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Two killed as storm batters France and Britain

An Atlantic storm battered southern Britain and northern France on Monday, killing two people, sinking a trawler in the Channel and blowing a cargo vessel aground on the French coast.

The storm, which began late on Sunday, brought down trees and power lines and pounded coastal defences.

French maritime authorities said a 26-year-old man fell into the sea when his small boat was hit by a large wave on Sunday in the small port of Relecq-Kerhuon, near Brest in the far west of Brittany.

Cloud Lightning

Major storm sparks travel chaos and damage in Britain, France

LONDON - Heavy storms were expected to cause more travel chaos in Britain Tuesday, with France also preparing for more bad weather, after three vessels ran into problems in the Channel a day earlier.

Five French fishermen were rescued from a trawler which sank late Monday in gale-force winds off the Channel island of Guernsey, maritime officials said, while a body was separately recovered off the coast of Brittany in northwest France, feared to be that of a man missing since Sunday.

Tanker beached
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Major storm sparks travel chaos and damage in Britain, France

Cloud Lightning

Get used to the wild weather: scientists

Fed up with unpredictable winter storms cancelling air flights, closing highways and dumping enormous amounts of precipitation?

Too bad.

Canadian scientists say get used to it.

Snowman

The media snowjob on global warming

Just how pervasive the bias at most news outlets is in favour of climate alarmism -- and how little interest most outlets have in reporting any research that diverges from the alarmist orthodoxy -- can be seen in a Washington Post story on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), announced last week in New York.

The NIPCC is a counter to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The group was unveiled this week in Manhattan at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, along with its scientific report claiming that natural factors -- the sun, El Ninos and La Ninas, volcanoes, etc, -- not human sources are behind global warming.

Better Earth

US government sued over failure to protect polar bears

The US government agency responsible for compiling the country's list of endangered species will face a new legal challenge today over its failure to protect the polar bear. Environmental groups are set to sue the Bush administration in a federal court in California, claiming the Fish and Wildlife Service is now in breach of its own mandate.

The FWS was due to have decided by January 9 whether to classify the polar bear as threatened due to climate change.

Life Preserver

Operation to rescue 758 anglers-over off Sakhalin coast

An operation to rescue anglers from an ice-floe, drifting in the Sea of Okhotsk off the Sakhalin coast, has been successfully completed. According to the latest data of the Sakhalin branch of the Russian Ministry for Emergencies, as many as 758 people have been brought to the shore.

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Cloud Lightning

'Worse To Come' As Storms Batter Britain

Forecasters warn that more severe weather is on the way as rain and gales pummel parts of Britain.

Sky weather forecaster Lucy Verasamy said even stronger winds were on their way, especially for the South West and coastal areas, after gusts of 80mph battered the south.

Solent Coastguard has been told to expect gusts up to a violent storm force 11 this afternoon.

"The worst is yet to come," Lucy said.

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Waves batter South Wales

Life Preserver

UK: Tanker 'at risk of coming ashore'

A tanker with 13 crew on board is in difficulty off the Isle of Wight as storms batter southern England.

The Swedish registered Astral began dragging anchor about one mile (1.6km) to the east of the island and was at risk of coming ashore.

Several tugs have managed to secure the 11,000 tonne ship and it is under tow to Southampton.

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Snowman

US: Midwest Cleans Up After Record Snowfall

Columbus, Ohio - Highway and utility crews worked overtime Sunday to recover from the huge storm that buried Ohio and other parts of the Midwest in snow and tore down power lines elsewhere.

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Australia is worst nation on Earth at preserving wildlife



Karak
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Ten unique creatures face extinction as country finally tries to turn its appalling conservation record around.

Australians love their wildlife - after all, who could fail to warm to a koala, or a wombat, or a kangaroo? But few Australians know that they have the worst record on the planet for conserving their beautiful and unusual animals.