Mexico floods close oil wells, force 7,500 out

Areas of two towns in Veracruz were under up to 10 feet of water

MEXICO CITY - Mexican officials have evacuated 7,500 people and are keeping oil wells shut in Veracruz due to severe flooding from heavy rains along Mexico's Gulf coast.

The state's top civil protection official, Ranulfo Marquez, says large sections of the towns of Minatitlan and Hidalgotitlan are under 10 feet of water.

With rain-swollen rivers jumping their banks, residents have been wading through chest-high waters and floating down roads on canoes.

Marquez said Monday that water levels are starting to drop, and Petroleos Mexicanos spokeswoman Georgina Saavedra says five Pemex wells remain closed.

The wells shut down Sept. 22 produce at least 1,500 barrels of crude per day. Their closure is not expected to affect prices.

Thailand flooding kills 23 over past 2 weeks

230,000 sickened by bacteria, human waste in floodwaters

A monk paddles through floodwaters at a temple in Thailand's Lopburi province on Sept. 22

BANGKOK, Thailand - Floods in Thailand have killed 23 people and sickened more than 230,000 over the past two weeks, including many who contracted waterborne ailments after wading through dirty water, the government said Tuesday.

The 23 people were swept away by flash floods that have afflicted 27 of Thailand's 75 provinces since early September, the Ministry of Public Health said in a statement.

Seven of the 23 victims were elderly people and four were children under 12, said Siripon Kanchana, deputy permanent secretary at the ministry.

Most of those who sought medical treatment suffered from skin funguses, cold symptoms and respiratory problems.

The health ministry warned residents that floodwaters were full of parasitic leeches, human waste and bacteria that can cause skin infections and fungus.

The floods, which destroyed farmland and inundated villages, have caused nearly $8 million in damage, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Center said.

Heavy downpours in northern and northeastern Thailand at the height of the rainy season caused rivers to swell, Water Resources Department Director-General Siripong Hungspreuk said, warning residents in low-lying areas to remain vigilant for flash floods and mudslides.

Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change

• Study looks at food impact on greenhouse gases
• Return to old-fashioned cooking habits urged

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.

The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops - alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.

The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.

Tara Garnett, the report's author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."

The report's findings are in line with an investigation by the October edition of the Ecologist magazine, which found that arguments for people to go vegetarian or vegan to stop climate change and reduce pressure on rising food prices were exaggerated and would damage the developing world in particular, where many people depend on animals for essential food, other products such as leather and wool, and for manure and help in tilling fields to grow other crops.

Instead, it recommended cutting meat consumption by at least half and making sure animals were fed as much as possible on grass and food waste which could not be eaten by humans.

CONTINUE

Ocean "dead zones" spread, fish more at risk

OSLO (Reuters) - The number of polluted "dead zones" in the world's oceans is rising fast and coastal fish stocks are more vulnerable to collapse than previously feared, scientists said on Monday.

The spread of "dead zones" -- areas of oxygen-starved water -- "is emerging as a major threat to coastal ecosystems globally," the scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Such zones are found from the Gulf of Mexico to the Baltic Sea in areas where algae bloom and suck oxygen from the water, feeding on fertilizers washed from fields, sewage, animal wastes and pollutants from the burning of fossil fuels.

"Marine organisms are more vulnerable to low oxygen content than currently recognized, with fish and crustaceans being the most vulnerable," said Raquel Vaquer Suner of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Spain.

"The number of reported hypoxic (low oxygen) zones is growing globally at a rate of 5 percent a year," she told Reuters.

Her study with a colleague showed that the number of "dead zones" had risen to more than 140 in 2004 from almost none until the late 1970s.

Hundreds of millions of people depend on coastal fisheries for food. Crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters and shrimps are less able to escape from low-oxygen waters than fish.

WARMING Continued...

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Ladybug species begin disappearing from US

Ladybug, ladybug, where have you gone?

Some species have nearly vanished, while others are on the rise

THACA, N.Y. - The nine-spotted ladybug was considered so common, charismatic and crop-friendly that it was adopted as New York’s official state insect in 1989.

As it turns out, the species may have disappeared from the state nearly two decades before that. Recent surveys in New York and the Northeast have found none of the once-ubiquitous beetles entomologists call Coccinella novemnotata — or C-9, for short.

The decline of C-9 and some other native ladybugs happened so quickly and precipitously that scientists have launched a nationwide project to help them understand why some ladybug species have all but vanished while others have greatly increased their numbers and range.

“We don’t know why this happened, what impact it will have on controlling pests or how we can prevent more native species from becoming so rare,” said John Losey, a Cornell University entomologist who leads the Lost Ladybug Project.

Funded by a $2 million National Science Foundation grant, the project is recruiting citizen scientists, particularly children, to search for C-9 and other ladybug species and send photos of them to Cornell for identification and inclusion in a database.

“The scientific end of our project is, there are so many ladybugs, so many places to look for them and not very many entomologists, so we really need help building a database and mapping out where these beetles are,” said Leslie Allee, a Cornell research associate.

“The other objective of our project is educational,” Allee said. “The goal is to generate excitement about natural science and getting outdoors; demystifying science and getting kids comfortable with the process of doing scientific inquiries.”

CONTINUE

Snowfall Seen on Mars

Even as its mission winds down, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has spotted snow falling from the Martian sky.

Phoenix's camera and meteorological equipment have shown clouds and fog forming during the night as the air gets colder.

"This is now occurring every night," said Jim Whiteway of York University in Toronto and lead scientist for Phoenix's Meteorological Station.

A laser instrument that is pointed directly up into Mars' atmosphere has also detected snow from clouds about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground. There are no conventional photographs of the snowfall. Scientists knew from previous studies that it snows on Mars. But they've never seen it happening from the ground.

"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," Whiteway said. "We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground."

The craft has also seen new hints of the planet's watery past. Meanwhile, mission scientists are trying to squeeze in all the science they can before the Martian sun sets for the winter, including a surprise attempt to switch on Phoenix's as-yet unused microphone.

Mission scientists announced the plans for Phoenix's remaining weeks of activity at a press conference Monday.

They also revealed information that will help them to "begin rewriting the book of Martian chemistry," said Michael Hecht, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and lead scientist for Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA).

Phoenix landed in the northern plains of Mars on May 25 and has been using its onboard instruments to analyze the Martian dirt and subsurface ice layer at its landing site above Mars' arctic circle. The mission, extended once by NASA through the end of September, was extended again earlier this month through the end of December.

But it's unlikely Phoenix will last that long.

What's next

CONTINUE

Floods, drought, mosquito disease aim at Europe

Asian tiger mosquito

PARIS (AFP) — Climate change will amplify the risk of flooding in northwestern Europe, water scarcity and forest fires on the northern Mediterranean rim and bring milder winters to Scandinavia, the European Environment Agency (EAA) said on Monday.

Higher temperatures will also extend the habitat range of virus-carrying mosquitoes, including the Asian tiger mosquito which carries the chikungunya virus and other pathogens, it said.

"Many regions and sectors across Europe are vulnerable to climate change impacts," Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the Copenhagen-based EAA, said in a press release.

"Implementation of adaptation actions has only just started. We need to intensify such actions and improve information exchange on data, effectiveness and costs."

The report is an update of a 2004 assessment on Europe's exposure to climate change. It is an overview of data drawn mainly from the EAA's own resources and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The EAA said the warming trend in Europe was above the global average.

Since pre-industrial times, Europe's landmass has warmed by 1.0 degrees Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and the seas around it by 1.2 C (2.16 F), compared with a global mean of 0.8 C (1.44 F) and 1.0 C (1.8 F) respectively, it said.

"Projections suggest further temperature increases in Europe between 1.0 and 5.5 C (1/8-9.9 F) by the end of the century," said the report.

"More frequent and more intense hot extremes and a decreasing number of cold extremes have occurred the past 50 years, and this trend is projected to continue."

In 2007, the IPCC gave an estimate of a global rise in temperature this century of 1.8-4.0 C (3.24-7.2 F).

The report said Europe's climate was already being affected by warming in several ways.

Snow cover has decreased by 1.3 percent per decade in the last 40 years, and Greenland is being affected by ice-sheet loss.

There have been several major droughts in the past few decades, including the catastrophic heatwave in 2003 that claimed tens of thousands of lives in continental Europe, and water shortages that gripped Spain and Portugal in 2005.

Among wildlife, some species of birds, insects and mammals are moving northwards and uphill to escape higher temperatures, and sub-tropical species of fish are showing up in European waters with increasing frequency.

On the plus side, more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air is helping forests, which in most cases are growing faster now than a century ago, it said.

Looking to the future, the report also made these points:

-- STORMS: The strongest storms are likely to get stronger, but they will be slightly less frequent.

-- FLOODS: Flooding is projected to occur more frequently in many regions, particularly in winter and spring, with northwestern and central and eastern Europe most vulnerable.

-- HEALTH: Heatwaves, mosquito-borne viruses and water-borne diseases are among the panoply of challenges to health from warming. "The risk is very dependent on human behaviour and the quality of health care services and their ability to detect early and act," the report warns.

-- COSTS: Many costs are likely to be substantial, although an accurate figure cannot be placed upon them.

These include the bills from biodiversity loss, from the loss of hydropower and ski tourism as a result of changed rainfall and snowfall patterns, damage to agriculture from heatwaves and coastal erosion caused by rising sea levels.

Thailand: Ministry of Public Health reveals over 180,000 illnesses after 17 days of flooding

The Minister of Public Health reports that after 17 days of flooding throughout the nation, 180,000 illnesses have been attributed to the conditions with 18 fatalities so far.

Spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health Dr. Supan Srithamma (สุพรรณ ศรีธรรรมมา) indicated that 24 flood hit provinces are no longer experiencing inundation with only 5 still under threat, namely, Pitsanulok, Lopburi, Ayuthaya, Khon Kaen and Prachinburi. The ministry has closely monitored the areas, especially in terms of water born illnesses and is safeguarding against diseases that occur once flood levels drop.

Royal Medical teams detached by His Royal Highness Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn have split off into 70 teams have given assistance since the 11th of this month. Some 189,513 people have sought medical attention with the most prevalent ailments being rashes and athletes foot, followed by the flu and muscle tension. 18 fatalities have been reported from 10 provinces, mostly in the north and northeast.

Over 133,000 medicinal kits have also been distributed to flood hit provinces with 18,500 more to be given out today.

Recent global warming unprecedented in 1,300 years

A new scientific study adds evidence that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fluctuated a bit over time, but that the sharp increase during the past few decades is bigger than anything in at least 1,300 years.

The report was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Its conclusion is that temperature increased and decreased a little over the centuries, but the fluctuations were small enough that the line was roughly flat, like the shaft of a horizontal hockey stick. Then, from about 1980 to now, temperature increased sharply, more than any increase before — like the blade of the hockey stick. For the past 10 years, climate-change skeptics have been calling the hockey stick bogus. Now the scientists who studied the climate record and produced the original hockey-stick graph have done a new study using more data from more sources — and they got the same pattern.

The new study “establishes further evidence that the recent warming isn’t just part of a typical cycle,” said climatologist Michael Mann , director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “Of course, this alone doesn’t establish the cause of that warming — that it must be due to human influences,” Mann said. That’s left to other scientific studies of the climate.

Forces of nature — changes in the output of the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions — and random variation explain the changes in climate before industrial times, Mann said. But only if human factors are taken into account — particularly the production of long-lasting, heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels — can scientists explain the unusually high recent temperature increase, he said.

Mann’s group’s study collected additional data for the centuries before the mid-19th century, when scientists began recording temperatures. Their previous study depended on tree rings, and some critics said it was not a reliable way to reconstruct past climate over a long period. Mann said that while it’s not always true that tree rings aren’t reliable, his team decided to conduct a new study that didn’t depend on them. They took data from other natural sources of clues about past climate — corals, ice cores and lake and cave sediments.

“We found we got more or less the same answer,” Mann said. The recent temperature increase is an anomaly over 1,300 years without using tree rings, and for 1,700 years if the tree-ring data are used, the study found. Scientists have observed a warming of about 0.8 degrees Celsius during the past century. Mann said there was a burst of about 0.3 degrees from about 1900 to 1950. Then, in the 1950s to 1970s, temperatures were flat or showed a slight cooling, because heavy particle pollution, which has a cooling effect, masked the heating effect of greenhouse gases, Mann said. Another, larger increase of temperature has been recorded in the past 30 years, he said, due largely to the increase of greenhouse gases. Particle pollution was reduced as a result of clean-air laws in the US and other countries. reuters

Iran's food prices surge nearly 50% in September

In August, Iran's inflation rate reached 27.6%

TEHRAN (AFP) — The increase in food prices accelerated in Iran in September, when the cost of a basket of 45 staple food items showed a mighty leap of nearly 50 percent from the same month a year earlier, the Kargozaran newspaper reported Sunday, citing central bank figures.

For the three Iranian months of Tir, Mordad and Shahrivar (July to September), year-on-year food price inflation was 28.98, 40.08 and 48.46 percent respectively, taking the average increase for the summer period to 39.2 percent, the daily said.

Items monitored for the inflation figures include meat, beans, rice, sugar, fruits and dairy products.

Many economists have accused President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of directly fuelling the price rises by ploughing huge amounts of cash into the economy to fund local infrastructure projects and small production units.

In spite of efforts by the central bank to shrink the excessive volume of loans, analysts say the government has already injected so much oil money into the economy that inflation will remain high for months and years to come.

Ahmadinejad this week replaced the head of the central bank, Tahmasb Mazaheri, in a bid to bring more harmony to his economic team around his expansionary policies.

The central bank was eager to reassert its control of the money supply -- a key indicator of future inflation trends -- after annual inflation hit 26 percent in June.

In August, Iran's inflation rate reached 27.6 percent, as citizens were again battered by rising prices of foodstuffs and other goods.

Floods, landslides kill 50 in Vietnam, Thailand

HANOI (Reuters) - Flash floods and landslides have killed 50 people in Vietnam and Thailand, swept away thousands of homes and inundated farmland, official reports said on Sunday.

In Vietnam, the death toll from typhoon Hagupit, which struck the Philippines and China earlier in the week, has jumped to 32 with another five people missing.

Thousands of homes were either washed away or destroyed by heavy rains and landslides in northern Vietnam, the government's storm and flood prevention committee said.

Hagupit, which means "lashing" in Filipino, killed at least eight people in the Philippines and three in China where it triggered a "once-in-a-century storm tide."

Vietnamese soldiers were dispatched to evacuate thousands of people from areas vulnerable to more flash floods and landslides in the mountainous provinces of Son La, Lang Son and Bac Giang.

Heavy rains on Sunday could trigger more landslides in the mountainous north, and flooding along the Thai Binh river, the National Meteorology Center said.

The Red River near the capital Hanoi was expected to reach dangerously high levels on Sunday, rising to 8.6 meters (28 ft), the center said.

Vietnam's main agriculture belt including the coffee-growing Central Highlands region and the Mekong Delta rice basket was not in the storm's path.

In Thailand, the death toll from floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains has risen to 18, while nearly 190,000 people have been treated for water-related illnesses and injuries, the Health Ministry said. Continued...

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Haitian 'mud city' needs global help to recover from killer storms

	Photo 10 of 20
Furniture is stuck in the mud inside a house in Gonaives, Haiti, Friday, Sept. 19, 2008. As Haiti's President Rene Preval pleaded for long-term assistance in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly Friday, Gonaives, Haiti's ravaged fourth-largest city, in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike, remains encased in mud. Children play in it and adults try to remove it with muddy buckets and rags. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

THE UN World Food Program's director has flown to a Haitian city encased in mud to draw global attention to the ongoing disaster that has complicated the country's struggle to feed itself.

The program has asked for $US54 million ($65 million) to help Haiti recover from four killer storms but so far has received only $US1 million. Beginning a two-day survey of the disaster area on Friday, Josette Sheeran said concerted global action was needed to avert a famine.

Haitian President Rene Preval also pleaded for long-term help in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

The devastated coastal city of Gonaives is largely cut off from the rest of Haiti because of flooded roads and wrecked bridges.

Grey mud is still piled waist-high in homes. Tens of thousands still live in shelters and roam muddy streets looking for food.

At least 194 people were killed by the tropical storms in less than a month in Gonaives and the surrounding region, the largest share of a national death toll of 425.

Some of the muck is topsoil flushed from higher land when a river broke its banks, churned through the countryside and sliced through town before emptying into the sea.

Clouds of mosquitoes now breed in Gonaives's wet ground, raising fears that disease will spread. Children play in the muck.

Some families bale the mud from their houses, soldiering on in the stench. Mothers use muddy rags to wipe off kitchen utensils. Most residents have nowhere else to go.

The floods from hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike destroyed about 60 per cent of Haiti's food harvest.

Speaking in New York, Mr Preval said emergency aid alone would not solve Haiti's plight.

"Once this first wave of humanitarian compassion is exhausted, we will be left as always, truly alone, to face new catastrophes and see restarted, as if in a ritual, the same exercises of mobilisation," he said.

UN: Hurricanes, Floods Create Huge Problems in Caribbean, Africa, South Asia

The United Nations top humanitarian official says recent floods and storms have created grave humanitarian situations in the Caribbean, South Asia, and West Africa. Various U.N. agencies are stepping up assistance to these hard-hit areas. From U.N. headquarters in New York, VOA correspondent Margaret Besheer has the story by intern Maha Saad.

" alt="High winds from nearby Hurricane Gustav kick up waves before dawn, in George Town, Grand Cayman Island, 30 Aug 2008 " src="http://author.voanews.com/english/images/ap_grand_cayman_gustav_30aug08_eng_175.jpg" border="0" height="190" hspace="2" vspace="2" width="189">

High winds from nearby Hurricane Gustav kick up waves before dawn, in George Town, Grand Cayman Island, 30 Aug 2008

With hurricane season underway, the Caribbean has been hit by a series of storms including Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna and Tropical Storm Fay. They have taken lives, damaged infrastructure, and displaced people. Several island nations have experienced their wrath, but U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes says Haiti is the worst hit with nine of its 10 districts seriously affected.

"It has been hit badly by three storms in three weeks and the damage from that has been severe, indeed. It is clear that the death toll is significant. Maybe between 100 and 200, but again, there are no very accurate figures available so far," he said.

Holmes says at least 600,000 people will need humanitarian assistance, but the current conditions are making it difficult to assess the damage and reach those in need. He said UNICEF, the World Food Program and other U.N. humanitarian agencies are helping feed and shelter thousands of storm victims on the island.

Meanwhile, South Asia is experiencing heavy rains and severe flooding. In Nepal, the Koshi river broke its banks on August 18, leaving more than 50,000 people displaced. U.N. agencies have been deploying humanitarian staff across the area, with food, shelter materials and drugs to prevent malaria and diarrhea outbreaks.

Across the border in India, the U.N. says severe flooding affected some three million people in 1,700 villages. At least 66 people died and more than 300,000 homes were damaged. Holmes says the Indian government is well-equipped to handle the emergency, but the U.N. has offered its help.

West Africa has also been struck by heavy rains and floods, causing some deaths, damaging homes, infrastructure and crops. Holmes says the global food crisis is adding to the stress of the situation. "They come on top of a difficult situation in many of these countries because of the global food crisis, which has been affecting them. Many of these countries are chronically food insecure to start with, so they start from a difficult position," he said.

He said U.N. agencies are also stepping up their assistance to these hard hit areas to help meet shortfalls.

UN Says Tens of Thousands of Flood Victims in Western Nepal Need Food

The United Nations World Food Program is appealing for $2.5 million for an emergency food program in Western Nepal, which has been inundated by heavy flooding this week. The WFP says the money will be used to feed about 170,000 people for one month. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Nepalese live in make-shift houses on the road side after their houses got damaged due floods in Sunsari, about 400 kilometers southeast of Katmandu, 29 Aug 2008

Incessant rainfall in the mid-western and far-western regions of Nepal this week has caused flooding and landslides in eight regions. The United Nations reports at least 30 people have been killed and 30 are missing.

World Food Program spokeswoman Emilia Casella says the organization has to find the money to feed 170,000 flood victims in the West who have lost practically everything.

"Imagine when 170,000 people are displaced by severe flooding, it means they have lost their homes," she said. "They have lost their livelihoods and, unfortunately in some cases, family members. So when a community has to recover from something like this even if they are only displaced from their homes for a few weeks until the waters recede it can take months to rebuild."

Casella says crops have been lost and planted crops have been destroyed. So food assistance, she says, will need to continue for some time to come.

She says the WFP will provide the flood victims with a mixed-commodity basket of rice, lentils, vegetable oil and salt, as part of this new multimillion dollar emergency operation.

The floods in western Nepal come on top of severe flooding last month in eastern Nepal, when the Koshi River, one of the largest river basins in Asia, breached its embankment.

Flooding there has caused widespread devastation, displacing 70,000 people. Most are staying in temporary shelters or in ad hoc settlements.

The United Nations warns debris and dead cattle in the region pose a big threat to hygiene. It says encephalitis cases have been reported and it fears an upsurge in cases of malaria.

The United Nations and its partners are appealing for $15.5 to help monsoon victims in the east over the next six months. This money will supplement a $100 million appeal that was previously launched to address chronic problems in Nepal this year.

Casella says the World Food Program is providing food assistance to the 70,000 people in eastern Nepal in addition to the new flood victims in the West. She says this brings the total number of beneficiaries to 220,000.

Kyle puts crops at risk

With tropical storm Kyle headed toward the Maritimes, trees and bushes loaded with fruit and other crops in the Annapolis Valley and surrounding farming communities are at risk.

So, early Saturday, a group called Friends of Agriculture in Nova Scotia, urged the public to visit their favourite farm today and early Sunday to pick the crops for their own use or even volunteer to help a farmer.

“This is the most important part of the harvest season in Nova Scotia for fruit crops, whether apples or blueberries or any others,” said Linda Best, of Friends of Agriculture in Nova Scotia.

“And with an approaching hurricane, I know from my experience when I grew up on a farm, when you hear that those winds are coming at this time of year and you know how quickly those apples will fall, there goes a great part of the value of the apple or the other berries when it hits the ground.”

Click here to find local farms across Nova Scotia.

Rare hurricane watch for Maine as Kyle heads north

This image provided by NOAA shows Tropical Storm Kyle taken at 12:15 p.m. EDT Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008. At 11:00 p.m. EDT, Kyle was centered about 280 miles west of Bermuda. A hurricane watch has been issued for part of Maine's coast and forecasters say the center of Tropical Storm Kyle is expected to pass near eastern New England. Kyle is the 11th named storm this season in the Atlantic. (AP Photo/NOAA)

EASTPORT, Maine (AP) — A rare hurricane watch was posted for part of the Maine coast on Saturday as Tropical Storm Kyle roared north toward the region with a threat of conditions similar to one of New England's nor'easters.

"Hurricane season isn't over, " said Maine Emergency Management Agency director Rob McAleer. "It's been a very active season."

It was Maine's first hurricane watch in 17 years, the National Weather Service said. Elsewhere in New England, a hurricane warning was posted for Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts in September 1996, according to the weather service office in Taunton, Mass.

Two to 4 inches of rain had already fallen along some coastal areas by midday Saturday and the storm was expected to deliver an additional 2 to 4 inches, said Eric Schwibs of the weather service in Gray.

At 2 p.m. EDT, Kyle was centered about 300 miles west-northwest of Bermuda and 550 miles south of Nantucket, the National Hurricane Center said in Miami.

The storm had top sustained wind near 70 mph and the potential to grow to hurricane strength. It was moving north over the open Atlantic at 20 mph, up from 15 mph during the morning.

Kyle's center was forecast to be near eastern New England or the Canadian Maritime provinces late Sunday, the hurricane center said.

The hurricane center posted a hurricane watch from Stonington, at roughly the center of the Maine coast, to Eastport, on the border with New Brunswick, Canada. A tropical storm watch extended south to Cape Elizabeth, near Portland.

Kyle could make landfall near Eastport, possibly late Sunday, the hurricane center said.

That would put the storm's strongest wind in New Brunswick, rather than in Maine, which would get conditions more akin to "a garden variety nor'easter," said Schwibs.

The government of Canada issued a tropical storm watch for southwestern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the hurricane center said.

The weather service also issued flood watches for the southern two-thirds of New Hampshire and southern Maine through Sunday evening.

McAleer said the storm's biggest threat in Maine would be the potential for high waves and small stream flooding.

"We urge everyone to pay close attention to weather warnings, and stay away from any flooded roadways, or fast-running streams," McAleer said.

The Coast Guard prepared crews and equipment for the storm and urged boat owners to secure their vessels in anticipation of high wind and seas that could run 10 to 20 feet high off shore.

Eastern Maine's power company, Bangor Hydro-Electric, said it prepared for potential outages and planned to have additional crews on duty.

Solid ice may be inside Neptune and Uranus

A snapshot from a first-principle molecular dynamics simulation of ice-VII (on the right) in contact with liquid water (on the left). As the simulation progresses the position of the solid-liquid interface can be monitored and used to accurately determine the location of the melting temperature of water under high pressure conditions. (Credit: Visualization by Eric Schwegler/LLNL)

U.S. scientists using first-principle molecular dynamics simulations have determined the interiors of Neptune, Uranus and Earth might contain some solid ice.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, together with University of California-Davis collaborators, used a two-phase approach to determine the melting temperature of ice VII -- a high-pressure phase of ice -- in pressures ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 atmospheres.

For pressures between 100,000 and 400,000 atmospheres, the team led by Eric Schwegler found ice melts as a molecular solid, similar to how it melts in a cold drink. But in pressures above 450,000 atmospheres, there is a sharp increase in the slope of the melting curve due to molecular disassociation and proton diffusion in the solid, prior to melting, which is typically referred to as a superionic solid phase.

"The sharp increase in the melting curves slope opens up the possibility that water exists as a solid in the deep interior of planets such as Neptune, Uranus and Earth," Schwegler said.

The research that included Francois Gygi, Giulia Galli and Manu Sharmae appears in early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Zimbabwe children eating toxic roots, rats

AIDS/HIVLONDON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Children in Zimbabwe are eating rats and inedible roots riddled with toxic parasites to stave off hunger because of chronic food shortages, an aid agency said on Thursday.

Save the Children said the most vulnerable faced starvation unless they get food aid in the next couple of weeks. "The rising malnutrition and the rise in diseases are going to mean that children will die and we have to act very fast," said Sarah Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the relief group.

The United Nations had said previously that more than 5 million people in Zimbabwe would need food aid by early next year after a poor harvest compounded by economic turmoil.

Jacobs said many people in the Zambezi Valley, the poorest and driest area, were now surviving on a vile-tasting, fibrous root called makuri. "It's got no nutritional value whatsoever.

It tastes disgusting and it also has a parasite which attaches to it which is toxic," said Jacobs, who has just returned from the region. "This is all they have to eat. You see babies eating it and toddlers eating it, and it's not digestible.

It creates terrible stomach pains." People were eating anything to survive, she said. She had come across one child who had died after eating a poisonous root and young children eating tiny rats they caught in their huts.

Save the Children and other agencies are resuming work after Zimbabwe's government lifted a ban on their operations at the end of August. President Robert Mugabe imposed the ban before a run-off presidential election in June, accusing the agencies of supporting the opposition.

But Save the Children said in reality many agencies had not been able to work in the field since the first election round in March. The agency, which has launched a 5 million pound ($9.2 million) appeal for emergency operations in Zimbabwe, said the situation had got much worse in the past few months and that rampant inflation meant even people with jobs would need food aid. "People's ways of coping have been completely exhausted.

People are saying they're scared they're going to die within weeks if food doesn't come," Jacobs said. "We really are playing catch up. It's a huge humanitarian job now and there has to be much more money than there has ever been before."

Jacobs said many children had diarrhoea after eating makuri, which was particularly dangerous in a situation where there was no proper clean water or sanitation. The lack of nutrition had also weakened people's immune systems and left them vulnerable to illness just before the rainy season when cases of malaria and cholera increase.

There have already been suspected cases of cholera even though the disease does not usually appear until the rains arrive in October. Save the Children said proper nutrition was particularly vital for those with HIV/AIDS, which effects one in five adults in Zimbabwe.

The food crisis has also caused many children to drop out of school either because they could not afford to go, needed to work or look for food, or because their teachers could not afford the journey to work. (Editing by Angus MacSwan) (For more news and information on humanitarian issues visit www.alertnet.org)

Amphibians facing a wipeout by 2050

Sir David Attenborough has joined scientists in an alert on how climate change and disease may lead to extinction

The common toad is one of the 81 species under threat. Warmer winters have disrupted its hibernation

Half of Europe’s amphibian species could be wiped out in the next 40 years. Scientists from the Zoological Society of London say that the combined force of climate change, pollution, disease and habitat loss and degradation has left many with “nowhere to run”.

After assessing the amphibians’ prospects, they predicted that more than 50 per cent of the 81 species native to Europe faced extinction by 2050.

Even surviving species, they said, were likely to suffer a decline in numbers and distribution, including the common toad in Britain, which is already being affected by climate change.

Trent Garner, Jonathan Baille and Helen Meredith announced their findings last night at a ZSL event hosted by Sir David Attenborough, the naturalist and broadcaster.

They said that in the short term many species would need to be taken into captivity because they faced extinction in the wild.

In the long term, although pollution could be reduced and habitats restored in limited areas, the survival of amphibians in Europe depended on solutions to climate change and cures to diseases being found.

They based their predictions on a review of past published papers and modelling programmes, combined with findings from current conservation projects.

Sir David described amphibians as “the lifeblood of many environments” because of the important role they played in them, such as providing food for larger animals.

“It is both extraordinary and terrifying that in just a few decades the world could lose half of all these species,” he said. He hoped “that we will not be hearing the dying croaks of these amazing creatures in the years to come”

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Oldest Rocks on Earth Found

Reuters Photo: This image shows a portion of the oldest-known rocks on Earth, dating from 4.28 billion...

Scientists have found the oldest known rocks on Earth. They are 4.28 billion years old, making them 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a disk of gas and dust circling the sun. Remnants of crust from Earth's infancy are hard to come by because most of that material has been recycled into Earth's interior several times by the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface.

In 2001, geologists found an expanse of bedrock, known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt, exposed on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec.

Suspecting that the rocks there could be from one of the earliest periods of Earth's history, geologists took samples to try and determine their age. They measured tiny variations in the isotopes (or species of an element that have different numbers of neutrons) of the rare earth elements neodymium and samarium in the rocks and determined that the samples were from 3.8 to 4.28 billion years old.

The oldest dates, which came from rocks that geologists call "faux amphibolite," are thought to be ancient volcanic deposits. They beat the previously oldest known rocks, which are 4.03 billion years old and come from a formation called the Acasta Gneiss in Canada's Northwest Territories.

The only dates of crustal material older than the newly-dated Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt are from isolated mineral grains called zircons that are highly resistant to weathering and geologic processes. The oldest zircons, from grains in Western Australia, are about 4.36 billion years old.

The Nuvvuagittuq rocks are "the oldest whole rocks found so far" though, said geologist Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution, who analyzed the rocks with Jonathan O'Neil, a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal. The team's findings are detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science. Their work was supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Examining such ancient rocks "gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the processes that formed the early crust," Carlson said.

Boulders on Tonga may have been dumped by tsunami

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven monstrous chunks of coral lined up on the western shore of Tonga may be evidence of a powerful volcano-triggered tsunami, researchers said on Wednesday.

The house-sized boulders, some as high as 30 feet high and weighing up to 3.5 million pounds (1.6 million kg), appear to have been carried ashore several thousand years ago by a wave rivaling the tsunami generated by Indonesia's Krakatoa volcano in 1883.

"These could be the largest boulders displaced by a tsunami, worldwide," Matthew Hornbach of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics said in a statement.

Hornbach, whose team is preparing a report on the boulders for a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Houston next month, said they are so unusual that tales of their origins appear in Tongan folklore.

According to one legend, the god Maui hurled the boulders ashore in an attempt to kill a giant human-eating fowl.

"We think studying erratic boulders is one way of getting better statistics on mega-tsunamis," Hornbach said. "There are a lot of places that have similar underwater volcanoes and people haven't paid much attention to the threat."

Food riots break out as flood victims go hungry

AID workers in eastern India struggled to provide food to tens of thousands of flood victims after riots broke out yesterday.

In Orissa state, people are still stranded on embankments and roads after large areas were flooded when authorities opened the sluice gates of a dam on the Mahanadi river after heavy rains last week.

Food riots broke out in many areas after villagers complained they were not getting relief supplies. Hungry victims beat up officials, blocked roads and looted relief materials.

Jitendra Kumar Dalai, a police officer who was injured by hungry survivors in the flood-hit Jagatsinghpur district, said: "At least eight people sustained injuries after two groups of people clashed over distribution of relief."

Authorities said more than 100,000 people were still marooned and 19 more deaths were reported yesterday, taking the death toll from floods in the eastern state to 48 in the past week.

At least 20 more deaths were also reported in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh yesterday, raising the overall toll across India to at least 239 in the past five days. Rising rivers have burst their banks and swamped vast areas of farmland.

Officials said they had posted policemen near the Taj Mahal to monitor water levels in the swollen Yamuna river, though there appears to be no danger to the mausoleum.

Eight die as rain cuts off 20,000 China quake victims

BEIJING (Reuters) - Torrential rain isolated more than 20,000 people in an area of southwest China still recovering from a devastating earthquake in May, state media said Thursday, with eight people dead and dozens missing.

Heavy rain caused flash floods, cave-ins and landslides in mountainous Sichuan province near the epicentre of the quake, where survivors are still living in tents and pre-fabricated houses.

At least 80,000 people were killed in the May 12 earthquake.

Thirty-eight people are missing and roads and telephone lines have been cut in the storms, Xinhua news agency said.

The downpours began to pound Mianyang city and surrounding countryside in Sichuan province Monday night, it said.

Mianyang encompasses Beichuan and other areas that were the hardest-hit counties in the Sichuan earthquake.

The rainstorms were separate to a typhoon which ploughed into south China Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, closing schools, cancelling flights, uprooting trees and bringing down billboards in several cities. Many rivers burst their banks.

Among the dead was the chief engineer of a British freighter tossed around in the storm off Guangdong, Xinhua said.

Thousands of homes and large areas of forestry and farms were destroyed, the China Daily said. Continued...

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Thousands Stranded As Storms Hit China Quake Area

The downpours began to pound Mianyang city and surrounding countryside in Sichuan province, southwest China, on Monday night.

Continuous rain near the epicentre of China's May 12 earthquake has killed at least eight people and left 38 missing, with thousands stranded by mountain torrents, cave-ins and mudslides, state media said on Wednesday.

The downpours began to pound Mianyang city and surrounding countryside in Sichuan province, southwest China, on Monday night, Xinhua news agency said.

Mianyang encompasses Beichua and other areas that were the hardest-hit counties in the Sichuan earthquake, which killed at least 80,000 people.

In the latest disaster, at least 2,200 houses have collapsed and 6,500 people were stranded throughout the hilly region, Xinhua said. "Some pre-fabricated houses built after the quake and other residences were flooded," the report said.

More than 300 people were injured in the downpours, said an earlier report.

The rainstorms were separate to a typhoon which ploughed into a densely populated area of south China on Wednesday, triggering a "once-in-a-century storm tide" in several cities.

Earlier this month, a mudslide caused by the collapse of a mine waste reservoir killed more than 260 people in their village homes in northern China.

SCOTLAND: Sea levels to rise dramatically

High tides, storm surges and wave action can cause coastal flooding

Sea levels in parts of Scotland will have risen by about 30cm by the 2080s, a Dundee University report suggests.

Researchers were analysing the risk of coastal flooding and ways to manage it.

More than 300 coastal floods since 1849 were studied, with the Solway Firth, Moray Firth, Aberdeenshire and Firth of Clyde having suffered the most.

They found that storms driven in from the Atlantic Ocean during periods of strong westerly winds were the main cause of coastal flooding.

Present-day flood risk arises from the combination of high tides, storm surges, and wave action driven by the wind.

Over the past few decades, water levels 50-60cm above the highest predicted tide have been recorded at Aberdeen, Lerwick and Stornoway and 120cm at Millport.

With sea level rise and the threat posed by storm surges, now is the time to assess the risk posed by coastal flooding Prof Alan Werritty Dundee University

The report estimates that by the 2080s sea levels will be about 20cm higher in the Clyde estuary, 28cm higher in Moray and Aberdeenshire and 32cm higher in the Northern Isles.

The researchers concluded that a short-term reactive approach was often taken by councils to dealing with coastal flood protection, rather than a long-term strategic approach.

However, they recognised that local authorities had funding restrictions and limited resources.

Professor Alan Werritty, who led the University of Dundee team compiling the report, said: "Until recently, coastal flooding has attracted less attention in Scotland than floods affecting cities and the countryside.

"With sea level rise and the threat posed by storm surges, now is the time to assess the risk posed by coastal flooding and ways of managing that risk.

"The Scottish Government is currently bringing in a Flooding Bill which will radically change the way we manage flood risk in Scotland.

"This report is designed to assist the Scottish Government in changing the way we react to coastal floods."

Red squirrels Red Alert

Protected in the past from their grey cousins, indigenous squirrels flourished in a nature reserve on the Lancashire coast. Now a deadly virus threatens to wipe them out

Red squirrels have long been a big attraction at the Formby nature reserve, but now many are dying horrible deaths as a result of the virus that leaves them with lesions on their eyes, mouths, ears and paws

The stretch of sandy coastline around Formby in Lancashire has long been popular with Premiership footballers from nearby Liverpool and from Manchester. But football stars are not Formby's most famous residents. That honour goes to the red squirrels that have scampered for decades in the pine forest between the town's wide streets and the sand dunes that protect them from the sea.

Some 360,000 people visit the National Trust reserve there each year, and most go home happy to have seen a red squirrel. For decades, Formby, and the surrounding borough of Sefton, has had the highest density of red squirrels in England and, until recently, it was not unusual to see groups of 20 or 30 animals together.

But visit Formby now and the squirrels are missing. A survey planned for next month is expected to confirm that a deadly virus has swept through the area, sending the red squirrel population crashing to such low levels that it may never recover. Hundreds of the animals are feared to have died, and many more are not expected to make it through the winter. According to Andrew Brockbank, the National Trust property manager who has worked at Formby for 11 years, the situation is "very bleak".

The Animal Welfare Institute says these horses, including one with cut and swollen eyes, were among animals being transported to slaughter at a now-defunct Texas plant. Such cases illustrate the inhumane treatment of many horses destined for the meat market, the group says.

he emotional debate over slaughtering horses for human consumption gained new life in Washington this week as a House committee approved a measure that would ban the practice nationwide and halt the export of U.S. horses destined for dinner tables in other countries.

While it’s unclear whether the Judiciary Committee’s Tuesday approval of the slaughter ban will lead to passage by the full House and Senate before the clock runs out on the current session of Congress, the panel’s hearings refocused attention on an issue that has motivated animals-welfare groups for years.

Outraged by what they say is cruel treatment of horses sold for meat, the groups already
have succeeded at forcing closure of the three remaining U.S. horse slaughterhouses -- two in Texas and one in Illinois – in recent years. But since thousands of horses are still exported for slaughter in Canada and Mexico, and many states have no laws that would prohibit the opening of new plants, the groups have been seeking federal regulation since 2001.

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New global warming threat as scientists discover massive methane 'time bomb' under the Arctic seabed

Global warming could rapidly accelerate as millions of tons of methane escape from beneath the Arctic seabed, scientists warned today.

Huge deposits of the greenhouse gas - 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - are rising to the surface as the Arctic region heats up, according to preliminary findings.

Researchers found massive stores of sub-sea methane in several areas across thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf and observed the gas bubbling up from the sea floor through 'chimneys', according to newspaper reports.

Researchers believe the Arctic Ocean seabed is thawing in patches and releasing greenhouse gases

The researchers believe escaping sub-sea methane is connected to rises in temperatures in the Arctic region.

One of the expedition leaders, Orjan Gustafsson, of Stockholm University in Sweden, said researchers had found 'an extensive area of intense methane release'.

'At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface.

'These "methane chimneys" were documented on echo sounder and with seismic (instruments),' he said in an email from a Russian research ship, quoted in The Independent.

The email continued: 'The conventional thought has been that the permafrost "lid" on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place.

'The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes.

'We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed.'

The average temperature of the region has risen by 4C over recent decades,leading to a major decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice.

Nepal: Livestock and livelihoods in jeopardy

SAPTARI, 23 September 2008 (IRIN) - Thousands of livestock belonging to survivors of last month's devastating flood in eastern Nepal are at risk, NGOs warned.

Of the 60,000 people displaced in Nepal's eastern Sunsari and Saptari districts, some 23,000 are living in camps in Saptari, according to the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS).

Another 27,000 are living in camps and shelters in Sunsari, with the rest staying with relatives in Nepal or neighbouring India.

Most of the displaced are farmers and land labourers, making up more than 90 percent of those affected, according to NGOs.

About 5,500 hectares of cultivated land was damaged when the Koshi River - Nepal's largest - burst its banks on 18 August, the Ministry of Home Affairs reported, destroying livestock, livelihoods, income generation and other productive opportunities for area residents.

Most of the displaced arrived in the camps and shelters with their livestock, mostly goats and cattle, in tow, the government-run District Livestock Service Office (DLSO), the only agency to focus on the animals, reported.

Thousands of animals neglected

More than 40,000 livestock were affected by the floods, the government says, including 20,000 displaced from Sunsari, 10,000 from Bihar in India, as well as 10,000 more from local areas of Saptari.

"Neglect of the animals could lead to high mortality and the impact will cause health risks for humans - both displaced and among the local population," noted Kashi Nath Yadav, the DLSO's chief of Saptari, about 300km southeast of Kathmandu.

Scores of animals died or were left injured in the flood waters. More than 2,000 animals in the camps have died - that number is expected to grow in the coming days, according to the DLSO.

Of the nearly 600 animals injured in the floods, many have developed skin diseases after being in the water for more than 10 days, the government office said.

Yet despite these developments, just less than half of all livestock in the camps has been properly vaccinated due to a lack of medicine, fuelling concern about a possible outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD).

The highly contagious and infectious animal disease that normally occurs during hot and humid conditions every monsoon gets worse in flood conditions, Yadav said.

To date, 150 cases of FMD have been reported - a number that could rise exponentially unless immediate action is taken, animal health specialists warned.

Humans first

But with humanitarian agencies still struggling to assist the tens of thousands of people displaced, it is unlikely the animals, on which so many depend for their livelihoods, will get the assistance they need soon.

"Our first priority in our emergency assistance is to help the displaced families and relocate them to a permanent settlement," explained Sanjeev Kumar Kafley, the NRCS's director of disaster management.

Livestock should be included in the recovery programme as doing so now would place an additional burden on aid agencies, he said.

Until that happens, however, scores of animals will likely die.

Many farmers in the camps are already struggling to feed their animals, citing an acute shortage of fodder and animal feed.

"If livestock is not prioritised, thousands of farmers will suffer further from the loss of their animals, which is also their only means of livelihood," Yadav stressed.

India army called in as floods overwhelm defences

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - The army was called in to rescue tens of thousands of stranded villagers in Uttar Pradesh, officials said on Tuesday, as floods destroyed homes and swamped one of the country's biggest tiger reserves.

At least 14 more people drowned overnight in Uttar Pradesh, raising the death toll from floods to more than 200 in the past four days, officials said.

Monsoon rains and floods have already killed 1,500 people in India and Nepal since June.

"The death toll could go up further," G.K. Tandon, a senior Uttar Pradesh official said. "Excess water flow from the upper reaches of rivers coming from Nepal is likely to worsen the situation in some areas."

Authorities used boats to rescue villagers after heavy rains over the weekend caused rivers to burst their banks and flood new areas. About 57,000 people have been evacuated to camps so far.

Television pictures showed soldiers trying to pull old women and children into a boat as others fought for a place.

Authorities said they were trying to trace tigers and other animals inside the Dudhwa National Park. In the country's east, at least a quarter of a million people were still stranded in Orissa. Large parts of the state were flooded after authorities were forced to open sluice gates of a dam on the Mahanadi river due to heavy rain.

Those stranded said snakes and other reptiles were entering homes, forcing them to move to higher ground. Continued...

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Greenland: roar of melting glacier sounds climate change alarm

Ilulissat Icefjord, western Greenland

LULISSAT, Denmark (AFP) — Flying low over the vast, white expanse of Greenland's Ilulissat glacier, one of the biggest and most active in the world, the effects of global warming in the Arctic are painfully visible as the ice melts at an alarming rate.

The helicopter lands on a granite cliff overlooking the Ilulissat ice fjord, or Kangia in Greenlandic, offering a magnificent, panoramic view of elaborate ice formations as they float towards the sea at a rate of two meters (yards) an hour, spilling massive icebergs into the open water.

Off in the distance, huge boulders of ice break off of the imposing Ilulissat glacier, more commonly known by its Greenlandic name Sermeq Kujalleq, creating a thunderous roar as the glacier recedes in one of the planet's most striking examples of global warming.

"The ice in some places on the coast is now melting four times faster than before," says Abbas Khan, a Dane who studies the movements of Greenland's glaciers at the Danish Space Centre.

The Ilulissat glacier and icefjord have been on UNESCO's world heritage list since 2004 and is the most visited site in Greenland, its ice and pools of emerald-blue water admired by tourists and studied by scientists and politicians around the world.

The glacier is the most active in the northern hemisphere, producing 10 percent of Greenland's icebergs, or some 20 million tonnes of ice per day.

But the glacier is in bad shape, experts warn.

Recent estimates by US scientists who study NASA's satellite images daily show that it is rapidly disintegrating.

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Flour getting harder to get

RAWALPINDI: Despite the government’s efforts to supply flour on controlled price at fair-price shops and trucking points, a flour shortage persists adding to the difficulties of the people.

Imran Khan, a consumer, told Daily Times 20-kg flour bags were unavailable in the market and shopkeepers were selling loose flour at Rs 25 a kg, which means Rs 500 for 20 kg. He said, “What is the point of setting up sale points when people are unable to benefit from them.”

He said it seemed that the shopkeepers had hoarded flour and would sell it at Rs 375 per bag after Eid. He said the government should take up this issue seriously.

Hamid Mehmood, another consumer, said he had noticed that the same faces got flour from trucks every day while most consumers returned home empty-handed. He said these people were agents of shopkeepers who stored bags and sell loose flour.

Mohammad Asif said the government had set up 35 sale points, but it was difficult to get flour from them because of long queues. Miller curses govt: A flourmill owner said the city administration was giving them wheat half their requirement.

He said the government was supplying 28 100-kg wheat bags to every grinding machine against 50 bags in normal times. He said the administration had forced them to produce 10 percent bran and 10 percent fine flour.

He said if a mill had ten grinding machines, it would get 86 bags of Ukraine-imported and 200 bags of local wheat, which was why the flour quality was poor. The mills in Rawalpindi had eight to 18 grinding machines each, he said.

Dealer wants more: Mohammad Hussaain, a dealer, said the government had set up sale points, which were not sufficient and trucks could not cater to needs of the entire population.

He said he could manage to get 100 bags from four to eight mills, while earlier he was supplied 100 to 150 bags from one mill. He said many dealers had left this business.

He said flourmills in the twin cities were producing 96,000 20-kg flour bags daily till last year, which had now reduced to 60,000 bags daily.

Govt sees no shortage: District Food Controller Rohail Butt said there was no shortage of flour in the city as 4,000 bags were returned to flourmills because they were left over at Sunday bazaars and 19 other sale points.

He said flour smuggling had declined because of the government actions. He said people were checked at Pirwadhi, Kohi Noor and Faizabad bus stops besides closed monitoring of the city’s exit and entry points.

He told people to feel free to buy flour from fair price shops. He said the government was not supplying flour bags to shopkeepers because they used to stock them.

World's Soils in Sharp Decline; Global Food Shortage to Follow

The world's soils continue to be degraded at an unprecedented rate that will only exacerbate the current food crisis, scientists are warning.

The current surge in food prices has been blamed on factors such as the diversion of food crops into biofuels production, coupled with poor harvests caused by droughts, floods and pests. But the situation was a long time in coming, experts say, with unexpectedly poor harvests stressing an already weakened food production system.

According to a report by the World Resources Institute, world agricultural production has fallen by one-sixth, and one-fifth of the world's cropland is now considered degraded. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, almost one million square miles are in "consistent significant decline," according to another report by a worldwide agricultural consortium.

This suggests that fixes focused on producing stronger seeds or planting more land are missing the point.

"The first thing to do is to have good soil," said Hans Herren, winner of the World Food Prize. "Even the best seeds can't do anything in sand and gravel."

According to Roger Leakey of Australia's James Cooke University, it is theoretically possible to grow 9,000 pounds of corn per acre in Africa. But yields are closer to 500 pounds per acre "because over the years, their soils have become very infertile and they can't afford to purchase fertilizers."

But Herren noted that even fertilizers are only a short-term solution in a situation where poor farming practices are destroying soil - and not just in Africa.

Pedro Sanchez of Columbia University said that degraded soil is only a symptom of a more fundamental problem with the world's agricultural system. The techniques to feed to world already exist, he said, but are simply not being employed.

"It's very frustrating, especially when you see children dying," he said.

A recent report by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that to solve the agricultural crisis, a need to more local agriculture based on natural techniques is needed.

NYC Trade Center dig exposes Ice Age landscape

Reuters Photo: A U.S. flag flies from a crane over the World Trade Center site September 11,...

NEW YORK - Crews excavating the World Trade Center site this summer for the foundations of a new skyscraper have uncovered features carved into the bedrock by glaciers about 20,000 years ago, including a 40-foot-deep pothole.

Exposing the solid rock beneath at the ground zero site in lower Manhattan is critical for supporting what will be Tower 4 of the new World Trade Center, being built by Silverstein Properties.

"You want to make sure you're not perching something on a ledge," said Anthony Pontecorvo, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, which is working on the project.

While removing the overlying soil is an engineering necessity, the digging has given scientists a rare window into the deep past and formations like the huge pothole.

"There are areas in local parks that have small vertical potholes exposed," Cheryl J. Moss, the senior geologist at Mueser Rutledge, told The New York Times. "But I'm not aware of anything in the city with a whole, self-contained depression on this scale."

Moss and Pontecorvo plan to deliver a lecture about the geology of the site Wednesday at the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center next to the ground zero site.

The reminders of the power of glaciers won't be around for long. The pothole and other features are being covered, filled in or blasted away.

"It's nice to look at, but it's all got to go," said Robert B. Reina, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge.

Damage from Ike could affect coastal ecosystem of Texas for years

· Coastline of Texas under stress
· Higher sea levels from global warming adds to threat
· Texas coast crucial for a wide range of life

Locals stranded by hurricane Ike await helicopter rescue in High Island, Texas. Photograph: Guy Reynolds/Dallas Morning News/AP

It was a violent dose of nature to a coast already hammered by decades of pollution, population growth and habitat loss. As scientists and land managers start to assess the storm's impacts on beaches, dunes and marshes, they are seeing signs of present damage and future worries.

"The impacts are going to be phenomenal," said Jim Sutherlin, superintendent of the Texas parks and wildlife department's 24,250-acre J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area, near Port Arthur. "We're going to take the critters that crawl or walk, and for the full stretch of the coastal zone that got the full impact of the coastal flood, they're just eliminated."

Although big storms are a natural part of any coastline's life story, the upper Gulf Coast of Texas was already under stress from many sources.

Coastal development and subsidence - a drop in the land's surface level as petroleum and groundwater are pumped out - have degraded large areas of marsh. Excessive organic material in coastal waters creates a "dead zone" of almost no oxygen in the upper Texas gulf.

And today's idea of a normal Texas coast could change dramatically in a future with higher sea levels from global warming. Earlier this month, scientists from three American universities concluded in the journal Science that a global sea level rise of 31.5 inches by the year 2100 should be the assumption. The highest conceivable rise, they estimate, is 6.5 feet.

Even the lower figure would put much of the existing Texas coastline permanently under water and would let a hurricane's strongest force reach farther inland. With coastal development, storms and rising seas all chewing away natural defences such as dunes and wetlands, damage from future hurricanes is likely to get worse.

...CONTINUE

Surprise spring snowfalls blanket KZN South Africa

Snow is seen on the N3 Highway north of Pietermaritzburg. (Giordano Stolley, Sapa)

Parts of KwaZulu-Natal were transformed into a "winter wonderland" after snowfalls blanketed several areas of the province.

Temperatures plummeted into the low teens, with residents of Kokstad and Giants Castle waking up to 0C.

Durban experienced its coldest September night in recorded history on Friday night.

Snowfalls were reported in Kokstad, Matatiele, Underberg, Mooi River, Bulwer, Himeville and Nottingham Road.

Several roads in the province were closed and people were advised not to go snow hunting, as they risked becoming stuck in traffic and not being able to keep themselves warm.

The road between Harding and Kokstad was closed for most of yesterday, but has since been reopened.

Weather warning issued
Johannesburg - The South African Weather Service has issued a weather warning of possible heavy rainfall and snowfalls in southern, central and eastern KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Eastern Cape on Saturday.

"Snowfalls are expected over the eastern high ground of the Eastern Cape, as well as the southern and western high ground of KwaZulu-Natal," spokesperson Mkhushulwa Msimang said.

Msimang said heavy snowfalls were expected to persist over the Drakensberg and southern interior of KwaZulu--Natal until sunrise on Sunday.

Transport officials reported on Saturday that certain roads had been closed in Kwazulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape after heavy snowfall.

"Roads are completely closed in Kokstad and people are advised not to go there especially those who go there to see the snow," said spokeswoman for the Kwazulu-Natal transport department Nonkululeko Mbatha.

"If they go there they will be stuck for several hours," she said.

The R612, Ixopo road, portions of Bulwer Road, the road from Underberg leading to Bulwer and Frankly road were all closed.

World's common birds 'declining'

Once a familiar sight and sound, the nightingale is becoming less common (Image: Gareth Peacock)

Enlarge Image

The populations of the world's common birds are declining as a result of continued habitat loss, a global assessment has warned.

The survey by BirdLife International found that 45% of Europe's common birds had seen numbers fall, as had more than 80% of Australia's wading species.

The study's authors said governments were failing to fund their promises to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.

The findings will be presented at the group's World Conference in Argentina.

The State of the World's Birds 2008 report, the first update since 2004, found that common species - ones considered to be familiar in people's everyday lives - were declining in all parts of the world.

In Europe, an analysis of 124 species over a 26-year period revealed that 56 species had declined in 20 countries.

Farmland birds were worst affected, with the number of European turtle-doves (Streptopelia turtur) falling by 79%.

In Africa, birds of prey were experiencing "widespread decline" outside of protected areas. While in Asia, 62% of the continent's migratory water bird species were "declining or already extinct".

Biodiversity barometers

"For decades, people have been focusing their efforts on threatened birds," explained lead editor Ali Stattersfield, BirdLife International's head of science.

Silent spring: Cuckoo numbers are falling (Image: John Carey) We need to be looking at some of the policies and practices that affect our wider landscapes Ali Stattersfield, BirdLife International

"But alongside this, we have been working to try to get a better understanding of what is going on in the countryside as a whole."

By consolidating data from various surveys, the team of researchers were able to identify trends affecting species around the world.

"It tells us that environmental degradation is having a huge impact - not just for birds, but for biodiversity as well," she told BBC News.

While well-known reasons, such as land-use changes and the intensive farming, were causes, Ms Stattersfield said that it was difficult to point the finger of blame at just one activity.

"The reasons are very complex," she explained. "For example, there have been reported declines of migratory species - particularly those on long-distance migrations between Europe and Africa.

"It is not just about understanding what is happening at breeding grounds, but also what is happening at the birds' wintering sites."

She said the findings highlighted the need to tackle conservation in a number of different ways.

"It is not enough to be looking at individual species or individual sites; we need to be looking at some of the policies and practices that affect our wider landscapes."

...CONTINUE

India floods, rains kill 173

An Indian villager walks among the wreckage of her flood damaged home

SHIMLA, India (AFP) — The death toll due to heavy rains and flooding over the weekend across India shot up to 173 with the air force rescuing a revered Tibetan spiritual leader, officials said Sunday.

Most of the casualties were reported from India's most populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh with 110 people dead in rain related accidents, revenue secretary Balwinder Kumar said in state capital Lucknow.

Further north, in the tourist state of Himachal Pradesh, state officials said 46 had died due to heavy rains lashing the state.

In eastern Orissa, 17 people were washed away and 2.4 million people left homeless after four rivers burst their banks and flooded villages, senior official Ajit Kumar Tripathy said Sunday in state capital Bhubaneswar.

In Uttar Pradesh, Kumar said incessant rains and strong winds triggered house collapses which killed many victims.

Further north, rains felled trees and severed power lines in Himachal Pradesh, blocking roads and bridges and cutting off electricity to houses, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said.

Indian air force helicopters, dropping food, medicines and supplies to affected people, also ferried the Karmapa Lama, who heads the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, to safety, Dhumal said.

The Karmapa Lama -- Ugyen Trinley Dorje -- ranks only behind the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama in the Tibetan spiritual hierarchy.

Another helicopter dropped food and other essentials to 45 trekkers including 25 foreigners stranded in the high altitude Lahaul valley, he added.

Sudha Devi, a senior Himachal administration official said at least 150 tourists had been evacuated from the snow covered 13,050 feet (3,977 metres) high Rohtang Pass on Sunday.

Meanwhile, in eastern Orissa state, about 266,000 people were evacuated to safer places after heavy rains and water overflowing from brimming dams inundated large parts of the state, Tripathy said.

"According to initial reports, 1,849 villages in coastal Orissa are under water," he said.

Indian Air Force helicopters dropped food packets to people in the worst affected districts of Cuttack, Puri, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara, he added.

Officials said many of the 17 deaths in the state were caused by the collapse of flimsy homes.

Scientists Behind 'Doomsday Seed Vault' Ready The World's Crops For Climate Change

As climate change is credited as one of the main drivers behind soaring food prices, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is undertaking a major effort to search crop collections - from Azerbaijan to Nigeria - for the traits that could arm agriculture against the impact of future changes. Traits, such as drought resistance in wheat, or salinity tolerance in potato, will become essential as crops around the world have to adapt to new climate conditions.

Climate change is having the most negative impact in the poorest regions of the world, already causing a decrease in yields of most major food crops due to droughts, floods, increasingly salty soils and higher temperatures.

Crop diversity is the raw material needed for improving and adapting food crops to harsher climate conditions and constantly evolving pests and diseases. However, it is disappearing from many of the places where it has been placed for safekeeping - the world's genebanks. Compounding the fact that it is not well conserved is the fact that it is not well understood. A lack of readily available and accurate data on key traits can severely hinder plant breeders' efforts to identify material they can use to breed new varieties best suited for the climates most countries will experience in the coming decades. The support provided by the Global Crop Diversity Trust will not only rescue collections which are at risk, but enable breeders and others to screen collections for important characteristics.

"Our crops must produce more food, on the same amount of land, with less water, and more expensive energy," said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "This, on top of climate change, poses an unprecedented challenge to farming. There is no possible scenario in which we can continue to grow the food we require without crop diversity. Through our grants we seek, as a matter of urgency, to rescue threatened crop collections and better understand and conserve crop diversity."

Through a competitive grants scheme, the Trust will provide funding for projects that screen developing country collections - including wheat, chickpea, rice, barley, lentils, coconut, banana, maize, and sweet potato - for traits that will be essential for breeding climate-ready varieties. These projects involve 21 agricultural research institutions in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Israel, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Syria.

Scientists will be screening chickpea and wheat collections in Pakistan for traits of economic importance for farmers; characterizing rare coconuts in Sri Lanka for traits of drought tolerance and tolerance to other pests and diseases; screening for salinity tolerance in sweet potatoes in Peru; and identifying drought-tolerant bananas in India....CONTINUE

War and Drought Threaten Afghan Food Supply

YAKOWLANG, Afghanistan — A pitiable harvest this year has left small farmers all over central and northern Afghanistan facing hunger, and aid officials are warning of an acute food shortage this winter for nine million Afghans, more than a quarter of the population.

The crisis has been generated by the harshest winter in memory, followed by a drought across much of the country, which come on top of the broader problems of deteriorating security, the accumulated pressure of returning refugees and the effects of rising world food prices.

The failure of the Afghan government and foreign donors to develop the country’s main economic sector, agriculture, has compounded the problems, the officials say. They warn that the food crisis could make an already bad security situation worse.

The British charity Oxfam, which conducted a provisional assessment of conditions in the province of Daykondi, one of the most remote areas of central Afghanistan, has appealed for international assistance before winter sets in. “Time is running out to avert a humanitarian crisis,” it said.

That assessment is echoed by villagers across the broader region, including in Bamian Province. “In all these 30 years of war, we have not had it as bad as this,” said Said Muhammad, a 60-year-old farmer who lives in Yakowlang, in Bamian. “We don’t have enough food for the winter. We will have to go to the towns to look for work.”

Underlying the warnings are growing fears of civil unrest. The mood in the country is darkening amid increasing economic hardship, worsening disorder and a growing disaffection with the government and its foreign backers, particularly over the issue of government corruption.

Returning refugees are already converging on the cities because they cannot manage in the countryside, and they make easy recruits for the Taliban or other groups that want to create instability, said Ashmat Ghani, an opposition politician and tribal leader from Logar Province, south of Kabul, the nation’s capital.

“The lower part of society, when facing hunger, will not wait,” he said. “We could have riots.”

CONTINUE

Meat industry wants to sell engineered animals as human food

FDA to review genetically engineered animals

WASHINGTON - Super Chicken strutted a step closer to the dinner table Thursday.

The government said it will start considering proposals to sell genetically engineered animals as food, a move that could lead to faster-growing fish, cattle that can resist mad cow disease or perhaps heart-healthier eggs laid by a new breed of chickens.

The rules will also apply to drugs and other medical materials from genetically engineered animals, a field with explosive potential.

U.S. supermarkets currently sell no meat from genetically engineered animals. But a Boston-area company called Aqua Bounty Technologies hopes to win approval next year for its faster-growing salmon and make the fish available by 2011. "It tastes just like any other farm-raised salmon," said vice chairman Elliot Entis, who has sampled it.

Reaction from consumer groups was mixed. They welcomed the government's decision to regulate genetically altered animals, but they cautioned that crucial details remain to be spelled out. For example, the Food and Drug Administration does not plan to require that all genetically engineered meat, poultry and fish be labeled as such. It would be labeled only if there was a change in the final product, such as low-cholesterol filet mignon.

"They are talking about pigs that are going to have mouse genes in them, and this is not going to be labeled?" said Jean Halloran, director of food policy for Consumers Union. "We are close to speechless on this." Consumers Union publishes Consumer Reports magazine.

CONTINUE

100s of new creatures found on Australian reefs

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Marine scientists have discovered hundreds of new animal species on reefs in Australian waters, including brilliant soft corals and tiny crustaceans, according to findings released Thursday.

The creatures were found during expeditions run by the Australian chapter of CReefs, a global census of coral reefs that is one of several projects of the Census of Marine Life, an international effort to catalog all life in the oceans.

"People have been working at these places for a long time and still there are literally hundreds and hundreds of new species that no one has ever collected or described," said Julian Caley, a scientist from the Australian Institute of Marine Science who is helping to lead the research.

"So in that sense, it's very significant in that if we don't understand what biodiversity is out there, we don't have much of a chance of protecting it," he said.

Scientists at several Australian museums have begun the complex process of working with the samples for genetic barcoding and taxonomy, the formal system of naming living things. That work is expected to take years, Caley said.

Among the creatures researchers found were about 130 soft corals — also known as octocorals, for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp — that have never been described in scientific literature, and scores of similarly undescribed crustaceans, including tiny shrimp-like animals with claws longer than their bodies.

The 10-year census, scheduled for final publication in 2010, is supported by governments, divisions of the United Nations and private conservation organizations.

The Australian researchers conducted three expeditions, one each in the waters off the Great Barrier Reef's Lizard and Heron islands, and one in the Ningaloo Reef, on Australia's northwest coast. Thousands of samples were collected during the three-week research trips, which took place between April and September.

Researchers plan to explore the three sites annually for the next six years to learn more about soft corals, which are poorly understood, despite making up a large part of the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists are also looking to catalog how many animal species live on Australia's coral reefs, how many are unique to the reefs and how they respond to human disturbance.

Researchers also pegged 36 plastic house-like structures to the ocean floor in various locations around the three sites. Animals are likely to be attracted to the structures and make them their home. Researchers will go back and study the life inside each house over the next few years. The structures will also be placed in reefs in other parts of the world, providing a standardized method for studying marine life internationally, Caley said.

The project marks the first time any group has made a concerted effort to understand the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef, said Ron Johnstone, a marine science professor at the University of Queensland who is familiar with the research.

The scientists' findings could have direct benefits for humans, Johnstone said. Marine life is used in medicines, and the creatures could also provide clues as to how they cope with climate change and pollution — issues people wrangle with as well.

"Some people say, 'Going out and collecting samples — of what value is that?'" he said. "It's a bit like saying we don't know what we have in the shop so we don't know what we can use to survive, and at the same time we don't know what bits of the machine fit together to make it work."

Scientists name 100 new shark and ray species

SYDNEY - Scientists using DNA have catalogued and described 100 new species of sharks and rays in Australian waters, which they said on Thursday would help conservation of the marine animals and aid in climate change monitoring.

More than 90 of the newly named species were identified by scientists in a 1994 book "Sharks and Rays of Australia" but remained scientifically undescribed.

One rare species of carpet shark catalogued was found in the belly of another shark.

The Maugean Skate Zearaja maugeana, a new species from Bathurst and Macquarie Harbours in Tasmania is seen in this handout photo released by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIRO on September 18, 2008. REUTERS/CSIRO/Handout

The new names and descriptions will now feature in a revised 2009 edition of the book by Australia's peak scientific body.

The Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) said its cataloguing of the new species was critical for the management of sharks and rays, which reproduce slowly and are vulnerable to overfishing.

CSIRO scientists said sharks and rays as apex predators play a vital role in the ocean's ecosystem and can be indicators of climate change.

"Their populations are sensitive to small-scale events and can be an indicator of environmental change," CSIRO team leader Peter Last said in a statement announcing the cataloguing.

Some of the new species named include:

* The endangered Maugean Skate shark, closely related to an ancestor from the Gondwanan period in Australia some 80 million years ago, found at the southwest of the island state of Tasmania. It is one of the only skates in the world found in brackish or freshwater and its survival could be affected by climate change, said the scientists.

* The critically endangered gulper shark or the Southern Dogfish which is endemic to the continental shelf off southern Australia.

* The Northern Freshwater Whipray and the Northern River Shark, which grow to over two meters (six feet) in length, and are among the largest freshwater animals in Australia. Until recently these were confused with similar marine species.

Environment group WWF-Australia said the cataloguing of 100 new species of sharks and rays would boost conservation moves to protect the marine animals.

"It is a major scientific breakthrough," said WWF-Australia fisheries manager Peter Trott. "We now need to know what changes in management are needed to conserve these animals."

Trott said confusion between separate species of sharks and rays meant that new, rare or endangered species may be mistaken for more common species and inadvertently taken by fishermen.

"We are literally fishing in the dark when it comes to sharks and rays. In many cases we simply do not know what species we are plucking from Australian waters, Trott said in a statement.

Rare rhinos endangered by loss of habitat

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - South Asia's endangered Great One-horned Rhinoceros is being driven out of its natural habitat in search of food into the hands of illegal poachers, experts said on Thursday.

A meeting of the Asian Rhino Specialist Group in Nepal said that the massive animal's feeding grounds were being invaded by "exotic species" of weeds and wild plants and the rhino could soon run out of natural fodder.

"Grassland is being invaded by weeds and other unwanted plants that are not suitable for rhinos," Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, co-chairman of the group said from the Chitwan National Park, home to 408 rhinos.

"We have to concentrate on how best to control the weeds and for this we have to intensify research."

The endangered animal, whose numbers have been rising in Nepal and India, is found mostly in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, and in southwestern Nepal.

"The weeds and wild plants are an exotic species and how it came we don't know. It is spreading fast in the habitat and we are looking into the reasons now," Shyam Bajimaya, an expert with Nepal's national parks said.

Nepal's Chitwan National Park, located 81 km (51 miles) southwest of Kathmandu, is the second-biggest home for the rhinos after the Kaziranga National Park in the Indian state of Assam, which has 1,855 animals.

The number of rhinos in the Indian park has risen from about 1,200 in 1999, helped by a reduction in poaching, Talukdar said. The rhino population in Chitwan was also on the rise, he added. Continued...

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Scientists Behind 'Doomsday Seed Vault' Ready The World's Crops For Climate Change

Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 17, 2008) — As climate change is credited as one of the main drivers behind soaring food prices, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is undertaking a major effort to search crop collections—from Azerbaijan to Nigeria—for the traits that could arm agriculture against the impact of future changes.

Traits, such as drought resistance in wheat, or salinity tolerance in potato, will become essential as crops around the world have to adapt to new climate conditions.

Climate change is having the most negative impact in the poorest regions of the world, already causing a decrease in yields of most major food crops due to droughts, floods, increasingly salty soils and higher temperatures.

Crop diversity is the raw material needed for improving and adapting food crops to harsher climate conditions and constantly evolving pests and diseases. However, it is disappearing from many of the places where it has been placed for safekeeping—the world's genebanks. Compounding the fact that it is not well conserved is the fact that it is not well understood. A lack of readily available and accurate data on key traits can severely hinder plant breeders' efforts to identify material they can use to breed new varieties best suited for the climates most countries will experience in the coming decades. The support provided by the Global Crop Diversity Trust will not only rescue collections which are at risk, but enable breeders and others to screen collections for important characteristics...CONTINUE

Arctic is set to lose another big chunk of sea ice this year

WASHINGTON — This year will see the second-biggest loss on record of Arctic sea ice — a sign that the area of ice coverage is shrinking at a pace faster than once expected.

The trend also suggests that global warming is likely to increase, polar bear habitat will decline and previously icebound areas could be opened to oil and gas exploration.

Mark Serreze , a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center , said Tuesday that the sea-ice minimum, which will be reached later this month, won't hit last year's record because the amount of daylight is decreasing in the Arctic and a new freeze is beginning.

But the minimum amount of ice at summer's end this year will be near last year's total. In 2007, the extent of Arctic ice was 23 percent lower than the previous record in 2005. That 2007 total, which set a record, was 1.65 million square miles. As of Monday, satellite observations showed 1.78 million square miles.

Arctic sea ice is important because it reflects most sunlight, keeping polar regions cool and producing a cooling effect at lower latitudes. Open water, in contrast, absorbs the sun's energy, and the warm ocean waters mean more ice melting, the National Snow and Ice Data Center says.

If ice is lost, more sun is absorbed, and heat from the ocean is released back to the atmosphere, Serreze said.

The understanding of the impacts of these changes is still in its infancy, Serreze said.

The center's measurements show the ice has declined dramatically during the past 30 years.

"The real issue is what's the long-term trend, and it's negative," said Serreze. He said summer could be ice-free in the Arctic by 2030. Some scientists give it just another decade.

Two years of extreme ice minimums indicate that the low in 2007 wasn't random, said James Overland , a scientist who researches the arctic climate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)....CONTINUE

'Catastrophic' melt threat to polar life

Studies show polar bears are already suffering from the effects of the thinning ice.

Data showing Arctic sea ice may reach its lowest level on record this summer underscores the need for governments to speed up talks on a new climate pact, says the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Observations on ice coverage and thickness show a record low for the second year in a row, continuing a "catastrophic" trend that may threaten polar wildlife and quicken global warming, the WWF said this week.

Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate adviser of the WWF's Arctic programme, said: "If you take reduced ice thickness into account, there is probably less ice overall in the Arctic this year than in any other year since monitoring began.

"This is also the first year that the Northwest Passage over the top of North America, and the Northeast Passage over the top of Russia, are both free of ice."

The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said this month that Arctic sea ice coverage was the second lowest on record, and could break last year's low mark before the season is over. Satellite measurements began in 1979.

Last month, a scientist at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, reported that a chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan broke away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another sign of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier.

Sommerkorn said: "There are already signs that species such as polar bears are experiencing negative effects as climate change erodes the ice platform on which they rely. These changes are also affecting the peoples of the Arctic whose traditional livelihoods depend on healthy ecosystems."

Arctic ice melts in summer and refreezes in winter. But over the years, more of the ice is lost to the sea with less of it recovered in winter. While ice reflects the sun's heat, the open ocean absorbs more heat and the melting accelerates warming in other parts of the world.

"As that ice goes, Arctic waters absorb more heat, adding to global warming," Sommerkorn said.

"This is not just an Arctic problem, it is a global problem, and it demands a global response."

The group said governments must accelerate climate talks to ensure that a new deal to replace the Kyoto treaty can be agreed on at a UN summit next year.

Whales Heard Near New York City

The calls of three whale species have been heard in the waters around New York City for the first time.

Scientists had never listened so intently before. So after installing sound recorders 13 miles from the New York Harbor entrance and off the shores of Fire Island, a team of researchers heard the calls of fin, humpback and North Atlantic right whales.

"These are some of the largest and rarest animals on this planet trying to make a living just a few miles from New York's shores," said Chris Clark, director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The whales were known to migrate through the region. The new information about the seasonal presence of whales will help policymakers develop management plans to protect them, according to a statement released today.

Whales are known to sing complex love songs and to have different dialects that vary regionally. They can hear one another across hundreds, if not thousands, of miles, scientists say, but increasing ship noise may threaten their ability to communicate.

In the New York area, knowing the whales' travel paths will help ship traffic managers avoid whale collisions in area waters. Further, the study will characterize New York waters' acoustic environment and determine whether underwater noises, including shipping, affect the whales.

"With data generated by acoustic monitoring, we can better understand New York's role in the life history of these endangered whales and make more informed conservation decisions," said James Gilmore, chief of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Bureau of Marine Resources. "This is especially important for the survival of right whales."

Acoustic monitoring began in the spring to record the right whales' northward migration from their calving ground off the Florida eastern coast to their feeding grounds off Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And acoustic monitoring has begun for the whales' southern migration in the fall, back to the calving areas. The study will continue through February and is expected to reveal which species occur in New York waters throughout the winter months.

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Cuba says entire sugar crop effected by hurricanes

HAVANA, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Cuba's entire sugar crop was flattened and flooded by Hurricanes Ike and Gustav this month, according to a preliminary government report on the two storms damage to the country, broadcast by state-run television on Monday.

"There were 156,600 hectares of cane flattened and 518,879 flooded." the report said.

Cuba harvested 330,000 hectares of cane during the 2008 harvest, producing almost 1.5 million tonnes of raw sugar.

There are 700,000 hectares devoted to sugar cane in the country.

The harvest is still three months away and flattened cane often recovers with some loss in yield, while flooded cane needs to be drained within two weeks to avoid significant losses.

The report, read on the evening news, did not indicate how much of the flooded area had been drained.

Hurricane Ike passed over the entire island a week ago, followed by 24 to 48 hours of rain and extensive flooding.

Gustav hit the westernmost part of the country the week before. Continued...

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Ike destroys thousands of tons of food, citric fruit in Cuba

HAVANA, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Hurricane Ike destroyed more than 4,000 tons of stored food and 135,000 tons of citric fruit when it hit Cuba, the local press reported on Monday.

Cuban Interior Minister Marino Murillo told the local press that the losses were caused when the roofs of many storage houses were battered by the hurricane.

Hurricane Ike also ruined about 135,000 tons of citric fruit, Cuban Agriculture Minister Maria del Carmen Perez said on Monday.

Perez said the crop of citric fruit was the hardest hit by the hurricane, suffering more losses than the crops of bananas and tobacco.

Earlier, Hurricane Gustav ruined the harvest of citric fruit on Juventud island, one of Cuba's main plantation areas.

The harvest of citric fruit in the Caribbean's largest island has already dropped 50 percent in the past decade.

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike together have caused about 5 billion U.S. dollars in damage, the government said Monday night.

Possible First Photo of Planet Around Sun-Like Star

Astronomers have taken what may the first picture of a planet orbiting a star similar to the sun.

This distant world is giant (about eight times the mass of Jupiter) and lies far out from its star (about 330 times the Earth-Sun distance). But for all the planet's strangeness, its star is quite like our own sun.

Previously, the only photographed extrasolar planets have belonged to tiny, dim stars known as brown dwarfs. And while hundreds of exoplanets have been detected by noting their gravitational tug on their parent stars, it is rare to find one large enough to image directly.

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun," said David Lafrenière, an astronomer at the University of Toronto who led the team that discovered the star. "If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward."

Further study will be needed to prove that the planet is in fact orbiting around the star, as opposed to the possibility, however unlikely, that the two objects just happen to lie in the same area of the sky at roughly the same distance from us.

"Of course it would be premature to say that the object is definitely orbiting this star, but the evidence is extremely compelling," Lafrenière said. "This will be a very intensely studied object for the next few years!"

The researchers used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to glimpse the planet and its star, 1RXS J160929.1-210524, which lies about 500 light-years from Earth. Though the star has about 85 percent the mass of the sun, it is younger than our star. In order to image the far-flung system, the team utilized adaptive optics technology, which uses flexible mirrors to offset the distortion light suffers as it passes through Earth's atmosphere.

The strange planet so far from its parent star is unexpected based on current theories of star and planet formation. For comparison, the farthest planet in our solar system, Neptune, lies only 30 times the Earth-sun distance away from the sun.

"This discovery is yet another reminder of the truly remarkable diversity of worlds out there, and it's a strong hint that nature may have more than one mechanism for producing planetary mass companions to normal stars," said team member Ray Jayawardhana, also of the University of Toronto.

The distant exoplanet, at about 1,800 Kelvin (about 1,500ºC), is also much hotter than our own Jupiter, which has a temperature of about 160 Kelvin (-110ºC).

The team discovered the new planet as part a survey of more than 85 stars in the Upper Scorpius association, a group of young stars formed about 5 million years ago. The researchers have detailed the study in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters and also posted online.

"This discovery certainly has us looking forward to what other surprises nature has in stock for us," said University of Toronto team member Marten van Kerkwijk.

Honeybees Could be Wiped Out in 10 Years

Beekeepers in the United Kingdom have warned that the country's honeybee population could be all but wiped out within 10 years, unless the government allocates £8 million ($16 million) to fund research into identifying and eliminating threats to the industry.

"Beekeeping is still reeling from the varroa mite, which carries a number of viruses and devastated thousands of hives across the country when it reached Britain 10 years ago," said Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeeping Association. "Now there is a real danger that colony collapse disease, which has wiped out 80 per cent of bees in parts of the United States, will appear in this country. Unless we develop effective protection, there could then be massive losses of bees across the country."

Government ministers have said that there is no money available for agricultural research projects.

"The pollinating of farmers' crops carried out by our bees is provided free of charge," Lovett responded. "Over five years, that work raises £800 million for the nation. We are asking for an £8 million research program to save our bees to run for five years. That is 1 percent of the money our bees generate."

Honeybees are critical for the pollination of many commercial food and ingredient crops, contributing an estimated £165 million ($333 million) per year, plus an additional £12 million ($24 million) in honey sales.

The beekeepers say that they are still recovering from the effects of the varroa mite, which affected approximately half of all beehives in the United Kingdom. If the still-fragile bee population is hit with colony collapse disorder, they say, it could mean disaster.

"We have to be prepared for that happening and to have some line of defense," Lovett said. "We need to know what is causing this disease and find ways to combat it so we are not completely exposed when it arrives here."

Most beekeepers believe that the spread of colony collapse to the United Kingdom is inevitable.

In global flu outbreak, who gets saved?

In the event of a global flu outbreak, some government leaders could have higher priority to receive vaccines than infants and toddlers.

Think that's unfair? Morally wrong? Or the right move to keep leadership intact?

The Pima County Health Department wants to know your opinion.

The department, which has been preparing for the possibility of a massive pandemic flu outbreak for more than four years now, is adding a new component to its plan — input from the public.

Department officials held a private meeting and discussion Saturday about the ethics involved in handling an outbreak with about 65 community members, including neighborhood leaders and local activists. At least two ethicists from Tucson hospitals also attended.

The health department is also asking the public at large to help by filling out a questionnaire on its Web site.

It asks respondents to answer such questions as how to rank the types of patients hospitals should admit first in the event of a pandemic — should it be according to who is most sick, or by occupation, first-come first- served, youngest to oldest, by insurance, by who is most likely to improve with care?

Increased awareness about some of those difficult choices is another department goal.

"If people understand what's going on, there's a bigger chance of buy-in, if and when if happens," said Dr. Michelle McDonald, the department's chief medical officer.

"There will be three major ethical issues — short supplies of critical things, restrictions of freedom (as) places will be closed, and there will be personal and community interests to balance."

A pandemic creates unique issues for jurisdictions trying to handle widespread illness in their communities.

Primarily, it means they won't be getting help from other places. It could mean shelves in grocery stores aren't restocked, gas is in short supply, and cities won't be able to operate as normal because of ill employees.

"Many people will be asked to make choices," McDonald said.

The scenario isn't hypothetical. History shows between two and three pandemic flu outbreaks every century, with variations of severity.

The last one occurred in 1968. That outbreak, often called the "Hong Kong flu," resulted in 34,000 deaths in the U.S.

In 1957 and 1958, the "Asian flu" resulted in 70,000 U.S. deaths.

The worst pandemic flu in the last century was the 1918 "Spanish flu," which infected between 30 and 40 percent of the population and resulted in more than a half-million deaths in the United States and between 20 million and 100 million deaths worldwide.

"Is there going to be another pandemic? Yeah, there is absolutely, no question," said Dr. Bob England, director of the Maricopa County Health Department.

"If it gets going, it's going to go very fast. … But panic does not have to happen if you communicate well, tell the truth and give people something rational to do."

Health officials recommend that individuals and families have an emergency plan, including an emergency supply of water and both human and pet food, and a comprehensive first-aid kit.

Tons of drugs dumped into wastewater

Bryant Sears, working in a Teflon suit and wearing goggles and rubber gloves, pulls out leftover medicines and contaminated packing to sort one-by-one at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, May 13, 2008 in Minneapolis. Items are put into separate barrels and bins, depending on their differing disposal standards and methods.

U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America's drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.

These discarded medications are expired, spoiled, over-prescribed or unneeded. Some are simply unused because patients refuse to take them, can't tolerate them or die with nearly full 90-day supplies of multiple prescriptions on their nightstands.

Few of the country's 5,700 hospitals and 45,000 long-term care homes keep data on the pharmaceutical waste they generate. Based on a small sample, though, the AP was able to project an annual national estimate of at least 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging, with no way to separate out the drug volume.

One thing is clear: The massive amount of pharmaceuticals being flushed by the health services industry is aggravating an emerging problem documented by a series of AP investigative stories — the commonplace presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the nation's drinking water supplies, affecting at least 46 million Americans.

Researchers are finding evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs.

The original AP series in March prompted federal and local legislative hearings, brought about calls for mandatory testing and disclosure, and led officials in more than two dozen additional metropolitan areas to analyze their drinking water.

And while most pharmaceutical waste is unmetabolized medicine that is flushed into sewers and waterways through human excretion, the AP examined institutional drug disposal and its dangers because unused drugs add another substantial dimension to the problem.

"Obviously, we're flushing them — which is not ideal," acknowledges Mary Ludlow at White Oak Pharmacy, a Spartanburg, S.C., firm that serves 15 nursing homes and assisted-living residences in the Carolinas.

Such facilities, along with hospitals and hospices, pose distinct challenges because they handle large quantities of powerful and toxic drugs — often more powerful and more toxic than the medications people use at home. Tests of sewage from several hospitals in Paris and Oslo uncovered hormones, antibiotics, heart and skin medicines and pain relievers.

Hospital waste is particularly laden with both germs and antibiotics, says microbiologist Thomas Schwartz at Karlsruhe Research Center in Germany.

The mix is a scary one.

In tests of wastewater retrieved near other European hospitals and one in Davis County, Utah, scientists were able to link drug dumping to virulent antibiotic-resistant germs and genetic mutations that may promote cancers, according to scientific studies reviewed by the AP.

Researchers have focused on cell-poisoning anticancer drugs and fluoroquinolone class antibiotics, like anthrax fighter ciprofloxacin.

At the University of Rouen Medical Center in France, 31 of 38 wastewater samples showed the ability to mutate genes. A Swiss study of hospital wastewater suggested that fluoroquinolone antibiotics also can disfigure bacterial DNA, raising the question of whether such drug concoctions can heighten the risk of cancer in humans.

Pharmacist Boris Jolibois, one of the French researchers at Compiegne Medical Center, believes hospitals should act quickly, even before the effects are well understood. "Something should be done now," he said. "It's just common sense."

Lyman Glacier: Frozen reservoir above Lake Chelan is dying

North Cascade's Lyman Glacier is dying — and it's not the only one

Researcher Mauri Pelto and his son, Ben Pelto, 18, walk in front of the face of the Lyman Glacier during an expedition Aug. 11. Pelto lead a team of climbers working on the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project to study the Lyman Glacier and what used to be the Spider Glacier, now a snow field. The trek went through Spider Meadows, over Spider Gap and onto Lyman Glacier. Also on the trip were field scientist Tom Hammond and field assistant Brad Markle. (World photo/Don Seabrook)

Lyman Glacier, sitting just below 8,459-foot Chiwawa Peak, is dying.

Nearby, Spider Glacier has already passed away. The scientist who pronounced it dead three years ago believes that one-third of the glaciers in the North Cascades — including Lyman — are doomed. ...CONTINUE

Mound of water in front of Hurricane Ike could devastate Galveston

The science behind a storm surge

Carlos Barria / Reuters file

Hurricane Ike, still forming in the Gulf of Mexico, caused floods near Surfside Beach, Texas September 12, 2008. Hurricane Ike closed in on the Texas coast on Friday, pushing a wall of water that weather officials warned could bring certain death to those who did not heed mandatory evacuation orders.

View related photos

As Hurricane Ike races toward Texas, it is pushing a mound of water in front of it that could inundate parts of the Gulf coast with up to 25 feet of water. The surge involves some incredible feats of physics, and in many hurricanes it’s the leading cause of death.

Galveston Island, Texas, destroyed at least once before by a major hurricane in 1900, began to see the Ike-related water creeping up along its beaches Thursday and by Friday, parts of the city of Galveston were flooded by the surge coming in from Galveston Bay.

And, "it's only going to get worse," said Lance Wood, the Science and Operations Officer for the Houston/Galveston National Weather Service (NWS) office.

How it works
As a hurricane travels over the ocean, its strong winds push against the water's surface, causing it to pile up higher than the sea's ordinary level. As the storm approaches land, this pile of water, called storm surge, is pushed ashore.

The growth of a surge depends on wind strength, plus how long the wind blows in one direction. As has been the case with Ike, the surge can build for hours and hours while a storm is still hundreds of miles away.

Surges build gradually as a storm approaches, but when a hurricane makes landfall, the surge can suddenly grow into a towering monster. Storm surge is the main cause of the death and destruction associated with hurricanes; the raging waters can swiftly move in and flood roads and houses and wash away cars, trees and other debris.

Surge along the beach fronts in the Houston/Galveston area had already mounted to 8 feet high early Friday afternoon, Wood said. Projections right now have that surge hitting up to 14 to 16 feet on the Gulf side of the island and 15 to 20 feet on the Bay side.

"There's going to be a lot of water coming at them," Wood said.

Strength and size
Ike is piling up so much ocean water partly because of its strength — it is on the upper end of Category 2 storms (on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which rates hurricanes by their wind speeds) and could become a Category 3 storm sometimes before it makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday morning.

As far as storm surge is concerned though, Ike is effectively a Category 3, NWS storm surge specialist Will Schaffer told LiveScience. To estimate storm surge, forecasters look at the difference in pressure between the outside of the storm and the low at the storm's core; the greater the difference, the higher the surge.

Also a factor in Ike's substantial surge is its massive size. When a hurricane reaches Ike's size, its energy is spread out over a larger area, which in turn spreads the ravaging winds...CONTINUE

Antarctic winter ice gets bigger; Arctic shrinks

OSLO (Reuters) - The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers in what could be an unusual side-effect of global warming, experts said on Friday.

In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall.

At the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice is now close to matching a September 2007 record low at the tail end of the northern summer in a threat to the hunting lifestyles of indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears.

"The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased...at a rate of 0.6 percent per decade" from 1979-2006, said Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

At 19 million sq kms (7.34 million sq mile), it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he said. The average year-round ice extent has risen too.

Some climate skeptics point to the differing trends at the poles as a sign that worries about climate change are exaggerated. However, experts say they can explain the development.

"What's happening is not unexpected...Climate modelers predicted a long time ago that the Arctic would warm fastest and the Antarctic would be stable for a long time," said Ted Maksym, a sea ice specialist at the British Antarctic Survey.

The U.N. Climate Panel says it is at least 90 percent sure that people are stoking global warming -- mainly by burning fossil fuels. But it says each region will react differently. Continued...

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Sea floods Texas island; get out or 'certain death'

Ike shoves waves over the Galveston Seawall. (KRTK)

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Floodwaters surged into Galveston Island neighborhoods Friday morning with the center of Hurricane Ike still more than 200 miles from landfall.

Gulf of Mexico waters wash into a neighborhood on Galveston Island, Texas, on Monday morning.

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Waves washed for blocks inland, the beginning of a storm surge that forecasters warned could reach up to 22 feet and bring "certain death" to anyone who remained in Galveston Bay homes.

Rarely do forecasters use such forceful language.

The last time they did was three years ago as Hurricane Katrina closed in on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Forecasters expect Ike, a Category 2 storm, to strengthen before its center makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday. The storm is so big that it fills most of the Gulf of Mexico. Watch waves wash into Galveston »

Although the weather service reports when a hurricane's center will hit land, it also says that the worst of the storm can hit before or after that.

Roughly 3.5 million people live in the storm's impact zone, according to federal estimates.

The weather service painted a vivid picture in its warning of the destruction it expects: a towering wall of water, possibly up to 22 feet high, crashing over the Galveston Bay shoreline as the brunt of Ike comes ashore. That wall of water could send floodwaters surging into Houston, more than 20 miles inland.

"All neighborhoods ... and possibly entire coastal communities ... will be inundated during the peak storm tide," the weather service warned. "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one- or two-story homes will face certain death."

But farther inland, 4 million Houston-area residents were told to hunker down and stay home, even as government offices and schools prepared to close Friday in anticipation of the hurricane.

"We are only evacuating areas subject to a storm surge," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county's chief executive officer. "Yes, we know you will lose electricity. But you're not in danger of losing your life, so stay put."

Forecasters find Hurricane Ike so intimidating because of the location they expect it to land -- near Galveston Island, just south of Houston. The city of Galveston is on the island.

If that happens -- hurricane tracks are hard to predict and subject to change -- the storm's counter-clockwise rotation would push water into Galveston Bay for hour upon hour, battering sea walls and structures.

The final storm surge, the one that could exceed 20 feet in height, would come as the hurricane's eye crosses the shoreline.

Still, not everyone was heeding the weather service warnings...CONTINUE

Ike, taking up nearly 40 percent of the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 1 million people were ordered to evacuate

HOUSTON - Cars and trucks streamed inland and chemical companies buttoned up their plants Thursday as a gigantic Hurricane Ike took aim at the heart of the U.S. refining industry and threatened to send a wall of water crashing toward Houston and Galveston.

Nearly 1 million people along the Texas coast were ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm, which was expected to strike late Friday or early Saturday. But in a calculated risk aimed at avoiding total gridlock, authorities told most people in Houston — the nation's fourth-largest city — to just hunker down.

The storm is so big, it could inflict a punishing blow even in those areas that do not get a direct hit. Forecasters warned that because of Ike's size and the state's shallow coastal waters, it could produce a surge, or wall of water, 20 feet high, and waves of perhaps 50 feet. It could also dump 10 inches or more of rain.

“It’s a big storm. I cannot overemphasize the danger that is facing us,” Gov. Rick Perry said at a news conference. "It's going to do some substantial damage. It's going to knock out power. It's going to cause massive flooding."

Ike is huge, taking up nearly 40 percent of the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center said tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph extended across more than 510 miles, and hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph stretched for 220 miles. A typical storm has tropical storm-force winds stretching only 300 miles.

Because of its great size, storm surge and gigantic waves are the biggest risk, said Hugh Willoughby, former director of the federal government's hurricane research division. The larger the storm, the longer it hits and the higher waves can build.

Traffic was building on roadways leading away from low-lying areas in Galveston County, and officials urged residents to finish storm preparations quickly. Some gas stations were running out of fuel as residents scurried to leave.

Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas on Thursday ordered a mandatory evacuation for the entire island on which the city sits. An earlier order had covered just the west side of the island, which is unprotected by a seawall.

“This is a very hard call for me to make but our intent is to save lives,” she said. “We believe it is best for people to leave.”

No shelters in Galveston
She said the city of 60,000 — virtually destroyed by a hurricane in 1900 that killed more than 6,000 people and remains the nation’s worst natural disaster — will not open shelters. She advised those who ignore the order to have supplies like food, water and medicine and to secure their homes.

By midday, lines of cars, buses and trucks crowded onto a bridge to leave the island. Others without transportation waited for buses to carry them to hurricane shelters inland.

"I have been through enough storms not to stick around for big ones," Jeff Henning, who left Galveston County with his family for Florida, told msnbc.com. "I am also well prepared for a return as I know the aftermath is what always wears people down long after the exciting winds have left."

Others hunkered down. Henning said he knew of a family who planned to ride out Ike with other boat owners at a marina boathouse.

And Keith Andrews, a shipyard worker, said that “I’m just going to batten down and not worry about it. If the Lord wants you, he’s going to take you anyway.”

Mandatory evacuations were also ordered for tens of thousands of people in low-lying areas in Harris County, where Houston is located.

“We’re not talking about gently rising water but a surge that could come into your home,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief administrator.

Most of the evacuations were limited to sections outside Houston, as well as nearby bayous and Galveston Bay.

Hoping to avoid the traffic gridlock of three years ago, when Hurricane Rita threatened the area, officials urged the 2 million residents of the city itself and 1 million in other areas of the county to remain at home.

"We are still saying: Please shelter in place, or to use the Texas expression, hunker down," said Emmett. "For the vast majority of people who live in our area, stay where you are. The winds will blow and they'll howl and we'll get a lot of rain, but if you lose power and need to leave, you can do that later."

Other evacuation orders were issued for all of Jefferson and Orange counties, an area home to more than 320,000 people between Houston and the Louisiana state line, and part of San Patricio County farther south.

Jefferson and Orange were two of three Southeast Texas counties that also had mandatory evacuations as Hurricane Gustav approached about two weeks ago. The region suffered major damage during Hurricane Rita in September 2005.

On Wednesday, authorities began moving people with special needs by bus to San Antonio, about 190 miles from Houston.

Houston flights disrupted
In Houston, gleaming skyscrapers, the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center lie in areas that could be vulnerable to wind and damaging floodwaters if Ike crashes ashore as a major hurricane.

Flights were also being disrupted. American Airlines is canceling all flights in and out of Houston's Intercontinental airport as of noon Friday and all day Saturday.

Southwest is canceling all flights in and out of Houston's Hobby airport as of Friday morning.

In Tierra Grande, a low-lying rural neighborhood south of Corpus Christi, residents struggled with the cost of evacuation and the strong pull to stay with their homes and animals. Few, if any, appeared to be leaving.

Diana Acevedo said she and her family considered leaving their double-wide trailer, but they had called around and it was too late to find a place to stay. Looking out at a rickety swingset and tricycle in the front yard, Acevedo said they would pick up loose items and perhaps board windows like some of her neighbors.

“I think it’s going to get really bad,” she said. In previous heavy rains, water filled with sewage from flooded septic tanks has lapped near her door, more than two feet off the ground.

About 1 million people live in the coastal counties between Corpus Christi and Galveston.

Worldwide Wheat Shortage?

At one time, the United States government had an emergency supply of grains that was designed to last the entire country three years. Today, most of the grain supply has been given away to 3rd World countries leaving the United States susceptible to a food shortage.

From Bloomberg…

Global wheat production for the marketing year through May will probably reach 603 million tons as consumption rises to 619 million tons, according to the USDA. Demand in India, the most- populous nation after China, is up 16 percent since 2001.

The U.S. is the exporter of last resort as Russia, the third-biggest exporter, and Argentina, the fourth-largest, keep more for themselves. So far this marketing year, U.S. shipments have doubled to Egypt, Iraq and Indonesia, and tripled to the European Union, USDA data show. Pakistan, which imported nothing from the U.S. last year, purchased 150,000 tons.

“There is not enough high-protein wheat to go around, and the last thing a wealthy nation or a centrally planned economy wants to do is run out of wheat,” said William Tierney, executive vice president for John Stewart & Associates, a commodity consultant in Washington.

Three million people displaced by massive flooding in India

The Kosi river, which originates in Nepal, burst a dam last month and unleashed the worst flooding in 50 years. About three million people have been displaced from their homes in Bihar and some 900,000 people have been evacuated to relief camps.

On August 18, heavy rains triggering the bursting of the dam and the massive subsequent flooding in Nepal and Bihar. This dramatic increase in water volume caused the Kosi to change course, severely affecting areas not normally prone to flooding.

Over 300 relief camps have been set up in the flood-hit districts.

Concern's response

The Indian government has set up temporary camps to provide shelter and humanitarian assistance to families displaced by the flooding, but at present they have the capacity to accommodate less than 10 percent of those in need. Large numbers of other displaced families have sought refuge at roadsides, on open ground, or in makeshift camps on their own.

Concern is delivering immediate humanitarian assistance to these people the government has not been able to reach with basic survival items such as shelter, water and sanitation, and food.

Concern is currently providing 6,000 families (30,000 people) with essential relief supplies. In the coming weeks, we hope to reach up to 10,000 families (approximately 50,000 people).

Our highest priorities are to distribute the following to families who have lost everything in the floods:

- Supplementary food rations: The government is expected to provide food rations to the entire flood-affected population in Bihar, but this will take time. In the interim, Concern aims to provide 15-day food rations such as rice and lentils to affected families.

- Temporary shelter

- Household kits including plastic matting, serving plates, cooking utensils, water buckets, etc.

CONTINUE

Farmers fear harvest could be the worst since 1968

Britain is facing its worst harvest for at least 40 years as 30 per cent of the country’s grain lies in waterlogged or sodden ground. Hilary Benn, the Rural Affairs Secretary, is expected to give the go-ahead today for farmers to salvage what is left of their crops by using heavy machinery on wet fields.

European Union rules ban farmers from using combine harvesters on wet land to protect soil quality. Those who flout the ban can be prosecuted. The exemption is expected to last for about three weeks.

The poor harvest is unlikely to lead to a rise in the price of bread, cakes, biscuits and flour, however. Gordon Polson, director of the Federation of Bakers, said that although much of the milling wheat was of a poor quality it could still be used for bread and flour.

He said: “The poorer wheat means it has less protein, but manufacturers can add gluten to ensure the proper quality for making bread. We are not happy and we may still have to import some milling wheat, but no one is talking about price rises for bread.”

The harvest has been most badly affected in the North East, especially Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Co Durham, where the heavy rainfall and flooding have meant that on many farms less than 50 per cent of the wheat has been harvested.

Farmers stand to lose as much as £30,000 each because much of the grain in the soil is suitable only for animal feed. The price of this lower-quality grain has dropped from £120 to £100 a tonne in a month; best milling wheat is valued at £140 to £150 a tonne.

There is also concern about next year’s harvest. Unless farmers clear this year’s crop within the next two weeks many will be unable to prepare the ground and plant new seed...CONTINUE

North American Freshwater Fishes Fading into Extinction

GAINESVILLE, Florida, September 9, 2008 (ENS) - Fishes that once were abundant in North American streams, rivers and lakes are now disappearing, with nearly 40 percent of all species in jeopardy, according to the most detailed assessment of the conservation status of freshwater fishes in the last 20 years.

The report shows that 61 fishes are presumed extinct, and 280 species are classed as endangered. In addition 190 are considered threatened, and 230 fishes are listed as vulnerable to extinction.

An endangered holiday darter from the southeastern United States (Photo by Noel Burkhead courtesy USGS)

The new report, published in the journal "Fisheries," was conducted by a team of scientists from the United States, Canada and Mexico, led by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey. The team examined the status of continental freshwater fishes and those that migrate between rivers and oceans.

"Freshwater fish have continued to decline since the late 1970s, with the primary causes being habitat loss, dwindling range and introduction of non-native species," said Mark Myers, director of the USGS. "In addition, climate change may further affect these fish."

The 700 fishes now listed as imperiled for this report by the Endangered Species Committee of the American Fisheries Society are a 92 percent increase over the 364 listed in the previous 1989 study.

The fish at greatest risk are the salmon and trout of the Pacific Coast and western mountain regions. More than 60 percent of the salmon and trout had at least one population or subspecies in trouble, the report shows.

Also at great risk are minnows, suckers and catfishes throughout the continent; darters in the southeastern United States; and pupfish, livebearers, and goodeids, a large, native fish family in Mexico and the southwestern United States.

Fish families important for sport or commercial fisheries are also vulnerable to extinction. One of the most popular game species in the United States, striped bass, has populations on the list.

Twenty-two percent of sunfishes, a family which includes the well-known species such as black bass, bluegill and rock bass, are listed as at risk.

An endangered Alabama sturgeon from the Mobile River. (Photo courtesy Patrick O'Niel, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources)

The southeastern United States, the mid-Pacific coast, the lower Rio Grande and basins in Mexico that do not drain to the sea are losing their freshwater fish species more quickly than other regions...CONTINUE

Iran battles searing drought across half the country

An Iranian shepherd from the Qashqai tribe grazes his sheep near a dried-up river in Eghlid

EGHLID, Iran (AFP) — According to local legend, Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, abhorred the telling of lies, which he believed to be his people's worst enemy.

It is said that next in line was drought. Little has changed for the modern-day descendants of those who lived 2,500 years ago in what is now Iran.

The historical grave of Cyrus lies not far from the town of Eghlid in the southern Iranian province of Fars. This agricultural city has 11 rivers -- but 10 of them have now run dry.

On the road between Isfahan and Shiraz, Eghlid's altitude of 2,230 meters (7,360 feet) near the Zagros mountains means it should not be short of water. But it is.

Mohammad Gholi Ashiri has small oblong concrete ponds in which he used to breed up to 20 tonnes of trout a year. But his business in one of the forsaken villages in the area has literally dried up.

"We don't have even one litre of water, even for drinking," Ashiri said. Now the 46-year-old ruined father of four also has an insistent bank to deal with because he has been late in repaying his business loans.

"We don't know what to do. There's no way out, and no way to stay," he lamented. "First lying, and then drought. That's what Cyrus the Great warned his people of. In that order!"

Fars, where wheat is the prime product, is one of Iran's 14 provinces -- out of a total of 30 -- officially labelled a drought-stricken region.

Its four million-strong population is accustomed to weather changes including dry spells, but never have they seen anything like this.

Average rainfall is down 68 percent in Fars this year. The situation is so bad that Ayatollah Mohiedin Haeri Shirzai, Friday prayers leader in Shiraz the provincial capital, urged everyone to pray for rain on a certain day in June.

The people of Eghlid have good reason to urge divine intervention -- up to 85 percent of the town's 100,000 population relies on farming and livestock to survive.

According to the local state agriculture organisation, the drought had inflicted losses of more than two billion dollars by July.

"The problem is that in autumn there will be no water for next year," said Mansour Rashidi, a provincial ministry of agriculture expert.

"The underground water table will not be replenished. We will be hit with the lowest amount of water ever because we have used up all the reserves."

Tehran has allocated nearly five billion dollars to fight the drought nationally. Even arch-foe the United States, often referred to in Iran as the Great Satan, is helping out.

Major quakes hit Japan and Indonesia

(CNN) -- A magnitude 6.9 earthquake rattled Japan on Thursday, within minutes of a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in Indonesia, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries from either quake, but both prompted tsunami warnings, although Japan's Meteorological Agency predicted it would be small, about 50 centimeter (20 inches).

The Indonesian quake occurred at exactly 9 a.m. (0000 GMT), the USGS said. Its epicenter was offshore, about 75 miles (120 km) north of Ternate in the province of Moluccas in eastern Indonesia. The quake was strongly felt in Ternate.

The Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysical Department issued a tsunami warning shortly afterward -- standard procedure for a quake of magnitude 6.6 or higher with an epicenter offshore.

The Japanese quake occurred at 9:21 a.m. (0021 GMT). The USGS initially classified its magnitude as a 7.2, but later reduced it.

The quake's epicenter was offshore, about 80 miles (125 km) south-southwest of Kushiro on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and about 21.7 miles (35 km) below the Earth's surface.

The Indonesian quake was much deeper -- about 57.9 miles (93 km). In general, earthquakes centered closer to the Earth's surface produce stronger shaking and can cause more damage than those further underground.

Earthquakes between magnitude 6.0 and 6.9 are considered "strong" by the USGS.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said neither quake posed a Pacific-wide tsunami threat. However, "earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a hundred kilometers of the earthquake epicenter," the administration said.

Global Cooling May Be Under Way

Almanac Draws Results From Solar Activity, Weather Records

Summer has been one of Alaska's coldest

High temperatures this season were 3rd lowest on record

Summer is officially over in Alaska, and if you got out in the sun to enjoy both days of it you were lucky.

Those were the two July days the temperature at the offices of the National Weather Service in Anchorage hit 70 degrees or better.

"Those temperatures occurred at the beginning of the month (of July) and were immediately followed by a long stretch of cool and wet weather.

"With only two days above 70 degrees this year, that sets a new record for the fewest days to reach 70,'' the weather-watching agency reported Friday.

Add to the lack of heat and sunshine what the agency calls "an astonishing 77%" of days colder than normal, and you get the picture.

This summer was every bit as bad as you thought it was.

Gardens didn't grow. Salmon returned late. Bees didn't make honey. Swallows didn't breed.

CONTINUE

Four dead as powerful 6.1 quake hits southern Iran

Iranian warships near Bandar Abbas, where the quake hit

TEHRAN (AFP) — A powerful earthquake jolted southern Iran on Wednesday, killing four people on an island in strategic Gulf waters and destroying some buildings, officials and news reports said.

The US Geological Survey said the 6.1 magnitude quake hit at 1100 GMT about 53 kilometres (33 miles) southwest of the port of Bandar Abbas, which is home to an oil refinery and the country's main naval base.

"So far, four people have been killed and 26 people have been injured," the head of the country's emergency services, Abbas Hassani, was quoted as saying by state television.

The deaths occurred on Qeshm island, which lies just of the Gulf coast from Bandar Abbas in the strategic oil route of the Strait of Hormuz.

"So far we have been conducting rescue operations in about seven villages and we have no estimate of the damage," the television quoted head of the rescue mission of Iran's Red Crescent, Ahmad Esfandiari, as saying.

However, it was not immediately known if any oil facilities in the area were damaged or whether operations had been halted.

The television said the tremor lasted about 30 seconds but was followed by at least 10 aftershocks, the most powerful measuring 4.8 on the Richter Scale.

Yaser Hazbavi, the provincial head of the national disasters office, told the television there was some damage on Qeshm and power cuts on some parts of the island, which is more than twice the size of neighbouring Bahrain and is home to about 100,000 people....CONTINUE

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life.

It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.

While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the Origin of Life in Florence, Italy, last week. The replication isn't wholly autonomous, so it's not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.

"We've made more progress on how the membrane of a protocell could grow and divide," Szostak said in a phone interview. "What we can do now is copy a limited set of simple [genetic] sequences, but we need to be able to copy arbitrary sequences so that sequences could evolve that do something useful."

By doing "something useful" for the cell, these genes would launch the new form of life down the Darwinian evolutionary path similar to the one that our oldest living ancestors must have traveled. Though where selective pressure will lead the new form of life is impossible to know.

CONTINUE

Virus threatens world's biggest wild abalone fishery

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The world's biggest wild abalone fishery, which accounts for 25 percent of the global annual harvest, may be under threat from a destructive virus, Australian officials said.

The ganglioneuritis virus has been detected in two abalone from waters off Australia's southern island state of Tasmania and tests are under way to determine the extent of the threat.

The virus has already devastated the abalone industry in nearby Victoria state on the Australian mainland.

"Our current activities are aimed at trying to determine the location and extent of any disease in the wild so we can develop appropriate control measures," Tasmania's chief veterinary officer Rod Andrewartha said in a statement.

Abalone is a rare and expensive shellfish eaten as a delicacy in parts of Asia and regarded as a symbol of wealth in Chinese society. Tasmania's abalone export industry is worth about A$335 million (US$418 million) a year.

The abalone virus, which affects the nervous system of abalone and has a high mortality rate, was first detected in Australian waters in 2006 off the Victorian coast.

The virus was recently detected in two abalone processed in a plant on Tasmania's southeast coast.

"We are not seeing signs of contamination within the live holding facility that held the two that tested positive," Tasmanian Abalone Council president Greg Woodham told the Mercury newspaper on Wednesday in Hobart, Tasmania.

Divers were gathering samples from wild abalone for scientific testing. Continued...

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Australia being hit by more "extreme waves"

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's vast coastline is increasingly being battered by destructive "extreme waves" driven in part by climate change, scientists said on Wednesday.

Research into wave size changes over the past 45 years showed waves of 3 meters (9.8 feet) in height or more were increasing, hitting Australia's southern coasts as severe storms become more frequent and intense, government experts said.

"Extreme wave conditions are greatest south of the Australian continent, associated with the passage of extra-tropical storms along Australia's southern margin," they said in a report.

Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent, is feeling an accelerated version of global warming, climate scientists say, leading to extreme droughts and sudden severe storms.

The country is vulnerable to shifts in temperature and rainfall because it already has many arid and semi-arid areas, and was recently included by the United Nations in a list of vulnerable climate shift "hotspots".

Average yearly temperatures are projected to increase by as much as 6 degrees Celsius by 2070.

Most Australians live in large coastal cities and towns in the continent's southeast, meaning storm surges and extreme waves will increasingly threaten communities with flooding and severe coastal erosion caused by pounding surf.

Ocean wave measuring buoys off the island state of Tasmania showed "increased wave heights and anticlockwise rotation of wave direction" in response to a shifting south of storms due to climate shift, the report said. Continued...

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'20 million people in China under risk of flooding'

New York, Sept 9 (PTI) Up to 20 million people are at increased risk of flooding and major power shortages in China's Sichuan Basin, an expert on the subject has said The risk from flooding and power shortages could last next few decades or possibly centuries, says Dr Alex Densmore, a geographer from Durham University who had been studying the active faults in Sichuan for the past eight years.

A major earthquake in May had killed nearly 100,000 people.

The biggest risk, he said, is posed by the ongoing landslides, a common occurrence after major earthquakes such as one in May. Landslides cause rocks and sediment to be dumped in the river valleys and this material then moves downstream to settle on river beds.

In some areas, river beds are already two to three metres higher due to the increased amounts of sediment after the earthquake. This means that during heavy rains the rivers have greater potential to burst their banks a risk that will last for decades to centuries, he added.

There is also the potential for build up of sediment in the reservoirs behind the many dams in the area. These reservoirs then become useless for flood control or hydro-electric power generation, Densmore said.

These long-term effects of the earthquake should be considered very carefully by the Chinese authorities, he said.

Many mountain communities, who took the brunt of the disaster, have been relocated and re-housed in the 500 km-wide Sichuan Basin, which is perceived to be a safer area to live. PTI

Chronic wasting disease confirmed in white-tailed deer

It was confirmed on Aug. 25 that a captive white-tailed deer tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease.

Chronic Wasting Disease is a neurological disease which affects deer, elk and moose. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) along with the Michigan Department of Agriculture both confirmed the findings of the deer which tested positive at a privately owned breeding facility in Kent County.

“The disease is a hazardous threat that hunters must take seriously,” said Michigan United Conservation Club President Bill Krepps. “Instead of reacting negatively, now is the time to work together to insulate our deer heard from further spread of this horrible disease.”

According to the DNR, the disease is fatal and infected animals display abnormal behaviors, progressive weight loss and physical debilitation.

Experts believe that the disease is transmitted through infectious, self-multiplying proteins (prions) contained in saliva and other fluids of infected animals.

Potential victims can acquire the disease by direct exposure to infected fluids or from a contaminated environment. Once contaminated, research suggests that soil can remain a source of infection for long periods of time, making chronic wasting a particularly difficult disease to eradicate.

The DNR's response included immediate activation of its Chronic Wasting Disease contingency plan. The plan included a ban on baiting and feeding of deer and elk in Michigan's Lower Peninsula, a ban on transportation of deer and a quarantine of captive cervid facilities. Also, hunters who harvest deer in the department's surveillance "hot zone" in the Kent County townships will be required to participate in a deer check. The ban also applies to feeding for recreational viewing as well as hunting.

“In order to protect our current and future hunting heritage, Michigan hunters must stop baiting and feeding deer to prevent Chronic Wasting Disease and other diseases from not only infecting other animals, but to ensure a proper long-term scientific management of our herd,” Krepps explained.

Deer hunters this fall who take deer from Tyrone, Soldon, Nelson, Sparta, Algoma, Courtland, Alpine, Plainfield, and Cannon townships will be required to bring their deer to a DNR check station. Deer taken in these townships are subject to mandatory deer check.

The disease cannot be detected with live animal tests. As a result, the department will kill and test 300 deer within the “hot zone.” According to the DNR, this response plan is designed to prevent potential spread of the disease.

According to a FAQs sheet released by the DNR, “any regional threat to a healthy deer population is a statewide concern.” The release also stated that dear hunting annually generates more than $500 million and that a healthy deer herd is critical to the state’s economy.

“The proximity of Chronic Wasting Disease to Charlevoix County is to be determined,” said Tim Rice, Wildlife Supervisor of the Gaylord DNR office. “That facility (in Kent County) has sold product to other facilities. Once we find out where they’ve sold to, then we can determine how this affects those areas.”

According to Rice, the disease cannot hurt a human upon consumption of one of these deer. “As far as we know, there isn’t any evidence that it can be transferred to other species,” Rice said.

“We’ve done some testing to determine that it hasn’t spilled over into the free-ranging deer population,” said Rice. “If it has, then it’s a pretty serious issue.”

Deadly virus threatening livestock in Morocco

Livestock like goats, sheep are essential to the livelihoods of millions of North Africans

9 September 2008 – A deadly viral disease is threatening to kill millions of sheep and goats in Morocco, endangering the local economy and neighbouring countries, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.

FAO is helping Morocco deal with the outbreak of peste des petits ruminants (PPR), which is a highly contagious disease among domestic goats and sheep and transmitted through close contact.

So far there are 133 known cases of the disease in 29 provinces of the North African country. But FAO fears that trading in livestock will markedly increase with the onset of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and the celebration of Eid Al-Adha, set for December, causing the outbreak to spiral out of control.

The 17 million sheep and 5 million goat populations in Morocco play an important role in supporting the livelihoods of millions of families.

“These outbreaks can lead to serious economic losses, aggravated by imposed sanitary measures, controls on livestock movement and trade restrictions,” FAO said in a press release.

“In the event that the present scenario evolves to higher mortality, the livelihoods of the affected herders would severely be at risk,” warned FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech.

Mortality rates in infected animals can reach 80 per cent in acute cases and 100 per cent in “super acute” cases with ruminants dying in the first week.

In its acute form the disease is characterized by high fever, discharges from the eyes and nose, sores in the mouth, lesions of the mucous membranes, laboured breathing and diarrhoea.

This is the first ever occurrence of the disease in Morocco, indicating that PPR has now crossed the natural barrier of the Sahara and poses a risk to North Africa.

At the request of Moroccan authorities, FAO have fielded a team to assist with establishing urgent measures to control and limit the spread of the disease, as well as help local authorities create an emergency preparedness plan.

The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth--Maybe

Researchers debate whether Earth will be swallowed by the sun as it expands into a red giant billions of years from now

Overheated: Researchers debate whether Earth will be swallowed up by the sun as it expands to its red giant state billions of years from now.

The future looks bright—maybe too bright. The sun is slowly expanding and brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable. About 7.6 billion years from now, the sun will reach its maximum size as a red giant: its surface will extend beyond Earth’s orbit today by 20 percent and will shine 3,000 times brighter. In its final stage, the sun will collapse into a white dwarf.

Although scientists agree on the sun’s future, they disagree about what will happen to Earth. Since 1924, when British mathematician James Jeans first considered Earth’s fate during the sun’s red giant phase, a bevy of scientists have reached oscillating conclusions. In some scenarios, our planet escapes vaporization; in the latest analyses, however, it does not.

The answer is not straightforward, because although the sun will expand beyond Earth’s orbit, or one astronomical unit (AU), it will lose mass along the way. As a result, Earth should drift outward as the gravitational tug lessens over time. (At its maximum radius of 1.2 AU, the sun will have lost about one third of its mass, compared with its current heft.) In this way, Earth could escape solar envelopment.

But other factors complicate the analysis. Drag on the planet from the sun’s outermost, tenuous layers will cause Earth to drift inward. Smaller forces from the other planets—all in turn reacting to the same reducing, expanding sun—are even more difficult to account for completely.

Earlier this year two teams reported different kinds of calculations indicating that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun. In a calculation that would thrill any college junior studying classical mechanics, Lorenzo Iorio of Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics used perturbation theory. It simplifies analyses by dropping relatively small factors, thereby making complex equations of motions that describe the interactions between the sun and Earth mathematically manageable. Assuming that the sun’s yearly mass loss (currently about one part in 100 trillion) remains small for the duration of its evolution to the red giant phase, Iorio calculates that Earth will move outward at about three millimeters a year, or only 0.0002 AU by the sun’s red giant phase. But at that point the sun will balloon up, in only a million years, to 1.2 AU in radius, thus vaporizing Earth.

Iorio’s paper, submitted to Astrophysics and Space Science, has not yet been peer-reviewed. Several scientists question whether quantities that Iorio assumes are small will indeed remain small throughout the sun’s evolution.

Even if Iorio got his number crunching wrong, he may have the right answer. In an analysis published in the May Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Klaus-Peter Schröder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in England also conclude that Earth is doomed, by using more exact solar models and by considering tidal interactions. As the sun loses mass and expands, its rotation rate must also slow down—physics students learn this relation as the conservation of angular momentum. The slowed rotation causes a tidal bulge on the sun’s surface. The gravity exerted by this bulge pulls Earth inward. With such a consideration, the researchers find that any planet with a present-day orbital radius of less than 1.15 AU will ultimately perish.

Could Earth be saved if someone is still left at home? In a bold piece of astronomical engineering, Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues have proposed nudging Earth with a large asteroid arranged to pass nearby periodically. It could take one billion years to move our planet out to somewhere safe, like the orbit of Mars. Our moon, though, might have to be left behind, and any miscalculation could mean extinction. Needless to say, more study is required.

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'I have never seen anything like it in my life'

Hurricane Ike slams Cuban world heritage site before aiming for Havana

AP

A car is buried under rubble after Hurricane Ike hit Holguin, Cuba, on Monday.

View related photos

HAVANA - Hurricane Ike roared toward Cuba's densely populated capital of fragile historic buildings after forcing 1.2 million people to evacuate, killing at least four and ravaging homes elsewhere on the island nation.

Meanwhile, U.S. residents from Florida to the Texas border with Mexico braced for Ike's next wallop.

The hurricane, which raked the Bahamas and worsened floods in Haiti that have killed at least 331 people, made landfall on eastern Cuba as a terrifying Category 3 hurricane, then weakened Monday as it ran along the length of the Caribbean's largest island.

It was a Category 1 storm Monday afternoon, but forecasters expected it to strengthen again before hitting Louisiana, Texas or northern Mexico this weekend.

It was a Category 1 storm Monday afternoon, but forecasters expected it to strengthen again before hitting Louisiana, Texas or northern Mexico this weekend.

'Boom, boom, boom'
On the narrow streets of Camaguey, falling utility poles crushed cars and the roaring wind transformed buildings of stone and brick into piles of rubble. Colonial columns were toppled and the ornate sculptures on the roofs of centuries-old buildings were smashed in the city, a UNESCO world heritage site.

"I have never seen anything like it in my life. So much force is terrifying," said Olga Alvarez, 70, huddling in her Camaguey living room with her husband and teenage grandson. "We barely slept last night. It was just 'boom, boom, boom.'"

Delia Oliveras, 64, said it was the strongest hurricane her family has experienced. They fled to a covered patio as winds tore the roof from the living room.

"This critter was angry, really angry," she said.

State television reported that Ike killed four people in Cuba — the first storm deaths on the island in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.

1.2 million evacuated
Two men were killed in central Cuba while removing an antenna from a roof. On the island's east, a woman died when her house collapsed on her and a man was killed by a falling tree.

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UN says Ethiopian food shortage now alarming

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. humanitarian office said Monday that food shortages in Ethiopia have reached alarming levels following widespread drought in the country.

Relief organizations are grappling with a "considerable shortage of supplies," with the U.N. World Food Program in need of $136 million for its operation in the Horn of Africa nation, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports "that the food security situation in Ethiopia has deteriorated to alarming levels in the wake of drought conditions throughout much of the country."

Last week, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes visited Ethiopia and said the southeast, scene of a long rebellion, is the most worrying of all the regions affected by severe food shortages. He urged aid agencies to help ensure that Ethiopia's devastating food crisis does not become a famine.

The U.N. says more than four million Ethiopians need emergency assistance and a further eight million need immediate food relief.

Severe floods hit Ethiopia last year, destroying most of the food crops. This year, drought has worsened the situation.

Montas said Monday that flooding in Gambela in southwestern Ethiopia has reportedly displaced nearly 35,000. The World Health Organization has provided emergency drugs and supplies for 10,000 people there, she said.

Global Warming Kills Wyoming Forests

DUBOIS, WYOMING - Millions of trees are dying in the forests surrounding Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. An epidemic of pine, spruce, and Douglas Fir beetles are killing the trees. They're also threatening a system that supports grizzly bears and other wildlife.

Pine Beetles are attacking here in the Union Pass area of the Wind River mountains. Where a lush green forest once stood, an aerial view shows huge patches of red mark dying pines. Most are lodge pole pines. But, the high mountain stands of white bark pine are dying, too in large numbers here.

As a scientist cuts the bark off a tree, he announces, "This is a dead tree. Attacked this year." A group of scientists examine the trees. They find pine beetle tracks under the bark of dead white bark pines, and nearby they find dead beetles. Then, they find beetles and tracks in a big green tree. They call this tree a zombie. While it's needles are green now, they'll be brown soon.

An Entomologist from the University of Montana, Dr. Diana Six said, "We're seeing effects all over the world. We're seeing effects in Mexico, Canada, all over the western U.S." Six explained the beetle populations are exploding because the winters are warmer, and summers are longer and warmer.

"We're seeing the beetles having large effects in an ecosystem where they previously did not." The ecosystem she's describing is the white bark pine system. It supports grizzly bears fattening up for the winter. They eat the fat and protein rich cones red squirrels stash in middens.

Ecologist Dr. Steven Running says global warming is a result of human acitivies creating too much carbon dioxide. Running said, "We are instigating changes in a matter of decades that normally would have occurred over thousands of years."

But, a geologist in Cody says dramatic climate shifts have occurred many times throughout earth's history. Leighton Steward said after much study, "I cannot find evidence that CO2 has been one of the major drivers of climate."

Steward has written a book on his theory, that throughout the eons, CO2 is caused by global warming, and is not the cause of it. He says scientists from several countries have studied ancient ice cores, and found, "That temperatures changed, and several hundred years later, the CO 2 levels changed." But, Dr. Running was one of 600 scientists from around the world on the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their 2007 report.

He warned, "We don't think another hundred years of this will end up with a functional biosphere anymore." The geologist's explanation of climate change can be found the in the newly released book, Fire, Ice, Paradise. The IPCC 2007 report on climate change can be found on the web.

"What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth," UN envoy, Hedi Annabi

Worst storm in 48 years batters Caribbean islands

· Hurricane wrecks 80% of homes in Turks and Caicos
· Call for urgent help as Ike closes in on Cuba

An image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of hurricane Ike over the Turks and Caicos, en route to the Bahamas. Photographer: NOAA/AP

Hurricane Ike was closing in on Cuba last night after damaging 80% of homes on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos, causing fresh misery for a region battered by tropical storms.

Ike, a category 4 storm with winds of up to 135mph, blew off hundreds of roofs and wrecked scores of fishing boats in Turks and Caicos, a British overseas territory.

Thousands of tourists fled the archipelago before the near-direct hit, and residents who stayed hunkered down "just holding on for life", said Michael Misick, the chief minister. "They got hit really, really bad. A lot of people have lost their houses, and we will have to see what we can do to accommodate them."

There were no immediate reports of casualties but the territory would need urgent aid, said Clive Evans, of the British Red Cross. "These islands have not seen storms like this for 48 years."

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that the frigate HMS Iron Duke and support vessel Wave Ruler were on their way to the area to offer disaster relief. The ships had only recently finished offering support in the Cayman Islands, hit by Hurricane Gustav a week ago.

The hurricane centre hit the Bahamas' Great Inagua island before weakening slightly as it bore down on Cuba's northern coast. The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) predicted the storm's eye might hit Havana, a city with many vulnerable old buildings, by Monday night.

Residents in the Cuban capital stocked up on candles and tinned food, workers rushed to protect coffee plants and other crops, and plans were under way to distribute food and cooking oil to disaster areas.

The Foreign Office last night advised against all but essential travel to Cuba.

Authorities at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, on the island's eastern tip, closed beaches and banned cars from roads. The cells holding terrorism suspects were hurricane-proof, said military officials.

Last week's storm wreaked billions of dollars of damage on Cuban agriculture and homes, leading Fidel Castro, the former president, to compare its impact to a nuclear bomb.

The path of the new storm remains difficult to forecast. Several computer projections have Ike restrengthening into a major hurricane and menacing the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines along the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the week.Many residents there are still returning after fleeing Gustav, a storm that in the US failed to deliver the punch it once threatened.

"Our citizens are weary and tired and have spent a lot of money evacuating from Gustav," said Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans. "My expectation this time is it will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav."

Although the threat to Florida Keys appeared to recede, a phased evacuation for residents was carried out yesterday.

Other projections turned Ike west in the Gulf of Mexico towards the Texas-Mexico border, highlighting the lack of confidence in longer-term forecasts.

"It is much too early to anticipate which areas along the Gulf coast could be impacted," said Jamie Rhome, a senior forecaster at the NHC.

Ike brought further devastation in Haiti, killing 48 people and destroying the last bridge into the port of Gonaives, where people are very short of food. The latest casualties brought Haiti's death toll from four tropical storms in less than a month to 306. Although rain stopped by late afternoon, large areas remained vulnerable to flooding because rivers were swollen from last week's tropical storm Hanna.

A trickle of aid in the form of drinking water and high-energy biscuits has not eased the desperation. "What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth," a UN envoy, Hedi Annabi, said after touring Gonaives on Saturday.

Fears grow over platypus numbers

Platypus
Photo: Ryan Osland

IT MIGHT be enshrined on Australia's 20-cent coin, but the platypus is no longer a dime a dozen in parts of Victoria.

Concerns are growing that the platypus is facing "localised extinction" in parts of the Wimmera River after recent population surveys returned grim results.

Despite estimates in 1998 that almost 80 platypuses lived in the Wimmera near the small town of Crowlands, a recent study failed to locate a single specimen in the 20 kilometres of river surveyed.

University of Melbourne platypus expert Elise Furlan, who was involved in the survey, said the severe drought was putting enormous pressure on platypus numbers.

"There are sections of the Wimmera that have dried up, so that obviously restricts the habitat of the platypus," she said.

Water scarcity has also reduced the prevalence of aquatic insects, which make up the bulk of platypuses' diets.

Ms Furlan said there had also been a huge decline in platypus numbers around Melbourne waterways.

Other surveys in the Wimmera region located only one platypus in the nearby MacKenzie River, prompting the local Catchment Management Authority to speculate that the MacKenzie might be the last remaining platypus habitat in the region.

Conservation biologist Melody Serena, of the Australian Platypus Conservancy, said it was difficult to say whether localised extinction was occurring, but there had been evidence in recent years to suggest platypus numbers were declining. She said the population might have "crashed" during the severe drought of 2006. "It is highly likely that many animals died at this time."

Ms Furlan said increased water availability was the obvious panacea for the woes of the platypus, underlining the importance of protecting the environmental flows of Victorian rivers.

"It is essential for platypus survival that we have environmental flows, not only for platypuses but also for invertebrate species," she said.

Toll in Haiti from Ike climbs to 600; Cuba evacuates half-million

Waves hit the waterfront in Baracoa, Cuba

HAVANA (AFP) — Hurricane Ike took aim at Cuba Sunday after leaving 20 people dead in Haiti, where fatalities from a succession of powerful storms in the past few weeks now tops 600.

Ike was downgraded Sunday from a Category Four hurricane to a still potentially devastating Category Three, as Cuba evacuated hundreds of thousands in a frantic bid to evade the storm's fury.

Officials in Haiti meanwhile, continued aid operations in the flood-stricken town of Gonaives, which has borne the brunt of recent flooding and seen untold misery and destruction .

Ike plowed across the low-lying Turks and Caicos overnight as a powerful Category Four storm, causing some injuries and extensive damage on the British territory and tourist haven, Bahamas radio reported.

The hurricane then raked the southeastern Bahamian island of Great Inagua, toppling trees, blowing off roofs, causing an island-wide power failure and forcing many of its one thousand residents to seek refuge in shelters, a resident told AFP by telephone.

With winds decreasing slightly to 120 miles (195 kilometers) per hour, the storm was forecast to roar ashore in eastern Cuba Sunday night as a Category Three "major hurricane" on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.

But the immediate concern was its effect on Haiti , where a humanitarian crisis was unfolding after flooding from Ike and previous storms Hanna and Gustav left around 600 people dead and thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.

With winds near 215 kilometers (135 miles) per hour, the storm's outer bands lashed Haiti's vulnerable northwest coast with torrential rain.

Hundreds of bodies were found in flood-prone Gonaives, a town of 350,000 in northwestern Haiti, after a five-meter (16-foot) wall of water and mud engulfed much of the town. The storm followed on the heels of Hanna, last week's massive storm.

United Nations peacekeepers on Saturday evacuated several thousand residents from Gonaives, a local official said, but thousands more are still awaiting relief.

Some 650,000 Haitians have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to UNICEF.

Officials said 200,000 people have been without food and clean water, many for four days.

At least 20 people were found dead Sunday in Cabaret, 13 of them children, when a torrent of muddy water raged through the village, the region's parliamentarian said.

"What has happened here is unimaginable," deputy Pierre-Gerome Valcine told AFP from Cabaret, 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of the capital Port-Au-Prince.

"Many homes were destroyed in Cabaret, and we have seen some bodies of children in the water," added a journalist for UN radio who spent the night on the roof of his house.

Massive flooding over the past week in the poorest country in the Americas has triggered a humanitarian crisis that was worsening by the day -- and prompted prayers from Pope Benedict XVI.

"I want to remember the dear population of Haiti, greatly distressed in recent days by passing hurricanes," Benedict told pilgrims on the Italian island of Sardinia.

Continuing stormy weather hampered relief efforts Sunday, when heavy rains led to the collapse of a key bridge which severed the only viable land route to Gonaives.

...CONTINUE

Hundreds of thousands flee hurricane in Cuba

Barely a week after Hurricane Gustav devastated western Cuba, the island was battening down the hatches again on Sunday for another killer storm, with more than half-a-million people evacuating Cuba's north-east coast, officials said.

Hurricane Ike, labelled an "extremely dangerous" storm already responsible for at least 20 deaths in heavily flooded Haiti, was on course to barrel into Cuba's north-eastern flank on Sunday night, and authorities were leaving little to chance.

In Camaguey province 225 000 residents evacuated, 150 000 were mobilised in Santiago de Cuba and 108 000 in Holguin, while 120 000 people -- including 13 000 tourists -- took shelter in the western province of Matanzas, near the capital, Havana.

Another 16 000 people evacuated their homes in Guantánamo province, site of a major United States naval base, authorities said, as Ike's outer rain bands began to lash the eastern coast.

The communist government's internationally recognised storm-preparedness was in full effect on Sunday as medical equipment, food and potable water were mobilised, fuel and power generators prepared and homes secured across the country.

Vice-President Jose Ramon Machado, meeting authorities in Holguin, urged people to "carry out the evacuation in an orderly and speedy fashion", and to take steps to "avoid the loss of life".

Ike is raging into the Caribbean from the Atlantic as a category-four storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 215km/h.

Ike "is a danger for all of Cuba's national territory", warned forecaster Jose Rubiera. Cuba's population tops 11-million.

At 6pm GMT on Sunday the centre of the storm was 155km east of Guantánamo, Cuba, the US National Hurricane Centre reported.

Six dead and hundreds homeless as storms rage across Britain

(David Jones/PA)

Watery Lane, in Hereford, lived up to its name after the recent heavy rainfall

The Environment Agency is warning water levels could continue to rise after six people were left dead and hundreds forced from their homes by autumnal storms.

The North East is the region most seriously hit by the weather, although flash floods have also hit parts of Yorkshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Forecasters have predicted the rain will continue to fall in parts of Britain, especially the east coast, but said it would consist of random showers rather than the persistent rain of recent days.

Some areas have suffered a month’s rainfall in 24 hours, with tragic consequences.

In Stroud, Gloucestershire, emergency services had to battle to recover the body of a workman killed in a mud-slide after a trench collapsed in torrential rain. The 27-year-old, from nearby Cheltenham, was buried under the mud and police declared him dead at the scene.

A 17-year-old girl from Thamesmead, in London, died when the 4x4 vehicle she was in overturned and plunged into a swollen river in Powys, mid-Wales, on Friday evening.

The Land Rover Discovery was part of a convoy of off-road enthusiasts attempting to cross a ford near the Llyn Brianne reservoir, but it was swept downstream by flood water. The driver and front-seat passenger managed to escape, but the teenager was trapped in the back. Eventually, the vehicle was towed on to land, where two off-duty paramedics who were on the trip attempted to administer first aid.

The group could not get a mobile phone signal because of the remoteness of the area, so one of the party had to drive for 30 minutes before finding help at a farmhouse.

The girl was airlifted to Bronglais hospital, in Aberystwyth, but died shortly after arriving. The other people in the Land Rover were treated for hypothermia.

In the northeast, a 42-year-old motorcyclist from Sheffield died after hitting a tree branch on the A66 near Darlington.

The weather was also blamed for causing a car accident in which a young couple were killed. Barry Rowe, 29, and Rebecca Hoynes, 30, died after their Subaru estate hit a grass bank and careered off the road in Plymouth, Devon, in heavy rain on Friday.

And North Yorkshire Police said a motorcyclist was killed when he was in collision with a fire engine responding to an emergency call near the village of Wilton, on the A170 between Scarborough and Pickering. Earlier in the day fire crews from North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service had been pumping out homes in the Pickering area after the local beck burst its banks.

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Aid workers race to feed Haitians after Hanna

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) — Authorities fear that the death toll in the flooded city of Gonaives could rise into the hundreds as U.N. peacekeepers and aid groups rush food and water to tens of thousands left hungry by Tropical Storm Hanna.

Officials are still trying to assess the damage, but it is possible that there are several hundred dead, said Godson Orelus, departmental director of Haitian national police for Artibonite region.

"We have not found 500 bodies," he said, referring to reports that he called inaccurate. But officials say at least 163 people across Haiti have died, and powerful Hurricane Ike approached Saturday with the likelihood of more rain for this flooded city.

That could impede aid deliver, recovery of bodies and — with the ground already saturated and rivers overflowing — kill even more people.

In the northern coastal town of Cap-Haitien, authorities were trying to move thousands of people into shelters ahead of Ike, said Father Duken Augustin, a priest who was helping with the effort.

But the town offers only a few school and churches, he said.

"It's going to be hard," he said. "We will try to do what we can...People are really, really, really scared."

Floodwaters that destroyed the majority of the region's crops still remained, Augustin said.

"We have a very bad situation," he said. "Please say a prayer for us."

As U.N. food trucks rumbled through damp streets in Gonaives on Saturday, dozens of children raised their arms and ran after them.

"Hungry! Hungry!" they yelled.

U.N. envoy Hedi Annabi, visiting a shelter where hundreds of people pushed and shoved for water and high-energy biscuits, said relief was trickling in, but that much more was needed.

With Hurricane Ike approaching, the National Hurricane Center in Miami issued a tropical storm warning Saturday for parts of Haiti, including Gonaives. The storm's maximum sustained winds slipped a little Saturday morning, to near 110 mph, but it was expected to regain force over the coming two days.

The U.N. World Food Program said Saturday that successive deadly storms have displaced hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed scores of homes and plantations.

"WFP has first-rate logistics, and this storm system is putting us to the test," said Myrta Kaulard, WFP Representative in Haiti.

The rusty container ship Trois Rivieres, chartered by the WFP, arrived belching white smoke at a remote private port outside the city on Friday. It was guarded by Argentine peacekeepers brandishing assault rifles.

Within hours, the U.N. began distributing high-energy biscuits and water to emergency shelters where at least 40,000 people were marooned and increasingly desperate. Operations were suspended at dusk, considering it too dangerous to work in the city after dark...CONTINUE

Ike forcing millions to flee from the Caribbean to Florida

Florida, Caribbean Eyeing Dangerous Ike

Category 4 Hurricane Slams Turks And Caicos

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Clouds form as the sun sets on the island of Providenciales and Hurricane Ike approaches the Turks and Caicos Islands, Sept. 6, 2008. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

(CBS/AP) "Extremely dangerous" Hurricane Ike grew to fierce Category 4 strength Saturday as it roared on an uncertain path that forced millions from the Caribbean to Florida, and Louisiana to Mexico, to nervously wonder where it would eventually strike.

Preparations stretched more than 1,000 miles as the massive, 135-mph storm took a southwesterly shift that could send it over Cuba near the Florida Keys sometime Monday before heading into the warm open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And once again, a possible target was New Orleans and the already storm-weary U.S. Gulf Coast.

"These storms have a mind of their own," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said after a meeting with mayors and emergency officials. "There are no rules, so what we have to do is be prepared, be smart, vigilant and alert."

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Ike's large eye punched its way late Saturday "near or over" the low-lying British territory of Turks and Caicos, already pummeled for four days this week by Tropical Storm Hanna.

At the airport in Providenciales hours before Ike's approach, Patrick Munroe had hoped to catch a departing flight, but was turned away, even before the airport closed.

"It looks really, really serious," he said. "And I think it's going to be devastating."

In Haiti, authorities tried to move thousands of people into shelters ahead of Ike, still struggling to recover from Hanna. Rescue workers feared Hanna's death toll could rise into the hundreds in the flooded city of Gonaives if Ike dumped more rain from outer storm bands as the storm rumbled nearby.

Hanna did not pack the same punch Saturday while racing up the U.S. Eastern seaboard, but it did cause one traffic accident fatality on Interstate 95 in Maryland. It also brought wind and pelting rain, with some sporadic flooding, all along its trek into New England.

In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Lowell formed late Saturday some 265 miles off Mexico's southwest coast and could become a hurricane by Monday, the hurricane center said. Forecasters said Lowell could unleash several inches of rain on parts of Mexico before drifting away from its coast.

Ike is another matter.

Tens of millions of people in countries spread over a swath of the hurricane zone monitored the trajectory of a storm that had a huge footprint, with tropical storm-force winds stretching up to 140 miles from its eye.

At 11 p.m. EDT, Ike's large eye was near or hovering over the Turks and Caicos.

Ike muscled up from a Category 3 to a Category 4 storm earlier in the day, with some gusts even higher than maximum sustained winds of 135 mph. It was moving toward the southwest at about 15 mph, a course it was expected to continue Sunday before gradually turning to the west toward the Gulf.

Our citizens are weary and they're tired and they have spent a lot of money evacuating .. from Gustav. my expectations this time is, it will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

The storm's outer bands of lashing winds and rains were expected to begin affecting the Southeastern Bahamas overnight and Cuba's government put up hurricane warnings across several provinces.

"It's a very dangerous storm," hurricane center meteorologist Colin McAdie told The Associated Press. "There's going to be some ups and downs, but we expect it to remain a major hurricane over the next couple days."

Tourists were urged to leave the Bahamas, and authorities in the Dominican Republic began evacuating dozens of families from river banks that could flood because of two already overfilled dams....CONTINUE

Heroin Addicted Elephant Home After Rehab

Poachers Captured 4-Year-Old Asian Elephant Using Drug-Laced Bananas

(AP) An Asian elephant that became addicted to heroin at the hands of illegal traders will return home after a three-year rehab program, state media said Thursday.

Xiguang, a 4-year-old male Asian elephant, became addicted after he was captured by smugglers along the Chinese-Myanmar border in March 2005. The traders fed the elephant bananas laced with heroin as bait and to pacify the creature, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

When Xiguang was found two months later along with six other captured elephants in China's southwest, he was suffering from withdrawal and was sent to a protection center in China's tropical Hainan island.

Xiguang received daily methadone injections in doses five times larger than those given to a human and has now fully recovered, Xinhua said.

He is expected to return to the Yunnan Wild Animal Park in the capital of Yunnan province, Kunming, on Saturday.

The Asian elephant is threatened with extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund conservation group, with only 25,600 to 32,750 left in the wild of Asia's tropical forests - fewer than a tenth of the number of wild African elephants.

A diamond in the sky

Click HERE to see animation

6 September 2008
The first images from Rosetta’s OSIRIS imaging system and VIRTIS infrared spectrometer were derived from raw data this morning and have delivered spectacular results.

"Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said Uwe Keller, Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS imaging system from the Max Planck Institut Fuer Sonnensystemforschung, Lindau.

Visible in the image are several small craters on the asteroid, and two huge ones, one of which is 2 km in diameter, indicating that the asteroid must be very old.

The images are 50 to 60 pixels in diameter, enough to characterise the shape and other characteristics of the body of the asteroid.

	Steins in 3-D

Rita Schulz, Rosetta Project Scientist, said, "In the images is a chain of impact craters, which must have formed from recurring impact as the asteroid rotated. The impact may have been caused by a meteoroid stream, or fragments from a shattered small body."

The chain is composed of about 7 craters. To determine the age of the asteroid, a count of the craters on the asteroid’s surface has been started (the more the number of craters, the older the asteroid). So far, 23 craters have been spotted.

From the images, scientists will try and understand why the asteroid is unusually bright, and how fine grains of the surface regolith are. This will tell them more about how the asteroid formed.

Steins in 3-D

Gerhard Schwehm, Mission Manager for Rosetta said, "It looks like a typical asteroid, but it is really fascinating how much we can learn from just the images. This is our first science highlight; we certainly have a lot of promising science ahead of us. I’m already looking forward to encountering our next diamond in the sky, the much bigger Lutetia."


The OSIRIS imaging system's Wide Angle Camera (WAC) worked perfectly through the fly-by.

The OSIRIS team expects that the images that they will retrieve from the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) will be of comparable resolution. This will add to the detailed colour information and hence to knowledge of the surface composition.

Asteroid Steins: A diamond in space

Science team members noted that the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) appears to have switched to safe mode a few minutes before closest approach, but switched back on after a few hours. The software is programmed to switch to safe mode when certain parameter thresholds are crossed to protect the camera. The team will concentrate investigating the reasons for this anomaly once the science data has been analysed.

After analysis of the Rosetta data, Steins will be one of the best-characterised asteroids so far.

New Virtual Telescope Zooms In On Milky Way's Super-massive Black Hole

Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*): The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (Credit: NASA, /CXC, MIT, F.K.Baganoff et al)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2008) — An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The astronomers linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a virtual telescope more than 2,800 miles across that is capable of seeing details more than 1,000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. The cosmic target of the observations was the source known as Sagittarius A* ("A-star"), long thought to mark the position of a black hole whose mass is 4 million times that of the sun. Though Sagittarius A* was discovered three decades ago, the new observations for the first time have an angular resolution, or ability to observe small details, that is matched to the size of the black hole "event horizon" — the region inside of which nothing, including light, can ever escape.

The concept of black holes, objects so dense that their gravitational pull prevents anything including light itself from ever escaping their grasp, has long been hypothesized, but their existence has not yet been proved conclusively. Astronomers study black holes by detecting the light emitted by matter that heats up as it is pulled closer to the event horizon...CONTINUE

Russia backs international cooperation to address asteroid threat

MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the idea of international

MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the idea of international cooperation to deal with the threat of an asteroid collision, the head of the federal space agency said on Friday.

"The problem really exists, and we need to think about how to solve it - naturally through broad international cooperation within the framework of the UN," Anatoly Perminov said in an interview with the Russian daily Krasnaya Zvezda.

He said a Russian radar facility, RF-70, used by the Space Forces, could be useful in dealing with the threat.

Russian scientists earlier suggested nuclear explosive devices are the most effective means of protecting the Earth from possible collisions with space bodies, including comets and asteroids.

Scientists around the world have been seeking ways of protecting the Earth from the threat of dangerous Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Scientists say such collisions pose a threat on average once every 200-1,000 years.

An earlier report by a Moscow scientific conference identified the 99942 Apophis, or Asteroid 2004 MN4, with a diameter of 350 meters, as the Earth's biggest space threat.

In 2029, this NEO will be just 36,000 km (22,400 miles) - closer than orbiting satellites - from the Earth. The planet's gravity could alter the asteroid's path in such a way that it could end up on a collision course with Earth on its next approach in 2036.

The explosion could surpass the famous Tunguska explosion of June 30, 1908, which affected a 2,150 square kilometer (830 sq miles) area of Russia felling over 80 million trees in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia.

Some researchers believe, however, that blowing up NEOs in space contains other dangers and could result in large fragments, which survive any blast, continuing on their collision path with Earth.

They propose a more cautionary approach toward dealing with NEOs, by deflecting them from their collision path toward the Earth.

'Hundreds' killed by Haiti storm

Aerial footage of the aftermath of deadly storm in Haiti

Almost 500 bodies have been found in the port city of Gonaives, Haiti, after floodwaters caused by recent storms receded, according to reports.

Police commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille said 495 bodies had been found and the toll could get higher.

A ship carrying 33 tons of UN aid arrived in Haiti on Friday to help an estimated 600,000 people struggling in the wake of tropical storm Hanna.

The storm is heading for the US, while Hurricane Ike threatens the Bahamas.

See Ike's predicted path

The US National Hurricane Center says Ike is a Category Three hurricane, with winds of up to 185 km/h (115mph).

It is expected to pass near or over the Turks and Caicos Islands and south-eastern Bahamas late on Saturday or early Sunday.

By then it could be a major hurricane, forecasters say.

Tropical storm Hanna made landfall in the US early on Saturday, dropping heavy rain on beaches near the border between North and South Carolina.

Storm warnings are in force along the Atlantic coast from Georgia to New Jersey.

In Haiti, the devastation from the storm in Gonaives has been described as catastrophic.

Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis said her newly-installed government would take the necessary measures to help victims.

Stench of death

Commissioner Dorfeuille told Reuters new agency: "The weather is calm now and we are discovering more bodies. We have found 495 bodies so far and there are 13 people missing.

"The smell of the dead is very unpleasant in Gonaives. The death toll could be even higher."

Hanna dumped massive amounts of rain on the country over four days, blowing down fruit trees and swamping tin-roofed houses.

The port city of Gonaives bore the brunt of the storm, forcing thousands of people to seek shelter on rooftops and balconies as flood waters rose.

The UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Haiti, Joel Boutrioue, told the BBC it was still difficult to get aid to thousands of people. Roads are cut off and access to some areas is only possible by air - which is limited by the available number of helicopters.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has also launched an appeal, asking for $3.4m in aid.

Haiti was first drenched by Tropical Storm Fay, before Hurricane Gustav wreaked havoc last week, with torrential rainfall over heavily deforested and hilly terrain causing floods and mudslides.

Earlier, Hanna was also blamed for two deaths in Puerto Rico.

In the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, there have been no reports of major damage.

However, preparations are under way for the arrival of Hurricane Ike.

"The ground is saturated and some of the dams in the south-east region are fairly close to their maximum capacity," said meteorological official Gloria Ceballos.

Civil defence director Colonel Juan Manuel Mendez said Dominican troops had been put on alert.

Feds warn climate change could harm giant sequoias

Federal researchers warned Thursday that warming temperatures could soon cause California's beloved giant sequoia trees to die off more quickly, so forest managers must start considering the impacts of climate change and a longer, harsher wildfire season.

Hot, dry weather over the last two decades already has helped to kill an unusual number of old-growth pine and fir trees growing in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks, according to recent research from the U.S. Geological Survey.

In the next decade, climate change also could start interfering with the giant sequoias' ability to sprout new seedlings, said Nathan Stephenson, one of several scientists speaking at an interagency symposium in Visalia, a small city at the base of the towering Sierra Nevada mountains.

"The first effects of climate change that we're likely to see is that the giant sequoias will have trouble reproducing because their root systems don't work as well when temperatures warm," said Nathan Stephenson, a research ecologist with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center, whose desk sits just a few miles from General Sherman, the planet's largest living tree. "After that, I wouldn't be surprised if in 30 years we see their death rates go up."

Sequoiadendron giganteum, an inland cousin to the tall California coast redwood, can grow to be more than 2,900 years old and bulk up to more than 36 feet in diameter.

Stephenson was among a team of tree demographers who monitored the health of pines and firs growing in the two southern Sierra Nevada parks from 1982 to 2004. As both temperatures and summer droughts increased over that period, he found those trees' normal death rate more than doubled, and the stands became more vulnerable to attacks from insects or fungus, he said.

While those species have a faster life cycle than the ancient sequoias, scientists say the mortality rates can help predict what may happen to the massive organisms as temperatures are predicted to increase an average of 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit statewide by the end of the century.

"We've got a lot of our most cherished species at stake," said Constance Millar, a senior research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. "Rather than just managing forests for the plants we see growing there today, we're now having to look forward to think about what might thrive there in 100 years."

Overpopulation could be people, planet problem

(CNN) -- By the year 2050, China will no longer be the most populous country in the world.

India will see its population grow by 700 million people by 2050, the U.S. Census bureau estimates.

That distinction will pass to India, where more than 1.8 billion people could be competing for their country's resources, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base.

The 2007 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations Population Division set China's current population at around 1.3 billion people, and India's at around 1.1 billion. If population continues to grow at the estimated rate, such rapid growth in India between now and mid-century could lead to overpopulation and an uncertain future for the environment and the people living there.

And while organizations like the Population Institute and the United Nations Population Fund are working to promote the human rights and environmental consequences of overpopulation, not everyone views the newest population estimates with pessimism.

"Nothing ever continues at its present rate, neither the stock market nor population growth," said Doug Allen, the dean of the school of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and an expert in the history of cities and urban design, which he's taught for more than 31 years.

"There is a substantial body of evidence that the world population will flatten out in about 30 years," he said. "Built into that model would be an assumption that more of the world's population will become urban, and as such the population will begin to decline."

Citing historical evidence of falling birthrates in urban populations, Allen looks to Italy as a current example of the phenomenon.

"Italy right now [is] not at a point where it can sustain its current level. And I don't think that's because people in Italy have suddenly become aware of the need to conserve resources. I think it has more to do with decisions that are made by families on the margin not to have as many children."

Consequences of overpopulation...CONTINUE

Ike ignites into 'extremely dangerous' Category 4 hurricane

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Ike grew from a Category 1 into a menacing Category 4 storm in about six hours Wednesday as it fed on the warm waters of Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center said.

An infrared image from a NOAA satellite shows Ike swirling in the Atlantic on Wednesday night.

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more photos »

"Ike is an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane" with 135-mph sustained winds, the center said in its 11 p.m. ET advisory.

Although it is likely to lose some strength during the next few days, Ike is forecast to regain Category 4 status by Monday, the center said.

"It is too early to determine what, if any, land areas might be affected by Ike," the hurricane center said.

But the center's potential four- to five-day track for Ike puts it anywhere from north of Jamaica to the coast of South Florida on Monday. iReport.com: Are you in Ike's path?

At 11 p.m. ET Monday, Ike was moving west-northwest through the Atlantic Ocean. The storm will be over open water for two days, forecasters said.

Earlier Wednesday, Ike intensified into the fifth hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season when its winds reached 80 mph.

But before Ike can reach into the Caribbean or threaten Florida, Tropical Storm Hanna was getting more organized in the Bahamas, according to the hurricane center.

At 2 a.m., Hanna was about 325 miles east-southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas, with winds of 65 mph.

CONTINUE

Citrus Crops in U.S Under Siege From Unknown Bacterium

Citrus greening is blazing through the Florida citrus groves like wildfire. Scientists don't know how long it will take to find a treatment or cure for this contagious bacterial disease. One scenario projects that within nine to ten years, all the citrus trees currently in the ground will be dead.

Citrus greening, caused by a bacterium yet unnamed, is one of the most serious citrus diseases in the world, destroying the economic value of the fruit while compromising the tree. The disease has significantly reduced citrus output in Asia, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and Brazil. Now trees grown in the U.S. are in jeopardy.

Growers describe the disease as being much worse than citrus canker which has already killed over 4,000,000 trees. Currently, there are 30 counties in Florida quarantined for citrus greening. Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam, as well as 32 counties in Texas are quarantined for the Asian citrus psyllid, one of the two species of insects spreading the bacterium.

"This is as bad as it gets," said the manager of a 4,000 acre Florida orange grove in a recent press release. There is no current cure for infected trees. In parts of the world where greening is epidemic, citrus trees decline and die within a few years.
The disease was first detected in the U.S. in 2005, when it appeared on pummelo leaves and fruit. Since then, citrus greening has spread through most of central Florida.

In April, 2008 the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced findings from a summit held in December, 2007 between federal, state and industry leaders to determine how to defend America's citrus crop against the disease. The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service purposed the development of a national plan that will result in a coordinated and holistic approach for targeting the pests. The agency will also work with key federal and state citrus health experts and industry leaders to create working groups that will gather information and help address the critical issues identified at the summit. However, these working groups will have no direct influence over Federal and State appropriations or regulatory activities.

In March, 2007 the Murraya paniculata, commonly known as orange jasmine or mock orange, was placed on the hot list of plants that serve as hosts for citrus greening by the Florida Department of Agriculture. This is an ornamental plant native to South and Southeast Asia, used throughout Florida as a shrub.

In Florida the Citrus Production Research Advisory Council is concerned that the citrus juice industry will not be able to maintain enough productive acres to support the capital invested in the processing and packing plants. Experts have suggested that the minimum tree acreage necessary to keep the industry viable is 500,000. The productive acreage in the 2006-07 season was 554,000.

According to a Florida plant virology expert, researchers have not found any plants that are resistant to the infectious bacterium. He sees the insertion of greening-resistant genes into citrus as the most promising solution.

Look for the loss of the Florida citrus crop to further exacerbate the shrinkage of food crops during a time of increasing worldwide demand and crisis, signaling another leg up in the spiraling of food prices. Solutions for this devastating problem may result in the addition of another category of GMO food, as well as the falling of more huge amounts of farmland into the ownership or control of the federal government.