Tornado Kills At Least Seven In North Carolina Reuters 17/11/2006 A tornado ripped through a North Carolina trailer park on Thursday, killing at least seven people as it tore mobile homes off their foundations and flipped cars into the air, officials said. Four people were missing, according to North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, and 20 people with storm-related injuries were taken to hospitals after the twister splintered the mobile homes just west of the town of Riegelwood, North Carolina, and left a trail of debris and strewn clothing. Kip Godwin, Columbus County commission chairman, told Reuters the death toll of seven could rise as emergency teams searched the area for other casualties, who might have been flung into neighboring woods by the fierce windstorm. "It was just like a war zone as you would imagine, cars on top of cars, cars on top of houses, people's clothing everywhere," County Commissioner Sammie Jacobs said by telephone. "I noticed a couple of bodies were in a ditch." Easley sent North Carolina's emergency response team to the area and told a news conference up to 40 homes were destroyed. Up to 20,000 customers lost power, two North Carolina utility companies said. Jennifer Long, director of the Columbus County tourism board, said the tornado touched down about 7 a.m. and an emergency shelter had been set up for people who lost their homes. The tornado was created by a storm system that caused havoc across large parts of the South on Wednesday and early on Thursday. Media reports said one person died on Wednesday in Louisiana. In a separate tornado incident, an elderly man was injured in Iredell County in North Carolina overnight, the Red Cross said.

Scientists: Arctic getting warmer, melting POSTED: 1435 GMT (2235 HKT), November 17, 2006 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Signs of warming continue in the Arctic with a decline in sea ice, an increase in shrubs growing on the tundra and rising worries about the Greenland ice sheet. "There have been regional warming periods before. Now we're seeing Arctic-wide changes," James Overland, an oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Washington state, said Thursday. For each of the last five years it was at least 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above average over the entire Arctic over the entire year, he said. The new "State of the Arctic" analysis, released by the U.S. government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also reports an increase in northward movement of warmer water through the Bering Strait in 2001-2004, which might be a factor in continuing reduction of sea ice. During that time there were record lows in sea ice coverage in the region, Overland said. This year there was more normal coverage in the Bering area but a record low on the Atlantic side of the Arctic. In the past when such a shift occurred, there would have been no net loss of ice overall, just a change in where there was a smaller amount, but now there is both the shift and an overall net loss of ice, he said. Indeed, the report said Arctic sea ice coverage last March was the lowest in winter since measurements by satellite began. Jacqueline A. Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in New Hampshire, said the sea ice decline is now being observed in both winter and summer. The study was designed to assess the overall impact of climate change in the Arctic and will be updated annually. It was compiled by researchers from the United States, Canada France, Germany, Poland, Norway, Sweden and Russia, she said. In addition, 2007 has been designated the International Year of the Arctic and that will be marked by intense scientific study of the region. There have been many changes over the Arctic land areas also, said Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a professor at the geophysical institute of the University of Alaska. These include changes in vegetation, river discharge into the Arctic Ocean, glaciers and permafrost. The tundra is becoming greener with the growth of more shrubs, he said, which is causing problems in some areas as herds of reindeer migrate. At the same time, there is some decrease in the greening of the northern forest areas, probably due to drought. The glaciers are continuing to shrink and river discharge into the Arctic Ocean is rising, Romanovsky said. There has been a significant warming of the permafrost over the last 30 years, he said. Much of the damage to the permafrost soil can be blamed on human construction activities and fires, he said, but in many areas this frozen ground is close to the melting point and could soon begin to thaw. Overland said the changes are affecting wildlife in the Arctic, with those living in the middle levels of the ocean, like pollock, seeming to do well, while those on the surface ice or the sea floor, such as walrus or crabs, not coping so well. "We're seeing a lot of indicators of climate change in the Arctic, and that may be an indicator for change in other parts of the world," he said. Most of the heating from sun comes to the equator and subequatorial regions, and a lot of heat leaves by radiation from the Arctic, he explained. "The temperature difference between the Arctic and equator drives all of our weather," Overland said. If the Arctic should warm up and that difference be reduced, weather could change, though people remain unsure what the changes would be.

Oil slides to 17-month low near $55 By Simon Webb Reuters Fri Nov 17, 2006 LONDON - Oil fell toward $55 on Friday, hitting its lowest level since mid-2005 driven by fund selling across commodity markets on concern of an economic slowdown in the world's largest energy consumer the United States. Oil drew further downward momentum from high U.S. oil inventories and ahead of the expiry of the front-month U.S. crude contract at the close of trade on Friday. U.S. crude was down $1.01 at $55.25 a barrel at 1327 GMT after hitting its lowest level since June 14 last year at $54.86. The price has fallen over 29 percent from the record of $78.40 in July. London Brent crude was 48 cents lower at $58.06. "There is rising concern that we could be going into a U.S. economic slowdown," said Rick Mueller, senior oil analyst at consultancy ESAI. "This fall also speaks of a well supplied crude market and a warmer outlook in the U.S., and with those conditions maybe the market is starting to wake up to the fact that prices shouldn't be near $60." Base metals also slid on concern that if the world's largest economy slows, global demand for raw materials would also suffer. London copper prices slid to their lowest levels since June on Friday. U.S. industrial output data for October on Thursday was weak, showing signs of a cooling economy. Oil markets have traded in a roughly $58-$62 barrel range for around six weeks, the longest period of range-bound trading since the same time a year ago. While the front-month U.S. contract for December was well below that level on Friday, the second-month futures contract for oil in January was still trading near $58. That contract will become the benchmark on Monday. "We really can't ignore the fact that it is contract expiry," said Mueller. "As things stand, once that contract is off the board, we'll be back where we were on Monday." Still, some traders say prices may break below the band, dragged down by ample stocks, a relatively mild start to the U.S. winter and doubts about the ability of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to enforce output cuts agreed from November 1. Lower oil prices have spurred product consumption, BUT warmer than usual weather has sapped heating oil demand. U.S. stocks of refined products were falling, but overall crude inventories are 13.8 million barrels higher than a year ago. The U.S. National Weather Service on Thursday forecast warmer-than-normal weather for the U.S. Northeast, the world's top heating oil market, from December until February, although other forecasts are mixed. OPEC producers agreed at an emergency meeting last month to cut supplies by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from November 1, although investors doubt the cuts will be fully enacted. OPEC this week prepared the ground for a further ouptut cut when the group next meets in output in December, citing concern about potentially large rises in inventories next spring if it continues to pump at present levels. Analysts said the market may be testing the group to find the oil price it wants to defend. For some longer-term investors who believe that markets will get tighter in the years to come as suppliers struggle to meet rising demand, the fall in price represents a buy opportunity. "I don't think short-term sentiment is looking anything other than negative," said Mark Matthias, chief executive of British investment specialist Dawnay Day Quantum. "But taking a three-to-five year view, I would be a buyer of oil below $60.

Housing construction plummets in October By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer November 17, 2006 WASHINGTON - Housing construction plunged to the lowest level in more than six years in October as the nation's once-booming housing market slowed further. The Commerce Department reported on Friday that construction of new single-family homes and apartments dropped to an annual rate of 1.486 million units last month, down a sharp 14.6 percent from the September level. The decline, bigger than had been expected, was the largest percentage decline in 19 months and pushed total activity down to the lowest level since July 2000. Applications for new building permits, seen as a good sign of future plans, fell for a ninth consecutive month, the longest stretch on record. The October drop was 6.3 percent, pushing permits down to an annual rate of 1.535 million units, the slowest pace in nine years. David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, said he believed construction would fall by about 13 percent this year as builders scramble to deal with plunging sales. "We had an unsustainable boom in housing in both 2004 and 2005 and now we have a correction on hour hands," he said. The sharp slowdown in housing this year stands in stark contrast to the past five years, when the lowest mortgage rates in four decades had powered sales of both new and exiting homes to five consecutive records. The housing weakness trimmed a full percentage point off economic growth in the July-September quarter, when the economy expanded at a tepid 1.6 percent rate. Housing is expected to continue acting as a drag over the next year but analysts believe the adverse effects of falling sales and construction cutbacks will not be enough to pull the country into a recession. There were signs that the steep plunge in housing was beginning to level off. The monthly survey of builder sentiment edged up slightly in early November following another small increase in October. It marked the first back-to-back improvements in builder sentiment since June 2005. The level of building activity in October was 27.4 percent below activity in October 2005, the biggest year-over-year decline since March 1991. Construction of single-family homes fell by 15.9 percent in October from the seasonally adjusted September level, dropping to an annual rate of 1.177 million units. Construction of multi-family units dropped by 9.1 percent to an annual rate of 309,000 units. The drop in construction was led by a 26.4 percent decline in the South. Construction fell by 11.7 percent in the Midwest and was down 2.1 percent in the West. The only region showing strength was the Northeast, where construction jumped by 31 percent.

Wanted: man to land on killer asteroid and gently nudge it from path to Earth Friday November 17, 2006 The Guardian - Nasa evokes Hollywood in effort to avoid catastrophe - Mission would bridge gap between moon and Mars It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs. To save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036. Chris McKay of the Nasa Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com: "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid. "The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities." A 1bn tonne asteroid just 1km across striking the Earth at a 45 degree angle could generate the equivalent of a 50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion. Attempting to break it up with an atomic warhead might only generate thousands of smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to reform. Scientists agree the best approach, given enough warning, would be to gently nudge the object into a safer orbit. "A human mission to a near Earth asteroid would be scientifically worthwhile," Dr McKay said. "There could be testing of various approaches. We don't know enough about asteroids right now to know the best strategy for mitigation." Matt Genge, a space researcher at Imperial College, London, has calculated that something with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75 days. Gianmarco Radice, an asteroid expert at Glasgow University, said the best approach would be to land a device to dig into the object. "You could place something on the surface to eject material that would push the asteroid in the other direction." Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course. In 2005, Nasa's Deep Impact mission tested a different technique when it placed an object into the path of a comet. Dr Radice said robots could do the job just as well, doing away with the need for a risky and expensive manned mission. Last year Japan showed with its Hayabusa probe that a remote spacecraft can land on an asteroid. But with manned missions to the moon and possibly Mars on its to-do list again, Nasa is keen to extend the reach of its astronauts. Dan Durda, a senior research scientist in the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said an asteroid landing mission would be a good way test the new Constellation programme spacecraft, the Apollo-style planned replacements for the space shuttle with which Nasa hopes to return to the moon. He told Space.com: "A very natural, early extension of the exploration capabilities of this new vehicle's architecture would be a "quick-dash" near-Earth asteroid rendezvous mission." Tom Jones, a former shuttle astronaut, said: "After a lunar visit, we face a long interval in Earth-Moon space while we build up experience and technology for a Mars mission. An asteroid mission could take us immediately into deep space, sustaining programme momentum, adding public excitement and reducing the risk of a later Mars mission." Europe has its own efforts to tackle asteroids. Its planned Don Quijote mission will launch two robot spacecraft, one to tilt at a harmless passing space rock, and a second to film the collision and watch for any deviation in the asteroid's path. 'Not if, but when...' Hits and near misses At Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, scientists monitor all "potentially hazardous asteroids" that might one day end up on a collision course with Earth. So far they number 831. The next close-ish shave - at a mere 17 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth - will be asteroid 2004QD14 on November 29. The Earth has a long history of asteroid strikes. Thirty five million years ago, a 5km-wide asteroid ploughed into what is now Chesapeake Bay, in the US, leaving an 80km crater. In 1908, an asteroid devastated swaths of Siberia when it exploded mid-air with the force of 1,000 Hiroshimas. The theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge asteroid striking Mexico 65m years ago is controversial since scientists uncovered rocks from the crater predating the extinction of the dinosaurs by 300,000 years. A near miss, when asteroid QW7 came within 4m km of Earth in September 2000, led Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik to declare: "It's not a case of if we will be hit, it is a question of when. Each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery." In January 2002, the former science minister, David Sainsbury, announced the government's response to the threat from hurtling asteroids: a new information centre based in Leicester.

Flashback: It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time December 7, 2005 The Guardian Scientists call for plans to change asteroid's path Developing technology could take decades In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness. A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it. Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere. And, scientists insist, there is actually very little time left to decide. At a recent meeting of experts in near-Earth objects (NEOs) in London, scientists said it could take decades to design, test and build the required technology to deflect the asteroid. Monica Grady, an expert in meteorites at the Open University, said: "It's a question of when, not if, a near Earth object collides with Earth. Many of the smaller objects break up when they reach the Earth's atmosphere and have no impact. However, a NEO larger than 1km [wide] will collide with Earth every few hundred thousand years and a NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every hundred million years. We are overdue for a big one." Apophis had been intermittently tracked since its discovery in June last year but, in December, it started causing serious concern. Projecting the orbit of the asteroid into the future, astronomers had calculated that the odds of it hitting the Earth in 2029 were alarming. As more observations came in, the odds got higher. Having more than 20 years warning of potential impact might seem plenty of time. But, at last week's meeting, Andrea Carusi, president of the Spaceguard Foundation, said that the time for governments to make decisions on what to do was now, to give scientists time to prepare mitigation missions. At the peak of concern, Apophis asteroid was placed at four out of 10 on the Torino scale - a measure of the threat posed by an NEO where 10 is a certain collision which could cause a global catastrophe. This was the highest of any asteroid in recorded history and it had a 1 in 37 chance of hitting the Earth. The threat of a collision in 2029 was eventually ruled out at the end of last year. Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer from Queen's University Belfast, said: "When it does pass close to us on April 13 2029, the Earth will deflect it and change its orbit. There's a small possibility that if it passes through a particular point in space, the so-called keyhole, ... the Earth's gravity will change things so that when it comes back around again in 2036, it will collide with us." The chance of Apophis passing through the keyhole, a 600-metre patch of space, is 1 in 5,500 based on current information. There are no shortage of ideas on how to deflect asteroids. The Advanced Concepts Team at the European Space Agency have led the effort in designing a range of satellites and rockets to nudge asteroids on a collision course for Earth into a different orbit. No technology has been left unconsidered, even potentially dangerous ideas such as nuclear powered spacecraft. "The advantage of nuclear propulsion is a lot of power," said Prof Fitzsimmons. "The negative thing is that ... we haven't done it yet. Whereas with solar electric propulsion, there are several spacecraft now that do use this technology so we're fairly confident it would work." The favoured method is also potentially the easiest - throwing a spacecraft at an asteroid to change its direction. Esa plans to test this idea with its Don Quixote mission, where two satellites will be sent to an asteroid. One of them, Hidalgo, will collide with the asteroid at high speed while the other, Sancho, will measure the change in the object's orbit. Decisions on the actual design of these probes will be made in the coming months, with launch expected some time in the next decade. One idea that seems to have no support from astronomers is the use of explosives. Prof Fitzsimmons. "If you explode too close to impact, perhaps you'll get hit by several fragments rather than one, so you spread out the area of damage." In September, scientists at Strathclyde and Glasgow universities began computer simulations to work out the feasibility of changing the directions of asteroids on a collision course for Earth. In spring next year, there will be another opportunity for radar observations of Apophis that will help astronomers work out possible future orbits of the asteroid more accurately. If, at that stage, they cannot rule out an impact with Earth in 2036, the next chance to make better observations will not be until 2013. Nasa has argued that a final decision on what to do about Apophis will have to be made at that stage. "It may be a decision in 2013 whether or not to go ahead with a full-blown mitigation mission, but we need to start planning it before 2013," said Prof Fitzsimmons. In 2029, astronomers will know for sure if Apophis will pose a threat in 2036. If the worst-case scenarios turn out to be true and the Earth is not prepared, it will be too late. "If we wait until 2029, it would seem unlikely that you'd be able to do anything about 2036," said Mr Yates.