dozens of flights jetting between North America and Asia there every day. Volcanic ash blasted five to six miles into the sky can damage or shut down jet engines, so the observatory listens and watches for eruptions around the clock.

Most Aleutian volcanoes produce tiny quakes every day, but Tanaga had been remarkably quiet for reasons that remain unclear, Wessels said.

"It had one reasonably measurable event every month or so, and now it's gone to several per hour," he said.

Tanaga rises steeply on its own uninhabited island, 63 miles from the nearest community in Adak and more than 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage. It's one of 28 volcanoes monitored by the observatory for seismic action, hot spots and smoky plumes -- including the 11,070-foot Mount Spurr that looms on the horizon 80 miles due west of Anchorage.

Spurr, which last dusted Anchorage with ash during its 1992 eruption, continued to gurgle with its own quake swarm this week and remained under a restless "yellow" alert.

"It had some nice little seismic events going on this morning, at least a half dozen measurable ones," Wessels said Thursday.

Meanwhile, Tanaga, far to the west, began rumbling late Oct. 1 and has since produced 15 to 68 tiny earthquakes every day. Centered about a mile and half northeast of the summit, the quakes ranged from magnitude .5 to 1.7, far too small to be felt on the surface.

This unrest doesn't necessarily mean Tanaga will erupt anytime soon, and the volcano's alert was not raised from the dormant "green" status, Wessels said.

"We put out a release so that everybody knows that this volcano is doing something neat and interesting," he said.

The last known eruption of Tanaga occurred in 1914, when lava was seen flowing down its steep slopes. Smoke was reported from the summit in 1829, 1791 and 1763-70. But the volcano is so little seen that no one really knows its habits.

The new quakes aren't the kind of tremors produced when molten rock begins oozing toward the surface, Wessels said. A more likely cause may be hot gas shattering rocks under immense pressure far underground.

They could also be regular old earthquakes, related to the Pacific tectonic plate moving along the Aleutian Arc.

"Sometimes these volcanoes have to adjust themselves to the stress," Wessels said.

Engineers: New Cause of New Orleans Flood

By BRETT MARTEL, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 8, 1:07 AM ET

NEW ORLEANS - Much of the city flooded not because water rushed over the tops of levees, but because two of the storm barriers that ring New Orleans actually shifted and then collapsed, a team of independent engineers said Friday.

The preliminary analysis contradicts initial reports by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which said water may have pushed over the top of the levees, eroding the earthen embankments that support the flood walls.

The independent engineers said the shifting of the barriers was understandable and did not assign blame or speculate about design flaws that the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina may have exposed.

"Levees tend to be built in very difficult situations on poor site conditions because you're essentially turning marshy land into land you can stabilize and do things on," said civil engineering professor Raymond Seed, who led a team from the University of California at Berkeley.

The California team worked with the American Society of Civil Engineers and Army engineers for several days this week before releasing the findings. More research is planned.

The question of what caused the flooding at the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal has been debated since the storm. The findings Friday show that soil from one levee was pushed back 35 feet, and that soil from the other apparently heaved upward from its base.

The independent engineers agreed that some of the worst flooding in the city stemmed from water in an industrial canal flowing over the top of a levee. But their report prompted a concession from Army engineers.

Soil giving way beneath the flood walls, causing the walls to collapse, was "certainly a possibility," said Paul Mlakar, a senior research scientist with the Corps.

Seed said the problems likely stemmed from different types of soil that make it difficult to build levees of consistent strength. The technology exists to compensate for such weaknesses if taxpayers are willing to absorb the cost, he added.

"The cost of a significantly stronger system would have been much smaller than current damage. The problem is, the current damage wasn't a sure bet," Seed said. "If it's a long-shot bet, it's very hard to get money spent up front. And so the American way is sort of take your chances."

Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29 and the massive flooding in the Lakeview, Mid City and Gentilly neighborhoods followed the next day, when waters from Lake Pontchartrain backed into canals and blew through the shifted levees.

Engineers: New Cause of New Orleans Flood (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051008/ap_on_re_us/katrina_flooding)

Hmmmmmm, levees don't shift, only the hand of God could cause them to shift.

617 Killed in Central America Rain, Floods

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago

SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala - Dozens of Mayan Indians used hand tools to dig through hardening mud on Saturday, searching for bodies under a landslide that swallowed a Guatemalan neighborhood and pushed the regionwide death toll from a week of pounding rains to 617.
ADVERTISEMENT

Hardest hit was the lakeside town of Santiago Atitlan, where the side of a volcano collapsed, killing at least 208 people. Officials said the victims were among 508 people killed and another 337 missing in Guatemala.

The rest of the dead were scattered throughout
El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.

The mud-spattered body of 3-year-old Mari Taxachoy Tzina was pulled Saturday from the home where she died. Her father, Gaspar, buried her in a common grave at the local cemetery.

"That's my wife, my two daughters, my son — I'm only missing one more son," he said, explaining how he had buried almost his entire family.

"You always think about saving your family, but I couldn't," said Gaspar, a laborer who returned from work in Guatemala City to find his house gone, replaced by a blank face of mud.

Guatemala has borne the brunt of heavy rains exacerbated by Hurricane Stan, which made landfall Tuesday on the Mexican Gulf Coast before quickly weakening to a tropical depression.

Governments in Central America and Mexico were still struggling Saturday to reach isolated areas devastated by flooding and landslides. Many roads had yet to be cleared.

On the banks of Lake Atitlan, a popular tourist destination, dozens of Mayan Indians swarmed over a vast bed of caked mud that covered trees and houses, looking for those still missing after Wednesday's landslide.

Primitive wooden coffins piled up in the cemetery, waiting for bodies. Villagers held sprigs of native herbs to ward off odors as they dug mass graves for bodies that likely would be buried without names.

"Entire families have disappeared," said Diego Sojuel, of the Santiago Atitlan municipal aid committee. "In some cases, there is no one that can identify the cadavers. And in other cases, it is because of the state of decomposition that we are going to have to bury them without names."

Tourists worked alongside local residents digging trenches 10-feet deep through mud strewn with bits of tin roofing, clothing, papers and bedding.

Chris Needham, 24, of London, paused to wonder aloud whether some areas might eventually have to be declared a burial ground.

"That's people's families under there," he said. "They're not going to stop digging. I wouldn't stop."

Guatemalan officials organized an air-rescue squad of their own helicopters as well as those lent by the United States and neighboring Mexico, but bad weather has limited flights.

Colombia announced Saturday it will fly in 10 tons of food, cleaning materials and first-aid equipment to help victims in Central America and Mexico.

In Mexico, President
Vicente Fox visited devastated southern Chiapas state and delivered aid to hundreds living in shelters. Some victims said they still had not heard from missing family members.

"I want them to look for my brother, Leonardo Maldonado, who is 27. He lives with us, but he went to work and I haven't heard anything from him," said Maria del Carmen, an evacuee.

In Guatemala, government workers have used heavy machinery to clear fallen trees and earth from the InterAmerican Highway. The country's important Pacific coast highway remained impassable, however, after raging rivers destroyed five bridges.

The disaster started gradually in communities ringing Lake Atitlan, where creeks and rivers began spilling their banks on Wednesday as rains soaked cornfields that climb steep, deforested hillsides.

Martin Ramirez Tacaxoy, 41, a farmer, said his sister came by to wake him up to tell him the nearby river was rising.

But because the continuing rains had been so gentle, many other people went back to sleep — until the wall of earth came.

"It was a roar, it was like an earthquake," said Ramirez Tacaxoy, who pulled out three of his neighbors, some severally wounded from mud that had buried them, in some cases up to their necks. "Some people on the edges where able to grab hold of coffee trees, and we pulled them out. But many remained underneath."

Survivors struggled to describe the thunderous roar of the mud that buried entire families.

"I saw it coming. I leaned up against the wall," Pablo Gaspar, 16, a firewood collector, said, gasping on his hospital bed after being rescued from the muck. "Then the wall collapsed on me."

He lost six family members, including both his parents.

617 Killed in Central America Rain, Floods (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051008/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/central_america_flooding)

This is an update on Pastor Roger's post.

Quake Kills More Than 3,000 in South Asia

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 22 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A huge earthquake triggered landslides, toppled an apartment building and flattened villages of mud-brick homes Saturday, killing more than 3,000 people across a mountainous swath touching Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

The casualty toll from the 7.6-magnitude tremor was rising early Sunday as rescuers struggled to dig people from the wreckage, their work made more difficult as rain and hail turned dirt and debris into sticky muck. The worst damage was in Pakistan, where the dead included 250 girls crushed at a school and 200 soldiers on duty in the Himalayas.

For hours, aftershocks rattled an area stretching from Afghanistan across northern Pakistan into India's portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing tremors could cause more damage.

The earthquake, which struck just before 9 a.m., caused buildings to sway for about a minute in the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, an area some 625 miles across. Panicked people ran from homes and offices, and communications were cut to many areas.

Most of the devastation occurred in the mountains of northern Pakistan. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of the capital, Islamabad, in the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir.

"It is a national tragedy," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's chief army spokesman. "This is the worst earthquake in recent times."

In Mansehra, a shopowner named Haji Fazal Ilahi stood vigil over the body of his 14-year-old daughter, which lay under a sheet on a hospital mattress. He said his wife, another daughter and a brother also died when the family's house fell.

"I could see rocks and homes tumbling down the mountains," said Ilahi, who was driving to his village of Garlat when the quake struck. "When I reached my village, there was nothing left of my home."

India's government offered condolences and assistance to Pakistan, a longtime rival with which it has been pursuing peace efforts after fighting three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

"While parts of India have also suffered from this unexpected natural disaster, we are prepared to extend any assistance with rescue and relief which you may deem appropriate," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a message to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

India reported at least 250 people killed and 800 injured when the quake collapsed 2,700 houses and other buildings in Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths occurred in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and in the city of Srinagar, said B.B. Vyas, the state's divisional commissioner.

Telephone lines were down. Some bridges developed cracks, but traffic was reported to be passing over them.

A senior Pakistani army officer said 200 soldiers were killed by debris and landslides in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

About 1,000 civilians died in that region, said Sardar Mohammed Anwar, the top government official in the area.

"This is my conservative guess, and the death toll could be much higher," Anwar told Pakistan's Aaj television station, adding that most homes in Muzaffarabad, the area's capital, were damaged, and schools and hospitals collapsed.

The death toll was at least 1,600 in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, said Akram Durani, the province's top elected official.

Ataullah Khan Wazir, police chief in the northwestern district of Mansehra, said authorities there pulled the bodies of 250 students from the wreckage of one girls' school in the village of Ghari Habibibullah. About 500 students were injured, he said.

Dozens of children were feared killed in other schools.

Mansehra, about 90 miles northwest of the capital, was believed to be a hotbed of Islamic militant activity during the time the Taliban religious militia ruled neighboring Afghanistan. Al-Qaida operatives trained suicide squads at a camp there, Afghan and Pakistani sources told The Associated Press in 2002.

Afghanistan appeared to suffer the least damage. In its east, an 11-year-old girl was crushed to death when a wall in her home collapsed, police official Gafar Khan said.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, said the quake was felt at Bagram, the main American base in Afghanistan, but he had no reports of damage at bases around the country.

The United Nations said it was working with Pakistan, Afghanistan and India on an emergency response to the quake.

President Bush offered condolences, and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said the United States was ready to help.

"At this difficult time, the United States stands with its friends in Pakistan and India, just as they stood with us and offered assistance after Hurricane Katrina," Rice said in a statement.

In Pakistan, Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz ordered the military to extend "all-out help" to quake-hit areas and appealed to the nation to stay calm.

Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas, but landslides and rain hindered rescue efforts.

The only serious damage reported in Pakistan's capital was the collapse of a 10-story apartment building, where at least 10 people were killed and 126 were injured. Hospital doctors said the dead included an Egyptian diplomat, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said two Japanese were killed.

A man named Rehmatullah who lived near the apartment building said dust enveloped the wreckage.

"I rushed down, and for some time you could not see anything because of the dust. Then we began to look for people in the rubble," he said. "We pulled out one man by cutting off his legs."

"It was like hell," added Nauman Ali, who lives in a nearby building. "I was tossed up in my bed and the ceiling fan struck against the roof."

Aided by two large cranes, hundreds of police and soldiers helped remove chunks of concrete, one of which was splattered with blood. One rescue worker said he heard faint cries from people trapped in the rubble.

In Abbotabad, north of Islamabad, dozens of injured quake victims and other patients lay on the lawn of the city hospital as staff with loudspeakers appealed to the public for food and other relief supplies.

One of the injured was an 8-year-old boy, Qadeer, whose father, a farmer named Jehangir, said the only buildings left standing in their village were a mosque and a school. Qadeer lay unconscious, his right leg heavily bandaged.

Authorities laid out dozens of bodies under sheets in a damaged sports stadium in Muzaffarabad.

Quake Kills More Than 3,000 in South Asia (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051008/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_quake)

This is an update on Pastor Roger's post.

Hurricane Vince forms near Madeira Islands
10 October 2005

MIAMI: The 20th tropical storm of an uncommonly active Atlantic hurricane season strengthened quickly into a hurricane on Monday after forming in an unusual location, near Portugal's Madeira islands.

Hurricane Vince was about 200km northwest of the Madeira islands at 1000 NZT with winds of 120kmh, and was moving toward the northeast at 9kmh, the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

Its forecast track would take the storm toward Portugal but Vince was expected to gradually weaken on Tuesday as it moved over cooler waters. The hurricane was mainly a hazard to shipping, the hurricane centre said.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has been one of the costliest and deadliest for the United States, and Vince's formation made 2005 the second-busiest season since records began 150 years ago.

There were 21 named storms in 1933 and 19 in 1995. An average season spawns around 10 tropical storms, of which six become hurricanes. Tropical storms become hurricanes when their maximum sustained winds reach 119kmh.

US hurricane researchers say the Atlantic has swung back into a period of increased storm activity that could last another 20 years. Some climatologists also believe global warming may be increasing the average strength of tropical cyclones.

JNW HEADLINE NEWS
Analysis: Eyes to the north

By Ryan Jones
October 9th, 2005

Lebanese security officials have told Geostrategy-Direct that hundreds of “Palestinian” terrorists have crossed into Lebanon over the past two weeks with Syrian assistance.

Damascus' ostensible aim is to strengthen what hold it still has over Lebanon through its terrorist allies, and to bolster forces massed in Israel's northern neighbor for future aggression against the Jewish state.

Over the past three years, attacks originating in Lebanon or carried out inside Israel proper by Syrian-supported groups have elicited Israeli air strikes on Syrian targets both in Lebanon and Syria itself.

And so Syria last week also concluded the procurement of advanced Russian-made S-18 anti-aircraft missiles, just in case Israel tries to retaliate again. Moscow also agreed to offer advanced military training to more than double the Syrian officers it now instructs in the ways of war.

The strengthening of Syrian and terrorist forces north of Israel corresponds to increased cooperation between “Palestinian” terror groups in the PA-controlled territories and those based in Syria and Lebanon, most notably Hizballah.

In early 2004, IDF intelligence officials estimated some 80 percent of “Palestinian” terror cells were financed and controlled, either directly or indirectly, by Hizballah.

With all the terrorists on the same page, their numbers bolstered, and morale skyrocketing in the wake of Israel's retreat from Gaza, the likelihood of a coordinated rocket assault on both northern and southern Israel at the same time has greatly increased.

Both Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza certainly have the armaments, the will and the audacity to carry out such an assault.

If they do, Israeli will presumably launch a harsh response, including token strikes meant to display it's military superiority, such as bombing runs on terrorist bases in Syria.

But this time Syria would be in a far better position to down an Israeli aircraft or two, leading to the situation quickly spiraling out of control, with Israel needing to respond even more harshly and the terrorists greatly emboldened in their offensive.

While all of this may seem like wild speculation amid relative calm in Israel and Western assertions of renewed momentum towards peace, another source indicates it is at just such a time that all hell will break loose.

The enemy to the north will say, “I will go to a peaceful people, who dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates.” (Ezekiel 38:11)

Thus says the Lord God: “On that day when My people Israel dwell safely... Then you will come from your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you...a great company and a mighty army.” (Ezekiel 38:14-15)

Interestingly, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz last week told The Jerusalem Post that on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israel has never dwelt more safely in its land than it does now.

Analysis: Eyes to the north (http://www.jnewswire.com/library/article.php?articleid=788)

Note;{/b] Wait till you read the next post! Everyone had better start LOOKING UP!

'Final stage - war against Israel'

A letter found by U.S troops in Iraq sent by Bin Laden's deputy to Islamic insurgent leader in Iraq, reveals al-Qaeda's future strategies; according to the letter, terror against Israel is the final stage of al-Qaeda's plan to take control of the Middle East
Yitzhak Benhorin

Terror against Israel is the final stage of al-Qaeda's plan to take over the Middle East: The U.S. has obtained a letter sent by Osama Bin Laden's deputy Ayman Zawahiri to the leader of Iraq's insurgency Abu Musab al-Zarqawi outlining its future strategies, the Washington Post reported Friday.
 
According to the letter, intercepted during an operation in Iraq, al-Qaeda plans to broaden its activities from Iraq to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

The 13 page document provides a thorough outline of al-Qaeda's strategies in Iraq and beyond. The document's content was authenticated by numerous sources.

Al-Qaeda's four-stage plan is clearly detailed: expelling the U.S. forces from Iraq, creating a caliphate over as much of Iraq as possible, expanding jihad to neighboring countries, specifically Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and war against Israel.

"I want to be the first to bless you on what God has blessed you with - fighting in the heart of the Muslim world that was a battleground for large historic Islamic wars and what is now the place of Islam's greatest war in the present era," Zawahiri said in the letter.

"The 'Mujaheddin' or warriors must not be allowed to end their mission with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons," he said. "Then we will return to having the secularists and traitors govern us."

Letter contains request for financial assistance
 
The letter also hints at tensions within the group. Zawahiri warns Zarqawi against beheading hostages and then distributing videotapes, which could harm al-Qaeda's popularity in the Islamic world, he writes.

He advises Zarqawi to shoot hostages instead of beheading them.

However, it sees Zarqawi has ignored al-Qaeda's deputy and his group in Iraq continues to behead their hostages - the leader beheaded a hostage two weeks ago.
 
The letter also contains a request by Zawahiri for financial assistance from al-Qaeda supporters.

'Final stage - war against Israel' (http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3152239,00.html)

Ready, willing and looking up!

Did we really need to intercept such a letter as this to know that this has been al-Qaeda's plan all along?

Nope, That is something all Christians should know.  Maybe it will help some non-believers, believe!

Storm Drops 20 Inches of Snow in Colo.

By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

DENVER - A powerful storm that dropped up to 20 inches of snow in parts of Colorado knocked out power Monday to thousands of people, closed a lengthy stretch of a major highway and triggered rock slides in the foothills.

The storm was blamed for at least three deaths, while an elderly man who got lost while snowshoeing was found safe after a night outdoors.

Authorities said 150 miles of westbound Interstate 70 was closed from the Kansas line to Denver. The entire highway was closed for the 80 miles between Denver and Limon, where truck stop parking lots were overflowing.

More than 70 people were staying overnight in four Red Cross shelters opened for drivers stranded along I-70, spokesman Robert Thompson said.

The storm cut off power to 80,000 homes and businesses when power lines snapped and transformers failed, according to Xcel Energy.

"You could hear them popping," said Tom Hartman, who was shoveling snow outside the Schlessman Family YMCA in Denver when the transformers began to crackle and die.

Some 12,000 homes and businesses, mostly in the Denver area, were still without electricity late Monday.

Dozens of schools closed or were opening late, including three in the Denver area that closed because of power failures.

Two children were hospitalized with minor injuries after a school bus slid backward down a steep embankment south of Denver, Douglas County schools spokeswoman Carol Kaness said.

A 73-year-old Denver woman was killed Monday after a tree limb snapped off and struck her, and a man and a woman died after their van skidded off Interstate 76 northeast of the city.

The unidentified 74-year-old man who got lost while snowshoeing with his son Sunday was found safe after a night outdoors in the foothills outside Denver.

"He's fine, he's just cold," Clear Creek County sheriff's dispatcher Marty Writer said.

Hundreds of flights were delayed at Denver International Airport as planes lined up to de-ice before takeoff, an airport spokesman said. At one point, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all Denver-bound flights for 90 minutes.

In southwestern Colorado, rain associated with the storm system was believed to have triggered two rock slides in San Miguel County, including one that shut down a lane of Colorado 145 near Telluride. No injuries were reported. Steady rain also caused two rock slides in Boulder Canyon northwest of Denver, forcing the closure of one lane of Colorado 119 and damaging a car. No one was hurt.

The National Weather Service had predicted up to 4 feet of snow in the southern Colorado mountains, but some of the snow melted and the precipitation turned to rain, leaving an accumulation of about a foot.

Snowfall amounts ranged from 20 inches in Breckenridge to 12 inches in Strasburg, about 20 miles east of Denver. Ski resorts, eager to open for the year, reported up to 24 inches of snow in the mountains west of Denver.

El Paso County Search and Rescue was called to help drivers who got stuck on snowy county roads east of Colorado Springs.

"We've got people out trying out the four-wheel-drive vehicles, and they're finding out they don't work very well," spokesman Steve Sperry said.

Storm Drops 20 Inches of Snow in Colo. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051011/ap_on_re_us/western_snowstorm)

Three Alaska volcanoes showing signs of unrest
Tue Oct 11, 2005 7:09 PM ET165

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Anchorage residents could see a cloud of steam over the weekend from a volcano 900 miles away -- one of three Alaska volcanoes showing signs of unrest.

The three volcanoes, including two located on remote Aleutian islands distant from any population centers, are setting off frequent tremors and minor bursts of ash or steam, seismologists said on Tuesday.

Cleveland Volcano, 900 miles southwest of Anchorage, had a small eruption on Friday, said the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which monitors Alaska's more than 40 active volcanoes.

Its ash plume rose to a height of nearly 15,000 feet (4.6 km) above sea level, observatory scientists said.

A cloud of steam from the 5,676-foot (1,730-m) volcano's peak was visible from Anchorage over the weekend.

The volcano has had periodic but minor ash emissions and some debris flow caused by melted snow, said Dave Schneider, a U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist and acting scientist-in-charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Ash emissions "are a lot easier to see now than they were in the summer because you have fresh snow," Schneider said.

Cleveland Volcano, which comprises the western half of uninhabited Chuginadak Island, last erupted in 2001. The closest community, 45 miles to the east, is Nikolski, an Aleut village of 36 people.

The other volcanoes showing unrest are 5,925-foot (1,800-m) Tanaga Volcano and 11,070-foot (3,400-m) Mount Spurr, 75 miles west of Anchorage.

A series of eruptions in 1992 showered Anchorage and the surrounding region with ash, forcing a brief closure of Anchorage International Airport.

Three Alaska volcanoes showing signs of unrest (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-11T230847Z_01_DIT183310_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-VOLCANOES-ALASKA.xml)

Brazil Declares Amazon River a Disaster

Tue Oct 11, 8:39 PM ET

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Authorities declared part of the Amazon River a disaster area after a drought left the levels of parts of the river too low for navigation, officials said Tuesday

The government of the jungle state of Amazonas declared the disaster on Monday, freeing up money, food and medicine to scores of river communities that now can be reached only by air, government spokesman Hiel Levy said by phone.

"All these communities are having difficulty finding supplies. We're working to make sure they don't run out," Levy said by phone from Manaus, 1,660 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.

The level of the Amazon rises and falls regularly, but this year the dry season has been more severe than normal. Officials said the water levels in areas about 35 miles upstream from Manaus have dropped several feet to about five feet, making it hazardous for river boats and difficult for fishing, a key occupation.

"We're worried," Manaquiri Mayor Jair Souto told the Associated Press. "We have about 25,000 people whose basic food is fish. We're a community of fishermen."

Officials said Amazonas Gov. Carlos Eduardo de Souza Braga spoke with Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva about the problem and sent workers to dig wells to supply isolated communities with drinking water, which previously was drawn from the river.

Water levels are expected to rise in early November at the start of the rainy season.

Brazil Declares Amazon River a Disaster (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051012/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_amazon)

American Baptist Exodus
Scripture, homosexuality divide another venerable denomination.
by Rob Moll | posted 10/05/2005 09:00 a.m.

The Pacific Southwest region of the American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA) has begun defecting in the largest church exodus from any denomination over the presenting issue of homosexuality. Underlying issues, according to leaders, include the authority of Scripture and church discipline. Representing more than 300 churches, the region's board of directors voted September 8 to begin withdrawal. At least four other regions are considering leaving the ABCUSA, a member denomination in the National Council of Churches.

The ABCUSA officially states that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." However, gay-affirming congregations remain affiliated with the denomination. When conservative regions have disfellowshiped such congregations, those congregations have simply affiliated with a more liberal ABCUSA region.
<snip>
American Baptist Exodus (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/011/2.23.html)

Your going to have to finish reading this from it's mother site.

Typhoon Nando continues to threaten Philippines
www.chinaview.cn 2005-10-12 23:00:27

    MANILA, Oct. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- The Philippine weather bureau PAGASA Wednesday said typhoon Nando (international name Kirogi) has intensified and continues to threaten the provinces of northern Luzon.

    By 14:00 local time, PAGASA said satellite and surface data tracked the weather disturbance at 1,020 km east northeast of northern Luzon with maximum sustained winds of 160 km per hour near the center and gustiness of up to 195 km per hour. It continues to move west northwest at 3 km per hour.

    The weather bureau forecast the typhoon to be 1,000 km east northeast of northern Luzon by Thursday morning and 970 km east northeast of northern Luzon by Friday morning.

    By Saturday morning, it is expected to be 980 km east northeastof northern Luzon or 680 km east southeast of Okinawa, Japan, PAGASA added.

    PAGASA said the islands of Luzon and Visayas will experience mostly cloudy skies with scattered rainshowers and thunderstorms. Mindanao will have partly cloudy to cloudy skies with isolated rainshowers and thunderstorms.

Four Children in Minnesota Contract Polio

 By MARTIGA LOHN
Associated Press Writer

October 13, 2005, 7:58 PM EDT

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Four children in an Amish community in Minnesota have contracted the polio virus -- the first known infections in the U.S. in five years, state health officials said Thursday.

Dr. Harry Hull, the state epidemiologist, said the cases do not pose a threat to the general public because most people have been vaccinated against polio and are unlikely to have contact with Amish people. But he said he expects to find more infections within the Amish community because some of its members refuse immunizations on religious grounds.

None of the children have shown any symptoms of the paralyzing disease. About one in 200 people who contract the polio virus suffer paralysis because of it; others typically rid themselves the virus after weeks or months.

None of the four children had been vaccinated. Three are siblings; the fourth is a baby from another family.

The infection came to light when the baby was hospitalized for various health problems and underwent tests. Authorities then began testing other members of the community for the virus.

Officials would not identify the Amish community but said it consisted of 100 to 200 people.

Hull said the infections were traced to an oral vaccine that was administered in another country, probably within the past three years.

The use of oral polio vaccine containing the live virus was stopped in the United States in 2000. The live-virus vaccine caused an average of eight cases of polio a year in the United States. The U.S. and Canada now use an injected vaccine made from the killed virus.

State and federal officials are investigating how an infection from a vaccine given in another country reached Minnesota. Stool or saliva from an infected person can transmit the virus.

Health officials said they are working with the Amish community to determine who may have been exposed to the virus, and to encourage immunizations.

"We have been going house to house, talking with them about the risk, offering the vaccine and attempting to collect specimens to see if the virus has been spreading," Hull said. "Some families have said, `No, thank you, we do not want to interact with you at all.' Other families have said, `Sure, we'll get vaccinated. We'll provide specimens.'"

Without the community's cooperation, Hull said, there is a chance of an outbreak similar to one that occurred in 1979 in Amish communities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri and Pennsylvania. Ten people were left paralyzed by the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The last naturally occurring case of polio in the United States was in 1979, and health officials consider the disease eliminated in the Western Hemisphere. It persists in other parts of the world, with the vast majority of cases concentrated in India, Nigeria and Pakistan, according to the World Health Organization.

According to the CDC, more than 95 percent of U.S. children are vaccinated against polio by the time they enter school.

Southwestern N.H. braces for possibility of more flooding

By Anne Saunders, Associated Press Writer  |  October 13, 2005

CONCORD, N.H. --The southwestern part of the New Hampshire should escape further flood damage as long as any new rainfall stays below 3 inches, Emergency Management Director Bruce Cheney told lawmakers Thursday.

With the National Weather Service late Thursday calling for 2 to 3 inches of rain, it could be a close call.

Cheney, Gov. John Lynch and leaders in the House and Senate gave lawmakers an overview of the damage and the status of the emergency relief.

"The progress has been truly remarkable but as you know, there's still much to do," Lynch said.

A key bridge in Hinsdale was repaired to allow emergency vehicles across and may open to regular traffic by Friday afternoon, Cheney said.

The state has distributed 46,000 sand bags to Cheshire and Sullivan counties and 550 well-testing kits. State health officials were going door-to-door to collect water samples that state environmental officials will test to see if the drinking water is safe.

Fifteen inspectors evaluated area dams and determined none are in danger of breaching, Cheney said.

Power was restored to all but about 16 homes on Thursday afternoon and all were expected to be back on line by nightfall. Most homes have phone service back as well, he said.

"We've had plans in place for years," Cheney said of disaster relief planning. In all, 11 state agencies, the American Red Cross and various federal officials are in the flood-stricken area making repairs, providing assistance to victims and assessing damage.

"It worked well," he told lawmakers of the state's planning efforts. "New Hampshire is well prepared."

Maine Gov. John Baldacci said Thursday he has offered Lynch any assistance possible and Maine transportation officials say they could provide temporary bridges and personnel to assemble them.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts state police dogs are assisting New Hampshire canines in the search for three people believed swept away in the weekend floods. Officials have given up any hope of finding them alive.

Fish and Game Lt. Todd Bogardus said searchers were working their way through 16 miles of terrain from Alstead to the Connecticut River. They also are searching the Connecticut for Sally and Tim Canfield, who apparently were swept away along with their house, and Spencer Petty, who may have been washed downstream in his van.

He said teams are pulling apart debris piles left all along the flood route. The piles are made up of everything from trees to pieces of houses and cars.

Three people were confirmed dead in the flooding and a kayaker swept away in Antrim also has not been found.

Health officials are warning residents of the danger of illness and injury left behind by the weekend floods.

Cheshire County Sheriff Richard Foote said the flood waters and debris-filled areas are contaminated with human waste from destroyed septic systems, as well as gas, oil and other chemicals from destroyed homes and cars and fuel tanks.

He said people risk infection if they are cut by debris.

Cheney was confident that New Hampshire would soon get $5 million in federal aid. Additional federal money also is likely once communities can document their losses, put repairs out to bid and collect receipts that document the expenses involved in removing debris and repairing roads and public facilities, he said.

Homeowners who suffered major losses also should be eligible for some federal aid, but that could take time, he said.

In the interim, lawmakers are organizing a fundraising effort -- originally planned to help Katrina victims and now aimed at helping New Hampshire's own.

"This isn't an Alstead problem or an Acworth problem or a Walpole problem, this is a New Hampshire problem," Lynch said. "In typical New Hampshire fashion, this is all of us pulling together to help our families."

 Forecasting the Next Great San Francisco Earthquake

The San Francisco Bay region has a 25 percent chance of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake in the next 20 years, and a roughly 1 percent chance of such an earthquake each year, according to the "Virtual California" computer simulation.

The Virtual California approach to earthquake forecasting is similar to the computer models used for weather forecasting, said John Rundle, director of the UC Davis Computational Science and Engineering Center, who has developed the model with colleagues from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions. A previous forecast of earthquake hazards, the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities, used records of past earthquakes to calculate the probability of future ones.

The Virtual California model includes 650 segments representing the major fault systems in California, including the San Andreas fault responsible for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The simulation takes into account the gradual movement of faults and how they interact with each other.

The researchers used the model to simulate 40,000 years of earthquakes in California. They found almost 400 major (magnitude 7 or above) earthquakes at an average interval of 101 years. The simulation data indicates a 25 percent chance of another such earthquake in the next 20 years, a 50 percent chance in the next 45 years and a 75 percent chance by 2086.

The latest work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Other authors on the paper are Paul Rundle, Donald Turcotte, Robert Scherbakov and Gleb Yakovlev at UC Davis; Andrea Donellan, Peggy Li and Jay Parker, Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Bruce Malamud, King's College, London; Lisa Grant, UC Irvine; Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, Bloomington; Dennis McLeod, University of Southern California; Bill Klein, Boston University; and Kristy Tiampo, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

The fear of these things will be the beginning and the end.

All these things a Prophised in the Bible. Just remember to keep LOOKING UP! (To borrow the phrase from bep's.)

Northeast Slogs Through 8th Day of Rain

By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

SPRING LAKE, N.J. - Toilets backed up with sewage, military trucks plowed through headlight-high water to rescue people, and swans glided down the streets as rain fell for an eighth straight day around the waterlogged Northeast on Friday.

Overflowing lakes and streams forced hundreds of people from their homes in New Jersey and New Hampshire, and parts of New York and Connecticut also were under flood warnings.

Some spots have had more than a foot of rain since Oct. 7, and 2 to 3 more inches of rain were expected in some places by Saturday.

Across the Northeast, at least 10 people have died because of the downpours since last weekend, and four others remain missing in New Hampshire.

Acting New Jersey Gov. Richard J. Codey declared a statewide state of emergency — the first step toward applying for federal aid — late Friday afternoon.

In the shore town of Spring Lake, giant military vehicles rolled in to help carry out hundreds of residents after an inlet flooded and a pumping station overflowed, sending sewage into the water.

Jack O'Connor, 84, was rescued from his apartment by rowboat. "All the years I've lived in Spring Lake, I've never been in a boat until now," he said.

Not far away, 65 homes were evacuated because of lake flooding, and a dam at a state park failed, swamping the streets. About 100 nearby residents who evacuated overnight as the Shark River rose were being allowed to return by afternoon.

In the town of Oakland, a half-dozen swans glided down the middle of a street as neighbors watched water lap at their porches.

"It's just lousy," said Ralph Petricone. "Learn from your mistakes."

In the northern part of the state, floodwaters knee-deep and higher cut off some neighborhoods, and sewage backed up into homes in Jersey City.

In Connecticut, the ground was so soft because of the steady rain that trees toppled, blocking the railroad tracks in Naugatuck. Commuters were forced to take shuttle buses.

Up to 3 inches of rain was expected in parts of southwestern New Hampshire. State workers passed out 46,000 sandbags and 550 well-testing kits.

Officials in Keene, N.H., one of the cities hardest hit by earlier flooding, issued a mandatory evacuation for 93 residents of a trailer home park along the Ashuelot River, and a voluntary evacuation for 1,200 other residents.

In Alstead, N.H., where at least 12 homes washed away last weekend, Gov. John Lynch set up a temporary office in the town fire department, passing out laminated cards with his cell phone number and direct lines to state agencies and public utilities.

Northeast Slogs Through 8th Day of Rain (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051014/ap_on_re_us/severe_flooding)

Aftershock rattles Pakistan quake survivors
Fri Oct 14, 2005 5:55 AM ET

By David Fox

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Survivors of the Kashmir earthquake spent a sixth night in the open in the worst-hit city of Muzaffarabad, kept awake by the rumble of aid trucks and an aftershock early on Friday that set dogs howling.

The aftershock, at around 2 a.m. (1700 EDT), measured 5.3 magnitude on the U.S. Geological Survey's sensors. Local meteorological officials said there were 70 aftershocks in a 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday, and the seismic activity was likely to continue for months and maybe years.

People who had been sleeping on the pavement in the Pakistani Kashmir capital leapt to the middle of the road, eyeing what was left of buildings warily before eventually drifting back.

The aftershocks added to the misery of an estimated 3.3 million people affected by the quake, more than a million of them without homes and in desperate need of food and water but also tents and mobile latrines. The approach of winter was a worry.

"This is a very major earthquake but it's really aggravated a thousand times by the topography. An earthquake is bad anywhere, in the Himalayas it becomes much worse," the U.N.'s top emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland told Reuters in an interview.

"So it's a nightmare in trying to reach now, community after community which are homeless, roofless, without food, without water. It is this race against time I fear we are now losing for many of these outlying villages.

The official death toll of 25,000 in Pakistani Kashmir is expected to rise. Some local officials and politicians say deaths could exceed 40,000. Another 1,200 died in Indian Kashmir.

The army has been airdropping supplies to villages cut off from help in remote valleys of the Himalayan foothills of Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province.

Where valleys were too narrow and steep-sided for helicopters to fly, mule-trains are being sent to carry in the food, blankets and tents people will need to survive.

WINTER SNOWS

But for the villagers, mules and airdrops were a temporary and unsatisfactory step -- they were looking for assurances they were not going to be cut off for the winter.

<snip>

Aftershock rattles Pakistan quake survivors
Fri Oct 14, 2005 5:55 AM E (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-14T095529Z_01_EIC160889_RTRUKOC_0_US-QUAKE-SUBCONTINENT.xml)

2005 set to be second hottest year on record
Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:39 AM ET

By Gerrard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - 2005 will be the second or third warmest year on record globally, Britain's national weather service said on Friday, as climate concerns build among people in polar and low-lying areas and in the insurance and utility industries.

"Whether it is second or third depends on how Siberia reacts between now and the end of the year," said Wayne Elliott, Met Office spokesman.

"1998 was the warmest ever, 2005 is looking at being second. It will be another very warm year generally, which is in line with global climate change research."

The Met Office bases its measurements on both land and sea temperatures.

After 1998, the four hottest years globally were the last four years, according to Met Office data going back to 1861. The second hottest year was 2002, followed by 2003, 2004 and 2001.

The trend adds weight to concern among many scientists that the world is hotting up and that human activity including burning of fossil fuels and generation of "greenhouse gases" by industry is playing a major part.

Two recent hurricanes have left the United States with tight fuel supplies, energy companies say.

Meanwhile, in Europe Portugal and Spain have experienced their worst droughts ever recorded, and further east, floods and torrential rain drenched Switzerland, Germany, Austria and EU membership-candidates Bulgaria and Romania.

"The vast majority of scientists would now say that there is a significant, substantial human effect on the environment," Craig Hutton, project manager at the GeoData Institute, University of Southampton, said on Friday.

"I think that's good enough to get on and start to plan in reality for the effects of climate change."

Southampton University is working with IBM to research a early warning system for UK flood responses, to anticipate storm and tidal surges.

2005 set to be second hottest year on record (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-14T123845Z_01_ROB436559_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-WEATHER-2005.xml)

US says bird flu in Europe a "troubling sign"
Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:49 AM ET13

 By Darren Schuettler

HANOI (Reuters) - The spread of Asia's deadly bird flu to Europe is a "troubling sign" and the world must work faster to prepare for a potential flu pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Mike Leavitt said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters in Hanoi on a tour of bird flu-hit Southeast Asia, Leavitt said outbreaks in Turkey and Romania underscored the need for urgent action against the virus which appeared to be spreading through migratory birds.

"The world is a biological dangerous place right now. An enemy avian virus known as H5N1 is establishing a presence in nations all over the world," Leavitt said.

He said outbreaks "that have occurred in Turkey and Romania and other countries along the natural flyways are certainly troubling signs".

European countries tightened border controls on poultry and poultry products on Thursday after tests confirmed a bird flu outbreak in Turkey was H5N1, the same virus which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003.

Test results to determine the strain of virus infecting three ducks in Romania were expected on Saturday.

Experts suspect migratory birds, usually wildfowl which are silent carriers of the virus, may have carried the disease to Europe along their natural migratory routes.

"It will require a measured response on all of our parts if this continues to occur, as it inevitably will," Leavitt said.

The World Health Organization said on Friday the chances of human cases had increased with the virus' spread into new areas and it urged intensified surveillance of flocks and humans.

"STOP IT IN BIRDS"

Leavitt, accompanied by top U.S. health experts on the fact-finding mission to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam -- where 41 people have died since 2003 -- said fighting the disease at farm level was a top priority.

"H5N1 is mostly an animal disease today. To stop it from spreading to humans, we have to stop it in birds," Leavitt said in a region where the virus is endemic despite the slaughter of millions of birds.

Animal health experts say Thailand and Vietnam have had some success in containing bird flu, but still have not wiped it out.

The picture is more bleak in poorer countries such as Cambodia and Laos. Public health infrastructure is minimal and government budgets cannot afford a mass poultry vaccination program such as the one underway in Vietnam.

The United States has pledged $25 million to the region for training, supplies, lab equipment, village-based surveillance systems and public education.

Equally important is transparency in a region where some nations have been accused of blocking proper monitoring by failing to report cases or giving too few samples to scientists.

"While there may be short term costs to us individually or collectively, the burden of being secretive and lacking transparency would be catastrophic," Leavitt said.

US says bird flu in Europe a "troubling sign" (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-14T124848Z_01_ROB424404_RTRUKOC_0_US-BIRDFLU-LEAVITT.xml)

Wilma Forms, Tying 1933 Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season Record

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season tied a 1933 record for the busiest ever as Tropical Storm Wilma formed today over the Caribbean Sea, causing crude oil and natural gas prices to rise.

Wilma was about 220 miles (354 kilometers) south-southeast of Grand Cayman at 11 a.m. Miami time, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an online advisory. The system is the 21st named tropical storm of the 2005 hurricane season.

The storm, which has winds of 45 mph (72 kph), is forecast to strengthen in the next 24 hours as it moves west toward Honduras, Belize and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Wilma may become a hurricane by tomorrow, the center said. Wilma is moving very erratically and may take different paths, said Mark McInerney, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

``If it gets in the Gulf, the water is warm there, so it would have fuel to intensify,'' McInerney said today in an interview. ``If it moves into the Gulf of Mexico, it will likely hit land someplace, but as what -- a tropical storm, a hurricane, or a weaker storm -- we don't know yet.''

Crude oil and gasoline prices rose on concern Wilma may enter the Gulf, disrupting oil output that's 67 percent below normal following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

`Taking No Chances'

``The storm may lead to further evacuations,'' said Michael Fitzpatrick, vice president of energy risk management with Fimat USA in New York. ``If the storm moves into the Gulf it will lead to a suspension of repairs and there may even be a contraction in production. We're taking no chances.''

Wilma's winds extended 70 miles from the system's center as the system moved southward at about 5 mph. The storm probably will turn west in the next 24 hours, the hurricane center said. Rainfall of 4 inches to 6 inches is possible in the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, with as much as a foot in some areas. Honduras may receive as much as 10 inches of rain.

With six weeks left of the June 1-Nov. 30 season, this year already has set records. Katrina was the costliest ever U.S. natural disaster when it slammed into Louisiana in August, killing about 1,250 people. Spain was hit this month by its first tropical cyclone ever.

A tropical storm warning and hurricane watch were in effect for the Cayman Islands, indicating such conditions are possible within 24 and 36 hours, respectively. The Honduran government issued a tropical storm warning from the Nicaragua border west to Cabo Camaron.

On Alert

Anyone living on the Gulf Coast from the Florida Keys to Texas should be on the alert, Richard Knabb, a meteorologist at the center said in a telephone interview.

Hurricanes are measured on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity. The weakest hurricanes are rated Category 1, with sustained winds of at least 73 mph. Category 2 hurricanes have minimum winds of 96 mph.

Crude oil for November delivery rose $1.14, or 1.8 percent, to $63.77 a barrel at 10:01 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures have declined 10 percent since reaching a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30, the day after Katrina made landfall. Prices are up 16 percent from a year ago.

Gasoline for November delivery surged 5.49 cents, or 3.1 percent, to $1.8035 a gallon in New York, the biggest gain since Sept. 28. Prices have dropped 38 percent from a record $2.92 reached on Aug. 31. Gasoline is up 28 percent from a year ago.

This year's Atlantic hurricane season was already the busiest since systematic aircraft reconnaissance of weather systems began in 1944. Until this year, that mark stood at 19, in 1995, though less reliable data indicate 1933 had 21 storms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

All the letters of the alphabet except Q, U, X, Y and Z are used to name storms. After Wilma, the storms will be named for the letters in the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and so on.

Three strong earthquakes hit Turkey
Ankara, Turkey   
17 October 2005 04:11
Three violent earthquakes shook western Turkey on Monday, cracking walls, collapsing chimneys and sending 30 people to hospital, including a man who reportedly threw himself from the fifth floor of a building in panic.

Fear gripped many people who refused to enter buildings, preferring to wait in parks in case of aftershocks, witnesses said.

Anatolia news agency said about 30 people were hospitalised, mostly for treatment of fractures, after they jumped off balconies or windows. One man who had hurled himself off the fifth floor of a building was in a critical condition, it said.

The first quake occurred beneath the Aegean Sea at 8.45am local time.

Measured at 5,7 points on the Richter scale by the Kandilli observatory and six by the Athens observatory, it was felt in several Turkish towns on the Aegean coast and on the nearby Greek islands of Chios and Samos.

A second earthquake, measuring 5,9, struck at 12.47pm with its epicentre beneath the Aegean Sea off the town of Seferihisar, which lies 40km south-west of Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city, a spokesperson for Kandilli observatory said.

A third temblor, with an intensity of 5,6 on the Richter scale, followed eight minutes later, the Kandilli observatory said.

Officials said the quakes did not cause extensive structural damage.

But schools were closed for the rest of the day and Tuesday in Izmir and the surrounding Izmir province.

In the coastal resort of Urla, several house chimneys collapsed and cracks opened up in the walls of buildings after the first tremblor, said the town mayor Selcuk Karaosmanoglu.

"The second quake was extremely strong. It shook the area quite violently," said an accountant from Izmir, Umut Taskin.

Turkey's top seismologist warned of the threat of more earthquakes in a region, which is crossed by several seismological fault lines.

"These earthquakes can continue over a few days," Gulay Barbarosoglu, the head of the Kandilli observatory, told the NTV news channel.

About 20 000 people died in two massive tremors in the country's heavily industrialised north-west in August and November 1999. -- Sapa-AFP

Volcano erupts in PNG’s West New Britain

Posted at 01:52 on 18 October, 2005 UTC

Experts from the Rabaul Volcano Observatory in Papua New Guinea are being rushed to Talasea district in West New Britain province to assess the sudden eruption of dormant Mt Garbuna volcano at the weekend.

The National newspaper quotes a report from the West New Britain Provincial Disaster Office that Mt Garbuna started erupting late Sunday evening and continued into Monday morning when it subsided.

However, another report from the disaster office last night says volcanic activity intensified again yesterday afternoon.

The paper quotes provincial disaster office director, Major Paul Kaliop, as saying ash from the mountain fell on Garu village and its surroundings, contaminating water sources.

It says more than 20,000 people in the Talasea district could be affected by any further eruption.

Stay off popular volcano, Vanuatu official warns visitors

Posted at 03:46 on 18 October, 2005 UTC

Vanuatu authorities are warning people to stay off Mount Yasur volcano on Tanna island.

The mountain is one of the most accessible volcanos in the world and it’s a favourite spot for tourists.

The general manager of the department of geology and mines, Esline Garae, says seismic monitors have measured a surge in activity over the last two weeks.

    “The volcanic seismicity, recorded at the proximity of Yasur, shows an increase of activity since mid-September 2005, and this could be the warning signs of high explosive activity.”

Ms Garae says ash from eruptions on Mount Yasur usually doesn’t fall near settlements.

The Vanuatu Tourism Office is urging visitors to respect Ms Garae’s advice.

Warning: Possible Volcano Eruption in El Salvador

San Salvador, Oct 17 (Prensa Latina) Salvadoran National Service of Territorial Research (SNET) warned that LLamatepec, a volcano in western El Salvador between Santa Ana and Sonsonate departments could erupt.

Crater activity is anomalous, changing and unpredictable and, according to the persistent vibrations, experts expect an eruption similar to that causing two deaths on October 1, when more than 6,000 people had to be evacuated.

Once seismic activity started, authorities declared state of alert in areas around the volcano and prohibited tourists from ascending to Cerro Verde.

The abrupt eruptions of the volcano caused underground waters to rise in gotcha9an and La Floresta, near the city of Izalco, citizens reported.

LLamatepec is being monitored by a group of experts from SNET and Salvadoran State University, who have detected a slight increase in emissions of sulfur dioxide.

According to official data, this volcano, which last erupted in 1904, becomes active every one hundred years.

Disease threatens Guatemalan mudslide survivors

Doctors fear that overcrowding and septic water could lead to a rash of illness among survivors of a landslide that swept away a Guatemalan village this month.

Thousands of people from the Maya Indian village of Panabaj are crammed into churches and houses in the nearby village of Santiago.

The Government is racing to build temporary shelters.

"The worst problem now is the risk of epidemics," said Alfonso Verdu, coordinator of Doctors Without Borders in Guatemala.

"I don't think the situation in Santiago is under control."

Mr Verdu says doctors have seen dozens of cases of diarrhoea among survivors as well as dysentery, hepatitis A and chicken pox.

Thousands of people were vaccinated against tetanus last week in the main square of Santiago.

Panabaj sat between a volcano and Lake Atitlan's turquoise waters in spectacular countryside that draws thousands of American and European backpackers every year.

But it disappeared on October 5 under a deadly slick of mud, rocks and trees that poured hundreds of metres down the volcano after Hurricane Stan drenched the region with rain.

Police are preventing people from entering the stinking remains of the mostly buried town where authorities say there could be more than 1,000 dead.

But stray dogs are roaming among the ruins.

Santiago Mayor Diego Esquina estimates 4,400 people survived the disaster and more than 150 of them are living at a convent in the village.

In one dank, small room, 20 people sleep on dirty mattresses.

Happy to be alive, they say they are afraid to go to temporary buildings being built by the Government because they are too close to where the mudslide occurred.

"I'm not going to that shelter," survivor Maria Ratzan said.

Panabaj has been declared a mass grave and is now covered in white lime to prevent the spread of disease.

Earthquake death toll could top 54,000
Last Updated Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:37:33 EDT
CBC News

Officials from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir say the Oct. 8 earthquake's death toll will be "not less than 40,000" in that state alone, meaning that the disaster may have claimed more than 54,000 lives in all of Pakistan and India.

About 13,000 people died in other parts of Pakistan, with officials saying the toll could jump sharply as relief teams reach more remote villages. So far, 1,350 people have been reported dead in Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir.

The grim numbers were released Sunday, as heavy rain and lightning storms continued to ground helicopters trying to bring aid to northern Pakistan, where almost 2 million people are homeless because of the 7.6-magnitude earthquake.

Flooding on many roads also halted the delivery of aid by truck.

The storms eased on Monday, allowing deliveries to resume.

Survivors have hiked out from remote regions in search of aid, while soldiers, relief workers and volunteers continue to carry in supplies by foot.

About 65,000 people were injured in the earthquake. Many have yet to be treated, and there have been reports of infection and gangrene setting in.

One-fifth of ravaged villages still beyond reach

Nine days after the quake, both Pakistani government officials and the U.S. State Department estimated Sunday that one in five villages in the stricken zone had yet to receive any help.

A pilot for the U.S. military who had been flying over Kashmiri villages to try to assess the damage told Reuters news agency that many of them looked fine from above, but were actually only intact roofs lying on the ground.

Many survivors say nothing remains of their homes.

"The whole village is gone," said Rubina Mahmoud, whose village of Bandhi Thanoliya was wiped out by a landslide that killed 30 people.

"Three members of our family are buried under the mud," Mahmoud told CBC News.

"We'll never be able to rebuild," said Raveen Achtar. "There are big cracks in the ground. It will be difficult to go back to our land."

100,000 more tents needed, military says

Through the region on Sunday, many homeless survivors searched desperately for blankets and battles broke out over tents amid temperatures that have dropped to 5 C in most places and below zero in higher altitudes.

Relief agencies are also racing to set up shelter before winter sets in this month.

Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmed Khan, the Pakistani relief commissioner, said 29,000 tents and 118,000 blankets had been distributed – but estimated that 100,000 tents were needed.

"There are bound to be casualties because of bad weather. How much? I don't know," he told a news conference.

Huge quantities of relief supplies have arrived during the past week and aid workers said there was enough food for everyone – but distribution was often chaotic.

More than 200 military personnel in Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) left by plane for Pakistan on Sunday. The team expects to be fully operational within days.

Light earthquake reported off California coast
10.17.2005, 04:42 AM

LOS ANGELES (AFX) - An earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale occurred late Sunday afternoon off the coast of California, the US Geological Survey said.

The quake struck 52 miles south-southeast from San Clemente Island, CA, and 70 miles west-southwest from Coronado, CA at 2111 GMT, the USGS said in a preliminary report.

The USGS described the temblor as a 'light earthquake.'

A spate of quakes, including one of 7.0 magnitude in June, has raised concerns about the possibility of a strong earthquake hitting the region.

Earthquake shakes Greece's eastern Aegean islands
17 Oct 2005 06:50:22 GMT
Source: Reuters

ATHENS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - An earthquake measuring magnitude 6 rocked Greece's eastern Aegean islands at around 0545 GMT on Monday, but no injuries or serious damage were reported, the Athens Geodynamic Institute said.

The earthquake's epicenter was located near the Turkish coastline, about 250 kilometres east of Athens and jolted the islands of Samos, Ikaria and Chios.

"So far no damage has been reported in Samos prefecture," the chief of the island's fire department told Greek TV.

Earthquake shakes southern Peru, no damages

Associated Press

Lima (Peru), October 18, 2005

A moderate earthquake has shaken Peru's southern coast, causing alarm in some cities and towns but no damage or injuries, the country's Geophysics Institute said.

The quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8 struck at 2.22 pm on Monday close to the town of Tarata, 930 kilometres southeast of the capital, Lima, the institute said in a statement.

Tremors were felt strongly in Peru's second largest city, Arequipa, 750 kilometres southeast of Lima, and in the country's southernmost city, Tacna, where people rushed from buildings into open streets and plazas, local radio reports said.

Chilly winter forecast for U.S. Northeast - EarthSat


NEW YORK, Oct 17 (Reuters) - U.S. households should brace for a frosty winter, particularly in the Northeast which is the biggest consumer of heating oil around, private forecaster EarthSat predicted on Monday.

"The current winter outlook is colder than last year and much closer to the 30-year normal for the national average expectation," EarthSat said in its revised outlook.

"The focus of the coldest anomalies should be more frequently toward the East Coast rather than the Mid-Continent," EarthSat said.

The outlook is bad news for Americans already facing record high prices for heating oil and natural gas.

The EarthSat forecast showed natural gas consumption-weighted heating degree days -- a measure of temperature below 65 degrees Fahrenheit -- averaging about 7.5 percent greater than last year for December through February.

The forecast will make this winter roughly in line with the 30-year average, but significantly colder than the five and 10-year averages, EarthSat said.

"We've had a very active hurricane season, a weak El Nino, and a hot summer. These things tend to translate into a colder winter," said EarthSat's Matt Rogers.

The U.S. West is expected to average warmer than normal.

Heavy Snow Falls On Mount Washington

POSTED: 11:16 am EDT October 17, 2005

MOUNT WASHINGTON, N.H. -- Just last week, the summit of Mount Washington was basking in 50-degree record temperatures, but that has all changed.

Winter weather came early to the highest point in the northeastern United States. As of Monday morning, more than 18 inches of snow and ice had accumulated on the summit, which was being hit by blowing snow and sleet.

Hurricane Wilma blamed for 10 deaths in Haiti

CTV.ca News Staff
 
Updated: Tue. Oct. 18 2005 11:29 PM ET

Ten deaths in Haiti from mudslides have been blamed on hurricane Wilma, which has been upgraded to a category 2 storm.

Forecasters expect Wilma to grow into a Category 4 storm on a scale of five, with winds of more than 210 kilometres per hour when it crosses from the Caribbean Sea into the Gulf of Mexico on Friday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center has the storm crossing southern Florida on Saturday -- although a hurricane's path is difficult to predict.

At 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Wilma was centred about 295 km south of Grand Cayman and about 325 km east-northeast of the Nicaragua-Honduras border. It was moving northwest at about 13 km/h.

With maximum sustained winds near 160 km/h, forecasters expect Wilma to further intensify over the next 24 hours.

The storm's outer bands were already causing high winds, rain and surf on the Atlantic coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua.

Emergency crews in Honduras are preparing to evacuate 10,000 people from resort areas potentially exposed to the storm.

"All interests in western Cuba, the Yucatan Peninsula, the Florida Peninsula, and the Florida Keys should monitor the progress of Wilma during the next several days," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a public advisory.

The Keys were also planning an exodus.

Forecasters are predicting the storm will travel west and then turn toward the west-northwest, dumping roughly 10 to 15 cm of rain on the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Haiti, southeastern Cuba and Honduras.

The official long-range track has Wilma crossing the Gulf between southwest Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Friday, before curving east toward Florida's southern Gulf coast over the weekend.

"There's no scenario now that takes it toward Louisiana or Mississippi, but that could change," Max Mayfield, director of the Hurricane Center told The Associated Press.

Prompting fears the hurricane could move in on the Gulf Coast, which has already been battered this year by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Dennis, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned residents they must be prepared for yet another evacuation.

On Monday, Wilma entered the history books as the season's 21st named storm, matching a 72-year-old record for the highest number of Atlantic storms in a single season.

The last time this many storms formed since record-keeping began 154 years ago was in 1933.

Having become the season's 12th hurricane, Wilma also ties a 1969 record for the most hurricanes in one term.

The six-month hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

October 19, 2005
New Storm Measures as Most Intense Ever for Atlantic Basin
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Hurricane Wilma, which appeared headed toward Cancun, Mexico, and possibly the Gulf Coast of Florida by this weekend, intensified into the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean basin early this morning, with winds of 175 miles per hour.

The hurricane is "potentially catastrophic," the National Hurricane Center said in its most recent advisory this morning.

"All interests in the Florida Keys and the Florida peninsula should closely monitor the progress of extremely dangerous Hurricane Wilma," the hurricane center said.

The hurricane center, based in Miami, added however, that if Wilma traveled across the gulf and made landfall in southwest Florida, it would likely be a substantially weakened storm. This morning, officials in the Florida Keys asked tourists to leave the area - which is usually a precursor for a larger evacuation order.

Forecasts project Wilma to move through the Yucatan Channel, the body of water between Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. It is not expected to affect the region from Texas to Mississippi struck by hurricanes Katrina and Rita the past two months; those storms killed more than 1,200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage.

"We are not concerned about the Gulf Coast and we expect little if any impact on the oil industry," said Stacy Stewart, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. "This is mostly going to be a Florida peninsula storm."

Since August of last year, seven hurricanes have passed over Florida.

Hurricane Wilma's winds extend 15 miles out, and tropical storm force winds extend to 160 miles, according to the hurricane center.

The storm's central pressure of 26.06 inches, or 882 millibars, is the lowest recorded of a storm in the Atlantic Ocean basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Lower pressure translates into higher wind speeds.

The previous record holder was Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which had a pressure of 888 millibars. Hurricane Rita, which slammed into the Gulf Coast last month, had a pressure of 897 millibars.

A hurricane watch is now in effect for the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula and parts of Cuba and the Cayman Islands. A tropical storm warning has been called for regions of Honduras, which has closed two seaports in preparation for Wilma. Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua and the Cayman Islands have issued their own hurricane warnings. Mexico's hurricane warning includes the tourist area of Cancun. The MTV Latin America Video Music Awards ceremony, originally scheduled to be held Thursday at a park near Cancun, was rescheduled for today to avoid Wilma.

Honduras and neighboring Guatemala are still recovering from Hurricane Stan, whose rains caused flooding and mudslides that killed at least 800 people.

The hurricane is expected to dump 10 to 15 inches of rain on the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, and as much as 25 inches in mountainous regions of Cuba, according to the hurricane center.

At 8 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the center of Wilma was located about 340 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico, moving in a northwest direction at about eight miles an hour.

The storm is 12th hurricane of the season, which ties a record set in 1969. That figure is the most for a single season since record-keeping began in 1851. On Monday, the storm became the 21st named storm in the Atlantic hurricane season, tying a record set in 1933, and exhausting the list of names for this year. Any new storms in the six month hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30, would be named with letters from the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpha.

Strong quake rocks eastern Japan
Tokyo, Japan   
19 October 2005 02:21

An earthquake of preliminary magnitude 6,2 rocked eastern Japan late on Wednesday, the meteorological agency said. The temblor shook buildings in Tokyo and nearby areas, including Ibaraki, Chiba and Fukushima prefectures, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

There was no danger of a tsunami from the quake, centred 40km below the sea off the coast of Ibaraki prefecture, the agency said.

Runways at Tokyo's Narita airport were temporarily closed but have now reopened, Kyodo News agency said. High-speed train services north of Tokyo were also temporarily suspended but quickly resumed.

A nuclear power plant in Tokaimura near the quake zone had shut down automatically, according to national broadcaster NHK.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because it sits atop four tectonic plates. Since the late 1970s, the government has taken measures to strengthen its monitoring of seismic activity, and to coordinate steps with local governments on how to cope with earthquakes.

Last October, a 6,8-magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan, killing 40 people and damaging more than 6 000 homes. It was the deadliest to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7,2 quake killed 6 433 people in the western city of Kobe. -- Sapa-AP

Geologists say 'bulge' may turn into volcano
100 square miles of Oregon terrain rising 1.4 inches each year

LOS ANGELES TIMES

BEND, Ore.

Half an hour west of this mountain town in central Oregon, in an area covered by forest, is a growing bulge in the terrain that scientists say could be the beginnings of a volcano.

The bulge covers 100 square miles and is rising at a rate of 1.4 inches a year. The shape resembles a dome, with the highest point about three miles west of the South Sister volcano in the Cascades.

Geologists say that the bulge represents a rare opportunity to study what could be a volcanic formation in its earliest stages, but officials in Bend, a town of 65,000, worry more about the potential hazards, such as lava and ash or flying rocks.

"Is it going to blow up and bury Bend?" City Manager Harold "Andy" Anderson asked. "In the wake of (Hurricane) Katrina, we're trying to assess our biggest natural threats, and the bulge came up in meetings as a possibility."

Scientists have held community forums trying to assuage concerns and educate the public about why the phenomenon should inspire fascination rather than fear. They say that nothing is comparable in the Cascades or possibly in all of North America, but the technology that detected the bulge is relatively new.

The bulge, in the Three Sisters Wilderness Area - named after three volcanic peaks - was detected in March 2001 by a geologist using a new imaging technology called radar interferometry, which uses satellites to measure changes in Earth's surface.

Since the discovery, scientists have "wired" the bulge with additional measuring equipment. Geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey have also visited the site and a report on their latest findings is expected this month.

Rice Won't Rule Out Force on Syria, Iran

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday refused to rule out U.S. troops still serving in Iraq in 10 years or the possibility that the United States could use military force against neighboring Syria and Iran.

Rice deferred to the decisions of President Bush and military commanders as Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pressed her for more specifics on the U.S. strategy in Iraq.

Asked specifically whether the United States would have troops in Iraq in five or 10 years, Rice said: "I think that even to try and speculate on how many years from now there will be a certain number of American forces is not appropriate."

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan also would not rule out the possibility of a U.S. troop presence that far in the future.

"In terms of decisions about troop levels, we've always said that we will look to our commanders on the ground and they will be the ones who will make decisions based on circumstances on the ground," McClellan said.

Lawmakers also pressed Rice on strategy for dealing with Iran and Syria. U.S. officials have accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to flow across its borders into Iraq and Iran of supporting the insurgency.

Rice said the United States was using diplomatic means to urge a change in the behavior of both countries — but she stopped short of ruling out military force. "I'm not going to get into what the president's options might be," Rice said. "I don't think the president ever takes any of his options off the table concerning anything to do with military force."

Testifying before the committee for the first time since February, Rice sought to reassure jittery lawmakers — who are hearing from their war-weary constituents — that the Bush administration had a plan for success: helping Iraqis clear out insurgents and build durable, national institutions.

She said the United States will follow a model that was successful in
Afghanistan. Starting next month, she said, joint diplomatic-military groups — Provincial Reconstruction Teams — will work alongside Iraqis as they train police, set up courts, and help local governments establish essential services.

But even as Rice tried to crystalize the plan, Republicans and Democrats asked her pointed questions they say Americans need to know.

"I'm not looking for a date to get out of Iraq," Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) of Delaware, the top Democrat on the panel, said. "But at what point, assuming the strategy works, do you think we'll be able to see some sign of bringing some American forces home?"

Rice declined to answer directly, choosing to leave an estimate to military commanders. "I don't want to hazard what I think would be a guess, even if it were an assessment, of when that might be possible," Rice said.

Later, Sen. Paul Sarbanes (news, bio, voting record), D-Md., told Rice that her response to questions about U.S. troop withdrawal "leads me to draw the conclusion that you're leaving open the possibility that 10 years from now we will still have military forces in Iraq."

"Senator, I don't know how to speculate about what will happen 10 years from now, but I do believe that we are moving on a course on which Iraqi security forces are rather rapidly able to take care of their own security concerns," Rice responded.

Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island were among several lawmakers who asked Rice whether the Bush administration was considering military action against Iran and Syria, and asked whether the president would circumvent congressional authorization if the White House chose that option.

"I will not say anything that constrains his authority as commander in chief," Rice said.

The lawmakers' queries followed Rice's earlier remark that: "Syria and, indeed, Iran must decide whether they wish to side with the cause of war or with the cause of peace."

As Rice spoke, a woman in the second row of spectators shouted "Stop the killing in Iraq." A police officer motioned her out of the room.

By State Department design, Rice testified before the committee just days after Iraq apparently approved its first constitution since a U.S.-led coalition ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. Her appearance also coincided with the start of Saddam's trial in Baghdad for a massacre of 150 of his fellow Iraqis.

McClellan praised Saddam's trial as "a symbol that the rule of law is returning to Iraq."

Rice heralded the referendum on the charter as "a landmark" and said the US. strategy was moving from a stage of transition to a stage of preparing a permanent Iraqi government.

She described the administration's plan as "clear areas from insurgent control, to hold them securely, and to build durable, national Iraqi institutions."

"Our strategy is to clear, hold, and build," she said. "The enemy's strategy is to infect, terrorize, and pull down."

Alongside Iraqi allies, she said, the United States is working to dismantle the insurgent network and disrupt foreign support for them, maintain security in areas insurgents no longer hold, and build national institutions to "sustain security forces, bring rule of law, visibly deliver essential services, and offer the Iraqi people hope for a better economic future."

Rice Won't Rule Out Force on Syria, Iran (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051019/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq)

Wilma Heads for Central America; 12 Dead

By FREDDY CUEVAS, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras - Hurricane Wilma swirled into the most intense Atlantic storm ever recorded Wednesday, a Category 5 monster whose 175 mph winds and heavy rains already have been blamed for killing at least 12 people in the Caribbean as it bore down on Central America.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami forecast that Wilma could make landfall in southwestern Florida on Saturday and bring devastating winds to the east coast. Officials ordered visitors out of the Florida Keys.

Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua and Honduras were getting heavy rain from the storm, though it was not likely to make landfall in any of those countries. Many residents prepared for the worst only weeks after rains left more than 1,500 people dead or missing in Central America and Mexico.

With rough seas already pounding coastal areas, flood-prone Honduras warned that Wilma posed "an imminent threat to life and property" and closed two seaports on its Caribbean coast. Neighboring Nicaragua and the Cayman Islands also were on alert.

Computer models showed Wilma possibly making a sharp turn as it hits upper-level winds blowing east, moving through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico, where it threatened Cancun, before heading toward Florida.

Forecasters urged the Florida Keys and the peninsula to closely monitor the storm's progress.

"It does look like it poses a significant threat to Florida by the weekend. Of course, these are four- and five-day forecasts, so things can change," meteorologist Dan Brown said.

At 11 a.m. EDT, the hurricane was centered about 325 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph, making it a Category 5 storm, according to the Hurricane Center. It was moving west-northwest at near 7 mph.

It was expected to dump up to 25 inches of rain in mountainous areas of Cuba and up to 15 inches in the Caymans and Jamaica over the next two days. A foot of rain was possible from Honduras through the Yucatan peninsula, the weather service said.

In Mexico, the MTV Latin America Video Music Awards ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday at a seaside park south of Cancun, was postponed until an undetermined date.

A hurricane watch was in effect for the east coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, parts of Cuba and the Cayman Islands.

Wilma's confirmed pressure readings Wednesday morning dropped to 882 millibars — the lowest minimum pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Atlantic basin, according to the hurricane center. Lower pressure translates into higher wind speed.

Forecasters said Wilma was stronger than the devastating Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys in 1935, the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall on record.

But Wilma was not expected to keep its record strength for long, as disruptive atmospheric winds in the Gulf of Mexico should weaken it before landfall, Hurricane Center meteorologist Hugh Cobb said. Gulf water is about 1 to 2 degrees cooler than that in the Caribbean, which should inhibit its strength more, he added.

The strongest storm on record, based on the lowest pressure reading, had been Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which registered an 888 millibar reading.

The head of Haiti's civil protection agency, said Maria Alta Jean-Baptiste said the storm's outer bands caused flooding and landslides that killed at least 11 people since Monday and forced at least 2,000 families from their homes.

"The situation is not catastrophic, but if the rains pick up, it could become very difficult for some people," Jean-Baptiste said.

Heavy rains were swelling rivers along Honduras' eastern Atlantic coast Wednesday, but emergency officials had not yet ordered evacuations.

Honduras and its neighbors already are recovering from flooding and mudslides earlier this month in the aftermath of Hurricane Stan.

Cuban authorities suspended classes in the threatened western province of Pinar del Rio and prepared to evacuate tourists from campgrounds and low-lying areas, according the Communist Party newspaper. Heavy rains in the island's eastern province of Granma forced the evacuations of more than 1,000 people, though some 5,500 residents of Guantanamo, further east, were allowed to return to their homes.

Jamaica, where heavy rains have fallen since Sunday, closed almost all schools and 380 people remained in shelters. But businesses remained open and people went to work and shopped as usual. One man died Sunday in a rain-swollen river.

Wilma already had been blamed for one death in Jamaica as a tropical depression Sunday.

Some Florida residents began buying water, canned food and other emergency supplies. The state has seen seven hurricanes hit or pass close by since August 2004, causing more than $20 billion in estimated damage and killing nearly 150 people.

"People have learned their lesson and know better how to prepare. We're not waiting until the last minute anymore," said Andrea Yerger, 48, of Port Charlotte, Fla.

Her house had to be gutted after being damaged by Hurricane Charley last year.

In the Cayman Islands, authorities urged businesses to close early Tuesday to give employees time to prepare for the storm. Schools were ordered to close on Wednesday.

Forecasters said Wilma should avoid the central U.S. Gulf coast devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita earlier this year which killed more than 1,200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage.

Wilma is the record-tying 12th hurricane of the season, the same number reached in 1969. That is the most for one season since record-keeping began in 1851.

Wilma Heads for Central America; 12 Dead (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051019/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/hurricane_wilma)

Minor earthquake hits San Francisco region

Associated Press

The Geysers (US), October 19, 2005

A small earthquake has struck The Geysers, about 130 kilometres north of San Francisco.

The 4.0-magnitude quake was recorded at 5:05 pm local time about 8 km northwest of The Geysers in northern Sonoma County last evening, according to preliminary reports from the US Geological Survey.

There were no reports of injuries or damage, a sheriff's department staffer said.

The Geysers is located near a volcanic field where subterranean steam builds up and helps make the area seismically active, according to the USGS.

1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY Wed Oct 19, 7:25 AM ET

More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the
Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment, according to the Pentagon's first detailed screening of servicemembers leaving a war zone.

Almost 1,700 servicemembers returning from the war this year said they harbored thoughts of hurting themselves or that they would be better off dead. More than 250 said they had such thoughts "a lot." Nearly 20,000 reported nightmares or unwanted war recollections; more than 3,700 said they had concerns that they might "hurt or lose control" with someone else.

These survey results, which have not been publicly released, were provided to USA TODAY by the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. They offer a window on the war and how the ongoing insurgency has added to the strain on troops.

Overall, since the war began, about 28% of Iraq veterans - about 50,000 servicemembers this year alone - returned with problems ranging from lingering battle wounds to toothaches, from suicidal thoughts to strained marriages. The figure dwarfs the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty count: 1,971 U.S. troops dead and 15,220 wounded as of Tuesday.

A greater percentage of soldiers and Marines surveyed in 2004-05 said they felt in "great danger" of being killed than said so in 2003, after a more conventional phase of fighting. Twice as many surveyed in 2004-05 had fired a weapon in combat.

"The (wartime) deployments do take a toll," says Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "We send them to austere locations, places that are extremely hot, extremely cold, very wet, very dry ... where they may also encounter an armed enemy."

The Pentagon's goal is to identify all troops in need of care in part by screening every servicemember on a wide range of issues before and after overseas duty.

Begun in 1997 and expanded in 2003, it is the most detailed health assessment of deployed troops ever. It came in response to ailments that surfaced after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Jim Benson, a spokesman at the Department of Veterans Affairs, says comparable data from previous wars don't exist.

In October 2004, a federal panel of medical experts that studied illnesses of Gulf War veterans estimated that one in seven suffer war-related health problems.

Benson said the percentage of troops back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with health issues is close to the portion of former servicemembers coming to the VA for mental health or medical care. He says 101,000 of the 431,000 war vets who have separated from the military, or about 23%, have sought help.

1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return (http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/1in4iraqvetsailingonreturn;_ylt=AiDOhXuhA55_YnpC9uDyKl5H2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-)

This percentage rises to 2 in 4 within 5 years and almost to 3 in 4 within 10 years. Many that have health problems from the Gulf area do not show up right away.

Thats not good Pastor Roger. I will pray more, for the vets, all over the world today.

When I made this thread, I should have called it. "Matthew 24, Birthing Pains." Cause these are signs, of Jesus's return.

Resting in the hands, of the Lord.
Bob

Matthew 24:50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,

Hurricane Wilma strongest hurricane on record
Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:39 AM ET173

 By Michael Christie

MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Wilma became the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record on Wednesday as it churned toward western Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula on a track toward Florida, having already killed 10 people in Haiti.

The season's record-tying 21st storm, fueled by the warm waters of the northwest Caribbean Sea, strengthened alarmingly into a Category 5 hurricane, the top rank on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity.

A U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane measured maximum sustained winds of 175 mph, with higher gusts, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The plane also recorded a minimum pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest value ever observed in the Atlantic basin. That meant Wilma was stronger than any storm on record, including Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in late August, and Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana coast in September.

Storm warnings were in force for Honduras in Central America, where more than 1,000 people died this month after Hurricane Stan triggered mudslides that buried entire villages. Warnings were also issued for the Yucatan, Cuba and the Cayman Islands.

Wilma has killed up to 10 people who died in mudslides in deforested and impoverished Haiti after several days of heavy rain, civil protection officials said.

Wilma was expected to bring rainfall of up to 25 inches to mountainous parts of Cuba, and up to 15 inches to Jamaica and to the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British colony south of Cuba. Honduras and Mexico could expect up to 12 inches

of rain, the hurricane center said.

By 8 a.m. EDT, the hurricane was about 340 miles

southeast of Cozumel, Mexico.

Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, tying the record set in 1933. It was also the 12th hurricane and tied the record for most hurricanes in a season set in 1969.

The season still has six weeks left to run. Hurricane experts say the Atlantic has swung back into a period of heightened storm activity that could last another 20 years. Climatologists also fear global warming could be making the storms more intense.

FLORIDA IN WILMA'S SIGHTS

The storm was moving west-northwest at 8 mph (13 km/h). A turn toward the northwest was expected in the next 24 hours. Once in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, Wilma was expected to make a sharp turn to the northeast, toward Florida.

Wilma was not expected to threaten New Orleans or Mississippi, where Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,200 people and caused more than $30 billion in insured damage.

It was also expected to miss the oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico still reeling from Katrina and Rita.

But frozen orange juice futures closed at a six-year high on Tuesday amid fears Wilma could ravage Florida groves that had just begun to recover from the hurricanes that destroyed 40 percent of last year's crop.

Florida was hit by four hurricanes last year and has been struck by hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Rita this year.

Cuba's western tobacco-growing province of Pinar del Rio braced for heavy rain. More than 5,000 people were evacuated from eastern Cuba, where two days of rain caused floods and mudslides in the provinces of Guantanamo, Santiago and Granma.

Wilma was expected to weaken before reaching Florida.

Nevertheless, officials in the Florida Keys, a vulnerable chain of low-lying islands connected to mainland Florida by a single road, warned residents and tourists to take the storm seriously.

Tourists would be ordered to evacuate on Thursday and residents would be told to flee the coming storm on Friday.

"This is our fourth storm but this one is really aggressive," Irene Toner, director of emergency management for the county that encompasses the islands, told local radio. "This one we are taking seriously. The damage is going to be substantial."

Hurricane Wilma strongest hurricane on record (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-19T123849Z_01_ROB857009_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEATHER-WILMA.xml)

Death Toll in Asian Quake Soars to 79,000

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 19, 4:32 PM ET

BALAKOT, Pakistan - The death toll soared to 79,000 Wednesday from South Asia's mammoth earthquake, following a survey of one of the two hardest-hit Pakistani regions — making it one of the deadliest quakes in modern times.

More aftershocks rattled the region, sending up huge clouds of dust from steep-sided mountain valleys where villages lie in pieces. During a helicopter tour of the ruins, the president promised new, quake-ready houses for the homeless.

In remote mountains, a steady flow of injured villagers continued to seek medical attention. Many had infected wounds, untreated since the Oct. 8 temblor, and had to rely on relatives to carry them for hours on foot to makeshift clinics.

More than 60 helicopters were dropping relief supplies, and mule trains were pushing into areas where no helicopters can land.

"Many people out there, we are not going to get to in time," said Rob Holden, the U.N. disaster coordinator in Pakistan's part of
Kashmir. "Some people who have injuries don't have a chance of survival."

Eleven days after the 7.6-magnitude quake, the full scale of the disaster is becoming apparent. A helicopter trip through the badly hit Neelum and Kaghan Valleys showed flattened homes on mountainsides and roads blocked by boulders, trees and earth. Moving only on foot, people were fashioning new pathways over landslides.

The central government updated its death toll to 47,700, but regional authorities gave much higher figures, based on information trickling in from outlying areas and as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Since the early days of the disaster, the central government death tally has lagged behind that of local authorities, although federal officials have said privately they expect the toll to rise dramatically.

Citing reports from local authorities and hospital officials, the government of North West Frontier Province said 37,958 people had died there and the toll was likely to rise. The prime minister in Pakistani-held Kashmir said at least 40,000 people died in that neighboring region. India has reported 1,360 deaths in the part of Kashmir that it controls.

Those tallies would push the death toll to 79,318 from the quake.

That figure was in line with an estimate Wednesday from a senior army official that 75,000 to 80,000 people had died across Pakistan. The official did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to comment on the death toll.

Aid workers fear casualties could rise even further as communities without adequate food, shelter or health care will soon face the harsh Himalayan winter. Snow has already begun to fall in high mountains, and some villages face subfreezing temperatures at night.

However, the death toll in Pakistan is unlikely to come close to December's magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami that killed more than 176,000 people — most of them in Indonesia — or a magnitude 8.2 temblor that killed at least 240,000 in Tangshan, China, in 1976.

Hundreds of aftershocks are still rattling the South Asian quake zone, frightening the many homeless who are camping by ruined homes. A 5.8-magnitude tremor struck on Wednesday morning, near the epicenter of the main quake. Less than an hour later, a second was felt that registered 5.6.

There were no reports of injury, but the aftershocks caused new landslides that briefly blocked at least one road and sent rubble coursing down eroded mountainsides.

On a tour near the quake-hit town of Balakot, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf promised to build quake-proof homes for the homeless — drawing applause from about 200 villagers at a tented settlement.

Carrying a swagger stick and wearing a baseball cap, Musharraf also said he would be willing to let Kashmiri civilians drive across the militarized border from India to help their brethren on the Pakistan side rebuild.

"If they want to assist in the reconstruction effort and in (distributing) relief goods, yes, I will allow it. ... We would like to encourage it," he said.

There's been no formal Indian response to the offer. It appears at least in part a diplomatic parry to India's previous offer of military helicopters for relief efforts. The nations have fought two wars over Kashmir, and Pakistan refuses to let Indian military personnel onto its side of the disputed frontier.

At Nanseri, a village four miles from the Line of Control in Kashmir, injured people were still emerging from their communities — making arduous journeys across towering mountains, with relatives carrying their loved ones on their backs or in wooden-and-twine beds.

Dr. Amjad Sarij Memon said his eight-man team of volunteer doctors from the southern city of Karachi had performed more than 500 operations in the past six days in tents in the village. He said they have had to carry out "numerous amputations" because of infected wounds.

Despite the growing influx of aid, the U.N. World Food Program has estimated a half-million survivors have yet to receive any. Pakistan's military, however, says all but about 5 percent of communities have been reached — although it does appear that many villages have received little aid.

In Beijing, top U.N. relief coordinator Jan Egeland urged China, which borders Pakistan, to contribute winterized tents. Pakistan says it urgently needs 150,000-200,000 tents. It now has about 30,000.

Death Toll in Asian Quake Soars to 79,000 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051019/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_quake_pk1;_ylt=ArQCoa4YdDZPykxpQT1VZWqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--)

Strong aftershocks rock quake-shattered Pakistan
Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:32 AM ET168

 By Faisal Aziz

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Aftershocks rocked earthquake-wrecked northern Pakistan on Wednesday, but survivors at least had one reason for hope as Islamabad and New Delhi agreed the border dividing Kashmir should be opened to help them.

Pakistan's relief commissioner said the official number of dead due to the October 8 earthquake rose by around 6,000 to 47,723.

There were no reports of deaths in what were the strongest of dozens of aftershocks since the quake devastated Pakistani Kashmir and adjoining North West Frontier Province.

But there were landslides in both areas, making life even harder for soldiers trying to rebuild crumpled roads into the high hills, where countless thousands of survivors still wait for help.

At one of their toughest jobs, in Kashmir's Neelum valley, the tremors sent scree rattling down the hills onto the short stretch of the 160-km (100-mile) road they had managed to clear.

Even without more landslides, officers in charge of the work said it would take weeks to drive on the road up the valley. That means large quantities of aid, beyond the capabilities of a growing helicopter fleet, will not be delivered.

With the harsh Himalayan winter looming and the heavy tents needed to house hundreds of thousands of homeless people in short supply, the tremors added to the misery.

But people in Muzaffarabad, the ruined capital of Pakistani Kashmir, were cheered by Pakistani's President Pervez Musharraf's dramatic call on India to open the heavily militarized border which separates the bitterly divided region.

India's prompt agreement gave hope the Line of Control (LOC), a ceasefire line which divides Kashmir and families, would be opened, help would pour across and many relatives would be able to meet each other for the first time in decades.

"It would be a fantastic thing," income tax official Azhar Mehmood said in a typical comment. "If you are here when they actually allow Kashmiris to cross the LOC, you'll see for yourself how important this decision is for the Kashmiri people."

However, there was no word on when the two nuclear-armed countries, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, would sit down and talk about how to do it.

DIFFICULT CROSSING

India also suffered in the quake, with at least 1,300 confirmed dead in its part of Kashmir.

But roads are badly damaged and so is a bridge at the solitary border crossing, so it was not immediately clear how long it would take to set up any movement across the frontier.

India and Pakistan embarked on a peace process to resolve all issues at the start of 2004, including their core dispute over Kashmir, which both claim.

Progress has been slow.

Since the earthquake, both governments have been criticized for letting ingrained distrust get in the way of opening up new routes to get relief supplies to beleaguered communities cut off in the Neelum and Jhelum valleys near the Line of Control.

Pakistan is accepting aid from India, but refuses to let Indian troops join the rescue work on Pakistani soil, despite the struggle to clear the way into valleys and areas too narrow for helicopters to fly into safely.

Pakistan still needs more helicopters to drop supplies and bring out casualties, but New Delhi turned down its request for helicopters without crews.

"We have accepted all assistance except military men coming across and one should not grudge that," Musharraf said on Tuesday night as he called for the de facto frontier in Kashmir to be opened.

Despite a steady stream of aid from abroad, Pakistan is still short of tents and blankets, fearing for the lives of tens of thousands of people stranded in the uplands without adequate food and shelter and snow already falling on mountaintops. Injured people are dying for lack of medical care, doctors say.

Major-General Farooq Ahmed Khan, federal relief commissioner and Musharraf's point man in the crisis, said Pakistan also desperately needed at least 100,000 anti-tetanus shots.

Thousands of survivors were still living in the open in cold night temperatures, "some with open or gangrenous injuries and with little access to clean water", the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

Strong aftershocks rock quake-shattered Pakistan (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-19T123213Z_01_EIC160889_RTRUKOC_0_US-QUAKE-SUBCONTINENT.xml)

Amen brother, that is exactly what it is,

PA has no intent to disarm terror groups
Khaled Abu Toameh, THE JERUSALEM POST    Oct. 18, 2005

On the eve of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's visit to Washington, the PA announced that it has no intention of disarming Hamas or other armed groups.

Abbas is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Thursday for talks with US President George W. Bush on the latest developments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the Israeli disengagement. Sources close to Abbas said earlier this week that he would brief Bush on the PA's plan to confiscate "illegal" weapons that are in the hands of various factions and militias, including Hamas.

However, Abbas's national security advisor, Jibril Rajoub, denied on Tuesday that the PA was planning to disarm Hamas or any other armed group. "We haven't called for disarming anyone," Rajoub said. "There is no decision to collect [illegal] weapons and we haven't taken any steps in this direction."

The weapons of the "resistance" groups, Rajoub added, should remain intact and should not be used on the streets or to terrorize the PA and civilians. He admitted that the PA and its security forces had failed to deal with the state of anarchy that has swept the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal.

Rajoub's remarks came as 12 Palestinian factions signed a "code of honor" in which they vowed to respect the results of next January's parliamentary elections and refrain from using weapons during the election campaign.

Hamas was the only group that refused to sign onto the understandings because they included a demand to refrain from using mosques as a platform for the election campaign.

The leaders of factions stressed the importance of holding the legislative elections on time and pledged to honor the results and to cooperate with the PA's Central Election Committee. In addition, they said that no weapons would be displayed or used during the pre-election campaign.

In a separate development, the Palestinian Legislative Council agreed on Tuesday to delay a vote of no-confidence in the cabinet of Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei until Abbas returns from the US.

The decision to postpone the vote came at the request of Abbas, who asked in a letter to the legislators that he be given the opportunity to address the council next week.

"The issue of the government is of such importance that it requires a meeting between me and members of the parliament immediately after my return from aboard," Abbas wrote.

Earlier this month the council voted in favor of a calling on Abbas to appoint within two weeks a new cabinet because of its failure to put an end to lawlessness and chaos in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The council also urged Abbas to form a transitional cabinet that would govern until the parliamentary elections.

The call, according to sources in Ramallah, has sparked off a sharp dispute between Abbas and Qurei, who has made it clear that he has no intention of stepping down. In an attempt to appease Qurei, Abbas announced this week that he won't have enough time to form a new cabinet before registration for the parliamentary elections starts in late November.

Tuesday's session was briefly delayed after hundreds of unemployed workers occupied the council chamber in Gaza City to demand jobs and money. The protesters accused the PA leadership of failing to address the plight of unemployed workers and demanded financial assistance to pay their electricity and water bills.

In Khan Yunis, Fatah gunmen kidnapped two Palestinians suspected of "collaboration" with Israel. The kidnappers announced that they belong to a Fatah-affiliated group calling itself Knights of the Storm. They claimed that the two, whose identities were not revealed, were suspected of assisting Israel in tracking down and killing wanted gunmen in the Gaza Strip.

PA has no intent to disarm terror groups (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540558412&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter)

Wilma Downgrades to Category 4

Thursday, October 20, 2005

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Hurricane Wilma rapidly strengthened into one of the Americas' most intense storms ever and lashed Caribbean coastlines Wednesday, forcing tourists to flee as it threatened to slam into Cancun and southern Florida.

Wilma briefly grew into a monstrous Category 5 storm before weakening to a Category 4 Wednesday night. The storm forced thousands of people to evacuate low-lying areas in a 600-mile swath covering Cuba, Belize, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and the Cayman Islands, officials said.

At least 13 deaths have been blamed on Wilma this week, including a man who drowned Wednesday while trying to cross a river that overflowed its banks in southern Haiti.

Forecasters said Wilma has the potential to make an extremely damaging impact in a season that has already seen devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. With its center still over open water, the storm's sustained winds were near 155 mph Wednesday night, down from 175 mph earlier in the day.

The National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield (search) said Wilma could reach the Florida Keys Saturday, possibly toward the evening. Visitors were ordered out of the Florida Keys even as schools closed.

The White House, stung by criticism that it had not responded quickly enough to Katrina, promised to stay on top of the situation. "We are closely monitoring what is an extremely dangerous storm," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "People should take this hurricane very seriously."

Tourists packed Cancun's airport even though skies were still partly sunny, looking for flights home or to other resorts. MTV (search) postponed its Video Music Awards Latin America ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday at a seaside park south of the resort town.

Mark Carara cut his family's vacation short by two days and tried to get on a standby flight home to Colorado Springs, Colo. "You hear it was the biggest storm on record, and yeah, that was the clincher right there," he said. "It was time for us to go."

John Hyndman, a 59-year-old electrician from Ottawa said his hotel had asked guests to leave. "I think people are more panicked just about what a hurricane can do," he said. "It can be very scary."

Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located, announced that hundreds of schools would be closed Thursday and Friday, and many will be prepared to serve as shelters for expected evacuations.

Floridians braced for the storm by boarding up windows and stocking up on supplies, although forecasters at the hurricane center said the forward motion of the storm appeared to be slowing, which could cause it to eventually weaken.

Predictions differed on the hurricane's path and how strong it would be when it reaches U.S. shores. Though some weakening was expected by Thursday, the "potential for large loss of life is with us," said Max Mayfield, director of the U.S. hurricane center.

"This is one of those cases where we have a tremendous amount of uncertainty," said Mayfield. Referring to Wilma's explosive two-day growth from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, Mayfield said "this is one of the most perplexing storms we have had to deal with" this year.

At 11 p.m. EDT, Wilma was centered about 235 miles southeast of Cozumel (search), Mexico. It was moving west-northwest near 8 mph, with some wobbles, forecasters said. Forecasters warned it could re-intensify Thursday as it turns to the northwest.

Wilma's record-level intensity was measured in its pressure. Confirmed pressure readings early Wednesday dropped to 882 millibars, the lowest minimum pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Americas, but it later lost power and rose to 892 millibars, according to the hurricane center. Lower pressure translates into higher wind speed.

The strongest Atlantic storm on record, based on pressure readings, had been Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which registered 888 millibars.

Wilma was on a curving course that would carry it through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico on Friday, possibly within a few miles of Cancun and Cozumel. Forecasters warned it could smash into southwestern Florida on Saturday with towering waves, then work its way up the East Coast with devastating effect.

Heavy rain, high winds and rough seas pounded coastal areas of Honduras, knocking out power to some towns, forcing the evacuation of coastal villages and closure of two Caribbean (search) ports.

Four fishermen were reported missing at sea and about 500 U.S. and European tourists were moved to safe locations at hotels on the Bay Islands.

The head of Haiti's civil protection agency, Maria Alta Jean-Baptiste, said a man drowned Wednesday while trying to cross a river that overflowed its banks in the southern town of Les Anglais. She said another man was swept away by the fast-moving current but survived.

The death raised to 12 the number of people killed in rain and landslides since Monday in the island nation. One man also died Sunday in a rain-swollen river.

Cuban authorities suspended classes in the threatened western province of Pinar del Rio and prepared to evacuate tourists from campgrounds and low-lying areas, according to Granma, the Communist Party daily. Heavy rains in the island's eastern province of Granma forced the evacuations of more than 1,000 people.

Forecasters said Wilma was stronger than the Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys in 1935, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane to make landfall on record.

But disruptive high-altitude winds in the Gulf of Mexico (search) should weaken Wilma before landfall, said Hugh Cobb, a meteorologist at the hurricane center.

Wilma's track could take it near Punta Gorda on Florida's southwestern Gulf Coast and other areas hit by Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, in August 2004. The state has seen seven hurricanes hit or pass close by since then, causing more than $20 billion in damage and killing nearly 150 people.

Forecasters said Wilma should avoid the central Gulf coast ravaged by Katrina and Rita, which killed more than 1,200 people.

Wilma is the record-tying 12th hurricane of the Atlantic season, the same number reached in 1969. Records have been kept since 1851. On Monday, Wilma became the Atlantic hurricane season's 21st named storm, tying the record set in 1933 and exhausting the list of names for this year.

The six-month hurricane season ends Nov. 30. Any new storms would be named with letters from the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpha.
Wilma Downgrades to Category 4 (http://www.worthynews.com/zone.cgi?http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,172680,00.html)

Moderate quake shakes western Turkey, 15 hurt
20 Oct 2005 23:57:07 GMT
Source: Reuters

ISTANBUL, Oct 21 (Reuters) - A moderate earthquake shook western Turkey early on Friday, causing slight damage to several buildings and resulting in 15 casualties from the ensuing panic, the local governor said.

The Kandilli earthquake observation centre said the tremor, at 0:40 a.m. (2140 GMT), measured 5.9 on the Richter scale and its epicentre was in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Seferihisar in Izmir province.

Izmir Governor Oguz Kagan Goksal told the CNN Turk television channel 15 people had been taken to hospital as a result of heart attacks or jumping from buildings during the quake.

The roofs of five buildings, three of them empty, had been damaged in the tremor, he said.

Residents gathered in parks and open areas after the quake, and the local council made public announcements telling them not to go back into their houses, CNN Turk said.

Turkey is criss-crossed by seismic faultlines and experiences frequent tremors. Some 18,000 people were killed in a powerful earthquake which shook northwest Turkey in 1999.

Authorities decided to close schools in the Izmir region on Friday as a result of the quake, the channel said.

 ;D  Hurricane postpones another homosexual party ;D
Theme for Florida Keys Fantasy Fest: 'Freaks, Geeks, and Goddesses'
Posted: October 21, 2005
1:13 a.m. Eastern

By Joe Kovacs
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

For the second time this year, an Atlantic hurricane is forcing the postponement of a popular homosexual event filled with "unthinkable debauchery."

The annual Fantasy Fest in Key West, Fla., had been slated to kick off today, but the threat of Hurricane Wilma is putting a damper on the festivities, delaying events until after the storm passes.

"We've never had a hurricane interfere with Fantasy Fest, at least as long as I've been here," Harold Wheeler, director of the Monroe County Tourist Development Council for the past 10 years told the Key West Citizen. "In fact, it's just the opposite – Fantasy Fest has always been there to open up our season."


Participant at 2000 Fantasy Fest in Key West, Fla.

According to its official website, "The 27th Fantasy Fest 'Freaks, Geeks & Goddesses' offers another nutcake romp through the realms of the ridiculous and will not back down in the face of a hurricane. ... Well, maybe we'll have to push it back a few days, but fear not! Fantasy Fest events will still rock the island, just packed into six days instead of 10."

For those not familiar with the perennial party in the week leading up to Halloween, the Associated Press describes it this way:

    Fantasy Fest, which began in 1979 as a small food fair and parade, is a huge event in the nation's gay community (not that there aren't plenty of straights who also come for the debauchery). There are AIDS fundraisers, drag queen beauty contests, costume parties, lots of drinking and women wearing nothing but paint from the waist up.

The Miami New Times calls it a "time for parades, beads, wild costumes, and unthinkable debauchery ... packed with plenty of scary, silly, and downright naughty parties."

As WorldNetDaily previously reported, another homosexual festival, Southern Decadence, was postponed in August as Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans.  ;D

But the catastrophic damage left by Katrina did not stop homosexuals from partying, as less than a week after the disaster, while thousands of citizens were suffering from homelessness, hunger and looting in their flooded city, a group of "gays" marched down Bourbon Street in the Big Easy. A few days later, other homosexuals gathered in Lafayette, La., to hold what they called the Southern Decadence Parade in Exile.

   WND THE MEANEST SEASON
Hurricane postpones another homosexual party
Theme for Florida Keys Fantasy Fest: 'Freaks, Geeks, and Goddesses'
Posted: October 21, 2005
1:13 a.m. Eastern

By Joe Kovacs
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com


Wild costumes and plenty of exposed skin are common at the annual Fantasy Fest in Key West, Fla.

For the second time this year, an Atlantic hurricane is forcing the postponement of a popular homosexual event filled with "unthinkable debauchery."

The annual Fantasy Fest in Key West, Fla., had been slated to kick off today, but the threat of Hurricane Wilma is putting a damper on the festivities, delaying events until after the storm passes.

"We've never had a hurricane interfere with Fantasy Fest, at least as long as I've been here," Harold Wheeler, director of the Monroe County Tourist Development Council for the past 10 years told the Key West Citizen. "In fact, it's just the opposite – Fantasy Fest has always been there to open up our season."


Participant at 2000 Fantasy Fest in Key West, Fla.

According to its official website, "The 27th Fantasy Fest 'Freaks, Geeks & Goddesses' offers another nutcake romp through the realms of the ridiculous and will not back down in the face of a hurricane. ... Well, maybe we'll have to push it back a few days, but fear not! Fantasy Fest events will still rock the island, just packed into six days instead of 10."

For those not familiar with the perennial party in the week leading up to Halloween, the Associated Press describes it this way:

Fantasy Fest, which began in 1979 as a small food fair and parade, is a huge event in the nation's gay community (not that there aren't plenty of straights who also come for the debauchery). There are AIDS fundraisers, drag queen beauty contests, costume parties, lots of drinking and women wearing nothing but paint from the waist up.

The Miami New Times calls it a "time for parades, beads, wild costumes, and unthinkable debauchery ... packed with plenty of scary, silly, and downright naughty parties."

As WorldNetDaily previously reported, another homosexual festival, Southern Decadence, was postponed in August as Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans.


Robert Baxter pushes Grand Marshal Robert Doucet Sept. 7 during the Southern Decadence Parade in Exile in Lafayette, La. (courtesy: The Daily Advertiser)

But the catastrophic damage left by Katrina did not stop homosexuals from partying, as less than a week after the disaster, while thousands of citizens were suffering from homelessness, hunger and looting in their flooded city, a group of "gays" marched down Bourbon Street in the Big Easy. A few days later, other homosexuals gathered in Lafayette, La., to hold what they called the Southern Decadence Parade in Exile.

At least one state senator has attributed this year's hurricane devastation to the hand of God punishing the U.S. for its national breaking of biblical laws.

"America has been moving away from God," said Alabama Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo. "The Lord is sending appeals to us. As harsh as it may sound, those hurricanes do say that God is real, and we have to realize sin has consequences."

Fantasy Fest is the biggest money maker for the Florida Keys, drawing up to 60,000 people who spend millions of dollars.

"People who have been poor for months wait for this week," Barbara Anderson, a local real-estate broker told AP.

Hurricane postpones another homosexual party (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46960) ;D

Note; The poor babies, they need to start praying for their salvation. The Lord is coming soon, and will find them wanting....

Hurricane Wilma Slams Into Mexico

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 23 minutes ago

CANCUN, Mexico - The fearsome core of Hurricane Wilma slammed into the island of Cozumel on Friday, starting a long, grinding march across Mexico's resort-studded coastline, where thousands of stranded tourists hunkered down in shelters and hotel ballrooms.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the hurricane's eyewall — part of the fastest-moving section surrounding the eye — had hit Cozumel, a popular stop for divers and cruise ships.

Hundreds of residents and nearly 1,000 tourists were riding out the hurricane in shelters in Cozumel.

The storm, packing sustained winds at nearly 145 mph, was expected to make an agonizingly slow journey to the tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and sideswipe Cuba — 130 miles east of Cancun — then swing east toward hurricane-weary Florida.

Cuba evacuated nearly 370,000 people in the face of the storm, which has already killed at least 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica.

"The most important thing now ... is to protect lives," President
Vicente Fox said in a broadcast address to the nation Thursday night.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm "has the potential to do catastrophic damage."

Mexico's civil defense chief, Carmen Segura, said Friday that almost 52,000 people had been evacuated in the Yucatan Peninsula, although most were staying with relatives or friends.

She said relatives of tourists should be calm. "We say to them that their families are protected as they should be."

Power was cut early Friday to most parts of Cancun — a standard safety precaution — and winds blasted waves across streets flooded 3 feet deep at some places in the city, about 35 miles north of Cozumel.

"God protect us!" ran the headline Friday in a local newspaper, Quequi.

About 1,500 people were crowded into a dark, sweltering municipal gymnasium downtown. Many took shelter under plastic tarps because of a leaking ceiling.

"After one more day of this, I believe people will start getting cranky. Things could get messy," said Scott Stout, 26, of Willisville, Ill., who was on a honeymoon with his wife, Jamie.

At 11 a.m. EDT, the maximum sustained wind diminished slightly to nearly 145 mph, with higher gusts. Wilma's slow-moving, wobbly center was 35 miles southeast of Cozumel. The hurricane   was moving toward the northwest at 5 mph, which was expected to bring the eye to shore by Friday afternoon in Cozumel and Friday night on the peninsula.

Forecasters said the Category 4 storm could dump as much as 40 inches of rain over isolated, mountainous parts of western Cuba and about half that in some other parts of Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula.

It could strengthen to a Category 5 hurricane before hitting land, forecasters said. Its slow progress delayed its expected arrival in Florida until Monday, but fueled fears that it would have more time to dump rain and pummel the low-lying Mayan Riviera, possibly causing major damage. The hurricane was expected to churn over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for most of the weekend.

Wilma's eye was so large it might take hours to pass over land, leading to fears that confused residents might leave shelters in the calm of the middle of the storm.

At the beachside Playa Azul hotel on Cozumel's north end, manager Martha Nieto said "the waves are getting very high."

"We wish it was over. The waiting drives you to desperation," Nieto said by telephone.

After airports closed late Thursday, desperate tourists who had lined up for hours in a failed bid to get on the last planes out were instead shuttled to sweaty emergency shelters.

Devon Anderson, 21, of Sacramento, Calif., was packed into a school with other Americans. He said the army never arrived to board up the windows.

"There's no food, no water," he said. "We've pretty much just been deserted."

About 20,000 tourists remained at shelters and hotels on the mainland south of Cancun, and an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 in the city itself.

Some, like 30-year-old Carlos Porta of Barcelona, Spain, were handed plastic bags with a pillow and blanket.

"From a luxury hotel to a shelter. It makes you angry. But what can you do?" he said. "It's just bad luck."

In Cancun, high winds bent palm trees and waves gobbled the city's white-sand beaches. Nearly 50 hotels were evacuated, leaving the normally busy tourist zone deserted.

Early Wednesday, Wilma became the most intense hurricane recorded in the Atlantic. The storm's 882 millibars of pressure broke the record low of 888 set by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Lower pressure brings faster winds.

The storm should eventually make a sharp right turn toward Florida because it will get caught in the westerlies, the strong wind current that generally blows toward the east, forecasters said.

With Florida the next target, Gov.
Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency, and officials cleared tourists out of the exposed Florida Keys. Across Florida's southwest coast, people put up shutters, bought canned goods and bottled water and waited in ever-growing lines at gas stations.

In Belize, a nation south of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, officials canceled cruise ship visits and tourists were evacuated from islands offshore. But the tiny country weathered the storm with few reports of damage.

Hurricane Wilma Slams Into Mexico (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051021/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/hurricane_wilma;_ylt=AgszUO20nqKkI0bQkbgjezas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--)

AMEN!


(They're not getting the message though.)

Apocalypse, now?
Katrina, other disasters fuel doomsday predictions


By Kari Huus
Reporter MSNBC
Updated: 9:02 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2005

It’s been 10 months of epic disaster. First there was the tsunami that killed some 250,000 people in Southeast Asia. Then came Hurricane Katrina with its devastating toll on the Gulf Coast, followed by an earthquake that took tens of thousands of lives in South Asia. Now, Hurricane Wilma, one of the most powerful storms ever measured in the Atlantic Basin, is stalking the Florida coast, and experts are warning of a deadly avian flu pandemic.

It’s enough to make just about anyone pause to look for meaning in the madness.

For many who await Judgment Day, the writing is on the wall.

So close is the correlation between recent events and the biblical prophecy of the Second Coming, by the reckoning of RaptureReady.com, its "Rapture Index" has been hovering around 160 — the highest levels since just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to the Web site, "the higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the ... rapture." When the number is above 145, it advises: "Fasten your seatbelts!"

"There is a resurgence of End Times thinking," says Stephen O'Leary, an expert on apocalyptic thinking and an associate professor at the University of Southern California. Anxiety about doomsday always lurks under the surface and resurfaces periodically, he says. "It's a very traditional way of coming to terms with disaster. In one sense it’s as old as the hills ... but there is a recent uptick of this kind of thinking."

Current events have provided rich fodder for religious groups devoted to watching for the End Times, when the faithful believe that they and nonbelievers will ultimately be judged. Nowhere is this more evident today than on the Internet, where scores of Web sites analyze the news through a biblical lens. While predictions of an apocalypse are part of many religions, including a version in Islam that is very similar to the Christian one, it is evangelical Christians who are sounding alarms in U.S. churches and online.

Among the most commonly cited biblical passages describing the beginning of the end are in Matthew, where Jesus warns that "nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes," and this passage in Luke: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring."

The race to interpret the news
Many evangelical Christians believe these events signal the End Times, as spelled out in the Book of Revelation, which go something like this: First there is the Rapture, in which God's loyal followers suddenly disappear from Earth and enter his kingdom. Then comes the Tribulation, a seven-year period of rule by the Antichrist and severe hardship on Earth. During this time, nonbelievers who remain on Earth will have a chance to convert to Christianity but will be hounded by the Antichrist and his minions. Then comes Armageddon, when God comes back to defeat Satan in a devastating battle. Ultimately, there is Judgment Day, when those who are with God live on in Paradise, and others are eternally condemned to Hell.

There are scores of Web sites that interpret current events through the prism of biblical passages, seeing divine signs not only in the weather, but in the war in Iraq and events at the United Nations.

Abbaswatchman.com "explains how virtually everything we are seeing, from hurricanes and tsunamis to tensions with Damascus are fulfilling prophesies." The blog ApocalypseSoon.org strives "to document the final moments of human history as it unfolds and to announce the return of Jesus Christ on earth." The list goes on.

New Orleans warning
Some Web sites serve as a pulpit for those who believe that God sent Katrina to smite New Orleans for its sinning ways and to send a warning to the rest of the nation.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," says conservative anti-gay activist Michael Marcavage on the site RepentAmerica.com. He says New Orleans was punished for a "public celebration" of homosexuality, wanton drunkenness and show of flesh.

Alabama state Sen. Henry E. "Hank" Erwin Jr., a Republican, expressed a similar view in a weekly column he writes for news outlets. "New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness," he wrote. "It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God."

Irwin Baxter, founder of End Times Ministries, is among those more focused on how Katrina and the other disasters, combined with key political indicators — including the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — point to an imminent apocalypse. "With all these converging at the same time, it looks to me we are very close to or just entered the (End Times)," says Baxter.

“People are really apprehensive right now,” he says. But the upside, from his point of view, is that the disasters could help make believers out of doubters. “If we continue seeing event after event of this magnitude ... I think it could really galvanize a lot of people.”

He's given up his regular job as pastor at a Pentecostal church in Richmond, Ind., to devote all his time and energy to End Times Ministries, which includes a magazine that has 30,000 subscribers, a Web site and a radio program broadcast on 30 stations and over the Internet.

To be sure, not all conservative Christians think it's wise to make predictions. "There have been storms throughout  history," says Mark Bailey, president of the Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative evangelical institution. "To say about any of these that 'this is it' is dangerous speculation."

He is also troubled by the view that storms are used to punish a certain group of people. However, he adds, "It's a great time to ask, 'If this was it, would I be ready?'"

Apocalypse on the big screen
The soul-searching, and the speculation in Christian circles is driven in part by a highly successful series of films based on the best-selling book series "Left Behind." The story, a melodrama with a backdrop of End Times prophecy events, focuses on characters who remain on Earth after the believers are swept to heaven in the Rapture. The films, starring former television actor Kirk Cameron, launched on DVD in 2000 and have prompted a wave of other books, movies and spin-offs in the apocalypse genre. The third "Left Behind" movie is set to premiere at churches across the country on Friday.

USC's O'Leary suggests that media coverage of real disasters from Sri Lanka to New Orleans may also be intensifying the belief in impending peril, because the events are delivered instantaneously to American living rooms. "There is a sense of escalation that makes us feel that it's happening more rapidly," says O'Leary.

Religious groups don't have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. O'Leary says that even in secular circles, people also embrace apocalyptic thinking when it converges with worrisome scientific or technological developments.

"The prime case was the Y2K scare," he says, referring to fears of a disaster on the eve of the new century. "For awhile it seemed to have a rational technical basis, which seemed to go overboard," creating fears that lingered until the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, "long after computer programmers said it was going to be OK," he says.

Evidence of global warming fuels fears of impending disaster among those who don't necessarily believe in divine intervention, O'Leary points out. And the emergence of nuclear weapons technology after World War II lent plausibility to belief in a secular version of Armageddon.

"You don’t have to be a religious believer to think that we’re headed for disaster," O'Leary says.
Apocalypse, now? (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9731623/) ;D

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Disasters feed fears of apocalypse

Recent famines, flood and earthquakes make believers, nonbelievers wonder if the end is near.
By Carol Eisenberg / Newsday

Every morning, the Rev. Micheal Mitchell prays that if today is the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, he will be ready.

"Ever since the terrorist attacks four years ago, I try to live every day as if it will be the last day," said Mitchell, 46, senior pastor of New Life Tabernacle United Pentecostal Church in New York.

Mitchell's belief that he is watching biblical prophecy unfold in the form of modern-day famines, floods and earthquakes has grown increasingly urgent. What with a cataclysmic earthquake swallowing whole villages in South Asia, coming on the heels of a killer tsunami and hurricanes that flooded the Gulf Coast and brought lethal mud slides to Guatemala, apocalyptic anxiety is running extraordinarily high -- among believers and nonbelievers alike.

Set against a backdrop of terror threats and worries that avian flu may morph into a pandemic, it's no wonder that talk of a biblical-scale reckoning is cropping up in all sorts of conversations.

"A lot of people are watching the Rapture Index very carefully right now," said Stephen O'Leary, an expert on apocalypticism at the University of Southern California, referring to a Web site that purports to offer a statistical gauge of the approach of the moment that Christians believe Jesus will remove the faithful from Earth.

The Web site, www.raptureready.com/rap2.html, registers 159. Anything higher than 145 means "fasten your seat belts," according to the legend. (My note; I think most of us know this website.)

Apocalyptic beliefs have long been an American staple. A June 2001 survey by the Barna Research Group, for instance, found that 40 percent of adults in the United States believe the physical world will end as a result of supernatural intervention. Fifty percent disagreed, and 10 percent didn't know.

Mitchell, like many Pentecostals and charismatics, believes the seven years of calamities leading to Armageddon -- the battle in which Jesus will defeat the Anti-Christ -- may already have begun. Now, he said, he gets almost daily questions from congregants about how current events may reflect those prophecies.

Social scientists say that such preoccupations reflect an increasingly apocalyptic mood in America, expressed not just in Christian fundamentalism, but also in secular doom-and-gloom scenarios.

Nonbelievers tend to express their anxieties in terms of man-made ecological disasters or, more simply, an indifferent and hostile nature. If the recent storms and quakes portend anything, it's climactic change, not biblical reckoning, said Oliver Haker, 28, a New York lawyer.

Others search for a deeper, redemptive meaning behind so much suffering and despair.

"When I heard about the quake in Pakistan, I thought, 'Wow, this could be it -- we could be entering the final seven years,' " said Irwin Baxter, founder of Endtime Ministries in Richmond, Ind., who does a biblical prophecy radio show.

Naysayers note that such predictions are a constant in human history -- and have always been proven wrong.

"We have an acute need to find an explanation for suffering, pain and death," O'Leary said.

Certainly, it is a sign of the times that booksellers report an uptick in sales for books not just about biblical prophecy, but also that explain disasters in scientific terms.

Besides the steady popularity of apocalyptic titles, like the bestselling Left Behind series, "what we have seen recently is marked interest in books that help readers understand the issues of the day," said Bill Tipper, bestsellers editor for Barnes&Noble.com.

Newsday Staff Writer Robert Kahn contributed to this story.

Disasters feed fears of apocalypse (http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0510/20/A15-354889.htm)

Al Aqsa leader: Jews have no right to Mount
In WND interview claims mosque 'was built by the angels'
Posted: October 22, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Following is a WorldNetDaily exclusive interview with Sheik Kamal Hatib, vice-chairman of the Islamic Movement, the Muslim group in Israel most identified with Temple Mount militancy. The Movement, which Israel says is associated with Hamas, campaigns for Islamic control of Israeli holy sites, and has been calling the past few weeks for Muslims to ascend the Mount en mass to protect it from "Jewish attacks."

By Aaron Klein
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

WND: Who should have sovereignty over the Temple Mount – Jews, Christians, or Muslims. Or should it be shared?

HATIB: We absolutely believe that Al Aqsa, all its different parts, all its walls, all its courts, and everything down the mosque or up it, all these fully belong to the Muslims. Only to them. No one other than the Muslims has any right over Al Aqsa, or even over any grain of its sand. We, the Muslims, insist and emphasize that the only sovereignty over Al Aqsa must be for the Muslims. We will not accept or recognize any other sovereignty, including shared control.

WND: But what about the previous Jewish Temples? Do you believe they existed? Do Jews have any historic claims to the Temple Mount whatsoever?

HATIB: We the Muslims believe that Al Aqsa was built since the time of Adam – God bless him. It was built 40 years after the construction of the Al Haram Mosque in Mecca which was built thousands of years ago. Al Aqsa was built by the angels as it is mentioned in a verse of the Quran. The mosque is mentioned in the Quran, which speaks about the raising of the prophet.

We believe that the Jewish Temples existed, but we deny they were built near Al Aqsa. When the First Temple was built by Solomon – God bless him – Al Aqsa was already built. We don't believe that a prophet like Solomon would have built the Temple at a place where a mosque existed.

WND: What you are saying contradicts reality. There is no serious scholar or archeologist in the world who argues Al Aqsa was built before the Jewish Temples. And if the Temples didn't exist on the Mount, what then do you say is the Western Wall? What do you make of all the archeological findings?

HATIB: About the Kotel (the Western Wall), we deny any relation between the Temple and the Al Aqsa Mosque. We believe that the Western Wall is part of the mosque and not the Wall of Lamentation, as the Jews say. ... The Western wall is an inseparable part of the mosque.

And all the historical and archeological facts deny any relation between the Temples and the location of Al Aqsa. We must know that Jerusalem was occupied and that people left many things, coins and other things everywhere. This does not mean in any way that there is a link between the people who left these things and the place where these things were left.

WND: You have been calling repeatedly for Muslims to protect Al Aqsa from Jewish attack. Which Jews exactly are trying to attack Al Aqsa?

HATIB: We believe the danger over Al Aqsa existed and continues. As long as Jewish groups have ambitions to reconstruct their Temple at the same place of Al Aqsa, the danger of an attack will still exist. Some of these Jewish extremist groups even believe the years between 2005-2007 is the period in which the Temple must be built, and not building it by then means the Lord's anger will be directed towards them, as they argue. Therefore, this is a very sensitive period and we call in a very loud voice to all who are concerned that the mosque is a redline for us, and any harm caused to it will bring a great catastrophe and a great disaster. The Israelis and the Jewish people will have to face one and a half billion Muslims from all over the world.

WND: It seems you and the Islamic Movement are using Al Aqsa as a political tool to incite Muslims against Israel.

HATIB: Our relation with Al Aqsa is not a political question. Far from that, it is a question of religion and faith. We have the honor to fill this role in favor of Al Aqsa. If the Israelis thought that the Arabs in Israel would not have strong relations and feelings towards Al Aqsa, then they were mistaken. This mosque will always be part of our faith. Our demand from the Israelis and the world is not to desecrate it.

WND: What if a Jew did attack the mosque?

HATIB: We suggest to the Jews and Israelis not to be dazzled from the weakness of our nation at this period. [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's provocative visit five years ago caused an intifada for the last five years and caused the killing of more than 4,000 Palestinians and more than 1,300 Israelis. Therefore we say that any attack against Al Aqsa means the deluge.
(My note; Actual deaths were 13 Israelis, and 52 Palestinians. This is another case of the media's distortion of facts. Among those are, New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN. This narrow focus on the words and images purveyed by these sources allows for an analysis that is specific and precise and thus devastating in its documentation of how many certainly not all, journalists distorted the facts of the uprising.)

WND: You were talking about Al Aqsa being mentioned in the Quran. But I understand it is never directly mentioned. And the city of Jerusalem is not mentioned once. Commentators later concluded a verse about Muhammad descending to the furthest mosque referred to Al Aqsa. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is mentioned thousands of times throughout the Torah. Half the Torah is about Temple worship. Explain why you feel the Mount is not holy to Jews?

HATIB: The fact that Jerusalem is mentioned in the Torah does not in any way mean that the city was populated or built by the Jews. Everyone knows that when the prophet Abraham came from Arik in 1850 before Christ he was given by the Arab King Melchizedek the land where he and his wife lived in Hebron, and it was 600 years before Moses' message, which also proves that Abraham was not a Jew.

And your saying that our faith is based on this interpretation of the verse [about Al Aqsa] is a totally wrong analysis. The Al Aqsa of the Quran is the same Al Aqsa of our days, not any other mosque. That is what our Sharia says. As for what you say that Jerusalem is mentioned thousands of times in the Torah; it is not a matter of numbers and quantity. There is a very clear historical event mentioned in the Quran concerning the mosque that was built by Adam and where all our prophets prayed.

WND: Speaking of praying, currently, Jews and Christians can only ascend the Mount at certain hours on certain days, and only with approval from the Wafq (the Mount's Muslim custodians). If they go up, it is to tour. Non-Muslims are not allowed to pray on the Mount. Why is it so offensive to you if Jews or Christians pray on the Temple Mount?

HATIB: We don't want even these scheduled visits, which are allowed to take place only because of the Israeli occupation. The visits are not the result of a free choice of the Muslims and the Wafq. If it was not for Israel, these visits could not take place at all.

As a principle, we are not against the possibility that Jews and Christians enter our mosques, but in present there is a campaign against Al Aqsa and the Jewish occupation still has dangerous ambitions towards the mosque and every entry will be done to demonstrate a religious presence. Therefore, if they would enter freely into the mosque, there will be political consequences and interpretations that we cannot accept.

Speaking about the Christians, I say that every person who believes in God must act for peace and for love among human beings and not to help in creating hate and war. Unfortunately, the evangelical Christians believe in the necessity of a war of civilizations. Because of this belief, President Bush, supported by these groups, is leading this war against the Muslim world.

The crazy support of these Christian groups for Israel is based on their faith that the return of the Messiah – God bless him – would be in Israel. Therefore they support Israel, because they believe that the continuation of Israel to exist hastens the arrival of the Messiah. God forbid! The Messiah can never be the reason for war.

Al Aqsa leader: Jews have no right to Mount (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46961)

Wilma 'clobbering' Mexico's Yucatan
Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:18 AM ET11

By Greg Brosnan

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico (Reuters) - Massive Hurricane Wilma clobbered Mexico's Caribbean beach resorts on Saturday, threatening heavy damage and loss of life as it meandered slowly into the Yucatan peninsula.

Winds of 125 miles an hour (220 kph) howled in off the sea, knocking over houses, upturning trees and trapping thousands of tourists in cramped shelters. The storm was downgraded to a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, from a Category 4 on Friday and a record-breaking Category 5 earlier this week.

The calm of the storm's eye settled over Playa del Carmen early in the day but the storm's north eye wall was "really clobbering northeastern Yucatan," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a 5 a.m. EDT report on its web site at www.nhc.noaa.gov.

Metal sheets flew off the roofs of homes in Playa del Carmen and spun dangerously through the streets like Frisbees.

The stalled storm battered the coastline for more than 24 hours and was due to hang over the area until at least Saturday night, raising the risk of disaster.

Authorities said there were no reports of deaths so far.

"It's a monster. It is roaring all the time," said Guadalupe Torroella in the low-lying resort of Cancun, where the sea rushed onto the land and flooded international hotels.

Wilma dumped 23 inches (590 mm) of rain on Friday on Isla Mujeres island, an unprecedented downpour for Mexico.

"We are talking about a record hurricane as far as rain is concerned," said meteorologist Alberto Hernandez Unzon. He said Wilma had an unusually wide diameter of 500 miles.

Mudslides caused by rains from Wilma killed 10 people in Haiti earlier this week and Cuba was reeling as the storm drenched the west of the island and unleashed tornadoes.

Wilma was expected to begin hitting heavily populated southern Florida as early as Sunday. While forecasters expect it to weaken by that time, authorities in the Florida Keys ordered tourists out and were considering evacuating the islands' 80,000 residents.

Five flimsy homes had collapsed in Mexico's Playa del Carmen but their residents were among the tens of thousands who had already fled to damp shelters.

YUCATAN GETTING NAILED

The town hall lay broken with windows blown out and furniture tossed onto office floors. Five prisoners escaped from a nearby jail into the jungle after a fence blew down.

The storm was expected to dump 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 cm) of rain across the Yucatan and western Cuba. Some areas could get up to 40 inches, U.S. forecasters said.

"The Yucatan is really getting nailed on this," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center. "It will continue to pound that region for at least 24 hours."

Wilma briefly reached record strength out at sea earlier this week.

All along Mexico's "Maya Riviera," thousands of stranded tourists huddled nervously in dank, sweaty gymnasiums and schools as the flimsy wooden beach cabins where many had been staying took a battering.

"When the boards blew off our window we decided to look outside and -- oh my God," said Gloria Winkles, a tourist from Texas sheltering in a small hotel in from the coast and looking out at raging waters in which a blue jeep lay half submerged.

Sullen visitors grabbed sleep in damp shelters and played cards by candlelight

"The trouble is, you don't know how long it is going to go on for. You don't know anything," said Swiss vacationer Christen Jasmin, 19, sitting in the half light in the dining room of a hotel in Playa del Carmen.

Cuba evacuated 368,000 people from low-lying areas as it braced for coastal storm surges and floods.

Wilma became the strongest Atlantic storm on record in terms of barometric pressure on Wednesday.

At 5 p.m. EDT on Friday its center was 25 miles

south of Cancun and roughly stationary, the hurricane center reported. A gradual northward drift should begin later in the day, it said.

Wilma was expected to miss Gulf of Mexico oil and gas facilities but Florida's orange groves were at risk.

This hurricane season has spawned three of the most intense storms on record. Experts say the Atlantic has entered a period of heightened storm activity that could last 20 more years.

(Additional reporting by Noel Randewich in Cancun, Anthony Boadle in Cuba, and Jane Sutton in Miami)

Wilma 'clobbering' Mexico's Yucatan (http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-22T141818Z_01_ROB857009_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEATHER-WILMA.xml)

Tropical Storm Alpha Sets Mark for Storms

By RON WORD, Associated Press Writer 18 minutes ago

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Alpha formed Saturday in the Caribbean, setting the record for the most named storms in an Atlantic hurricane season and marking the first time forecasters had to turn to the Greek alphabet for names.

The previous record of 21 named storms had stood since 1933. Alpha was the 22nd to reach tropical storm strength this year, and the season doesn't end until Nov. 30.

At 8 p.m. EDT, Alpha had sustained winds of about 40 mph — 1 mph over the threshold for a tropical storm.

It was centered about 70 miles south of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and moving northwest at about 15 mph, the
National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

A tropical storm warning was in place for Haiti and parts of the Dominican Republic, and a tropical storm watch was in effect for the Turks and Caicos islands and the southeastern Bahamas.

Since 1995, the Atlantic has been in a period of higher hurricane activity, a cycle expected to last at least another 10 years.

Scientists say the cause of the increase is a rise in ocean temperatures and a decrease in the amount of disruptive vertical wind shear that rips hurricanes apart.

The busy seasons are part of a natural cycle that can last for at least 20 years, and sometimes 40 to 50, forecasters at the hurricane center say. The current conditions, they say, are similar to those in the 1950s and 60s.

The U.S. Gulf Coast has been battered this year by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Dennis — and Wilma will be next. It had sustained winds of about 100 mph as it moved over the Yucatan Peninsula on Saturday and was expected to turn northeast, pushed by a strong wind current, and approach southern Florida on Monday. A hurricane watch was in effect for the state's entire southern peninsula.

Wilma was the last on the list of 21 storm names for 2005; the letters q, u, x, y and z are skipped. The Greek alphabet provides a continuation of that list but had never been used in six decades of regularly naming Atlantic storms.

At 8 p.m. EDT, Wilma was moving north near 3 mph with maximum sustained winds near 100 mph. It was located about 30 miles north-northwest of Cancun, Mexico, or about 390 miles west-southwest of Key West, Fla.

Tropical Storm Alpha Sets Mark for Storms (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051023/ap_on_re_us/tropical_weather)

Alpha Drenches Dominican Republic, Haiti

By JOSE P. MONEGRO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 51 minutes ago

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Authorities ordered about 30,000 people evacuated from their homes Sunday as rains spawned by Tropical Storm Alpha threatened to flood low-lying areas, even as the storm weakened to a depression.

Forecasters warned that deadly flash floods and mudslides were possible as rivers already were swollen and soil saturated after days of rain in the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti, partly due to Hurricane Wilma.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Alpha could bring an additional 4 to 8 inches to the island nations — and as much as 15 inches in some places.

Alpha made landfall early Sunday as a tropical storm with sustained winds of 50 mph. The storm later weakened over land into a tropical depression.

At 11 a.m. EDT, Alpha's rough center was 175 miles west-northwest of Santo Domingo and moving toward the northwest at nearly 15 mph, according to the hurricane center. Maximum sustained winds were nearly 35 mph.

Forecasters said it could dissipate Sunday in the mountains of the Dominican Republic, or regain strength as it moves over water again.

Heavy rains were reported throughout the Dominican Republic, and authorities with megaphones walked through low-lying neighborhoods of San Juan de Maguana — which was badly damaged by Hurricane George in 1998 — to urge people to leave. Moderate flooding was reported in several low-lying communities in the south.

No deaths or injuries were immediately reported, but the country was in a high state of alert, said Jose Luis German, spokesman for the country's Emergency Operations Committee. About 1,000 people were in shelters.

In Haiti, authorities closed the airport because of heavy rains, said Abel Nazaire of the nation's Risk and Disaster Management agency. A rain-swollen river overflowed its banks in the southern town of Jacmel, flooding some areas and forcing an unknown number of residents into shelters, said civil protection director Maria Alta Jean-Baptiste.

Meteorologist Ignacio Feliz of the Dominican weather service said authorities were especially concerned about Alpha since heavy rains — in part due to Hurricane Wilma — already had drenched the island in recent days.

Both nations were vulnerable, but the danger was particularly high in Haiti because of extensive deforestation and the millions of people who live in flimsy homes on river banks and mountain sides. The storm brought rain to the city of Gonaives, where 1,900 people were killed and 900 went missing after Tropical Storm Jeanne hit last year.

A tropical storm warning was posted for the southeast Bahamian islands and for the Turks and Caicos.

Alpha formed as a tropical storm Saturday in the Caribbean and marked the first time forecasters had to turn to the Greek alphabet for names. The previous record of 21 tropical storms and hurricanes had stood since 1933. The hurricane season doesn't end until Nov. 30.
Alpha Drenches Dominican Republic, Haiti (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051023/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/dominican_tropical_weather;_ylt=Ar9ubiFQK.NLPO9jnG1AKuVvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--)

Wilma Heads for Fla. As Category 2 Storm

By DAVID ROYSE, Associated Press Writer 47 minutes ago

KEY WEST, Fla. - Hurricane Wilma churned toward Florida on Sunday, picking up speed "like a rocket" as tens of thousands of residents were ordered to flee from vulnerable islands and coastal areas.

The southern half of Florida's peninsula was under a hurricane warning Sunday in anticipation of Wilma, a Category 2 storm with 100 mph sustained wind. Landfall was expected around dawn Monday.

Tornados were possible over parts of the state through Monday and powerful storm-surge flooding was expected on the southwest coast.

About 160,000 people in the state were under mandatory evacuation orders, including the entire population of the Florida Keys island chain. There was no way of knowing exactly how many actually left, but it appeared only about 20 percent of the 78,000 Keys residents fled, said Billy Wagner, senior Monroe County emergency management director.

"If they don't get out of there, they're going to be in deep trouble," Wagner said.

Evacuation orders also covered barrier islands and coastal areas in Collier and Lee counties, such as Fort Myers Beach, Marco Island, Sanibel and parts of Naples.

"The time of preparing is rapidly moving into time of action," Florida Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate said.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, predicted Wilma would dramatically pick up speed later Sunday, and its top wind speed would increase.

"It's really going to take off like a rocket," he said. "It's going to start moving like 20 mph."

In Tallahassee, Gov. Jeb Bush urged residents in evacuation zones to leave and warned others that "now's your last chance to stock up on supplies." He said authorities expected widespread power outages and flooding and urged residents to stockpile enough food, water and medication for three days.

About 3,500 people were in shelters across the state, including roughly 850 people who registered Sunday at a Red Cross shelter in Germain Arena in Fort Myers, with some pitching tents and setting out mats on melting ice where the Florida Everblades minor league hockey team plays.

"I'm just doing a lot of praying that things will work out," said David Bright, 48. "I'm born and raised right here in Fort Myers, Fla., and just know you don't play with (hurricanes)."

Elsewhere, a Key West nursing home began loading residents into ambulances Sunday to evacuate to facilities in West Palm Beach or Fort Pierce. A hospital in the island city was evacuated Saturday.

Wilma had been joined by Tropical Storm Alpha, which formed Saturday off the Dominican Republic as the record 22nd named storm for the Atlantic season, before weakening to a tropical depression.

It was the first time forecasters exhausted the regular list of names and had to turn to the Greek alphabet for labels in almost 60 years of naming storms. The previous record of 21 tropical storms and hurricanes had stood since 1933.

Alpha "is not going to be a threat to the United States," Mayfield said. "I want to make that very clear."

By 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Wilma had maximum sustained wind near 100 mph. It was centered about 240 miles west-southwest of Key West and was moving toward the northeast at about 12 mph. Hurricane-force wind of at least 74 mph extended up to 70 miles out from the center, and wind blowing at tropical storm-force reached outward up to 200 miles, the hurricane center said.

Before moving back out to sea, Wilma pummeled Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for two days with screaming winds and torrential rains that flooded the nation's resort coastline. Authorities said at least three people died in Mexico during the storm, which earlier killed 13 people in Jamaica and Haiti.

In Florida, tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph were expected in the Keys and the southwestern part of the state by Sunday evening, and in Miami and other Atlantic coast cities around midnight. The center of Wilma should make landfall on Florida's southwest coast as a Category 1 or 2 hurricane around sunrise Monday, forecasters said.

However, a storm's strength can be unpredictable. "Because of that, we're asking everyone to prepare for a Category 3, one category stronger, just in case," hurricane center Deputy Director Ed Rappaport said Sunday.

Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Butch Kinerney said resources ranging from dozens of military helicopters to 13.2 million ready-to-eat meals were standing by.

"We're ready for Wilma and, whatever the storm brings, we're set to go," Kinerney said.

Wilma's outer rain bands caused hip-deep street flooding Saturday in some neighborhoods in the Fort Lauderdale area, forcing people out of at least 50 apartments and houses. More than 5 inches of rain fell in that area, Broward County and
National Weather Service officials said.

Gladys Sparrow, a 44-year-old home health care worker, said water rose to a foot inside her home, destroying clothes and furniture and bringing in bugs and trash.

"It's dirty, wet, muggy, everything," Sparrow said.

Four to 8 inches of rain was expected in southern Florida through Tuesday, with up to a foot in some areas. Category 2 hurricanes can be accompanied by storm surge flooding of 8 to 13 feet. Battering waves could be on top of that.

At a shelter set up in Florida International University in west Miami-Dade, Robert Line, 48, of Key West, waited for the storm with his wife after evacuating the island city some 135 miles south of Miami.

"We're treating it like a vacation," Robert Line said before admitting that tensions were running high at the shelter. "Everybody's stressed out. Everybody's walking on eggshells."
Wilma Heads for Fla. As Category 2 Storm (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051023/ap_on_re_us/wilma_florida;_ylt=AqczcWQjfYAM7iaHszHZc52s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--)

Gulf Coast Suffers Record Hurricane Season

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 22, 2005; 3:27 PM

-- Not in the last century, since it was decided that the dead and detritus of every hurricane should be recorded, has there been such a disastrous barrage of wind and rain and saltwater on the Gulf Coast.

Twenty-one tropical storms and hurricanes in the past five months, tying the most ever in a single season. The last letter left in the tempest alphabet was "W" and that has gone to Hurricane Wilma.

The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency responsible for christening these uncontrollable offspring of nature, has never before run out of names. (There is no X, Y or Z, no U or Q _ not enough proper nouns begin with those letters, the agency says.) If there are more before the season ends on Nov. 30, and a potential storm was brewing this weekend south of Puerto Rico, noms de storms revert to the Greek alphabet, beginning with Alpha.

By July, one month into the season, there were already seven named storms _ tropical storms Arlene, Brett and Cindy, hurricanes Dennis and Emily, and tropical storms Franklin and Gert.

The worst of that bunch was Dennis, which from Independence Day to July 12 battered coastal Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and many spots in the Caribbean with 150 mph wind. At least 32 people died. In Tallahassee, Fla., more than seven inches of rain poured down in four days, more than a normal summer month's worth.

After that beginning, the season got worse. Much worse.

The end of August brought Hurricane Katrina, whose damage statistics are still being tallied. The National Hurricane Center says Katrina may be the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. It will take a very long time to decide that.

Because of huge backlogs of autopsies at Federal Emergency Management Agency morgues, it has been impossible to sort the dead from the missing (among them the lost souls whose bodies were sucked into the gulf and not returned). As of this past week, the death tally stands at more than 1,280 across five states.

It started small _ a tropical depression southeast of the Bahamas. Veering left and picking up speed, it made landfall as a Category 1, the weakest of all hurricane classifications, on the evening of Aug. 25, atop the Miami-Dade-Broward county line.

It dumped more than a foot of rain across Florida, knocking down trees and snapping power lines until it hit the gulf. And there it sat, feeding on the warm water, growing fatter and more powerful until it ballooned into an awesome and terrifying Category 5 headed for New Orleans.

At 6:10 a.m., four days after arriving in southern Florida, Katrina made landfall in Plaquemines Parish, La., just south of the City of New Orleans, as a Category 4 storm with 140-mph wind. Four hours later, it made a second landfall near the Mississippi line, dropping to a Category 3 with 125-mph wind. At its widest, the storm's swath stretched from west of Lafayette, La., to Pensacola, Fla. Storm surges of up to 29 feet drowned southern Mississippi, washing away a major portion of the interstate and an unknown number of people.

Up to 17 inches of rain fell in the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana. And what nature didn't flood in downtown New Orleans, a broken levee did in the impoverished 9th Ward. Thousands evacuated; many aren't expected to return. The state's economy was knocked to its knees _ nearly a quarter of a million unemployment claims have been processed since Aug. 29, more than all of 2004. Louisiana budget officials have predicted government layoffs and cuts to health services and education because of taxes and revenues lost to Katrina.

The estimated insurance pay-outs don't help the economic portrait either _ with the latest estimate around $34 billion.

After Katrina, it was hoped that was the end of death and destruction and rain and wind _ for this season, least. But nature abhors a vacuum and doesn't possess a conscience.

There was more. Five more. September brought hurricanes Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe and Rita.

It was Rita that, for one breathtaking day threatened to wipe out Katrina's record of destruction and the country's fourth-largest city _ Houston.

On Sept. 20, it swept through Florida Straits, reaching Category 2 intensity as the eye passed south of Key West. Then Rita, too, blew into the gulf. At an astounding rate, it mushroomed from a Category 2 to a Category 5 in about 24 hours, and it seemed to be heading straight toward Galveston, Texas, a place that had lost some 8,000 people to a hurricane in 1900, before storms were given names.

About 40 miles north of Galveston lies Houston. On Sept. 24, at 2:30 a.m., a slightly subdued Rita hit just shy of the Texas-Louisiana border, as Category 3 storm with 120-mph wind. Lake Charles, La., was flooded. Parts of New Orleans were again flooded. The Texas oil towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur were flooded. More than 100 deaths have been attributed to Rita, nearly one-fourth occurring the day before the storm hit when a bus full of elderly evacuees exploded outside Dallas.

In hindsight, and compared to Katrina, Rita delivered only a glancing blow. Insured losses are estimated at up to $6 billion. Rainfall around New Orleans ranged from 4 to 6 inches, instead of four times that much.

After it was decided, about a century ago, to officially document the death and destruction wrought by hurricanes, record-keepers came up with many kinds of ways to do so. There is a list of the 10 costliest hurricanes (ranked by damage figures). There is a list of the 10 deadliest hurricanes (ranked by lives lost).

On the former, Hurricane Andrew of 1992 occupies the No. 1 spot, with $26.5 billion in monetary losses. On the latter list, Galveston's 1900 storm is at the top.

Last year's quartet of hurricanes that terrorized Florida _ Charley, Ivan, Frances and Jeanne _ rank second, third, fourth and sixth, respectively, with damages ranging from $15 billion to $6.9 billion

Gulf Coast Suffers Record Hurricane Season (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005102200715_pf.html)

Wilma Threatens Fla. With 110-Mph Winds

By DAVID ROYSE, Associated Press Writer 25 minutes ago

KEY WEST, Fla. - Hurricane Wilma accelerated toward storm-weary Florida on Sunday and grew stronger, threatening residents with 110-mph winds, tornadoes and a surge of seawater that could flood the Keys and the state's southwest coast.

After crawling slowly through the Caribbean for several days, Wilma pulled away from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 2 storm and, forecasters said, began picking up speed "like a rocket" as it headed toward the U.S. mainland. The storm was expected to make landfall around dawn Monday.

The southern half of the state was under a hurricane warning, and an estimated 160,000 residents were told to evacuate, although many in the low-lying Keys island chain decided to stay.

"I cannot emphasize enough to the folks that live in the Florida Keys: A hurricane is coming," Gov. Jeb Bush said. "Perhaps people are saying, 'I'm going to hunker down.' They shouldn't do that. They should evacuate, and there's very little time left to do so."

At 8 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Wilma's 110 mph winds were just 1 mph shy of Category 3 status. As the storm crossed the Gulf of Mexico, forecasters said they saw no evidence of wind shear that they hoped would reduce the hurricane's intensity before it makes landfall in southwest Florida.

Wilma had battered the Mexican coastline with howling winds and torrential rains before moving back out to sea. At least three people were killed in Mexico, following the deaths of 13 in Jamaica and Haiti.

Forecasters expected flooding from a storm surge of up to 17 feet on Florida's southwest coast and 8 feet in the Keys. Tornadoes were possible in some areas through Monday.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, predicted Wilma would dramatically pick up speed as it approached Florida.

"It's really going to take off like a rocket," he said. "It's going to start moving like 20 mph."

Because the storm was expected to move so swiftly across Florida, residents of Atlantic coast cities such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale were likely to face hurricane-force winds nearly as strong as those on the Gulf Coast, forecasters said.

Wilma would mark Florida's eighth hurricane since August 2004 and the fourth evacuation of the Keys this year.

Fewer than 10 percent of the Keys' 78,000 residents evacuated, Monroe County Sheriff Richard Roth said.

"I'm disappointed, but I understand it," Roth said. "They're tired of leaving because of the limited damage they sustained during the last three hurricanes."

By Sunday evening, tornado warnings were already posted for parts of southwest Florida, and the hurricane's outer bands began lashing coastal areas in Wilma's path. A waterspout was spotted off Key West.

It was markedly different than conditions Sunday morning in the Keys, when sunshine beckoned boaters onto the water and many residents went about their normal routines.

"We were born and raised with storms, so we never leave," Ann Ferguson said from her front porch in Key West. "What happens, happens. If you believe in the Lord, you don't have no fear."

Some 100 Key West parishioners attended Mass at a Catholic church where a grotto built in the 1920s is said to provide protection from dangerous storms. Ray Price took his usual stroll down Duval Street to check out the ocean.

"Another day in paradise," Price said.

Some people shared that attitude on the mainland. At a park for recreational vehicles in Fort Myers Beach, Leonard Hasbrouck stood bare-chested as a fire truck rolled by blaring a warning.

"Mandatory evacuation," a firefighter shouted into a loudspeaker. "You are hereby ordered to leave your residence by the board of county commissioners of Lee County, Fla."

"They came by yesterday," Hasbrouck said. "I told them, 'I'm not going to ask you to rescue me.'"

Tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph were expected to begin late Sunday, and the core of the hurricane was forecast to slice across the peninsula Monday, speeding northeast at up to 25 mph.

Gov. Bush wrote his brother, President Bush, asking that the state be granted a major disaster declaration for 14 counties ahead of the storm. Many of the areas bracing for Wilma were hit by some of the state's previous hurricanes.

The governor said state officials expected heavy rain and widespread power outages. The National Guard was on alert, and state and federal officials had trucks of ice and food ready to deploy.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was poised to send in dozens of military helicopters and 13.2 million ready-to-eat meals if needed, spokesman Butch Kinerney said.

"We're ready for Wilma and, whatever the storm brings, we're set to go," Kinerney said.

George Delgado of Miami was still covering the windows of his house with plywood Sunday. He said he waited until the last minute to make sure the hours of work were necessary.

"I was hoping it would turn some other way," Delgado said.

At 8 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Wilma was centered about 170 miles west-southwest of Key West and moving northeast at about 15 mph. Hurricane-force wind of at least 74 mph extended up to 85 miles from the center and wind blowing at tropical storm-force reached outward up to 230 miles, the hurricane center said.

Weary forecasters also monitored Tropical Depression Alpha, which formed Saturday off the Dominican Republic and was briefly a tropical storm, the record 22nd named storm for the Atlantic season. It was the first time the hurricane center exhausted the regular list of names and had to turn to the Greek alphabet.

Alpha was not considered a threat to the United States.

On Florida's Gulf Coast, evacuation orders covered barrier islands and coastal areas in Collier and Lee counties, such as Fort Myers Beach, Marco Island, Sanibel and parts of Naples.

Visitors crossing the bridge into Marco Island Sunday were greeted by an electric sign that flashed, "EVACUATE, EVACUATE."

About 3,500 people were in shelters across the state, including roughly 850 people at the Germain Arena near Fort Myers, where evacuees pitched tents and placed mats on the ice rink where a minor-league hockey team plays. Cots and sleeping bags lined hallways outside the rink.

David Bright sat nearby on a chair, a Bible beside him. He's old enough to remember plenty of other hurricanes, including destructive Donna in 1960.

"I'm just doing a lot of praying that things will work out," he said. "I'm born and raised right here in Fort Myers, Fla., and just know you don't play with them."

Wilma Threatens Fla. With 110-Mph Winds (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051024/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_wilma)

EU considers wild bird import ban as parrot tests positive for H5N1

Sun Oct 23, 4:14 PM ET

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The
European Union's executive faced increasing pressure to ban all wild bird imports after a parrot that died while in British quarantine was confirmed to have infected with the deadly Asian strain of bird flu.

The first confirmed case of H5N1 in the European Union, the parrot demonstrated that in addition to migratory birds the global trade in exotic birds risks spreading the virus that has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia over the past three years.

Britain, which reported Friday the parrot imported from South America had been infected with bird flu, announced Sunday that tests had shown it was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Even before the tests were in the British government had appealed for the EU to put in place a blanket ban on the import of exotic birds, which the bloc's executive Commission said it would urgently consider.

"The commission is currently considering the issue, it will decide by Tuesday," said spokesman Stefaan de Rynck.

The European Union already has various bird import bans in place for Romania, Russia, Thailand and Turkey, countries which have had confirmed cases of the lethal H5N1 bird flu strain.

It is also preparing a similar ban for Croatia, where a new bird flu outbreak was announced on Friday with test results awaited for the H5N1 strain.

Russia, which has had several outbreaks of H5N1, reported at the weekend bird flu of an as yet undetermined type in a second area west of the Urals mountains.

Sweden said a case of bird flu among ducks was not the deadly strain.

British veterinary authorities said that as the parrot had been in quarantine since it arrived from Surinam it did not affect the country's status as free of bird flu.

The virus was closer to strains in Asia than those believed brought by migratory birds to Romania and Turkey.

"The closest match is a strain identified in ducks in China earlier this year. It is not so similar to the strains from Romania and Turkey. It is not a strain that the Veterinary Laboratory Agency has seen before," said Debby Reynolds, chief veterinary officer of Britain's department of environment, food and rural affairs (DEFRA).

Britain's proposal for the EU ban on live wild bird imports was to be raised at an EU agricultural ministers' meeting in Luxembourg on Monday and Tuesday.

The possible ban, which would not affect domesticated birds, will also be discussed by experts at a meeting of the EU food security committee on Tuesday in Brussels before a final decision is taken by the commission.

Health experts from more than 50 countries were set to gather in Copenhagen on Monday to assess the response to avian flu, amid concerns H5N1 could mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans, causing a global pandemic.

Also Monday, in Ottawa, health ministers and experts from 30 countries were scheduled to meet to forge a coordinated international front against bird flu and to advance global preparations for a possible flu pandemic.

Ministers from China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and the United States are expected as are representatives from the World Health Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Organization for Animal Health.

Croatian authorities continued Sunday to kill thousands of domestic birds in in a three-kilometre (two-mile) radius around a lake near the eastern village of Zdenci where earlier six dead swans were found to have been infected by the virus.

Another five swans were found dead at a pond, also in eastern Croatia, and were sent to Zagreb for analysis. The result of the tests will be known on Monday or Tuesday.

Germany has begun enforcing a temporary ban on outdoor poultry rearing, confining fowl to sheds with spot checks on farms and fines of up to the equivalent of 30,000 dollars (25,000 euros) for violations.

The neighbouring governments of Austria, the principality of Liechtenstein and Switzerland have banned rearing free range poultry for the next few months.

Slovakia on Sunday issued a ban on live poultry and birds at markets and expositions.

The French agency for food safety recommended increased scrutiny of wildlife, but stopped short of proposing poultry be confined.

In the Middle East, Israel and its Arab neighbour Jordan stepped up efforts to coordinate their response on Sunday with a meeting of health officials, an Israeli embassy spokesman said.

Veterinary officers from the two countries met on Thursday and agreed to open a 24-hour hotline to exchange information on the advance of the disease.

In China, there was another outbreak of the virus on a farm in its northern Inner Mongolia region, where 2,600 birds died, with 91,000 others culled.

Officials in Beijing on Saturday began checking chickens, ducks, geese and even carrier pigeons being raised as pets in the city to make sure they were properly vaccinated or isolated, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao issued a directive for an all-out effort to prevent the spread of the virus.

Experts from Britain's Medical Research Council were Sunday set to leave on a 10-day trip to China, Vietnam and Hong Kong to look at the way the disease was being monitored there and how to improve cooperation.

The FAO has warned that migratory birds believed to be carriers may next take the virus to Africa, saying that the continent would be an "ideal breeding ground" because of close contact between people and animals.

Scientists fear Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are particularly threatened as they host millions of migratory fowl flying to warmer climes during the European winter.

EU considers wild bird import ban as parrot tests positive for H5N1 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051023/ts_afp/healthfluworld;_ylt=AmJW6aZoCOkuLcAFFNicmKN0bBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--)

Britain: Bird Flu Is Deadly H5N1 Strain

By MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago

LONDON - The British government said Sunday that a strain of bird flu that killed a parrot in quarantine is the deadly H5N1 strain that has plagued Asia and recently spread to Europe.

Scientists determined that the parrot, imported from South America, died of the strain of avian flu that has devastated poultry stocks and killed 61 people in Asia the past two years, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The virus is spread by migrating wild birds and has recently been found in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania, spurring efforts around the globe to contain its spread.

While H5N1 is easily transmitted between birds, it is hard for humans to contract. But experts fear it could mutate into a form of flu that is easily transmitted between humans and cause a pandemic that could kill millions.

Debby Reynolds, DEFRA's chief veterinarian, said the parrot was likely infected with the virus while it was housed in the country's quarantine system with birds from Taiwan. Tests conducted on the Taiwanese birds that had died were inconclusive, according to the department.

DEFRA said the virus was most closely matched to a strain found in ducks in China earlier this year but was not very similar to strains discovered in Romania and Turkey. The genetic makeup of the virus changes slightly as it spreads, and scientists use such tests to track its migration across the world.

It was Britain's first confirmed case of bird flu since 1992.

Elsewhere, the Croatian government on Sunday promised to compensate villagers and farmers whose birds were slaughtered to prevent the spread of bird flu. About 10,000 domestic birds have been killed in an area near a national park where six swans were found to have been infected with the virus.

Damage from the culling was estimated at about $160,000. However, international bans on Croatian poultry exports could hurt farmers more. The European Commission on Friday said it was preparing a ban on all poultry imports from the country, while some individual European nations have already done so.

Medical experts detected the H5 virus in the swans Friday. Samples from the contaminated birds were then sent to a laboratory in Britain to establish whether they had the deadly H5N1 strain. Tests were also being done on samples from five other swans found dead Saturday morning near the park.

In related developments Sunday:

_Sweden said four ducks found dead in an area west of Stockholm Friday were infected with bird flu, but not the deadly H5N1 strain.

_Montenegro began testing its poultry for bird flu as a precaution after the disease was confirmed in neighboring Croatia. Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina also ordered cars to be disinfected at the Croatian border, and banned poultry imports from the country.

_The European Union said its bird flu experts will discuss a possible ban on imports of wild birds into the 25-nation bloc on Tuesday. The EU has so far resisted calls to ban all pet bird imports, fearing it could create a black market that could increase the threat of infected birds being smuggled in.

_Jordan and Israel agreed to limited cooperation to combat the possible spread of bird flu by monitoring people traveling across their shared border, the official Petra news agency reported. Neither country has had any cases of the virus.

_North Korea has launched a nationwide campaign to prevent a fresh outbreak of bird flu, strengthening quarantine and reporting systems and enhancing education of poultry farmers, a media report said. Earlier this year, North Korea culled about 210,000 chickens and other poultry after acknowledging its first bird flu outbreak in March. No new cases have since been reported.

Britain: Bird Flu Is Deadly H5N1 Strain (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051024/ap_on_he_me/bird_flu)

Volcano Erupts on Largest Galapagos Island

Sun Oct 23, 8:36 PM ET

QUITO, Ecuador - A volcano has begun to erupt on one of the
Galapagos Islands known for its diverse flora and fauna, including the archipelago's famed giant tortoises, park officials said Sunday.

The 4,920-feet Sierra Negra volcano, located on seahorse-shaped Isabela, the largest of the Galapagos Islands, began erupting late Saturday afternoon, producing three lava flows, officials from the Galapagos National Park told The Associated Press in a statement. It has not yet been determined whether the island's plant and animal life have been affected.

Many Galapagos tortoises, some of which have a lifespan of more than 150 years, live near volcano craters.

Puerto Villamil on Isabela's southern coast is home to 2,000 people, but the eruption posed "no risk to the population," the statement said. Tourist centers near Sierra Negra were closed as a precaution.

The Galapagos Islands, located 625 miles off Ecuador's Pacific coast, were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 for their exotic wildlife such as marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies. The islands' rich biodiversity inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Volcano Erupts on Largest Galapagos Island (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051024/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/galapagos_volcano;_ylt=AlwKPPOzVlX2FhajlB5s_b3uOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NTMzazIyBHNlYwMxNjk2)

Cuba Rescues 250 Flood Victims From Wilma

By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

HAVANA - Rescuers in inflatable rafts and amphibious vehicles pulled nearly 250 people from flooded homes Monday after huge waves churned by Hurricane Wilma flooded the capital's coastal highway and adjacent neighborhoods of old, crumbling buildings.

The ocean spread up to four blocks inland, inundating streets and buildings with water up to three feet deep.

There were no immediate reports of injuries anywhere on the island. Nearly 700,000 people were evacuated across Cuba's west in recent days as Wilma approached, first hitting Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and then plowing across southern Florida.

"We're amazed," resident Laura Gonzalez-Cueto said as she watched scuba divers carry small groups of people in black inflatable rafts with outboard motors.

Although the Malecon coastal highway and adjacent neighborhoods often flood during storms, the extent of Monday's inundation was highly unusual.

As of midmorning, 244 people, including some children, had been rescued, municipal official Mayra Lassale said. Mayor Juan Contino was with rescue workers in an inflatable raft at the scene of some of the worst flooding.

Residents worried that high tide in the afternoon could worsen the flooding.

"They say the water is going to go down, but it's only rising," 24-year-old Meibis Herrera said as she stood calf-deep in her apartment in central Havana. Her refrigerator and other appliances were balanced on chairs in hopes of keeping them dry.

"Too much water," she sighed as another surge of water pushed in through the door.

The outer bands of Wilma also flooded evacuated communities along the island's southern coast over the weekend after the hurricane clobbered Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Flooding and high winds caused heavy damage to homes in the northern coastal community of Baracoa, just east of Havana.

In the Port of Mariel east of Havana, people gathered outside homes to watch in awe as waves several yards high rolled in one after another. Part of a concrete seawall crumbled, but otherwise no major damage was evident.

"Last night was really tense, just waiting for what might happen," said Joelsis Calderin, 30. "I've never seen waves like this. You have to respect the sea."

"Come on over," another Mariel resident, Sussel Acosta, joked to her neighbors. "Everyone's catching fish at my front door."

The government shut off electricity throughout the capital and across the island's west — a standard safety precaution — as high winds howled across the island.

Cuba prides itself on saving lives during hurricanes, and its civil defense plans have been held up by the United Nations as a model. Mandatory, widespread evacuations are common and face little resistance.

Cuba Rescues 250 Flood Victims From Wilma (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051024/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_hurricane_wilma)

'Super storm' brewing, likely to hit Northeast

Forecasters: Wilma will combine with Alpha to pummel Mid-Atlantic, New England states

Posted: October 24, 2005
3:20 p.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Hurricane Wilma, having barreled across Florida this morning with up to 125 mile-per-hour winds, is set to combine with other weather elements to form a "super storm" that will likely bring severe conditions to the Mid-Atlantic and New England states tomorrow.


AccuWeather.com meteorologists report that remnants of Tropical Storm Alpha will be drawn north along the Atlantic coast and will merge with Wilma and a large low pressure system that will develop off the Virginia Capes. The result is expected to bring wind, rain, snow and flooding to the Northeast.

According to the weather site, wind and snow could uproot trees and snap limbs, possibly leading to power outages if down trees strike power lines.

There are flash flood watches and warnings in effect today from the Delmarva Peninsula to central New York and southern Vermont, and winter storm watches are in effect in the northern half of those states, AccuWeather reports.

More rain would be a less than welcome sight for New England residents that have been hit with heavy precipitation in the last month.

New Hampshire Bureau of Emergency Management spokesman Jim Van Dongen says the state can handle up to 2 inches of rain, but there is "little wiggle room" if more rain falls.

After coming ashore as a Category 3 hurricane, Wilma weakened to a Category 2 storm before once again strengthening over the Atlantic. The hurricane hit the east coast of Florida harder than expected, shattering windows, peeling away roofs and knocking out power to millions of people.

Wilma, Florida's eighth hurricane in 15 months, came ashore at 6:30 a.m. Eastern today near Cape Romano, 22 miles south of Naples, spinning off tornadoes and bringing a potential for up to 10 inches of rain, the National Hurricane Center said.

'Super storm' brewing, likely to hit Northeast (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47012)

Galapagos Volcano Erupts for Third Day

By GONZALO SOLANO, Associated Press Writer Tue Oct 25, 8:16 PM ET

QUITO, Ecuador - A volcano on the largest of the Galapagos Islands erupted for the third straight day Tuesday, but experts said it didn't threaten villagers on the island or the super-sized tortoises that gave the remote archipelago its name.
Oscar Carvajal, chief technician of the Galapagos National Park on Isabela island, said tortoises and land iguanas were not threatened because the lava flows were down the northeast slopes of Sierra Negra volcano where there were no animal populations.

"The lava flows have not affected the species because they are on the other side. There are no problems with tortoises or land iguanas. Only a small amount of vegetation has been burned in the interior of the caldron and on the flanks," Carvajal said.

The 4,920-foot high Sierra Negra volcano began erupting late Saturday, sending three rivers of spectacular lava flow down its northeastern slopes.

Carvajal said the lava expelled Tuesday was considerably less. He said most of the lava was flowing from a fissure at the top of the volcano back into the interior.

Park and local authorities say Puerto Villamil, the island's only village with 2,000 inhabitants, is also out of danger because it is located south of the volcano.

Puerto Villamil mayor Pablo Gordillo said authorities have taken precautions and were ready to evacuate people by sea and air if necessary.

Patricio Roman, a technician at Ecuador's Geophysics Institute, said the eruption of Sierra Negra was a normal process for islands that are of volcanic origin. He said the archipelago, made up of 13 islands, only four of which have human inhabitants, is still young enough in geological terms to be in a process of formation.

"Sierra Negra volcano is very active, one of the most active volcanos in the Galapagos, and the Galapagos are considered one of the most active volcano centers in the world," he said.

"The Galapagos Islands are what geologists know as a hot point, a point that draws magma from the depths," he said.

Sierra Negra last erupted in 1979, but in May of this year La Cumbre volcano on nearby Fernandina island, which is uninhabited, erupted with water vapor, gas and ash. Another volcano on Isabela, Cerro Azul, erupted in 1998.

The Galapagos Islands, located 625 miles off Ecuador's Pacific coast, were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

They are known for their flora and fauna, including marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies and giant tortoises that live up to 150 years of age. The islands' unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Galapagos Volcano Erupts for Third Day (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_sc/galapagos_volcano;_ylt=AqWHu1sXA9GlalXS.7wr7Aes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MzV0MTdmBHNlYwM3NTM-)

Eyes to the sky for the Mars spectacular

Mon Oct 24, 5:49 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - The last time Mars swung so close to Earth, Hindu seers foretold of war, European astrologers predicted love and Germany reported a rash in UFO sightings.  ???

Thus is the spell cast by planetary alignment, so extreme predictions and odd events seem entirely possible this week as Mars and Earth edge together once more.

On Sunday, October 30, the Red Planet will be 69.4 million kilometers (43.1 million miles) from Earth -- a distance that in galactic terms is less than wafer-thin and will not be equalled until 2018.

Skywatchers are rubbing their hands at the opportunity.

In the runup to Sunday, but also for much of November, Mars will appear as a big orangey-yellow "star" in the east, an object so bright that it should be visible in almost any conditions of light pollution, says the US publication Sky & Telescope.

Weather permitting -- on Earth and also on Mars, where there are some worrying signs of an impending dust storm -- anyone with a modest telescope should be able to pick out some of the features that make Mars so special.

According to the French magazine Ciel et Espace, anyone who invests in a small 60mm (two-inch) -diameter telescope, priced in many countries at around 150 euros (180 dollars), should be easily able to spot Syrtis Major, Mars' most recognisable characteristic.

This vast region of cratered plateaux appears as a dark, roughly triangular-shaped tongue whose point heads towards Mars' North Pole.

They should also be able to make out Helas, a vast impact crater that is often covered by whitish mist and is sometimes mistaken for Mars' southern polar icecap.

Invest a couple of thousand euros (dollars) or more to get a telescope with a diametre of 200mm (eight inches) or more -- or go to your nearest observatory or visit an astronomy website -- and some really hunky stuff comes into view.

For size, nothing beats Mons Olympus, 26,000 metres (84,500 feet) high -- the biggest volcano in the Solar System. And Arizona's Grand Canyon would fit snugly inside Valles Marineris -- seven kms (four miles) deep and 200 kms (120 miles) across.

Mars' southern pole, seasonally shrunk by summer heat, will appear as a brilliant white dot. And with luck, one night you may bag Mars' tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, which once were asteroids until they were captured by the Martian gravity.

On August 27, 2003, Earth and Mars were a mere 55.76 million kms (34.65 million miles) apart, the closest in almost 60,000 years.

This time, the planets are slight farther apart, but the viewing prospects are better than in 2003, says the Institute of Celestial Mechanics at the Paris Observatory.

This is because, in 2003, Mars' course barely took it above the horizon for viewers in Earth's northern hemisphere, which meant the image was distorted by light passing through the atmosphere.

Earth, the third planet from the Sun, takes 365 and a quarter days to go around its star. Mars, the fourth planet, takes 687 Earth Days.

That means they come close every 26 months or so. But both planets take a slightly elliptical path around the Sun, and this factor determines precisely how close the flyby will be.

The next time the planets will be closer than in 2003 will be in 2287.

Eyes to the sky for the Mars spectacular (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051024/sc_afp/spaceastronomymars;_ylt=AiihBmx1I6MNb_ihrtFGCV1xieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NmhocGZ1BHNlYwMxNzAw)

Lisbon's 1755 earthquake a warning for today

By Barbara Cornell Tue Oct 25, 9:15 PM ET

LISBON (Reuters) - The aftershocks of a truly epic earthquake are measured not by magnitude or distance but by centuries.

Exactly 250 years after one of the world's most devastating quakes transformed regal Lisbon into a ghost town, experts from around the world will gather to find a prologue for the future.

The earthquake that hit Lisbon on November 1, 1755, rang Paris' church bells and triggered a tsunami from Norway to North America. It sent shockwaves through Enlightenment Europe, changing forever the way earthquakes were perceived and handled.

"We have to call attention to the authorities and the population in general that this past event, this terrible event, may come again," said Carlos Sousa Oliveira, president of the Portuguese Society for Earthquake Engineering.

"We don't know when. It might not be as strong. But we have to prepare to face it."

About 200 seismologists, engineers, architects, urban planners, historians, and even philosophers are expected at a four-day conference here, beginning on the November 1 anniversary.

Experts will present testimony from this month's killer South Asian quake and lessons from recent disasters, such as northwestern Turkey in 1999 and the Indian Ocean in 2004.

They will discuss research and preparedness in earthquake-prone countries, like Japan, Italy and Russia, and try to raise awareness of danger elsewhere.

"People living in Portugal have no idea of the risk. They are not aware of the risk because earthquakes have a long return period, meaning they can take hundreds of years to happen again," said Alfredo Campos Costa, an earthquake engineer working in seismic risk assessment research.

Experts concede that knowledge means little unless it is applied, and that the most potent argument for change, such as designing safer buildings, is the memory of previous disasters.

"It's folk memory rather than regulation that decides how people build," said Robin Spence, a professor of architectural engineering at Cambridge University and president of the European Association for Earthquake Engineering.

FIRST MODERN DISASTER

Before the conference, experts will hold a one-day workshop on October 31 to draw up a Europe-wide strategy to deal with the risk of quakes.

"We don't know exactly what are the most prone areas in terms of seismic risk and worse, we don't know how to mitigate this risk," said Campos Costa.

"If something happens like the 1755 earthquake today ... all of Europe is going to pay because we are all united at the economic level ... Europe is nowadays like a city," he added.

The 1755 earthquake, which also devastated Morocco and claimed around 70,000 lives, shattered the prevailing optimism that this was the best of all possible worlds.

Scientists say it was the first modern disaster, with coordinated emergency responses and a reconstruction plan that was drawn up with a possible, future disaster in mind.

"The event and the administrative organization afterwards can be regarded as the beginning of seismology, because it was the first time that a government took responsibility for disaster management," said Karl Fuchs, a geophysics professor and former director of the Geophysical Institute at the University Fridericiana at Karlsruhe, Germany.

BURNING CANDLES, BROKEN BUILDINGS

The earthquake struck on a sunny Saturday in Lisbon, one of Europe's richest cities and an international trading center.

Tremors, so violent that they stirred waters off Finland, toppled buildings and set off a devastating tsunami that swept through the city's center. Fires, blamed on church candles, burned for six days. Aftershocks continued for nine months.

The earthquake, estimated at 8.75 on the Richter scale, knocked down all but 3,000 homes and ruined 53 palaces, 32 churches and 46 monasteries and convents. Today the skeleton of the Convento do Carmo still haunts the Lisbon skyline.

The quake's epicenter and magnitude are still debated. But what is certain is how quickly the authorities responded.

"Bury the dead and feed the living," are words attributed to Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Melo, the Marques de Pombal who was Portugal's virtual dictator at the time and whose statue gazes from a major traffic circle toward the city he rebuilt.

Under his direction, Lisbon immediately took such steps as erecting gallows to deter looters and salvaging building materials from debris.

Assessment questionnaires -- asking people how many shocks were felt, what kind of damage was caused -- were sent out. Some of the questions are the same as those used today.

Pombal is mostly remembered for a construction plan for Lisbon's Baixa neighborhood which created a grid of level streets and uniform buildings using construction techniques designed to resist both earthquakes and fire.

Although recent disasters show man's science is still unable sometimes to cope with nature's ferocity, the Lisbon conference will show how far seismology has come since the 1755 quake.

"In Japan, almost all scientists have given up predicting future earthquakes," said Takashi Furumura, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute.

He uses supercomputers to see how the ground shifts during quakes. Since many population centers are in sedimentary basins, his research can help cities detect how vulnerable they are.

The idea, Furumura said, is to anticipate ground movement before a seismic wave hits and oscillate buildings in the opposite direction so the motion cancels out.

"It's a dream," he said, "but who knew we could go to the moon?"

Lisbon's 1755 earthquake a warning for today (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051026/sc_nm/quake_lisbon_dc;_ylt=AsoRKreS.v.PaZ94ox_ZJxPQOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NmhocGZ1BHNlYwMxNzAw)

None Hurt After 20-Ton Yosemite Rockslide

2 hours, 50 minutes ago

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. - Lodging that had been shut down after a 20-ton rockslide forced hundreds of visitors to relocate was reopened on Wednesday, park officials said.

No one was hurt in Tuesday's rockslide, which happened near Curry Village, but tourists were sent to other accommodations inside the park until a geologist could conduct an assessment.

No damages were reported when the rocks crumbled and rained down behind the construction site of the new Curry Village employee dormitories. Most of the debris piled onto a parking lot that is under construction.

Yosemite officials said the construction site was designed to keep visitors and staff safe if there is a rockslide.

Rockslides are not frequent in the park. But in 1999, another slide near Curry Village killed one climber — Peter J. Terbush, of Gunnison, Colo. — and injured three others.

None Hurt After 20-Ton Yosemite Rockslide (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_re_us/yosemite_rockslide)

Popping Rocks Reveal New Volcano
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

type size: [A] [A] [A]

Oct. 27, 2005 — Noisy popping rocks hauled up from the deep Pacific seafloor off northern Mexico appear to be from a very young undersea volcano, say U.S. and Mexican geologists.

Some of the weird and scientifically valuable gas-charged volcanic rocks were first discovered in the same area in 1960, but no one had been able to find them again until now.

It took some careful and persistent dredging of the 10,500-foot-deep (3,200-meters) seafloor by a bi-national crew of students and researchers near what is called Popcorn Ridge, 200 miles south of San Diego near Guadalupe Island, to relocate the remarkably loud rocks.

"People don't know how many volcanoes there are off the coast here," said Dana Vukajlovich, one of the chief scientists on the cruise, organized by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Another Scripps oceanographer, Dale Krause, who first found the popping rocks 45 years ago.

The rocks pop because they contain pressurized pockets of gases that had bubbled out of the rock when it was molten and erupting from a submarine volcano, explained Vukajlovich.

But under intense pressure two miles underwater, the bubbles remained locked inside the lava rocks. Once brought to the surface, however, where the pressure is a small fraction as much, the high-pressure gases in pockets near the surfaces of the rocks broke through explosively.

"It's kind of like the sound of ice cracking in water," said Dana Vukajlovich, describing the racket made by spontaneous explosions of the rocks when they were brought aboard the Roger Revelle research vessel in early October.

Unlike ice in water, however, the rocks were was as loud as firecrackers, she said. "You could hear it over the sound of the machinery on deck." There were even small pieces of the rocks flying off, she said.

And while all the noise is exciting, it's not what makes them so valuable to scientists, she said.

"They're pretty rare," said geochemist David Graham of Oregon State University of the few sites where popping rocks have been found worldwide. "They're typically found on relatively slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridges."

That's an undersea rift zone where the crust of the Earth is being pulled in opposite directions and there are many volcanoes spewing out molten rock to fill the gap.

The rocks from what Vukajlovich's crew has dubbed the Krause Volcano are the only popping rocks found outside the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, said Graham.

What the popping rocks offer scientists is a chance to study volcanic gases that may have come undisturbed from deep in the Earth, said Graham.

While chemical analyses are just getting started on the Krause Volcano rocks, similar Atlantic popping rocks contained primarily carbon dioxide gas, said Graham.

Of more interest, however, are smaller amounts of argon and helium, both "noble gases" that do not chemically react with any other elements. Argon and helium are leftovers from the heat-producing nuclear decay of larger elements deep inside the planet, he said.

How much of each gas that's found in the rocks could support or challenge theories about how the interior of the Earth is heated.

"It helps in understanding the thermal budget of the Earth," said Graham.

And since argon tends to escape rocks more quickly than helium, the amounts of both in the Krause Volcano rocks will give a clue to how quickly the magma that made the rocks moved up from the Earth's mantle.

If, for instance, there's a lot of argon, it's more likely the rocks made a quick trip up. "We're hoping it's very well preserved gas from the mantle," Vukajlovich said.

Galapagos Volcano Erupts for Third Day
Galapagos Volcano Erupts for Third Day but Experts Say It Not a Threat to Humans, Animals
By GONZALO SOLANO
The Associated Press

QUITO, Ecuador - A volcano on the largest of the Galapagos Islands erupted for the third straight day Tuesday, but experts said it didn't threaten villagers on the island or the super-sized tortoises that gave the remote archipelago its name.

Oscar Carvajal, chief technician of the Galapagos National Park on Isabela island, said tortoises and land iguanas were not threatened because the lava flows were down the northeast slopes of Sierra Negra volcano where there were no animal populations.

"The lava flows have not affected the species because they are on the other side. There are no problems with tortoises or land iguanas. Only a small amount of vegetation has been burned in the interior of the caldron and on the flanks," Carvajal said.

The 4,920-foot high Sierra Negra volcano began erupting late Saturday, sending three rivers of spectacular lava flow down its northeastern slopes.

Carvajal said the lava expelled Tuesday was considerably less. He said most of the lava was flowing from a fissure at the top of the volcano back into the interior.

Park and local authorities say Puerto Villamil, the island's only village with 2,000 inhabitants, is also out of danger because it is located south of the volcano.

Puerto Villamil mayor Pablo Gordillo said authorities have taken precautions and were ready to evacuate people by sea and air if necessary.

Patricio Roman, a technician at Ecuador's Geophysics Institute, said the eruption of Sierra Negra was a normal process for islands that are of volcanic origin. He said the archipelago, made up of 13 islands, only four of which have human inhabitants, is still young enough in geological terms to be in a process of formation.

"Sierra Negra volcano is very active, one of the most active volcanos in the Galapagos, and the Galapagos are considered one of the most active volcano centers in the world," he said.

"The Galapagos Islands are what geologists know as a hot point, a point that draws magma from the depths," he said.

Sierra Negra last erupted in 1979, but in May of this year La Cumbre volcano on nearby Fernandina island, which is uninhabited, erupted with water vapor, gas and ash. Another volcano on Isabela, Cerro Azul, erupted in 1998.

The Galapagos Islands, located 625 miles off Ecuador's Pacific coast, were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

They are known for their flora and fauna, including marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies and giant tortoises that live up to 150 years of age. The islands' unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Season's 23rd Tropical Storm Forms

By MICHELLE SPITZER, Associated Press Writer Thu Oct 27, 8:54 AM ET

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Beta formed Thursday in the southwestern Caribbean Sea, extending this year's record of named storms in the Atlantic hurricane season.

Beta is the season's 23rd tropical storm, the most since record keeping began in 1851. The disturbance formed Wednesday night and warnings were issued for the entire Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. The storm was also expected to bring heavy rain across western Panama and Costa Rica.

Forecasters said it was not expected to threaten the United States.

Richard Knabb, hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said it was not unusual to get storm activity toward the end of hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.

"It may not be over with Beta, but let's hope so," he said.

At 8 a.m. EDT, it was located about 70 miles south of San Andres Island and about 135 miles east-southeast of Bluefields, Nicaragua. A hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning has been issued for the islands of San Andres and Providencia. Heavy rain and strong winds were expected there Thursday.

A tropical storm warning has been issued for the entire Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and adjacent islands. Hurricane conditions are possible in the next several days, forecasters said.

Its maximum sustained winds were near 40 mph and was moving northwest near 4 mph. Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 35 mph.

Beta is expected to produce 10 to 15 inches of rain across western Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, forecasters said.

Last week Tropical Storm Alpha formed, which was the first time a letter from the Greek alphabet has been used because the list of storm names was exhausted. The previous record of 21 storms stood since 1933.

Season's 23rd Tropical Storm Forms (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051027/ap_on_re_us/tropical_weather;_ylt=AlcsKtYbavhfPorUD4OLpN.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-)

Beta upgraded to hurricane, batters Caribbean
Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:57 AM ET162

 By Cyntia Barrera Diaz

PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Beta was upgraded to a hurricane on Saturday as it punished a small Caribbean island with fierce winds and hundreds of Miskito Indians streamed into shelters in a sleepy Nicaraguan port to escape exposed villages.

Beta, the latest cyclone in a record-breaking season, whipped Colombia's Providencia island with winds nearing 80 mph (130 km/hr) as it inched its way toward Central America.

The wind ripped roofs off homes on the island, which along with neighboring San Andres, was once a favored hideaway of famous 17th-century Welsh pirate Henry Morgan. No deaths were reported.

In Nicaragua, barefooted fishing families carrying clothing in bags and furniture on their backs fled coastal hamlets to seek protection in Puerto Cabezas, where schools doubled as storm shelters.

"We heard on the radio we had to leave," said fisherman Bismark Williams, 35, who was picked up by a boat under government orders to evacuate as many people as possible from the coast.

Beta was upgraded early Saturday to a Category 1 hurricane and was forecast to strengthen further in the next 24 hours and could become a strong Category 2 before it makes landfall along the east coast of Nicaragua on Sunday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

"We think 600-700 people have already come in, and there are more boats on their way," said Orlando Aberlado, in charge of deploying the fishing craft used in the evacuation.

Small fishing villages populated by Indian tribes like the Miskitos and descendants of escaped African slaves are strung along the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua.

It is one of the region's most isolated areas and transport is often by plane or boat along muddy rivers.

"We are considering evacuating some 8,000 people from different places along the coast," said Col. Mario Perez-Cassar, the head of Nicaragua's civil defense.

Puerto Cabezas' hospital stocked up with medicines for pneumonia in case slow-moving Beta cuts off the low-lying area with its strong winds and torrential rains.

Beta upgraded to hurricane, batters Caribbean (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-29T105655Z_01_SCH864269_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEATHER-BETA.xml)

Magnitude 6.5 earthquake shakes southern Indian Ocean: Hong Kong

Sat Oct 29, 5:44 AM ET

HONG KONG (AP) - A strong earthquake measuring magnitude 6.5 shook the southern Indian Ocean on Saturday, the Hong Kong Observatory said.

The quake struck at 0417 GMT and was centred about 2,200 kilometres southwest of Perth, Australia, the observatory said. No other information was immediately available.

Magnitude 6.5 earthquake shakes southern Indian Ocean: Hong Kong (http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20051029/ca_pr_on_wo/australia_earthquake;_ylt=AvQunoHKRQRFVIlc4oWdR6FvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--)

Militant-Linked Group Claims India Blasts

By RAJESH MAHAPATRA, Associated Press Writer 41 minutes ago

NEW DELHI - A little-known group that police say has ties to
Kashmir's most feared militants claimed responsibility Sunday for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi.
ADVERTISEMENT

Authorities said they already had gathered useful clues about the near-simultaneous blasts Saturday night that ripped through a bus and two markets crowded with people preparing for the Hindu festival of Diwali.

Investigators reportedly raided dozens of small hotels across India's capital looking for possible suspects, and police said "numerous" people were being questioned.

The attacks came at particularly sensitive time as India and Pakistan were hashing out an unprecedented agreement to partially open the heavily militarized frontier that divides the disputed territory of Kashmir to speed relief to victims of a massive earthquake earlier this month.

The agreement was finalized early Sunday, and Indian officials appeared hesitant to quickly put the blame for the bombings on Pakistan-based militants, unlike in previous terror attacks during a 16-year-old insurgency by Islamic separatists in India's part of Kashmir.

The United States "strongly condemns the heinous terrorist attacks in India," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

"By targeting innocent civilians making final preparations for holiday celebrations, terrorists have demonstrated yet again that they are enemies of humanity and contemptuous of the values all in the civilized world share," McClellan said in a statement.

India's accusations of Pakistani involvement in a 2001 attack on parliament put the two nuclear-armed rivals on the brink of a fourth war. But they pulled back and, after pursuing peace efforts since early last year, both appeared intent on keeping the atmosphere calm.

"We have lots of information but it is not proper to disclose it yet," Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil told clamoring journalists after an emergency meeting of the Cabinet called to discuss the attacks. "Our people are making good progress. The investigation is going well."

A man called a local news agency in Indian Kashmir to say the militant Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, or Front for Islamic Uprising, staged the bombings, which police said killed 59 people and wounded 210.

The caller, who identified himself as Ahmed Yaar Ghaznavi, said the bombings were "meant as a rebuff to the claims of Indian security groups" that militants had been wiped out by security crackdowns and the Oct. 8 earthquake that devastated the insurgents' heartland in the mountains of Kashmir.

A senior police officer in India's Jammu-Kashmir state said the caller's name was not familiar to intelligence agencies, and New Delhi's deputy police chief, Karnail Singh, said the group had not been very active since 1996.

However, while Singh refused to comment on the claim of responsibility, he said the group is linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared of the dozens of Kashmiri militant groups.

A leading anti-terrorism expert said earlier that the timing and nature of the blasts appeared to indicate the work of Lashkar.

"It looks like Lashkar. They are the most active group here," said Vikram Sood, the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's foreign intelligence agency.

Lashkar and some other Kashmiri groups are known to have expertise in using the powerful explosive RDX, and a police officer with knowledge of the investigation said forensic experts were studying whether RDX was used in the attack.

He said witnesses reported that the biggest explosion created a huge ball of fire like that usually caused by RDX. The officer agreed to discuss the probe only if granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with journalists.

Police said they also were looking for a man in his 20s who refused to buy a ticket on a bus and got off in the Govindpuri neighborhood, leaving behind a large black bag. When some of the 40 passengers raised an alarm, the driver and conductor examined it and threw it out just as the blast occurred, injuring them both along with seven others.

Several Indian television stations said dozens of hotels in New Delhi had been raided after the bombings and suspects were detained.

Singh, the deputy police chief, refused to comment on the reported raids. He insisted that "no one is under detention," but said many people were being questioned.

After the attacks, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party — India's main opposition party — called on the government to review what it called the "soft border" policy agreed to with Pakistan.

The deal reached early Sunday will allow people to cross the frontier in Kashmir at five points starting Nov. 7 to help get food, shelter and medical aid to victims of the quake, which killed about 80,000 people and left 3 million homeless, most in Pakistan.

Opening the border is a touchy issue in India because of the uprising by Islamic militants who are fighting to make India's part of Kashmir independent or unite it with Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the subcontinent was partitioned at independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir, but they have been pursuing efforts to improve relations and ease tensions since early last year.

"Both India and Pakistan internalized the experience of the last few years. This is reflected in the sobriety" of official comments about the bombings, said C. Uday Bhaskar, an analyst at New Delhi's Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses.

He noted that after the bloody 2001 attack on parliament, Indian leaders quickly blamed Kashmir militants and Pakistan's spy agency, nearly bringing on another fourth war.

"We now have a better appreciation of the linkages in such terror attacks and a better assessment of how to articulate it in public," Bhaskar said.

This time, too, Pakistan's government has been quick to condemn the bombings, which drew worldwide condemnation.
Militant-Linked Group Claims India Blasts (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051031/ap_on_re_as/india_explosions;_ylt=AiFMNsHJO5_nqECe3xNAHoNbbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b3JuZGZhBHNlYwM3MjE-)

For those of you that don't know why, this is posted here. Terrorism is a war of sorts.

Earthquake Shakes Parts of Montana, Idaho

2 hours, 12 minutes ago

HELENA, Mont. - A moderate earthquake shook parts of western Montana and eastern Idaho on Sunday, but no injuries or property damage were reported.

The epicenter of the temblor — which had a preliminary magnitude of 4.5 — was in a sparsely populated, mountainous area along the Montana-Idaho line, about 29 miles southeast of Salmon, Idaho, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Web site.

The Lemhi County Sheriff's Department in Salmon received dozens of calls about the 5:23 p.m. quake, but no damage reports.

"I myself did not feel it, but the inmates felt it," said Deputy Jess Bowen, whose office is next to jail cells. "They were probably just paying attention, and we were busy doing other things."

More than 75 people who felt the quake posted reports on the geological service's Web site, including some in Missoula and Helena, about 130 miles northeast of Salmon.

A 4.5 temblor beneath a city could bring damage such as cracked chimneys or windows, said Michael Stickney of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. But little damage was reported Sunday in part because of the sparse population, he said.

Earthquake Shakes Parts of Montana, Idaho (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051031/ap_on_re_us/northwest_earthquake)

Senior British Muslim Warns on Terror Laws

By MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer
58 minutes ago

LONDON - A prominent British Muslim warned lawmakers Monday that proposals for tough new anti-terror laws could undermine the Muslim community's willingness to cooperate in fighting terror.

Abdurahman Jafar, a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain, expressed concern about the Terror Bill, which was drawn up in the wake of the July attacks on London's transit system.

The bill would extend the maximum 14-day detention for terror suspects without charge to three months, outlaw attending terrorist training camps and make it an offense to glorify or encourage terrorism.

Addressing a meeting of Parliament's joint committee on human rights, Jafar told lawmakers that he feared a "really horrific counter-productive effect" from the bill, partly because of the proposed glorification offense.

He said the measure threatens to merge "the issue of illegitimate attacks against peaceful democracies, with legitimate acts of resistance against illegitimate regimes around the world."

Jafar, who is vice chairman of the legal affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, also voiced concern about the plans to lengthen the detention period for terror suspects who haven't been charged.

He said the legislation risked weakening the wider Muslim community's commitment to fight terrorism in the wake of the July 7 attacks, which killed 52 commuters and four suicide bombers, who were devout Muslims.

The House of Commons voted last week to back the Terror Bill. But before the bill can become law, it faces further scrutiny by a committee of lawmakers, a further vote in the Commons, and votes in parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords.

Senior British Muslim Warns on Terror Laws (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051101/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terror)

Lesbian Minister Defrocked By United Methodist Church

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 1, 2005; A03

The highest court in the United Methodist Church yesterday defrocked a lesbian minister in Philadelphia and reinstated a Virginia pastor who had been suspended for denying a gay man membership in his congregation.

The nine-member Judicial Council also rejected a declaration by Methodists in the Pacific Northwest that there is a "difference of opinion among faithful Christians regarding sexual orientation and practice." The court said the declaration was a "historical statement without prescriptive force" and had no bearing on church laws.

The decisions amounted to a clean sweep for conservatives who believe gay sex is a sin and want to strictly enforce a Methodist rule against "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" in ordained ministry. They were the latest in a series of defeats for liberals in the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination who have sought to be more welcoming toward gay men and lesbians.

The court rulings, which are final, put an end to the Rev. Irene "Beth" Stroud's hopes of remaining an ordained Methodist minister. Stroud, 35, said she thought she "was prepared for whatever might happen" but found it impossible to master her emotions yesterday. "It's been tears off and on all morning," she said.

Stroud said she will continue working at Philadelphia's First United Methodist Church of Germantown as a lay minister, which means she cannot administer Communion and baptisms.

Her case began when she told her congregation in 2003 that she was living in a "covenanted relationship" with another woman. Her message from the pulpit violated the church's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays in the clergy and resulted in a formal charge by her bishop.

In December 2004, a jury of 13 ministers convicted Stroud of "practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teaching" and removed her ministerial credentials. But a regional appeals panel overturned the verdict, citing legal errors and an ambiguous clause in the church's constitution that pledges no discrimination on the basis of "status."

Yesterday, the Judicial Council reaffirmed the original jury's verdict by a 6 to 2 vote, with one judge absent. Wary of such a decision, Stroud had not resumed ordained ministry since the original trial.

"If it's a choice between serving in the ordained ministry with my credentials intact, and serving as an 'out' lesbian person acknowledging the most important relationship in my life and not having those credentials, I'll take being out. I think it's better and more honest, and more healthy in the long run," she said.

The Judicial Council's rulings also represented a significant change in fortune for the Rev. Edward Johnson, pastor of South Hill United Methodist Church in South Hill, Va.

Johnson, 58, had been on an involuntary, unpaid leave since June, when Methodist ministers in Virginia voted 448 to 114 to discipline him for refusing to allow a gay man to become a member of his congregation. His district superintendent and his bishop had urged Johnson to admit the man.

Yesterday, the Judicial Council reinstated Johnson, with back pay, with a 5 to 3 vote. It said local pastors have the discretion to decide on members.

Johnson was traveling yesterday and did not return messages. The Rev. Tom Thomas, who served as Johnson's legal counsel, said the decision "salvaged" the career of a good pastor and "preserves the way pastoral ministry has been done in our church for 200 years."

The Judicial Counsel viewed the case as a question about a pastor's authority, rather than a question about whether people in same-sex relationships are eligible to join the church. In a dissenting opinion, Judicial Council member Susan T. Henry-Crowe said the decision "compromises the historical understanding that the Church is open to all."

Like many other Protestant denominations, the Methodist Church has been struggling with sexual issues for 30 years. Its legislative body, the General Conference, meets every four years and has, in recent sessions, reaffirmed the prohibition on "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" in the clergy by increasing margins.

Because of a changing geographic formula, conservative Methodists from the South have been gaining influence in the General Conference and have helped elect more conservatives to the Judicial Council. In May 2004, delegates also voted to tighten church laws, making it easier to charge, try and convict gay ministers.

"A lot of loopholes have been closed, but I believe in risky ways," said the Rev. Thomas E. Frank, director of Methodist Studies at Emory University and a proponent of welcoming gays into the church. "There's a lot of ambiguities in the judicial procedures because the church has never tried that hard to get people out; instead, it's emphasized being a big tent and getting everybody in. It's a sharp reversal when we start heading in the other direction."

Mark Tooley, a conservative Methodist at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, said the rulings show that Methodism "is not moving in the direction of the Episcopal Church and declining liberal Protestantism in the West." Rather, he said, it "is moving in the direction of global Christianity, which is robustly orthodox."

Lesbian Minister Defrocked By United Methodist Church (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/31/AR2005103100971_pf.html)

Mexico Celebrates 'Day of the Dead'

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 19 minutes ago

MEXICO CITY - Mexicans marked the annual Day of the Dead holiday on Tuesday with a towering pile of giant skulls, huge skeletons, vast altars to the dead and large carpets of marigold petals in Mexico City's main square.

Amid the crowd listening to music or waiting for freshly-baked "dead bread" rolls to emerge from huge brick ovens, there were plenty of children dressed up as little witches, skeletons or princesses, illustrating the steady encroachment of U.S.-style Halloween customs.

"That's why we're doing this, to defend our traditions a little," said Fernando Flores, 39, as he walked with his two young sons through the enormous Day of the Dead display, which featured altars erected by unions, political parties and other groups. "I don't have anything against it (Halloween), but it's not our tradition."

Traditionally, the bright orange color of the marigold petals are thought to guide the dead back to their homes — where they "spiritually" nourish themselves from the foods they liked in life.

Home altars include the deceased person's favorite food and drink, along with candles, incense, photos of the dead and other decorations.

The skulls — the giant versions in the display were built by an arts group — represent the small candy skulls traditionally given as gifts, and also the Aztec practice of exhibiting the skulls of conquered enemies. Candy skulls are often engraved with the names of the living, or accompanied by short, ironic poems mourning the "death" of a living friend.

Asked which he preferred — this rich panoply of Mexican tradition, or Halloween — Flores' son, Juan Manuel, 8, quickly piped up, "Halloween ... because of the 'calaverita'," as trick-or-treating here is known.

Mexican children often go about asking for money for their 'calaverita' — a small plastic pumpkin — rather than candy.

Like the Flores, the Callejas family tries to do both: set out traditional altars to deceased grandparents, while also allowing their children to join in Halloween-style festivities.

It's just the first round in the holiday battle: Christmas decorations are already going up in stores — Santa Clauses and reindeer, in addition to more traditional nativity scenes — and Callejas she will have to keep her kids from expecting gifts on Christmas day, rather than the traditional Jan. 6 Three Kings Day.

Some took a philosophical attitude toward the battle between Halloween and Day of the Dead, itself a mix of pre-Hispanic and Catholic customs.

"It's all the same thing," said Luis Aquino Gallegos, 7 as his mother bought him a plastic scythe, and his sister a small broomstick, as they left the more traditional festival.

Traditional celebrations last through Nov. 2, when families honor deceased adults. Many families will make nighttime visits to graveyards, to commune with dead relatives.

In one special ceremony on Mexico's northern border, a caravan of two dozen Indian women from the southern state of Chiapas arrived Monday in the city of Ciudad Juarez to honor the hundreds of women who have been slain there in the past decade.

The women lit candles, blew conch shells, beat drums and burned incense in what they described as a ceremony of respect for the dead and solidarity for the victims' surviving relatives. The caravan was dubbed "the Wind of 1,000 Voices."

Mexico Celebrates 'Day of the Dead' (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051102/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_day_of_the_dead)

European Union lowercases 'Christ' :'(
Brussels' grammar rule says title to be spelled with small 'c' in future
Posted: November 1, 2005
2:12 p.m. Eastern


© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A new grammar rule devised by the European Union in Brussels stipulates the word "Christ" shall be spelled with a lowercase "c."

The rule was part of an orthography reform published in October, reported Canada Free Press.

The paper cites a German newssite, Kath.net, in reporting that the new guidelines also indicate the Dutch word for "Jews" (Joden) is to be spelled with a capital "J" when referring to nationality and with a lower-case "j" when referring to the religion.

The EU changes become mandatory next August. There are no penalties set out for those who insist on continuing to spell Christ with a capital "C."

Canada Free Press noted the title of Javier Solana, secretary general of the EU, was still to be spelled with capital letters.

Many Europeans have long discarded belief in God and in fact believe more deeply in ghosts than in a deity.

A new poll finds two-thirds of Britons said they believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits, but only 55 percent said they believe in the existence of God.

Meanwhile, 26 percent believe in UFOs, 19 percent in reincarnation and 4 percent in the Loch Ness Monster, Ananova reported.
European Union lowercases 'Christ' (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47166) :'(

Jesus   Christ


So ridicule me, sue me or put me in jail, I will always capitilize  Jesus Christ.   ;) ;) ;) ;)

No, I won't ridicule you, sue you, or put you jail.

You and me both, can serve the same sentence. In fact, I think, I will capitilize ....... JESUS CHRIST full name , from now on. ;D :D ;D

I like that idea myself.

Radical Islam blamed for French rioting

Muslims 'scorn' Europe's ways, 'conspire to take it over'
Posted: November 5, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jon Dougherty
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

As rioting that began in a poor, mostly Muslim, neighborhood near Paris a week ago continues to spread to other suburbs and cities across France and parts of Europe, U.S. experts and at least one American lawmaker believe radical Islam is most likely responsible for the chaos.

And, they say, despite the characterization by several media outlets that those perpetuating the violence are primarily disaffected youth upset with French economic and social policies, the fact the unrest spread so quickly and is virtually limited to Muslim neighborhoods signifies a deeper, ideologically driven motive.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., in an interview with WND, said he believes the chickens are coming home to roost in France because, for years, the country with the largest Islamic population in Europe has ignored rising Muslim tensions within its own borders. The real issue the French "are now dealing with," he said, "is [that] you cannot integrate some people into your society."

Daniel Pipes, an expert on Islam and the director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank promoting American ideals in that region, thinks the riots in France are a microcosm of the larger radical Islamic goal of gaining a solid foothold in Europe.

"The great majority of Muslims in Europe see themselves as bearers of a superior civilization and see themselves growing prodigiously," he told WND. "Through a cultural, religious and demographic confidence they feel scorn towards European ways and conspire to take it over."

Lee Kaplan, spokesman for United American Committee, an organization striving to educate more Americans to the threat of radical Islam, suggested France's quest to be "evenhanded" in its dealings with its massive Muslim immigration has backfired and now reached a point where Paris has little choice but to meet the problem head-on. In an interview with WND, he suggested that "with 5 million Muslims in France – the most in all of Europe," this week's chaos was inevitable.

Origin of unrest

According to earlier reports, the rioting – which has seen the destruction of hundreds of vehicles, public buses and buildings – began Oct. 27 after the accidental deaths of two Muslim teens. Both boys were electrocuted while hiding from police in an electrical power substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. Reports said police were in the area checking identification papers when the two boys ran away from them.

By week's end, riot police and firefighters were battling scores of Muslim rioters, some armed with weapons and Molotov cocktails. A police union official likened the violence to "civil war" in calling for the government to impose a strict curfew as French leaders vowed to restore order in the worst crisis of domestic violence in the country in decades.

As rioting exploded in France, Muslim-influenced unrest also began in Denmark, fueling further speculation that Europe is increasingly under siege by Islamic extremism. In the Danish rioting, Kaplan said, Muslim immigrant youths have even taunted authorities, saying, "This territory belongs to Islam; you don't belong here."

Much of the chaos, analysts said, is tied to the lack of Muslim integration into European society – whether by design or by choice. In France and Denmark alike, many cities dominated by Islamic faithful have been deemed too dangerous for police and are, effectively, "no-go zones."

"The riots typify French reaction to Islamism and spring from a European approach to the Islamic wave of migration into Europe," according to Islam analyst Robert Spencer.

Writing in FrontPage magazine, Spencer explained, "After WWII, the French built so-called 'sink estates' for the workers they encouraged to emigrate to help rebuild the nation, as did Germany."

Most of these workers came from Turkey and colonies in North Africa.

"Instead of planning for their integration into society, however, the French allowed these communities to grow and fester in economic and social isolation," Spencer said. "After two generations, the sink estates have proven to be nothing more than preplanned ghettoes, and the workers have no future except as second-class citizens of the nations they helped rebuild from devastation."

Tancredo believes many Muslims don't want to become "European." And he says the French and Danish riots are part of a larger militant Islamic movement perpetually at odds with the West.

The French "really don't want to integrate and assimilate, I think, the Muslims into French society, but I also think the Muslims are not interested in doing that themselves," he said. "This division, this rampaging nature manifesting itself in these riots and everything else, is an example of the clash of civilizations" he believes threatens Europe and the United States.

"The rioters are part of a population that has never considered itself French," says Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch and author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam."

Adds Pipes, "Kids burning cars and buildings aren't specifically doing that in an attempt to 'take control.' But I do think that, ultimately, is the significance of what they're doing.

"This isn't comparable to the 1960s race riots in the U.S.," he said. "This does have, deep down, an Islamic agenda of control, even if the kids doing the rioting aren't cognizant of that" at the moment.

Muslim call to arms
By MATTHEW SCHULZ
06nov05

AN inflammatory pamphlet urging Muslims to oppose Western governments was handed out at an important Islamic festival in Melbourne yesterday.

The flyer, distributed at a family carnival to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan in Preston, bore the name of the fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir – which is banned in Britain and Germany.

It claimed new terror laws were part of a conspiracy to eradicate Islam in Western countries.

And it said Muslims had "enormously rejected their evil and corrupt rulers that the West have appointed over them, and they are looking forward to consigning them to the dust bins of history".

The pamphlet told how Muslims in other countries had "heroically resisted" invasion and "inflicted the most humiliating lesson on supposed superpowers".

It claimed Prime Minister John Howard's recent summit with Muslim leaders was a "smokescreen designed to rubber stamp the government's proposals".

The pamphlet said: "The Muslims have awoken to the true ugly face of western colonialism, and realise with full perception that the west is responsible for flooding their countries with blood, poverty, corruption and turmoil, after it divided its lands, impoverished its peoples and dishonoured its noble sons and daughters".

In August Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock said he had no evidence that Hizb Ut-Tahir had breached current laws but he was already reviewing the rules for declaring a terrorist organisation after elements of the group called for attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, Iran, the US and Israeli interests.

In Sydney the group has already drawn gatherings of up to 200 calling for the creation of an Islamic super state.

The pamphlet claimed the west had, through draconian legislation, given Muslims three options: face deportation; adopt and embrace western values by abandoning Islam; or face persecution and humiliation.

"Fear none but Allah. Pledge your obedience to Him and to the work that gives victory to His Deen. Ally yourselves with those who work day and night to confront this war against Islam," the pamphlet says, in what was virtually a call to arms.

Amid children and families enjoying the Enid El-Fiter Festival in Preston, an unknown man in traditional Muslim garb and speaking little English handed out the leaflet printed in English and Arabic.

Melbourne's most senior Muslim cleric Sheik Fehmi urged Muslims at the celebration – expected to attract up to 10,000 visitors over the weekend – to ignore the pamphlet.

He said Ramadan was the time for spiritual purification and reflection for Muslims.

"We're not terrorists and we're not thinking of terrorist acts, we're not going to do anything in the future - God willing."

"And this is the time to show how peaceful we are," he said.

But he described the Howard government's new anti-terror laws as "excessive and had been "presented in a fearful way" and a break in the known democracy and fair go of Australia that I've known in the 54 years in this country."

"That's why at this time of the year we put all that aside, we haven't got time for them, we're trying to do something spiritual."

Sheik Fehmi also revealed elders in the Islamic community had convinced firebrand preacher Abdul Nacer Benbrika to curb his inflammatory support of terror.

He said repeated appeals appeared to have worked, amid reports that the extremist former Algerian could be the first to be detained under new anti-terror laws.

ASIO agents investigating extremist elements in Australia raided the northern suburbs homes of Mr Benbrika and his supporters in June.

Mr Benbrika, 46, has praised Osama bin Laden and suggested Australian Muslims have the right to fight coalition troops in Iraq in comments that have frustrated mainstream Muslims.

He continues to visit the Preston mosque where Sheik Fehmi is based.

"We have already sent him the message, and `please do not speak something that offends not only the people in Australia, but people in your own community'."

"He's seen the outcome of that and seen the outrage and he realises that now. Lately, he's not been saying anything."

`But Mr Benbrika would not be banned from one of Victoria's busiest mosques.

"We don't want to create friction, but want to let him know in a peaceful way."

 Muslim call to arms (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17152369%255E2862,00.html)

To some extent it seems like history repeating itself.

Tornado Kills 15, Injures 200 in Indiana

Tornado Rips Through Southern Indiana, Killing at Least 15 People and Injuring About 200

EVANSVILLE, Ind. Nov 6, 2005 — A tornado tore across southwestern Indiana early Sunday, cutting a swath through a mobile home park and smashing homes as residents slept, leaving at least 15 people dead and about 200 injured, a state official said.

Pam Bright, a spokeswoman for Indiana's homeland security agency, said 10 people have been confirmed dead on the southeast side of Evansville at the Eastbrook Mobile Home Park, where she said victims were still being pulled from the debris.

Another five people were confirmed dead in adjoining Warrick County, where the Ohio River city of Newburgh was raked by a tornado after 2 a.m. Sunday, she said.

Bright said the Eastbrook Mobile Home Park, with about 350 homes, was devastated when the tornado, which had earlier struck just south of the Ohio River in Henderson, Ky., crossed the river and moved into Vanderburgh County, striking the mobile home park first.

The tornado developed in a line of thunderstorms that rolled rapidly eastward across the Ohio Valley during the morning.

The damage path through Newburgh, eight miles east of Evansville, was about three-quarters of a mile wide, and extended for roughly 20 miles, Assistant Fire Chief Chad Bennett told CNN. He said emergency sirens sounded, but most people didn't hear them because it happened in the middle of the night.

Barren Island Volcano fumes again
Press Trust Of India
Mumbai, November 10, 2005
   
            
      
            
      
      
      
      

Barren Island Volcano, located east of Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has renewed its activity from November 4 and was flowing into the sea, volcanologist Prof D Chaandrasekharam said on Wednesday.

The present activity appears to be much more intense than the previous eruption, Prof Chaandrasekharam of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) said. Following the Sumatra Earthquake of December 2004 and March 2005, the Barren island volcano renewed its activity in May 2005 after a gap of five years.

The renewed volcano activity was also confirmed by the Coast Guard official Commandant Basra and his assistant Pankaj Verma from Port Blair. The present eruption has preceded by nearly 10 earthquakes in this region including the two earthquakes which occurred on November 3 with magnitude 4.8 (Nicobar) and 4.5 (Andamans) on Richter scale.

 Scientists fear Goma volcano will erupt again

GOMA, Congo (AP) -- Nicolas Muhamiriza remembers sitting atop a small hill, as red rivers of molten lava crept over the city and swallowed his sprawling villa.

Muhamiriza, 47, was once the owner of a thriving bottling plant. Now he is among thousands of Congolese in the eastern city of Goma who struggle to pay rent for wooden shacks, their livelihoods destroyed nearly four years ago when lava submerged schools, hospitals and houses.

Scientists and officials fear Goma will one day be incinerated by Nyiragongo, the volcano that looms over the city. But Goma's fertile soil and its location at the tip of Lake Kivu means people still swarm to its lively markets, for trading with nearby Uganda and Rwanda.

City officials would like to move Goma's residents 30 miles west, to the towns of Sake and Kirotshe. Few, however, can afford to leave, and the government doesn't have the resources to help.

"If I had the money I would move tomorrow, but where would I go?" Caleb Kabanda said with a shrug. "Here, maybe I can find a job. Outside, it will be impossible."

Kabanda, a 31-year-old former English teacher whose school was turned into cinders by the lava, said he gets by on odd jobs now.

Some 500,000 people live in Goma, and the population will probably double in five years as more people move in despite the risks, Deputy Mayor Deo Katindi said.

"I believe that Goma will disappear from the map," he said, sitting in an office about 200 yards from an expanse of black stones and ash where one stream of lava flowed through the city.

Katindi, who lost his house, car and all his belongings, sits on a planning committee which concluded last year that the best idea was to try to lure people away from Goma by investing in Sake and Kirotshe.

He said Goma has appealed for financial help from the international community, but received nothing. As a result, no concrete steps have been taken toward moving.

Scientists say Nyiragongo is lively and a serious hazard.

Only Italy's Mount Vesuvius is more dangerous in its threat to humans than Nyiragongo, which has erupted five times since 1902, said Celestin Kasereka, a volcanologist at Goma's Volcano Observatory.

"We don't know when the volcano will erupt," Kasereka said. "But it could easily be worse than the last time."

During Nyiragongo's relatively small eruption on January 17, 2002, nearly 80 percent of Goma's economic activity was wiped out by flows of glowing lava that crept across the central markets.

Some 300,000 people fled the city, nearly half of whom lost their homes. Most soon returned, possessing nothing more than the tattered clothes on their bodies.

"We have no choice, we must forget," said Bijou Bernabe.

She talked with a reporter while sitting on the roof of her former house, which is filled with hardened lava and buried between charred carcasses of cars whose frames jut from the black volcanic rocks around her.

"If there is an eruption we will run away again," said Bernabe, 29, licking at wet dough dripping from her fingers while frying dumplings to sell. "But two days later all of us will return. The volcano is a part of our lives."

Some in Goma, where the rotten smell of sulfur regularly wafts down from the volcano's crater, believe that the next eruption may very well be their last.

"That smell is a warning," said Pierre Muhindo, 46, father of three and a longtime security guard. "Stone after stone will fall on the earth, before we all go to heaven."

Muhamiriza, the bottling plant owner, is scared, too, but says he cannot afford to leave.

He continues to bottle drinks, but on a smaller scale after losing his equipment to the lava. His "factory" is now a small room with a few machines, and he worries about being able to pay the school fees for his 8-year-old son, Gad.

Muhamiriza sat in front of his house, his feet resting on black swirls of solid lava, a constant reminder of the day he fled a fuming Nyiragongo with his wife and seven children.

"Everything that I work for could be eaten by the volcano again," he said.

Tornadoes Touch Down


DES MOINES -- Tornadoes have touched down in Woodward, Ames and Radcliffe Saturday afternoon.

A tornado warning has been issued for East Polk, Hardin and Jasper counties.

A Tornado Watch has been issued for the western two-thirds of Iowa until 9 p.m. Saturday.

The National Weather Service says scattered thunderstorms are expected to form near the Iowa-Nebraska border Saturday afternoon and move rapidly northeast at more than 50 mph. A few storms could produce wind gusts in excess of 60 mph.

There is a slight risk of tornados with these storms. The main threat will be from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

A watch means conditions are right for the development of dangerous weather. Iowans should be on the lookout for severe weather and stay tuned to KCCI-TV and KCCI.com for the latest developments.

Tornado Damage There was a tornado touchdown in southeast Woodward and severe damage to the area. There are gas leaks have been reported in both Woodward and Stratford. Stratford is being evacuated. Residents are being asked to go to the fire-resuce building. There are minor reports of injuries.



Stadium Evacuated

The Jack Trice stadium was evacuated of fans before the Iowa State University football game.

Sunday, November 13, 2005 · Last updated 9:34 a.m. PT

Iowa picks up pieces after deadly tornado

By AMY LORENTZEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WOODWARD, Iowa -- Jackie and Bill Seeman sorted through the wreckage of their home Sunday to see what was spared by a tornado that killed one person and damaged dozens of homes.

They were delighted to find a few collectibles, but their car was covered in rubble and their boat had been thrown hundreds of feet away.

"We'll probably stay here, although I'd like to go somewhere without a tornado," Jackie Seeman said as she began crying.

Twisters swept across two counties north and west of Des Moines late Saturday afternoon, ripping up farms in the towns of Stratford and Woodward. At least one person was killed in Stratford.

Bill Seeman was shopping in a nearby town when the storm arrived but Jackie Seeman, 47, said she was in bed when her house collapsed around her.

"I heard a big whoosh and a big boom and then my house just came in on me," she said.

Dallas County Sheriff Brian Gilbert said no serious injuries were reported in Woodward, but search dogs were being brought in to check the rubble as a precaution. "We are 98 percent sure we have accounted for everybody," he said.

"It's amazing. If you've seen the damage here, we had homes that were just obliterated and they had people in them at the time it came through," Gilbert said.

advertising
Roads to Woodward were being reopened Sunday to allow access to utilities, Gilbert said.

In Stratford, a town of about 746 people, residents were asked to stay away to give repair crews room to work Sunday, said Chris Segar, a communications supervisor with the Hamilton County sheriff's office.

Segar said the Red Cross set up a relief center for residents affected by the storm.

High wind also broke windows on the outskirts of Ames, where tornado sirens had already sent college football fans gathered for the Iowa State-Colorado game running for shelter.

When Sean Wolfe, of Woodward, returned from the game, his home was gone. "It's done," he said.

However, his dogs were unhurt in his garage. "They're my kids," he said Sunday as he walked them past the town fire station.

Tornadoes also caused minor damage in several other towns, said Gary Foster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines.

Tornadoes aren't common this late in the year. Iowa has had just 23 November tornadoes since 1950, according to weather service records.

The conditions were right, though, with unseasonably warm weather in the way of a fast-moving cold front, experts said. Last weekend, another tornado ripped through western Kentucky and Southwest Indiana, killing 22 people.

Tropical Depression Forms in Caribbean; May Become Storm Today

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The 27th tropical depression of the Atlantic storm season formed over the Caribbean Sea and may become a tropical storm later today, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

With strengthening forecast, the depression may become a storm today, the center said. It would then be called Tropical Storm Gamma, the 24th named storm of the June 1-Nov. 30 season, breaking a record set last month by Hurricane Beta. The system is 4 mph short of the 39-mph threshold for a tropical storm.

The depression, with maximum sustained winds of 35 miles (55 kilometers) an hour, was about 150 miles west of St. Lucia just before 5 a.m. local time, the center said in an online advisory. The system was moving toward the west-northwest at near 10 mph, and forecast to keep that motion away from the Windward Islands.

The center's 5-day ``probability cone'' forecast shows the latest system heading northwest and then west across the Caribbean, south of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica on a path toward central America, where countries including Guatemala and El Salvador were devastated by floods and landslides brought on by Hurricane Stan in early October.

More than 1,500 people were killed or missing in the wake of Hurricane Stan in Guatemala alone, with dozens of deaths in El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Honduras, where floods and landslides destroyed infrastructure and washed away homes.

The latest storm would be named Gamma: the storms are named in alphabetical order, and after reaching Wilma last month, forecasters turned to the letters of the Greek alphabet.

Winter storm watch starts at noon today; 4 to 8 inches of snow predicted

By Susanne Nadeau

Herald Staff Writer

Snow predicted for Sunday in Grand Forks fizzled out, but forecasters said it's a sure thing today.

Saturday night, snow did fall, but it fell more heavily west of Grand Forks, with anywhere from 1 to 5 inches accumulating in places.

In Leeds, N.D., 5 inches of the fluffy white stuff fell, but it didn't stay long.

According to a dispatcher at the Lake Region Law Enforcement Center, the small amount of snow that fell overnight in Ramsey County and Benson County "burned off during the day" Sunday.

In Pierce County, a dispatcher said a slight "dusting" of snow hit the area, but roads were clear Sunday night.

In Grand Forks, a little less than half an inch of moisture fell, but it just didn't stick, according to meteorologist Vince Godon of the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Grand Forks.

"Anything that hit the ground pretty much melted," he said. Godon said a combination of warmer-than-average ground and not enough moisture kept the area devoid of snow.

"When it snows hard enough, it can overcome those warm ground temperatures," he said.

Winter storm watch

There's an 80 percent chance of snow today, with a winter storm watch going into effect about noon. The watch will continue through Tuesday afternoon, Godon said.

"It covers most of eastern North Dakota and a lot of Minnesota," he added.

Godon said the expected snow is part of a system moving from Montana.

"Northeast Montana already has a blizzard warning," he said Sunday night.

Temperatures are predicted to be cooler all week, matching normal November readings, according to Godon.

Four to 8 inches

It is likely snow will accumulate today, provided the storm system moves through as predicted. Anywhere from 4 to 8 inches are predicted to fall by Tuesday afternoon.

"Really, the big change comes when you can keep some (snow) on the ground," Godon said. "Temps will change - the highs and lows - when there is snow on the ground. Once that happens, you are never going to get those record highs anymore."

So, the snow might just be here to stay, after today's storm.

"It's looking pretty good because we're already cooler," Godon said.

Powerful earthquake hits northern Japan
Tokyo, Japan   
15 November 2005 07:30
A powerful earthquake shook northern Japan early on Tuesday, triggering small tsunami waves that struck towns along the north-eastern coast about 350km away. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said the magnitude-7,1 quake hit at 6.39am local time off the east coast of Japan's main island of Honshu, and issued a tsunami warning.

About 400 households along the coast were temporarily ordered to evacuate, public broadcaster NHK reported. Local authorities also ordered fishing boats to move to open water to avoid being washed up on the shore.

Small tsunami waves measuring up to 50cm hit Ofunato city on the coast of Iwate prefecture nearly an hour after the quake, the agency said.

Smaller tsunami waves hit at least four other coastal towns in Iwate, Aomori and Miyagi provinces, but there were no immediate reports of damage.

The agency called off the tsunami warning about two hours after the quake.

Tsunami waves -- generated by earthquakes -- are often barely noticeable in the ocean, but can rise to great heights once they arrive at shore.

Tuesday's quake shook buildings across a wide area of northern and eastern Honshu, including Tokyo, and Hokkaido.

Express train services between Tokyo and north-eastern Japan were temporarily suspended for safety checks, but resumed later, NHK said.

Tokyo's metropolitan area is home to about 35-million residents, or a quarter of Japan's population.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because it sits atop four tectonic plates. A 7,2-magnitude earthquake shook north-eastern Japan in August, injuring at least 59 people, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and causing widespread power outages.

There was no destructive Pacific Ocean-wide tsunami threat following Tuesday's earthquake, based on historical quake and tsunami data, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Ewa Beach, Hawaii.

However, earthquakes as large as Tuesday's can generate a local tsunami capable of causing destruction along coastlines within 100km of the epicentre, according to the centre.

In 1993, a quake off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido triggered a tsunami measuring 30m tall on Okushiri Island, flattening homes there within minutes. More than 200 people died in the waves, and in fires caused by the quake.

A quake with an estimated magnitude of 8,3 hit Tokyo in 1923, killing 142 000 people. Tsunami waves followed that quake, but caused relatively little damage. -- Sapa-AP

Colombian volcano threatens eruption
15/11/2005 - 14:11:43

Authorities today began evacuating 1,500 residents living on the slopes of a volcano in south-west Colombia over concerns it is about to erupt.

The evacuation order was given last night and emergency officials early today began knocking on the doors of the poor subsistence farmers who live on the Galeras volcano, located near the Ecuador border 340 miles south-west of Bogotá, said Roberto Torres, a geologist at Colombia’s Geology and Mines Institute.

Tropical Depression 27 forms over the eastern Caribbean

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

MIAMI, USA: The twenty-seventh tropical depression of the 2005 hurricane season has formed over the eastern Caribbean Sea, bringing heavy rains to portions of the Lesser Antilles.

According to the 11pm EST advisory from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the depression could become Tropical Storm Gamma on Tuesday.

Interests throughout the Caribbean should monitor the progress of this system.

At 11 am EST Monday, the centre of tropical depression twenty-seven was located near latitude 14.5 north, longitude 65.3 west, or about 275 miles south of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The depression is moving toward the west-northwest near 9 mph and a turn to the west is expected during the next 24 hours.

Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph, with higher gusts.

The depression is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 5 to 8 inches over the Windward Islands and 1 to 3 inches over the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Isolated maximum amounts of 10 to 12 inches will be possible over the higher terrain areas of the Windward Islands, the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

For storm information specific to your area, including possible inland watches and warnings, please monitor products issued by your local weather office.

Central U.S. cleans up after tornadoes

NASHVILLE, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Clean-up and damage assessment began in five central U.S. states Wednesday after at least 32 tornadoes swept through the region, killing one person.

Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were all struck Tuesday afternoon. The only known fatality was in Marshall County in western Kentucky when a mobile home overturned and caught fire after a tornado strike, CNN reported.

The most extensive damage was reported around Madisonville, Ky, where Mayor Karen Cunningham said a tornado touched down around 4 p.m., leaving 20 or 30 homes "severely damaged." Dozens of other homes and buildings sustained moderate damage.

At least 22 people were injured, three critically, Cunningham said.

National Guard troops were deployed to assist police as various communities imposed nighttime curfews.

CNN said as of 8 p.m. there had been 32 confirmed reports of tornadoes connected with the storm system, stretching from Kentucky and Tennessee as far south as the Gulf Coast.

Tropical depression claims first victims in Caribbean, two fishermen buried in mudslide

By E. Glenford Prescott
ASSOCIATED PRESS

8:02 p.m. November 15, 2005

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – Mudslides killed two fishermen and destroyed seven homes as heavy rains brought by a tropical depression overflowed river banks and made roads impassable in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, emergency officials said Tuesday.

Torrents of rain also swept away two bridges outside of the Trinidad capital, Port-of-Spain, and flooding has forced 20 schools to close in the country's east.

The poorly organized depression was moving south of the Dominican Republic and was expected to strengthen into Tropical Storm Gamma on Wednesday or Thursday, said Richard Knabb, a meteorologist with the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami. It is not expected to threaten the United States.

It would be the 24th named storm of an already record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season. The previous record of 21 named storms had stood since 1933.

On the Grenadine island of Bequia on Monday, a mudslide buried two men in a party of 10 camping on a fishing trip near Rocky Bay, emergency management coordinator Howie Prince said.

The victims' friends tried to dig them out but were overtaken by a second landslide and fled. Emergency workers recovered the bodies of Randolph Matthews, 27, and Alwyn Williams, 32, early Tuesday, Prince said. The men were from the fishing village of Questelles, on the main island of St. Vincent.

Near the capital, Kingstown, landslides destroyed three houses and rivers burst their banks, making several roads impassable, Prince said.

One man was hospitalized with a head injury after his house collapsed. Another man lost all of his personal papers and most of his furniture.

The airport in St. Vincent was closed because of heavy rain and flooding in the terminal and debris on the runway. National emergency officials said 18 homes suffered major damage, and there were 33 reported incidents of landslides, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told NBC Radio St. Vincent.

In Trinidad, a river in the country's east jumped its banks, leaving several homes flooded under 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water. Landslides have also left several roads impassable.

The depression was centered about 265 miles south-southeast of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic Tuesday evening. Maximum sustained winds remained near 35 mph.

The storm has been a poorly organized system due to the unchanged wind speed, said Richard Pasch, a U.S. hurricane specialist in Miami.

It was expected to produce 3 to 6 inches of rain over the Windward Islands and northern Venezuela, possibly over Bonaire and Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba.

Tropical Depression Weakens in Caribbean


Wednesday November 16, 2005 6:31 PM

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent (AP) - A tropical depression that had threatened to become yet another named storm in an already record-breaking season dissipated Wednesday following its damaging passage over the Windward Islands.

Although the depression was no longer expected to become a tropical storm, its remnants could be absorbed by another system and pose a new threat in one to two days, said Jack Beven, a hurricane specialist with the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

By midday Wednesday, the depression's remnants were centered about 370 miles southwest of the Dominican Republic and about 305 miles southeast of Jamaica.

``It just sort of weakened and fizzled out,'' Beven said of the system, which forecasters had earlier warned could become the 24th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

In the Windward Island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, authorities evaluated the damage from a day earlier, when the storm system's heavy rain caused flooding and mudslides that killed two fishermen.

Authorities also evaluated the damage in Trinidad and Tobago, where flooding swept away two bridges outside the capital, Port-of-Spain. Several towns and villages along Trinidad's north coast were cut off because roads had been washed out.

 Earthquake rocks Taiwan, no reports of damage

 TAIPEI: An earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale rocked eastern Taiwan today, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, officials said.

The epicentre of the quake, which struck at 5.14 p.m.

(1444 Hrs IST), was about 26 km east of Taitung county on the eastern coast at a depth of 125 km, the Central Weather Bureau said in a statement.

Earthquakes occur frequently in Taiwan, which lies on a seismically active stretch of the Pacific basin.

One of Taiwan's worst quakes occurred in September 1999. It measured 7.6 on the Richter scale and killed more than 2,400 people.

Strong earthquake jolts northern Chile, Bolivia

SANTIAGO, Nov. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- A strong earthquake hit northern Chile and southern Bolivia on Thursday, causing panic among local residents and cutting utilities, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, officials in Chile and Bolivia said.

    The quake, measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale, occurred at 16:29 p.m. (1929 GMT) and triggered panic along the border in the Andes mountains, according to Chile's National Emergency Office (ONE).

    The epicenter of the quake was 40 kilometers southeast of the northern Chile resort town of San Pedro de Atacama, near the Bolivian border, at a depth of 155.4 kilometers, it said.

    In the Pacific coastal city of Antofagasta, 1,100 km north of Chile's capital, hundreds of residents rushed to the streets out of fear of a tsunami.

    Despite the subterranean shaking, there were no reports of casualties yet, according to Chilean officials.

    Officials in Bolivia also said there were no immediate reports of injury or damage there and that the earthquake zone was sparsely populated.

    The University of Chile Seismology Institute put the magnitude at 6.8 on the Richter Scale, still the second most intense quake registered in northern Chile.

    A more powerful quake in June left 11 Chileans dead and destroyed hundreds of houses in the Andes mountains along the border with Bolivia. Enditem

Section of Plymouth Mass. hit by minor earthquake

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — A small-scale earthquake shook a section of Plymouth on Thursday.

Officials with the Weston Observatory, which monitors earthquake activity, say the 2.5 registered tremor was centered two miles south of the center of town.

The quake was felt just after 12:30 p.m., according to the observatory's Web site.

A quake of that magnitude is the smallest generally felt by people and not severe enough to cause damage.

"We deal with about half a dozen earthquakes a year felt somewhere in the New England region," said the observatory's director, John Ebel.

In Massachusetts, Ebel said, a majority of the seismic activity happens in the eastern portion of the state, usually concentrated north and northeast of Boston. The third area of activity is from Plymouth to the South Coast.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, according to the Plymouth police and officials at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

Peter Judge, a spokesman for MEMA, said the quake caused no problems at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in the town.

A local cultural institution, Pilgrim Hall Museum which houses many artifacts from the 17th-century, was also safe.

"Pilgrim Hall has not fallen," said Peggy M. Baker, the museum's director.

Tropical Storm Gamma Forms Near Honduras

Tropical Storm Gamma Forms Off Central America, May Threaten Florida by Start of Next Week

MIAMI Nov 18, 2005 — Tropical Storm Gamma the 24th storm of the busiest hurricane season on record formed Friday off the coast of Central America, and forecasters said it could threaten Florida by the beginning of next week, perhaps as a hurricane.

Tropical storm warnings were issued for the coast of Belize and the Bay Islands of Honduras. Mexico issued a tropical storm watch for the eastern Yucatan Peninsula, which was hit hard in October by Hurricane Wilma. Six to 15 inches of rain were possible.

The long-term track from the National Hurricane Center indicated that Gamma may take a path similar to Wilma's and head northeast toward the Florida Peninsula. Wilma sliced across the southern portion of the state Oct. 24, causing widespread power outages and more than 20 deaths.

At 10 p.m. EST, Gamma's maximum sustained winds were near 45 mph and it was located about 45 miles north-northwest of Limon, Honduras, and about 175 miles east-southeast of Belize City, Belize, moving northwest at near 5 mph.

The storm causing flooding and landslides in Honduras that killed at least two people and prompted the government to evacuate hundreds from coastal towns. President Ricardo Maduro said soldiers were bringing in food, water, medicine and blankets.

In Belize, a small plane belonging to the exclusive Blancaneaux Lodge resort, owned by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, disappeared Friday shortly after taking off with two passengers, whose names were not released. A search was also under way for five fisherman whose boat capsized.

Gamma extended the Atlantic's record-breaking storm season. The previous record of 21 named storms had stood since 1933, and for the first time, officials had to turn to the Greek alphabet for names.

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Florida Fears Tropical Storm
# The south of the state, still recovering from Hurricane Wilma, could be vulnerable to Gamma, forming in the western Caribbean.

By Ken Kaye, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

MIAMI — This can't be happening again. Can it?

Just as South Florida comes up for air, it could be under attack again in a scenario extremely similar to that of Hurricane Wilma.

 Forming in the western Caribbean on Friday, Tropical Storm Gamma was projected to hit southwest Florida by Monday afternoon. It could bring winds as high as 65 mph, heavy rains and a high potential for tornadoes — almost exactly one month after Hurricane Wilma.

The good news, at this point: Gamma was not expected to grow into a hurricane. In addition, a cold front could weaken it or guide it south of the state, said meteorologist Jamie Rhome with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The bad news: Even if it arrives as a weak, sloppy system, it could be devastating to the thousands of homes in the region with blue tarps and roof damage after Wilma, said Tony Carper, Broward County's director of emergency management.

"We have a lot of homes that are in a weakened condition," he said. "There's a lot of patchwork roofs all over the place, and it could severely impact those. And that's not to mention mobile homes."

Rhome says residents shouldn't panic.

"While we want people to pay really close attention to this system, we don't want mass hysteria — given South Florida's sensitivity to tropical systems," he said.

South Florida already has been struck twice this year, first by Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 25, then by Wilma on Oct. 24.

Late Friday, Gamma, the 24th named storm of what already was the most active hurricane season on record, was southeast of Belize City, wobbling northwest at 5 mph. It had maximum winds of about 45 mph, barely tropical storm strength.

It was expected to graze Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula by Sunday and get pushed toward Florida by a cold front.

"What you have here is a Midwest cold front versus a tropical system, clashing," Rhome said, adding that the course of the storm would be determined by "whichever one is stronger."

If the forecast track holds, Gamma could dump widespread rains of three to five inches over South Florida, starting as early as Sunday. Some areas could get more than six inches, said meteorologist Dan Gregoria of the National Weather Service in Miami.

Gamma's track had much uncertainty because "the models are all over the place," said Paul Milelli, Palm Beach County director of public safety.

His greatest concern: The storm's rapid forward speed combined with the cold front means that "the potential for tornadoes is very great." Tornadoes can cause severe damage beyond the winds and rain in a tropical system.

Firefighters Battle 4,000-Acre Calif. Fire

By JEFF WILSON
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 19, 2005; 10:35 AM

VENTURA, Calif. -- Calming winds have helped firefighters battle a 4,000-acre wildfire that prompted a voluntary evacuation of about 200 ridge-top homes.

Fierce Santa Ana winds fanned the late-season blaze that started early Friday in School Canyon _ a hilly, rocky area between Ventura and Ojai, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

The blaze was 15 percent contained late Friday and officials hoped to make significant progress through the night as crews dug around the fire's borders and the winds died down, said Inspector Ron Haralson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

"We still have a few hot spots, but the fire is mostly laying down," he said.

The origin point and cause of the fire were under investigation.

At midmorning, a wall of flames as high as 30 feet snaked along hillsides, and by early afternoon a huge plume of whiskey-brown smoke carried ash to the nearby Pacific Ocean.

In just a few hours, the wind-driven fire tripled in size. But the fire calmed down in the early evening as a cooler onshore breeze helped decrease winds and temperatures.

The National Weather Service canceled a wind advisory, but forecasters cautioned winds would continue in the area through early Sunday at 15 to 25 mph with isolated gusts near 35 mph.

The fire roared down School Canyon heading to the northern edge of Ventura. At one point, it burned to the backyards of several large homes.

"We have a lot of crews up there and are making every effort to protect those structures," said Joe Luna, a spokesman with the Ventura County Fire Department. "But we are confident that the winds _ when they calm down _ will allow us to put this out."

Many of the stucco homes in the area have tile roofs, and fire officials said requirements that brush be cleared around houses had helped.

Still, firefighting equipment was headed to Ventura from throughout the state. Bulldozers and hotshot crews worked their way up Highway 101 from Los Angeles. Water-dropping helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft also were called in to assist firefighters on the ground.

Late Friday, FEMA authorized the use of federal funds to help the state battle the fire.

 Strong quake hits Indonesia
From correspondents in Washington DC
November 20, 2005

A MAGNITUDE 6.5 earthquake has hit Simeulue, Indonesia, the US Geological Survey says.

"A strong earthquake occurred at 1410 GMT (1:10 AEDT) on Saturday, November 19," the USGS said on its website.

"The magnitude 6.5 event has been located in Simeulue, Indonesia," (1440km) north-west of Jakarta.

Simeulue is near the Aceh region devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami last year.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii said it had no information on the quake because it has no monitors outside the Pacific region.

The centre said, however, that earthquakes of such a size had the potential to create a tsunami.

 Quake jolts southeastern Iran

A mild earthquake measuring 4 on the Richter scale hit the provincial capital of Yassouj in southeastern Kohgilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in the wee hours of Saturday.

According to the seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University, the quake occurred at 01:11 hours local time (21:41 GMT Friday).

The tremor was felt in an area measuring 51.53 degrees in longitude and 30.58 degrees in latitude, the report added.

There are no reports of any casualty or damage to property.

Quakes of varying magnitudes often occur in Iran, which is situated on some of the world's most active seismic faultlines.

Rockfall plumes draw attention to simmering volcano

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Rockfall at Mount St. Helens kicked up a dust plume Tuesday that rose above the rim of the volcano's crater, drawing attention in the region.

"It's a nice sunny day and we're having the first couple of rockfalls that we've had in a while that are putting little dust plumes over the crater rim," said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Seth Moran at the agency's Cascade Volcano Observatory here, about 50 miles south of the mountain that erupted to deadly effect in May 1980.

Seismic activity has continued at low levels, Moran said.

The white plume floating above the peak was raising concerns locally.

"When rockfalls go down they kick up a dust plume and people can see it - especially from Portland," Moran said.

Overcast weather had hidden the mountain for weeks.

"Any time you go through a pause" during which the mountain is not visible, people notice activity more when the peak comes back into view, Moran said.

Mount St. Helens rumbled back to life in September 2004 after years of quiet. In October a flow of molten rock reached the surface, marking a renewal of domebuilding activity that had stoppped in 1986.

The 1980 eruption killed 57 people, flattens forests and sent a river of hot mud and ash down the Toutle River Valley.

USGS and the University of Washington continue to monitor the mountain.

Scientists say a more explosive eruption, possibly dropping ash within a 10-mile radius of the crater, is possible at any time.

5.2 earthquake recorded in Unimak Island region

 According to the Associated Press, residents in the Felt Pass area of Unimak Island got a jolt this morning before their morning coffee.

The Alaska Earthquake Information center says a magnitude 5.2 earthquake was recorded just after six o'clock this morning. The quake was centered about 72 miles southwest of False Pass, at a depth of about five miles.

Officials say the earthquake was felt in False Pass. That's a community of about 60 people located on the eastern shore of Unimak Island, about 650 miles southwest of Anchorage.

 Quake jolts southwest of Iran
Tehran, Nov 23, IRNA

Iran-Quake
A tremor measuring 3.7 on the open-ended Richter scale hit the city of Chelgerd of Chaharmahal Bakhtiari Wednesday afternoon.

According to the Shahr-e Kord Seismological Center, affiliated to Geophysics Institute of Tehran University, the quake occurred at 12:57 hours local time (09:27 GMT).

The tremor was centered in an area located 49.67 degrees longitude and 32.59 degrees latitude, the report added.

There are no reports of any casualty or damages.

Quakes of varying magnitudes often occur in Iran, which is situated on some of the world's most active seismic fault lines.

Massive quake hits eastern China

Saturday 26 November 2005, 10:06 Makka Time, 7:06 GMT

At least 12 people have died and more than 400 were injured when an earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale struck east China's Jiangxi province.

Xinhua news agency, which cited the Ministry of Civil Affairs, gave the official toll as of 11.55am (0355 GMT), three hours after the quake on Saturday morning.

The data seemed to tally with numbers provided by local officials talking to AFP by telephone.

"Six people were killed in Jiujiang county," a local official earlier said. "Another 247 were injured, and 8,072 buildings were toppled."

An official in nearby Ruichang city said five people had been killed there, while 39 were injured.

One fatality was recorded near the city of Wuxue, in neighbouring Hubei province, an official there said.

"The earthquake this morning was quite scary," said a shopkeeper in Ruichang reached by telephone who would only give her surname as Zhou.

Milder trembling that she assumed was an aftershock was felt again around 1pm (0500 GMT), Zhou said.

Many people in Ruichang, which has a population of about 420,000 people, were staying outside for fear of more aftershocks, Zhou added.

Tents were set up outside the local hospital, she said.


Temperatures in the region were relatively mild, hovering around 10 degrees Celsius, weather reports said.

The quake measured 5.7 on the Richter scale and struck at 8.49am (0049 GMT), the China National Seismic Observation Network said, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Earthquake kills at least seven in Iran
Sun Nov 27, 2005 2:09 PM GMT

By Alireza Ronaghi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - At least seven people were killed and many more injured when an earthquake razed mud-brick villages on the Gulf island of Qeshm off Iran's south coast on Sunday, officials and state media said.

Iran's official news agency IRNA said the quake, with a magnitude of 5.9, shook southern Iran for about 10 to 15 seconds at 1:53 P.M. (10:23 a.m. British time) and the island's main hospital was full of injured people.

"The earthquake was really strong and people poured into the streets in panic. My husband immediately rushed off to one of the stricken villages," said Sara Sadeqi, 22, a housewife in Qeshm City, the island's capital.

Mohsen Kazemi from Iran's Red Crescent relief agency told Reuters all of the seven came from the villages of Tonban, Gavarzin, Khaledin and Gourian.

Tahereh Irankhah, a volunteer with the Red Crescent in Qeshm, said the situation at the hospital was desperate.

"The number of people injured is very high, and people are in the corridors. We need tents and blankets," she said.

State media said there were three strong aftershocks.

PALM FORESTS

Qeshm is the biggest island in the Gulf and is a free-trade zone in southern Hormuzgan province with a population of about 120,000.

It is famed for its palm forests and its beaches are much loved by tourists and nesting sea turtles.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was of 6.1 magnitude, and placed it about 58 km (36 miles) southwest of the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.

The tremor was the first fatal quake in Iran since February when more than 600 people died in a magnitude 6.4 tremor, centred on the town of Zarand about 700 km (440 miles) southeast of Tehran.

That quake revived painful memories of the devastating 6.8-magnitude quake in 2003 that killed 31,000 people in the desert citadel city of Bam, 1,000 km (600 miles) southeast of Tehran.

Sunday's tremor was also in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates, prompting many people to evacuate buildings.

Witnesses in high-rise buildings said they felt the ground shake for about a minute. Many residents left their buildings and waited on the streets.

Earthquake shakes Turkey's Malatya province


   ANKARA, Nov 26 (Xinhuanet) -- An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 on the Richter scale shook Turkey's central province of Malatya on Saturday.

   No casualty was reported.

   Semi-official Anatolia News Agency quoted officials of an observatory center as saying that the quake occurred at 17:56 p.m.(1556 GMT) and that the epicenter of the quake was at the Poturge town of Malatya.

   Malatya Governor Osman Derya Kadioglu was quoted as saying that there were no reports of any casualties or damage after the quake which was felt in Malatya and surrounding provinces.  


   Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey. A strong quake hit western Turkey in 1999, leaving more than 18,000 people dead.

Comoros Volcano Spews Ash Over Capital
MORONI - A volcano spewed ash in its second eruption this year in the Indian Ocean Comoros islands, sending hundreds of villagers fleeing in fear the mountain could unleash a river of lava, witnesses said.

Mount Karthala, a 2,361-metre (7,746-feet) volcano, sent clouds of ash and sparks flying late on Thursday, leaving the capital Moroni and other villages on the main island of Grande Comore covered in grey.

Witnesses said the ground continued to rumble on Friday.

A number of villagers who live close to Karthala fled on foot and by car, while authorities put disaster plans into place and urged the public to remain calm.

Karthala erupted in April, forcing thousands to flee in fear of poisonous gas and a possible magma flow. It was the first eruption in more than a decade on the archipelago nation, 300 km (190 miles) off the coast of east Africa.

"For the last 10 days, the volcano has been showing worrying signs, but in the last week the activity has risen. This phenomenon of rising activity is not predictable," said Hamidou Soule, a vulcanologist with the National Centre for Documentation and Scientific Research.

The centimetre-thick layer of ash made breathing difficult for thousands who had no means of protection beyond wrapping scarves around their faces.

The islands have largely escaped major destruction from the volcano, but has had several close calls. In 1991, the last eruption before April, Karthala threw boulders for several kilometres but caused no injuries.

A torrent of molten rock coursed down a fissure on the side of the mountain in April 1977, destroying 300 homes in the village of Singani, but again, residents escaped to safety.

In 1903, noxious fumes seeped from cracks and suffocated 17 people.

Snowstorm Knocks Out Power Across Plains

Snowstorm Slams Across the Plains Knocking Out Power for Thousands and Closing Roads

BISMARCK, N.D. Nov 29, 2005 — Broad areas of the Dakotas remained shut down Tuesday by the Plains' first blizzard of the season, with highways closed by blowing, drifting snow and thousands of people without electricity as temperatures hit the low teens.

Five deaths had been blamed on slippery roads in Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. A sixth person was killed by a tornado spun off by the huge storm system in Arkansas.

Travelers trying to get home after Thanksgiving had been stranded in hotels, truck stops and churches across the Plains.

The storm was heading toward the Great Lakes on Tuesday after dumping snow as far south as the Texas Panhandle. As much as 20 inches of snow fell at Kennebec, S.D., while Chamberlain, S.D., was choked by drifts up to 8 feet high.

The snow, ice up to 5 inches thick and wind gusting to 70 mph had snapped power lines.

Utility officials estimated that 50,000 customers were blacked out across eastern South Dakota on Tuesday, and many communities in North Dakota also had no electricity. The morning's low at Grand Forks, N.D., was 14 degrees.

Power companies in North Dakota said it could take days to restore power because the storm tore down major transmission lines.

Firefighters in Fairmount, N.D., offered the town's roughly 400 residents rides to the community center, which has a backup generator, but the blackout also shut down the town's pumps.

"We still have water but it's getting pretty low here," Fairmount Fire Chief Dave Jacobson said.

Utility crews were out early Tuesday working to restore electricity in northwestern Minnesota.

"Bless 'em, they're just the cavalry," said Chris Kling, a spokeswoman for Otter Tail Power Co.

At Hankinson, N.D., people took refuge at the Dakota Magic Casino, which also has its own generator, said customer service representative Cheri Braun. "Our hotel can't hold any more," she said.

Interstate 94 remained shut Tuesday by poor visibility and icy pavement for about 100 miles across eastern North Dakota from Fargo to Jamestown, and I-29 was barricaded from Fargo to Watertown, S.D., a stretch of about 140 miles. About 200 miles of east-west I-90 remained closed across central South Dakota from Mitchell to Kadoka.

Farther south, however, Colorado and Kansas had reopened more than 400 miles of eastbound I-70 between Denver and Salina, Kan., after two days. To the east, Minnesota had reopened I-94 east of the North Dakota line.

Almost 1,000 people spent Sunday night in shelters along I-70 in Kansas, including more than 200 on cots and exercise mats at Fort Hays State University in Hays, officials said.

Among those at Fort Hays State were Mike and Ilona Dorsey, returning to Denver after visiting relatives in Topeka.

"We stopped at every town from Colby to here and couldn't get a hotel," Dorsey told The Hays Daily News. "Everything was filled."

Numerous other highways also remained closed in the Dakotas, as well as eastern Colorado and northwest Kansas.

The same storm whipped up tornadoes that destroyed at least eight homes in Arkansas on Sunday and damaged more than 30 homes at Fort Riley, Kan.

The storm was retaining most of its clout as it headed toward the Great Lakes, said National Weather Service meteorologist Fred Stasser of Goodland, Kan.

"I would imagine they're going to get some of the same sort of deal," he said.

 Tropical storm batters Canaries
A tropical storm has lashed the Canary Islands, killing at least seven people and leaving a trail of destruction.

Many people are still without electricity, while some roads have been blocked by fallen trees and landslides.

At least six African migrants drowned when waves engulfed their makeshift boat. A man also died after being blown off his roof on Fuerteventura.

Winds gusted at up to 200 km/h (124 miles per hour) in parts of Tenerife, disrupting public services.

Tropical Storm Epsilon Forms in Atlantic


Tuesday November 29, 2005 3:31 PM

MIAMI (AP) - Tropical Storm Epsilon formed Tuesday in the central Atlantic, where it was a threat only to shipping, forecasters said.

The 26th named storm of the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record was expected to be absorbed by other weather systems and shouldn't affect land, said Jennifer Pralgo, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

At 10 a.m. EST, Epsilon had top sustained wind of about 45 mph. It was centered about 845 miles east of Bermuda and about 1,395 miles west of the Azores Islands. It was moving west near 8 mph and was expected to continue that movement for at least 24 hours.

The six-month Atlantic hurricane season ends Wednesday, but forecasters warn that tropical storms and hurricanes can develop in December.

Experts: Next Hurricane Season Likely to be as Active
By VOA News
30 November 2005

The busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record ends Wednesday, but forecasters say next year's season could be just as active.

Since the season began June 1, a record 26 storms have achieved wind speeds high enough to be classified as tropical storms.  The latest, tropical storm Epsilon, formed in the Atlantic Tuesday.  Thirteen of those 26 reached hurricane force.

Three hurricanes: Katrina, Rita and Wilma -- temporarily became Category Five storms, featuring winds of at least 249 kilometers per hour.  All three weakened before making landfall.

Experts say Katrina was responsible for the deaths of some 1,300 people as well as tens of billions of dollars' worth of property damage.  It wiped out some Gulf Coast towns and left at least 80 percent of New Orleans under water.

Some experts say this year's severe storm activity is part of an active cycle that will last more than a decade.  Others contend it is the result of global warming.

Epsilon becomes 14th hurricane of Atlantic season
Fri Dec 2, 2005 9:58 AM ET

MIAMI (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Epsilon strengthened into the 14th hurricane of a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season on Friday, but was not expected to retain that intensity for long, nor to threaten land, U.S. forecasters said.

Hurricane Epsilon's maximum sustained winds reached 75 mph (120 kph) by 10 a.m. EST, just 1 mph over the threshold at which tropical storms are categorized as hurricanes, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The storm was 1,220 miles west of Portugal's Azores islands and accelerating toward the northeast, away from the wealthy mid-Atlantic British territory of Bermuda, at 14 mph (22 kph).

While the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on Wednesday, the Miami-based hurricane center said it was not unprecedented to see a hurricane in December in that part of the Atlantic, where the waters tend to be too cool for storms to intensify greatly.

Epsilon appeared to be traveling along a narrow ridge of warm water and was expected to start weakening steadily within 12 to 18 hours after hitting much cooler waters.

Like its four predecessors, Epsilon was named for a letter in the Greek alphabet after the official list of storm names for 2005 was exhausted.

This season has gone into the record books for the most storms and the most hurricanes. The highest number of hurricanes previously on record was 12 in 1969 and the highest number of named storms was 21 in 1933.

It also had the most Category 5 storms -- the top rank on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity -- including Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and killed more than 1,200 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Strong earthquake shakes northern Japan
Tokyo, Japan

A large earthquake measuring 6,4 on the Richter scale hit northern Japan late on Friday.

The northern region of Tohoku felt "a strong jolt" from the quake, which happened at 10.13pm local time, according to the meteorological agency.

The quake was located off the Pacific coast of northern Miyagi prefecture, roughly 350km north-east of Tokyo.

The quake happened 40km underground, the agency said, adding that there was no tsunami warning.

A spokesperson for the Miyagi police said there were no reports of damage or casualties.

The areas around Miyagi frequently experience large earthquakes, and experts fear a big one could hit the region in the near future.

The area was hit by a 7,2-magnitude quake in August, which shut down traffic but caused little other damage.

Friday's quake was also felt strongly in the centre of Tokyo, shaking high-rise buildings designed to withstand powerful tremors.

The quake followed a moderate earthquake measuring 4,3 on the Richter scale that hit central Japan.

The first tremor struck at 9.54pm about 50km underground in Saitama prefecture, just north of Tokyo, the agency said.