Prophecy, Drought, Earthquakes, Famine, Pestilence, War, and Strange Weather.

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Hurricane Watch Downgraded for Tropical Storm Chris (Update1)

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A hurricane watch in the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas was downgraded to a tropical storm watch, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said, citing the Bahamian government.

Tropical Storm Chris, which is approaching the area, is weakening and is ``not likely'' to turn into a hurricane, Dr. Lexion Avila, a hurricane forecaster at the center, said by telephone.

Chris, centered 135 miles (217 kilometers) north of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and moving west at 13 miles per hour, was ``weakening in a hurry,'' the center said in an online advisory. The storm's maximum sustained winds have decreased to 45 miles per hour, with higher gusts. Maximum sustained winds reached 65 mph yesterday.

Forecasters had predicted yesterday that Chris may turn into the first Atlantic hurricane of the year, projecting that it would move into the Gulf of Mexico early next week. They said there was no immediate threat that would prompt the shutdown of offshore oil and gas operations. The Gulf's offshore platforms account for about a quarter of U.S. production.

Chris will continue west, maintaining current wind speeds, over the next 24 hours, the hurricane center said. A tropical storm watch remains in force for the coast of the Dominican Republic, between the northern border with Haiti and Cabo Engano. That means tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours.

Storm Path

A tropical storm warning, which means such conditions are expected within 24 hours, was discontinued for Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.

The storm was expected to move on a path south of those taken last year by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which struck the central Gulf region. Its probable path, based on computer models, would see it leaving Puerto Rico today and passing north of the Dominican Republic and Haiti tomorrow, forecasters said. It is expected to be over Cuba by early Aug. 6, before heading into the Gulf early next week.

Tropical storm-force winds extend 80 miles from Chris's center, the hurricane center said. The storm is expected to dump 2-4 inches (5-10 centimeters) of rain on the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic. Puerto Rico will get 3 to 5 inches of rain with up to 10 inches on high ground, the center said.

Record Year

The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. Last year's season was the most active on record, with 15 hurricanes. They included Katrina, the costliest U.S. natural disaster, which devastated the north-central Gulf Coast in August.

Tropical weather systems are named when they reach storm strength, with sustained winds of 39 to 73 mph, and they become hurricanes when winds reach 74 mph.

The first named storm in the Atlantic basin this year was Alberto, which made landfall June 13 in Florida with winds of 50 mph. It had weakened from near hurricane-force winds of 70 mph and later dumped as much as five inches of rain on parts of Georgia and South Carolina.

On July 20 and 21, Tropical Storm Beryl passed over Nantucket, Massachusetts, with sustained winds of 45 mph.

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Typhoon grounds 200 Hong Kong flights

 Hong Kong's airport was working Friday to clear a chaotic backlog of thousands of passengers after fierce gusts from Typhoon Prapiroon forced airlines to ground all their flights.

The territory's airport authority said 152 Friday flights had been delayed and 38 cancelled one day after the unexpectedly ferocious storm forced airlines to ground all planes for the day.

Thousands of people were waiting at Chek Lap Kok for delayed flights Friday afternoon, some of them for more than 24 hours, in the worst backlogs seen at the airport since it opened in 1998.

A spokesman for the authority described the airport as "extremely congested" and said passengers should phone their airlines to check on departure details before setting off for the airport.

On Thursday, more than 500 flights were affected by the typhoon, which brought severe crosswinds and forced Cathay Pacific, Dragonair and China Airlines to cancel all flights.

Typhoon Prapiroon, which thundered within 300 kilometres of Hong Kong before making landfall in southern China, had a far greater effect on the former British colony than expected.

It brought gusts of up to 200 kilometres per hour to Hong Kong and sea swells of up to 20 metres, and brought two dramatic rescues of Chinese seamen whose vessels ran into trouble Thursday.

Some legislators in Hong Kong Friday criticized the territory's Observatory for failing to predict the ferocity of the storm and to put out a higher typhoon alert signal.

Democratic Party leader Lee Wing-tat said the warning system should be overhauled, saying people were put at risk by the failure to hoist a higher signal which he described as "very bad professional judgment."

If a higher signal had been issued, people would have stayed away from work and flights might have been cancelled with more notice, avoiding the backlogs of up to 10,000 passengers that built up at the peak of the storm Thursday evening.

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Mexico drains large dam at risk of overflowing on U.S. border

Mexican officials are draining water from behind a large earthen dam in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
Officials say the reservoir had reached full capacity after four days of heavy rains. But they say it's not now at risk of overflowing.

Authorities warned more than four-thousand families living near the dam to move as a precaution. They're also watching 69 smaller dams throughout Juarez as more rain remains in the forecast.

Federal officials declared Juarez a disaster area due to the extensive flooding and damage to homes, roadways and infrastructure caused by the rains. Authorities estimated the losses at about 45-and-a-half (M) million dollars.

[Shammu]

Hot summer nights getting hotter

WASHINGTON (AP)—America in recent years has been sweltering through three times more than its normal share of extra-hot summer nights, government weather records show. And that is a particularly dangerous trend.

During heat waves, like the one that now has a grip on much of the East, one of the major causes of heat deaths is the lack of night cooling that would normally allow a stressed body to recover, scientists say.

Some scientists say the trend is a sign of manmade global warming.

A top federal research meteorologist said he "almost fell out of my chair'' when he looked over U.S. night minimum temperature records over the past 96 years and saw the skyrocketing trend of hot summer nights.

From 2001 to 2005, on average nearly 30 percent of the nation had "much above normal'' average summertime minimum temperatures, according to the National Climatic Data in Asheville, N.C.

By definition, "much above normal'' means low temperatures that are in the highest 10 percent on record. On any given year about 10 percent of the country should have "much above normal'' summer-night lows.

Yet in both 2005 and 2003, 36 percent of the nation had much above normal summer minimums. In 2002 it was 37 percent. While the highest-ever figure was in the middle of America's brutal Dust Bowl, when 41 percent of the nation had much above normal summer-night temperatures, the rolling five-year average of 2001-05 is a record - by far.

Figures from this year's sweltering summer have not been tabulated yet, but they are expected to be just as high as recent years.

And it is not just the last five years. Each of the past eight years has been far above the normal 10 percent. During the past decade, 23 percent of the nation has had hot summer nights. During the past 15 years, that average has been 20 percent. By comparison, from 1964 to 1968 only 2 percent of the country on average had abnormally hot nights.

"This is unbelievable,'' said National Climatic Data Center research meteorologist Richard Heim. "Something strange has happened in the last 10 to 15 years on the minimums.''

But it is not surprising because climate models, used to forecast global warming, have been predicting this trend for more than 20 years, said Jerry Mahlman, a climate scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research and a top federal climate modeler.

It is a telltale sign of global warming, Mahlman said: "The smoking gun is still smoking; it's not shooting people yet.''

One reason global warming is suspected in summer-night temperatures is that daytime air pollution slightly counteracts warming but is not as prevalent at night, said Bill Chameides, a climate scientist for the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

The records for summer-night low temperatures are part of a U.S. Climate Extremes Index developed by the National Climatic Data Center. Last year, in large part because of record hurricane activity, saw the most extreme weather in the United States since 1910.

Hot summer nights getting hotter

[Shammu]

Earth changed after Sumatra quake

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've determined Earth's gravity changed as a result of the giant 2004 Sumatran earthquake.

The discovery marked the first time scientists have used satellite data to detect changes in the Earth's surface caused by a massive earthquake.

The discovery signifies a new use for data from NASA satellites and offers a possible new approach to understanding how earthquakes work.

The 9.1-magnitude December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in the Indian Ocean produced a tsunami that killed approximately 230,000 people, while displacing more than 1 million others.

The event followed the slipping of two continental plates under the seafloor that raised ocean bed in the region by several feet for thousands of square miles.

"The earthquake changed the gravity in that part of the world in two ways that we were able to detect," said Shin-Chan Han, a research scientist at Ohio State University. He and colleagues determined the quake triggered the massive uplift of the seafloor, changing the geometry of the region and altering previous global positioning satellite measurements of the area. And the density of the rock beneath the seafloor shifted, producing detectable gravity changes.

Earth changed after Sumatra quake

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Pat Robertson converts – to 'global warming'
Broadcaster says U.S. heatwave convinced him burning fossil fuels needs to be addressed

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has jumped into the growing chasm between evangelicals divided over the issue of global warming.

On his "700 Club" broadcast yesterday, Robertson told viewers that while he had not been a believer in global warming in the past, the record-breaking heatwave blanketing the U.S. was "making a convert out of me."

"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," he said. "It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

Robertson joins the chorus of evangelical leaders who have raised the issues of global warming and the environment to a place once reserved for abortion and school prayer by Christian activists.

As WorldNetDaily reported, 85 Christian leaders signed an Evangelical Climate Initiative, unveiled Feb. 8, that called for government action to deal with global warming.

Signers of the Evangelical Climate Initiative included, among others, Rick Warren, pastor and author of "The Purpose Driven Life," Rich Stearns, president of World Vision, Commissioner Todd Bassett, national commander of The Salvation Army, and David Neff, executive editor of Christianity Today.

"The purpose of ECI is a very practical one," said Jim Jewell, the group's spokesman. "It is an attempt to rally evangelicals around the very real need to solve global warming and a call on Congress to pass legislation accomplishing this."

But rather than rally evangelicals to the cause of global warming, ECI galvanized Christian critics who formed their own group – the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance – and released a statement last week endorsed by 100 evangelical theologians, pastors, climatologists and economists criticizing ECI's claims.

The "idea of scientific consensus on [human-induced] global warming is an illusion," the ISA statement reads.

"The consensus is usually mischaracterized," said Calvin Beisner, a professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and a coauthor of the ISA statement. "[The] consensus is not that catastrophic, human-induced global warming is going on. I don't find it in the scientific literature."

An earlier letter, signed by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship and other leading conservative evangelicals, successfully encouraged the National Association of Evangelicals to not take an official position on global warming.

"Evangelicals are to be first and foremost messengers of the good news of the gospel to a lost and dying world," the letter read in part. "We are to promote those things that please God and oppose those things in the world that clearly violate His righteous standard of conduct. We respectfully ask that the NAE carefully consider all policy issues in which it might engage in the light of promoting unity among the Christian community and glory to God."

Robertson, who warned in October that the NAE was teaming up with "far left environmentalists" to promote the idea that global warming was caused by humans and needed to be mitigated, has now indicated he's sympathetic to the claims of the green evangelicals.

"If we are contributing to the destruction of this planet, we need to do something about it," he told viewers.

[Soldier4Christ]

Researchers revise 2006 hurricane forecast
Possibility of repeat of Katrina disaster downgraded to ‘very small’

Hurricane researchers at Colorado State University said Thursday that this year’s hurricane season won’t be as bad earlier predicted and said a monster storm like Katrina is unlikely.

“The probability of another Katrina-like event is very small,” said Phillip Klotzbach, lead forecaster for the hurricane research team.

The researchers reduced the number of likely hurricanes to seven from nine and intense hurricanes to three from five.

There is, however, a considerably higher-than-average probability of at least one intense hurricane making landfall in the United States this year, 73 percent. The average is 52 percent.

Researcher William Gray said Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures are not quite as warm and surface pressure is not quite as low, both factors in the decision to revise the forecast.

“Overall, we think the 2006 Atlantic basin tropical storm season will be somewhat active,” Klotzbach said. “This year it looks like the East Coast is more likely to be targeted by Atlantic basin hurricanes than the Gulf Coast, although the possibility exists that any point along the U.S. coast could be affected.”

Gray and his team say hurricane activity will continue to be above average for another 15 to 20 years.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami in May predicted 16 named storms in the Atlantic, six of them major hurricanes. As of Thursday, there have been three named storms.

Thirteen major hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic basin the past two years, seven of them striking the U.S. coast with devastating damage resulting from four of them in 2005: Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Klotzbach and Gray call for a total of 15 named storms to form in the Atlantic basin this year, down by two from their prediction May 31. On average, there are 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes per year.

For Florida and the East Coast, the probability of a storm landfall is 64 percent, compared with a long-term average of 31 percent.

From the Florida Panhandle west to Brownsville, Texas, the probability is 26 percent, compared with a long-term average of 30 percent.

[Soldier4Christ]

Tropical storm Bopha

Tropical storm Bopha is forecast to strike Japan at about 00:00 GMT on 8 August. Data supplied by the US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point of landfall will be near 24.0 N, 125.5 E. Bopha is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 111 km/h (69 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.

The information above is provided for guidance only and should not be used to make life or death decisions or decisions relating to property. Anyone in the region who is concerned for their personal safety or property should contact their official national weather agency or warning centre for advice.

This alert is provided by Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) which is sponsored by Benfield, Royal & SunAlliance, Crawford & Company and University College London (UCL). TSR acknowledges the support of the UK Met Office.

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57 die in tropical storm


The death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon jumped to 57, with 16 more people missing, after the storm knocked down houses and set off landslides and flash floods in China, news reports said today.

Hardest hit was Guangdong province, where 38 people have been killed since Prapiroon roared ashore on Thursday. In neighbouring Guangxi region to the west, 19 people were killed, including six migrant farm workers whose shelter was swept away by a flash flood in the city of Laibin, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Elsewhere, people were buried by landslides, struck by lightning and crushed by collapsed walls. One woman died after being hit by a billboard knocked down by high winds.

In Guangdong, a 25-year-old policeman assisting with rescue work was killed when a mudslide buried him in the city of Sihui, the Guangzhou Daily newspaper said.

The deaths came despite a massive evacuation ahead of the storm that moved more than 660,000 people out of threatened areas. It said 46,000 houses were destroyed and damage was estimated at 2.4 billion yuan (£157 million).

Prapiroon killed six people earlier as it passed across the Philippines. One person in Hong Kong was injured on Wednesday when high winds toppled empty cargo containers at a shipping terminal.

The typhoon season started early in China this year, where storms have already killed more than 1,460 people, mainly in the densely populated southeast.

Prapiroon, named after the Thai rain god, is the region’s eighth major storm of the season.

Typhoon Kaemi killed at least 35 people in China last week and left dozens missing in flooding and landslides.

[Soldier4Christ]

Guam braces for Tropical Storm Saomai

Military bases on Guam entered Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness-1 and the National Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning for the Marianas Islands on Saturday in advance of Tropical Storm Saomai as it rumbled rapidly northwest toward Guam.

The eighth storm of the northwest Pacific’s tropical cyclone season was forecast to track just north of Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base on Sunday, weather officials said Saturday.

Forecasts called for winds of 50 mph and higher to rake the island late Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening, said National Weather Service meteorologist Genny Miller, though she said “a lot can change in 24 hours, especially at this stage of development.”

Naval Forces Marianas officials ordered all personnel to remain indoors until the all-clear is sounded. They projected the storm’s closest point of approach to be noon Sunday with sustained winds of between 46 and 52 mph and gusts up to 58 mph.

Forecasts also called for rainfall in excess of 6 inches, with some localized flooding, Miller said.

The storm spawned overnight Friday just to the west of Chu’uk Island and became a tropical storm in less than 24 hours.

The National Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning for the Marianas Islands at 5 p.m. Saturday Guam time, Miller said. While TCCOR-1 was declared for military bases, the rest of the island remained in TCCOR-2, which was issued by Guam’s civil defense office at 8 p.m., the Pacific Daily News reported.

Navy officials asked for its customers to conserve water, with southern residents strongly encouraged to take the necessary steps in case the Navy had to decrease supplies to Guam Waterworks. The Orote Point commissary and all Navy Exchange facilities were ordered closed on Sunday.

At 1 a.m. Sunday, Guam time, Saomai was 155 miles southeast of the island, moving northwest at 13 mph with sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts of up to 52 mph at its center.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center projected Saomai would pass 33 miles north of Andersen and 62 miles north of Naval Base Guam at 9 a.m. Sunday, packing sustained winds of 52 mph and gusts of up to 63 mph.

It’s forecast to reach typhoon strength sometime Tuesday evening and begin curving west-northwest away from the Marianas in the general direction of Okinawa but it’s too early to tell whether Saomai will threaten the island, 18th Weather Flight officials at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, said.

Saomai is the Vietnamese word for the planet Venus.

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Northern regions on alert for flash floods from tropical storm


HA NOI — Authorities in several northern mountainous provinces were told yesterday to warn local residents in low-lying areas about possible flash floods and torrential rains associated with the weakening tropical storm Prapiroon.

The Central Steering Committee for Flood and Storm Control yesterday issued an emergency notice to the provinces of Lao Cai, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Cao Bang, Bac Can, Lang Son and Quang Ninh, calling on them to prepare for the effects of the storm.

The centre asked local authorities to check on people living in flood and landslide-prone areas situated downstream of reservoir dams, and issued warnings to people in mining zones and tourism sites.

Special attention should be given to relocating families living in make-shift houses vulnerable to the effects of flood waters and unstable embankments, it said, while localities should also prepare to safeguard reservoirs, buildings and roads.

As of 1pm yesterday, the centre of the storm was located 140km off the north-east coast of Mong Cai in Quang Ninh Province and tracking north-north-west at 10-15km/h toward China’s Guangxi Province, said the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting. Wind gusts subsided to eight degrees on the Beaufort Scale from yesterday’s predicted twelve as the storm began to weaken into a tropical low as it approached the coast, it said.

Xinhua News Agency reports that a rescue team from China’s Hainan Province’s on Thursday saved 9 Vietnamese sailors who were on a cargo ship stuck onshore in the province due to Prapiroon typhoon.

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Thousands evacuated as volcano threatens to erupt

The Mayon volcano in the Philippines appeared ready to blow its top today as six explosions sent ash columns up to a half-mile high and led officials to evacuate tens of thousands of people from an extended danger zone.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alert to level 4, saying an explosive eruption appeared imminent. Level 5 represents an ongoing eruption.

Officials extended the danger zone to five miles on the volcano’s southern side, from 4.3 miles earlier.

The new area included at least five neighbourhoods in Legaspi city, where classes were immediately suspended. Adjacent areas “should prepare for evacuation in the event explosive eruptions intensify,” a volcanology institute advisory said.

Governor Fernando Gonzalez of Albay province, where Mayon is located, said about 35,000 villagers were being evacuated today and an additional 20,000 people would have to be moved out of harm’s way in case of a major eruption.

About 80 army trucks and government vehicles have been deployed to ferry residents to 34 evacuation centres, officials said.

Officials are hoping Mayon, which has erupted at least 47 times in the last 400 years, would go off quietly. An explosive eruption would complicate evacuation efforts, although Albay has been known to have developed one of the most efficient disaster response systems in the country, Gonzalez said.

“We don’t know but we are prepared. We always look at the worst scenario,” he said.

Gerry Losentales, a poor 87-year-old farmer, has refused to leave his hut near his small vegetable farm even after the land was partly seared by lava flows a few days ago. He was among dozens of residents ordered to evacuate today from Mabinit village below the volcano.

“I survive by tending that farm and I have lived here all my life,” a teary-eyed Losentales said as soldiers helped him board an army truck loaded with villagers to be brought to a temporary school shelter. “I hope the government can help me now.”

Lava began flowing on July 14 and has been slowly extending down Mayon’s slopes.

Volcanologist July Sabit said the alert level was raised after six explosions were monitored starting at 7.08am local time today, with ash columns reaching up to 2,625ft high.

“Lava also continues to flow,” he said.

Earlier, volcanologists said they detected 21 low-frequency volcanic earthquakes in the last 24 hours. Renato Solidum Jr., head of the volcanology institute, said the lava flow could continue, or the eruption could shift from quiet to explosive.

Brigadier General Arsenio Arugay, head of a task force that will respond to the situation, was given four to 10 hours to mobilise all concerned agencies.

Last week, the government deployed troops to keep sightseers away from the edge of advancing lava. Solidum earlier said the danger could come from collapse of the lava dome or a sudden explosive eruption that could send pyroclastic flows – clouds of superheated gas and ash – racing down the volcano’s slopes.

Mayon is one of the Philippines’ 22 active volcanos. Its most violent eruption, in 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried a town in mud. A 1993 eruption killed 79 people.

The Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common.

[Soldier4Christ]

Bedbugs' Bite Back In U.S.

ATLANTA -- After waking up one night in sheets teeming with tiny bugs, Josh Benton couldn't sleep for months and kept a flashlight and can of Raid with him in bed.

"We were afraid to even tell people about it at first," Benton said of the bedbugs in his home. "It feels like maybe some way your living is encouraging this, that you're living in a bad neighborhood or have a dirty apartment."

Absent from the United States for so long that some thought they were a myth, bedbugs are back. Entomologists and pest control professionals are reporting a dramatic increase in infestations throughout the country, and no one knows exactly why.

"It's no secret that bedbugs are making a comeback," said Dan Suiter, an associate professor of entomology at the University of Georgia.

Before World War II, bedbug infestations were common in the U.S., but they were virtually eradicated through improvements in hygiene and the widespread use of DDT in the 1940s and 1950s.

Bedbugs are tiny brownish, flattened insects that feed exclusively on the blood of animals and humans. Their bites may cause itchy red welts or swelling.

Unlike mosquitoes, though, they are not known to transmit blood-borne diseases from one victim to another. They are extremely resilient and very difficult to exterminate. Experts say bedbugs are not necessarily an indicator of unsanitary conditions.

In the past four years, reports of bedbugs have significantly increased in U.S. cities, from New York to Honolulu, especially in hotels, hospitals and college dormitories - all places with high resident turnover.

The National Pest Management Association, which represents many of the country's pest control companies, says the number of bedbug reports have increased fivefold in four years.

The Atlanta branch of pest-control firm Terminix saw no cases of bedbugs in 2004 and only three or four last year. But in the first six months of this year, they've had 23 new cases, said Clint Briscoe, a spokesman.

Experts are not entirely sure what has caused the marked increase. Some speculate that increased international travel and immigration may be partially to blame.

The tiny bugs may be hitching a ride in the luggage or clothing of travelers. This could explain the high concentration of the pests in cities like Atlanta and New York, which attract a lot of international traffic.

Another factor is a change in pest control practices. Companies are spraying more responsibly now, Suiter said. Instead of indiscriminately saturating the perimeter of all rooms, they often use more conservative measures and do large-scale spray treatments only when there's an infestation. As a result of consumer demand, less toxic chemicals are also being used.

"The bottom line is it may be a convergence of all those factors, but none of that really explains the rapid increase in recent years," said Michael Potter, a professor and urban entomologist at the University of Kentucky.

Experts agree that the public needs to be educated about bedbugs - on the symptoms and how to prevent them.

"A lot of people, including some physicians, don't even think they're real," Potter said. As a result people may go months before realizing the source of their discomfort.

In Hawaii, where tourism is a major industry, state lawmakers passed a resolution for a prevention campaign after infestations at some hotels damaged their reputations and annoyed travelers. Similarly, legislation for a bedbug task force has been proposed by New York City Councilwoman Gail Brewer.

For Benton, a 31-year-old graduate student, the bedbugs sparked a seven-month battle that included bug bombs and the tossing out of his and his fiancee's bedroom furniture.

They gave up and moved out of their apartment in New York and eventually moved back to their native Memphis, Tenn. Benton said the bugs essentially drove them out of New York because they couldn't sleep knowing the bugs may be anywhere.

"The main part of it is psychological trauma that they create because of the idea that they are feeding on you at night," Benton said. "It's still hard to talk about if it's anywhere near bedtime."

[Soldier4Christ]

Quake strikes Vanuatu, Philippine volcano spews
Tsunami alerts issued in South Pacific, Mayon eruption nears


The earth was shaking around the globe yesterday as a strong earthquake jolted the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, prompting tsunami warnings, and the Mayon volcano in the Philippines appeared on the verge of an eruption.

The Vanuatu quake hit at 9:18 a.m. local time about 50 miles from Vanuatu's largest island, Espiritu Santo, in the north of the island chain, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Meanwhile, six sharp explosions roared in the Mayon volcano, sending ash columns high into the sky and forcing the evacuation of 50,000 people.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alert to level 4, saying an explosive eruption appeared imminent. Level 5 represents an ongoing eruption.

Army trucks and other government vehicles have been deployed to ferry residents to at least 30 evacuation centers.

Lava has been flowing at the volcano since July 14. Mayon is one of the Philippines' 22 active volcanoes. Its most violent eruption, in 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried a town in mud. A 1993 eruption killed 79 people. The Philippines is in the Pacific "Ring of Fire," where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 on the Richter scale also struck a group of remote Japanese islands.

Japan lies at the junction of four tectonic plates and endures about 20 percent of the world's powerful earthquakes, frequently jolting Tokyo and other major cities.

Another earthquake centered along the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border killed at least 39 people as it wrecked villages in both countries. Wells were also damaged or destroyed, leaving an acute water shortage in some parts of the region.

[Shammu]

Magma On The Move Beneath Yellowstone
      
Much of Yellowstone National Park is a giant collapsed volcano, or a caldera. In an enormous eruption roughly 640,000 years ago, this volcano spit out around 240 cubic miles of rock, dirt, magma and other material. Around 70,000 years ago its last eruption filled in that gaping hole with flows of lava. The area has enjoyed an uneasy peace since then, the land alternately rising and falling with the passing decades. New satellite data indicate that this uplift and subsidence is caused by the movement of magma beneath the surface and may explain why the northern edge of the park continues to rise while the southern part of the caldera is falling.

Charles Wicks, Daniel Dzurisin and their colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey studied radar images of the caldera captured by the European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite during two passes over the park. Using a technique called interferometry--whereby radar measurements from two different vantage points are combined to give a measure of height--the scientists confirmed measurements on the ground that showed the land rising. But the images also revealed that a roughly 12-mile-wide circle of land centered at the northern rim of the caldera is still rising while land to its south is sinking. The source of that uplift, according to data revealed in today's Nature, lies more than seven miles underground.

Therefore, magma movement must be the cause of the rise and fall, Dzurisin explains. "It's just too deep to be caused by pressurization of the hydrothermal system," he says. "A small amount of magma has either moved up or been intruded to a depth of [seven miles] or perhaps it was already there and it's been pressurized."

Although previous studies had hinted at new magma moving beneath Yellowstone, this represents the first compelling evidence, according to Dzurisin. Such magma movement would also explain recent surface phenomena including new cracks and hot springs as well as the more frequent eruption of Steamboat Geyser. "If you do pressurize or increase the volume of a source [seven miles] deep, you put the ground in tension and that would be conducive to new fractures giving access to the surface for hot waters that previously hadn't had that access," he adds.

This new magma does not mean that Yellowstone will erupt again in the near future; much more significant signs such as more earthquakes, more focused ground deformations and the escape of volcanic gases would point to that. But it does point to continued activity at one of the world's largest volcanic systems. "We don't know if the next event will be a continuation of the series of lava flows that filled in the caldera or the beginning of a new cycle that will create a new caldera," Dzurisin says. "Eruptions are far enough apart that there is a very low probability of the next eruption happening in our lifetimes or anytime soon. The flipside is: the system has been active for millions of years and it's going to erupt again sometime."

Magma On The Move Beneath Yellowstone