DHAKA, BANGLADESH - A series of tornadoes ripped through parts of Bangladesh on Thursday, killing seven people and injuring hundreds more.

Five people died when the storm touched down on a field where a large number of Muslim devotees had gathered to pray.

The storm lasted just a few minutes but destroyed several houses and uprooted trees.

In southwestern Faridpur, one person died and 40 people were injured when a tornado hit the area. Another tornado in northwestern Bogra left one dead and 30 injured.

Meanwhile, five people died in heavy rains in the Indian city of Calcutta, when their homes collapsed. Parts of the city have been flooded, along with hundreds of villages.

Satellite information shows the ice coverage was 13.4 per cent below its average in September, the university's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said.

"This is the third year in a row with extreme ice losses, pointing to an acceleration of the downward trend," NSIDC's Walt Meier said.

The ice loss is roughly equal to the area of Ontario.

The decline in 2003 was 12 per cent. The long-term average is eight per cent.

Global warming may be to blame, although natural shifts in the climate are probably contributing to the melting, the researchers said.

Antarctic warming?

Another U.S. study suggests it will soon be the Antarctic's turn.

While the climate there has been cooling for 30 years, the trend is likely to rapidly reverse, researchers from NASA's Godard Institute of Space Studies concluded.

The prediction, based on a model, matched observations, they said.

While there are factors that are working against melting, "global warming is expected to dominate in future trends," said researcher Drew Shindell.

Georgiy Mamedov visited Manitoba to push for a shipping route between Murmansk and the port of Churchill on Hudson Bay.

"I think it has huge potential," he said.

While the route is covered by ice eight months of the year, the shipping season is a week longer than it used to be.

That's part of the picture unveiled by Lithoprobe, a 20-year examination of Canada's ancient geological history. Named for the probe of the lithosphere (the earth's outer shell) the project used 20-tonne trucks dubbed "dancing elephants" to generate some of its data.

Since 1984, more than 800 university, government and industry scientists have been examining the movements of ancient continents, oceans and islands, piercing together the evidence to draw a map of Canada's origins.

They call it "Canada's basement," a view of the country 80 kilometres deep and 6,000 wide.

"Underneath the surface of Alberta, we found a subsurface mountain range," said Dr. Ron Clowes, Lithoprobe's head and a professor of earth and ocean sciences at the University of British Columbia.

Even more spectacular, "There was once an ocean ... on the scale of the current Pacific" under modern day Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Often working in groups of four, the dancing elephants – more properly called vibroseis trucks – created seismic waves by co-ordinated bouncing on a pad. The waves are reflected back from the earth, but the reflections vary, depending on what the waves hit.

The reflected waves are then recorded, producing data and charts.

The information is already being used by mining companies to explore for minerals, and is providing data on the process that might lead the volcano in Mount St. Helens, Wash., to erupt.

GUWAHATI (AFP) - At least 38 people have died and hundreds have been injured as torrential rains lash parts of Bangladesh and India, inundating large towns and forcing thousands to flee their homes, officials said.

Eleven people died in landslides in Guwahati, taking the overnight death toll to 18 in the northeastern Indian city, officials reported on Friday.

Witnesses said cars and homes were submerged by the worst deluge in a decade in Assam's biggest city.

Guwahati residents took to makeshift bamboo rafts, an AFP reporter said from his flooded office in the town.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, at least 11 people died and hundreds more were injured by a series of tornadoes that ripped through towns and villages on Thursday, officials said.

Eight people were killed when a whirlwind crashed into a field where a large number of Muslims had gathered to pray in central Bangladesh on Thursday, a police official said. Eight of the injured were in serious condition.

In the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, which also adjoins Bangladesh, rains caused by a low pressure in the Bay of Bengal, have claimed nine lives since Thursday, officials said.

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Heavy rainstorms flooded roads and homes and paralysed traffic in Istanbul, but there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, rescue officials said.

Five schools were closed in the worst-hit area of Alibeykoy, a low-lying neighborhood on the European side of this city that spans two continents, while dozens of kilometers (miles) of jams halted traffic on the beltway and the two bridges linking Europe and Asia.

"More than 30 kilos (eight gallons) of rain per square meter (10.8 sq feet) fell on Istanbul over the past few hours, peaking at 100 kilos (26 gallons) in some areas," Cengiz Ozturk, a spokesman for the city's Disaster Coordination Center, told AFP.

"Traffic is paralysed, there are lots of accidents, cellars and ground floors are flooded, but we have no reports of dead or missing," he said.

By midday, firemen in this sprawling city of 12 million had been called on more than 600 times, Ozturk said, while media reports, quoting firemen, said flood waters had reached heights of more than 1.5 meter (five feet) in some areas.

The main road was inundated in the leafy Bosphorus suburb of Istinye where the Istanbul Stock Market is located on the European side of the city and flood waters mixed with waste gushed out of sewage holes.

Istanbul's notoriously inadequate sewage system quickly overflows with almost every heavy rain, and most of the damage occurs in low-lying neighborhoods with almost non-existant infrastructure that mushroom around the city as a result of uncontrolled urbanization.

Heavy rains in August, said to be the worst in decades, had again flooded Alibeykoy, where Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbas had pledged to expropriate property and move people to safer areas, but action has yet to be taken.

Dozens of houses and workplaces were isolated by flood waters in Beykoz, on the Asian shore, and firemen came to the rescue of a stranded school bus, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Two subway stations were evacuated and there were power cuts in some areas, city officials said.

Ironically, the downpour, which began around midnight (2100 GMT) Wednesday and is expected to last for three more days, according to the weather department, came after a 40-hour cut in the water supply in wide swathes of the city's European side.

SUZUKA, Japan - The qualifying sessions for the Japanese Grand Prix were cancelled and moved to Sunday because of the threat of a typhoon scheduled to hit the Suzuka track.

Typhoon Ma-on is due to hit the region at 9:00 am local time (0000 GMT) on Saturday and officials have decided to close the track because of concerns over possible winds of up to 200km/h. [...]

The typhoon, which is yet to hit land, has intensified in strength to a super typhoon but it is understood that once it has passed through the weather will improve significantly. [...]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Two people were missing as powerful typhoon Ma-on made landfall on Japan on Saturday, lashing the nation with heavy rains and high winds, snarling transport and prompting thousands to evacuate.

The storm, which threatens to strike Tokyo, is the record ninth typhoon to hit Japan this year and comes just a week after another deadly storm, Meari, killed 27.

"The storm is definitely going to come very close to Tokyo, and may directly hit it," a Meteorological Agency official said.

Heavy rain was lashing Tokyo as evening approached, and floodgates throughout the city had been closed. A highway over the landmark Rainbow Bridge in central Tokyo was also closed as the storm bore down.

The storm forced the cancellation of some 184 domestic flights and 44 international flights, Kyodo news agency said. NHK national television said virtually all flights from Tokyo's Haneda airport, which mainly serves domestic destinations, were canceled as Ma-on neared the capital.

The storm made landfall in Shizuoka, 150 km (93 miles) west of Tokyo. Record strong gusts of 243 km (151 miles) an hour were recorded in one Shizuoka town.

Two people were missing, including a 74-year-old newspaper delivery man on his rounds in Chiba who was believed to have been swept into a river. The other was a man in his 60s carried away by rising floodwaters.

Around 2,400 people throughout Japan were evacuated from their homes, seeking refuge in schools and public halls, Kyodo news agency said. [...]

An unexplained and unprecedented rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere two years running has raised fears that the world may be on the brink of runaway global warming.

Scientists are baffled why the quantity of the main greenhouse gas has leapt in a two-year period and are concerned that the Earth's natural systems are no longer able to absorb as much as in the past.

The findings will be discussed tomorrow by the government's chief scientist, Dr David King, at the annual Greenpeace business lecture.

Measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere have been continuous for almost 50 years at Mauna Loa Observatory, 12,000ft up a mountain in Hawaii, regarded as far enough away from any carbon dioxide source to be a reliable measuring point.

In recent decades CO2 increased on average by 1.5 parts per million (ppm) a year because of the amount of oil, coal and gas burnt, but has now jumped to more than 2 ppm in 2002 and 2003.

Above or below average rises in CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been explained in the past by natural events.

When the Pacific warms up during El Niño - a disruptive weather pattern caused by weakening trade winds - the amount of carbon dioxide rises dramatically because warm oceans emit CO2 rather than absorb it.

But scientists are puzzled because over the past two years, when the increases have been 2.08 ppm and 2.54 ppm respectively, there has been no El Niño.

Charles Keeling, the man who began the observations in 1958 as a young climate scientist, is now 74 and still working in the field.

He said yesterday: "The rise in the annual rate to above two parts per million for two consecutive years is a real phenomenon.

"It is possible that this is merely a reflection of natural events like previous peaks in the rate, but it is also possible that it is the beginning of a natural process unprecedented in the record."

Analysts stress that it is too early to draw any long-term conclusions.

But the fear held by some scientists is that the greater than normal rises in C02 emissions mean that instead of decades to bring global warming under control we may have only a few years. At worst, the figures could be the first sign of the breakdown in the Earth's natural systems for absorbing the gas.

That would herald the so-called "runaway greenhouse effect", where the planet's soaring temperature becomes impossible to contain. As the icecaps melt, less sunlight is refected back into space from ice and snow, and bare rocks begin to absorb more heat. This is already happening.

One of the predictions made by climate scientists in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that as the Earth warms, the absorption of carbon dioxide by vegetation - known as "carbon sink" - is reduced.

Dr Keeling said since there was no sign of a dramatic increase in the amount of fossil fuels being burnt in 2002 and 2003, the rise "could be a weakening of the Earth's carbon sinks, associated with the world warming, as part of a climate change feedback mechanism. It is a cause for concern'.'

Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College London, and a former special adviser to the former Tory environment minister John Gummer, warned: "We're watching the clock and the clock is beginning to tick faster, like it seems to before a bomb goes off." [...]

The heatwave of last year that is now believed to have claimed at least 30,000 lives across the world was so out of the ordinary that many scientists believe it could only have been caused by global warming

But Dr Cox, like other scientists, is concerned that too much might be read into two years' figures. "Five or six years on the trot would be very difficult to explain," he said.

Dr Piers Forster, senior research fellow of the University of Reading's Department of Meteorology, said: "If this is a rate change, of course it will be very significant. It will be of enormous concern, because it will imply that all our global warming predictions for the next hundred years or so will have to be redone."

David J Hofmann of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration centre, which also studies CO2, was more cautious.

"I don't think an increase of 2 ppm for two years in a row is highly significant - there are climatic perturbations that can make this occur," he said. "But the absence of a known climatic event does make these years unusual.

"Based on those two years alone I would say it was too soon to say that a new trend has been established, but it warrants close scrutiny."

Temperatures in the Sydney CBD hit a record high for October today.

Meteorologist Peter Dundah, says the highest temperature has been recorded at Observatory Hill.

"We've had records since 1859 - the previous hottest October day was in October 4, 1942 when Observatory Hill recorded 37.4 degrees," he said.

"Today we surpassed that and actually recorded 38.2 degrees at about 1:30pm."

NEW YORK - Hurricane Ivan battered US crude oil production to a 50-year low in September and repairs to Gulf of Mexico operations may not finish before 2005, officials and analysts said.

Disruptions in the Gulf of Mexico, along with temporary dips in Alaskan operations, cut US output 15 percent from last year to 4.85 million barrels per day, according to the private American Petroleum Institute.

It was the lowest monthly output rate in half a century.

The Gulf of Mexico region usually produces about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day.

But latest government figures showed 471,328 barrels per day were still out of production.

Based on preliminary information supplied by operators, 150,000 barrels per day may be back on line by the end of October, according to the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS).

But for the longer term, the agency said operators could only promise that about 96 percent of the normal daily Gulf of Mexico production "should be back on line within six months."

"We have already lost 19 million barrels so far and it looks like by the time we're done with repairs it is going to be closer to 30 million barrels," said PFC Energy analyst Jamal Qureshi.

Ivan, which careened into the Gulf of Mexico September 16, may be the most damaging hurricane yet for the oil industry.

Ten platforms in the Gulf are still evacuated.

The hole in US supplies is widely blamed for pushing up the oil market, where New York's light sweet crude price has jumped about 60 percent since the start of this year.

Unlike other, sometimes more powerful hurricanes that crossed the southwestern United States in mid-August -- Charley, Frances, Jeanne -- or others of previous years, Ivan's trajectory took it on a particularly devastating path for the oil industry.

Its point of impact was to the west of Florida, in Alabama, near the mouth of the Mississippi, a region hosting a quarter of the US petroleum infrastructure.

"Ivan had a very heavy concentration in production areas," Qureshi said.

The result: landslides, massive waves and powerful winds damaged 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) of pipelines and 150 platforms.

ChevronTexaco, Shell, El Paso and Noble Energy were among the worst hit.

"The companies are engaged in around the clock repair operations and only bad weather is slowing down further progress," MMS Gulf of Mexico regional director Chris Oynes said in the service's latest report October 8.

Pipelines in mud slide areas off the mouth of the Mississippi River failed and would require a "significant effort" to locate and repair because they were buried in 20 to 30 feet (seven to 10 meters) of mud, the MMS said.

Hundreds of homes in Motueka, Golden Bay and Marlborough were without power this morning as Network Tasman battled to restore services.

Fallen trees delayed firefighters getting to a small blaze that began on the Takaka Hill about 5.30am after power lines were brought down by the winds.

State Highway 60, from both sides of the Takaka Hill, was closed until about 8.30am while emergency services cleared the debris. [...]

Large parts of Sydney were left without power for a night after a substation overheated in an unseasonal heatwave, the electricity supply firm said.

Power was restored early Thursday to the roughly 22,000 homes and businesses affected, Energy Australia spokeswoman Sandy Olsen said.

The blackout began late Wednesday on a searingly hot day when temperatures reached 38.2 degrees Celsius. Company officials said they did not believe the substation failure was directly related to the heat, although it came hours after a fire at an underground transformer of a separate substation in Sydney.

Olsen said power was restored around 4:30 a.m. (1830 GMT Wednesday).

The unusually hot weather in the southern spring has also raised fears of a new wave of bushfires. Dozens of fires have broken out across Australia's densely populated eastern states in the last few days and a fire ban has been imposed in the northeastern state of Queensland.

CHICAGO (AP) — A fish known for its voracious appetite and ability to wreak havoc on freshwater ecosystems has been found in Chicago's Burnham Harbor, alarming state biologists.

An angler caught the 45-centimetre fish last weekend and thought it looked peculiar, so he posted a picture of it on the Internet. Scientists recognized it as a northern snakehead, a native of China, Korea and Russia.

Officials said Thursday they would scan the harbour near Lake Michigan with electronic equipment to verify whether other northern snakeheads are present. If so, they are concerned the fish could multiply and gobble up native fish.

"I'm hoping this is just a random fish dumped out of an aquarium by somebody who didn't know what to do with it," said Tom Trudeau, head of the Lake Michigan fisheries program at the state Department of Natural Resources. "The fear is seeing their young in the lake. If that happens, we're in trouble."

The northern snakehead can grow to a metre in length and has large teeth and a voracious appetite for other fish. It is usually imported for food or aquariums.

Scientists call it a "frankenfish" for its ability to survive in oxygen-depleted water, move over land from one pond to another, and devour other fish.

Chicago imposed a ban on northern snakeheads two years ago after an angler discovered one in Maryland. The fish have also been spotted in Philadelphia and Wisconsin.

KYBURZ, Calif. Two major blazes continue to burn in the Eldorado National Forest, while steady rain helped put out a 2,000-acre fire ignited by a suspected arsonist in Yosemite National Park.

The Power Fire, which has has spread to 16,800 acres near Highway 88, is now about 50 percent contained.

Heavy rain has helped contain the fire, but it also prevented fire crews from working. Highway 88 has been reopened, but drivers were warned of "extremely hazardous conditions."

The Fred's Fire has burned about 7,700 acres in the Kyburz area of the Eldorado National Forest. It is expected to be fully contained by tonight. Highway 50 remained closed between Pollock Pines and Myers.

Park rangers in Yosemite National Park say they believe a body found yesterday belonged to the arsonist who ignited the 2,000-acre blaze.

Park officials say it appears the person died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Firefighters had planned to begin suppression efforts today, but steady rain has put out most of the fire.

TOKYO (AFP) - A powerful typhoon was expected to hit parts of Japan this week on the heels of a storm that killed at least six people, the meteorological agency said.

Typhoon Tokage was located 390 kilometers (241 miles) southeast of Miyako island in the Pacific region and packing wind speeds of 144 kilometers (90 miles) per hour, the agency said.

It was moving northwest at a speed of 20 kilometers (12 miles) an hour and was forecast to hit southwestern Japanese islands including Okinawa as early as Tuesday, the agency said.

According to the agency's computer simulation, the typhoon is expected to move northeast through the Japanese archipelago on Wednesday and Thursday, with strong winds, heavy rain and high waves.

Ma-on, the most powerful typhoon to hit eastern Japan in a decade, slammed into the Tokyo metropolitan area on October 9, leaving six people dead and three others missing and paralyzing the capital's transport systems.

Just a week before Ma-on, Typhoon Meari wreaked havoc in the Japanese islands, leaving 22 dead, six missing and presumed dead, and 89 injured in floods, landslides and other storm-triggered accidents.

SARDIS, Ark. - Driving rain and high wind caused heavy damage and injured at least 10 people Monday as storms moved through Arkansas, knocking out power to thousands of customers, authorities said.

Near the town of Sardis, Fire Chief Rick Morris said about 45 structures were damaged or destroyed. Several tornados were reported.

"When I looked out the window I saw the tornado swirling and I heard it hit," said sign painter Doug Hethcox. "All I could do was dive for the floor. The next thing I knew it was over. My trailer was knocked about 4 feet off its foundation."

Near Hethcox's mobile home, 50-foot pine trees were snapped and others were pulled out at their roots. Twisted metal and insulation from destroyed mobile homes sat in the top of trees.

Tthe top and front of John Harris' home near Sardis was ripped away. He said his wife and preschool-aged daughter were in the residence just before storm hit.

"It's all gone," Harris said, as he sat on what used to be the front steps of his blown-out brick and frame structure in central Arkansas.

Typhoon Tokage also injured at least 62 people, police said, after becoming a record 10th major storm to land on the archipelago in the past year. The typhoons have claimed at least 118 lives.

Packing windspeeds of 144 kilometers (89 miles) per hour, Tokage triggered landslides and sent objects flying while bullet trains between Tokyo and Osaka had to be cancelled.

Six … long … years.

Solar physicist David Hathaway has been checking the sun every day since 1998, and every day for six years there have been sunspots. Sunspots are planet-sized "islands" on the surface of the sun. They are dark, cool, powerfully magnetized, and fleeting: a typical sunspot lasts only a few days or weeks before it breaks up. As soon as one disappears, however, another emerges to take its place.

Even during the lowest ebb of solar activity, you can usually find one or two spots on the sun. But when Hathaway looked on Jan. 28, 2004, there were none. The sun was utterly blank.

It happened again last week, twice, on Oct. 11th and 12th. There were no sunspots.

"This is a sign," says Hathaway, "that the solar minimum is coming, and it's coming sooner than we expected."

The blank sun on Oct. 11, 2004, photographed by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

Solar minimum and solar maximum--"Solar Min" and "Solar Max" for short--are two extremes of the sun's 11-year activity cycle. At maximum, the sun is peppered with spots, solar flares erupt, and the sun hurls billion-ton clouds of electrified gas toward Earth. It's a good time for sky watchers who enjoy auroras, but not so good for astronauts who have to be wary of radiation storms. Power outages, zapped satellites, malfunctioning GPS receivers--these are just a few of the things that can happen during Solar Max.

Solar minimum is different. Sunspots are fewer--sometimes days or weeks go by without a spot. Solar flares subside. It's a safer time to travel through space, and a less interesting time to watch polar skies.

Hathaway is an expert forecaster of the solar cycle. He keeps track of sunspot numbers (the best known indicator of solar activity) and predicts years in advance when the next peaks and valleys will come. It's not easy:

"Contrary to popular belief," says Hathaway, "the solar cycle is not precisely 11 years long." Its length, measured from minimum to minimum, varies: "The shortest cycles are 9 years, and the longest ones are about 14 years." What makes a cycle long or short? Researchers aren't sure. "We won't even know if the current cycle is long or short--until it's over," he says.

Above: Astronomers have been counting sunspots for centuries. This plot shows sunspot numbers from 1610 to 2000. Data are also available for the current cycle (1996-2004): click here.

But researchers are making progress. Hathaway and colleague Bob Wilson, both working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, believe they've found a simple way to predict the date of the next solar minimum. "We examined data from the last 8 solar cycles and discovered that Solar Min follows the first spotless day after Solar Max by 34 months," explains Hathaway.

The most recent solar maximum was in late 2000. The first spotless day after that was Jan 28, 2004. So, using Hathaway and Wilson's simple rule, solar minimum should arrive in late 2006. That's about a year earlier than previously thought.

The next solar maximum might come early, too, says Hathaway. "Solar activity intensifies rapidly after solar minimum. In recent cycles, Solar Max has followed Solar Min by just 4 years." Do the math: 2006 + 4 years = 2010.

By that time, according to NASA's new vision for space exploration, robot ships will be heading for the moon in advance of human explorers. If Hathaway and Wilson's prediction is correct, those robots will need good shields. Solar flares and radiation storms can damage silicon brains and electronic guts almost as badly as their organic counterparts.

For now, says Hathaway, we're about to experience "the calm before the storm." And although he's a fan of solar activity--what solar physicist isn't?--he's looking forward to the lull. "It'll give us a chance to see if our 'spotless sun' method for predicting solar minimum really works."

Solar Max will be back soon enough.

SAN FRANCISCO - Heavy rains in northern California knocked out power to at least 144,000 customers on Tuesday and forced the evacuation of 200 residents, many in areas where wildfires burned as recently as a week ago.

The unusually early winter storm was concentrated over Napa and Sonoma counties north of San Francisco, where winds gusted to nearly 60 mph and some hilly and mountainous regions received more than a half-inch of rain per hour.

"It's coming down hard and the winds are just incredible," said Lt. Kevin House of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department.

About 200 residents in hamlets along the South Fork of the American River were told to clear out Sunday because authorities feared mudslides could occur on hillsides cleared of vegetation by fires.

Just last week, a 37,000-acre fire burned in Napa and Yolo counties, and another wildfire covered 7,700 acres in the Eldorado National Forest.

"There's no vegetation holding anything up on the hill anymore because it all got burned out," House said.

Many of the evacuees had been allowed to return home just two days earlier as the fire danger abated. Some were staying at a temporary shelter, officials said.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said most of the power outages were in pockets across northern California.

Officials said the storm was headed toward southern California, where up to 6 inches of rain were expected in some areas. Emergency crews were bracing for potential flooding and mud and rock slides, particularly in areas ravaged by last October's disastrous wildfires.

"If it comes down slowly and easy, it's a blessing. If we get a deluge all at once, it's a curse," Marvin McMain said Tuesday as he filled sandbags to protect his home in the San Bernardino Mountains.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - Strong storms continuing to surge across the U.S. South dumped more than 12 centimetres of rain in Tennessee on Tuesday, causing flash floods and at least one death.

A day after tornadoes destroyed homes in Arkansas and Alabama and left three dead in Missouri, heavy rain caused a Tennessee driver's vehicle to hydroplane, jump a guardrail and overturn. Police said the woman died instantly.

Rain also swamped a water-treatment plant in Waynesboro, Tenn. Officials said residents were not affected but water from other sources was being delivered to hospitals and nursing homes.

At Tennessee State University in downtown Nashville, rain caused a nine-metre section of portico over the main entrance of a building to collapse. No classes were in session because of fall break and no one was injured.

Elsewhere, residents were cleaning up from Monday's tornadoes, which claimed three lives in southeastern Missouri.

Three family members died and other relatives were injured when a tornado destroyed three homes and a farm shop near the small town Cooter, the Pemiscot County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday.

The tornado touched down Monday night on Don Tims' property, killing his sister, his brother-in-law and his father.

Tims, his wife and sister-in-law were also in hospital. Three or four children in the homes were treated for minor injuries.

"We had a problem finding some of the victims," Sheriff's Deputy Ferrell Stewart told the Kennett Daily Dunklin Democrat newspaper.

"One was found across the roadway from the residence."

Parts of the trailers were found two kilometres away, he said.

In Arkansas, authorities said at least 118 buildings were damaged and about 15 people were injured in two tornadoes. No deaths were reported.

With her trailer destroyed and her daughter injured, Virginia Ragan burst into tears Tuesday.

"The wind started crashing in," she said, standing amid the rubble that was once her home.

"I thought, it's just a storm, it's just a storm. But then the trailer started raising up."

"The windows were busted."

Strong thunderstorms swept into metro Atlanta late Tuesday morning, and forecasters warned the risk of severe weather will continue through the afternoon and into tonight.

The National Weather Service said isolated severe thunderstorms are possible, mainly north of a line from Columbus to Atlanta to Blue Ridge. The greatest threat will be damaging winds, the Weather Service said.

At noon, a line of storms stretched from Birmingham, Ala., eastward through downtown Atlanta to Athens. Other strong storms were moving through the northwest corner of Georgia.

It was not yet known whether the stormy weather contributed to the late-morning crash of a twin-engine plane near downtown Atlanta. [...]

Heavy rain and high winds in excess of 90 kilometres per hour caused havoc on the mid-north coast of NSW overnight, police said today.

State Emergency Services (SES) received more than 50 telephone calls from residents in the Coffs Harbour district as adverse weather conditions damaged buildings and vehicles.

Motorists were stranded as storms battered the area, causing flooding and debris from fallen trees and powerlines to block roads, NSW police said.

An SES spokesman said the service was continuing to receive calls as people woke this morning to the aftermath of the storms.

"Coffs Harbour has been a bit wild and woolly overnight and SES volunteers have responded to some 50 calls for help," he said.

"It appears there has been some pretty strong wind - exceeding 90 kilometres per hour - and there have been a number of trees uprooted and limbs fallen."

The spokesman said the service would send in workers from other areas during the day to help with the clean up. [...]

Houston's autumn heat wave is continuing to set records, and forecasters say there's  little chance of a reprieve until next week.

A record-breaking temperature of 94 degrees steamed up Bush Intercontinental Airport on Tuesday, and it would only take a temperature of 92 degrees to beat today's record. Clouds from this morning lingered longer than usual, however, keeping a lid on the heat so far.

No real relief is possible until a cold front breaks through early next week, said National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Lewis, and that's by no means a sure thing.

This week's scorcher can be blamed on a broad area of high pressure over the Gulf of Mexico that forecasters expect to strengthen.

By the weekend, daytime highs may moderate a little, but the downward shift is expected to be slight.

It is thought to be the most extreme example of global warming on the planet.

Some estimate that the sea moves inland three metres a year
The village of Shishmaref lies on a tiny island on the edge of the arctic circle - and it is literally being swallowed by the sea.

Houses the Eskimos have occupied for generations are now wilting and buckled.

Some have fallen into the sea. Not only is the earth crumbling underfoot, but the waves are rising ominously all around.

As we walked across the narrow strip of beach that was his playground as a kid, village elder Tony Weyiouanna pointed to a series of barricades that have been erected over the years in the hope of stemming the tide.

"All of our efforts have been to protect our community," he told me. Has it worked? "Not yet."

Tony estimates the tide moves an average of 10 feet (three metres) closer to the land every year. When he was growing up, it was roughly 300 feet (91 metres) from where it is now.

To visit the Maldives is to witness the slow death of a nation.

For as well as being blessed with sun-kissed paradise islands and pale, white sands, this tourist haven is cursed with mounting evidence of an environmental catastrophe.

To the naked eye, the signs of climate change are almost imperceptible, but government scientists fear the sea level is rising up to 0.9cm a year.

Since 80% of its 1,200 islands are no more than 1m above sea level, within 100 years the Maldives could become uninhabitable.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Rangers completed a dramatic rescue Thursday of two climbers from a snowy mountain and removed the ice-encrusted bodies of two other hikers who died on the peak in an unexpected early blizzard in the Sierras.

A man tries to dig his camper free on a blocked road Wednesday in Yosemite National Park, Calif.

The deaths occurred on El Capitan, a forbidding 3,200-foot granite mountain at Yosemite National Park, following a fierce blizzard that stranded nearly two dozen hikers and climbers across Northern California this week. Other than the two deaths, everyone was found or rescued.

The two deaths created a gruesome sight for a helicopter crew that managed to fly close enough Wednesday to spot the bodies, which were blue and dripping with icicles as they dangled from their ropes about two-thirds the way up the precipice.

To retrieve the corpses, rangers rappelled down El Capitan and carried the bodies on their backs hundreds of feet to the summit. Rescue crews also rappelled down the mountain to get the surviving climbers, who were expected to be airlifted off the mountain later Thursday.

"They're cold and they're tired but they're in fine condition," said Jen Nersesian, a park spokeswoman.

The two victims — a Japanese man and woman — had been ill-prepared for the weather, a ranger said.

The surviving climbers had spent the night on a portable ledge secured high above the valley floor. A team of 12 began trying to reach them late Wednesday.

The blizzard blew in early Sunday and continued through Wednesday, creating deadly white-out conditions and 50 mph gusts as it dumped several feet of snow across the Sierra Nevada [...]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A small tornado that tore through a Port Canaveral cargo area caused moderate damage, officials said Thursday.

Weather Calculators The tornado started as a waterspout in the Banana River about 6 p.m. Wednesday, then came ashore on the north edge of the port. There were no injuries, although there was damage to property and cargo, and power lines were pulled down.

"We're just so very blessed that it wasn't more," Port Authority spokeswoman Roslyn Postell said Thursday. [...]

The tornado came with little warning because the waterspout was spawned by a 20-mile line of thunderstorms that developed rapidly, said meteorologist Scott Spratt with the National Weather Service's Melbourne office.

"It was a real experience, after all the hurricanes we've been through and everything. It was just another thing about living in Florida," said eyewitness Jim Johnson.

Reported damage included the flipping of several used cars that were part of a shipment waiting at the port and the destruction of an office trailer. "It looks like Bigfoot stepped on it," Postell said. [...]

Ironically, earlier in the day the port held a grand reopening ceremony to honor those who got the facilities running again following the three hurricanes to hit Florida's Atlantic coast. [...]

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Typhoon Nock-ten lashed northern Taiwan with powerful winds and driving rain Monday, disrupting international flights and closing financial markets, schools and government offices.

Flash floods killed three people, including a TV cameraman and a firefighter. The typhoon's eye passed just north of the capital, Taipei, and forecasters said the storm would churn northeast toward Japan, still recovering from another typhoon that killed 83 people last week.

But Nock-ten, which was weakening, could be downgraded to a tropical storm before reaching Japan, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau said. [...]

A powerful Alaskan storm began sweeping across California on Tuesday, flooding homes in San Francisco, cutting power to thousands and leading to a record-breaking snowfall in the Sierra.

The University of California, Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Lab reported that 48 inches of snow have fallen this month at Soda Springs by Tuesday afternoon, the most at the site for October since it began keeping records in 1945. That eclipsed the previous record of 36 inches in 2000.

Many Sierra ski resorts were reporting their earliest openings in years.

"It's snowing like a son of a gun," said Norm Sayler, owner of Donner Ski Ranch at 7,200-foot Donner Summit, just up the highway from the snow lab.

A surprise storm last week already had dumped 2-to-3 feet of snow.

The storm is expected to linger through Thursday, dropping several inches of rain across the state and 2 feet of snow or more in the mountains. The National Weather Service forecast called for intense rain in Southern California, prompting flash flood warnings and fears of mudslides in mountain areas scarred by wildfires over the past year. [...]

The Met Office has issued a flood alert as Ireland prepares for gale-force storms and heavy rains in the coming days.

The eastern and southern coasts are expected to be worst-hit by the storm, which will be exacerbated by high tides.

Met Eireann said the combination of these two factors and a low-pressure system approaching the south-west coast would create a high risk of floods.

ROOFS were torn from sheds, houses damaged, silos toppled, and trees uprooted when a heavy storm buffeted southern Queensland overnight.

Counter Disaster and Rescue Service acting Toowoomba area manager Bob Bundy said the storm began battering the Darling Downs towns of Millmerran, Tara, Elton, Clifton and Dalby - all west of Toowoomba - about 7pm (AEST) - refusing to let up for three hours.

He said Tara was the worst hit, struck by strong winds and heavy hail which left several roads closed by debris.

Six emergency service volunteers had worked for most of the night in Tara, while 10 were now clearing debris from roadways and houses.

"There is apparently a huge number of trees down, damage to sheds and that sort of thing," he said.

So far only two houses had been reported to have suffered minor damage during the storm.

But he said calls were still coming in from people who had only just assessed the damage to their properties.

STRONG winds and heavy rain in Melbourne have kept State Emergency Service crews busy, with about 100 calls for help this morning.

Heavy rain overnight and this morning, and south-westerly winds gusting up to 80km/h, had resulted in roof damage, mainly to homes in Melbourne's east, SES spokesman Peter Cocks said.

"Our volunteers are out there ... having a lot of people being affected by this heavy rain," Mr Cocks told radio station 3AW today.

"And of course, just to make it worse, the strong winds that are crossing Melbourne ... are creating a different range of hazards, with tree branches and trees being blown on to roads and lots of other debris flying around." [...]

A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming plans to criticize the administration's approach to the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and say that a senior administration official told him last year not to discuss dangerous consequences of rising temperatures.

The expert, Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, expects to say that the Bush administration has ignored growing evidence that sea levels could rise significantly unless prompt action is taken to reduce heat-trapping emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes.

Many academic scientists, including dozens of Nobel laureates, have been criticizing the administration over its handling of climate change and other complex scientific issues. But Dr. Hansen, first in an interview with The New York Times a week ago and again in his planned lecture today, is the only leading scientist to speak out so publicly while still in the employ of the government.

In the talk, Dr. Hansen, who describes himself as "moderately conservative, middle-of-the-road" and registered in Pennsylvania as an independent, plans to say that he will vote for Senator John Kerry, while also criticizing some of Mr. Kerry's positions, particularly his pledge to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada.

He will acknowledge that one of the accolades he has received for his work on climate change is a $250,000 Heinz Award, given in 2001 by a foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry, Mr. Kerry's wife. The awards are given to people who advance causes promoted by Senator John Heinz, the Pennsylvania Republican who was Mrs. Heinz Kerry's first husband.

But in an interview yesterday, Dr. Hansen said he was confident that the award had had "no impact on my evaluation of the climate problem or on my political leanings."

In a draft of the talk, a copy of which Dr. Hansen provided to The Times yesterday, he wrote that President Bush's climate policy, which puts off consideration of binding cuts in such emissions until 2012, was likely to be too little too late.

Actions to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions "are not only feasible but make sense for other reasons, including our economic well-being and national security," Dr. Hansen wrote. "Delay of another decade, I argue, is a colossal risk."

In the speech, Dr. Hansen also says that last year, after he gave a presentation on the dangers of human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate shifts to Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, "the administrator interrupted me; he told me that I should not talk about dangerous anthropogenic interference, because we do not know enough or have enough evidence for what would constitute dangerous anthropogenic interference."

After conferring with Mr. O'Keefe, Glenn Mahone, the administrator's spokesman, said Mr. O'Keefe had a completely different recollection of the meeting. "To say the least, Sean is certain that he did not admonish or even suggest that there be a throttling back of research efforts" by Dr. Hansen or his team, Mr. Mahone said.

Dr. Franco Einaudi, director of the NASA Earth Sciences Directorate at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Dr. Hansen's supervisor, said he was at the meeting between Dr. Hansen and Mr. O'Keefe. Dr. Einaudi confirmed that Mr. O'Keefe had interrupted the presentation to say that these were "delicate issues" and there was a lot of uncertainty about them. But, he added: "Whether it is obvious to take that as an order or not is a question of judgment. Personally, I did not take it as an order."

Dr. John H. Marburger III, the science adviser to the president, said he was not privy to any exchanges between Dr. Hansen and the administrator of NASA. But he denied that the White House was playing down the risks posed by climate change.

"President Bush has long recognized the serious implications of climate change, the role of human activity, and our responsibility to reduce emissions,'' Dr. Marburger said in an e-mailed statement. "He has put forward a series of policy initiatives including a commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our economy.''

In the interview yesterday, Dr. Hansen stood by his assertions and said the administration risked disaster by discouraging scientists from discussing unwelcome findings.

Dr. Hansen, 63, acknowledged that he imperiled his credibility and perhaps his job by criticizing Mr. Bush's policies in the final days of a tight presidential campaign. He said he decided to speak out after months of deliberation because he was convinced the country needed to change course on climate policy.

Dr. Hansen rose to prominence when, after testifying at a Senate hearing in the record-warm summer of 1988, he said, "It is time to stop waffling so much and say the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."

Sunspots are surface concentrations of the star's magnetic field and the more there are, the more energy the Sun is emitting. The dark features have been observed and recorded regularly since 1610.

Scientists have tried to reconstruct previous sunspot activity using ice cores and tree rings. These contain isotopes, such as carbon-14 and beryllium-10, created when high-energy particles from deep space, called cosmic rays, slam into the atmosphere. Fewer cosmic rays reach the Earth when the Sun is very active, because the charged particles from the Sun deflect them.

Now, a team led by Sami Solanki of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Sonnensystemforschung in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, has analysed records of trees preserved in riverbeds and bogs that date back 11,400 years to produce the most precise study yet of sunspot history.

Back in time

The team started by using sunspot records to calibrate models of how carbon-14 in tree rings correlate withsolar activity. The models "reproduce the observed record of sunspots extremely well, from almost no sunspots during the seventeenth century to the current high levels", writes Paula Reimer, a paleoclimate expert at Queen's University, Belfast, UK, in an article accompanying the research paper in Nature.

They then extrapolated the tree ring data backwards in time and discovered that no period in the last 8000 years has been as active as the last 70. About 75 sunspots have appeared every year in this period, compared to an annual average of about 30 over the last 11,400 years.

"We are living in extraordinary times as far as solar activity is concerned," says study co-author Manfred Schussler. "Extended periods of high activity seem to be much more rare than we previously thought."

Indeed, the data also showed that high activity periods only occurred for about 10% of the period studied, and tended to last for about three decades. "That's one of the interesting things - this latest cycle has already lasted longer than most do," says Reimer.

Inside the Sun

Models of the Sun can account for the well-known 11-year-long cycle of solar activity but the underlying reason for the 70-year high is unknown. "There is a consensus that the magnetic field underlying the solar activity is generated in the solar interior, but the details of this mechanism are still not understood," Schussler told New Scientist.

Furthermore, previous data from carbon-14 studies of tree rings suggest patterns change on scales of 200 years. "It seems like that periodicity should be driven by the Sun, but people argue back and forth on this all the time," Reimer told says. That is because the total energy emitted by the Sun actually changes by a relatively small amount as the number of sunspots varies.

The new research will allow scientists to see if past climate changes "are too large to be explained by the sunspot cycle alone", Reimer says.

She notes that the current upsurge in sunspots is not enough to account for the approximate 0.5°C rise from pre-industrial temperatures over the last 30 years.

Journal reference: Nature (vol 431, p 1047, p 1084)

DUBLIN, Ireland - The city of Cork and several towns were severely flooded Wednesday as the year's strongest Atlantic storm arrived with heavy rain and wind gusts of more than 70 mph. No deaths or injuries were reported.

The River Lee, which runs through Cork, burst its banks and flooded the southwestern city's main roads with up to 9.5 feet of water. Records indicated it was the worst such flood since 1962.

The surging tide caught shop workers in Ireland's second-largest city and homeward-bound commuters by surprise. Scores of cars, with water lapping at their windows, were abandoned on roads. Flotillas of beer kegs bobbed from pubs' cellars as shop owners scrambled to erect makeshift — and largely ineffective — barricades at their front doors.

Firefighters escorted to safety people trapped in their cars by the flooding.

Flooding in towns to the east of Cork, like Waterford and Dungarvan, was nearly as bad. The River Suir also burst its banks, flooding key roads, forcing people to abandon waterlogged cars and sending workers into a frantic, often-futile battle to sweep back the tide with brooms.

Thousands of homes along Ireland's southern coast suffered periodic blackouts as the state-owned Electricity Supply Board struggled to repair downed lines.

Cork's airport also diverted many flights to other Irish airports and outbound passengers faced delays averaging four hours.

Authorities warned that worse was likely to come, with at least another day of harsh weather forecast and coastal residents braced for more possible flooding as high tides approached.

Most ferry services on routes to Britain and France were canceled.

But one Irish Ferries ship with more than 200 people aboard was caught in the storm as it crossed the Irish Sea to the southern Wales port of Pembroke. The captain, unable to dock the ship safely in Pembroke because of choppy seas, kept the ship at sea for several hours after its intended arrival.

In Dublin, the storm caused a tidal surge that trapped a Dutch man on a seaside walkway. Rescue workers in a helicopter used a line to pull him to safety.

The Irish Coast Guard advised people to avoid harbors, piers, cliffs, coastal walkways and other exposed seaside spots because of the risk of being blown or swept into the ocean.