Avalanches killed two mountain climbers in Italy's Vezza d'Oglio and Aosta valley and injured six others on Sunday, a day after the bodies of two Czech mountaineers, were found in an avalanche in central Slovakia's Tatras mountains.

In Germany, the authorities said a total of seven people had died since Friday in storm-related car accidents and floods, including a four-year-old boy who fell into a swollen river.

The Moscow rescue services said on Saturday 12 more people had frozen to death in the Russian capital, bringing this winter's death toll there to 227.

France and Switzerland issued avalanche warnings in the Alps at the weekend, saying the combination of fresh snow, warmer temperatures and fierce winds posed a fatal risk to skiers.

On Sunday, an avalanche in the French Alps buried two cross-country skiers, injuring one seriously.

 Three severe flood warnings - two in the Anglia region and one in Thames Valley - were in place and there were a further 136 flood warnings across the south and Midlands.

Severe winter weather is wreaking havoc across Europe, with nearly 200 people freezing to death in Poland, two killed by storms in Germany and floods threatening several European countries.

Most of the 183 victims of Poland's bitterly-cold winter were men who died of hypothermia after drinking heavily and falling sleep outside, police said.

Floods washed out parts of southern Belgium, took out Czech railways, and threatened northern Portugal, after rains and winds whipped up across western and central Europe overnight.

In Slovakia, a 51-year-old woman was killed and 15 injured, including four seriously, when the bus they were riding in spun out of control in high winds and crashed into a hillside.

This particular asteroid is the first ever found to orbit the sun in nearly the same path as Earth, but never manages to pass it, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

"In some ways, the Earth and this asteroid are like two race cars on a circular track," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Right now the asteroid is on a slightly slower track just outside Earth's, and our planet is catching up." - "There's no possibility that this asteroid could hit Earth, because Earth's gravity rebuffs its periodic advances and keeps it at bay," said Don Yeomans of JPL in Pasadena, California. "The asteroid and Earth take turns sneaking up on each other, but they never get too close."

About 260 people have left Stromboli, fearful of what the island's volcano might do next after it caused a massive wave to hit the village of Ginostra on Monday, injuring three people, damaging several homes and overturning boats.

One of the slopes of the volcano, which rumbled awake on Saturday, slid into the sea and the landslide created the wave. - Residents reported hearing an explosion on Monday that was thought to have set off the landslide, but the vulcanology institute has not confirmed the chain of events. The island was left practically deserted by Tuesday's exodus. Stromboli has an official population of 450, but civil protection officials said there were only 300 there at the time because many people were already away due to the holidays and the off-peak tourist season.

Europe was not as badly hit as Asia where nearly 400 people were reported dead of cold in Bangladesh and northern India in the past 10 days. But blizzards and icy temperatures on the back of last weeks floods brought scores of casualties across Europe.

Meanwhile in Germany, daytime temperatures on Wednesday were between minus 3C and minus 11C, with nighttime temperatures again expected to go to minus 20C or beyond. The cold wave is expected to continue through the rest of the week, with new snowfalls expected at the weekend, according to the Meteomedia weather service in Bochum.

A band of snow also hit many parts of the UK on Wednesday, disrupting rail services and causing road problems. During a night of heavy frost, temperatures sank as low as minus 8C in Farnborough, southern England and Hawarden in northeast Wales. They plunged to minus 16C in the Scottish Highland town of Aviemore. A rare snowfall hit central London just after 8.30 a.m. Earlier this week airports in the South of France were closed on Monday after the region was hit by rare snowfall.

The apparent ring might be merely an outer spiral arm of the galaxy, one group of researchers said, but the evidence suggests it is instead a well of several hundred million stars that encircles the entire Milky Way out beyond the main galactic disk.

Dupree explained what the event might look like to a viewer on a hypothetical planet surrounding Rho Cas: "The whole sky would be lit by the wrath of an angry star," she said. "I'm sure glad we're 10,000 light years away."

A huge and dense ring of interstellar gas is collecting near the galactic center and approaching a density that will, in about 200 million years, generate a burst of star formation that could transform the very appearance of our galaxy as seen from afar.

"Although it appears to snack often, this black hole is definitely on a severe diet," says Baganoff. "This could be because explosive events in the past blew away much of the gas from the neighborhood of the black hole."

Indeed, evidence for such events - which astronomers are viewing 26,000 years later due to the time it takes light to travel to Earth from the center of the Galaxy - can be found in the image. A faint streak of X-rays about 1 light-year long has been discovered 1.5 light-years from Sgr A*.

The streak points at Sgr A*, suggesting that it may be a jet of particles expelled at nearly the speed of light from just outside the event horizon of the black hole. The intensity and size of this jet indicate that the flaring activity has been occurring for many years.

The star, called Rho Cassiopeia, is a hypergiant with 20 to 40 times the mass of the sun. It puts out a half million times more light than the sun and can easily be seen from Earth even though it is 10,000 light years away. But Rho Cas, as it is called, is a seething, unstable ball of gas that expands and contracts over time and occasionally erupts with a violence that sends immense amounts of matter streaming through space.

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics captured images of such an explosion in 2000 and reported on their observations Tuesday at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

"The star did an amazing thing," said Andrea Dupree, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "We were exceptionally lucky to witness a stunning explosion."

Over a 200-day period, the star became brighter by 20 percent, a flare that made it one of the brightest stars in the universe, and then it dimmed, dropping in brightness by two magnitudes.

"An atmospheric shell was shredded by the blast wave and sent into space at Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound)," said Alex J. R. Lobel, also of Harvard-Smithsonian. The astronomers estimated that Rho Cas blasted mass equal to 10,000 Earths into space.

 "This is a higher rate of loss than has been seen on any other star," said Lobel. Based on a spectral analysis of the light which can determine temperature, Lobel said the star cooled by more than 3,000 degrees within a short period of time. All of this activity suggests that Rho Cas is nearing the end.

In Karelia province, near the Finnish border north of St Petersburg, 55 people have lost parts of arms or legs to frostbite and 5,300 people are living without heating. A state of emergency has been declared.

These moons are the first to be discovered around Neptune since the NASA Voyager II flyby in 1989, and the first discovered with a ground-based telescope since 1949, the center said in a statement. The three new moons were difficult to detect, since they are only about 18 to 24 miles in diameter and their distance from the sun means they are about 100 million times fainter than anything that can be seen with unaided eyes from Earth.

Ironically, the eastern region of Siberia, renowned for its deadly winters, has thus far experienced one of the mildest winters in a century.

Russia is not the only country in the region where the brutal winter has caused havoc. In Ukraine, heavy snowfall closed down five airports Sunday where runways were covered in ice, the emergencies ministry said Monday. In Germany, snow and frozen rain virtually shut down the airport at Cologne and Bonn, cancelled flights at Frankfurt's international airport and caused traffic snarls in Bavaria, officials said. Arctic weather in the Baltic region has killed at least 15 people in the Latvian capital of Riga in recent days, officials said Monday. Meanwhile ice has virtually frozen ports in the region. In Russia's second-largest city of Saint Petersburg on Monday, around 50 ships remained at sea, shut out of the city's frozen ports by a layer of ice some 80 centimeters (31 inches) thick covering the Gulf of Finland, off Saint Petersburg's coast. Ice there had not been that thick since 1941, when residents welcomed the frozen cover, for it enabled vehicles to sneak supplies into the city, under siege by the German army.

Meanwhile, countries in traditionally warmer areas continued to feel the effects of the vicious cold snap that caught western Europe unprepared last week. Fireman in Portugal said Sunday the cold has cost some five lives in their country, with one person dying from carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to warm up at home. In Greece, a young illegal immigrant was found frozen to death on the Greece-Albania border, while four other illegal immigrants have disappeared in the region, local Greek news agencies reported Monday.

After hovering over the west coast of French territories Wallis and Futuna, Ami gathered gusts of 175 kilometers per hour (109 miles per hour) as it hurtled southwards along the 180 degree line of longitude. It was expected to loom over Fiji late Monday night, meteorologists said Monday.

Residents of Nayau island in the Lau group were confronted by 30-metre (90-foot) waves and forced to seek shelter in upland caves, a radio operator there reported. Two children were missing and presumed dead in the village of Druadrua on Vanua Levu after the church they were sheltering in collapsed. The island's main town Labasa reported heavy flooding and suspended telephone service but no casualties, said the Disaster Management Committee.

Many of the dead were beggars, laborers or rickshaw pullers. In Bangladesh, newspapers said 40 more people died in the past 24 hours from the biting winter temperatures, raising the reported toll to 460. The government gives no official figures.

"Allah alone knows when this cold will end," said Fatema Begum, a mother of two youngsters living in a plastic tent on a noisy roadside in the capital, Dhaka, where tens of thousands sleep on the congested streets.

Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia handed out clothes to the shivering needy early Wednesday as vendors exploited the cold snap to double prices for woolen caps and jackets.

Weather officials saw no let-up for at least a couple of days in the near-freezing temperatures gripping the region that they said were partly due to winds blowing in from Siberia.

While the mercury levels are mild by some standards, they can prove deadly in South Asia where millions are homeless or live in shacks without heat.

Lack of good food worsens the cold's impact, lowering body heat and leading to hypothermia, doctors say. Minimum temperatures across the region have fallen to around three degrees Celsius (37.40F).

Residents of Nayau island in the Lau group were confronted by 30-metre (90-foot) waves and forced to seek shelter in upland caves, a radio operator there reported.

Two children were missing and presumed dead in the village of Druadrua on Vanua Levu after the church they were sheltering in collapsed. The island's main town Labasa reported heavy flooding and suspended telephone service but no casualties, said the Disaster Management Committee.

A New Zealand air force Orion aircraft was Wednesday to set out on an assessment mission of the islands, many of which had been declared disaster areas to hasten the distribution of aid and assistance. 

 Twenty-eight people were injured, most of them slightly, police said. - Most of the injured sustained cuts and bruises, and all but 10 were either treated at the scene or treated in hospitals and soon released, police said. None of the injuries was life-threatening.

The tornado, unusually powerful for the Mediterranean island, struck about 10 a.m., when businesses were just opening in a neighborhood of shops and small factories near the new port.

 The police press office said the tornado uprooted trees and severed power lines. About two hours later, a tornado also hit coastal area of Larnaca, near Kiti village, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) to the east, where police reported damage to homes and property. No injuries were reported there, according to police.

In Limassol, roofs were torn off several stores when the tornado touched down for a few minutes, lifted, then briefly touched down again. A trailer was overturned and a shipping container it had been carrying was ripped from its bed.

A ntonis Antoniou, who works in a pharmaceutical factory, said the tornado lasted three or four minutes and that he had stepped outside to watch it coming in from the sea until co-workers pulled him in to safety. "The windows started breaking and they told everyone to go into the basement," he said.

Bad weather also delayed the arrival of the 15-ship British naval task force that was gathering off Cyprus on Monday to head on to the Gulf, according to officials at the British base near Limassol. The ships were heading to the Gulf in support of any U.S.-led military action against Iraq.

Two weeks of heavy rains have destroyed thousands of homes in eight districts in Malawi, leaving 300,000 people homeless and struggling to survive in make-shift shelters made from plastic sheeting, said Malawi's chief relief official James Chiusiwa.

Overcrowding in shelters had raised the prospect of the outbreak of diseases, such as cholera, he told Reuters.

Government officials said last week that the floods had killed at least seven people. Villagers from affected districts of southern Malawi said dozens more were still missing.

"The situation is critical," Chiusiwa said. "These people are in urgent need of blankets, more plastic sheeting for shelter and urgent food supplies."

"We've lost complete control," said Jane Tollini, the zoos penguin keeper. "It's a free-for-all in here. After 18 years of doing this job, these birds are making mincemeat of me."

It all started in November when six newcomer Magellannic penguins, formerly of Sea World in Aurora, Ohio, were brought in.

Since then the penguin pool at the San Francisco Zoo has been a daily frenzy of circle swimming by all of the 52 birds at once.

The penguins start swimming in circles early in the day and rarely stop until they stagger out of the pool at dusk.

The six penguins from Ohio started it all, Tollini said, apparently convincing the others to join them for the watery daily circuit. "I can't figure out how the Aurora penguins communicated and changed the minds of the other 46," Tollini said.

Stromlo accounts for a third of Australia's astronomy research. "The speed of the fire was unbelievable," says Ian Chubb, vice chancellor of the Australian National University that runs Stromlo.

"The aluminum domes on top of the telescopes have all melted"

 "It's devastating," says Brian Boyle, director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Siding Spring in New South Wales.

 "It will mean the termination of a number of major projects, including a digital survey of the southern hemisphere sky."

Key equipment There are relatively few observatories in the southern hemisphere. But surveys of the southern sky are important, in part because they give a better view of the centre of our galaxy. The survey was in its second week of data collection when the fire struck. The fires also incinerated a key piece of equipment that Stromlo had built for the Gemini Observatory telescope in Hawaii. The Gemini Observatory is a pair of eight metre telescopes, one in Hawaii, the other in Chile. The AUS$5 million "imaging spectrograph" would have provided data on how galaxies form in the early Universe.

"Conditions are rapidly worsening with more blizzards forecast," said senior civil defense official Togoo, who, like many Mongolians, uses only one name.

Since the end of December, blizzards have killed four people and 80,000 head of livestock have died of starvation and extreme cold as snow blanketed land on which they would graze in a normal winter, officials said.

The unseasonably cold temperatures are dipping into Florida and even colder temperatures were expected overnight. Freeze warning for Florida A hard freeze warning was issued from the Florida Panhandle, where temperatures were expected to drop into the teens or low 20s, south to Miami, where it was expected to reach the low 30s.

"The movement of stars and planets has its effect on climatic conditions," claims Prasann Dixit, a well-known astrologer.

 According to him, "A change in the astronomical positions is like by January 18, following which one could expect a bright sun, thereby bringing a rise in the day temperature."

S ubhash Chandra, who took to astrology after retiring from the Indian Air Force, also sees logic in Dixit's explanation. "The geometrical position in which planets are currently placed is responsible for the intensity of the cold this winter," Chandra told IANS.

 As Cyclone Beni swirled menacingly near the two main coral atolls of Rennell and Bellona province, another tropical cyclone formed southeast of Fiji and was bearing down on the island kingdom of Tonga, weather forecasters said. Cyclone Beni and Cyclone Cilla were weaker than Cyclone Zoe, whose 300 kph (186 mph) winds stripped the Solomons' easternmost islands of Tikopia, Anuta and Fatutaka of their greenery around the New Year.

But their twin appearance reinforced predictions that the El Nino weather phenomenon could ensure a busy and violent cyclone season for the South Pacific this year. Officials in the Solomons said Beni was barely moving around 129 km (80 miles) south-southeast of Rennell and Bellona and sending winds of up to 60 knots gusting ashore.

 NASA meteorologists likened the images to a "full-body scan" of the storm, analogous to a doctor's image of a patient observed with sophisticated medical scanning equipment. Storms often form precipitation either by forming rain at lower altitudes or by forming frozen particles high in the atmosphere.

The 1999 storm did both as the storm evolved, according to David Atlas of NASA's Goddard center. "The 'full-body scan' also provides new insight into the intensity and hazards within storms, which should be avoided by aircraft," Atlas said in a statement.

"Even the aircraft used in this study did not go into the core of the storm because of the hazards."

Scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research used radar equipment sensitive enough to detect the different kinds of particles from the storm's base up to its top, 8-1/2 miles above the jungle floor.

A jet aircraft operated by the University of North Dakota also made measurements within the storm.

Yair, project coordinator for Israeli experiments on board the Columbia in its current mission, said analysis would attempt over the next few weeks to confirm scientists' initial impression that the glow is neither a sprite nor an elf, two other electrical phenomena associated with thunderstorms. "It is raw data hot from the oven," Yair said. "It's a grainy and noisy image but for scientists it's a treasure trove. That's what we like."

Scientists were excited by the news that astronauts on Sunday captured the first-ever pictures of elves taken from space with a calibrated camera. The shuttle and its seven-member crew, which includes Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, are on a 16-day science mission that began on Jan. 16. The study of sprites, elves and other luminosities associated with thunderstorms is part of what Yair described as a new discipline in the field of upper atmospheric physics. Sprites, which are red flashes shooting up from thunderstorms, were discovered only as recently as 1989, followed by elves, which are spreading red doughnut shapes, in 1994.

The latest luminosity, Yair said, was a narrow limb-like glow, hundreds of miles in length, red in color and probably made of nitrogen. Yair said the band was especially bright. "It seems that the atmosphere still holds surprises for us," Yair said. Yair said scientists studying these electrical discharges were looking to further basic science rather than develop specific products. "But if you understand the global electrical circuit, and if you want to fly certain high flying aircraft or even satellites or if you want to move things through this layer of atmosphere then you have to know really well what's going on up there in terms of electricity," Yair said.

"Most people were killed or injured by debris from huts and buildings made of sticks," Mamba said. "The crops have been uprooted by the wind and the water and famine is threatening." Bandundu province is 150 miles northeast of the capital, Kinshasa. News of the disaster was slow to reach the capital due to the region's remoteness.

Rho Cassiopeiae is one of the most massive stars known, about 40 times heavier and 700 times bigger than our Sun, and shining some 50,000 times more brightly. Such massive stars are called hypergiants and Rho Cassiopeiae is the brightest of only seven yellow hypergiants known in our galaxy. Hypergiants are very bright and very hot, with temperatures of between 3,500 C to 7,000 C. Between 1993 and 2002, five telescopes in Europe and the United States have been trained on the star, and the astronomers were rewarded in 2000 when they were able to record the first eruption. [...]

The team analysed the event's spectra, or separated light, to determine temperature changes and learn how much material was shot into space. The star cooled down from 7,000 C to 4,000 C within a few months during the event. Over 200 days, the star ejected about three per cent of its mass - equal to 10,000 Earths. Since then the star has been restless. Recently, its outer atmosphere seems to be collapsing, prompting Lobel to forecast that another eruption is imminent. Despite being 10,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Cassiopiea, Rho Cassiopeiae has a brightness of 4.5 on a scale that runs from 6 being the dimmest that can be seen by the unaided eye and 0 for the brightest objects. This massive distance means that the events being observed occurred about 10,000 years ago. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, so each light year an object is away represents a delay of a year between an event occurring and us being able to observe it.

"Rats are a reservoir of disease, the sleeping giants of disease in the world," Dr Lyn Hinds, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, told Reuters.

"It is more likely than ever that we will have greater levels of debilitating diseases caused by rats...with the increased density of human populations," she said at the start of the second International Rodent Biology and Management Conference. Although rats have plagued city-dwellers and farmers for centuries, researchers have yet to find an efficient way to stop them spreading disease or ruining crops. Ten rats are born for every human -- a staggering 3.6 million a day -- although many don't live for longer than a few months.

"This building went up fast - nobody had a chance," said Carcieri, who rushed back to the state from a Florida vacation.

It was the deadliest U.S. nightclub fire since 164 people were killed at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Ky., in 1977. It also came less than a week after 21 people were killed in a stampede at a Chicago nightspot.

The '80s hard rock band Great White had just started playing Thursday night when giant pyrotechnic sparklers on stage began shooting up and ignited the ceiling above them and soundproofing near the stage. Some in the crowd said they thought it was part of the act, but the fire quickly spread through the low-ceilinged building, filling it with thick, black smoke. The entire club was engulfed in flames within three minutes, Fire Chief Charles Hall said.

Capacity at The Station Concert Club was 300, but Hall said fewer people than that were inside the building. Robin Petrarca, 44, was standing within a few feet of a door, but said she couldn't see the exit because of the billowing smoke. In the rush to escape, she fell and was trampled, but made it out. "There was nothing they could do, it went up so fast," she said. Hall said the club recently passed a fire inspection, but didn't have a city permit for pyrotechnics.

The building, which is at least 60 years old, was not required to have a sprinkler system because of its small size. State officials said they had started an investigation and state police had spoken to band members.

The pyrotechnics were used without permission from the club, said Kathleen Hagerty, a lawyer representing club owners Michael and Jeffrey Derderian.

"No permission was ever requested by the band or its agents to use pyrotechnics at The Station, and no permission was ever given," she said.

The band's singer, Jack Russell, said the manager checked with the club before the show and the use of pyrotechnics was approved. And Paul Woolnough, president of Great White's management company, said tour manager Dan Biechele "always checks" with club officials before pyrotechnics are used.

"I'm not going to reply to those allegations, but I do know that the club would have been informed, as they always are," Woolnough said.

Biechele could not immediately be located for comment. The owner of a well-known New Jersey nightclub said Great White failed to tell him they were using pyrotechnics for a concert there a week ago. "Our stage manager didn't even know it until it was done," said Domenic Santana, owner of the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. "My sound man freaked out because of the heat and everything, and they jeopardized the health and the safety of our patrons." Most of the bodies were found near The Station's front exit, some of them burned and others dead from smoke inhalation. Hall also said some appeared to have been trampled in the rush to escape.

"They tried to go out the same way they came in. That was the problem," Hall said. "They didn't use the other three fire exits." Many of the injured were taken to Rhode Island Hospital. The governor said at least 25 people were in critical condition at state hospitals with severe burns and suffering from smoke inhalation. The ages of the victims ranged from the teens to the late 30s. "As much as we can prepare for anything like this the stark reality is hard to imagine," said Dr. Joseph Amaral, a surgeon and president of Rhode Island Hospital. "One of the most remarkable things for me is the degree of inhalation injuries that everyone sustained." The blaze broke out at about 11 p.m. during the first song at the concert in West Warwick, about 15 miles southwest of Providence. "All of a sudden I felt a lot of heat," said Russell, the band's singer. "I see the foam's on fire. ... The next thing you know the whole place is in flames." He said he started dousing the fire with a water bottle but couldn't put it out, then all the lights went out. "I just couldn't believe how fast it went up," he said. Russell said one of his band members, guitarist Ty Longley, was among the missing. Firefighters worked through the morning Friday to pull charred bodies from the building as onlookers watched, worried about missing friends."They were completely burned. They had pieces of flesh falling off them," said Michelle Craine, who was waiting to hear about a friend who was missing. "It was the worst thing I've ever seen." It was the second tragedy at a U.S. club in four days. Early Monday, 21 people were killed and more than 50 were injured in the Chicago melee, which began after a security guard used pepper spray to break up a fight.

MASSIVE SOLAR ERUPTIONS have accompanied the close solar flyby of the comet NEAT Tuesday. One coronal mass ejection plume at 05:00 hours 18 Feb. --Tuesday morning, extended at least 5 million miles from the surface of the sun toward the comet, Other coronal discharges were observed extending in excess of 12 million miles.

In the early hours of Thursday morning around 6:30am the Godlikeproductions.com comet discussion board (linked to the absent Kent Steadmans' CyberspaceOrbit website) inexplicably went offline about
thirty minutes after participants discovered that NASA had been faking webimages of the comet's passage past the sun on the morning of the 18th February.

BAD WEATHER EXCUSE - IN ADVANCE A total of 7 hours of data from early Tuesday had been missing from the hourly photographs released by the SOHO project monitoring the comet's passage. Live web imaging experienced interruptions of data by NASA --which in advance was already implausibly citing "weather problems" in the Wash. DC area as the reason. Also, the Goddard space facility displayed a Code RED -- stated to be as a result of weather problems, and which instructed non-emergency staff not to attend Tuesday 18th through Wednesday 19th February.

However the Rt 295, freeway which goes by the NSA and Goddard facilities was clear Wednesday. Indeed, locals informed GuluFuture.com that the freeway is invariably kept open because of the importance of the facilities it serves. In any event, it was 50F in the area Wednesday 19th, and snow had stopped. Also a US military website following the comet's flyby did not provide new images from 11:30pm EST Tuesday until late Wednesday afternoon. The images normally update several times an hour. At one point the website showed pictures from FEB 12th, 2003 in their 5 minute live update.

THE IMPLICATIONS. Given all this, the current image data has highly dubious credibility. The severity of the solar reactions could have torn the comet apart and even without this, the coronal mass ejection could cause significant weather, geomagnetic, and seismic effects on Earth.

One side-effect of the interaction with the sun may be that the orbit of the comet has been flattened. Orbit calculations had indicated it would be directly overhead [image] around Nov. 28, 2003, but if alternative theories about comet composition are correct, then the close flyby could have altered the trajectory disastrously. [ Try 3D orbit calcualtor ] Even if the comet were to miss (likely) then the possible debris field from the close approach to the sun could still pose serious dangers. But electromagnetic and solar wind effects could be felt much earlier. On Wednesday, an ominous statement by Homeland security chief Tom Ridge, recommended American citizens to have "3-days supply of food and water as well as flashlights" in preparation for an "attack."

The Homeland Security site advises:

The new campaign seeks to reduce fears and provide information by providing individuals specific actions they can take to protect themselves, their families and their communities in the wake of an attack, or another emergency situation. Emergency Supply Kit: Start with three days worth of nonperishable food and water. Remember, even if your community is not directly affected by an attack, your life and daily routine may be disrupted. You may need to shelter at home for a couple of days. Roads and stores may be closed - electricity may be turned off - your water supply might be interrupted.

Slightly excessive for a terror attack perhaps?

BEST KEPT SECRET Incredibly, there has been little media advance reporting of this most spectacular comet passage since Hale-Bopp and virtually no reporting of these current solar responses or the gaps in web imaging. However one of the most intriguing aspects of all this, is that only four days ago, Dr. Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California said that secrecy might be the best option if scientists were ever to discover that a giant asteroid was on course to collide with Earth.

"Overreaction not just by the public but by policy-makers scurrying around before the thing actually hits because we can't do anything about it anyway ... to a large extent you are better off not adding to your social costs," said Dr Sommer, who is also an adviser on terrorism. That's right, Dr. Sommer works for the Rand Corporation and is also an adviser on terrorism.

BIZARRE NASA MESSAGE RE LIVE WEB IMAGING: "NOTE: The Washington DC metropolitan area is under a snow emergency. If the LASCO team has technical problems with the software that reformats telemetry into images for the web they may not be able to fix it until the emergency is lifted."

SUN DIAMETER EQUALS 870,000 MILES
NEAT DIAMETER EQUALS 348,000 MILES
LENGTH NEAT TAIL EQUALS 5,220,000 MILES
JUPITER DIAMETER EQUALS 88,782 MILES
TO SAY THIS BABY IS BIG IS A LITTLE BIT OF ANUNDERSTATEMENT AS IS ITS TOTAL INVISIBILITY.

Spectacular Comet Hit by Solar Flare?

Spectacular images of the recently found NEAT comet show the cosmic voyager more than twice the size of planet Jupiter may have been struck by a massive solar eruption. Images from the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) satellite, which sits partway between Earth and the Sun and is designed primarily to monitor space weather, have on Tuesday morning shown a massive solar plume extending over a 5 million miles above the sun -seemingly towards the comet. But though the photography is time-lapsed, there are 7 hourly photographs missing from the data released by the SOHO project -meaning it is impossible to determine if the plume later extended to strike the comet.

A coronal mass ejection (CME), already appears to have hit the comet Monday, according to SOHO deputy project director Paul Brekke. The SOHO imaging shows sunlight reflecting off gas and dust from the comet's nucleus and hydrogen solar wind from the sun. The comet has been in LASCO's imaging domain since Sunday. It will begin to move out of the field of view around 5 a.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 20.KASSANDRA'S COMMENT:
"In Twin Cities tonight, about 6:00 p.m., I saw our comet! To say it is big is putting it midly. To the west and north a bit, you couldn't miss it low on the horizon. But was anybody but me looking at it in the grocery store parking lot? Nope, nada. Fucking phenomenal. I saw the comet that last passed us 37,000 years ago. To keep this a secret is a CRIME of unprecedented proportions." 2/20/2003 12:56 am EST

"A WEBSURFER'S COMMENT:
"Two days ago a press release comes out of NASA saying they would keep it a secret if an earth-threatening object came along. Now this NEAT comet is swapping spit with the sun and not a word in the media? Kids, there's no coincidences. I never bought into any of that Zeta Talk crap, but this baby has my attention."

NEW ZEALAND WEBSURFER NZDOOODE COMMENT:"Yeah, I contacted my National newsroom on the 18th and they told me that I was the first to tell them about it *shocked* is the mainstream media asleep or are they liars!??! I saw this 2002V1 comet with my naked eyes on sunset the other night, the sun was obscured by some loud, it was the most amazing sight I have ever seen before, in the sky. A major astronomical event like this, to keep the truth from the public is pure EVIL!! I looked in the sun's direction today and was dazzled by an unusual "very white" saturated light - significantly brighter than usual!! We are getting very red skies at sunrise and at sunset, it's summer here and we just got a forecast for unusual thunder/snow/hail tomorrow.