Probably well over 1,000 people have died in Spain as a result of the heatwave that gripped much of Europe in recent weeks, La Vanguardia newspaper said on Tuesday.

"Stifling temperatures caused a high number of deaths in Spain, mostly among elderly people. Several hundred, probably well over 1,000, can be linked directly to the heatwave," the paper said. [...]

KELOWNA -- A shift in wind direction could lead a large, out-of-control wildfire burning six kilometres southwest of Kelowna to seriously threaten the city.

"This is serious," said Dave Hall, an information officer with the Ministry of Forests. "We're doing everything we can to discourage the fire from moving [toward Kelowna]."

A lightning strike Aug. 15 ignited the 1,100-hectare blaze on Okanagan Mountain in Okanagan Lake Provincial Park. Heavy winds spread the flames quickly, despite prolonged efforts by water bombers and helicopters. [...]

River traffic on the Danube was blocked Tuesday after a ship ran aground as a result of low water levels caused by drought, officials in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar told the HINA news agency.

"For now we do not know when traffic on the Danube will be re-established," captain Ivan Mijic said, adding that the ship ran aground upriver in neighbouring Serbia.

He said that the Ukrainian ship was carrying an excessive load when it ran aground near the town of Apatin on the border with Croatia.

In Croatia, suffering its worst drought in 50 years, the water level of the Danube has fallen 45 centimeters (about 18 inches) below the average level measured near the eastern town of Osijek.

VICTORIA, Seychelles (Reuters) -- Masses of plankton, dying as global warming heats up the waters off the Seychelles, are threatening marine life in the Indian Ocean tourist haven, a government official said.

The dead plankton, as it decays, depletes the oxygen in seawater and in effect suffocates other forms of marine life.

The sludge also dulls the Seychelles' turquoise waters and tends to turn them green as algae feast on the plankton. [...]

Landslides have killed six workers and seriously wounded six others at a hydro-electric dam being constructed on the Tekezze River in northern Ethiopia, the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) said on Wednesday.

"The six were buried alive on Sunday by a landslide, triggered by a heavy downpour, while working at the site of the power project, which is being constructed to boost the country's energy supply," ENA said, quoting the region's police chief Mamo Abraha.

KAMLOOPS, British Columbia (AP) - A fast-moving wildfire in the backcountry of British Columbia prompted authorities to issue a travel advisory Wednesday for the region.

The wildfire near the city of Kelowna grew fivefold in 24 hours aided by tinder-dry conditions and gusting winds, the provincial government said.

"We're concerned about the safety of the public out there, should another fire start, and we don't want any more human caused fires," said Rick Clevette, a government spokesman.

The advisory stretches from Prince George in the north to the U.S. border, 340 miles to the south and from Vancouver Island to the border of Alberta, a distance of about 435 miles...

Fire information officer Kevin Matuga said the Kelowna-area wildfire blackening Okanagan Mountain provincial park, on the shores of Okanagan Lake, was just 8 square miles on Tuesday but now measured 42 square miles.

Matuga blamed gusting winds, dry forests and a lack of rain for the fire's mushrooming rate of growth.

"It's beyond what we've ever seen before," he said. "There's absolutely nothing our crews or equipment or helicopters can do to stop a fire from spreading that fast."

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Powerful thunderstorms caused flash flooding Tuesday in Las Vegas, knocking out power, closing roads and trapping some motorists atop their cars. The torrential downpour dumped 3 inches of rain in 90 minutes, bringing severe flooding mostly to the city's northwest section. Casinos along the Las Vegas strip saw only light rainfall.

"There was so much water, we couldn't see the sidewalks," said Ann Friary, owner of Northshore Learning Tree, a day care center. [...]

Heavy rains that started Monday night and continued all day yesterday again left portions of Metro Manila submerged in floodwater.

Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) deputy chairman and head of the flood control program, Cesar Lacuna, said the worst hit yesterday was the perennially flooded Dimasalang area in Manila.

Floods reached knee-deep in Maceda and Sampaloc, Lacuna said.[...]

Can viruses travel thousands of miles on the winds? Is there a whole ecosystem up in the clouds that we have not discovered? The answer to all three questions could be yes, according to scientists who are exploring the microbial metropolises in the skies.

There is, they say, growing evidence that bacteria, fungal spores and viruses may spend large amounts of time - even their entire lives - in the air, riding clouds across the planet. And they don't just inhabit the clouds - they may also be creating them. Certainly, many of the clouds' newly discovered inhabitants are exquisitely designed to create the maximum number of ice crystals, the basic building-blocks of clouds. Some Darwinian biologists even argue that the bugs may have evolved for that very job.

A Plague of flies which has caused misery in a picturesque West valley continued to baffle experts last night. Hundreds of thousands of flies have disrupted life for two weeks in the normally sleepy Collingbournes near Marlborough in Wiltshire.

The insects have become so numerous that some villagers in adjoining Collingbourne Ducis and Collingbourne Kingston have been forced to vacuum them up off the carpet.

Residents believe the phenomena was caused by a combination of farmers spreading muck in nearby fields and the recent heat wave. [...]

BAKER, Calif. (AP) - Thunderstorms unleashed flash floods across the Mojave Desert on Wednesday, forcing authorities to shut down Interstate 15, the main highway linking Southern California and Las Vegas...

In Las Vegas, casinos along the Strip saw only light rainfall Tuesday. But residents of hard-hit neighborhoods, especially in northwest Las Vegas, were cleaning up a mess Wednesday.

Thunderstorms dumped 3 inches of rain in less than 90 minutes in some parts of the city.

First floors of homes turned into muddy riverbeds. Furniture and family heirlooms were destroyed. Rolls of carpet were dumped into the street. Soaked photographs headed for the garbage.

Officials called the flood the worst since 1999, and said it did at least $1.2 million in damage to public property. Damage estimates for private property weren't available, but officials said one home was destroyed, 37 received major damage and 21 had minor damage.

Some 3,000 customers briefly lost electrical power.

A wildfire burning in the eastern Moreno Valley scorched an orange grove and destroyed several vehicles as it expanded to 1,668 acres before being contained Wednesday evening.

A second blaze, north of Los Angeles near suburban Santa Clarita, charred about five acres Wednesday and threatened several homes before it was contained, authorities said. Its cause was under investigation, Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Edward Oforio said.

Prophetic warnings of how global warming will play havoc with the world's agriculture appear to be coming true, according to evidence from this year's harvests in Europe and America.

The long weeks of sunshine might please holidaymakers and promise a vintage year for vineyards, but the persistent drought has reduced yields by up to a quarter in many parts of Europe for major crops such as wheat, sunflower and potato.

[...] But more worrying than a likely increase in bread, vegetable and other food prices is that the effect of the European heatwave on agriculture almost perfectly matches predictions of the consequences of global warming for the next century.

A harsh winter and late spring frost in much of Europe this year were followed by a heatwave that started in June, causing crops to develop up to three weeks too early for their ripening and maturing stages, when there was insufficient soil moisture.

Scientists working for the European Commission said their advanced crop yield forecasting system is predicting substantial drops in quality and quantity for key crops, particularly in central and southern Europe. [...]

Across Europe, the shortfall is so great that the European Commission has suspended licences for the export of wheat ...

"With drier conditions in the south it will be difficult to maintain dairy production, for example, and there will be parts of southern Europe where agricultural production is no longer viable," said Dr Olesen. [...]

Both the European and US experts warn that the recent heatwave was a foretaste of changes to come, New Scientist reported.

"It's dangerous to push these things under the carpet because we need to start planning now for the impacts of climate change," said Dr Olesen. [...]

LINCOLN, Mont. (AP) - Hundreds of firefighters worked in rough terrain to stop two approaching wildfires near this Montana mountain community Wednesday, even as another fire near Missoula made a run and forced 120 families there to evacuate.

In all, firefighters are battling some three dozen large fires in the state, and officials say their resources are running low...

The largest three dozen fires in Montana alone have burned about 300,000 acres at a firefighting cost of over $100 million. It's taking about 10,000 firefighters to keep up.

"It's the worst conditions we've experienced," Costamagna said. "We're having to bring in major support from other states."...

The National Interagency Fire Center reported Wednesday that 54 large fires were burning in the West, most of them in the Northern Rockies. Wildfires have charred 2.39 million acres of forest so far this year.

In Wyoming, firefighters were trying to contain a 15,600-acre wildfire that has kept the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park closed for a week.

UNDERTAKERS in France estimate the recent heatwave killed more than 13,600 people.

Funeral home giant OGF say almost 3500 people will have died in Paris alone by the end of the month...

The OGF toll is based on comparisons with last August's death rate.

The Withington Fire near Salmon has damaged a water filtration system leaving residents of the Sunset Heights subdivision without water. Lemhi County continues to haul in the daily supply of ten-thousand gallons of water for the residents.

Fire crews are still fighting the 14-thousand acre Slims Fire in the Nez Perce National Forest. A lightning storm started twelve new fires on Tuesday. Containment for the Slims Fire is expected for next Monday.

REDMOND, Ore. -- U.S. 20 over Santiam Pass could remain closed for more than a week as the Booth fire in Central Oregon turned the roadway into a flame-lined alley.

Heavy smoke from the blaze prevented air tankers from making retardant runs on the 3,000-acre fire and will keep President Bush from making a planned tour of the forest near Camp Sherman on Thursday. Bush was to instead deliver his forest policy speech at the Deschutes County Fairground in Redmond.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The ozone hole over the Antarctic is growing at a rate that suggests it could be headed for a record size this year, Australian scientists said on Friday.

A study by Australian Antarctic bases attributed the development to colder temperatures in the stratosphere where the ozone hole forms.

"The growth at the moment is similar to 2000 when the hole was a record size," Australian Antarctic Division scientist Andrew Klekociuk told Reuters on Friday. [...]

The ozone hole in 2003 presently covers all of the Antarctic. [...]

The full extent of the 2003 ozone hole will not be known until the end of September, as August and September are the coldest months for the South Pole. Temperatures begin to warm by early October and the ozone layer will then start to recover.

We live in a dreamworld. With a small, rational part of the brain, we recognise that our existence is governed by material realities, and that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep semi-consciousness which absorbs the moment in which we live then generalises it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true reality. All that separates us from the indigenous people of Australia is that they recognise this and we do not.

Our dreaming will, as it has begun to do already, destroy the conditions necessary for human life on earth. Were we governed by reason, we would be on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their seats, occupying and shutting down the coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the Blairs' retreat from reality in Barbados and demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic as the one we bore when we went to war with Hitler. Instead, we whinge about the heat and thumb through the brochures for holidays in Iceland. The future has been laid out before us, but the deep eye with which we place ourselves on earth will not see it.

Of course, we cannot say that the remarkable temperatures in Europe this week are the result of global warming. What we can say is that they correspond to the predictions made by climate scientists. As the Met Office reported on Sunday, "all our models have suggested that this type of event will happen more frequently." In December it predicted that, as a result of climate change, 2003 would be the warmest year on record. Two weeks ago its research centre reported that the temperature rises on every continent matched the predicted effects of climate change caused by human activities, and showed that natural impacts, such as sunspots or volcanic activity, could not account for them. Last month the World Meteorological Organisation announced that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1000 years", while " the trend for the period since 1976 is roughly three times that for the past 100 years as a whole." Climate change, the WMO suggests, provides an explanation not only for record temperatures in Europe and India but also for the frequency of tornadoes in the United States and the severity of the recent floods in Sri Lanka.

There are, of course, still those who deny that any warming is taking place, or who maintain that it can be explained by natural phenomena. But few of them are climatologists, fewer still are climatologists who do not receive funding from the fossil fuel industry. Their credibility among professionals is now little higher than that of the people who claim that there is no link between smoking and cancer. Yet the prominence the media gives them reflects not only the demands of the car advertisers. We want to believe them, because we wish to reconcile our reason with our dreaming.

The extreme events to which climate change appears to have contributed reflect an average rise in global temperatures of 0.6C. The consensus among climatologists is that temperatures will rise in the 21st century by between 1.4 and 5.8C: by up to ten times, in other words, the increase we have suffered so far.7 Some climate scientists, recognising that global warming has been retarded by industrial soot, whose levels are now declining, suggest that the maximum should instead be placed between and 10C. We are not contemplating the end of holidays in Seville. We are contemplating the end of the circumstances which permit most human beings to remain on earth. [...]

Email to a friend It's beautiful, but dangerous - this cloud puts on a stunning light show over the Antarctic but it is a grim warning that this year's hole in the ozone layer could be the biggest yet.

The stratospheric cloud is an ozone-eater, spotted recently by Australian scientists at Mawson station. Chemical reactions in such clouds convert normally inert man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into ozone destroyers. [...]

The biggest hole recorded was in 2000, when it was about 27 million square kilometres, but last year it had shrunk to about 20 million square kilometres.

Yesterday, however, NASA measurements showed that the hole was rapidly widening and now stood at more than 10 million square kilometres. It usually peaks in late September.

Methane belches may have catastrophic consequences - Exploding ocean methane could have had the force of 100 million megatons of TNT.

A massive methane explosion frothing out of the world's oceans 250 million years ago caused the Earth's worst mass extinction, claims a US geologist. [...]

Just one disturbance - a small meteorite impact or even a fast moving mammal - could then have brought the gas-saturated water closer to the surface. Here it would have bubbled out of solution under the reduced pressure. Thereafter the process would have been unstoppable: a huge overturning of the water layers would have released a vast belch of methane.

The oceans could easily have contained enough methane to explode with a force about 10,000 times greater than the world's entire nuclear-weapons stockpile, Ryskin argues. "There would be mortality on a massive scale," he says.

Heavy rainstorms cut road and rail routes in parts of northeastern Spain, officials said Friday.

The bad weather, which began late on Thursday, affected mainly the northeastern province of Zaragoza, where several roads and railway lines remained cut early on Friday.

Train services on the main line between Madrid and Barcelona via the city of Zaragoza had to be deviated through Valencia...

Some 900 firefighters were on Friday battling brush fires in hills above France's Mediterranean coast, in a region already ravaged by massive blazes in July.

Three fires broke out almost simultaneously late on Thursday in the Maures hills, between the towns of La Garde-Freinet and Vibaudan, in uplands northwest of the resort town of Saint-Tropez, rescue services said.

Wildfires have destroyed more than 330,000 hectares (815,000 acres) of forest in Portugal since the start of the year, a record figure, according to updated numbers released on Friday by Portuguese forestry officials.

Some 336,000 hectares of forest and scrubland have been burned, according to a provisional estimate, the forest service said in a statement.

The French government, already struggling to cope with the aftermath of a heatwave that may have killed 10,000 people, on Friday said it would give emergency aid to farmers hit by a drought that has caused losses of up to four billion euros.

Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard said the state would provide "around 500 million euros" (550 million dollars) to help cope with the drought, which he told reporters had caused "more than a billion euros" in damage...

Although the drought was in place before the killer heatwave that roasted France the first half of August, the persistent temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) during the hot spell greatly worsened the situation for farmers.

Crops wilted, millions of poultry died and livestock farmers had to use forage intended for winter to feed their animals...

Wine, too, was expected to become more expensive, though many makers were predicting a vintage of exceptional quality because, even though the grapes were producing less juice for pressing, the taste was more intense.

At least 7,000 people have been displaced and hundreds of domestic animals swept away by floods caused by four days of heavy rains in northeast Ethiopia, officials in the region said on Friday.

"Torrential rains since August 19 have caused the Awash river to overflow its banks, sweeping away hundreds of animals and destroying large numbers of properties in Gewanie area of northeast Ethiopia," local leader Hussein Ibrahim said.

KELOWNA, British Columbia (Reuters) - Emergency officials ordered an additional 20,000 people to evacuate their homes in Kelowna, British Columbia, on Friday as a wildfire moved closer to the prosperous vacation city.

The additional evacuation meant that 30,000 people, or nearly one-third of Kelowna's population, had been ordered from their homes, said Bruce Smith, a local emergency operations official.

Massive flames could be seen near the western Canadian city, as the 42,000-acre (17,000-hectare) fire raged, casting an eerie orange glow into the sky. [...]

The Bush administration has decided to allow thousands of the nation's dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries to upgrade their facilities without installing costly anti-pollution equipment, as they now must do.

Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Marianne L. Horinko said yesterday that she will sign the new regulation next week, and that the measure will take effect this fall. The decision marks an important, cost-saving victory for the utility industry, which has vigorously lobbied the administration for the past 21/2 years to relax the Clean Air Act enforcement program.

That program, known as New Source Review, generated dozens of state and federal lawsuits against 51 aging power plants during the Clinton administration, and forced some of them to agree to install hundreds of millions of dollars of pollution-control equipment.

The Bush administration plans to open a huge loophole in America's air pollution laws, allowing an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity...

The rules could represent the biggest defeat for American environmentalists since the Bush administration abandoned the Kyoto Treaty on global warming two years ago. But the energy industry welcomed them, saying they were essential for maintaining coal-fired power stations.

The regulations are being challenged by 13 states including New York. If adopted, they would represent a multi-million dollar victory for energy corporations, most of whom are significant Republican contributors, and who were consulted in the drafting of the administration's energy plan by vice-president Dick Cheney in 2001.

The US accounts for a quarter of the world's carbon emissions, 10% more than all of western Europe combined. Environmentalists fear that, by relaxing its controls even further, America could undermine attempts to persuade other countries to stick to the targets laid out by Kyoto.

According to the National Weather Service, more than five inches of rain fell in the area in a 24 hour period between Friday night and Saturday night.

This caused a river to overflow its banks and turned roadways into streams.

The State Government should help pay for a unique project to provide the drought-ravaged Murray River system with more fresh water, Australia's largest hydro-electricity company said yesterday.

Snowy Hydro Limited wants the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to fast-track a proposed cloud-seeding trial to increase snowfall over the Snowy Mountains.Company chief executive Terry Charlton said clouds passing over the mountains could be targeted with small quantities of silver iodide to stimulate snow production.He said the snow would not only enhance the snowfields, but provide spring run-off into streams flowing to the Murray River.

"The project has the potential to generate more than 100 billion litres of extra water into the Murray River system each year," he said. "One of the nation's greatest rivers is in dire straits and we have the means to make a valuable contribution to additional freshwater flows of that system."

Mr Charlton said his company was willing to commit $5 million a year towards a six-year seeding trial.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- A 23-year-old man is dead after being struck by lightning while playing soccer at a park in Fort Myers.

The Fort Myers Police Department reports the man was playing soccer at Billy Bowlegs Park when he was struck about 4 p.m. Saturday.

Police with bullhorns moved through the neighborhoods of Kelwona urging residents to leave as the fire pushed toward the city with flames as high as 400 feet. Thirty-thousand people have already been evacuated. Another eleven-thousand are on evacuation alert Sunday morning. A fire official says the blaze has destroyed at least 200 homes.

The east entrance to Yellowstone National Park was closed Monday so firefighters could conduct a burnout along the roadway in an effort to cut off a pair of pesky wildfires.

"It's the last eastern front of the fires," said fire spokesman Greg Thayer. "As soon as we get done with that we'll move real fast toward containment."

A group of scientists in East Anglia has launched an ambitious campaign to tackle the threat of global warming in an effort to shame ministers into stronger action on climate change.

The task they have set themselves is formidable: to slash the region's emissions of carbon dioxide in half the time the government believes is possible.

At first glance, the project, known as Cred, for carbon reduction, might easily be dismissed as well-meaning nonsense. But the team behind it, Keith Tovey and his colleagues at the University of East Anglia, belong to the most prestigious environmental science department in the country. [...]

LONDON (AFP) Aug 26, 2003 More than 900 deaths above average were registered in the week that saw Britain sweating in the hottest temperatures ever recorded, according to official figures released Tuesday.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that in the week ending August 15, there were 907 more deaths recorded than the average for comparable weeks in the previous five years.[...]

More than 15,000 people, most of them elderly, may have died during a heat wave that blanketed Europe earlier this month, recent estimates showed, leaving the continent in shock and anger.

France was hit hardest by the widespread health emergency sparked by two weeks of stifling temperatures, with the country's largest undertakers' group putting the death toll at about 10,000. [...]

A Homer-based nonprofit environmental group has alleged that Unocal Corp. failed to notify the Environmental Protection Agency of hundreds of violations of the Clean Water Act committed during operations in Cook Inlet between 1998 and 2002.

Cook Inlet Keeper announced Wednesday its intent to file a federal suit against the oil company seeking civil penalties and an injunction to prevent further violations of the Clean Water Act. The act requires notification at least 60 days prior to initiating litigation.[..]

[..]A review of EPA documents demonstrates Unocal did file non-compliance reports during the permit period. However, following an internal audit done in the summer of 2002 in preparation for re-issuance of its Clean Water Act permit, Unocal found errors in the monitoring reports filed between 1998 and 2002. A negotiated settlement with EPA resulted in a $370,000 fine for more than 550 unreported or misreported violations.

In April, Cook Inlet Keeper sought access to the public documents only to discover EPA couldn't find them. EPA asked Unocal to provide the missing documents.

According to Keeper Director Bob Shavelson, an analysis of those documents showed Unocal had committed 1,379 violations during the four-year period, more than twice the number on which the settlement had been based.

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) The second largest fish farm in Bosnia's Serb entity lost some 30 tonnes of fish in a severe drought that has hit the Balkans region for the last three months, an official said Tuesday.[...]

Most rivers in the area are at their lowest level since 1890 when information on water levels began to be collected.

HANOI (AFP) Aug 26, 2003 At least one person was killed and five others injured when a powerful typhoon struck northern Vietnam, uprooting trees and disrupting power supplies, officials said Tuesday.

Typhoon Krovanh, which brought heavy winds and torrential rains to the north part of the country, hit late Monday after moving south from China.[...]

BEIJING (AFP) Aug 26, 2003 A powerful typhoon has wreaked havoc on large parts of southern China, killing at least three people and affecting millions, state media and officials said Tuesday.

Typhoon Krovanh roared along several coastal provinces, hitting a number of population centers before settling down somewhat on China's border with Vietnam, according to Xinhua news agency.[...]

Two bombs believed to date back to World War II have emerged from the Danube river in eastern Serbia as the water levels retreat under Europe's scorching summer heat, reports said Wednesday.

The Tanjug news agency reported that the bombs, both heavily corroded, were found near the port of Prahovo by a local resident. [...]

CENTRAL Europe's biggest fresh water lake is shrinking after years of hot summers and low rainfall, prompting fears of an ecological and economic catastrophe.

Lake Balaton, in Hungary, has lost millions of gallons of water, exposing large mudflats and forcing visitors to walk far from the shore before they can swim.

[...] Miklos Zagoni, a science historian at Budapest University, said Balaton, as a shallow lake with an average depth of little more than 10ft, is an accurate gauge of climate change.

"Balaton's stability over the years shows the stability of climate change, but the last four years shows a big turn," he said. "This is the fourth year Balaton has had more evaporation than precipitation - a typical case of climate change.

"Statistically, this is a very significant trend change, and I believe it's a direct result of global warming."

Storms and strong winds lashed eastern France and Switzerland overnight, provoking blackouts and property damage and killing one man struck by lightning, authorities said Friday.

The 84-year-old victim was killed late Thursday as he walked in a field near the town of Vernet-la-Varenne in central France, firemen said, updating previous reports of only minor injuries.

Lightning strikes also caused several fires, including one that burnt a house in the French Alps to the ground, while the gusts tore the roof off an airport in Chambery in a nearby region. [...]

Power stations in the Alps were damaged by fallen trees, cutting electricity to more than 60,000 homes, and a broken high-voltage cable stalled train services in southeast France. [...]

In Switzerland, officials said they were evaluating the damage caused, and said electricity supplies also caused blackouts and trees crushed several cars. They had no reports of injuries in the country. [...]

SISTERS - Residents evacuated from portions of the Camp Sherman area because of wildfire will be allowed to return home this afternoon, if nearby fires don't suddenly flare up, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.

The Camp Sherman area was evacuated on Aug. 21, and since then the nearby Booth and Bear Butte fires have grown to a combined 42,572 acres.

CRANBROOK, B.C. (CP) - Forced from their houses and lake cabins by a wildfire almost a week ago, many evacuees taking refuge in hotels in this southern B.C. city said Saturday they are desperate for the simple comforts of their homes.

"I want so badly to go back home," said Linda Botterill who since being evacuated from her Monroe Lake home Monday has been holed up in a small hotel room with her husband.

Is it thinning or is it logging? A proposed change in the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan has sparked another debate between the timber industry and environmental groups with both blaming the U.S. Forest Service's management. The high cost of mechanized thinning in forests choked with small trees and brush and the limitations of control burns led to the proposal which has encouraged the timber industry and angered environmental groups.

"This is the forest service's attempt to deal with the fire problem," said Phil Aune of the California Forestry Association. He said the harvest can be done in an environmentally responsible manner.

A rash of lightning fires sparked earlier this week has nearly doubled in size burning 20,500 acres in Alameda, Stanislaus and Santa Clara counties by Friday night, fire officials said.

The Santa Clara Complex was 55 percent contained by Friday evening and has so far cost $3.5 million to fight, California Department of Forestry spokesman Bob Davis said.

Just over 2,300 firefighters from Marin, Napa, California State Parks, Department of Defense, CDF, Alameda County and Contra Costa County fire departments, as well as the Alameda County Sheriff's Department and National Guard, were on the line Friday.

Two people died near Udine in northeast Italy late Friday and more than 200 people were evacuated from their homes as torrential rain caused landslides near the Austrian border.

One of the victims drowned after being caught up in a mudslide near the village of Malborghetto Valbruna while the other died when a small hotel collapsed on a mountainside, rescue workers said.

Two thirds of the 300 residents of Dogna were evacuated when floodwaters swept down a nearby river following day-long rain, swamping the town hall to a depth of 40 centimetres (16 inches).

As many Germans and Austrians were on their way home after the holidays, traffic was halted on the A23 Palmanova-Tarvisio highway due to two mudslides while many other roads were blocked.

HOUSTON (AP) -- A tropical storm that formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday was forecast to hit Texas' central coast Sunday, but meteorologists said they did not expect it to be severe.

At the same time, the year's first major hurricane, Hurricane Fabian, was gathering strength far out in the Atlantic but was still several days from landfall.[...]

Lake Sarez is situated in an active earthquake zone

Experts meeting in Central Asia are debating water issues amid controversy over the possibility of catastrophic flooding from a huge mountain lake located high in the Pamir mountains.

In early August, an expedition by civil defence experts and Russian mountaineers concluded that an earthquake in nearby Afghanistan could destroy the natural barrier which holds back Lake Sarez, in south-eastern Tajikistan.

Fears have been expressed that the resulting flood could surge down the Panj and Amu Darya rivers, devastating large areas of inhabited land and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Lake Sarez was itself created by a major earthquake in 1911. Its waters are held back by a natural barrier of rocks and boulders over 500m (1640ft) high.

(AP) -- Federal firefighting crews were winding down their involvement in battling two wildfires in Yellowstone National Park on Saturday after days of cooler, damper weather.

The fires, which had burned about 23,500 acres, were 85 percent contained Saturday although full containment was not expected until mid-September, fire information officer Laura Navarrete said.

Just under 425 federal firefighters remained in the park, compared to more than 700 earlier in the week, and management of the fires was being turned over to local crews. "The firefighters are all pretty much leaving," Navarrete said.

(AP) - Rains put out a wildfire sparked by lightning that burned about 600 acres in the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Louisiana, federal officials said on Saturday.

The fire started on Friday and crews worked to contain the fire from advancing onto nearby private land in Cameron Parish, said Diane Borden-Billiot of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The fire burned through the night before early Saturday morning rains tamed it, she said.

Last week, wildfires charred more than 3,100 acres of marsh in the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, another refuge near the coast in Cameron.

ST. MARC, Haiti (AP)--Torrential rains burst river banks, sweeping away at least eight people and destroying dozens of flimsy riverside shacks in Haiti's west-coast city of St. Marc, officials said Saturday.

About 200 people of the city's 60,000 residents fled their homes and took refuge in government offices and a high school, said Gerald Joseph with Haiti's civil defense.

Seven people were missing and more than 200 homes were destroyed or damaged before the storm passed over the city, independent radio station KISKEYA reported.