Earth Changes
"There's a real sense of imminent doom," Times of London reporter Nick Meo told CBC News in an interview from Yogyakarta Tuesday morning. "Authorities are saying an eruption could happen at any time."
The volcano was spewing rocks and hot ash four kilometres down the mountain's slope, although the clouds of smoke coming from the crater were smaller than they had appeared the day before, Meo said.
Across northeastern Massachusetts, thousands of people fled submerged neighborhoods during the region's worst flooding in nearly 70 years. More than a foot of rain fell during the weekend in some areas.
"It seemed almost Biblical," Gov. Mitt Romney said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "We're sort of making jokes about Noah and taking two of each kind of animal because we haven't ever seen rain like this."
The outlook comes after a record-setting hurricane season in 2005 that devastated New Orleans and other coastal cities along the Gulf, and dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. oil industry that sent energy prices to record highs.
"The 2006 storm season will be a creeping threat," said AccuWeather Chief Forecaster Joe Bastardi. He projected that five hurricanes, three of them with winds over 110 miles per hour, would hit the U.S. coastline.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a bulletin saying the magnitude 7.4 quake had not generate a destructive Pacific-wide tsunami but warned it could spawn a small tsunami within 60 miles of its epicenter.
Nasser Khamis el-Mallahi, head of Egypt's Monotheism and Jihad, was shot dead and an accomplice was captured in a battle with police in an olive grove, said Lt. Gen. Essam el-Sheik, commander of the North Sinai security police.
The magnitude-3.6 quake struck shortly after 5 p.m. and was centered in the Pacific Ocean, about 13 miles off the coast of suburban San Diego, according a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey.
The tremor was felt by the inhabitants of Filicudi and by those of the nearby Alicudi. There weren't any damages reported to people or houses. It is the fourth earthquake in 4 days in the archipelago, where two tremors were felt in Stromboli and one in the channel between Salina and Lipari.
Alexei Ozerov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said the eruption started at 12.25 p.m. Moscow time (08.25 a.m. GMT) on Tuesday. The eruption does not pose any threat to local population, he said.
With a demoralised government plunging in the polls following claims of an internecine smear campaign, the future of the 52 year-old prime minister remained deeply uncertain after he was accused last week of lying to cover up his own alleged role.