With temperatures expected to be well above 100 degrees again Sunday, California officials were appealing to residents to turn down their air conditioners and hold off on using major appliances until after dark.
The blistering heat wave blanketing California continued to place tremendous strain on the power grid, as some 2,600 homes and businesses in Los Angeles remained without power Saturday after overloaded circuits knocked out power to thousands last week.
Around the state, dozens of cooling centers have been opened in parks, libraries, senior centers and county fairgrounds.
APSat, 01 Sep 2007 16:11 UTC
The number of trees infected with sudden oak death in California is increasing, and the disease has reached epidemic levels along the coast, researchers say.
The oak-killing pathogen is firmly established in 14 counties - including Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Alameda - and the number of infected trees in these counties is escalating, University of California researchers reported Friday.
Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She's been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it. But the roadkill she found last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra.
Heavy flooding after torrential rains has affected more than 130,000 people in seven West African countries, with impoverished Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritanian worst hit, the United Nations said on Saturday.
More than 30,000 people have been stricken in both Mali and Mauritania, with some 20,000 affected in landlocked Burkina Faso since the flooding began in July, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on its Web site.
The first break in the CCD mystery is about to be released.
Researchers at Penn State, the USDA and Columbia University have had a research paper accepted by Science magazine that outlines the first published information on a possible cause of Colony Collapse Disorder ... commonly known as CCD. But Science and for the most part the researchers are being tight-lipped about what's in that paper. The secrecy surrounding this research has been extraordinary and some of the activities of the researchers has left us scratching our heads.
MARGARET WEVER
APMon, 03 Sep 2007 03:07 UTC
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Hurricane Felix rapidly strengthened into a dangerous Category 5 storm Sunday and churned its way into the open waters of the Caribbean Sea after toppling trees and flooding some homes on a cluster of Dutch islands.
Felix was packing winds of up to 165 mph as it headed west, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was projected to skirt Honduras' coastline on Tuesday before slamming into Belize on Wednesday.
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| ©AP Photo/Pedro Diaz
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| Water floods a street after the heavy rains of Hurricane Felix passed over Oranjestad, Aruba, Sunday, Sept. 2, 2007.
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A magnitude 4.7 earthquake -- centered under the Santa Ana mountain range -- shook southern California at 10:29 Sunday morning.
Geologists confirmed preliminary automated reports that the earthquake's epicenter was eight miles west-northwest of the Riverside County city of Lake Elsinore and about 50 miles southwest of the Los Angeles Civic Center.
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| ©USGS
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About 600 people remained without power Sunday morning following powerful monsoon thunderstorms that rolled through Yuma.
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| ©The Republic
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| Lightning flashes above Maricopa, Ariz. Saturday night.
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Madelene Pearson
BloombergSun, 02 Sep 2007 05:43 UTC
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 struck beneath the Pacific Ocean off the Solomon Islands, the U.S. Geological Survey said today on its Web site.
The earthquake hit 96 kilometers (60 miles) south of Lata, Santa Cruz Islands in the Solomon Islands at 12:05 p.m. local time, the Web site said. It occurred at a depth of 35 kilometers, it said.
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| ©USGS
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USGSSun, 02 Sep 2007 00:20 UTC
Magnitude 6.3
Date-Time
Saturday, September 01, 2007 at 19:14:22 UTC
Location 24.788°N, 109.727°W
Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region GULF OF CALIFORNIA
Distances
* 90 km (56 miles) NE (40°) from La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico
* 133 km (83 miles) SW (215°) from Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico
* 137 km (85 miles) SSW (204°) from Ahome, Sinaloa, Mexico
* 1116 km (694 miles) SE (139°) from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
