AHMEDABAD, India - At least 94 people have died and some 200,000 have been evacuated due to heavy rains and flash floods in India's western coastal state of Gujarat, officials said amid warnings of worse to come.

"The flood situation is likely to worsen in Gujarat. We have to be prepared for the worst floods," Science Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters in New Delhi on Friday. "Only after July 4 or 5 will there be a substantial fall in rainfall."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, meanwhile, has offered "all help for flood relief," his office said, as Home Minister Shivraj Patil headed for Gujarat to assess the situation.

The floods in Gujarat, which began six days ago, have inundated scores of villages and water has overwhelmed residential suburbs of many towns, including worst-affected Vadodra, state government officials said.

Most of the 94 deaths occurred when people, both adults and children, were washed away by strong currents after dams overflowed, while others were crushed when buildings collapsed or were buried in mudslides, officials said.

They added that around 200,000 people in the affected areas of the state had been moved to higher ground by Friday.

Dozens of train services were delayed due to water-logged tracks while some had to be cancelled, marooning hundreds of passengers on railway platforms.

The rains have also disrupted flights and left vehicles stranded on water-logged highways, while all schools in the state were closed until Monday, education officials said.

Army and paramilitary personnel have been deployed to reach those trapped but bad weather prevented rescue helicopters from lifting those stranded in many places. [...]

MARSEILLE, France -- Fires fanned by strong winds and probably started deliberately on Friday swept through hundreds of hectares (acres) of woodland and scrub in southeastern France and the Mediterranean island of Corsica.

Corsica was particularly hard hit, with flames sweeping through some 1,400 hectares (five square miles) in the north of the island.

"There is no doubt about the criminal origin" of the fires, a senior government official in northern Corsica told AFP, saying that the blazes had been deliberately started three kilometres (two miles) apart.

With winds gusting to 90 kilometres (55 miles) an hour the flames spread swiftly Friday despite the efforts of more than 260 firefighters and aircraft dropping water.

Two babies, among 50 people who had taken shelter in a church, suffered mild problems from smoke inhalation.

There were no reports of loss of property. Local people were asked by the authorities to take shelter in their homes or in churches.

In Provence, in southeastern France, a fire broke out Friday and fanned by a strong northern mistral wind devastated 200 hectares (495 acres) of scrub and pine forest.

This blaze was also thought to be of criminal origin, as it started in two separate places. Two main highways were cut and isolated houses were evacuated.

In another part of Provence, where 160 hectares had been hit by fires Thursday, a further 100 were ablaze Friday.

North of the port city of Marseille between 40 and 50 hectares were on fire.

Weather forecasters said that the wind should drop in Corsica Friday but the mistral would continue to blow in Provence until Saturday.

Parched meadows and water shortages indicate France is already facing a summer drought. Meanwhile, its scientists are warning killer heatwaves will become the norm.

Just west of Parthenay in the rolling grasslands of western France is a panorama that could be Pembrokeshire or the west of Ireland. Here, in the département of Deux-Sèvres, amid lush, green meadows, you find low hills, hedges, clumps of trees and granite outcrops. Except that, this summer, the meadows are not lush or green. They are a dusty and sickly yellow-grey. The meadow grasses and wild flowers have died back to their roots, as if scorched by a giant hair-dryer. They have been "grilled", in the word of a local sheep farmer, Jean-Louis Chamard, by a winter and spring with virtually no rain and a blazing early summer with temperatures reaching 35C (95F) day after day.

A little further north lies the Cebron reservoir, a lovely artificial lake that supplies the centre of the département with drinking water. It is normally two-thirds full now, and a breeding ground for two species of tern, which come to this sheltered spot from the shores of the Atlantic 100 miles to the west.

This year there are few terns. The lake has been reduced to a large, mud-rimmed pond. Despite severe restrictions - no farm irrigation, no lawn sprinkling, no car washing, no filling of swimming or paddling pools - the nearby town of Parthenay has warned its citizens that they may run short of tap water by later summer or early autumn.

Deux-Sèvres is one of the three or four worst afflicted areas but a drought has already been declared in 28 of the 94 départements in metropolitan France. Even before the hottest and thirstiest months of the summer, France is running short of water.

This is not a drought as Africans, or even Australians, would recognise the term. The grass has died back but not turned to dust. The trees are in glorious leaf. There are no dead sheep or cows in the fields.

All the same, something odd is happening. Many of the worst-affected areas are along the western seaboard of France - from the Oise north of Paris, to Eure in Normandy to Charente-Maritime around La Rochelle. Many easterly and southerly parts of France are also suffering, but they are more used to dry winters and scorching summers. The départements of the west and centre-west - beloved of British tourists and exiles - are not.

Jacques Dieumegard, 60, a retired science teacher who is in charge of water supplies in the Parthenay area, said: "We always used to teach that France was a temperate country. Now, with a run of hot summers and dry winters, with periods of drought but also periods of intense cold, tropical downpours of rain and flash floods in the south, the experts are beginning to ask whether France can still be described as temperate." A study by weather futurologists at Météo France warned that by the second half of this century stifling summer months, like the August of 2003 that killed 15,000 old people in France, could become the norm.

France has had droughts before. In 1976, sheep and cows did die in the fields. It is impossible to say for certain whether this year is a one-off dry season or a sign of a radical change in rain patterns. Four years ago France had a torrential winter. Since then most winters have been unusually dry, especially in the west.

The great western drought of 2005 - said by many to be worse than 1976 - does, however, fit a wider pattern of climate change, which goes beyond the western seaboard of France. It might have been useful to bring President George Bush to Deux-Sèvres for the G8 summit next week, rather than to the green fairways of Gleneagles.

Wildlife is adapting. Many French swallows and house martins did not bother to emigrate to Africa last winter. For several years now, unusual species of butterfly, normally found in Africa, have been appearing farther and farther north. People find it much harder, especially farmers. In the great western drought of 2005, farmers are among the worst-hit victims. They are also, according to some local campaigners, the greatest water-hogging villains.

Farmers are not responsible for the change in the weather. They are, however, partly responsible for the acute shortage of water and especially the disastrous fall in the level of underground water-tables in some parts of western France.

Deux-Sèvres, like many neighbouring départements, used to be animal-rearing country, with small fields, hedges and trees. In the rocky centre of the département that pattern remains. In the south and east, however, there has been a steady conversion in the past two decades to large fields growing wheat and maize to take advantage of subsidies for cereals farming.

Maize, especially, demands huge amounts of water - about 1,000 cubic metres, or two-thirds of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, for every acre. Long, humped-back watering machines, metallic Loch Ness monsters, have become a familiar sight in northern and western France in the past 20 years.

In the summer months in Deux-Sèvres in a "normal" year, farmers use twice as much water as domestic consumers. Just under half of all the water used in France is now taken by farmers (not including private farm ponds and wells, which further lower the water table.)

Cereal-growers have been banned from using public water supplies in Deux-Sèvres since April. Many took the public-spirited decision not to plant maize this year after the dry winter and spring. Others, less far-sighted, are furious, staring at their stunted maize fields and complaining that farmers in neighbouring areas are being allowed to irrigate regardless.

Several cereal farmers in Deux-Sèvres refused to speak to me, partly because I was British and they regarded me as an emissary of Tony Blair. Beyond that, they said, they were too angry to speak to an unsympathetic press, British or French.

Jean-Pierre, a 50-something farmer, south of Parthenay said: "There is a lot of resentment. Many people are talking about violence but I don't see how that would help us. We are not asking for the right to use water to make big profits. We accept that some maize fields are done for. We only want to grow enough maize to feed our own animals in the winter. Otherwise, I don't see how some of us can survive."

Some local environmental activists are calling for a permanent ban on farm irrigation on Deux-Sèvres. Even moderate local politicians, such as M. Dieumegard, say that it is time for farmers to accept their part in responsibility for the acuteness of the drought.

"The change in farming methods has had two effects," M. Dieumegarde said. "Water tables have been pumped out faster than they used to be. But the larger fields for cereal farming have also meant the building of more elaborate and efficient systems of field drainage. That means much of the rain that does fall runs off straight into streams, rivers and then the sea, rather than sinking into the sub-soil and the water tables, which supply reservoirs such as Cebron."

Jean-Louis Chamard, 52, the sheep farmer with the "grilled" meadows, west of Parthenay, accepts there is "some truth" in this argument. He does not grow maize; his rocky terrain does not permit it. He is already feeding his winter supplies of hay to his 1,200 ewes and 800 lambs.

"There is nothing for them in the fields," he said. "There has been a little rain this week but the soil is so dry that the rain just vanishes on contact. It would take 10 days of continuous rain to bring some grass back. If that does not happen, we will have used all of our winter feed in the summer and we will be in serious difficulties."

M. Chamard, a local farm union activist, says it is easier to point the finger at cereal farmers than to offer an alternative. The movement to bigger farms means that growers have to earn larger amounts each year to pay off their loans. It would not be possible for all farmers in Deux-Sèvres to go back to animal rearing (for which the profits, and EU subsidies, are smaller).

"It is all very well for ecologists and others to say irrigation should be banned," M. Chamard said. "Maybe some restrictions are justified, but 20 per cent of the jobs in this département depend on farming, directly or indirectly. What is going to replace those?"

The reverse side of that argument is that 80 per cent of jobs in Deux-Sèvres - one of the least urbanised départements in France - do not depend on agriculture. Forty years ago, the figures would have been reversed.

Even in small towns such as Partnenay, whose prosperity depends partly on the farmland all around, there is much resentment of farmers. Isabelle, a 35-year-old mother of three, emerging from a local supermarket, said: "My friend told me that farmers were still watering their fields at night, while we're not supposed to fill a paddling pool for our kids. That's not right." [...]

The tensions within Deux-Sèvres suggest that farmers can no longer expect to get their own way politically in France - not even in La France profonde. One up to Mr Blair. On the other hand, if permanent climate change becomes reality, the present arguments about agricultural subsidies may come to seem quaint and academic in the years ahead.

The whole pattern of our agriculture will have to change, from Africa to northern Europe. The problems of irrigating maize fields in Deux-Sèvres may be a harbinger of much greater problems of food production still to come. And food, as we know, is not just an issue for farmers.

Sweltering heat has many Metro Detroiters seeking relief in Michigan's waters, where lakes already have warmed to peak summertime temperatures.

The average surface temperatures of the Great Lakes are at their highest in five years. Readings in the 60s and 70s from all but Lake Superior already are warmer than they were during last summer's most comfortable mid-August swimming days.

Tourists have headed north and boaters have hit the waterways for the busy Fourth of July weekend. Roger Funkhouser, manager of Bayshore Resort in Traverse City, has booked a growing number of downstaters looking to escape the heat.

"We get a lot of spur-of-the-moment visits when people decide they just can't take it anymore," he said. Victoria Davis, 14, of Pontiac, took advantage of Cass Lake's warm temperatures Friday.

"I thought it was going to be really cold. It's like bath water," said Davis.

She went swimming with her mother, Nancy, 37 and sister, Brooklyn, 8, at the lake at Dodge No. 4 State Park.

But experts warn that bountiful sunshine and warm water can have a downside. It can steam up a biological soup that spells trouble for living creatures in and out of the water.

Gary Towns, Lake Erie management supervisor for the state's fisheries division, expects to see accelerated weed growth in inland lakes and the possibility of more frequent toxic blue-green algae slicks.

Towns also expects an earlier and more dramatic onset of the annual midsummer fish die-off because of low oxygen levels in some lakes. Some algae, like the blue-green variety, can cause illness in animals.

"Heat is very good for making things grow, including weeds, algae and bacteria," said Rochelle Sturtevant, a systems ecologist with the Great Lakes Sea Grant network.

Sturtevant said researchers might not make sense of current temperature data for months or even years, but there is evidence this is an unusual season. Mary Kinzer said the weeds have grown so fast in the water in front of her Orchard Lake home in West Bloomfield that she has been unable to swim this season. Residents at the lake usually have the weeds cut and hauled out in July.

"It's like a carpet. I can see the fish making tunnels up through it," Kinzer said. "The algae is terrible, too. It seems worse than ever."

The warm water is having an effect on fish. Walleye headed out to deeper, colder water in Lake Erie two weeks ago, more than a month ahead of normal, said Towns.

"People are having some trouble catching legal-sized walleye in Michigan waters. Normally, you don't see that movement until August," he said. "This year, it happened in the second week of June." [...]

Steve Lichota, associate director of the environmental division of the Macomb County Health Department, is at a loss to explain why his monitors have registered high E. coli bacteria levels so often this season at Lake St. Clair beaches.

"It's usually rain that causes fertilizer runoff and introduction of fecal material along with combined sewage and storm water overflows. But for some reason we've been getting high readings without rain events that cannot be explained," Lichota said.

"No swimming" orders were issued at Metropolitan Beach Metropark on five days so far this season due to high E. coli counts. Memorial Beach and St. Clair Shores' Blossom Heath Beach remain closed over the holiday weekend, their third shutdowns of the season. A beach at the inland reservoir lake at Stony Creek Metropark also closed for a day in mid-June.

"That was a very rare thing," Lichota said. "Was it the geese and the lack of rainfall that caused a concentration of bacteria? Whether something out there is multiplying because of heat, I can't say."

A researcher at Central Michigan University has begun a study of bacteria that may multiply in beach sand, said David Schwab, director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor.

Experts say the trend doesn't provide proof of global warming theories, but may point to the extremes of natural weather cycles.

"It seems the last four or five years, perhaps the last decade, have been a little bit warmer," Schwab said. "Whether that is something that will continue, we don't know. It may simply be part of a 10-year, or even a 100-year, cycle." [...]

TBILISI, July 4 (Xinhuanet) -- A massive power failure struck east Georgia, including the capital of Tbilisi, on Monday night due to the breakdown of a high-tension wire that transmits electricity from the west part of the country to the east.

The Itar-Tass news agency reported that the accident happened at 23:15 p.m. local time (2015 GMT) when most subway trains were already in or approaching the platform.

Therefore, it did not take long to evacuate passengers from the railway carriages.

Local television stations, which had suffered similar power outages in recent years, turned to self-prepared emergency power supplies and continued to work.

BEIJING, July 5 -- Experts from 30 countries are attending the 5th International Convention on Environment and Development this week in Havana, Cuba.

The event addresses issues like water basin management, coastal eco-systems, protected areas, environmental education and more.

The Cuba-sponsored conference has held meetings every other year since 1997, aiming to promote environmental protection in the Latin America and Caribbean region, ensuring sustainable development.

Present at the five-day meeting are representatives from many Latin American nations, Europe, Asia, and international organizations like the International Union for Nature Conservation and the UN Program for the Environment.

MIAMI -- A tropical storm watch was issued Monday along the entire Louisiana coast as a tropical depression gained strength in the Gulf of Mexico.

The watch was issued for about 280 miles along the Louisiana coast from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Sabine Pass, Texas. A watch means tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours.

Meanwhile, a second tropical depression formed in the southeast Caribbean that could become a tropical storm Tuesday. It was headed toward South Florida by the end of the week.

At 11 p.m EDT, Tropical Depression 3 was about 360 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving north-northwest at 13 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The depression had top sustained winds of 35 mph, and could strengthen into a tropical storm with top sustained winds of at least 39 mph, forecasters said.

Early Monday, the system made landfall over the Yucatan Peninsula. Forecasters said it could have dropped 10 inches of rain in some areas.

Tropical Depression 4 was about 100 miles west-northwest of Grenada and moving west-northwest at about 17 mph. That track could bring it to Haiti by Wednesday and approaching south Florida by Friday. The system had top sustained winds of 30 mph.

The depressions are the third and fourth of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1 and ends Nov. 30. The next tropical storm would be named Cindy, followed by Dennis.

HAMPTON, N.H. - It was a tragic end to the holiday weekend: Two men dead after trying to rescue a 10-year-old boy who had been pulled into the Atlantic Ocean by a powerful rip tide at a popular Seacoast tourist spot.

Officials said Carlos Reyes, 35, of Marlboro, Mass., and about 10 other people went into restricted waters around 6 p.m. Monday after Reyes' son was swept away by a strong undertow in waist-deep water.

When authorities arrived, all 12 people were stuck in the current. Officials rescued 10 of them, including Reyes' son. But Reyes and Alex Tapia, 26, of Worcester, Mass., were pulled unconscious from the water and pronounced dead.

Police say that area of water was restricted because of the current, but lifeguards had gone off duty around 6 p.m.

"We felt that the situation should not have been this drastic," said chief lifeguard Jim Donahue.

Donahue said rip tides have been especially severe this season because of strong storms in May. Lifeguard captain James DeLuca said extra guards were on duty during the day Monday to patrol areas where there were known to be rip tides.

"We've never had beach conditions like that before," he said. "They were swimming in a bad area after the lifeguards went off duty."

Jerry Dobrov, 54, of Atkinson, said he was at the beach with his family. He left briefly to feed a parking meter and when he returned he saw ambulances and eight or nine lifeguards in the water looking for people.

Dobrov said he saw the head of an older man bobbing in the water.

Through the day, Dobrov said, lifeguards had been keeping swimmers from particular areas of the beach to avoid undertows.

"We came to see the fireworks. We got them," he said.

In New Jersey, meanwhile, two veteran parachutists died Monday after their chutes became entangled during a jump, police said. The two victims, a man and a woman, were jumping from an airplane operated by the Freefall Adventure Skydiving School based in Gloucester County.

The names of the victims were not immediately released. Police said the 33-year-old man was from Florida and had made 1,600 jumps; the 23-year-old woman had made 1,000 jumps.

A stalagmite from an Alpine cave may indicate that global warming is not as unusual as many think.

Deposits laid down in the stalagmite have enabled a European team to probe past climates confirming a Medieval Warm Period between AD 800 and 1300.

The warm spell is also indicated in some studies of tree-rings, ice-cores and coral reef growth records.

Writing in Earth and Planetary Science Letters the researchers suggest that global warming is a natural process.

Other scientists, however, say phenomena such as the Medieval Warm Period become less significant when broad sets of so-called "proxy data" are calibrated and synthesised to give a truly global picture - not just regional ones.

When this is done, they argue, the warming witnessed in the past few decades appears to be very unnatural.

Prolonged, stable record

The latest research was performed by Augusto Mangini and Peter Verdes, of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, Germany, and Christop Spötl, of the Institute for Geology and Palaeontology, at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

SPA-12 is a 20cm long stalagmite recovered from Spannagel cave in the Central Alps, a remote part of an extensive high-altitude complex of caves extending for at least 10km.

At an altitude of almost 2,500m the conditions inside the cave have remained relatively constant for possibly the past 5,000 years and certainly the past 2,000 years. Any changes there have been, the researchers believe, due to long-term changes in climate.

Several factors enabled the team to use SPA-12 to reconstruct the Alpine climate over the past two millennia.

For one, the relatively high radioactive uranium content of the mineral-rich liquid dripping from the roof to form the stalagmite makes it possible to date the time at which the various layers were laid down.

In addition, the stable environment in which SPA-12 has grown makes it relatively straightforward to relate its isotopic composition to the temperature at which various parts of the stalagmite formed.

'Little Ice Age'

SPA-12 also shows evidence of the so-called "Little Ice Age", a temperature dip between roughly 1400 and 1850 when there is complimentary evidence from tree-rings and glacier advances that at least Northern Europe chilled a little.

The long-term changes in temperature as revealed by SPA-12 are at odds with the temperature change profile adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC temperature curve only shows small variations during the last 1,800 years with an abrupt temperature increase after 1860 - the so-called "hockey stick" - which is generally ascribed to the increase of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

But the researchers analysing SPA-12 say that the stalagmite's temperature record is corroborated by ice-core records from Greenland and sediment deposits on the sea floor near Bermuda, both of which show evidence for a Medieval Warm Period.

The implications of SPA-12 will stoke up what is already an acrimonious debate between global warming sceptics and the scientific "consensus".

The latter say the hockey stick profile of recent temperature change is now evident from several studies using different raw data and methodologies.

The former argue the present climate is experiencing a natural rebound and that the IPCC should abandon the hockey stick and return to its 1990 position when the existence of the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period were recognised as more significant climate events.

Tropical Storm Cindy began moving ashore on Wednesday, pelting the Louisiana coast with rain and intermittent squalls.

St Bernard Parish sheriff's office spokesperson Captain Mike Sanders said the low-lying coastal parish has seen much worse, but residents are still keeping a watchful eye on the storm -- as well as on Tropical Storm Dennis, which is brewing in the Caribbean but will likely arrive in the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend.

"Our main concern with Cindy is that she'll come along the coastline, like it here, and stay awhile," Sanders said. "We like tourism, we know people enjoy it here, but in Cindy's case, we hope she just keeps on going."

BEIJING, July 7 -- Searing temperatures across booming China have driven up energy demand, exposed an over-reliance on coal and are taking a toll on industry, Xinhua news agency said.

Power shortages this summer should be "much more serious" than last year -- when China faced its worst energy crunch in two decades -- a source from the State Electricity Dispatching Center were quoted as saying.

"Many experts attribute the power shortage to the skyrocketing economy, especially high-power-consuming industries," Xinhua said in an overnight report.

China's unbalanced energy structure was also to blame, because excessive reliance on thermal power meant coal shortages could "immediately lead to a terrible power generation breakdown," Xinhua said.

China has poured billions of dollars into expanding its power transmission and generation capacity, but the national power system is forecast to struggle to meet demand until 2006-2007.

Generators nationwide are expected to crank out 25 to 30 gigawatts less power than consumers want to use this summer with no end to the crippling heatwave in sight.

Temperatures were expected to stay above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) across most of China over the next few days, especially in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which saw its hottest day in 70 years on Sunday when the mercury hit 39 C (102 F), Xinhua said.

The heat had forced the suspension of construction projects in many cities and caused water shortages, fires and traffic accidents, it said.

On Monday, almost 100 people in Shanghai were poisoned when toxic ammonia burst from a steel container that exploded after baking for hours under the sun.

MORANT BAY, Jamaica - Hurricane Dennis swept away a bridge and peeled tin roofs off homes in Haiti, killing at least five people as it strengthened to a Category 4 storm and headed straight for Cuba. Forecasters said it could reach the U.S. Gulf Coast by Sunday.

The Hurricane Center in Miami said the eye was swirling over water about 100 miles south of the Cuban coast and moving to the northwest at about 15 miles an hour.

The hurricane's winds neared 135 mph as it sideswiped Jamaica on Thursday. Forecasters predicted the storm could hit the United States anywhere from Florida to Louisiana by Sunday or Monday, raising fears that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico would be disrupted by the fourth storm in as many weeks.

Thunderstorms swept over the Dominican Republic, southern Haiti and northeast Jamaica. The Cayman Islands and Cuba were under hurricane warnings, including the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay holding some 520 terror suspects.

Hurricane Center forecasters warned the Sierra Maestra Mountains in southeastern Cuba could get 15 inches of rain, while Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains could see 10 inches. Hurricane force winds reached 50 miles from eye and tropical storm force winds another 140 miles.

In the southwestern Haitian town of Grand Goave, an Associated Press Television News reporter saw at least four people killed when a wood and metal bridge collapsed. Witnesses said the river came suddenly rushing over the bridge.

Elsewhere on the dangerously deforested island, wind gusts uprooted a palm tree and sent it into a mud hut, killing a fifth person in the southern town of Les Cayes, the Red Cross said. Many homes and roads in the south were flooded, some by as much as three feet of water.

The Florida Keys were under a hurricane warning Thursday and ordered tourists to evacuate, and the southern Florida peninsula was on tropical storm watch, expecting severe conditions within 36 hours.

In Jamaica, Prime Minister Percival Patterson urged people in low-lying areas to evacuate. [...]

The hurricane center warned the eye could pass over central Cuba sometime Friday afternoon. In the communist-run island, where the military-style government has been praised by the United Nations for its extensive hurricane preparedness plans, more than 100,000 people had been evacuated in the island's southeast, civil defense officials said on state television.

There were no immediate plans to evacuate detainees or troops from the U.S. detention center's Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, located on Cuba's extreme southeast end about 150 yards from the ocean, Gen. Jay Hood said.

Troops put heavy steel shutters on sea-facing cell windows as heavy surf sent splashes of salt spray over the razor wire fence. Officials said Camp Delta was built to withstand winds up to 90 mph. [...]

LISBON - Hundreds of firefighters were on Friday battling several wildfires in central and northern Portugal which threatened homes and forced the closure of several roads, including the nation's busiest highway.

Five water-dropping aircraft and more than 200 firefighters were at the scene of the biggest blaze near Albergaria-a-Velha, some 250 kilometres north of Lisbon, emergency services workers said.

The wildfire led local authorities to close a stretch of the nation's main highway, linking Lisbon to second-city Oporto in the north, for over seven hours because of the heavy smoke and threat to vehicles from the flames.

Local residents scrambled to protect their homes by using buckets of water and tree branches to put out the flames, images on state television RTP showed.

"Firefighters have the fire in their hands, it is getting controlled," the mayor of Albergaria-a-Velha, Joao Agostinho, told the television station.

"We could have had a catastrophe here," he added.

Firefighters suspect arsonists may be responsible for the blaze, which erupted in the early hours of Friday and was fueled by winds of up to 120 kilometres (75 miles) and hour, the mayor added.

Further north firefighters in the district of Oporto were battling some 30 wildfires of various sizes.

The fires caused ashes to rain down on downtown Oporto, private radio TSF reported.

Local officials said they had asked the army for help in the battle against the wildfires, which come as Portugal is facing its worst drought in decades.

Wildfires destroyed 21,504 hectares (53,115 acres) of brush and forest during the first six months of the year, compared with an average of 15,751 hectares during the past five years, agriculture ministry figures show.

Gulf of Mexico TX - An international team of marine research scientists working for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) have found new evidence that links catastrophic sand avalanches in deep Gulf waters to rapid sea level changes.

By analyzing downhole measurements and freshly retrieved sediment cores, IODP scientists are reconstructing the history of a basin formed approximately 20,000 years ago, when sea level fell so low that the Texas shoreline shifted almost 100 miles to the south.

The data are important to reconstructing climate change history and gathering insights about the development and placement of natural resources, particularly gas and oil deposits.

"The basin we chose to study is the ultimate sink of sediments transported by the Brazos and Trinity Rivers," explains cochief scientist Peter Flemings of Pennsylvania State University's Geosciences Department.

"Over the last 120,000 years, the basin accumulated enough sand and mud to cover the entire city of Houston with a 20-foot thick layer."

During the last glacial period, sediments discharged by rivers such as the Brazos and Trinity formed beaches and deltas near the continental shelf's edge.

Catastrophic submarine sand avalanches, called turbidity currents, carried the sediments into the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, where they accumulated in bowl-shaped basins.

Carlos Pirmez, a research geologist with Shell International E&P in Houston and a member of the science party explains, "Bowl-shaped basins such as the Brazos Basin IV are now buried thousands of meters beneath the Gulf of Mexico seafloor and host billions of barrels of oil and gas. Sediment records we acquire from the young basin off Texan shores will boost our understanding of how deeply buried reservoirs are formed, and how oil and gas can be drained from them more effectively."

Jan Behrmann, Fleming's cochief and a professor at Germany's University of Freiburg emphasizes that, "The goal of this expedition is not to explore or drill for oil, which lies much deeper than the sediments we recovered. But in the next several months, this science party will analyze sediment samples and will gain understanding of when and how turbidites form. We will then have a better picture of why and where these important deposits are formed."

The expedition scientists plan to obtain detailed measurements of changes in sediment and fluid properties to enable prediction of the mechanics of catastrophic underwater flows known as turbidity currents.

These currents are akin to underwater avalanches and carry large amounts of sand and mud in suspension, sometimes for hundreds of miles, at speeds up to 70 miles per hour near the seabed.

Sediments from these currents constitute an important piece of evidence in the study of sea level and climate change. Often, large petroleum reservoirs are found in the porous and permeable turbidite sands in deep water.

The first humans to arrive in Australia destroyed the pristine landscape, probably by lighting huge fires, the latest research suggests.

The evidence, published in Science magazine, comes from ancient eggshells.

These show birds changed their diets drastically when humans came on the scene, switching from grass to the type of plants that thrive on scrubland.

The study supports others that have blamed humans for mass extinctions across the world 10-50,000 years ago.

Many scientists believe the causes are actually more complex and relate to climate changes during that period, but, according to Dr Marilyn Fogel, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, US, chemical clues gleaned from the eggshells suggest otherwise.

"Humans are the major suspect," she said. "However, we don't think that over-hunting or new diseases are to blame for the extinctions, because our research sees the ecological transition at the base of the food chain.

"Bands of people set large-scale fires for a variety of reasons including hunting, clearing and signalling other bands.

"Based on the evidence, human-induced change in the vegetation is the best fit to explain what happened at that critical juncture."

Carbon clues

Dr Fogel's team, based in the US and Australia, examined hundreds of fragments of fossilised eggshells found at several sites in Australia's interior dating back over 140,000 years.

They looked at the indigenous emu and the Genyornis, a flightless bird the size of an ostrich that is now extinct.

The type of carbon preserved in eggshells gives a picture of the food the birds ate.

Before 50,000 years ago, emus pecked at nutritious grasses. But after humans arrived, about 45,000 years ago, they switched to a diet of trees and scrubs. Genyornis, however, failed to adapt and died out.

"The opportunistic feeders adapted and the picky eaters went extinct," said Professor Gifford Miller, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, US.

"The most parsimonious explanation is these birds were responding to an unprecedented change in the vegetation over the continent during that time period."

The data sheds light on the contentious issue of what led to the extinction of 85% of Australia's large mammals, birds and reptiles, after about 50,000 years ago, when human settlers arrived by sea from Indonesia.

Climate change theory

Mass extinctions on other continents also coincide with the arrival of modern humans, suggesting the two events are linked.

In North America, for example, the disappearance of the likes of mammoths and ground sloths is coincident with the arrival on the landmass of new stone-spear technologies carried by humans about 12,000 years ago.

In Australia, scientists have debated whether climate changes, human fires or excessive human hunting were the cause of the continent's big extinction.

Dr Fogel's team doubts the climate explanation but there are plenty of others who support the theory - such as Clive Trueman of the University of Portsmouth, UK.

He says some large mammals survived long after the sudden changes in vegetation identified by Dr Fogel's team.

"While there may be a connection between the arrival of humans and changes in vegetation, as demonstrated by carbon isotopes, sudden changes cannot be largely responsible for megafaunal extinctions as the beasts survived for at least 15,000 more years," he told the BBC News website.

"It is likely that extinctions were not caused by any single event, but reflect compounding factors such as natural climate changes associated with the Ice Age fluctuations and, quite possibly, the arrival of humans," Dr Trueman added.

The Group of Eight powers meeting in Scotland declared Friday that global warming required urgent action, but set no measurable targets for reducing the greenhouse gases that trigger it.

The leaders recognized that "climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the planet."

Their final declaration, seen by Reuters, acknowledged that human activity contributed in large part to global warming, and said there was a need to reduce greenhouse gases--mostly the product of the fossil fuels that power much modern industry.

They pledged to "act with resolve and urgency" to tackle the problem. But they set no yardsticks or clear goals.

And their declaration made only cursory reference to the binding Kyoto accord on cutting greenhouse gases, which was signed by all G-8 powers except the United States--President Bush has branded it as economic suicide.

Sidestepping any further rancor over Kyoto, the G-8 agreed a wide-ranging "action plan" to promote energy efficiency and the use of cleaner fuels. France, which has championed Kyoto, made clear on Thursday that it saw the outcome as only just sufficient.

"Even if it does not go as far as we would have liked, it has one essential virtue in my eyes--that is, to re-establish a dialogue and cooperation between the Kyoto seven and the United States on a subject of the highest importance," French President Jacques Chirac said.

In the event, the G-8 declaration also went some way to meeting other demands from Kyoto signatories.

In particular, they had been concerned that the Bush administration continued to be skeptical about the view of most scientists, including American experts, that global warming is largely man-made and is affecting the climate.

The text said that, while uncertainties remained in understanding climate science, enough was known to act now to "put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."

Environmentalists were dismissive of the text's failure to commit the G-8 to any measurable reduction in greenhouse gases.

"The agreement lacks a clear acknowledgement of the urgent need for action and fails to state any significant steps G-8 leaders will take to tackle climate change," the activist group Greenpeace said in a statement.

It said the Bush administration had been the main block to a stronger outcome.

The eight powers did pledge to launch a wider dialogue on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development, bringing in other major energy consumers. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said these talks would begin in Britain on Nov. 1.

The document said it was in the interests of all to work with large emerging economies--a reference in particular to China and India, which attended the Gleneagles summit and are expected to produce more pollution as their industries grow.

The G-8 powers pledged to promote the transfer of new technology to developing countries and also stated that the United Nations provided the appropriate forum to negotiate a future multilateral regime to address climate change.

ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland - Ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic hit an all-time high last year, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on one of the most sensitive and productive ecosystems in the world.

Sea ice off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador was below normal for the tenth consecutive year and the water temperature outside St. John's Harbor was the highest on record in 2004, according to a report released Wednesday by the federal Fisheries Department.

The ocean surface off St. John's averaged almost two degrees Fahrenheit above normal, the highest in the 59 years the department has been compiling records.

And bottom temperatures were also one degree higher than normal, according the report.

"A two-degree temperature anomaly on the Grand Banks is pretty significant in the bottom areas, where temperatures only range a couple of degrees throughout the year," said Eugene Colbourne, an oceanographer with the Fisheries Department.

Water temperatures were above normal right across the North Atlantic last year, from Newfoundland to Greenland, Iceland and Norway.

The Newfoundland data is another wake-up call on climate change, say environmentalists.

Anchorage, Alaska, has seen annual snowfall shrink in the past decade, high river temperatures are killing off millions of spawning salmon in British Columbia and northern climates around the world have noticed warming.

Meanwhile, ocean temperatures have risen around the globe, and species are already dying, said Bill Wareham, acting director of marine conservation for the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation.

"I don't think there's a question about whether these changes are happening," Wareham said.

But "everyone's quite shocked at the speed at which these things are changing."

Air temperatures in the Newfoundland region were also higher than normal, but Colbourne said the results are not conclusive.

Water temperatures in the cold Labrador current were actually below normal levels. And while the other temperatures were record highs, a similar warming trend occurred in the 1960s, Colbourne said.

"We really can't say for sure if what we're seeing in Newfoundland waters is a consequence of global warming, when we've only got 50 years of data or so," Colbourne said.

"It may be related to global warming but, then again, it may be just the natural cycle that we see in this area of the world."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Edmund Hillary, the first climber to conquer Mount Everest with his Sherpa guide, on Monday urged that the world's highest mountain be placed on the United Nations' list of endangered heritage sites because of the risks of climate change.

Himalayan lakes are swelling from the runoff of melting glaciers, environmental campaigners warned as the 29th session of the U.N. Environmental, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage Committee got under way Sunday in Durban. Many could burst, threatening the lives of thousands of people and destroying Everest's unique environment, they said.

"The warming of the environment of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years. This has caused several and severe floods from glacial lakes and much disruption to the environment and local people," Hillary said in a statement released Monday. "Draining the lakes before they get to a dangerous condition is the only way to stop disasters."

The New Zealander, who with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first scaled the world's highest peak on May 29, 1953, is one of a collection of climbers and others who have joined environmental groups in calling for the inclusion of Nepal's Everest National Park on UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger List.

Inclusion would commit UNESCO to assessing the risk to the park and developing corrective measures in conjunction with the government of Nepal.

Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries also threatens the coral reefs in Belize and glaciers in Peru, according to activists who have petitioned for their inclusion too on the endangered list. [...]

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Hurricane Dennis roared quickly through the Florida Panhandle and Alabama coast Sunday with a 120-mph bluster of blinding squalls and crashing waves, but shellshocked residents emerged to find far less damage than when Ivan took nearly the same path 10 months ago.

The tightly wound Dennis, which had been a Category 4, 145-mph monster as it marched up the Gulf of Mexico, weakened just before it struck less than 50 miles east of where Ivan came ashore. And despite downed power lines and outages affecting more than half a million people, early reports indicated no deaths and relatively modest structural damage.

"We're really happy it was compact and that it lasted only so long," said Mike Decker, who lost only some shingles and a privacy fence at his home near where the storm came ashore. "It was more of a show for the kids."

The storm indeed put on a show as it blew ashore at 3:25 p.m. EDT midway between the western Panhandle towns of Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach.

White-capped waves spewed four-story geysers over sea walls. Sideways, blinding rain mixed with seawater blew in sheets, toppling roadside signs for hotels and gas stations. Waves offshore exceeded 30 feet, and in downtown Pensacola, the gulf spilled over sidewalks eight blocks inland. Boats broke loose and bobbed like toys in the roiling ocean.

But Dennis, which was responsible for at least 20 deaths in the Caribbean, spared those to the north because of its relatively small size and fast pace. Hurricane winds stretched only 40 miles from the center, compared with 105 miles for Ivan, and Dennis tore through at nearly 20 mph, compared to Ivan's 13 mph.

Rainfall was measured at 8 inches, rather than the expected foot. [...]

Dennis caused an estimated $1 billion to $2.5 billion in insured damage in the United States, according to AIR Worldwide Corp. of Boston, an insurance risk modeling company. [...]

WETMORE, Colo. - Gusty wind and temperatures heading into the 90s prompted authorities to evacuate about 70 more homes Sunday east of a 2,900-acre wildfire in southern Colorado.

"The fire has got the advantage right now," said fire incident commander Marc Mullenix.

Officials had already evacuated 150 homes since the fire was reported Wednesday.

Black smoke billowed over the mountains Sunday as residents evacuated from the west side of the fire were given four hours to check their homes. Firefighters, meanwhile, hoped to burn vegetation around a ranch in fire path's. The fire was spreading in an area about 25 miles west of Pueblo. [...]

Lightning was suspected as the cause of both the Colorado and South Dakota blazes.

Thirteen large wildfires were active Sunday in nine states, and had burned more than 688,000 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Since January, wildfires have burned slightly more than 3 million acres, similar to the acreage burned by the same date last year.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) -- Scientists are puzzled by a mysterious Los Padres National Forest hot spot where 400-degree ground ignited a wildfire.

The hot spot was discovered by fire crews putting out a three-acre fire last summer in the forest's Dick Smith Wilderness.

"They saw fissures in the ground where they could feel a lot of heat coming out," Los Padres geologist Allen King said. "It was not characteristic of a normal fire."

Fire investigators went back to the canyon days later and stuck a candy thermometer into the ground. It hit the top of the scale, at 400 degrees.

A dozen scientists, including University of California, Santa Barbara, mineralogist Jim Boles, have been looking for answers since August. Robert Mariner, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who studies volcanic gas vents at Mt. Shasta, Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier was also called in.

"When I heard about the candy thermometer, I was amazed," Mariner said, noting that the temperature of the volcanic vents he studies is typically 200 degrees, around the boiling point of water. "I thought these guys were pulling my leg."

With the help of an air reconnaissance flight and thermal infrared imaging, scientists found that the hot spot covers about three acres. The hottest spot was 11 feet underground, at 584 degrees.

They found no oil and gas deposits or vents nearby and no significant deposits of coal. The Geiger counter readings were normal for radioactivity, and there was no evidence of explosions or volcanic activity.

One possible explanation still under study is that an earthquake fault may be the source of the heat.

"We can't rule out anything definitely yet," King said.

Hurricane Dennis could be an ominous sign of tempestuous times ahead, with more storms than usual set to pummel the Atlantic, British scientists warn.

Researchers from the Benfield Hazard Research Centre in London used a new model to predict a very active season.

Between July and October, they say, nine hurricanes will probably hit the Atlantic basin as a whole.

The main driving force is likely to be unusually warm sea temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic.

If the predictions come true, this will be the Atlantic's second bumpy year in a row, after 2004 saw hundreds killed and billions of dollars worth of damage caused by Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.

"Following the ravages of 2004, the current and projected climate signals now suggest that we should prepare for another exceptionally active Atlantic season in 2005, a factor which underlines the ongoing need for vigilance on the part of government and citizens alike," Mark Saunders of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre (BHRC) said.

Hurricane indicators

To predict the ferocity of the forthcoming hurricane season, the team studied the July-September forecasts for wind speed and surface water temperatures through the Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic.

These two factors are important because warm surface waters can trigger hurricanes, while wind speeds dictate how savage they become and whether or not they head inland.

Based on current and projected climate signals, the Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) consortium, which is led by the BHRC, predicts:

• A 97% probability of an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season
• 15 tropical storms for the Atlantic basin as a whole, with nine of these being hurricanes and four intense hurricanes
• Five tropical storm strikes on the US, of which two will be hurricanes
• Two tropical storm hits, including one hurricane on the Caribbean Lesser Antilles.

Early arrival

The forecast spate of hurricanes in 2005 is part of a multi-decadal cycle of fluctuating sea temperatures.

"It is a natural cycle of a period of about 50 or 60 years," Professor Saunders told the BBC News website.

"The last peak of activity was in the 1950s and scientists have mapped this pattern of warming and cooling of Atlantic sea temperatures back about 150 years, so they have two or three cycles of it."

However, Professor Saunders believes that global warming might be contributing to the problem.

"I think one has to wonder whether at least part of this activity could be due to global warming," he said. "Certainly, sea temperatures where hurricanes form have been the warmest on record over the last year or two."

Indeed, Dennis's early arrival is very irregular, and is yet another indication of the rough ride ahead.

"This year is quite unusual in that there is so much early activity," Professor Saunders said. "Dennis is only the second major hurricane to strike America in July. The other one happened in 1916.

"Often seasons which have high activity in July tend to be active for the whole season."

GULF BREEZE, Fla. - The outlook was improving for Cathy Hart and thousands of others Tuesday along the storm-battered Gulf Coast, where signs of normal life were everywhere just two days after Hurricane Dennis pummeled the region. Power was starting to come on, stores were opening their doors, and lines for ice and water were getting shorter.

Hart waited a half-hour in line for gas, and not wanting to waste what was in her tank she kept the air conditioner off - a prescription for misery with the temperature approaching 90.

Things were a little better at home. She at least has a generator to run a fan, and Hurricane Dennis spared her Gulf Breeze home, which was damaged 10 months ago by Hurricane Ivan.

"At least there are no trees on my house," Hart said. "I'll be happy to be just cleaning up branches."

"It's really quick," a relieved Deana Vess said as she drove in and out of the relief line at Gulf Breeze Middle School. Vess, who was without power six days after Ivan last year, said she hoped it will be turned back on sooner this time.

"The kids get miserable," Vess said.

Gulf Power spokesman John Hutchinson said fewer than 200,000 homes and business were without power in Florida on Tuesday - a marked improvement from a day earlier.

Most of those still without power were in Florida's two westernmost counties, Escambia and Santa Rosa. Hutchinson said the company would likely have 95 percent of the power back on within a week - except on Santa Rosa Island where the storm made landfall with 120 mph winds.

For many who lived through the aftermath of Ivan, the wait wasn't too daunting. "Mostly, it's an inconvenience," Hart said.

Restaurants in Pensacola experienced bustling business Tuesday as people without power at home went out for some food in the comforts of air conditioning. Home stores were also buzzing with people looking for chain saws and other equipment to begin their cleanup.

With few houses destroyed by Dennis, shelters also were shutting down. State officials reported that only 225 people remained in six shelters Tuesday.

Out in the Gulf of Mexico, petroleum companies on Tuesday restarted scores of production platforms that had been evacuated as the storm approached.

In Alabama, more than 800 people have called the attorney general's office to complain that some businesses are charging exorbitant prices to take advantage of people affected by Dennis.

Attorney General Troy King said the complaints have included grocery stores charging $5 for a bag of ice that would normally cost less than $2. State law makes it a misdemeanor to charge more than 25 percent above what the cost was during the 30 days before the emergency. [...]

Meanwhile, attention was shifting to a new tropical storm that formed late Monday in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Emily was 530 miles east-southeast of Barbados on Tuesday afternoon and heading west. It had sustained wind of 50 mph and was expected to strengthen.

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada - Hurricane Emily grew even more powerful Friday after slamming into Grenada, tearing up crops, flooding streets and striking at homes still under repair from last year's storms. At least one man was killed.

The storm strengthened to a dangerous Category 4 after it cleared the Windward Islands, unleashing heavy surf, gusty winds and torrential rains on islands hundreds of miles away: Trinidad in the south, nearby Venezuela, to the west and Dominican Republic in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.

Venezuelan authorities ordered some oil tankers to stay in port in the key oil refining zone of Puerto la Cruz, port captain Jose Jimenez Quintero said.

The storm, the second major hurricane of the Altantic season after Dennis, was packing sustained winds of 135 mph. "That makes Emily a very rare Category 4 hurricane in the Caribbean Sea in the month of July," said Stacy Stewart, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Emily struck hard in Grenada, especially in the northern parishes of St. Patrick's and St. Andrew's and the outlying islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique, authorities said.

The damage comes as the island nation is still recovering from last year's Hurricane Ivan, which destroyed thousands of residences and damaged 90 percent of the historic Georgian buildings in the capital.

"Just as we were trying to rebuild ... this is a very, very major setback," said Barry Colleymore, a spokesman for Prime Minister Keith Mitchell. "There's been lots of destruction."

The Organization of American States expressed concern at the prospect of a "severe economic setback" to countries hit by hurricanes, especially Grenada, and called an emergency meeting for Friday. [...]

SOFIA - Bread prices are expected to rise by as much as 40 percent in Bulgaria in the wake of heavy rains and flooding that ruined grain crops, the bread producers' union predicted.

"We expect a poor harvest to follow the abundant rainfall and flooding this summer and, together with the recent hike in fuel prices, it will necessitate a 30 to 40 percent increase in bread prices in some regions of the country," union chief Dimitar Ludiev told BTA news agency.

Grain crops are also threatened by an ever increasing rat population in Bulgaria's wheatbelt around Dobrich (southeast), press reports said.

In the past week wind, hail, and torrential rain turned vast tracts of farmland into swamps and flooded thousands of houses around the country.

Whole towns were cut from the world with no electricity, communications and running water, as landslides cut through highways, railroads and bridges in Ruse and Silistra to the north, and Gabrovo and Veliko Tarnovo in central Bulgaria, state emergency services announced.

An uprooted tree hit and killed a woman during a storm Tuesday in Karlovo (central), the Standard daily newspaper reported.

Two cargo trains were derailed Tuesday night in the region of Stara Zagora because of track damaged by the rains.

One of UNESCO's world heritage sites in Bulgaria, the rock-hewn churches near Ivanovo in the northeast, dating back to the 12th century, is in critical condition, local authorities reported.

They sought governmental help Wednesday to preserve the precious murals severely damaged by the rains. [...]

Finance Minister Milen Velchev requested Tuesday 75 million euros (91 million dollars) in financial aid from the European Commission to rebuild submerged infrastructure, his ministry announced.

One fourth of Bulgaria's population has suffered from flooding, with more than 6,300 innundated or completely ruined houses, 52 destroyed bridges, 420 streets and 35 kilometers of railroad.

A heat wave continues to melt almost all of Ontario, Quebec and much of New Brunswick. Days of 30 plus weather continue to bake the populous eastern cities and consequently are pushing electrical grids to their limits.

In Ontario, Terry Young, spokesperson for the Independent Electricity System Operator [IESO], the organization that is responsible for the day-to-day operations, says so far it has been successful in finding enough electricity to meet demand.

But the province doesn't generate enough power to meet demand, so it's forced to look to its neighbours for help.

"If we get into a situation where we've done all that we can, [if] we've asked people to cut back and we're still running short, then clearly we would have no choice but to cut power to certain parts of the province," said Young.

Power imports from Quebec, New York and Michigan keep the lights on in about one million Ontario homes. If those jurisdictions aren't able to supply energy Ontario would be in trouble.

Mike Richmond, a Toronto lawyer who deals with energy policy, says he's worried about the situation.

"It's very dry in Quebec," said Richmond, pointing to the number of forest fires burning in the province. "That impacts water levels. Most of the power they sell us is hydro power coming from rivers and dams. If their water levels are lower because of the current drought, they won't have that power available to export to us."

Power cuts would not only turn off fans and air conditioners during a heat wave but could also have a considerable impact on the real engines of the province's economy, forcing work slowdowns at the big steel plants and automakers.

Environment Canada says the hot, humid weather is likely to last at least for the rest of the week.

PHOENIX - Arizonans usually just shrug when the mercury climbs beyond 100 degrees and the breeze feels like a giant hair dryer pointed at your face. But lately, even the most seasoned desert dwellers are complaining about the blowtorch heat.

Temperatures have been above average every day since June 29 in Phoenix, where the normal high in the middle of July is a sizzling 107.

"This has gone on a little too long," said Joe Della Rocca, a 41-year-old Arizona native. "All I know is Vancouver sounds fabulous right now."

The city hit 116 degrees on Sunday, two degrees above the old record for the date, set in 1936. Phoenix was almost mild compared with the Colorado River Valley, where Bullhead City reached 124 on Sunday and Needles, Calif., hit 125.

Even nighttime readings were no comfort over the weekend. The low on Monday morning was 91 degrees in Phoenix; the high was 113. [...]

The collapse of a giant ice shelf in Antarctica has revealed a thriving ecosystem half a mile below the sea.

Despite near freezing and sunless conditions, a community of clams and a thin layer of bacterial mats are flourishing in undersea sediments.

"Seeing these organisms on the ocean bottom -- it's like lifting the carpet off the floor and finding a layer that you never knew was there," said Eugene Domack of Hamilton College.

Domack is the lead author on the report of the finding in the July 19 issue of Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

The discovery was accidental. U.S. Antarctic Program scientists were in the northwestern Weddell Sea investigating the sediment record in a deep glacial trough twice the size of Texas. The trough was unveiled in the 2002 Larsen B ice shelf collapse.

Toward the end of the expedition the crew recorded a video of the sea floor. Later analysis of the video showed the clams and bacteria growing around mud volcanoes.

Since light could not penetrate the ice or water, these organisms do not use photosynthesis to make energy. Instead, these extreme creatures get their energy from methane, Domack said today.

The methane is produced inside the Earth and is distributed to the sea floor by underwater vents.

This type of ecosystem is known as a "cold-seep" or a "cold-vent." The first of its kind was discovered in 1984 near Monterey, California. Since then, similar ecosystems have been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Sea of Japan.

This recent discovery is the first cold-seep to be described in the Antarctic. The nearly pristine conditions -- which have been undisturbed for nearly 10,000 years -- will serve as a baseline for researchers probing other parts of the ocean. They better hurry though -- debris from the iceberg calving has already begun to bury some of the area.

Domack hopes to find new species and that this discovery will open the door to future Antarctic expeditions, specifically into Lake Vostok, a freshwater lake that sits two miles below the surface.

Any knowledge gained from studies into Antarctic life could help researchers search for life in other subterranean water locations on Earth. And, experts say, this research could better prepare scientists to examine the hypothesized ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa or on Saturn's moon Titan.

Consolidated Edison said it provided a record 12,250 megawatts of electricity on Tuesday amid intense heat and humidity.

There were no significant power outages as temperatures in New York City topped 90, with a heat index in the 100s. Demand pushed the wholesale price of power deliverable on Wednesday to $182.25 a megawatt hour by 3 p.m. Tuesday.

The earlier record of 12,207 megawatts was set on Aug. 9, 2001. A megawatt provides electricity to about 1,000 homes.

Separately, the New York Power Authority activated its peak load management program, which calls on participating government and business customers, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Citibank, to conserve power. The six-year-old program aims to help NYPA meet 80% of the city's peak power load with in-city power plants.

Fourteen NYPA customers have committed to cut back on 61 megawatts of electricity use by turning off nonessential lighting and computers, adjusting air conditioners, running fewer elevators and shutting down decorative fountains. The customers receive $40 for each kilowatt of electricity they reduce under the program.

A weak cold front swept through Chicago during the lunch hour Monday, but once again, significant rain failed to materialize until the system was south and east of the city. O'Hare received no rain, while Midway collected only .08". Already the driest summer on record to date, a scant 0.2" of rain has fallen at O'Hare in the 7+ weeks since June 10.

Meanwhile, heat statistics are adding up. O'Hare's 91° and Midway's 92° are the 13th and 19th days respectively of 90° days in Chicago this summer, more than the last two summers combined.

Monday's cold front provides one day of relief from the ongoing heat. Another brief cold frontal passage is likely again on Thursday, with oppressive heat to follow over the weekend and into next week. Rain with frontal passage is likely on Thursday, but the computer models have not distinguished themselves and have consistently under forecast temperature and over forecast rain all summer.

More than 3.5 million people in Niger are on the verge of starving to death, after a plague of locusts and a punishing drought destroyed last year's harvest.

Aid agencies have warned that one in 10 children in the worst affected areas will die as a result of the official reluctance to act sooner to prevent famine. The government of Niger, the second poorest country in the world, warned last November that it would need help feeding 3.6 million people, including 800,000 children under five.

But while aid flooded into high-profile conflict areas such as Darfur in Sudan, Niger's pleas for help for a quarter of its population went unheard.

Jan Egeland, the outspoken UN under-secretary general, said last month that Niger was "the number one forgotten and neglected emergency in the world" and criticised international donor countries for ignoring his appeal for $16.2m (£9.3m) in emergency food assistance. By mid-July, the UN had received only $3.8m, even though more than 150,000 children are said to be severely malnourished. Most of these will now die before they can be fed.

After a five-day visit to the region, Jean Ziegler, a UN representative, said last week: "The vulnerable groups are on the brink of being wiped out, the children, the sick, the elderly."

Last month, 2,000 protesters marched into the capital Niamey to demand that the state distribute food to the starving, but government officials said at the time that it would be "foolish" to deplete its emergency stocks. Instead, the government offered to lend the poorest families cereal stocks to be repaid at the next harvest.

The UN's World Food Programme said it has finally managed to secure some emergency food aid, but the rations may take several weeks to reach those most desperately in need. It is estimated that the country needs more than 200,000 tons of food to make up for its shortfall.

Niger suffers a "hungry season" every year, as there is little irrigation for the 80 per cent of the population that depend on subsistence farming. But last year, drought and locusts destroyed most of the harvest and almost 40 per cent of livestock fodder. Farmers have had to either watch their cattle starve to death or sell them for a tenth of their normal value. As the prices of staples such as millet and sorghum soar, the money they receive for their livestock is not enough to buy food for their families.

Aissa Maman, a farmer, told Oxfam: "Prices have multiplied too many times. While I used to be able to buy one bag of 100kg millet after selling one or two healthy goats I would now need to sell three to five goats for the same amount."

By November last year, thousands of families had left rural villages and headed for Niamey and neighbouring countries such as Nigeria, Benin and Togo to look for food and work. Aid workers tell of how hundreds of people are walking through a desert littered with cattle carcasses looking for feeding centres and Nigerian immigration officials say thousands of people are trying to cross the border each day.

Milron Tetonidis of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told reporters: "There are children dying every day in our centres. We're completely overwhelmed, there'd better be other people coming quickly to help us out - I mean, the response has been desperately slow." MSF has also warned that the rains, which have finally arrived, are now making conditions worse by spreading malaria and diarrhoea in the camps.

Niger's neighbours, Mali and Mauritania, were also hit by the plague of locusts that swept through the southern Sahel last year and are also suffering from similar food shortages. Nigeria, which is the richest country in the area, has provided some food to its neighbours but has echoed the aid agencies' pleas for extra help to be provided.

At least 1,700 hectares of rice fields in four regencies in Cirebon have been severely damaged by locust swarms and farmers fear the insect menace left uncontrolled could threaten the region's entire harvest.

The four districts attacked by locusts were Weru, South Cirebon, Tengah Tani and Plumbon, Cirebon Agricultural Office chief Ali Effendi said.

To try and prevent the locusts from destroying more areas, Ali said the office had distributed free 260 liters of insecticide to farmers bordering on locust-hit areas.

That amount, however, is far less than farmers need to protect their crops and unlikely to make any difference to the situation.

"The insecticides have been distributed to farmers outside of the four districts where the rice plants were damaged by the locusts. Distributing the insecticide is a preventive measure in order to ensure locusts do not spread to other places," Ali said.

Despite the locusts, rice production in Cirebon this dry season is set to meet the production target of 270,000 tons, with 45,000 hectares in the region planted with rice.

Office head of pests and diseases Sunardi said the locusts often swarmed in the transition between the rainy season and the dry season.

Meanwhile, farmers whose fields were attacked by the locusts said they had put their fate in God's hands.

Rusli said he could not protect his crops with insecticides ahead of the locust attack because the spray at Rp 13,000 (US$1.35) a liter was too expensive.

He had lost half his year's work to the locusts, with one of his two hectares of paddies destroyed, and did not know how he would earn a living now, he said.

KIOWA, Colo. - A fast-moving wildfire forced the evacuation of about 50 homes near Denver on Wednesday as flames blackened a landscape of rolling grasslands and ponderosa pines.

Deputies went door-to-door warning residents to leave a cluster of houses about 25 miles southeast of Denver. Two air tankers were dropping fire-retardant on the 800-acre blaze.

"It's doubling in size every two hours," Elbert County Sheriff Bill Frangis said. One firefighter suffered a heat-related injury, and one horse was burned, he said.

Fire crews worked quickly, containing the blaze by late evening.

"They got on it fast," said Larry Helmerick of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center.

Only two homes remained threatened. Officials were slowly allowing people to return home, but most remained evacuated. It was not known how the fire started.

Residents said small fires started by lightning were common in the area, where homes occupy lots up to 60 acres. Many property owners are experienced in putting the blazes out themselves.

Hank Smith said he spent about two hours throwing dirt on the fire to stop it from advancing. He got so close, he said, that "when I pushed my glasses up, it burned my eyebrows."

Eleven fire departments battled the flames, which were being driven by winds of 10 to 15 mph that authorities feared could strengthen to 30 to 35 mph.

Firefighters were hampered by relentless heat. Denver reached 105 on Wednesday, tying the all-time record for hottest day, set on Aug. 8, 1878, according to the National Weather Service. It was the second straight day of triple-digit temperatures, far above the normal highs in the upper 80s.

Elsewhere Wednesday, fire crews battled two blazes near Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado and braced for the possibility that lightning could spark new blazes.

Fire information officer Jen Chase said trees were so dry that the probability of lightning starting a fire was 100 percent, and any new fires were likely to spread quickly.

A nearly 200-acre lightning-caused fire on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian reservation was 70 percent contained, and a second blaze on the reservation covering 2,318 acres was 85 percent contained.

Crews used tactics to avoid damaging fragile archaeological sites and artifacts, dropping retardant from the air.

Archaeological treasures on the reservation rival those at Mesa Verde National Park, said Tom Rice, the tribe's resource adviser. They include cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, stone tools and pottery.

In southern Arizona, a 22,500-acre fire was about 75 percent contained, thanks to burnouts and heavy rain, lessening the threat to about 30 homes and cabins and wildlife habitat in Madera Canyon.

Full containment of the blaze was expected by Thursday evening, said fire spokeswoman Donna Nemeth.

In northern California, firefighters contained a wind-blown wildfire that grew to more than 10,000 acres early Wednesday but burned past a nuclear weapons laboratory and some 500 homes without causing major damage, said Chopper Snyder, a California Department of Forestry dispatcher.

The fire left the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory untouched after an initial scare. Officials at the lab had declared an emergency, allowing other agencies to help protect an experimental test site at the facility.

In Oregon, firefighters battled a 5,000-acre blaze on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. The fire was not threatening any homes, but "it's got an awful lot of potential," said Gary Cooke, fire administrator for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.

Rafting along the nearby Deschutes River had been suspended, but by Wednesday officials allowed rafters to return. Monitors stood on the banks with bullhorns to help rafters stay out of the way of helicopters that dipped for water.

The National Interagency Fire Center said 36 large fires were active Wednesday in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. Nearly 3.9 million acres of land has been burned so far this year, compared with 4.4 million at this time last year.

PHOENIX - A record heat wave has led to the deaths of 18 people, most of them homeless, leaving officials scrambling to provide water and shelter to the city's transient population.

For the first time in years, homeless shelters opened their doors during the day to offer respite from the blistering sun, which has delivered above-average temperatures every day since June 29. Police began passing out thousands of water bottles donated by grocery stores, and city officials set up tents for shade downtown.

"I don't know why I'm not burnt to pieces," said Chris Cruse, 48, after taking refuge in a shelter.

Four more bodies were found Wednesday. Fourteen of the victims were thought to be homeless. Authorities did not know if a man found by the side of a road Sunday had a permanent residence.

The other three victims were elderly women, including one whose home cooling system was not on, police said. [...]

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said his office was asking Congress to provide utility assistance for soaring cooling bills the same way it provides for heating bills in Eastern states.

"Fair is fair. There are too many individuals dying of heat here," Gordon said.

Maricopa County, including Phoenix and its suburbs, has a homeless population between 10,000 and 12,000 people, said Gloria Hurtado, the city's human service director.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, high temperatures dipped below the 115-degree mark Wednesday for the first time in five days. Authorities were investigating six deaths since July 14 to see if they were heat-related.

CHICAGO - Lawns are turning brown. Flowers are wilting. Water levels are so low that ducks can stand in some rivers and streams.

A drought that is stunting corn, rice and soybean crops across the nation's Farm Belt is also leading many communities in more urban parts of the Midwest to ban lawn-watering and urge homeowners to conserve.

"I'm not watering out of respect for what is happening ecologically," said Tod Lending, gesturing toward his the parched front lawn on Chicago's North Side. "I have a 10-year-old daughter and I'm trying to teach her what the right thing is to do ecologically."

In Indianapolis, officials have pleaded with customers to cut their water use. St. Peters, Mo., made a similar request. So did Chicago, where WGN-TV meteorologist Dennis Haller said this is the driest summer so far in 135 years.

In North Aurora, homeowners can hand-water flowers and gardens, but using a sprinkler can bring a fine of $750. Algonquin, in suburban Chicago, and Waterford, Wis., are limiting residents to watering every other day. Brownsburg, Ind., banned it. [...]

The city of Chicago has stopped watering the grass at parks. And the Fire Department decided to teach fire hose techniques to its firefighters at a park so the ground would benefit from the water sprayed.

The drought-stricken area cuts a swath from eastern Texas up into the Great Lakes region, taking in parts of Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and almost all of Illinois. [...]

Conserving water can be a tough sell in Chicago, where the city's front yard Lake Michigan is a body of water about the size of West Virginia.

The level of Lake Michigan is only slightly below normal. But Sadhu Johnston, commissioner of Chicago's Department of Environment, warned: "If Chicago and other cities along the lake just continued pulling more and more water out of the lake, the level would drop" and devastate everything from fish to the shipping industry.

"There are all sorts of implications; it's unbelievable," he said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California looked set to escape without power blackouts on Thursday, allaying earlier fears sparked by record breaking demand in the southern half of the state and a series of power plant breakdowns, a spokesman for the state's Independent System Operator said.

But the ISO said Friday could see new problems as temperatures rose in the northern half of the state.

The state agency warned earlier on Thursday that rotating blackouts were possible, but demand for power started to dip from record breaking levels late in the afternoon.

"Load is starting to really come off now and I think we are in better shape in terms of the rest of this afternoon and this evening," spokesman Gregg Fishman said.

The operator, which controls most of the state's power grid, declared a transmission emergency early on Thursday afternoon as high demand linked to scorching heat and a series of power plant outages sparked some voltage problems.

Within minutes it also declared a stage two power alert for southern California, but the situation eased later.

"That (voltage) has largely stabilized. We did find a bit of extra generation," Fishman said.

RECORD DEMAND

Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International, said its customer demand reached 21,934 megawatts of power on Thursday, a new high. The previous record of 21,112 MW was set on Wednesday with a heatwave engulfing the southern half of the state.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation's largest municipal utility, on Thursday broke a demand record that had stood for almost seven years with a peak of 5,661 MW, a spokeswoman said. [...]

"Tomorrow (Friday) is going to be another interesting day," he said, noting utilities had already been asked to restrict maintenance in a bid to maximize available power supplies. [...]

PHOENIX, July 22 - A relentless and lethal blanket of heat has settled on much of the western United States, forcing the cancellation of dozens of airline flights, threatening the loss of electrical power, stoking wildfires and leaving 20 people dead in Phoenix alone in just the past week.

Fourteen of the victims here are thought to have been homeless, although the heat also claimed the life of a 97-year-old man who died in his bedroom, a 37-year-old man who succumbed in his car and two older women who died in homes without air-conditioning.

Daytime highs in Phoenix have remained near 110 degrees for more than a week, and municipal officials acknowledge that it is almost impossible to deal with the needs of the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people living on the streets. The city has barely 1,000 shelter beds, and hundreds of them are available only in the winter.

The lack of preparation for the homeless here is obvious to those sweltering on the sidewalk outside the Society of St. Vincent de Paul relief center in a zone of desolation between the office towers of downtown Phoenix and the State Capitol.

"I'm dying out here," said a homeless man in his 40's who goes by the name of Romeo, crouched in a sliver of shade on a littered sidewalk while waiting for a handout meal and a bottle of water. "The police are making us move all over the place. Where do they expect us to go? They need some more shelters."

The Phoenix police and private social service agencies have been passing out thousands of bottles of water donated by grocery chains and individuals. But the fierce heat continues to take a toll.

"We've not seen anything like this before," said Tony Morales, a Phoenix police detective. "We get heat-related deaths every summer, usually 5 to 10 deaths through the whole summer, but nothing like this."

In Maricopa County as a whole, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, 21 people died of heat exposure all of last year, just one more than the city's toll in the last several days.

Officials of the National Weather Service estimate that more than 200 heat records have been broken in the West during the last two weeks. On Tuesday, Las Vegas tied its record for any date, 117 degrees. Reno and other locations in Nevada have set records with nine consecutive days of temperatures at 100 or higher. The temperature in Denver on Wednesday reached 105 degrees, making it the hottest day there since 1878. The highest temperature for the entire region during the heat wave has been 129, recorded at Death Valley, Calif.

The weather forced airlines to cancel more than two dozen flights this week, remove passengers from fully loaded planes, limit the number of tickets sold on some flights and take other measures to withstand the heat.

The reasons for that are related to engineering. Aircraft manufacturers have customarily set temperature limits at which their planes can be safely operated. (The limits are lower at higher altitudes, as in the Rocky Mountains, and higher at lower altitudes, as in the desert that surrounds Las Vegas.) High temperatures mean aircraft engines must take in more air in order to create the greater thrust the planes need to leave the ground. But airplane makers also have limits on the amount of thrust that an engine can produce. If the engines exceed those limits, they may not perform properly. At that point, aircraft manufacturers advise, the airlines should remove weight from planes - either passengers or cargo - or, in the worst cases, not fly at all.

United Airlines canceled seven United Express flights out of Denver on Wednesday, when the record-tying temperature there exceeded the operating limit for the carrier's propeller planes, said a spokesman, Jeff Green. "It was just so extreme, and stayed on so long, that we had to cancel flights," Mr. Green said.

America West canceled 22 flights out of its Las Vegas hub this week, 11 each on Monday and Tuesday. The temperature of 117 there was approaching the limit for America West's regional jets: 117.26, above which they should not fly, said Linda Larsen, a spokeswoman for Mesa Airlines, which operates the flights for America West.

On the other hand, Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest carriers operating in Las Vegas and Phoenix, has not canceled any flights because of the heat, a spokesman said. And Frontier Airlines merely refused to fly any pets.

The extraordinary heat has lasted for many weeks in the Southwestern desert, where it has exacted a high price in lives along the Mexican border. Officials of the United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection say 101 illegal migrants have died of heat so far this fiscal year, which runs from October through September. That compares with 95 heat-related deaths in all of the previous 12 months.

Twenty-one border crossers have died in Arizona just since July 1, said Salvador Zamora, a spokesman for the border agency. The agency has stepped up its efforts to rescue migrants from the heat, using trucks and helicopters to aid people in distress in the brutal sun.

Here in Phoenix, where the issue of rescue involves the homeless, Moises Gallegos, the city's deputy director of community services, said that space was available in downtown shelters but that some of the homeless refused to use it. Some are drug or alcohol abusers who do not want to be tested and treated, a condition for entry, and others are mentally ill and refuse all offers of help, Mr. Gallegos said.

But some private social service agencies contend that there is a critical lack of shelter space here, and criticize officials for not opening a 500-bed city-owned homeless shelter that is used only in the winter.

"We need a year-round overflow shelter," said Terry Bower, director of the Human Services Campus Day Resource Center.

Elsewhere in Arizona, firefighters are struggling to contain a swarm of 20 wildfires around the state, most sparked by lightning, including a 60,000-acre blaze northeast of Phoenix that shut several major highways. Across the West as a whole, 32 large wildfires are burning, fueled by the heat, dry conditions and a profusion of brush created by the winter's heavy rains, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

And in California, the state's Independent System Operator, which handles the flow of power to three-quarters of California customers, declared a Stage 2 emergency on Thursday and Friday, the first in two years. Stage 2 means that utilities are within 5 percent of their maximum production of electricity and that interruption of power to some customers is possible.

Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the Independent System Operator, said the emergency was in effect for Southern California and asked residents to conserve electricity. Ms. McCorkle said the system had experienced 14 consecutive days in which demand in Southern California was near capacity.

"The Bay Area is not hot, and that has been our saving grace," she said. "L.A. is sizzling."

Craig Schmidt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's regional headquarters in Salt Lake City, said records had been falling across the Western states since the heat wave started on July 12.

In Phoenix, it was at least 110 every day from July 11 to 19; on Friday the temperature peaked at 108.

There may be some relief in sight, though: monsoons are moving into the area. The rain and cloud cover will cool things down a bit, officials said, but humidity will rise, prolonging the misery.

"Throughout the Western states - you have to estimate, but more than 200 records have probably been broken, and that's just talking daily records," Mr. Schmidt said. "These records are no fun to break."

Among the most remarkable was the one in Las Vegas, where the 117-degree reading on Tuesday matched the record for any date, set in 1942. The 95-degree low on Tuesday was also a record for Las Vegas, as was the average temperature that day, 104 degrees.

In Death Valley, meanwhile, the temperature never dropped below 100 degrees in two 24-hour periods.

Mr. Schmidt attributes the heat to a high pressure system that refused to budge.

"This one went on for so long, because there's a very strong ridge of high pressure centered over Utah and Arizona," he said, "and it kept the monsoon moisture from working its way northward. That usually cools things off with thunderstorms and clouds."

Andy Bailey, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Las Vegas, said: "It's probably fair to say what just wrapped up was probably the most intense heat wave the city's ever seen. We had a string of four days where it was 115 or above."

Now, however, the region is facing a new threat from the expected summer monsoons and thunderstorms, Mr. Bailey said.

"We're concerned with flash flooding today and tomorrow," he said.

Micheline Maynard contributed reporting from New York for this article, Katie Zezima from Boston and John Dougherty from Phoenix.

CHICAGO (AP) - Sweat-drenched city workers checked on senior citizens Sunday and shuttled people to cooling centers as temperatures surpassed the 100-degree mark here for the first time in six years.

Chicago was among scores of cities suffering amid a scorching heat wave that blazed a path across parts of the upper Midwest.

By late afternoon, temperatures at Midway Airport had reached 104 degrees, just one degree lower than the highest temperature ever recorded in the city, according to the National Weather Service.

Other parts of the Midwest also reached triple-digit temperatures. Temperatures hit 102 degrees in St. Louis and 101 in Iowa City, Iowa.

The skyrocketing temperatures prompted Chicago officials to implement an emergency response plan that was honed after 700 people died during a July 1995 heat wave. An automated calling system began contacting 40,000 elderly residents at 9 a.m. to inform them about the heat.

"If you looked at who died in 1995, it was not triathletes, it wasn't people at ballparks, it wasn't people at outdoor festivals, it was the elderly who were living alone," said Dr. William Paul, acting commissioner of the city's Department of Public Health.

Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman Rosa Escareno said three people appear to have died Sunday from heat-related injuries, but she added that it would be days before causes of death would be confirmed. The Cook County medical examiner's office said Sunday night that they had not attributed any deaths to the weather.

Sunday's broiling heat came on the 71st anniversary of the highest temperature ever recorded in Chicago. The mercury hit 105 degrees at O'Hare International Airport on July 24, 1934, said Bob Somrek, a weather service meteorologist.

The weather service issued an excessive heat warning that was to remain in effect until Monday for most of central and eastern Missouri, as well as western portions of Illinois.

Scientists monitoring a glacier in Greenland have found it is moving into the sea three times faster than a decade ago.

Satellite measurements of the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier show that, as well as moving more rapidly, the glacier's boundary is shrinking dramatically - probably because of melting brought about by climate change.

The Kangerdlugssuaq glacier on Greenland's east coast is one of several that drains the huge Greenland ice sheet. The glacier's movements are considered critical in understanding the rate at which the ice sheet is melting.

Kangerdlugssuaq is about 1,000 metres (3,280ft) thick, about 4.5 miles wide, extends for more than 20 miles into the ice sheet and drains about 4 per cent of the ice from the Greenland ice sheet.

Experts believe any change in the rate at which the glacier transports ice from the ice sheet into the ocean has important implications for increases in sea levels around the world.

If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt into the ocean it would raise sea levels by up to seven metres (23ft), inundating vast areas of low-lying land, including London and much of eastern England.

Computer models suggest that this would take at least 1,000 years but even a sea-level rise of a metre would have a catastrophic impact on coastal plains where more than two-thirds of the world's population live.

Measurements taken in 1988 and in 1996 show the glacier was moving at a rate of between 3.1 and 3.7 miles per year. The latest measurements taken this summer show it is now moving at 8.7 miles a year. [...]

(AP) - A large swath of the U.S. suffered through another miserable day of sizzling temperatures and steamy humidity Monday - a deadly heat wave that had people cranking up air conditioners, scrambling to cooling shelters and running through sprinklers in the park.

Temperatures neared 40 C in several cities, and the National Weather Service posted excessive heat warnings and advisories from Illinois to Louisiana and from Nebraska to the District of Columbia.

"It feels like basically just walking around in an oven," said 20-year-old McDarren Paschal as he mowed grass at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

The heat has caused numerous deaths. In the Phoenix area alone, 24 people, most of them homeless, have died.

City workers in Chicago checked on elderly residents and shuttled people to cooling centres Monday, hoping to avoid a repeat of a disastrous 1995 heat wave that killed 700 people. Wilmington, Del., set up sprinklers in city parks so people could run through the spray to cool off. A social service agency in Oklahoma City handed out fans to elderly people who didn't have air conditioning.

Sherri Ball went to a cooling centre in Peoria, Ill., because her window air conditioner couldn't keep up with the heat, a day after the mercury hit 38 C in the central Illinois city for the first time in a decade.

"It's hot and I can't breathe when it's real hot outside," said the 46-year-old Ball.

In other states, at least three deaths have been blamed on the heat in Missouri this summer, and authorities were looking into the death of a woman found Sunday in a home without air conditioning. Four people have died of the heat in Oklahoma, two of them young children left in cars, and at least three heat deaths have been tallied in New Jersey.

Some 200 cities in the West hit daily record highs last week, including Las Vegas, Nev., at 117, and Death Valley soared to 129, the weather service said.

A break in the heat was on the way, at least for the Midwest.

A cold front brought rain Monday to parts of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and was on its way to crossing Illinois, Missouri and Indiana on Tuesday, said Ed Shimmon, a weather service meteorologist in Lincoln, Ill. He said rainfall will likely be scattered, but still welcome in the drought-stricken region.

Demand for electricity to run air conditioners has hit near-record peaks from Southern California to the region served by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The load on generators caused a power outage in St. Louis County, Ill., where more than 900 customers were still without electricity Monday.

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Franklin was continuing its slow, erratic path toward Bermuda early Tuesday.

A tropical storm watch was issued for the western Atlantic islands, where forecasters said Franklin could drop 2 to 4 inches of rain.

"The erratic motion is not unusual for a weak and small tropical storm that is not very well organized," said Richard Knabb, a hurricane specialist at the
National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Franklin also could soon weaken to a tropical depression, Knabb said.

At 5 a.m., the storm was about 200 miles west-southwest of Bermuda, crawling north-northeast at 5 mph with top sustained winds near 40 mph.

Tropical storms have top sustained winds of at least 39 mph.

On Monday, the National Hurricane Center discontinued advisories on the former Tropical Storm Gert, which had faded to a tropical depression as it moved over Mexico.

Australia and the United States have been secretly negotiating a new international pact on greenhouse gas emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which they refused to sign, a minister said Wednesday.

The negotiations have also involved China, India and South Korea, according to a report in The Australian newspaper.

Environment Minister Ian Campbell said details of the deal and the countries involved would be announced soon.

Greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere are blamed for global warming, seen as one of the world's greatest environmental dangers, and the refusal by the United States and Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol was widely condemned.

"The countries that are involved in any future proposal will be announced when we announce the details of the proposal," Campbell told reporters, adding that this would be "in the very near future".

"Australia is, and I reassure the Australian people, working on something that is more effective post-Kyoto," Campbell said. [...]

One of the US arguments against the present Kyoto format is that it does not require big developing countries such as China and India to make targeted emissions cuts -- an absence that Bush says is unfair and illogical.

But developing countries say historical responsibility for global warming lies with nations that industrialised first, and primarily with the United States, which by itself accounts for a quarter of all global greenhouse-gas pollution.

The new alliance will bring together nations that account for more than 40 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, The Australian said. [...]

PHILADELPHIA -- A blistering heat wave gave Philadelphia summer school students the equivalent of a snow day Tuesday as temperatures climbed into the upper 90s and so many homeowners cranked up their air conditioners that their power grid set a record.

As a large swath of the United States suffered through another miserably hot day, several western states and parts of the Midwest began to feel the relief of a cold front pushing out what had been days of triple-digit temperatures.

But for the East, the cooler temperatures weren't expect to arrive until Thursday.

That likely means another early dismissal Wednesday for Philadelphia students stuck in summer school classrooms, many without air conditioning, officials said.

The demand for cooling was evident at PJM Interconnection LLC, which coordinates the movement of electricity between 13 states ranging from Illinois to North Carolina. The power grid reported setting a record Tuesday with a peak load of 135,000 megawatts - enough to power 108 million homes under normal conditions.

"It was 120 (degrees) in the direct sunlight," said Walt Arrison, a surveyor at the construction site who kept a small key chain thermometer in his pocket.

Already the heat has been blamed for deaths across the country, including 28 in the Phoenix area alone, most of them homeless people.

At least four deaths have been blamed on the heat in Missouri, including a woman found Sunday in a home without air conditioning. Two young children left in hot cars died in Oklahoma. A 29-year-old hiker died Monday in Kentucky. And a 48-year-old woman was found dead Tuesday in her non-air-conditioned apartment in Cincinnati. [...]

BOMBAY - Landslides and floods killed at least 30 people in India's western state of Maharashtra, leaving dozens more missing, and crippled normal life in the nation's financial hub, Bombay, a state official said on Wednesday.

Most fatalities in the industrial powerhouse state were in the coastal districts of Raigad and Ratnagiri, where several villages were cut off after heavy monsoon rains.

Maharashtra's relief secretary, Krishna Vatsa, said the government had called in the army, navy and air force to assist thousands of people who were stranded and to pull out possible survivors of landslides.

"We have not been able to reach some villages where more than several dozen people may be missing in landslides," Vatsa told Reuters, confirming at least 30 deaths in Raigad and Ratnagiri and adding that electricity, telephone links and transport connections had been cut off to those districts.

Press Trust of India reported 54 fatalities in Raigad district alone due to floods and landslides. In coastal Maharashtra, officials and media reported more than 1,700 people had been rescued since Tuesday.

Trading on Bombay's bond and currency markets was cancelled and Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deskmukh declared a state holiday saying conditions were very bad. The government asked people to stay at home as further heavy rains were forecast.

"The situation is so grave (that despite) these human efforts, we are not in a position to reach out to the people who are in the districts," Deskmukh told NDTV television.

Late on Tuesday, another official said that in the village of Juigao, about 150 km (95 miles) south of Bombay, 150 villagers were feared buried after a landslide.

BOMBAY FLOODED

In Bombay -- home to the Bollywood movie industry -- and its suburbs, thousands of office workers had to stay overnight in hotels, and schools were shut on Wednesday as rain continued overnight, flooding roads and stalling hundreds of cars. [...]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Agriculture Department on Wednesday declared virtually all of Illinois a disaster area eligible for low-interest loans because of crops withered by this summer's drought.

Only one county -- Alexander County in the southernmost tip of the state -- is not included in the disaster declaration.

"I am very pleased that USDA is able to offer this assistance to Illinois farmers and ranchers struggling due to the drought and look forward to visiting with them in the near future," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.

Illinois has been gripped by drought ranked as "extreme" or "severe" in recent weeks by the U.S. Agriculture Department's weather experts. State rainfall from March through June was just 8.5 inches, about half the normal level.

On Monday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, requested federal disaster aid. He said more than 117,000 farmers statewide have reported production losses, including 74,000 who estimated the drought would destroy at least one-third of their crops.

Last year, Illinois was the nation's second largest corn producer, harvesting nearly 20 percent of the record 11.8 billion bushel U.S. crop. [...]

The great predators of the seas - tuna, swordfish, marlin and others - could be on the way out. Canadian researchers who surveyed the catches from ocean fishery "hotspots" warn that not only are numbers in decline, but also the variety of species in any region.

The research, published in Science today provides fresh ammunition for conservationists who want to see the creation of large, internationally protected marine parks where fish populations can breed and recover.

Boris Worm and Ransom Myers of Dalhousie University, who showed in 2003 that shark populations in the north Atlantic had fallen by 90% in 15 years, combed fisheries data for the past 50 years to discover that catches were becoming less diverse.

Where fishermen might once have caught 10 different species, they now haul in only five. "It's not yet extinction - it's local fishing out of species," Dr Myers said. "Where you once had a range of species in dense numbers, now you might catch one or two of a certain species." [...]

Hundreds of properties were left damaged and trees uprooted
Residents have camped out in two sports centres in Birmingham after their homes were damaged by a tornado.

Twenty people were injured - three of them seriously - after winds of 130mph were recorded on Thursday afternoon.

The sudden storm damaged buildings and cars, uprooted trees, and took entire roofs off some homes in areas in the south of the city.

Emergency services worked alongside engineers overnight to clear tons of rubble and search properties.

Workers used dogs and specialist equipment to see if anyone had been trapped in damaged buildings. [...]

"Hundreds" of properties in the Kings Heath area were damaged, council officials said.

West Midlands Fire Service said the areas affected by the tornado, which hit the area at 1445 BST, also included Moseley, Quinton, Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook. [...]

"We have an average of 33 reports of tornadoes in the UK each year but these are especially rare in built-up areas and there has not been one of this strength in many years," said a Met Office spokesperson.

"City centres are not the natural habitat of a tornado; the tall buildings would normally stop their formation."

MUMBAI - Deaths from India's record monsoon have climbed to near 900, as rescuers unearthed more bodies from landslides and residents of a Mumbai shantytown stampeded on rumours of storm-created tsunamis.

"We are now confirming that the number of dead in Mumbai is 370," said A. N. Roy, police chief of the western commercial hub.

The figure included 18 killed in the overnight stampede, 74 bodies dug out by rescuers from a landslide that engulfed houses in Mumbai's Sakinaka area and five other flood-linked deaths, Roy said, updating earlier tolls.

At least 513 people have been killed elsewhere in Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, according to B.M. Kulkarni, of the state police, taking the total number of confirmed deaths to 883.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Amitabh Gupta said more than 50 people were injured in the stampede, which followed false reports that a wall of water was about to swamp the area -- variously from a burst dam or a tsunami.

"It was just a rumour and people believed it and they started running out of their homes through the narrow alleys," Gupta told AFP. "It was pitch dark as there was no electricity and a stampede followed.

"Police present at the scene made repeated appeals, which were ignored by the residents. The sea is just a kilometre (half a mile) away and some heard there was a tsunami," he said.

Police chief Roy said 17 people were detained "for spreading tsunami rumours."

Hospital officials said 11 of the 18 dead in the stampede were women and one was a three-year-old girl.

Arjun Periswamy, who lives in the slums as a daily labourer, said he watched the stampede in horror from his rooftop.

"All I could gather was there was an emergency and people started running. I shouted loud to my relatives below not to get out of the house. But my aunt and her daughter ran out and died in the stampede," he said.

More than 300 relatives of the dead and injured gathered outside a local hospital waiting to hear from doctors.

Chandrasekhar Prajapati, another survivor of the stampede, said he heard shouts of "run, run, water is coming."

"It has been raining heavily for the last couple of days. So everybody believed it," he said.

The gushing waters damaged the overstretched sewerage system and littered the streets of Mumbai with rotting vegetables, plastic bags and other garbage.

Strong winds accompanying the rains, which continued to hit Mumbai Friday, tossed billboards on to the roads and toppled power lines.

Susheela Ayre, a resident of the suburb of Thane said there had been no drinking water since Wednesday. [...]

The city's weather bureau said Mumbai received 944.2 millimeters (37.1 inches) of rainfall in a 24-hour period ending mid-morning Wednesday, the most rainfall ever recorded in a single day in India.

The annual monsoon rains that sweep the subcontinent from June to September routinely kill hundreds of people in India and cause widespread devastation.