One of South America's leading natural tourist destinations, the San Rafael Glacier in Chile, is retreating at an alarming rate, say UK scientists.

Located in a World Heritage Site, the glacier draws thousands of visitors each year to marvel at the way icebergs calve into the sea from its front wall.

But Dr Neil Glasser and colleagues say rapid melting is now under way because of historically high air temperatures.

They warn that if the glacier withdraws on to the land, tourism will suffer.

[...] "We first went there 13 years ago.

"People put paint marks on the rock wall where the glacier was then; they even built a lookout post directly over the front of the glacier in 92," Dr Glasser said.

"This year, the glacier is nowhere near this point - it's about a kilometre back from where it was.

[...] At San Rafael, the glacier's position was recorded once in the late 1800s as being more than 10km further out into the sea than it is now.

There is "no bigger long-term question facing the global community" than the threat of climate change, Tony Blair has said.

The UK prime minister was speaking at the launch of the Climate Group, an international campaign aiming to speed up greenhouse gas emission reductions.

[...] He said one of the first things he did on taking office was to ask scientists the scale of the global warming problem.

"One of the interesting things that came back to me was that this problem was greater than I had realised," Mr Blair said.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - Flash floods killed at least three people, sweeping one woman from a rescuer's hand, as heavy thunderstorms rolled across North Texas, and three toddlers were still missing Saturday.

The storms struck late Friday with wind gusting to as high as 60 mph that knocked down tree limbs and power lines. Hail as big as golf balls pounded some areas, the National Weather Service said.

Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The warning - one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist - comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed". [...]

The loss of nearly 60 percent of Lake Powell's water led to cracks five feet deep in the dried lake bed near Hite, Utah, as the Colorado River cut a new channel in the sediment.

PAGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip.

Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm.

Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the West during the 20th century was a fluke. In other words, scientists who study tree rings and ocean temperatures say, the development of the modern urbanized West — one of the biggest growth spurts in the nation's history — may have been based on a colossal miscalculation.

That shift is shaking many assumptions about how the West is run. Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, the states that depend on the Colorado River, are preparing for the possibility of water shortages for the first time since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930's to control the river's flow. The top water official of the Bush administration, Bennett W. Raley, said recently that the federal government might step in if the states could not decide among themselves how to cope with dwindling supplies, a threat that riled local officials but underscored the growing urgency.

"Before this drought, we had 20 years of a wet cycle and 20 years of the most growth ever," said John R. D'Antonio, the New Mexico State engineer, who is scrambling to find new water supplies for the suburbs of Albuquerque that did not exist a generation ago.

The latest blow was paltry snowfall during March in the Rocky Mountains, pushing down runoff projections for the Colorado River this year to 55 percent of average. Snowmelt is the lifeblood of the river, which provides municipal water from Denver to Los Angeles and irrigates millions of acres of farmland. The period since 1999 is now officially the driest in the 98 years of recorded history of the Colorado River, according to the United States Geological Survey.

"March was a huge wake-up call as to the need to move at an accelerated pace," said Mr. Raley, assistant secretary of the interior for water and science. [...]

CORONA, Calif. - Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes Tuesday as wildfires burned through Southern California brushlands parched by spring heat waves that led to an early fire season declaration by the state.

Some homes and outbuildings were destroyed but there were no reports of losses on the scale of the destruction that happened last fall, when thousands of homes were destroyed.

A man was charged with negligently setting the largest blaze.

Weather appeared to be improving Tuesday, with temperatures in the areas of the largest fires expected to top out in the mid-90s, about 10 degrees cooler than Monday. Meteorologists also said humidity would increase as air moved onshore from the Pacific.

The two biggest fires were in Riverside County, east-southeast of Los Angeles. Fires also burned in San Diego County and up the coast in Santa Barbara County.

The Cerrito fire in Riverside County between Corona and Lake Elsinore exploded overnight to 5,000 acres, up from 1,600 late Monday, and forced evacuation of up to 4,000 homes.

It was just 15 percent contained Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry. Three outbuildings, two unoccupied mobile homes and an unidentified structure were destroyed. [...]

LOS ANGELES (AP) A super storm envelops the globe, sending tornadoes skittering through Los Angeles, pounding Tokyo with hail the size of grapefruit and burying New Delhi in snow.

Brace yourself. After decades spent tackling volcanoes, aliens, earthquakes, asteroids and every other disaster imaginable, Hollywood has turned its attention to one of the hottest scientific and political issues of the day: climate change.

No one is pretending the forthcoming film "The Day After Tomorrow" is anything but implausible: In the $125 million movie, global warming triggers a cascade of events that practically flash freeze the planet.

It's an abruptness no one believes possible, least of all the filmmakers behind the 20th Century Fox release. "It's very cinematic to choose the worst-case scenario, which we did," said co-screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff.

Nonetheless, scientists are embracing the movie, unusual for those whose stock in trade is fact.

"My first reaction was, 'Oh my God, this is a disaster because it is such a distortion of the science. It will certainly create a backlash,'" said Dan Schrag, a Harvard University paleoclimatologist. "I have sobered up somewhat, because the public is probably smart enough to distinguish between Hollywood and the real world."

He now hopes the movie will do for interest in global warming what "Jurassic Park" did for dinosaurs.

In the new movie, due for release Memorial Day weekend, global warming melts the polar caps, sending torrents of fresh water into the world's salty oceans. That flood in turn chills a major current in the north Atlantic and tips the planet into a new Ice Age.

Quickly unleashed is every type of violent weather that filmmakers could cram into the movie, directed by Roland Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame. Most were invoked as an excuse to use cutting-edge special effects, Nachmanoff said.

Several scientists who are familiar with the film were charitable, even overlooking the rapidity with which events unfold in the movie. "The science is bad, but perhaps it's an opportunity to crank up the dialogue on our role in climate change," NASA research oceanographer William Patzert said of the premise.

Most, including the filmmakers, acknowledge time had to be compressed to keep the audience's interest. When scientists who study climate refer to abrupt changes, they refer to decades, if not hundreds or thousands of years.

"From the box-office point of view, controversy is good. It makes people talk about it," he said. "You couldn't buy this kind of publicity."

July 17, 2003 — The central Japanese city hosting the Expo 2005 world exposition plans to excavate an entire frozen mammoth and display it at the fair under a multi-million dollar Siberian expedition project, organizers said Thursday.

Seto and the other cities in Aichi prefecture, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Tokyo, have set up the Mammoth Excavation and Exhibition Organization Committee to send a mission to explore the Siberian permafrost.

"I believe chances of success will be 80-90 percent, given technological advances and information accumulated over the years," said Shinji Furukawa, chairman of the new committee.

The first stage of the mission, set for August-September of this year, will be information-gathering on the whereabouts of frozen mammoth remains and surveys of areas around Khatanga and Yakutsk in northern and eastern Siberia, respectively. [...]

The world fair, which takes place every five years, is to open in Seto in March 2005.

As a boon to a group of Russian and Japanese scientists who are hoping to clone mammoths, specimens from legs of what they believe are the extinct animal arrived at Kinki University's Gifu Science and Technology Center in western Japan on Thursday.

"The bone marrow, skin and muscle specimens, frozen in nitrogen liquid, ... look fine," the center's president, Akira Iritani, said after receiving the samples from Russia.

One of the most thorough students of this last great catastrophe was Sir Henry Howorth whose works are now virtually unobtainable. Although his interpretation of the evidence was, and still is, rejected by geologists committed to Lyell's principle of uniformity, he nevertheless put on record a tremendous amount of data, much of it gathered at firsthand, which is not nearly as well known as it should be. In one of his major works, The Mammoth and the Flood, he collected data regarding the innumerable known cases of mammoths frozen in northern latitudes, particularly in Siberia. (165) And yet in spite of this information, which is always very well documented, a comparatively recent paper by William R. Farrand entitled, "Frozen Mammoths and Modern Geology," spoke of only some 39 known frozen carcasses, of which only four are by any means complete; and it never once mentions the books and papers published by Sir Henry Howorth.

Howorth continued:

If animals die occasionally (in large numbers) from natural causes, different species do not come together to die, nor does the lion come to take his last sleep with the lamb! The fact of finding masses of animal remains.of mixed species all showing the same state of preservation, not only points to a more or less contemporary death, but is quite fatal to the theory that they ended their days peacefully and by purely natural means. If they had been exposed to the air, and to the severe transition between mid-winter and mid-summer, which characterizes Arctic latitudes, the mammoths would have decayed rapidly. But their state of preservation proves that they were covered over and protected ever since.

This renowned but neglected authority concluded:

It is almost certain in my opinion that a very great cataclysm or catastrophe occurred by which the mammoth and his companions were overwhelmed over a very large part of the earth's surface. And that the same catastrophe was accompanied by a very great and sudden change of climate in Siberia, by which the animals which had previously lived in fairly temperate conditions were frozen . . . and were never once thawed until the day of their discovery. No other theory will explain the perfect preservation of these great elephants.

- A perspective on potential climate changes presented by Dr. Robert B. Gagosian, President and Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - Global warming could actually lead to a big chill in some parts of the world. If the atmosphere continues to warm, it could soon trigger a dramatic and abrupt cooling throughout the North Atlantic region—where, not incidentally, some 60 percent of the world’s economy is based.

When I say “dramatic,” I mean: Average winter temperatures could drop by 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States, and by 10 degrees in the northeastern United States and in Europe. That’s enough to send mountain glaciers advancing down from the Alps. To freeze rivers and harbors and bind North Atlantic shipping lanes in ice. To disrupt the operation of ground and air transportation. To cause energy needs to soar exponentially. To force wholesale changes in agricultural practices and fisheries. To change the way we feed our populations.

In short, the world, and the world economy, would be drastically different. [...] And when I say “abrupt,” I mean: These changes could happen within your lifetime, and your grandchildren’s grandchildren will still be confronting them.

And when I say “soon,” I mean: In just the past year, we have seen ominous signs that we may be headed toward a potentially dangerous threshold. If we cross it, Earth’s climate could switch gears and jump very rapidly—not gradually— into a completely different mode of operation. [...]

These warm-to-cold transitions happen in about 3 to 10 years. The cold periods lasted for 500 to 1,000 years. Such oscillations in temperature and ocean circulation have occurred on a regular basis.

The Sun's shifting magnetic field is set to focus a decade-long storm of galactic dust grains towards the inner Solar System, including Earth.

The effect this will have on our planet - if any - is unknown. But some researchers have speculated that sustained periods of cosmic dust bombardment might be related to ice ages and even mass extinctions.

During the last decade, the magnetic field of the Sun acted like a shield, deflecting the electrically charged galactic dust away from the Solar System. However, the Sun's regular cycle of activity peaked in 2001.

As expected, its magnetic field then flipped over, so that south became north and vice-versa. In this configuration, rather than deflecting the galactic dust, the magnetic field should actually channel the dust inwards.

At the time the U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977, there was widespread concern about the cooling trend that had been observed for the previous quarter-century. After 1940 the temperature, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, had dropped about one-half degree Fahrenheit -- and more in the higher latitudes. In 1974 the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade."

Two years earlier, the board had observed: "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial age." And in 1975 the National Academy of Sciences stated: "The climates of the earth have always been changing, and they will doubtless continue to do so in the future. How large these future changes will be, and where and how rapidly they will occur, we do not know."

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona (AP) -- Just outside this mountain town, where the acres of ponderosa pine turn into a Christmas green blur, Tom Whitham eyes the weary, struggling forest.

Death is everywhere. Their limbs bare and bark brittle, the trees quickly turn this forest into an aching reminder of the devastation of drought and a massive bark beetle infestation.

Whitham pulls his pickup truck over and gestures to the dead trees -- 75 percent in this area alone.

Forget talk of global warming and speculation of what it might do in 50 years, or 100. Here and across the West, climate change already is happening. Temperatures are warmer, ocean levels are rising, the snowpack is dwindling and melting earlier, flowers bloom earlier, mountain glaciers are disappearing and a six-year drought is killing trees by the millions.

Most scientists agree humans are to blame for at least part of that warming trend, but to what degree?

"That's the $64,000 question," said Whitham, a regents' professor of biology at Northern Arizona University. "If we aren't causing it, we're certainly contributing to it. Humans can take a drought and make it even worse." […]

JAMMU, India (AFP) - The Indian army launched an operation to rescue 20,000 nomads trapped in the Himalayan reaches of Kashmir after a freak summer snow storm, officials said.

Eleven people, including three children, and 5,000 cattle have been killed in the past week by avalanches, a police spokesman said.
He said so far 10,000 nomadic shepherds, who had been grazing their cattle in areas of the storm, had been rescued and some sent for medical treatment.

Defence ministry officials said Indian troops would rush out 20,000 more nomads trapped in mountain passes of four southern Kashmir districts.

Heavy snow fell over several parts of the insurgency-torn state this summer for the first time in 20 years.

Thousands of Britons may be forced to wear charcoal masks and stay indoors this summer to avoid deadly fogs of ozone that will pollute the country during heatwaves, scientists have warned.

They have discovered that last August's heatwave caused plants and trees to release waves of a chemical called isoprene, which contributes to the production of ozone in the air. Scientists now believe ozone killed up to 600 people last summer.

'Temperatures topped 100F (37.7C) last summer for the first time since UK records began, and similarly intense heatwaves will become increasingly frequent as global warming intensifies. Current projections suggest they could happen ten times more often,' said Professor Alan Thorpe, of the Centres of Atmospheric Science. 'Among all our other problems, we are going to deal with severe ozone pollution.'

Ozone, which is particularly dangerous for children, old people and asthmatics, is produced when strong sunlight breaks up the nitrogen oxides released by car exhausts.

Summer temperatures in the Arctic have risen at an incredible rate over the past three years, leaving large patches of what should be ice as open water.

British polar explorer Ben Saunders was even forced to a abandon an attempt to ski solo from northern Russia across the North Pole to Canada on Monday, saying he had been amazed at how much of the ice had disappeared.

"It's obvious to me that things are changing a lot and changing very quickly," a sunburned Saunders said less than two days after being rescued from the thinning ice sheet close to the North Pole.

Heavy rain floated cars, high wind tossed a trailer and hail grew to an inch and more as a storm system moved across the upper Midwest early Friday. The flooding was blamed for at least one traffic death.

The storm was thick with lightning, striking transformers, setting buildings on fire in western Michigan and temporarily zapping the radar at the weather service station in Grand Rapids.

Wind topped 70 mph, and rain fell at up to 3 inches an hour. About 22,000 homes and businesses lost power west of Detroit. [...]

IQALUIT - A four-year international study of climate change in the Arctic has found global warming affects the north two or three time more intensely than it does the rest of the world. It has also identified several hot spots in the north, including the Mackenzie Delta Region.

[...] "There are hot spots," Dr. Corell says. "Alaska, Mackenzie Delta Region, and eastern Russia are changing much more rapidly. Another thing that we can say without any doubt [is] that, over the next 50 years anyway, we know precisely how it's going to change — and it's going to change again more rapidly than the rest of the planet, probably two to three times more rapidly."

Corell says Greenland was the biggest surprise in the study. He says there's been a 17-per-cent increase in ice melt, much more than expected.

The United States is sinking while Canada is on the rise. This has nothing to do with political rivalry between neighbours and everything to do with geology.

There is a see-saw motion going on across the North American continent and it is the southern superpower that is on the downward tilt. This is the startling finding of a group of scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago, based on global positioning satellite readings taken over 10 years at 200 points across the American continent. The Windy City is just on the wrong side of the hinge. It is dipping at the rate of one millimetre a year.

Explaining this unlikely phenomenon is the history of the Ice Age. The researchers argue that when most of the territory from the Great Lakes northward was under the weight of ice that was about a mile thick the crust of the Earth was being pressed down. When the ice started to melt about 18,000 years ago, a rebound began to occur and is still going on today.

CORONA, N.M. - Fire crews who were pulled off a wildfire that burned more than 1,500 acres and a ranch house resumed work early Saturday, hoping to beat a rush of 45-mph wind.

The fire, the state's first large one of the wildfire season, was reported Friday morning in the Cibola National Forest near Corona. By early afternoon, the wind pushed the flames from tree to tree. [...]

HEMISPHERE-SPANNING tempests rage. Hailstones the size of bowling balls bash Tokyo. Twisters tear up Hollywood. Snowstorms smother India. A flood tide swamps Manhattan, followed by a downburst of ultra-cold air that flash-freezes pedestrians in a New York second.

At a pace far faster than any scientist had predicted, global warming caused by pollution disrupts vital ocean currents, and Earth is plunged within days into a big chill.

Two survivors of the epic upheaval leave their bonfire of burning books inside the New York Public Library to scavenge medicine — from the Russian ship that has run aground on Fifth Avenue.

As if all that were not enough, the survivors have even more to contend with. "Very quiet, everyone, the wolves are on the set," comes the stage whisper from an assistant director. "And — action."

Hunched beside his cinematographer on a Montreal soundstage in March of last year, Roland Emmerich, the director of the blockbuster "Independence Day" and the "Godzilla" remake, chuckled as he brushed faux snow from his sweater and prepared to assault civilization with his latest monster, an instant ice age spawned by humanity's disregard for the environment.

Mr. Emmerich, 48, has made a profitable habit out of trying to humble Earth's dominant species. In his earlier movies, people united and defeated the aliens and the mutated reptile; in "The Day After Tomorrow," we may have met our match. There have been other films depicting environmental debacles. But this is the biggest, brashest effort yet by a filmmaker to take the industrialized world to the woodshed for messing things up. [...]

Most experts on climate change say a switch from slow warming to an instant hemispheric deep freeze like the one posited in the book is impossible. All the same, they say, regional disruptions in climate — like a sharp wintertime cooling in Europe — could take place in a warming world.

HALLAM, Neb. - More than a dozen tornadoes swept across southern Nebraska, killing at least one person and prompting Gov. Mike Johanns to declare a state of emergency.

Johanns confirmed the death Sunday before he was taken by military helicopter to tour the town of Hallam, where every home was damaged or destroyed, vehicles were flipped and splintered trees lay in the streets.

"I've never seen anything like this," Johanns said. "I've been in public office a lot of years, but I've never seen anything like this." [...]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Dozens of tornadoes and severe storms hammered the northern Plains and Midwest, with the governor of Nebraska declaring a state of emergency, officials said on Sunday.

A total of 81 tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in the region on Saturday as a weather front stalled over the area. Unseasonably warm, humid air from the south collided with waves of low pressure on the front, said Oliver Lucia, meteorologist with Metrologix weather service. [...]

Leading environmentalist urges radical rethink on climate change - Civilization might be overwhelmed by Global Warming

Global warming is now advancing so swiftly that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source can prevent it overwhelming civilisation, the scientist and celebrated Green guru, James Lovelock, says.

His call will cause huge disquiet for the environmental movement. It has long considered the 84-year-old radical thinker among its greatest heroes, and sees climate change as the most important issue facing the world, but it has always regarded opposition to nuclear power as an article of faith. Last night the leaders of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth rejected his call.

Professor Lovelock, who achieved international fame as the author of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth keeps itself fit for life by the actions of living things themselves, was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect.

He was in a select group of scientists who gave an initial briefing on climate change to Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Cabinet at 10 Downing Street in April 1989.

He now believes recent climatic events have shown the warming of the atmosphere is proceeding even more rapidly than the scientists of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thought it would, in their last report in 2001.

On that basis, he says, there is simply not enough time for renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar power - the favoured solution of the Green movement - to take the place of the coal, gas and oil-fired power stations whose waste gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), is causing the atmosphere to warm.

He believes only a massive expansion of nuclear power, which produces almost no CO2, can now check a runaway warming which would raise sea levels disastrously around the world, cause climatic turbulence and make agriculture unviable over large areas. He says fears about the safety of nuclear energy are irrational and exaggerated, and urges the Green movement to drop its opposition.

In today's Independent, Professor Lovelock says he is concerned by two climatic events in particular: the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which will raise global sea levels significantly, and the episode of extreme heat in western central Europe last August, accepted by many scientists as unprecedented and a direct result of global warming.

These are ominous warning signs, he says, that climate change is speeding, but many people are still in ignorance of this. Important among the reasons is "the denial of climate change in the US, where governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed".

YAKIMA, Wash. - Months ago, national fire managers predicted the 2004 wildfire season would be a bad one in the West. Now, they're changing their forecast: It's going to be worse.

With unseasonably warm temperatures in March and April, the potential loss of heavy air tankers for safety reasons and a years-long drought continuing, Western states and the federal government are facing the possibility of another devastating fire season.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Will climate change trigger mass extinctions or will new life bloom in its wake?

Some of the scientific scenarios are apocalyptic and see a warmer world leading to the most profound changes since the demise of the dinosaurs.

"The biodiversity and nature impacts (of global warming) are well-documented...all the signals are there: birds migrating earlier, flowers blooming earlier, seasons changing," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate Change Program for the conservation group WWF International. [...]

Rescue teams are searching for hundreds of people reported missing in parts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti hit by torrential rains.

At least 240 people have been killed in floods, officials say. Heavy rains have been falling for more than two weeks and more storms are expected.

VANCOUVER — When some forest fires that rampaged through the summer of 2003 continue to burn through this year’s winter and spring in the dense rooting system of a forest, you know things are pretty serious. That’s the case for at least a couple of last summer’s forest fires, including the notorious Okanagan Mountain fire near Kelowna that destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands of evacuations.

“Some fires continue to burn underground throughout the winter,” says Nancy Argyle of the B.C. Forest Service’s fire protection branch. There were so many forest fires last year in British Columbia that many are still not “closed” in the paperwork, bureaucractic sense of the word.

“For a lot of people that last fire season never ended,” says Argyle.

“When it’s over it’s usually over and people can rest. For a lot of people in protection (branch), the season still goes on and on and some work remains in the mop-up.”

At least 70 fires are not officially declared closed yet, she said. Authorities who plan for forest fires, who consult other experts such as Environment Canada and the Canadian Forest Service, are bracing for a wildfire season this summer that could be as bad or worse than 2003.

Last year, there were more than 2,500 wildfires and the model this year predicts 300 to 400 more than in 2003.

CAPITAN, N.M. - As a wildfire exploded in size in rural south-central New Mexico, the governor blasted the federal government for not allowing heavy air tankers to battle the flames.

After the blaze in Lincoln National Forest grew to more than 23,000 acres, Gov. Bill Richardson renewed his call for the Bush administration to allow the tankers to be used to drop fire retardant. The planes were grounded because of safety concerns after two broke up in flight during the 2002 fire season. [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Farmers and residents in several Midwest states face "serious flooding" after rivers and streams were swollen by heavy rains in recent days, U.S. government forecasters said on Wednesday.

The National Weather Service said the Midwest will have dry and sunny weather through the federal Memorial Day weekend, but parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin will need to closely monitor waterways that are digesting rain from the recent spate of storms.

The break in rainfall is welcome news for Midwest farmers who dealt with nearly 200 tornadoes in recent days. [...]

WASHINGTON - The Western drought probably will spread this summer, government forecasters said Wednesday, and warmer than normal temperatures are expected in both the East and West.

The long-term forecast for June, July and August anticipates above normal temperatures for much of the West, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountain states, the southern Alaskan coast, the Southeast, Ohio Valley and the Northeast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Drier-than-average weather is forecast for the Pacific Northwest. That is likely to mean that Washington and parts of Oregon see drought develop during the summer, the agency said. [...]

Meteorologists expect drought improvement in the Upper Midwest and gradual drought relief in the Southeast. They called the outlook in these areas "prudently optimistic."

Not so for the West.

"Meanwhile, long-term drought is affecting every western state and many areas in the High Plains states," LeComte said. "Clearly the major concern, as we move into summer, is in the West." [...]

An aerial view of the flood waters that cut through a community in Fond Verrettes, Haiti, Thursday, May 27, 2004. (AP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - U.S. and Canadian troops rushed medical supplies, drinking water and chlorine tablets Thursday to flood-battered towns, where bodies were seen floating near the tops of palm trees. Haitian and Dominicans braced for a death toll that could reach 2,000.

About 10,000 people in villages surrounding the submerged Haitian town of Mapou, who are cut off by roads devoured in the mud and landslides, remained in urgent need of help, according to Michel Matera, a U.N. technical adviser.

"We are still having difficulty reaching them even by helicopter," said Matera, who traveled to Mapou on Thursday. "We cannot land because of the flooding, nor can we get there on foot."

Late Thursday night, confirmed deaths in the two countries rose to nearly 1,000 with Haitian officials saying the recovery of scores of more bodies brought the toll to 579. The Dominican Republic reported 417 deaths there earlier.

In what could add to the disaster, forecasters predicted more rain in the coming days for the southern border region between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as residents of Mapou tried to dry their clothes and other belongings on tree branches. [...]

YANGON, MYANMAR - A cyclone has swept through western Myanmar, leaving at least 140 people dead and 18,000 more homeless. It was the worst storm to hit the impoverished and remote area in more than 30 years.

Winds of up to 170 km/h slammed Rakhine State, resulting in flooding and a tidal surge that sank at least 84 ships off shore and one ocean liner closer to shore.

UN agencies said phone and electrical networks have been knocked out and hospital services disrupted. Authorities are particularly concerned that flood waters have polluted drinking water, which could lead to outbreaks of illnesses such as diarrhea.

The Myanmar government has made an international appeal for food, medicine, clothing and temporary housing. At least 2,650 homes have been destroyed and another 1,385 are severely damaged.

TENINO, Wash. -- Two small tornados touched down in southwest Washington, damaging barns near Tenino and La Center but causing no injuries.

The twisters Thursday afternoon apparently were spawned by a 10-square-mile storm cell embedded in an intense cold front that brought heavy rain to much of the western part of the state, the National Weather Service said.

"It was very common across the area today to see extremely heavy rainfall with localized low visibility and ponding of water on roadways," said Mark O'Malley, a weather service meteorologist in Portland, Ore.

At one point visibility on Interstate 5 was cut to 50 feet, State Patrol troopers said. [...]

(CNN) -- America's midsection braced Sunday for another day of damaging wind and thunderstorms, a day after 91 tornadoes touched down across the region, killing three people.

The National Weather Service said the worst weather was likely to hit central and southern Illinois, south and east Missouri and Arkansas -- with "a moderate risk" surrounding that area, stretching into Texas and the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

Australians have been warned they face an environmental crisis unless they stop squandering scarce water resources in the world's most arid inhabited continent.

Australians have done little to curb water usage despite the worst drought in living memory, with households in the desert-dominated country still using water at a rate 30 percent higher than the OECD average.

The problem is most acute in large cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, which account for well over two-thirds of Australia's 20 million population.

With reservoir levels below 50 percent in all of Australia's major cities except Brisbane, experts have warned something must be done. [...]