VANCOUVER - Snow has carpeted Vancouver for the first time in more than a year, snarling traffic and delaying flights.

Vancouver is used to mild winters; last year it hardly snowed at all. [...]

SAN FRANCISCO - A winter storm flooded creeks, closed highways and delayed a passenger train for hours in northern California before moving on, and forecasters warned that more storms were likely.

In coastal Oregon, close to 25,000 customers lost power Friday morning, and a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 5 closed briefly just north of Grants Pass. [...]

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, (AFP) - Blizzards that began Christmas Eve have crippled parts of the mountainous western United States, piling more than two meters (six feet) of snow on Salt Lake City, Utah, and killing a couple whose mountain cabin in neighboring Idaho was buried by an avalanche as they slept. [...]

More than 25 major roads in Idaho were made impassable by snow.

In Utah, more that 10,000 homes were without power as utility crews have struggled to restore power lines downed by the snow accumulations. [...]

WINNIPEG - Manitobans came close to setting a new provincial record for energy consumption on Monday as they try to ward off the extreme cold that has descended on the province.

Environment Canada issued a wind chill warning for most of the province after frigid arctic air moved in, accompanied by winds of 15 to 20 km/h. That will produce wind chills of –40 to –45 for much of Monday. [...]

Cyclone Heta has hit the tiny South Pacific island of Niue, wreaking widespread damage with winds of up to 300km/h (185mph), local sources said.

The capital, Alofi, has been flattened, with at least one person dead, according to a New Zealand diplomat.

A state of emergency has been declared on the island, which has a population of 2,100. [...]

The island's only hospital is reported to have been damaged.
Premier Vivian said that the country's cash crops - taro, vanilla and limes - had probably been destroyed. [...]

TORONTO - The cold snap in Eastern Canada has claimed another victim. A 93-year-old woman was found frozen to death in front of the seniors home where she lived in Alma, Que. [...]

It is the continuation of the bitter cold that hit Western Canada last weekend. The freezing weather has now enveloped an area from Ontario to Prince Edward Island. In Quebec, the mercury has dropped as low as -46 degrees.

In Ontario, some schools are closed; others are keeping children inside during recess and lunch.

In Toronto, with the wind chill, it's -30 degrees, prompting the city to issue a cold weather alert for the homeless.

Environment Canada's Dave Phillips says "certainly in in Eastern Canada we're talking tonight, -45 degrees in Timmins, that's cold in any language." [...]

RESEARCHERS in Edinburgh believe that ghostly sightings might have a link to variations in magnetic fields.

Dr Paul Stevens of the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University measured residual magnetic fields at sites where ghosts had been reported regularly.

The sites, at the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh's city centre and at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, were found to have higher magnetic fields than surrounding buildings.

Dr Stevens said, "It is known that in some people high magnetic resonance can have an effect on temporal lobe activity.

"Some people subjected to this have reported feelings such as being 'touched by God' while others have seen and heard things that were not there."

One of those being helped by the Ghost Detectives at present, Jackie Williams of Trallwn, Swansea, believes her security cameras have picked up ghostly faces of babies, dogs and even that of Osama bin Laden.

The 55-year-old former hairdresser and care assistant said, "It's hard getting people to believe you, so we called in the Ghost Detectives.

"I've got an open mind on it at the moment."

Residents of Mtubatuba on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast are still counting the costs of a storm that swept through the small town yesterday afternoon. At least one person was killed and hundreds of houses were destroyed by the storm.

A 14-year-old youth died on the spot after being hit by flying corrugated iron blown off the roofs. More than 600 homes and a police station, several clinics and libraries were destroyed. The area is still without electricity as power lines were damaged. [...]

[...] Just as seismic waves travel through Earth, infrasonic waves travel through the air. And the lower the frequency of the waves, the farther they can travel without losing strength. Scientists first detected infrasound in 1883, when the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia sent inaudible sound waves careening around the world, affecting barometric readings.

[...] Low-frequency sounds are also generated by one of the most colorful displays in the sky, the northern lights, which are caused by charged particles in the air. This electricity heats atmospheric gases, and the warmed gas molecules spread out and increase air pressure.

[...] Studying the patterns of infrasound that precede eruptions might also have predictive value. While placing infrasound sensors on the Sakurajima volcano in Japan, Garcés witnessed an unexpected series of increasingly frequent and powerful explosions. By the end of the day, Sakurajima erupted. [...]

TORONTO - The bone-chilling cold that's smashing records in some parts of the country simply reminds us where we live, says Environment Canada.

"January is the coldest month. And we are the second-coldest country in the world," notes Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada. "If we didn't have winter, that would be the big story."

In the past 24 hours, five Ontario cities have set new record lows for this time of year: Timmins, Kapuskasing, Waterloo, Hamilton and Sarnia. Temperatures in many places have dropped into the minus 20s, but some places have got as cold as –43 C.

"We're still three weeks away from the middle of winter. So sad to say, there's more winter ahead of us than behind us," says Phillips. [...]

Our environment correspondent considers why warnings about the state of the planet are becoming more insistent

For the doom merchants amongst us, 2004 showed its fearsome teeth in a cracking start before it was even 10 days old.

On 7 January a report in the journal Nature said climate change could speed a million land-based species towards extinction within the next 50 years.

The next day the Worldwatch Institute declared modern lifestyles were bad for us and unsustainable for the planet.

The UK Government's chief scientist now says climate change is a far worse danger than international terrorism.

A triple onslaught like that defies anyone to head into the new year feeling even slightly positive about the human condition.

Yet life goes on, and most of us worry more about paying the Christmas bills than about a world bereft of a quarter of its animals and plants. [...]

The trouble with imperceptible change is that for a long time it has virtually no impact, certainly not on the political timescale of four or five years. And politicians respond (often) to what they think matters to voters.

Yet the record preserved in cores drilled out of the Greenland icecap shows climate change can be very rapid indeed, flipping from one stable state to another in a few decades.

It is not fanciful to envisage our children living in a Britain where the Gulf Stream has ceased to flow, and where climate change means winters as cold as northern Canada's.

SCORES of people could scarcely believe their eyes when a tornado appeared hovering over the Bristol Channel.

The destructive force, more akin to Mid-West USA than Wales, formed from low storm clouds over the water at 1.10pm yesterday. [...]

The Arctic's Inuit are being contaminated by pollution borne north by winds and concentrated as it travels up the food chain.[...]

The bodies of Arctic people, particularly Greenland's Inuit, contain the highest human concentrations of industrial chemicals and pesticides found anywhere on Earth — levels so extreme that the breast milk and tissues of some Greenlanders could be classified as hazardous waste. [...]

The Earth has entered a new era, one in which human beings may be the dominant force, say four environmental leaders.

In the International Herald Tribune, they say the uncertainty, magnitude and speed of change in many of the Earth's systems is without precedent.

The four, who include Margot Wallstrom, the European environment commissioner, say uncertainty cannot excuse inaction.

They believe humanity may cross some critical thresholds unawares, setting off changes which cannot be reversed.

Change at a gallop

The other authors are Professor Bert Bolin, founding chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Professor Paul Crutzen, winner of the 1995 Nobel prize for chemistry; and Dr Will Steffen, director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

Their article, The Earth's Threatened Life-Support System: A Global Wake-Up Call, marks the publication of an IGBP book, Global Change And The Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure.

They write: "Our planet is changing fast. Change is a fact of life, but in recent decades many environmental indicators have moved outside the range of variation of the last half million years...

"It is the magnitude and rate of human-driven change that are most alarming.

"The human-driven increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is nearly 100 parts per million and still growing - already equal to the entire range experienced between an ice age and a warm period such as the present.

"And this human-driven increase has occurred at least 10 times faster than any natural increase in the last half million years."

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Heavy rains swept across parts of the Middle East on Friday, flooding roads, downing power lines and forcing airports to close.

But in Egypt, Jordan and Israel it was dust storms that raised havoc, forcing airports to close and sending dozens of people to hospitals with breathing problems.

Heavy rains flooded streets in Beirut and caused power failures in many parts of the country.

The Beirut airport to diverted seven planes to Cyprus, Syria and Jordan. Only one plane landed Friday, a Middle East Airlines flight that touched down safely despite strong winds and poor visibility. Outgoing flights were not affected.

In the southern port of Sidon, rain storms forced the closure of the city's harbor and cut off electricity supplies and high waves broke over the beach wall. Main streets and many parked cars were submerged and palm trees were uprooted along the seaside boulevard. The storm destroyed billboards and plastic canopies erected over vegetable plots.

In neighboring Syria, dozens of roads and highways were blocked because of snow and flash floods, the official Syrian Arab News Agency said. The agency said snow was falling at altitudes of 2,640 feet.

In Egypt dust storms and howling winds forced eight airports to close. Cairo airport remained operational, but airports in Luxor, Aswan and six other cities had to close.

Eighteen domestic flights were either canceled or delayed Friday, Cairo airport officials said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

In Jordan, dust storms and wind of up to 50 miles an hour blew across the kingdom. An official from the Civil Defense Department said electricity was cut to some parts of the capital, Amman, and some traffic lights were blown down, but no injuries were reported.

Amman International airport remained operational and no flight delays were reported.

Israelis awoke Friday to find their cars covered in dust. Many people remained indoors, and the rough weather appeared to help keep things quiet in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with no serious violence reported.

Heavy winds and dust storms forced the ports in Haifa and Ashdod to close, train service was canceled in Haifa and El Al airline flights were delayed from Tel Aviv to Cairo.

In Israel's south, sandstorms limited vision to about half a mile. More than 100 people were treated for breathing problems due to the dust storms, Israeli news media reported.

(AP) -- Snow and freezing rain showers barreled across the Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and Midwest early Monday, a day after winter storms further south left roadways treacherous from the central Plains to the East coast.

Schools, businesses and government offices were closed Monday in North and South Carolina, while school districts across Ohio canceled classes in anticipation of slippery commutes.

"It has the potential of being a major ice storm," said meteorologist Jonathan Lamb with the National Weather Service in Greer, South Carolina "This type of situation is something to be prepared for."

A winter storm warning was issued for southern areas of New Jersey and road crews scrambled in Maryland and Delaware to prepare for what was predicted to be the heaviest snowfall of the season.

"It's going to be the biggest one of this winter," Maryland-based National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Woodcock said. "It will definitely be an impact, especially on the Monday morning commute."

At least 16 people died in weather-related car wrecks over the weekend. Dozens of airline flights were delayed or canceled from Missouri to South Carolina, and sporadic power outages were reported.

In Ohio, 14 people had to be rescued from Lake Erie by helicopter and airboat after high winds cracked the ice they were fishing on, separating them from Catawba Island, authorities said.

Rapid snowfall forced the cancellation of some flights out of Ohio's Dayton International Airport and Kansas City International Airport. Some connecting flights were canceled in South Carolina's Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport and Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

In North Carolina, freezing drizzle Sunday afternoon coated an earlier covering of snow. Troopers responded to 2,000 traffic accidents by mid-afternoon, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety said.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency, allowing him to activate the National Guard. Fifty solders were to report to armories early Monday and be ready to respond if hospitals or nursing homes lose power.

A winter storm warning was out Monday for much of Minnesota, Virginia and Indiana. Empty trains ran overnight in northern Virginia to keep tracks clear for morning commuters.

"It's a pretty large storm system coming through the Tennessee Valley, moving up through the Ohio Valley, then through New England by Tuesday," said Anita Silverman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.

A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.

Similar events in pre-history are known to have caused sudden "flips" of the climate, bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The development - described as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments", by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's weather mild.

If that happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem balmy by comparison.

[...] When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.

TORONTO - Canadians nationwide were contending with frigid temperatures and, in some areas, blizzards on Monday.

By mid-afternoon, every province had issued at least one weather warning.

PARIS (AFP) - Police closed highways, trains were held up and flights cancelled as winter storms battered parts of Europe which have left at least 10 people dead since the weekend.

Romania has been worst hit by blizzard conditions, the worst snow storms there in 40 years according to meteorologists, while Britain and France were bracing for heavy snowfalls creating potentially chaotic transport conditions. [...]

A pair of storms spread snow, sleet and freezing rain across the eastern half of the nation, glazing highways with treacherous ice as far south as Georgia and closing schools and government offices Monday.

The weather was blamed for at least 27 highway deaths and one sledding fatality on Sunday and Monday. [...]

TORONTO - Canadians will face freezing rain, extreme wind chill and heavy snowfall as severe winter weather continues to wallop the country.

A storm slammed Southern Ontario on Monday, and some areas were expecting up to 45 centimetres of snow by Tuesday night.

Environment Canada also predicted the storm would be accompanied by freezing rain and could become the worst in recent memory. [...]

KINGSTON, ONT. - The hunting practices of prehistoric Inuit whalers dramatically changed an Arctic pond ecosystem, long before European settlers arrived on the scene, according to a new study by Canadian scientists.

Although it's commonly assumed that High Arctic lakes and ponds were pristine before the arrival of Europeans, the study of Somerset Island, Nunavut by researchers from four Canadian universities suggest that may not be true.

"Our findings are an example of a long-term human intervention in a place where you really don't expect it," said Prof. John Smol, a Queen's University biology professor and Canada research chair in environmental change.

Since most native peoples led a nomadic life in a sparsely populated territory, scientists also thought their ancient activities didn't cause many changes to the environment.

But the new study of the region about 890 kilometres west of Baffin Island paints a different picture. [...]

A storm carrying the threat of heavy snow for the Northeast coated a wide swath of the East Coast in ice Tuesday, stopping trains, closing schools and courts, and knocking out electricity to a quarter-million people.

At least 46 deaths have been blamed on snow, ice and cold from Kansas to the Carolinas since the weekend. [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan 29 (OneWorld) -- As a U.S. federal judge in Alaska Wednesday ordered ExxonMobil to pay nearly US$7 billion in damages and interest as compensation for the disastrous 1989 oil spill of the Exxon Valdez, the world's largest grassroots environmental group said the U.S. oil giant should be held liable for many more billions of dollars for its contributions to global warming.

In a new report released shortly after the Alaska ruling, Friends of the Earth International (FoIE) charged that ExxonMobil's combined operations and production have caused between 4.7 and 5.3 percent of all human-made carbon dioxide emissions, which have been affecting the Earth's climate since the Standard Oil Trust, the company's oldest ancestor, was founded in 1882. [...]