Emporia, Kan. - Flash flooding swept seven vehicles off an interstate highway, killing four children, three of them strapped inside a minivan that was dragged for than two kilometres by the rushing water. Rescuers on Sunday were still searching for the children's mother and a driver from Texas.

Everyone was accounted for in the other five vehicles that were swept off the roadway in eastern Kansas when torrential rain sent a creek spilling over Interstate 35 late Saturday, authorities said.

XI'AN, Sept. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- The second flood crest on the Weihe River, a tributary of the Yellow River, arrived at Huaxian County in northwest China's Shaanxi Province Monday, forcing over 100,000 residents to be evacuated from the threatened areas.

[...] Continuous rain has caused flooding in over 50 rivers in Shaanxi Province since Aug. 24, affecting over one million residents and over 700,000 Mu (46,667 hectares) of cropland. It has caused a direct economic loss of over two billion yuan (about 241 billion US dollars), according the provincial flood control department.

Many other places in southern Shaanxi are also under flood threat. The weather forecast says most areas in Shaanxi Province will have more rain in the coming three days and the central areasin the province will even receive torrential rain.

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. -- Rescuers pulled two bodies out of the roiling Gulf of Mexico in Pensacola Sunday, bringing the death toll in the roughed-up surf to three for the holiday weekend.[...]

"I've never seen it this rough," Barry Overstreet told the Pensacola News Journal. [...]

Vicious storms which lashed through northeast Italy, triggering massive landslides and killing two people, have caused between 500 million and one billion euros (550 million to 1.1 billion dollars) in damages, authorities said Sunday.[...]

Television pictures showed houses perched precariously above gorges carved out by the torrents, which had created hollows several metres lower than the buildings' own foundations.[...]

Some 1,000 firefighters backed by 12 water-dropping aircraft on Sunday battled brush fires in hills off France's Mediterranean coast, a region already devastated by massive blazes last month. [...]

Nearly one billion people -- or one in every six people in the world -- lack access to safe drinking water and the developed world must understand this threat, a UN-sponsored forum heard here Saturday. [...]

Partly due to global warming, well over two billion people will be suffering from water scarcity by the middle of this century, the report warns.

The earth is warmer now than it has been at any time in the past 2,000 years, the most comprehensive study of climatic history has revealed. Confirming the worst fears of environmental scientists, the newly published findings are a blow to sceptics who maintain that global warming is part of the natural climatic cycle rather than a consequence of human industrial activity.

Prof Philip Jones, a director of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit and one of the authors of the research, said: "You can't explain this rapid warming of the late 20th century in any other way. It's a response to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."

The study reinforces recent conclusions published by the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). Scientists on the panel looked at temperature data from up to 1,000 years ago and found that the late 20th century was the warmest period on record. But the IPCC's report was dismissed by some quarters in the scientific community who claimed that while the planet is undoubtedly warming, it was warmer still more than a thousand years ago. So warm, in fact, that it had spurred the Vikings to set up base in Greenland and led to northern Britain being filled with productive vineyards. [..]

France faces a disastrous truffle harvest this winter - and for the next two winters - because the searing heat this summer has destroyed the breeding grounds of the temperamental and much-prized underground mushrooms.

Experts are predicting that few, if any, truffles will be found when the main collecting season begins in December, opening the floodgates to cheap but relatively tasteless truffles imported from China.

The problem is a concrete one: over 25 million people are suffering directly from the effects of desertification and a third of the earth's surface - more than 4 billion hectares - is under threat.

Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban Parliament, stressed that despite their ecological debts, the developed nations are doing very little to meet their responsibilities.

The subsistence of 1.2 billion inhabitants from 110 countries who depend on the soil is in danger.

With good reason we always think about Africa, but the problem is not just in the Third World. Data from the UN Convention Secretariat on combating desertification and drought indicate, for example, that over 30% of U.S. land is affected by degradation, and in Spain 31% is at risk. A quarter of Latin America and the Caribbean is desert and dry land.

It's a dramatic situation. According to estimates, by 2005 arable land will be reduced by two-thirds in Africa, one third in Asia, and one fifth in South America.

A tsunami wave higher than any in recorded history threatens to ravage the US coastline in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands, UK and US scientists will report today.

Locations on both African and European Atlantic coastlines - including Britain - are also thought to be at risk.

The new research, a collaboration between Dr. Simon Day of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at UCL and Dr. Steven Ward of the University of California, reveals the extent and size of the mega-tsunami, the consequence of a giant landslide that may be triggered by a future eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.

Previous research by Simon Day and colleagues predicted that a future eruption would be likely to cause a landslide on the western flank of Cumbre Vieja. A block of rock approximately twice the volume of the Isle of Man would break off, travelling into the sea at a speed of up to 350 kilometres per hour. The disintegration of the rock, this earlier study predicted, would produce a debris avalanche deposit extending 60 kilometres from the island. The energy released by the collapse would be equal to the electricity consumption of the entire United States in half a year.

The new model - which provides further insights into the consequences of the collapse - predicts that the landslide would create an exceptionally large tsunami with the capability to travel great distances and reaching speeds of up to 800 kilometres per hour. Immediately after Cumbre Vieja's collapse a dome of water 900 metres high and tens of kilometres wide will form only to collapse and rebound. As the landslide continues to move underwater a series of wave crests and troughs are produced which soon develop into a tsumani 'wave train' which fuels the waves progress. After only 10 minutes, the model predicts, the tsunami will have moved a distance of almost 250 kilometres.

The greatest effects are predicted to occur north, west and south of the Canaries. On the West Saharan shore waves are expected to reach heights of 100 metres from crest to trough and on the north coast of Brazil waves over 40 metres high are anticipated. Florida and the Caribbean, the final destinations in the North Atlantic to be affected by the tsunami, will have to brace themselves for receiving 50 metre high waves - higher than Nelson's column in London, some 8 to 9 hours after the landslide. Towards Europe waves heights will be smaller, but substantial tsunami waves will hit the Atlantic coasts of Britain, Spain Portugal and France.

Dr Day continued:

'The collapse will occur during some future eruption after days or weeks of precursory deformation and earthquakes. An effective earthquake monitoring system could provide advanced warning of a likely collapse and allow early emergency management organisations a valuable window of time in which to plan and respond.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Typhoon Dujuan blacked out thousands of homes, uprooted trees and drenched Taiwan early Tuesday before churning toward Hong Kong and China's mainland. Two people died in the storm, and a college student was missing, officials said.

Packing winds of 96 mph, the storm lashed southern Taiwan during the night, leaving a trail of debris. In the beach resort town of Kenting, TVBS cable news showed streets covered with fallen trees, broken glass, twisted store signs and motor scooters knocked over by the powerful gusts. [...]

Ahmedabad, September 1: THE most polluted city it may be but this car won't add to it. Reva, the electric car, was launched in Ahmedabad on Monday. Priced at Rs 2.68 lakh onwards, the car has a maximum speed of 65 km/hour with zero maintainance cost and costs only Rs 2 per km.

Chetan Maini, managing director, Reva Electric Car Company Private Limited, said, "This is the only solution to the rising pollution and the ever fluctuating petrol and diesel prices. Reva can transport two adults and two children for 80 km - that needs only 9 units of electricity."

The mini-car comes complete with all luxury features - leather upholstery, matching carpeting and mudguards, automatic air-conditioner, stereo system, heating system, a battery and a warranty of 40,000 km. The customer can also choose his any colour and get his car customised.

NDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- A storm poured 10 inches of rain on the Indianapolis metropolitan area Monday, causing flooding and road closures.

[...] The total accumulation might break a 108-year-old record for rainfall in Indianapolis in a calendar day.

"I think we'll be OK," he said of the hurricane. "Usually they pass us by, but I think it's important that you be ready in case they don't."[...]

Wet weather washed out Labor Day picnics and parades in the eastern half of the United States, hitting Indiana hardest, delaying the U.S. Open in New York and drenching Kansas, where a fifth death was attributed to flash floods.

A front stretched across the Ohio Valley and combined with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to produce heavy rain from the Midwest to the Northeast Monday, the National Weather Service said. [...]

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Global warming isn't what it used to be.

"Some people will tell you that the planet has warmed in the past and that species always managed to adapt, so there's no cause for alarm. Unfortunately that's not the case," said Johannes Foufopoulos, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. Foufopoulos says new research illustrates major differences between global warming today and past natural climate fluctuations as they relate to species extinctions.

Generally, each species requires specific habitat and climate conditions to survive. In the past when climate changed, populations of a species would die out on one edge of their habitat range and expand into newly available habitat at the other edge. This colonization process was crucial for the survival of species during the unstable climate of the last ice ages.

However this broad movement of species, which has prevented large-scale extinctions in the past, is not likely to operate effectively in the modern world, he said. [...]

LA GARDE-FREINET, France, Sept 2 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac said on Tuesday a forest blaze which killed three firemen near the Riviera resort of St Tropez was probably started deliberately.

[...] Some 54,000 ha (133,000 acres) of land have been ravaged by fire since the start of what has been one of the driest years in decades.

A 29-year-old man admitted in July to starting some of the fires that tore through the Riviera region, and risks up to 10 years in prison.

PARIS - Air pollution may have been the cause of death for thousands of French people who died in a heat wave that struck Europe this August, an environmental official said yesterday.

Hit by the hottest weather in some 60 years, France recorded around 11,400 more deaths than usual in the first two weeks of August. The elderly have been the worst affected, with many struck down by heatstroke and dehydration, as temperatures rose over 104 Fahrenheit.

A recent study suggests pollution may also have been a key cause of death, as searing temperatures and a lack of wind left a cloud of smog hanging over Paris.

The U.S. EPA has signed a notice denying a petition to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The petition was filed by the International Center for Technology Assessment and a number of other organizations.

[...] "We already are taking a number of actions, at home and abroad, to address climate change" said Mr. Holmstead. "Regulating the transportation sector for climate change purposes would have enormous economic, practical, and societal impacts."

Hong Kong was spared a direct hit when powerful Typhoon Dujuan brought heavy rains and gale-force winds to the territory on Wednesday, slamming into southern China's Guandgong province.

Dujuan had earlier battered Taiwan, leaving two people feared dead and a trail of destruction in its wake.

As Dujuan approached, Hong Kong's weather observatory briefly issued a number nine storm warning -- the highest on its scale -- but later downgraded the typhoon to eight as it appeared to shift towards the north of the territory. [...]

Three firemen were burned alive in their truck on the French Riviera on Monday night while helping battle fierce brush fires on the scorched Mediterranean coast fanned by gusty winds.

The three men, who were among more than 1,000 firefighters battling the blazes, were on a firetruck that was suddenly encircled by flames in the Maures hills of the Var region, where massive forest fires had already claimed four lives in July. [...]

"There are now 1,600 men on the scene and we are expecting 400 more to arrive during the morning," regional fire chief Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Baudot told AFP. [...]

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said during a recent visit to fire-hit areas in southern France a total of 54,000 hectares of woodlands had been destroyed across the country thus far this year -- the worst total in 15 years.

A typhoon has struck in China killing at least 20 people. Typhoon Dujuan has hit the southern Chinese coastal city of Shenzhen. It has caused extensive damage to parts of the country's showcase economic development zone.

The state Xinhua News Agency has called the damage the worst to the region since 1979. Sixteen people were killed and at least 20 others were injured when a workers' dormitory collapsed. Dujuan also knocked out power and caused explosions at electrical substations, Xinhua said.

(CNN) -- Powerful Hurricane Fabian weakened slightly Tuesday as it rumbled near the eastern Caribbean, bringing rain and elevated tides but little else to Puerto Rico and neighboring islands, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

At 11 p.m. EDT, Fabian -- still a Category Four hurricane -- had maximum sustained winds near 135 mph (215 km/h), a slight decrease from earlier in the day. Forecasters warned that fluctuations in the storm's strength would be common over the next 24 hours.

The center of the storm was about 225 miles (365 km) north-northeast of St. Martin in the northern Leewards. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 70 miles (110 km) from the center, and tropical storm-force winds extend outward as far as 160 miles (260 km), forecasters said. [...]

In the central Pacific, Tropical Storm Jimena sped away from Hawaii, according to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in the Hawaiian capital.

THE UN Convention against Desertification is known to many as the Convention of the Poor, probably as it is perceived as an issue affecting the underdeveloped nations. One more error that has been rectified during the sessions of the 6th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention against Desertification and Drought, which has been meeting in Havana since August 25.

Or perhaps that nomenclature is being used because of "notable absences" at the meeting, as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela noted in the first part of the roundtable convened in the context of the conference under the title "The UN Convention against Desertification as a instrument to reach the objectives of the millennium development."

[...] The final contribution of the first Round Table session came from President Hugo Chavez who dealt with several issues, including that of the wealth of natural resources that have been plundered from the countries of the South - as in the case of Latin America - over the last 500 years.

He observed: "We are here at this roundtable to think and to learn and the first thing that we see are the notable absences. There is no top-level representative from the European Union or the United States. This is the sixth conference of its kind. We could get to the one hundredth and they still won't come. They're not interested. What interests them is profit, money. If we were discussing oil prices, they'd be here in a flash."

(CNN) -- The Bermuda Weather Service on Thursday issued a hurricane watch as powerful Hurricane Fabian closed on the resort island, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

At 4 a.m. EDT, the storm was 570 miles (920 kilometers) south of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph (195 km/h) with higher gusts. According to forecasters, Fabian is expected to fluctuate in strength over the next 24 hours. [...]

The storm's projected track will bring it very close to Bermuda by early Saturday. [...]

he Earth appears to have been warmer since 1980 than at any time in the last 18 centuries, scientists say. The climate sceptics are flogging a dead horse. Professor Philip Jones, University of East Anglia: They reconstructed the global climate from data derived from ice cores, vegetation and other records.

They believe their research provides unequivocal confirmation that humans are affecting the climate. But sceptics still insist that any human contribution is likely to be too small to explain what is happening. [...]

STEINHATCHEE, Fla. - A growing tropical depression in the eastern Gulf of Mexico sent heavy rain ahead of itself into Florida early Friday, bringing more gloom to areas soaked by one of the wettest summers in recent years.

The Sea Hag Marina at the mouth of the Steinhatchee River was virtually deserted Thursday, a steady rain falling. A downpour - as much as 15 inches - was expected during the weekend as the depression, likely to be Tropical Storm Henri, moves across the state toward the Atlantic Ocean. [...]

A young girl was left in agony after being attacked by a fox while she slept.

The animal bit four-year-old Jessica Brown after creeping through an open door at her home in Tufnell Park.[...]

Only minor injuries are reported.

The most powerful storm to hit Bermuda in 50 years snapped off palm trees and knocked out power to 25,000 homes.

Crews from the United States and the Caribbean were called to the British territory to repair power lines.

Islanders bolted themselves inside homes or fled to hotels, some of which reported gushing leaks. Airports closed and all flights to Bermuda were canceled. It was unclear whether the airport would reopen Saturday because of the damaged causeway. [...]

Floods, landslides and the strongest typhoon to hit in a quarter of a century have killed at least 86 people in China with many others still missing, residents and local officials said yesterday.

About 20,000 people were keeping vigil round the clock on the swollen Weihe River in case it breached flood defenses, a local official said. The Weihe, the Yellow River's biggest tributary, has already burst its banks in five places in the northwestern province of Shaanxi.

Resulting floods and landslips have killed 38 people and 34 were missing, he said. About 180,000 people have been evacuated to higher ground since the heavy rains began a week ago.

Four people are missing after the most powerful hurricane to hit Bermuda in 50 years slammed into the holiday island, unleashing deadly winds that split trees in half and swept trucks off roads.

By nightfall on Friday, the hurricane's 120 mph winds had eased as Fabian pushed away from Bermuda. Officials were grappling with reports of widespread damage and injuries.

At least four islanders are feared dead, according to Bermuda Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith.

Flash floods caused by torrential rains have claimed 30 lives in Pakistan's northern mountainous region of Dir, according to officials.

Some of the victims were struck by lightening while the others were swept away by the rushing waters after heavy rains accompanied by thunder storms lashed Dir district, 300 kilometres north of Peshawar, district chief Sahibzada Tariqullah said. [...]

CAMP SHERMAN, Ore. - A fast-moving wildfire that raged through dense, beetle-ravaged pine trees in central Oregon after it jumped containment lines was still burning Saturday amid forecasts of cooler weather but persistent gusty winds. [...]

The blaze has so far cost about $17 million to fight, and more than 2,000 people are assigned to it, officials said. [...]

In Northern California, firefighters continued to battle a midweek siege of lightning-sparked wildfires, with at least 40 new ones spotted.

Of 228 known wildfires sparked by lightning in the area Wednesday, 51 still burned Friday. The largest - 2,600-acre in Lake County - was 85 percent contained.

California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Karen Terrill said some fires were not being fought because there were too few firefighters. About 4,000 were deployed after the lightning storm swept through.

China's northern province of Shaanxi is bracing for a new wave of flooding after having been seriously hit by floodwaters in recent days, state media said Sunday.

The Shaanxi floods have left 38 dead, with 34 missing, according to the most recent official figures.

A new flood crest is predicted to arrive at the province's Hua county Monday, and could raise water flow to 2,500 cubic meters (87,500 cubic feet) per second, the Shaanxi Meteorological Station was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying. [...]

Four women and three children died when two boats sank in the monsoon-swollen rivers of the eastern Indian state of Bihar, officials said Sunday.

Three girls, all eight years old or younger, drowned when gusty winds tipped their boat into the Bohta river Saturday in Teghra village of Saran district, 135 kilometers (85 miles) north of the state capital Patna, a police official said. [...]

The ozone hole has grown more rapidly than usual during the last two weeks compared to the same period a year ago according to the latest World Meteorological Organization, WMO, report.

Currently the ozone layer hole appears to be 25 million square kilometres in area, 10% below the record size of mid September 2000 when it reached 27 million square kilometres. The ozone mass deficit (a measure of the depth of the ozone hole) has reached 50 million tons, which "is also 10% below the record set in mid September 2000". [...]

Moderate drought conditions throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin have left farmers with undermined yields and soybeans and corn that will be salvaged for cattle feed. [...]

The moderate drought conditions cover the southern two-thirds of Minnesota and the southwestern three-fourths of Wisconsin. [...]

A Chico archeologist is convinced he has found evidence of an ancient flood that would have made Noah nervous, and the archeologist believes this monstrous inundation of the landscape should forever change our image of what a Sacramento River flood could do.

Greg White, director of the Archeology Project at Chico State University, wasn't looking for evidence of an epic deluge when he found it. He was monitoring a trenching operation in Colusa.

"It was quite young archeologically," said White, explaining the artifacts seemed to come from sometime between 900 and 1200 AD. Immediately on top of the village remains were what White sees as indisputable evidence of an enormous flood.

He found a 3-to 4-foot-thick layer of coarse sand and clay immediately on top of the village artifacts, and then additional artifacts of almost exactly the same age were located on top of this layer.

White said there was nothing in the site to suggest the village was being abandoned prior to the laying down of the silt layer. I would guess the village was occupied right up to the flood," said White.

Based on carbon dating of artifacts, both below and above the silt layer, the flood hit about 980 AD. Flooding along the Sacramento River, particularly in the days before dams controlled parts of the flow, are hardly strange. But what got White's attention was the thickness of the silt layer deposited by the flood.

A heavy flood might leave a few inches of sand and clay on the riverbank, but this flood left feet of material in its wake.

"You have to have a highly energetic flow to carry that much coarse material out so far," he explained. He described the power of this flood as "extraordinary."

White said he has found evidence of this same flood deposit in several other areas around the valley, and believes it may have inundated functionally the entire valley.

The archeologist also said there is some evidence to suggest there were additional floods of this magnitude in about 400 AD, and a cluster between 3,500 and 4,000 years ago.[...]

"It does give us plenty of evidence that the valley has gone crazy more than once in the past and there seems to be some periodicity to it," he said. White also explained the potential for enormous floods, should have an important impact on " how we think about the river."

Cranbrook, B.C. - A crew of firefighters working in the Cranbrook area of southern British Columbia has been hit by a mysterious illness, with more than a quarter of 400 men and camp personnel sick.

Some 107 weary firefighters who for months have been battling blazes in hot, smoke-filled forests were recuperating Tuesday from various symptoms including respiratory problems, coughing, sore throats, fevers, sore eyes, diarrhea and vomiting.

[...] Although tests will not be conclusive for a couple of days, medical experts said it looks as though the firefighter's smoke-filled lungs have been attacked by a virus.

[...] Tests have ruled out a water or food borne infection.

One firefighter said he and his colleagues were taken aback to see medical personnel walking through camp with their faces covered with cloth masks.

"It was quite shocking. I've never seen anything like that in all the years I've worked on fires," said the veteran firefighter who asked not to be named. "Everyone was saying, 'What's going on?'"

PARIS - France's leading funeral company now estimates the country's deadly heat wave in August claimed the lives of 15,000 people.

That number far exceeds the official government estimate of more than 11,000.

A spokeswoman for General Funeral Services says the updated numbers include deaths in the second half of August, after the record-breaking temperatures had gone down. [...]

BRUSSELS, Sept. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Levels of noxious ground-level ozone reached record high in 10 years in some parts of Europe this summer due to the heatwave in which thousands of people died, the European Commission said Tuesday.

The European Union executive said unlike the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere which protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet light, ground-level ozone, or "summer smog," can cause breathing difficulties especially for asthmatics, children and the elderly.

London experienced its highest ozone levels for 10 years and the pollution in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria exceeded dangerous levels for several days in August, presenting a serious health risk, the commission said in a report.

Heavy rains have destroyed at least 180 ancient mud buildings in the Unesco-designated world heritage city of Timbuktu.

The floods have also caused the deaths of at least four people in central Mali.

Timbuktu has a poor drainage system meaning that some 30mm of water that fell on the city some two weeks ago had nowhere to go, and soaked into the brittle, hard earth-built walls and foundations.

With more rain now predicted, Mali's authorities said on Monday, that things could get worse if the Niger River spills its banks.

Belgium launched an emergency clean-up operation yesterday after a sunken cargo ship submerged in the North Sea leaked some 100 tonnes of heavy oil.

The Tricolor, which sank carrying a cargo of luxury cars last year after colliding with another vessel in thick fog about 20 miles north of Dunkirk, is in the process of being salvaged.

Camp in-charge says blood test results not as alarming as initially perceived

KARACHI: The health campaign - launched by the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) last week to assess the impact of oil spill from the grounded ship Tasman Spirit on human health - is in progress.

As part of the campaign, launched with the active collaboration of the Sindh Health Department, medical aid to those affected by the oil spill from Tasman Spirit is being provided at a medical camp established at DHA's Beach View Club. Lab test facility is also being provided at the camp.

Hurricane Isabel is "extremely dangerous" and has gained strength Thursday as it rages over the Atlantic Ocean and heads west towards the Caribbean's northern Leeward Islands, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

The NHC said Isabel's maximum sustained winds have increased to 240 kilometers an hour (149 miles an hour) as it bears west at 15 kilometers an hour (nine miles an hour).

At 1500 GMT, the eye of the hurricane was located 865 kilometers to the east-northeast of the Leeward Islands on the eastern fringe of the Caribbean.

If Isabel continues along its current path, the hurricane is expected to hit seas to the north of Puerto Rico by the weekend.

At least 33 people were killed and 14 others were missing after one of the strongest typhoons to hit South Korea in years swept through the country's southern provinces, emergency authorities said.

The victims either drowned, were crushed in landslides or died in other accidents as the typhoon lashed South Korea with heavy rains and winds which reached record speeds.

Some 2,000 people were evacuated in the southern province of Gyeongsang, the eastern province Gangweon and the southern island of Jeju, and some 1.34 million households in Gyeongsang lost power, emergency officials said.

Eleven giant cranes were toppled in the port city of Busan and a train was derailed by a landslide in the central province of North Chungcheong early on Saturday, injuring 28. [...]

The blistering summer heatwave that gripped Europe this year killed more than 4,000 elderly people in Italy, the country's health minister revealed Thursday, outlining plans to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.

The figure was four times greater than estimates in the media in late August that put the number of heat-releated deaths at around 1,000.[...]

French Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei admitted Thursday the government had failed to anticipate the severity of last month's heat wave and to respond quickly to stem the spiralling death toll.

"There was neither a true alert in the sense of an alarm being given nor was there any advance preparation," Mattei told a parliamentary committee looking into what happened during the heat wave, which killed more than 11,000 people. [...]

Indigenous peoples from across the world on Thursday demanded free access and control over the natural resources of their ancestral homes at a global environmental congress in South Africa.

Some 150 indigenous groups, including the Coica community in the Amazon in South America, the San people from Botswana's Kalahari game reserve and the Katu from a national park in Indonesia, are united by a caucus that is using the fifth World Parks Congress (WPC) as a platform to plead their case. [...]

A substantial chunk of freshwater surfaces in drought-ridden Africa have been named as new protected areas, the WWF conservation group said Thursday.

"African governments are showing leadership in protecting freshwater habitats as a source of clean water to people and nature. It is especially important for water-scarce northern and southern Africa," WWF freshwater spokesman Jamie Eittock told AFP at the fifth World Parks Congress under way in South Africa. [...]

Residents of Australia's biggest city, Sydney, were ordered to stop sprinkling their lawns or hosing clean their cars Thursday under strict water curbs local officials blamed on global warming.

The premier of New South Wales state imposed the mandatory water restrictions on the city and its surrounding areas for the first time in nine years because of the country's worst drought on record and stubbornly rising domestic water use. [...]

Typhoon Maemi was headed toward the Korean peninsula after slamming into Japan's southern Okinawan islands, leaving in its wake one dead and 94 injured, authorities said Friday.

The typhoon, which local authorities called the worst to hit the southern Japanese islands in 30 years, was headed north northeast in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) at a speed of 35 kilometers (22 miles) per hour, the Meteorological Agency said. [...]

Hurricane Isabel, still a powerful Category 5 hurricane, maintained its westward heading toward the mainland this afternoon.

Forecasters said they could not yet predict where -- if anywhere -- it would make landfall, but they recommended that all residents of the U.S. East Coast check their hurricane supplies and update their response plans this weekend. [...]

The Antarctic ozone hole is bigger than it has ever been at this time of year, threatening populated regions of south America and New Zealand with harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation. [...]

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's most powerful typhoon on record left at least 110 dead or missing, knocking down buildings, smashing ships and triggering floods that forced 25,000 from their homes. [...]

Television footage showed giant container cranes twisted into pretzel shapes, a row of shredded seaside shops, overturned cars floating down streets turned into rivers and buckled roads and bridges. [...]

Heavy rains have killed at least 28 people in India's largest state.

Officials said the rainfall in Uttar Pradesh caused houses to collapse and rivers to inundate thousands of villages.

Senior relief officer Mahesh Dwivedi said more than 2,700 villages have been affected and approximately 2.5 million people have been moved to safer areas. [...]

This year's unusually heavy monsoon rains have also battered India's neighbours. [...]

(CNN) -- Hurricane Isabel swirled in the Atlantic on Saturday night, packing winds near 160 mph (256 kph) as it sidled up to the eastern Caribbean, the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said.

At 11p.m. EDT, the center of the hurricane was about 350 miles (560 kilometers) north-northeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Isabel had grown somewhat, with hurricane-force winds extending about 90 miles (144 kilometers) outward from the eye, according to an earlier advisory.

A severe drought which has hard hit large parts of Europe also caused dramatically low levels of the Danube river, making its navigation difficult and puting shipping companies in trouble.

The waters of the Danube, Europe's second longest river and a major commercial link between the continent and the Black Sea, have dropped to such a low level that virtually all riverine shipping companies have been forced to load ships and barges below their capacity. [...]

A 44-year-old man was handed a one-year prison sentence on Friday for starting eight fires that destroyed woodlands in France's southwestern Dordogne region. [...]

TENS of thousands of people have fled their homes on the US East Coast and dozens of navy vessels were ordered out to sea to avoid a collision with Hurricane Isabel.

Isabel eased slighty but was still packing winds of 170kph as it headed for an expected landfall early tomorrow, according to the US National Hurricane Centre. Forecasters said Isabel would pack its first punch in North Carolina and then sweep up the seaboard towards Washington. Nearly 50 million people live in the path Isabel is expected to take.

North Carolina and Virginia issued states of emergency and evacuations orders were made for an area covering about 110,000 people, mainly on the small Outer Bank islands off North Carolina and beach resorts on the coast.

About 23,000 people in North Carolina's Dare county were affected by the evacuation order. In summer the Dare population swells to 150,000 but Frank Pierce, a state public safety spokesman, said there were few tourists in the county now.

North Carolina Governor Mike Easley urged people to "stock up on needed supplies such as gasoline and water, and tune to news broadcasts to hear the latest updates from emergency management personnel".

Thousands of home and store owners from South Carolina to Virginia and Maryland rushed to board up windows and buy emergency food, batteries and first aid kits. Several hardware stores reported shortages.

Todd Liston, 34, screwed sheets of plywood onto the metal frame of the windows of the offices of his seaside pool company in Kitty Hawk.

This hurricane "looks pretty serious, more than usual", Liston said. "We're pretty prepared here, more than further inland."

Liston said that he has had to board up the windows several times because of hurricanes, including in 1999 for Hurricane Floyd. "Most people kept their plywood from last time," he said.

US warships began steaming out of the giant US naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, to get out of Isabela's path.

Up to 40 submarines and warships, including the carrier USS Ronald Reagan, headed to sea to ride out the hurricane, the US navy said.[...]

Isabel is now a Category two hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which goes to five. Over the weekend Isabel was a Category Five, packing winds of up to 260kph.

"The public must continue to take this storm seriously," Tim Schott, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, said.

Mexico City - A heavy monsoon season got wetter Wednesday across much of Mexico, including the Pacific coast state Michoacan where residents navigated city streets by boat in the state capital of Morelia. [...]

Natural disasters have been declared because of heavy rain in 14 out of Mexico's 31 states by the Interior Department, which estimates rains have adversely affected the living conditions of 50,000 Mexicans.

The spill happened overnight nearby a coal-burning power plant, but local environmental officials told AFP that it was unlikely the oil came from the facility. [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brazil's northern Amazon region, once thought to have been pristine until modern development began encroaching, actually hosted sophisticated networks of towns and villages hundreds of years ago, researchers said on Thursday.

Archeological evidence and satellite images show the area was densely settled long before Columbus and European settlers arrived, with towns featuring plazas, roads up to 150 feet wide, deep moats and bridges, the researchers found.

The report, published in the journal Science, suggests a society that was advanced and complex, and that found alternative ways to use the Amazon forest without destroying it. [...]

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The death toll from flash flooding in western Haiti two weeks ago has risen to 24, officials said Tuesday.

Hours of torrential rains caused rivers to burst over their banks and flood the town of St. Marc, about 45 miles northwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

PATNA: There is no let-up in the flood situation which has devastated a major part of 24 districts of the state killing 173 persons so far. In all, 4,445 villages of 163 blocks are submerged in the flood water.

UNB, Nilphamari

Sept 17 : Shortage of foodstuff in the local markets of the northern region has been reported, signaling the advent of Monga - the famine-like situation during Bengali months of Ashwin and Kartik.

Prices of essential commodities have increased after the recent flood while lack of job opportunities has worsened the situation. Poor people are taking stale food causing diarrhoea and other intestinal diseases. [...]

MARK COLVIN: The drought may have eased in many parts of Australia but in East Timor the long dry has left one in six people on the verge of starvation. More than 150,000 people are experiencing a food crisis many are being forced to scavenge in the bush just to survive. [...]

The huge size of the hole in the ozone layer is at a record level measuring 28 million square kilometres, according to the World Meterological Organisation.

Three times the size of the United States, the ozone hole has continued to grow over the last few weeks and is set to reach a maximum size in late September.

The consequences are likely to be serious and far-reaching.

WMO Professor Obasi warned on Wednesday that the most immediate threat to humankind relate to "increased variability in the intensity and frequency of storms floods and droughts, heat waves in major urban areas and the impact of sea-level rise on low-lying coastal regions".

Decade of evidence

Over the last ten years, the number of disasters of hydrometeorological origin has increased significantly, Obasi says.

Worldwide, recurrent drought and desertification seriously threaten the livelihood of over 1.7 billion people who depend on land for most of their needs.

White House officials have undermined their own government scientists' research into climate change to play down the impact of global warming, an investigation by The Observer can reveal.

The disclosure will anger environment campaigners who claim that efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions are being sabotaged because of President George W. Bush's links to the oil industry.

Emails and internal government documents obtained by The Observer show that officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue. [...]

The day after Isabel's swipe through the Washington region revealed a landscape trash-strewn and damaged: More than 1 million people in Northern Virginia were without reliable drinking water. Floodwaters were knee-deep in Annapolis's downtown market. More than 300 trees blew down in the District alone. [...]

"It's beginning to look like it will be the worst outage in our company's history," said Robert Dobkin, a spokesman for Pepco, which at one point had 531,000 customers without service. [...]

In Virginia, about 1.8 million utility customers were in the dark, Warner said, with about 80 percent of the state's largest city, Virginia Beach, without power. [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Communities along the U.S. East Coast were engaged in a massive clean-up after Hurricane Isabel on Saturday, with authorities sending truckloads of relief supplies, but local officials said it would take months to fix damage from floods and wind.

President Bush signed disaster declarations for North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, the hardest-hit areas, opening the way for federal assistance and aid programs.

With homes and businesses still struggling in the face of lingering flood waters and lack of electricity, the Department of Homeland Security said it was coordinating the federal government response after Isabel ripped through the mid-Atlantic region, leaving at least 25 people dead. [...]

Annapolis was hit with record flooding early yesterday as Hurricane Isabel whipped the waters of the Severn River over hastily constructed sandbag barriers, swamping the city's downtown waterfront and damaging most of the famed sailing capital's marinas.

The U.S. Naval Academy was closed after floodwaters swept into the basements of several academic buildings and a part of Bancroft Hall, the dormitory where all midshipmen live, said Cmdr. Rod Gibbons, the academy's spokesman. [...]

Complimentary breakfasts at the Annapolis Marriott Waterfront Hotel -- for guests stuck in the building's upper floors -- were ferried in by rowboat. A minivan parked across the street from the hotel was in water as high as its steering wheel. [...]

But they worry what they'll find and how much it may cost them. Experts say to expect storm-related insurance claims of close to $1 billion. [...]

The water shortage problem is close to crisis levels in most countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, a senior World Bank official has warned.

In a region where political tensions are already sky high, the warning is hugely significant.

Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali once predicted the following war in the Middle East would be "over the waters of the Nile, not politics".

A report, jointly undertaken by the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) and the European Commission, has found that extreme weather, coupled with an increase in man-made nutrients, was to blame for the dramatic loss of wildlife in the Western Baltic Sea last year.

The two organisations joined forces to investigate the exceptional oxygen depletion that had led to hundreds of dead fish being washed ashore along the east coast of Jutland, Denmark. They found that heavy rain and snow had led to greater run off of nutrients from agriculture, urban waste-water and waste-water from fisheries, into the sea. [...]

Authorities believe both fires burning in the Algarve were started deliberately. [...]

The torrential rains and flooding that have soaked China this year have been responsible for nearly 2,000 deaths nationwide since January, state media reported Sunday citing a senior official.

Vice Minister of Civil Affairs Yang Yanyin told a Beijing conference on rehabilitation work that floods, droughts, earthquakes and storms have caused more than 18 billion dollars in direct losses to the economy in addition to taking 1,911 lives, Xinhua reported. [...]

SOMETIME back in the 1950s an English comedian David Herman sang a satirical song lampooning the growing industrial activities in Europe, especially in Germany, that had led to pollution of air and water.

The artiste called on people travelling to Germany not to drink the water or breathe the air!

At that time the message conveyed in that song was not taken seriously and was considered to be funny. Now no one is laughing as environmental issues in Europe have become a major concern with erratic weather patterns, polluted water and polluted air. [...]

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - The largest ice shelf in the Arctic, a solid feature for 3,000 years, has broken up, scientists in the United States and Canada said Monday. They said the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, on the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's Nunavut territory, broke into two main parts, themselves cut through with fissures. A freshwater lake drained into the sea, the researchers reported.

LARGE ICE ISLANDS also calved off from the shelf and some are large enough to be dangerous to shipping and to drilling platforms in the Beaufort Sea. [...]

Only 100 years ago the whole northern coast of Ellesmere Island, which is the northernmost land mass of North America, was edged by a continuous ice shelf. About 90 percent of it is now gone, Vincent's team wrote. [...]

At Alert, a temperature increase of just one-tenth of a degree Celsius [one-fifth of a degree Fahrenheit] per decade has been observed since 1951. But during the period 1967 to the present, the temperature increase has been about four times that rate, about equal to that of Antarctica. The actual temperature on the ice shelf was measured in 2001 and 2002 and correlated with the Alert data, in order to project backwards the ice shelf temperature. This yielded an average July surface temperature of 1.3 degrees Celsius [34 degrees Fahrenheit] for the years 1967-2002, which is well above the zero degrees Celsius [32 degrees Fahrenheit] that is considered the critical threshold for ice shelf breakup in Antarctica, according to the researchers.

You can read the Preface and Introduction to EARTH'S CLIMATE AND ORBITAL ECCENTRICITY: THE MARINE ISOTOPE STAGE 11 QUESTION here

[...] Over at least a few 100 ky cycles, long cold glacials have alternated with short warm interglacials, perhaps in response to varying incoming solar radiation caused by the 100 ky eccentricity cycle in Earth's orbit. Because the current interglacial has already been about as long as the previous one, an expectation exists that another ice age might be imminent in the absence of human intervention. However, eccentricity also exhibits a 413 ky orbital varia-tion, so the interglacial centered at 400 ka known as ma-rine isotope stage (MIS) 11 is probably a better analogue for our current status than are any other recent intergla-cials. Indeed, the Earth orbital parameters characteristic of interglacial MIS 11 are repeated almost identically during the Holocene. Both interglacials correspond to times when the eccentricity of the Earth orbit was at its mini-mum so that the amplitude of the precessional cycle was damped. [...]

The melting is not something that just started:

The summer of 1998 was a season of high melt (negative mass balance) on Melville Ice Cap. It appears as the highest melt in the record but that may be because the record does not include 1960 and 1962 which produced strong melt on other QEI ice caps. On Devon Ice Cap, 1998 the second highest negative mass balance (high melt) in the 1961-99 record.[GLACIER MASS BALANCE IN THE CANADIAN ARCTIC: PLACING THE SUMMER OF 1998 IN LONG TERM CONTEXT download pdf here]

Glaciologists agree that warmer temperatures and below-average snowfalls are causing most of the Earth's 160,000 glaciers to shrink or disappear altogether. [...]

Reynald Delaloye is a research assistant at the Institute of Geography in Fribourg, Switzerland: "Except several exceptions, glaciers are withdrawing. This trend started approximately 150 years ago. But we observed in the past 15 to 20 years an acceleration of this withdrawal in many mountain ranges around the world."

In the Alps, the combination of warmer summers and drier winters, meaning less snow to feed the glaciers, is responsible for the glaciers disappearing. [...]

"If temperatures increase by another degree we may see a reduction of 20-25 percent of the glaciers' surface. If the warming reaches four or five degrees -- this is what is forecast for the coming century -- 80-90 percent of the glaciers' surface will disappear in the Alps," Delaloye says. [...]

Harrison says most glaciers in Kazakhstan -- like those in South America and Africa -- are expected to disappear completely over the next 20 years. Himalayan glaciers are also melting away at accelerated rates. [...]

The shrinking and anticipated disappearance of many of the world's glaciers has potentially catastrophic consequences for communities that rely on ice melt for water for irrigation, drinking, and hydroelectric and nuclear power stations. [...]

This is a lake that should not exist. It is 6,000 metres above sea level, a kilometre long and 100 metres deep. Twenty-five years ago it was a glacier. [...]

"Large glaciers around the world in both hemispheres have been retreating over the last 100 years." Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Research

Scientists say more than 40 Himalayan lakes could soon overflow, imperilling tens of thousands of people.

They say the lakes are filling up because rising temperatures are melting the surrounding glaciers and snowfields that feed them. [...]

HALIFAX - Scientists are aiming a green beam of light over Halifax on Monday night. It's part of an experiment to better understand global climate change.

[...] "A lidar system works on the same principle as sonar," Duck said. Except (instead of) using a ping of sound, we use a laser light."

The prototype laser reflects off particles in the atmosphere. Researchers record the measurements on the ground using an astronomical telescope, which then sends the data back through fibre optic cables to a computer for analysis.

"We can take measurements that impact on the climate problem, air quality and ozone depletion," he said.

[...] The researchers say since Nova Scotia is under the flight corridor between North America and Europe, it's a good place to study the particles ejected by high-altitude aircraft.

The particles affect the properties of clouds, which are important for climate.

PARIS - It sounds like a freak disaster: a blistering heat wave hits a country known for mild temperatures, killing thousands and prompting a breakdown in one of the world's best health systems.

But experts say the factors behind France's heat wave this summer are common in Europe and North America - and higher temperatures linked to global warming mean a similar disaster could easily happen again.

"We have to recognize that in the next years and decades, these episodes of heat waves will even be more frequent, sometimes even more severe," said Roberto Bertollini, an environmental health expert with the World Health Organization. [...]

The police chief of Paris, Jean-Paul Proust, said Monday an "extreme weather" emergency plan would be prepared in the coming months to cope with natural catastrophes such as the summer heatwave that killed more than 11,000 people across France.

Proust told the city council that the section of the plan dealing with unusually cold weather would be operational in time for winter.

A round-the-clock civil safety operations room to watch and react to hazardous weather would be in place early 2004, the police chief said. [...]

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia may be facing a permanent drought because of an accelerating vortex of winds whipping around the Antarctic that threatens to disrupt rainfall, scientists said on Tuesday.

Spinning faster and tighter, the 100 mile an hour jetstream is pulling climate bands south and dragging rain from Australia into the Southern Ocean, they say.

They attribute the phenomenon to global warming and loss of the ozone layer over Antarctica. [...]

Eighteen people were feared dead after swollen rivers washed away a school and dumped piles of fish and sand on a village in western Nepal, officials said Monday.

The Jhimruk and Mandavi rivers flooded after days of rain and poured over Sunday on Syauliwang village in Pyuthan district, 240 kilometers (150 miles) west of Kathmandu. [...]

Nine people have drowned in flash floods triggered by heavy rains in Negros Oriental, the Office of the Civil Defense said yesterday.

Floods submerged several villages in Santa Catalina town on Sunday after strong rains, leaving nine dead and one missing.

Relief operations were continuing and the casualty was not likely to rise.

HURRICANE Marty weakened slightly as it headed toward the Mexican mainland on yesterday after knocking out power, flooding streets and flattening trees on the southern Baja California peninsula. Two deaths were reported.

Forecasters said Marty was expected to maintain hurricane strength as it crossed the Gulf of California. [...]

Ten people have been confirmed dead and nine were still missing after heavy flooding caused by torrential rains in a mountainous county of southeastern China's Fujian province, state press said Tuesday.

The floods have killed at least 10 people in Yongtai county since late Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

[...] Floods, droughts, earthquakes and storms have caused more than 18 billion dollars in direct losses to the economy this year, with a total of 6.31 million people evacuated from disaster zones, according to the Civil Affairs Ministry.

A 32-year-old woman declared dead after falling into a manhole and spending several hours in flooded sewer pipes during violent storms in southern France said Tuesday she was thrilled to be alive.

[...] The woman, who is married and the mother of a 10-year-old daughter, lives in a small village northeast of Montpellier called Lunel, which was completely cut off Monday when high water levels sparked by violent storms flooded roads.

[...] The storms that lashed southern and southeastern France damaged hundreds of homes, forced the evacuation of several dozen elderly and handicapped people and left 3,000 rail passengers temporarily stranded in train stations.

Though it is spiraling out of control, tropical deforestation can be stopped with time, money and local involvement, experts told the World Forestry Congress here.

Since the early 1990s, rainforests have been shrinking at a rate of about 12.3 million hectares (30.4 million acres) per year, with the leading cause of deforestation being the clearing of land to feed an ever-growing population.

[...] In Africa alone, rainforests -- which cover some 528 million hectaresbillion acres) of land -- are in danger of dwindling by "a third or half" between now and 2025, according to Matti Palo and Erkki Lehto, professors at the Finnish Forest Research Institute in Helsinki.

Europe this year experienced its hottest summer for at least 500 years, providing further evidence of man-made global warming, Swiss university researchers said on Tuesday.

During the crushing heat wave between June and August this year, which triggered several thousand more deaths than usual, average temperatures eclipsed the previous record set in 1757, according to a study by the University of Bern's geography department.

The average temperature in Europe was 19.5 degrees Celsius (67 degrees Fahrenheit), two degrees higher than the average summer temperatures recorded on the continent between 1901 and 1995.

Central Europe and the Alps region were the worst affected by the heat wave, with temperatures up to five degrees higher than average, the study said.

[...] The overall rise in summer temperatures in Europe has picked up over the last 26 years, with an average rise of 2.8 degrees Celsius between 1998 and 2003. The last decade was the hottest of all, the study said.

In 1757, which set the previous European record, Scandinavia, eastern Europe and Russia experienced a record heat wave, the study added.

France's wine harvest for 2003 will be the lowest in a decade at 47.1 million hectoliters, or about 6.3 billion bottles, due to the severe summer heat and lack of rainfall, the national wine office said Tuesday.

"For this vintage unlike any other, the quality of the wines will depend on the technical prowess of the winemakers and the complementary nature of the production process," Onivins said upon releasing its figures.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The East Coast's recovery from Isabel was dealt a setback Tuesday by another round of storms that caused renewed flooding, flattened trees that had withstood the hurricane and knocked out power to thousands of customers, some for the second time.

A tornado with winds of nearly 70 mph touched down along a four-county path that crossed Richmond.

The Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point mill has not made any steel since Hurricane Isabel sent an unprecedented 10-foot storm surge into its power plant last week - possibly the longest unplanned outage in the plant's history.

The repairs and lost productively could cost millions of dollars once everything is counted and the mill is ramped back up, beginning tonight, according to International Steel Group of Cleveland, which bought Beth Steel's assets in May.

Last January, amateur adventurer Vince Keipper realized a long-time goal when he trekked to the top of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro. But the view from Africa's 19,340-foot (5,895-meter) rooftop hardly compared to what he saw on the way up the mountain's Western Breach.

"The sound brought our group to a stop," Keipper recalled. "We turned around to see the ice mass collapse with a roar. A section of the glacier crumbled in the middle, and chunks of ice as big as rooms spilled out on the crater floor."

Keipper grabbed his camera just in time to capture a section of Kilimanjaro's massive Furtwangler Glacier spilling onto the same trail his group had ascended the very night before.

Keipper's photos speak for themselves, dramatic proof of a scientific near-certainty: Kilimanjaro's glaciers are disappearing. The ice fields Ernest Hemingway once described as "wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun" have lost 82 percent of their ice since 1912 - the year their full extent was first measured.

If current climatic conditions persist, the legendary glaciers, icing the peaks of Africa's highest summit for nearly 12,000 years, could be gone entirely by 2020.

The 1997/1998 El Nino event, the strongest of the last century, is estimated to have affected 110 million people and cost the global economy nearly $100 billion.

An elderly woman was swept away by floods and 30 were forced out of their homes after torrential rains battered the central Italian region of Tuscany, the national rescue service said on Wednesday.

[...] A total 257 millimetres (10 inches) of rain fell in the region on Tuesday alone.

Click here to comment on this article

NEW YORK - About 1.2 million homes and businesses in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia were still without electricity Monday after Hurricane Isabel ravaged parts of the East Coast, utilities said.

At its peak the powerful storm, blamed for the deaths of more than 30 people, left more than 6.2 million customers in the dark from the Carolinas to Canada.

A devastating burst of gamma rays may have caused one of Earth's worst mass extinctions, 443 million years ago.

A team of astrophysicists and palaeontologists says the pattern of trilobite extinctions at that time resembles the expected effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst (GRB). Although other experts have greeted the idea with some scepticism, most agree that it deserves further investigation. [...]

Russia's top weather expert Wednesday confirmed what many Muscovites have felt in their bones for several years already: the Russian winter isn't what it used to be.

"It's become warmer in Moscow over the past 30 years," the head of the Russian Weather Centre Alexander Bedritsky said.

Three decades ago the mean winter air temperature in Moscow was minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit), but this has now risen to an average of minus eight degrees (18 degrees Fahrenheit), Bedritsky said, as quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

At least 18 people died Wednesday afternoon in western Nepal due to the landslides triggered by heavy rainfall, a local radio reported Wednesday evening.

At least 11 persons died when their houses were swept away in the landslides in Gajul and Dhabang villages of Rolpa district, while seven others died in the landslides in Pyuthan district, all located in western Nepal, the Kantipur FM radio quoted a local reporter as saying.

As many as 13 houses were swept away in Dhabang village whereas three houses were destroyed in Gajul village, the unnamed reporter said. Four persons are still missing in the landslides, he added.

The French government admitted on Thursday that nearly 3,500 more people than originally thought had died in the record heatwave that overwhelmed the country's morgues and hospitals in August, bringing the toll to 14,802, with elderly women the main victims.

[...] Despite increasingly strident warnings from hospital doctors as bodies piled up, the government only implemented a countrywide emergency plan after the heatwave had all but passed.

France has been shocked by the soaring toll given by officials, who initially declined to give numbers but eventually put forward estimates of 3,000, then 5,000, then 10,000 before finally arriving at the total of 14,802 given on Thursday.

In Toronto from 1951 to 1980, the average annual snowfall was 131 centimetres. From 1961 to 1990, the average dropped to 124 centimetres. The current average, covering 1971 to 2000, is just 115 centimetres.

From 1951 to 1991, the average January temperature was minus 6.7C. From 1971 to 2000, it rose to minus 6.3C. That change, Phillips says, "doesn't sound like much, but it adds up to a lot of warmth."

Three people died in flooding caused by torrential rain that beat down on the Tunisian capital and its suburbs, state news agency Tap said on Thursday.

The deluge on Wednesday paralysed the city and the surrounding neighbourhoods, causing blackouts and chaos on the roads and cutting telephone lines in a number of areas.

[...] The storm came just one week after Tunis and its surrounding region were hit by the heaviest rains in half a century. The subsequent floods claimed four lives and caused serious damage to housing, businesses and state-owned buildings.

Temperature records were set across NSW this week, the next three months are tipped to be warmer than average and, after the hottest European summer in five centuries, scientists there revealed the waters off Crete had climbed three degrees in a year.

At Observatory Hill yesterday the temperature peaked at 29 degrees - 10 degrees warmer than the forecast for today - and the first time since records began that Sydney's temperature has topped 27 degrees on five successive days in September.

The debate over global warming may also get hotter next week when Denmark's Bjorn Lomborg, the author of the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist, begins his Australian tour. [...]

MIAMI (AP) - Juan strengthened into a hurricane Friday southeast of Bermuda but only kicked up rough surf and wind gusts to 30 mph as it passed east of the islands. Now, it seems to have its sights set on the Canadian Maritimes, and could plow into Nova Scotia, possibly as a hurricane, by Sunday.

Modern commercial whaling had a devastating impact on the ecosystem of the North Pacific 50 years after it began, scientists revealed yesterday.

A chain reaction caused by killing too many whales has led to the collapse of seal, sea lion and sea otter populations, the researchers believe. [...]

BRITISH - built satellites which can raise the alert about a disaster on Earth are being launched by rocket into space today.

Costing 4.5 million each, they are an early-warning system for such events as forest fires or earthquakes. They have been dubbed "International Rescue" satellites after the 60s TV show Thunderbirds.

Britain, Turkey and Nigeria have paid to send three up from Russia today - and along with others they will form the Disaster Monitoring Constellation.

Audrey Nice, of the University of Surrey spin-off firm which designed the satellites, said: "They have more uses than we thought".

PARIS, Sept. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- France's national grid on Sunday confirmed that two high-votage powerlines supplying electricity to Italy were cut briefly early Sunday, causing a widespread power outage in most parts of Italy.

Power supply was cut at 3:25 am (0125 GMT) probably as a result of stormy conditions in the zone, the national grid said in a communique.

Power supply is progressively getting back to normal in northern Italy after the huge blackout.

[...] The sudden power outage was caused by an interruption in electricity supply from France, a spokesman for the Italian electricity company ENEL was quoted by Italian media as saying.

[...] Another ENEL spokesman said that two of the four power lines through which Italy imports electricity from France were cut for an unknown reason.

HALIFAX - People in Nova Scotia are preparing for power outages and flooding as Hurricane Juan swirls closer to the province.

The storm, which is expected to strike around 6 p.m. local time Sunday night, picked up speed late Saturday, according to the Canadian Hurricane Centre.

As of 9 p.m. Saturday, Juan had sustained winds of more than 165 kilometres an hour - about 30 kilometres faster than readings taken just hours earlier.

The change in intensity moved it to a Category 2 from a Category 1 storm. But officials predicted the winds would slow down as the hurricane roared across the cooler waters of the North Atlantic.

RICHMOND, Va. - Darrell Robinson thought he got hit hard when Hurricane Isabel toppled huge pines and oaks in his back yard, including one that crashed onto his roof. Then a tornado toppled the trees in his front yard five days later. Powerless after both the hurricane and the tornado and facing at least another week in the dark, Robinson and his family have come to expect the hard times and are learning to cope with them, as are thousands of other residents from North Carolina to Maryland.

"Where's the help? That's what we're looking for," Robinson said as he, his wife, Barbara Wisniewski-Robinson, both 37, and their 6-year-old daughter, Kendra, huddled around the dining room table in their darkened brick home. [...]

Just days after President Bush visited Richmond to thank FEMA workers on Monday, U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, a fellow Republican, said FEMA and state agencies were slow getting water, ice and generators into cities and towns. [...]

HALIFAX - An ambulance driver was killed and part of a four-storey apartment building collapsed early Monday as Hurricane Juan smashed into Nova Scotia's most densely populated area.

[...] Large sections of [Halifax and Dartmoutn] lost power as the Category 1 storm, with winds of more than 145 km/h, hit just before midnight local time.

Hundreds of people living in low-lying areas around Nova Scotia's capital had moved to higher ground late Sunday, before the hurricane swirled ashore.

HALIFAX (CP) - Hundreds of soldiers began a massive cleanup of Halifax's tree-littered streets Monday after the fiercest hurricane to hit Canada in years ripped through the region, leaving hundreds of thousands without power.

Smaller teams were moving through the north end, cleaning up debris from some of the thousands of trees felled by powerful winds that blasted the city early Monday morning. [...]

About 180,000 homes and businesses were still without power late in the day, primarily in and around Halifax, and officials warned it could be at least Thursday before it was completely restored. Power officials said at the height of the hurricane, more than 300,000 homes were without electricity. [...]

Over the last 50 years, the Dead Sea has dropped nearly 30 metres

The Dead Sea has been quietly shrinking for 50 years, raising concern for the future of a unique natural wonder of the world.

The world's saltiest body of water has fallen from 390 metres to 417 metres below sea level. The drop has accelerated to a metre a year recently, erasing a third of its ancient 950 square km size.

Modern economics are to blame - particularly tributaries feeding the sea being diverted to Israeli farmland. Potash-mining at the sea's southern basin has also caused increased evaporation.

Even while his three foundations continue to spend millions of dollars on environmental and health initiatives, Ted Turner told a newspaper group Sunday night he does not have an optimistic outlook for the future of the world.

"If I had to predict, the way things are going, I'd say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years," Turner said. "Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me." [...]

The ever-candid Turner also gave a negative review to the U.S. efforts in Iraq.

"We spent $87 billion to blow Iraq up and then we spent another $87 billion to put it back together, and all to get one man and we still haven't got him," Turner said. "Talk about a failure." [...]

[...] Friday's powerful earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 8.0 on the open-ended Richter scale, caused widespread damage in Hokkaido. They originated off the coast of the Tokachi area and measured lower 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 in the town of Urakawa and other areas.

Tsunami warnings were issued for coastal areas, and waves up to 4 meters were recorded. Such tsunami have not been seen in our waters for nine years.

The earthquakes and tsunami caused extensive damage to homes and vehicles. Hundreds of people were injured. Since the seismic centers of the quakes were deeper than previous major temblors, the resulting waves were relatively small, with minimal casualties.

[...] Technological advances cannot save people if they put themselves in harm's way after a tsunami warning is issued. Tsunami can move as fast as 800 kph.

In the case of the Hokkaido Nansei-Oki Earthquake in 1993, tsunami warnings were issued five minutes after the initial jolt. A massive wave swept Okushiri Island between three to five minutes after the jolt. People who had immediately rushed to high ground were saved, while more than 200 others perished. [...]

Australia's largest city will impose mandatory water restrictions from Wednesday with bans on sprinklers and washing cars and fines of 220 dollars (147 US) for offenders.

From midnight (1400 GMT Tuesday), teams of water restriction officers will begin patrolling Sydney and two surrounding areas for water wasters.

The move follows a long-running drought blamed by some on global warming and is the first time the city has imposed mandatory restrictions since October 1996. The drought has brought dam levels down to around 60 percent of capacity, down 13.5 percent on last year. [...]