Kaemi, the fifth typhoon of the year, was predicted to land on Fujian between Xiamen and Fuqing at noon or at dusk Tuesday after raking Taiwan with heavy rains and strong winds.

As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, the eye of Kaemi, was located at 135 km southeast of Xiamen and was moving northwestward at around 20 km per hour, according to the provincial observatory.

Heavy rain and winds with a speed of 117 km per hour are sweeping across the coastal province and the provincial flood control and drought relief office has sent a dozen of task forces to mountainous counties to organize anti-typhoon work.

Three thousand armed police have been stationed in Fujian, ready to launch rescue and relief operations when the typhoon comes.

Kaemi was estimated to linger in Fujian for about 24 hours before it enters the neighboring province of Jiangxi on Wednesday afternoon or night, said a local meteorologist.

China had been frequently stricken by typhoons since June this year, causing heavy casualties and huge economic losses. The bypast Typhoon Bilis alone has so far claimed more than 600 lives in Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The acting head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' office in Pyongyang also told The Associated Press that the North Korean government had no plans to launch an international appeal for help after the disaster caused by heavy rains earlier this month.

"The government has made it very clear that we are not allowed to make an international appeal for support," John Bales said by telephone from Pyongyang. "They feel they don't need it, that they can manage with what they've got themselves."

The casualty figures were only for counties where the International Red Cross is working along with its national counterpart and didn't cover all affected areas, Bales said, meaning the death toll was expected to rise.

North Korea's official media said last week that the disaster had left "hundreds" of people dead or missing, without giving exact casualty figures.

The high water left at least 12,585 families homeless, and the Red Cross is assisting 4,950 of those most in need by providing blankets, water containers, kitchen supplies and plastic sheeting, Bales said.

California authorities warned that the eighth day of the heat wave could drive demand for electricity to an all-time high.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger directed state agencies to reduce electricity use by 25 per cent and turn off unnecessary equipment. He urged local and municipal governments and universities to do the same.

Some businesses cut their power usage under a program that grants them lower rates if they agree to conserve during a crisis.

'Stage-one' emergency

State energy managers issued a "stage one" emergency, warning they were being forced to dip into reserve supplies to keep up with the demand for power.

"We're not sure we can go as high as the demand is looking like today," said Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's electrical grid. "It's going to be moment-to-moment through the afternoon."

Rolling blackouts were possible later in the day, said ISO president Yakout Mansour.

Monday's forecast called for high temperatures in central and Northern California of 43 C. In Southern California's Woodland Hills, the temperature was expected to reach 41 C. No relief was expected until at least midweek.

Authorities were looking into at least nine deaths in the scorched Central Valley that may have been related to the heat.

Heat-related stress

Among the victims was a Stockton nursing home patient who died from heat-related stress on Sunday after the Beverly Healthcare Center's air conditioning gave out, police spokesman Pete Smith said.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses lost power in California on Sunday because of high temperatures and heavy electricity use that caused transformers and other equipment to overheat.

Some 50,000 customers in Northern California still were without electricity, including 35,000 in San Jose and the East Bay area around Oakland, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. About 20,000 Los Angeles customers also remained without electricity.

Two die in Phoenix

In Arizona, heat was believed to have contributed to the deaths of two homeless men over the weekend.

The deaths came during three days of record-breaking temperatures in Phoenix. The temperature soared to 45 C on Sunday, breaking the record of 44 C set in 1906.

In Missouri, more than 200,000 homes and businesses in St. Louis were still without electricity Monday, down from the more than a half-million that were left in the dark last week after strong storms knocked down homes, buildings and businesses.

Ameren Corp. vice-president Richard Mark said Monday that 90 per cent of those without power could have the lights back on by Tuesday, with the rest expected to be back up by Wednesday.

Customers frustrated

The power company has been running TV commercials asking people to be patient. Some 4,000 utility workers from as far away as Arizona are restoring power around the clock, but many customers expressed frustration.

"You're supposed to have a backup plan in case something like this happens," said Dana Moorhead, who had no power Monday. "All my food's gone bad. Just going home is depressing."

New Yorkers in the dark

In New York City, thousands of Queens residents were facing their second week without power because of a blackout that at one point affected 25,000 homes.

By Monday morning, electricity had been restored to about 22,000 of those homes, buildings and businesses, Consolidated Edison said.

The blackout has devastated the inventories of ice cream parlours, bodegas, groceries, butcher shops, fish mongers and restaurants. City officials estimated that at least 750 businesses were affected with losses that could reach into the millions of dollars.

Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and scientists from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes in the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara channel -- called Shane Seep -- near an area known as the Coal Oil Point seep field. The blowout sounded like a freight train, according to the divers.

Atmospheric methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere, according to the study's authors, all from UC Santa Barbara.

"Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now," said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout." Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.

Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane "cloud" that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.

Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers.

The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.

Co-author Bruce Luyendyk, professor of marine geophysics and geological sciences, explained that, to understand the significance of this event (which occurred in 2002), the UCSB research team turned to a numerical, bubble-propagation model. With the model, they estimated methane loss to the ocean during the upward travel of the bubble plume.

The results showed that for this shallow seep, loss would have been approximately one percent. Virtually all the methane, 99 percent of it, was transported to the atmosphere from this shallow seep during the blowout. Next, the scientists used the model to estimate methane loss for a similar size blowout at much greater depth, 250 meters. Again, the model results showed that almost all the methane would be transported up to the atmosphere.

Over geologic time scales, global climate has cycled between warmer, interglacial periods and cooler, glacial periods. Many aspects of the forces underlying these dramatic changes remain unknown. Looking at past changes is highly relevant to understanding future climate changes, particularly given the large increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere due to historically recent human activities such as burning fossil fuels.

One hypothesis, called the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis, developed by James Kennett, professor of geological sciences at UCSB, proposes that past shifts from glacial to interglacial periods were caused by a massive decomposition of the marine methane hydrate deposits.

Methane hydrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure, called a clathrate hydrate. According to Kennett's hypothesis, climatic destabilization would cause a sharp increase in atmospheric methane -- thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming. This process may threaten the current climate, according to the researchers.

Warmer ocean temperatures from current global climate change is likely to release methane currently trapped in vast hydrate deposits on the continental shelves. However, consumption of methane by microbes in the deep sea prevents methane gas released from hydrates from reaching the ocean surface and affecting the atmosphere.

Bubbles provide a highly efficient mechanism for transporting methane and have been observed rising from many different hydrate deposits around the world. If these bubbles escape singly, most or all of their methane would dissolve into the deep-sea and never reach the atmosphere.

If instead, they escape in a dense bubble plume, or in catastrophic blowout plumes, such as the one studied by UCSB researchers, then much of the methane could reach the atmosphere. Blowout seepage could explain how methane from hydrates could reach the atmosphere, abruptly triggering global warming.

Thus, these first-ever quantitative measurements of a seep blowout and the results from the numerical model demonstrate a mechanism by which methane released from hydrates can reach the atmosphere. Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.

The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.

Norman King, an epidemiologist with the Montreal Health Department, says ragweed's summertime reign used to last 40 days. It's now about 60.

"It [the allergy season] appears to be getting worse in terms of the length of the growing season," said King.

The Health Department estimates that 10 per cent of Quebec's population suffers from allergies caused by ragweed. The symptoms range from itchy, red eyes and a scratchy throat, to sneezing and breathing difficulties.

Many turn to antihistamines for relief, but the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro is opting for a more hands-on approach.

Officials organized a ragweed pulling event Monday in one of the community's most popular outdoor parks, Riverdale Parc. As an incentive, those willing to volunteer their time to pull weeds were eligible to win a prize.

"The people that would be coming in with ragweed in the bag, we'll ask them to register their name and then after that we'll raffle some door prizes," said Bert Ward, a city councillor for Pierrefonds-Roxboro.

The boroughs that make up Montreal are responsible for controlling ragweed on public property, but private property owners are also expected to do their bit and run the risk of being fined if they don't.

"We could send a warning ticket, then after that we send court papers and say, 'OK, fine now you have to pay a fine,'" Ward said.

The councillor said Pierrefonds-Roxboro will soon toughen its bylaw to crack down on the prolific ragweed problem.

Health officials say one ragweed plant can produce more than 3,000 seeds. Those seeds have the potential to create as many as 600 plants the next year.

Officials say pulling the plant out by its roots and burning it is the best way to control the problem.

The birds, with their distinctive black Mohican-style plumage and long, downward-curved red bills, were once revered by pharaohs and were found throughout the Middle East, northern Africa and the European Alps.

They are now classified as critically endangered, the highest level of threat, by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Until four years ago the species was thought to be extinct in Syria. The only other wild population is in Morocco.

"Without this tracking project, the bird would have been consigned to history and hieroglyphics," Ibrahim Khader, head of BirdLife Middle East, said in the statement.

"We knew they were in Palmyra because of reports from Bedouin nomads and local hunters."

Scientists from BirdLife and the RSPB tagged the three ibis, named Zenobia, Sultan and Salam, in southeast Syria's Palmyra region, hoping to track them when they begin their annual migration this month to discover where they breed.

"Tracking the birds and finding their wintering sites may be the last chance to save them," RSPB scientist Ken Smith said. "We won't be able to help them until we know where they go and the threats and pressures they are facing."