In Britain one child in four lives in poverty, the report says. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Women and children in the UK would have longer and healthier lives if they lived in Cyprus, Italy or Spain, and Britain is facing “a public health timebomb”, according to a study by an expert on inequality and health.
Sir Michael Marmot, who is known worldwide for his work on the social determinants of health, says much of the rest of Europe takes better care of its families. Life expectancy for women and death rates among the under-fives are worse in the UK, where there is also more child poverty.
The public health time bomb Marmot describes is caused by the large number of so-called Neets – young adults who are not in education, employment or training.
Women in the UK can expect to live to 83, but those born in a number of other European countries will live to a riper old age: in Germany and Cyprus, their life expectancy is 84, while in Italy, France and Spain it is 85.
And while child mortality rates in global terms are low in the UK, at 5.4 deaths per 1,000 among the under-fives, many countries do better. Some of those are in eastern Europe, such as the Czech Republic, with 3.4 deaths per 1,000 births, and Slovenia with three. Most countries in western Europe do better than the UK. Greece has four deaths per 1,000 births and Luxembourg has three. Iceland has the lowest child mortality, at 2.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, and Finland is next best, with 2.9.
‘Neets’ – or young people not in employment, education or training – were likely to have worse health than their employed counterparts and the Government needed to act to ensure health inequality does not become entrenched, the authors of a report by the organization claimed.
The review also found that children and women would be better off living in many other European countries, including Eastern European states, than in the UK.
“Unemployment may be falling in the UK, but persistent high levels of the number of young people over 18 not in employment, education or training is storing up a public health time bomb waiting to explode,” said Professor Sir Michael Marmont, who chaired the study.
“We are failing too many of our children, women and young people on a grand scale.
Czech officials have said the waters of the Vltava river could reach critical levels in the capital city Prague as torrential rain continued to cause chaos and claim lives across central Europe. At least eight people have died and at least two are missing after heavy rain caused landslides and swelled river waters to dangerously high levels in three countries. Czech officials said the waters of the Vltava river could reach critical levels in Prague and that special metal walls were being erected to prevent flooding. Interim Mayor Tomas Hudecek said they were shutting down eight stations of the capital’s subway network and urging people not to travel to the city. Anticipating traffic problems, the mayor said all nursery, elementary and high schools in the Czech capital will be closed today. In the nearby town of Trebenice where a woman was found dead in the rubble after a summer cottage collapsed due to the raging water, authorities discovered the dead body of a man, Czech public television reported. Separately, at least three other people were reportedly missing.
The government of Czech Republic declared a state of emergency across much of the country on Monday. In Prague, the fire brigade erected flood barriers to try to protect the Old Town from the swollen Vltava River, which flows through the Czech capital. Meteorologists said the flooding in Prague and other areas of the country probably had not yet reached their peak. Heavy rainfall has also caused heavy flooding in low-lying regions of Austria – as well as landslides on some mountains. The number of deaths attributed to the flooding rose to two on Monday after the body of a man missing since Saturday evening was recovered. There has been at least one flood-related death in Germany and six in the Czech Republic since the floods hit. The European Commission noted that help would be available to the victims of the current flooding through the European Solidarity Fund, which it set up after the last major floods to hit the region in 2002. “I want to assure those affected and the politicians, too, that the European family will lend support to its member states and help where it’s needed the most,” said Johannes Hahn, a spokesperson for EU Regional Policy Commissioner.
On Tuesday, at least e10 pople wre confirmeed dead in Czech Republic. About nine others are reportedly missing. Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas declared a state of emergency on June 2 and promised relief aid. The Czech Republic capital, Prague, is preparing for more flooding as the Vltava river is continuing to rise.
In the Czech Republic, firefighters said some 700 Czech villages, towns and cities have been hit by flooding in the last few days and some 20,500 people had to be evacuated. In the country’s north, the water in the Elbe reached its highest level overnight and began to recede Thursday.
….
The Telegraph
Aerial footage shows extent of flooding across Europe
Flooding in the German city of Dresden and Czech capital Prague is een from the air, as the death toll due to the floods in Europe rises to at least 10.
9:28PM BST 04 Jun 2013
Aerial footage shows extent of flooding across Europe – Prague V01:19
Another nine people have been reported missing in the floods that have also swept through Austria and Switzerland.
Peak floodwaters coursing out of the Czech Republic were expected to hit Dresden, capital of the German province of Saxony, along the Elbe in three to four days.
Many areas of Dresden were already badly flooded on Tuesday, including some parts of the historic city centre.
Cities and towns in the German states of Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia and Brandenburg were also hit with flooding.
Seven of those killed in the floods were in the Czech Republic, where a man was found dead in the water in eastern Bohemia on Tuesday.
….
The Telegraph
Woman wakeboards along street in flood-hit Czech Republic
Video of a woman wakeboarding through the flooded streets of a Czech town has provided a rare moment of levity for the Czech Republic as it continues to battle the worst flooding in over decade.
Woman wakeboards along street in flood-hit Czech Republic V00:34
The video, which has become an internet hit in theCzech Republic, shows the 26-year old, known only as Mila, being towed by a car and skimming along the water-filled streets of the town of Pisek in southern Bohemia.
“We were going round the town taking pictures and then we saw children splashing in the water and that gave us the idea,” Radek, the man who made the video, told the Czech press. “We thought we could go boarding.”
The wakeboarding video came as vast flood waters caused by days of torrential rain continued to leave a trail of death and destruction across the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
The surging Elbe River crested Thursday in the eastern German city of Dresden, sparing the historic city center but engulfing wide areas of the Saxony capital. Residents and emergency crews had worked through the night to fight the floods in Dresden. The German military and the national disaster team sent more support in a frantic effort to sandbag levees and riverbanks as floodwaters that have claimed 16 lives since last week surged north. “Everybody’s afraid but the people are simply fantastic and sticking together,” said Dresden resident Silvia Fuhrmann, who had brought food and drinks to those building sandbag barriers. The Elbe hit 8.76 meters (28 feet, 9 inches) around midday – well above its regular level of two meters (6 1/2 feet). Still, that was not high enough to damage city’s famous opera, cathedral and other buildings in its historic city center, which was devastated in a flood in 2002. Germany has 60,000 local emergency personnel and aid workers, as well as 25,000 federal disaster responders and 16,000 soldiers now fighting the floods. Farther downstream, the town of Lauenburg – just southwest of Hamburg – evacuated 150 houses along the Elbe, n-tv news reported, as the floodwaters roared toward the North Sea.
The rivers Inn (back) and Danube flood the old city of Passau, southern Germany, on June 3, 2013. Due to heavy and ongoing rainfalls, parts of the southern state of Bavaria were flooded. CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/Getty Images
A person looks at the heavily damaged road between Lofer and Waidring in the Austrian province of Tyrol, Monday, June. 3, 2013. Heavy rainfalls caused floods along rivers and lakes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)
Rescuers navigate through an overflooded street in Passau, southern Germany, on June 3, 2013. Parts of the eastern and southern Germany were flooded due to heavy and ongoing rainfalls. CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/Getty Images
The ongoing rain continues here in southern German state of Bavaria on Sunday, resulting in emergency to many parts and even to neighboring countries. The flood situation worsened in much of southern and eastern Bavaria as a result of the week-long rain. The areas of the Danube and Inn are mainly affected. In Passau, which lies at the joint point of the Danube, Inn and Ilz, the authorities expect a new record level of the Danube by early Monday morning. The old town of Passau is already under water. Some streets are cut off power supply due to security concerns. It will be decided in the city of Regensburg in the next few hours whether about 250 residents should leave their neighborhood. The Tegernsee in Bavaria is currently rising by about 10 centimeters per hour. The power supply there is also interrupted to some extent. Parts of the highway A8 are locked at the freshwater lake Chiemsee. The railway also has big problems in the flooded areas, with several routes being blocked. The neighboring states are also affected, including Saxony and Baden-Wuerttemberg.
In Germany, where at least four people have died or are missing, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised federal support for affected areas and said the army would be deployed if necessary. Several cities, including Chemnitz in the east, and Passau and Rosenheim in the south, issued disaster warnings. Passau’s mayor, Juergen Dupper, warned that the water might rise above record levels of 2002 in the city, which lies at the confluence of three rivers. Large stretches of the Rhine, Main and Neckar rivers have been closed to ship traffic, the German news agency DPA reported.
Raging waters from three rivers have flooded large parts of the southeast German city of Passau following days of heavy rainfall in central Europe. A spokesman for the city’s crisis center said Monday that the situation was “extremely dramatic” and waters are expected to rise further by midday to their level highest in 70 years. Herbert Zillinger told The Associated Press that much of the city was inaccessible except by boat and electricity supplies have been shut off as a precaution.
….
….
Thousands flee flooding in central Europe
Thousands of people have fled their homes in Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria as central Europe is hit by heavy flooding.
The Telegraph
Image 1 of 3
Flooded houses next to river Steyr are pictured during heavy rainfall in the Austrian city of SteyrPhoto: REUTERS
By Agencies
11:48AM BST 03 Jun 2013
In Germany, raging waters from three rivers poured into the old town of Passau, one of the cities worst hit by flooding that has spread across a large area of central Europe.
Rescuers used boats to transport residents from flooded parts of the city to dry land as officials warned that water levels – already the highest in 70 years – could rise further. A spokesman for the city’s crisis centre said much of Passau was inaccessible on foot and the electricity supply had been shut down as a precaution.
“The situation is extremely dramatic,” spokesman Herbert Zillinger told The Associated Press.
Water from the Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers rose above markers set in 1954, when the city suffered its worst flooding in living memory. Zillinger said levels would continue to rise throughout the day.
Rivers in Saxony and Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as in Bavaria, have burst their banks, according to a Sueddeutsche Zeitung report. A man was found dead in Salzburg, Austria, and two others are missing, according to the Salzburger Nachrichten. The army is also helping civil authorities.
Statue of Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy is seen in flooded Vltava river in central Prague, Czech Republic, Flood danger was declared in also in others regions in western and northern parts of the Czech Republic.Photo: EPA
At least two people have been killed in devastating floods gripping the western Czech Republic. The disaster caused by torrential rains has prompted the evacuation of metro stations, several hospitals and the zoo in the capital. Heavy rain over the weekend has resulted in flood warnings in west, north, central and south Bohemia. At least one woman is dead, after her home collapsed in Trebenice u Prahy, southwest of Prague and two people are missing after their raft overturned on the River Berounka in Hlasna Treban in central Bohemia. In Prague, rescue workers, aided by the army, have set up flood barriers for the first time since the devastating floods of 2002. Hospitals, retirement homes and cultural institutions as well as the zoo are being evacuated across the city. A state of emergency has been declared in the Czech Republic due to the threat of flooding, Prime Minister Petr Nečas announced in a televised address. He added that the government has allocated 300 million Czech Koruna ($15 million ) to battle the flooding. “The situation is very serious,” acting mayor Tomas Hudecek stated, as water levels in the Vltava, the river that flows through Prague, reached 1,513 cubic meters per second. During the 2002 floods 5,000 cubic meters was flowing through the city every second, according to the Prague Post. The rising water levels have interrupted rail services between Bohemia and Moravia, with trains being stopped near Kolin. The flooding also partially damaged half of the 51 metro stations in Prague, with 17 of them submerged, local media Ceskenoviny reports adding that the total damage was put at 73 billion Czech Koruna (about $4 billion) , 27 billion (about $1,5 billion) of which in Prague only.
Czech officials said special metal walls had been erected in Prague to prevent flooding as the Vltava river approached critical levels. Interim mayor Tomas Hudecek said authorities were shutting down eight stations of the capital’s metro network and urging people not to travel. Three metro lines in central Prague would remain closed on Monday, as would all schools, he said. Two people were found dead in the nearby town of Trebenice, one of them a woman discovered in the rubble after a summer cottage collapsed due to the raging water, Czech public television reported. At least three other people have been reported missing. Many roads and train lines were closed, including the main one from Prague to the eastern part of the country. Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said 300 soldiers had been deployed to help local authorities and up to 2,000 placed on standby. The government declared a state of emergency in six regions. Thousands of people have had to be evacuated from their homes across the country. In Prague, authorities ordered the evacuation of parts of the city’s zoo near the river and patients from a Prague hospital were moved to higher ground.
The worst floods to hit the Czech Republic in a decade forced the evacuation of almost 2,700 people from low-lying areas while the rising water threatened Prague’s historic center, forced school closures and disrupted public transport. Czech police said at least five people had died in the flooding. Firefighters evacuated homes in western regions and in villages outside the capital on Sunday and Monday, rescuing 200 people. Flooding was also reported in Austria and water levels rose in Germany and Poland after heavy rain in central Europe over the past week swelled rivers. At least one person died and two were missing in Austria near Salzburg.
The subway network in central Prague was halted on Monday due to the weather, for the first time since massive floods submerged the city in 2002 and caused billions of dollars of damage in the Czech Republic. Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas declared a state of emergency for most of the nation on Sunday and pledged 300 million crowns ($15.11 million) for relief efforts. Troops started putting anti-flood barriers in place in Prague and volunteers helped pile up sandbags in areas popular with tourists in the ancient center. The landmark Charles Bridge was closed and workers evacuated parts of Prague zoo. Levels on the Vltava river that cuts through Prague’s center continued to rise on Monday. A spokeswoman for the state river management company said the levels could peak in the afternoon likely at half the level recorded in 2002. Meteorologists said the steady rains that have hit the country in the past week could ease in coming days, according to CTK news agency.
…
Worst flooding for a decade hits Prague
The Czech capital Prague declared a state of emergency as the worst flooding for over a decade tore into the city, threatening to engulf the streets of its historic heart.
Statue of Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy is seen in flooded Vltava river in central Prague, Czech Republic, Flood danger was declared in also in others regions in western and northern parts of the Czech Republic.Photo: EPA
Supported by troops and volunteers, Prague’s fire brigade erected metal flood barriers and sandbag walls in a battle to keep the River Vltava at bay while at the city’s zoo tigers were tranquillised as part of an animal exodus to the safety of dry ground.
Schools were closed, much of the Prague transport system shut down and the famous Charles Bridge spanning the Vltava usually jammed with thousands of tourists fell lifeless after local authorities closed it.
Days of torrential rain have carpeted central Europe and turned placid rivers into raging, muddy torrents that have claimed the lives of about eight people and destroyed scores of homes and buildings across the Czech Republic, southern Germany and Austria.
In the Czech Republic over 7,000 people have been evacuated, and Petr Necas, the Czech prime minister, said he had ordered the release of emergency funding for people who have lost their homes to the flooding. The country’s health ministry warned of the spread of waterborne diseases owing to flooding disrupting water supplies and flushing raw sewage onto the streets.
Gov’t declares state of emergency as the Vltava River swells to critical levels
Posted: June 2, 2013
By News Desk – Team
Walter Novak
The Kampa and Střelecký islands in the historic Prague city center were underwater as of the morning of June 3.
VIDEO: Click here for a video of the floods taken from the Vltava riverbank the morning of June 3.
Seven people have been confirmed dead and four are missing as a result of the flooding that has devastated parts of the Czech Republic, a police spokeswoman said Monday.
In addition, as of Monday, more than 7,100 people have been evacuated from areas threatened by floodwaters after rivers throughout the country spilled over their banks.
A state of emergency remains in effect in regions including Prague. The army has been dispatched to help with emergency manoeuvres.
Authorities said 2,800 cubic meters of water flowed through the capital Monday afternoon. Environment Minister Tomáš Chalupa expects water flow in Prague to reach a rate of up to 3,500 cubic meters per second and peak during the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Prime Minister Petr Nečas said the government has earmarked 4.5 billion Kč in relief and reconstruction aid. Those afflicted by the flooding will be eligible to receive up to 51,140 Kč in individual compensation.
Some 2,000 soldiers have been deployed to help clear areas damaged by the flooding. More than half of those evacuated hail from the central Bohemian region.
In Prague, riverside businesses and homes have been cleared, including in the historical center. Public transport authorities have closed major segments of all three metro lines as well as trams, and a replacement service has been deployed throughout the city.
Czech Republic officials say traces of horse meat were discovered in frozen packages of meatballs sent to their country for sale at furniture giant Ikea. NBCNews.com’s Dara Brown reports.
By Juergen Baetz and Karel Janicek, The Associated Press
Traces of horse have been found in meatballs labeled as beef and pork for Swedish global furniture giant Ikea, according to authorities in the Czech Republic.
The horse meat was found in one-kilogram packs of frozen meat balls made in Sweden and shipped to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there, the Czech State Veterinary Administration said.
Ikea furniture stores also sell typical Swedish food.
A total of 1,675 pounds of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.
Ikea’s furniture stores feature restaurants and also sell food typical of the company’s home country, including the so-called Kottbullar meat balls.
It was not immediately clear whether Ikea exported the same product to other countries. Calls seeking comment from Ikea in Sweden were not immediately returned Monday.
The Czech authority also found horse meat in beef burgers imported from Poland during random tests of food products.
Authorities across Europe have started doing random DNA checks after traces of horse meat turned up in frozen supermarket meals such as burgers and lasagna beginning last month.
The operation – dubbed “Red October” – claimed victims in embassies, government and military institutions in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain.
It also hit Australia, Iran, Israel, Russia and the US, among others.
But Belgium, the home of the EU and Nato headquarters, saw 15 separate breaches – the fourth highest number of any country on the list.
Over the past five years, the hackers pulled material, such as files, as well as keystroke history and Internet browsing history, from desktop and laptop computers, servers and USB sticks.
Volcanic activity on Spain’s El Hierro island has resumed far below the Earth’s surface in a similar manner to last July, albeit slightly stronger, the director of the National Geographic Institute, or IGN, in the Canary Islands, Maria Jose Blanco, told Efe on Sunday.
Blanco said that a peak of seismic activity is under way, a continuation of the volcanic process – a shifting of magma many kilometers (miles) under ground – that began in July 2011 which, although the main activity ended at the time with an undersea eruption, that did not mean that the overall activity had come to a definitive conclusion.
The IGN official said that at present it is not expected that the seismic movements that have been registered – which have occurred at depths of some 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles) – exceed 3.2 on the Richter scale, a fairly low level.
Blanco could not specify how long this new round of activity would last, although she did say that seismic peaks like the current one would, in all likelihood, continue to occur.
Therefore, she said, the IGN is studying the idea of convening the scientific committee of the Civil Protection Plan for Volcanic Risk in the Canaries after this reactivation in the depths of the El Hierro volcano, where over the past three days more than 330 minor seismic movements have been registered.
Officials with the regional government of the Canaries told Efe that experts had verified “an acceleration of released seismic energy accompanied by deformations” in underground structures.
For the present, the largest movement registered so far was the one measured at 3.2 on the Richter scale, which was felt on Saturday for some 13 hours and 15 minutes by the residents of the municipality of El Pinar, according to IGN data.
A slight increase of activity can be noted at Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico. The frequency of explosions has increased to more than 1 per hour, i.e. doubled when compared to last week.
The more energetic explosions produced small ash plumes rising up to 1 km. Episodes of volcanic tremor occurred as well, CENAPRED writes.
The new seismic swarm at El Hierro continues with hundreds of small quakes per day concentrated at about 20 km depth in the south-central part of the island near El Pinar. Pulses of tremor and a slight inflation are visible as well, but for now, it seems that magma is not moving much.
San Cristobal volcano had a small explosion yesterday at 8:17 am local time. Recent measurements showed an increase of SO2 emissions to 2,490 tons per day, i.e. almost double than before. Also, seismic tremor increased in the evening of 15 Sep.
Fuego volcano, Guatemala: Activity remains at normal levels with sporadic weak to moderate explosions with ash rising 400-800 meters and some rumbling sounds. The lava flow to the Taniluya canyon has apparently decreased a lot, as INSIVUMEH reported it to be only 50 m long yesterday.
Santiaguito volcano continues to have occasional explosions ejecting ash columns to 500 meters height, which spread west and northwest over the region of the villages of El Rosario and San Marcos, Palajunoj. There is constant activity in the 4 active lava flows, generating avalanches of blocks deposited within the river banks Nima Nima I and II.
Most other volcanoes in Central and Southern America have not shown any significantly unusual behavior.
Satellite observations: Batu Tara had its daily explosion to send ash to about 7,000 ft altitude, VAAC Darwin reports.
A strong SO2 plume was visible from Manam volcano (PNG) today, suggesting that there is heightened activity or an eruption.
Sakurajima volcano seems to be having a break from its relatively strong phase over the past days. There was only one probably weak explosion reported during the past 24 hours.
Smoke and ash billow from North Maluku’s Gamalama on Sunday. (Antara Photo/Rosa Panggabean)
Two of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes erupted on Saturday, prompting the government to issue warnings to populations living near the affected mountains.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said on Sunday that new eruption started at Lokon in North Sulawesi and Gamalama at Ternate in North Maluku.
Lokon generated a 1,500-meter high ash plume and violent strombolian (low-level) activity with some lava flow, while Gamalama produced a shower of ashes that covered the nearby city.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for BNPB, said on Sunday that Lokon, located in North Sulawesi’s Tomohon area, erupted at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
The explosion from the eruption shattered windows of the command post built to monitor the activities of the volcano, he said.
The agency, Sutopo said, had issued warnings to local administrations to prepare precautionary measures, and called on people to remain alert.
“The residents don’t have to be evacuated but they must not do any activities within the range of five kilometers from the volcano,” Sutopo said.
He said that the BNPB had asked the Tomohon administration to raise the awareness of residents.
Meanwhile, the Gamalama spurt sent ashes into the air for about 15 minutes at 11 p.m., before the wind carried the ashes toward the North Maluku capital of Ternate. “The ashes came down on the city, decreasing visibility to only 50 meters,” Sutopo said.
He said BNPB’s local branch went to the affected area and set up four stations to help people in the event of a larger eruption. “Here also, we don’t see any need to evacuate people. But we will stay on high alert,” the official said.
Lokon has erupted several times previously, with an explosion in July 2011 forcing more than 5,200 people to be evacuated.
The eruption created huge clouds of ash as high as 3,500 meters.
Lokon’s last deadly eruption was in 1991, when a Swiss tourist was killed.
Last December, Gamalama erupted, resulting in four villagers being killed and dozens others being hospitalized. About 1,000 residents were forced to evacuate.
The Indonesian archipelago has dozens of active volcanoes and straddles major tectonic fault lines known as the “Ring of Fire” between the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Earlier this month, there was volcanic activity at Lampung’s Anak Krakatau.
Nicaragua boosted its responses to volcanic activity in the northwestern region Saturday, as the San Cristobal volcano acted up for the second time in a week. Authorities installed 43 radio communication stations along the Pacific coast to monitor San Cristobal and another volcano, Telica. The radio posts aim to “ensure improved monitoring of seismic and volcanic behavior in the area,” said civil defense chief Colonel Nestor Solis, enabling authorities to issue more accurate warnings sooner. A number of towns near San Cristobal, located some 135 kilometers (83 miles) northwest of the capital, were evacuated last week after the volcano began rumbling, sending a column of smoke and ash high into the sky, before subsiding. On Saturday, the 1,745-meter (5,725-foot) tall volcano again spewed “abundant gas emissions moving toward the northeast” and increased seismic tremor and sulfur concentrations, according to the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies, or INETER. Sulfur dioxide monitoring showed levels of the compound — considered a measure of volcanic activity — were nearly double the readings from previous days, said the director of national disaster prevention and relief agency SINAPRED, Guillermo Gonzalez.
Taal volcano’s seismic network detected one volcanic earthquake during the past 24-hour observation period. Steaming activity and crater glow could not be observed due to thick clouds covering the volcano’s summit the whole day yesterday up to this morning,
Mayon Volcano’s seismic network detected one volcanic earthquake during the past 24-hour observation period. Steaming activity and crater glow could not be observed due to thick clouds covering the volcano’s summit the whole day yesterday up to this morning,
A volcano has erupted in eastern Indonesia, spewing clouds of thick, gray ash. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. State volcanologist Kristianto says Mount Gamalama in the Molucca Islands sprang to life last week. It unleashed two strong eruptions over the weekend, sending volcanic ash as high as 1 kilometer (0.62 miles). Kristianto, who uses only one name, says slow-moving red lava was visible at the peak of the eruption Monday. Villages have been blanketed with thick ash but no evacuations have been ordered. Gamalama last erupted late last year, and its mudflows killed four villagers two weeks later. Indonesia is a vast archipelago with millions of people living on mountains or near fertile flood plains. Seasonal downpours here often cause landslides.
[This event happened on friday, 14.09.2012] The nuclear reactor at Seabrook Station has been powered down since Friday evening, when a water intake valve was jammed closed by a computer glitch, according to an announcement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Water sank to a “low low level” inside one of Seabrook Station’s four steam generators on Friday, Sept. 14, after the valve problem occurred, according to an NRC inspector who was called to the scene. The low water level tripped an automatic shutdown of the reactor at approximately 8:25 p.m. The NRC inspector’s report indicates a computer card controlling the feedwater regulator valve failed. All other systems performed as expected after the reactor process stopped, according to the NRC inspector’s report. “One of our resident inspectors assigned to Seabrook traveled to the site Friday night to independently verify that the shutdown was being safely and effectively carried out and did not identify any concerns,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan wrote in an email announcement Monday. A report created by the NRC inspector indicates “emergency feedwater” was “actuated” because of low water levels in the steam generator. Al Griffith, a spokesman for the operators of Seabrook Station, Next Era Energy, said the plant was scheduled to power down on Sunday for a “refueling outage.” The event on Friday led them to begin the refueling outage early, he said. “Because we were entering a refueling outage anyway, we’ll keep the plant down,” Griffith said.
Six people have died from the cholera outbreak in parts of the Volta Region. Five of the deaths were recorded in Akatsi South while the sixth death was recorded in Adidome in the Central Tongu District. Four Electoral Areas in the Akatsi District are all battling with the disease.The Assemblyman for the Wute Electoral Area, Sammy Wuadi, said the cholera outbreak did not come as a surprise and that the people are being conscientised to keep their surroundings clean. According to Mr Wuadi, the situation is gradually abating following the strategies put in place by the Environmental Health Directorate to forestall the spread. A Senior Environmental Health Assistant in the Akatsi South District, Ms Akua Dzaka also stated that residents are being advised to desist from drinking from the Tordji River which is believed to have been contaminated. “We suspect that that is the source of the cholera outbreak and we are also educating them to take good care of the food that they eat,” she said.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
The Ebola virus has taken the Congo by storm, killing 31 people in the northeast part of the country. Another 38 people have the disease, sending alarm bells off in the World Health Organization. The total number dead has doubled over the past week, and workers are worried that having traditional funerals might increase the spread of the disease among those in attendance. There is no cure for Ebola and the disease kills 40 to 90 percent of those infected. It is also painful, leading to severe internal bleeding.
El Paso County health officials announced Friday, September 14, that a wild rabbit found on the northeast side of Colorado Springs has been laboratory-confirmed positive for Yersinia pestis, the cause of plague. This comes on the heels of a Pagosa Springs girl who contracted the plague and recovered from the disease. El Paso Countyâs last reported human case occurred in 1991. An El Paso County Public Health news release Friday says the animal was found is East of Powers Boulevard near the St. Francis Medical Center/Hospital. Of utmost importance is the risk to the human population in the area. Infectious disease experts are conducting an investigation to determine potential human exposures and to assess the general area for additional plague concerns. The people exposed have been identified and have been given preventive antibiotics to prevent plague from developing.
A rare disease suspected to be of âscrub typhusâ has claimed 30 lives, in Alwar district of Rajasthan this season. Another six have died due to a disease with similar symptoms in Dausa. Concerned over the high death count recorded since August 22 this year, the health department has sought the help of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) based in New Delhi. A team has reached the spot to collect blood samples, according to official sources. Scrub typhus can be cured but only if it is timely diagnosed. It is caused by the bite of mites especially during the monsoon season and is reported in areas close to jungles or urban shrubs. Since fever is one of the early symptoms of this disease, wrong or delayed diagnosis is a major worry. Residents claim that the death toll is over 50 but chief medical health officer (CMHO) in Alwar, Dr K K Meena, puts the official figure at 30. In Dausa, six people died recently after showing similar symptoms as scrub typhus which includes high fever and low platelet count. âIn the initial investigation, we have found that some of them had low platelet count accompanied by fever,â said Dr O P Bairwa, CMHO, Dausa.
Halliburton has lost a seven-inch radioactive rod somewhere in the Texas desert. The National Guard has been called in to help to find the device, which employees of the controversial US oilfield services company lost a week ago. The rod, which contains americium-241/beryllium and is stamped with a radiation warning symbol with the words “Danger Radioactive: Do not handle. Notify civil authorities if found”, was lost during a 130-mile journey between oil well sites in Pecos and Odessa last Tuesday. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warned that the radioactive material “could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them”. The agency said americium-241/beryllium, known as Am-241, is a “category 3” source of radiation and would normally have to be held for some hours before causing health problems.But the NRC still warned that “it could possibly â although it is unlikely â be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of days to weeks”. A spokeswoman for the NRC said the agency could not remember the last time a radioactive rod went missing. “[There has] never been one lost in the public domain,” she said. The spokeswoman added that there was a concern the radioactive material could fall into the hands of terrorists. The route the Halliburton truck took between Pecos and Odessa has been painstakingly searched with radioactive detection gear three times with assistance from local police and the National Guard. “When the crew went to remove the Am-241 source they discovered the source transport container lock and plug were not in place and that the source was missing,” the NRC said in its report into the incident. “The crew returned to the well site near Pecos and searched for the source, but did not find it. The radiation safety officer stated that the lock was found in the storage compartment in the back of the truck. The transport container plug was not in the container.”The three-man Halliburton crew, who had been using the rod to identify oil and gas deposits suitable for fracking, have been questioned by the FBI. The NRC said Halliburton was carrying out a forensic search of the truck. “They are literally stripping it down, removing every piece of equipment looking for the source,” the agency said. Halliburton said it would offer a reward to anyone who finds the rod but cautioned the public to stay at least 25ft away from the device.
A 63-year-old man died Sunday in the Czech Republic after drinking bootleg spirits tainted with methanol, bringing the death toll from an outbreak of alcohol poisoning to 20, hospital staff said. The man was found unconscious Friday at a railway station in the eastern town of Prerov and was hospitalised in a very serious condition. “Despite their efforts, doctors were unable to save him. The man died today a little before noon,” hospital spokeswoman Hana Szotkovska said. Eastern regions of the country have been hit hardest by what Czech experts describe as the worst wave of alcohol poisoning in three decades, but a first case has also been reported in the capital Prague. Around 40 people remained in hospital Sunday from the outbreak, which claimed its first two victims on September 6 and prompted the health minister on Friday to ban the sale of liquor with an alcohol content of over 20 percent. Poland, which borders eastern Czech Republic, on Sunday banned the sale of all alcohol manufactured by its neighbour, except for beer and wine. Czech police have to date charged 22 people in connection with the case. On Friday, they raided thousands of bars, restaurants and shops across the country for traces of bootleg alcohol. Czech police chief Martin Cervicek spoke Sunday of progress in the investigation, telling public radio station CRo1 that officers were on the trail of those who may have supplied the material used to manufacture the spirits.
Sixteen people are trapped after a tunnel along the Daqing-Guangzhou Expressway collapsed Sunday night in east China’s Jiangxi Province, local authorities said Monday. The tunnel, which is still under construction, collapsed at around 10 p.m. in Longnan County in the city of Ganzhou, said rescuers. By Monday noon, the trapped people still had not been found. The tunnel is part of the 3,429 km-expressway that spans from northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province all the way to southern Guangdong Province.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
Volcanic activity on Mount Yasur on Tanna Island in Vanuatu, which has been erupting for hundreds of years, has intensified. The Vanuatu Geohazards Observatory has raised its warning regarding Yasur to level two, with expectations of ash and rock falls around the mountain. The volcano reached a level three rating last year, but Vanuatu Geohazards Observatory manager Esline Garaebiti says a threat of that extent is unlikely. However she says people still need to stay clear of the mountain. “This volcano is quite special and the activity is so strong that we maintain it in level two for quite some time and if the explosions are becoming very strong and the projections go further out from the parking area then we will raise the level to level three.”
Damage from Typhoon Bolaven in North Korea, photographed near Komdok on Aug. 31 by KCNA, released Sept. 7 to EPA for international distribution.
Just as another typhoon headed toward the Korean peninsula, North Korea on Friday summarized the damage from the late summer storm season – 300 dead and another 600 injured or missing.
North Korea’s state news agency said that the worst damage came from the typhoon called Bolaven that swept over the peninsula on Aug. 28 and 29.
That storm alone killed 59 people and left about 26,320 people homeless after about 8,000 houses were destroyed by rain and flooding.
For a country that is so poor and inefficient that each year’s summer storms leave it a disastrous wreck, North Korea provides strikingly precise data about the damage.
Since mid-June, storms and floods damaged or destroyed 87,280 homes and left 298,050 people homeless, its news agency said.
It did not say whether they were temporarily homeless from, say, floodwater, or indeed needed entire new homes.
Among the other damage, 92 drinking water systems were ravaged and 16,900 trees knocked down. “More than 17,150 square meters of railroad were washed away and over 300 sections of railway [were] covered by landslides, with scores of tunnels and railway bridges damaged,” it said.
Now comes Typhoon Sanba, which is heading north from the Philippines toward Okinawa this weekend and the Korean peninsula by Monday. It is a stronger storm than Bolaven, which was billed as the biggest in a decade but didn’t turn out that way. Stars and Stripes reporter Dave Ornauer on Okinawa warns that he’s never seen a storm as intense as Sanba is shaping up to be.
By the time it hits the Korean peninsula, its winds will have died down from Category 4 to Category 2 speeds, he estimates. Even so, both South and North Korea are well-saturated. And North Korea is in no shape for another big storm.
One people got injured and several establishments were partially damaged when a tornado hit a town in Zamboanga Sibugay early today, local officials said. The tornado, which is locally called “buhawi”, hit Poblacion village, the town center of Kabasalan town about 3:30 a.m today, said Mayor George Cainglet. According to the responding police, a driver of a bicycle cab identified as Bebot Baricua, got injured when a flying debris hit him on the street, making him the only victim of the tornado. Besides him, the roofs of the public market, particularly under the wet section, and the roof of the garage area of the town police center were also tore by the tornado, the police added. “The damage was minimal but the residents went panic as a result of the sudden weather disturbance,” disaster officer Adriano Fuego told the press. The authorities estimated that the total damage caused by the tornado is just P200,000 (about $4,800), and the business at the public market was temporarily halted due to the disaster.
Northern Taiwan has seen heavy rainfall Saturday due to the combined effects of seasonal winds and a nearby typhoon, the Central Weather Bureau said. Moisture carried by seasonal winds from the northeast, together with the outer rim of Typhoon Sanba, has caused significant downpours in Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan County and Yilan County. Xindian District in New Taipei was the hardest-hit area, recording accumulated precipitation of 296 millimeters between midnight and 3 p.m. Saturday, bureau data showed. Rainfall in the areas is likely to continue until Sunday, causing daily minimum temperatures to drop to around 23 degrees Celsius, forecasters said. Meanwhile, strong winds reaching 100 kilometers per hour could be felt in coastal areas across the island due to influence from nearby Sanba. However, the typhoon is not expected to pose further threats to the island as it is heading toward the Ryukyu Islands, the bureau said. As of 2 p.m., Sanba was centered 720 km east of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan, moving at a speed of 23 kph in a north-northwesterly direction. It was packing sustained winds of 191 kph, with gusts reaching 234 kph, the bureau said.
Parts of Manila were under six feet (1.8 metres) of floodwater on Saturday after heavy rain lashed the capital overnight, forcing more than 400 people to flee their homes, officials said. There was also a strong typhoon lurking in the region, and although it was moving away from the Philippines and towards Japan, forecasters said it was adding to the wild weather. “Typhoon (Sanba) has no direct effect but the storm enhanced the southwestern monsoon so we will continue to experience rains,” said government meteorologist Gary de la Cruz. Low-lying coastal areas of the capital were hardest hit, forcing people to leave their homes, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. At least 10 domestic flights were cancelled and universities in affected areas called off classes, the council said.
Landslides triggered by heavy overnight rain in the hills caused extensive damage in six tea gardens, while the National Highway 31A which was blocked was cleared by the Border Roads Organisation on Saturday. Work had to be stopped for the day in Takdah and Lopchu gardens because of the landslide, while Bannockburn, Phoobshering, Ging and Pussimbing reported loss of tea bushes, Darjeeling Tea Association (DTA) Principal Secretary, Sandip Mukherjee said. “Takdah received around 18 inches of rainfall in the last 24 hours. A 40ft road in Takdah has been washed away in four places and five culverts have been damaged in landslides. There is no approach road to the garden factory now,” Mukherjee said. He said 13 labour quarters and two culverts were affected by the landslides at Lopchu. “Tea bushes in an acre have been uprooted in Lopchu and road connectivity within the garden has become a major problem. Given the extent of the damage, no work could be carried out in Lopchu,” he said. Road communication in the Ging tea garden, about 20km from Darjeeling, was hit after three culverts were damaged. “In Phoobshering, 6,500 tea bushes have been uprooted by the landslides. There is no approach road to the factory now. Water has also seeped into the garden factory,” he said. He alleged that constructions under the 100-days work scheme aggravated the situation in the tea gardens. District Magistrate Saumitra Mohan said “The NH31A was blocked at Tarkhola, Melli and Kalijhora but all major roads have been cleared of debris with the help of agencies like the Border Roads Organisation and the public works department.” Mohan, also the principal secretary of the GTA, said an order has been issued to all subdivisional officers and block divisional officers, that any project was to be cleared only after taking into account environmental concerns and technical viability.
At least 20 people were killed as dozens of houses collapsed following a cloudburst in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in north India on Friday. Several people are feared trapped under the debris and rescue operations have been launched, Disaster Management and Mitigation department officials said citing initial reports. According to officials, incessant rains since Thursday followed by a cloudburst in the wee hours Friday have left a trail of destruction in Timada, Sansari, Giriya, Chunni and Mangali villages in the district. River Saryu and Kaliganga are flowing above danger mark following rains since Thursday night. Communication and power lines were disrupted and traffic along several roads, including national highways, in the area has been blocked due to landslides, officials said. The local administration has sought the assistance of the Army in view of the large-scale destruction caused by the cloudburst in Rudrap rayag district.
Yukio “There is no immediate effect on health” Edano, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry who will have technically lost his portfolio on nuclear issues come September 19 (when the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Goshi Hosono’s ministry takes over the nuclear regulatory oversight from NISA), approved the resumption of construction of two new reactors.
So much for the Noda administration’s “pledge” to have zero nuclear power plant operating in 2030. (We’re just shocked. Shocked, aren’t we?)
On September 15, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yukio Edano held a meeting in Aomori City with Governor of Aomori Prefecture Shingo Mimura and the mayors of municipalities where nuclear facilities are located, and told them that he would allow the resumption of construction and operation of Ooma Nucleaer Power Plant by Electric Power Development Co.,Ltd. (in Ooma-cho, Aomori Prefecture) and Reactor 3 of Shimane Nucleaer Power Plant by Chugoku Electric Power Company (in Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture).
両原発の建設が再開されれば、震災後初めての原発建設となる。
It would be the first construction of nuclear reactors after the March 11, 2011 disaster.
In the “Revolutionary strategy for energy and environment” that was agreed upon on September 14, the national government clearly set the target to have zero nuclear reactors operating in 2030. If the government rule of 40 years of operation is applied, these nuclear reactors would be allowed to operate into 2050, which would be a contradiction to the new energy strategy.
Mr. Edano said in the meeting, “As to the nuclear power plants with permits for installing a reactor and for construction plan, we as Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are not thinking of any change”, indicating the intention to allow the resumption of construction and operation once the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirms safety. The Commission will be installed on September 19.
In addition to Ooma Nuclear Power Plant and Reactor 3 of Shimane Nuclear Power Plant, Reactor 1 of Higashidori Nuclear Power Plant is also under construction by TEPCO (in Higashidori-mura, Aomori Prefecture). However, Mr. Edano said of Higashidori’s Reactor 1, “TEPCO is not in a position yet to discuss nuclear energy”, indicating that the resumption of construction of Higashidori Reactor 1 would be unlikely at this time.
Currently, only 1 measuring point remains available to measure temperature in RPV of reactor2. [Link]
On 9/14/2012, Tepco released the work implementation plan to install new thermometer to RPV of reactor2, but they didn’t announce when to complete the installation clearly.
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) – A deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics has killed a seventh person at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland.
Aerial photo of the NIH Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland
NIH officials told the paper that the boy from Minnesota died Sept. 7.
NIH says the boy arrived at the research hospital in Bethesda in April and was being treated for complications from a bone marrow transplant when he contracted the bug.
He was the 19th patient at the hospital to contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of KPC, or Klebsiella pneumoniae.
The outbreak stemmed from a single patient carrying the superbug who arrived at the hospital last summer.
The paper reported the Minnesota boy’s case marked the first new infection of this superbug at NIH since January.
There are two dangers presented in this video: 1) The Electromagnetic Event; and 2) The Mega Solar Flare & CME – Music: Instrumental “Soul Survivor” by Akon & Young Jeezy
HAARP:
Emotional & behavioral suppression technology, Silent Sound Spread Spectrum technology, and weather modification are dangerous, unethical, a secret in their truest form, and don’t have a damn thing to do with HAARP — This is what you should know:
1) Things not caused by HAARP: Long Solar Minimum, Jupiter/Saturn Storms, Saturn/Venus Rotation Anomalies, New Radio Emission from Jupiter, Uranus Auroras, the ENA ribbon, and most importunely, earth’s shifting N pole and fading Magnetic Shield. [There is a natural event taking place]
2) Weather Modification that is not HAARP: Radar Rings are different [local VLFs can do it without any help from HAARP], see video called ‘Standing Wave Tank” to see how LF work better on water vapor than HF. Some rings are man made with VLF, others are a natural effect of the EM event; I believe we are trying to stop it.
3) Potential Danger of HAARP: Over-ionization of certain layers or regions, Creating Ozone holes, Increasing our Solar Vulnerability.
4) ****HAARP and the Russian/Norwegian Devices are directly under the auroral electrojet, which is the thing that would kill our grids in a solar storm. The devices are ionospheric heaters capable of expanding the electrojet and scattering the energy.
NIBIRU:
What can I say, there is no star coming in here. That would kill us, and wouldn’t have left any planets here if it had come before. The term ‘dark star’ is a misnomer, it’s not so dark you wouldn’t see it. There IS a possibility that we could see a crossing ‘planet’, but not a star. Here are those possibilities, google will help fill in the blanks.
1) Hypothetical Planet Vulcan [not star trek] happens to be real and comes out from behind the sun.
2) Rogue Planet enters our system. [they outnumber stars in our galaxy]
3) Planetary ‘Birthing’ process where a baby planet comes out of the Sun, Saturn, or Jupiter.
4) A Return to the World described in ‘Symbols of an Alien Sky’
[All but #2 could be lumped in together as caused by an electromagnetic event; I worry this is what is happening now– Sitchen made many documented errors, and it was the Maya, not the Sumerians, who spoke of 2012]
The highly infectious and sometimes fatal Foot and Mouth Disease infections have been traced in livestock in the Nyingtri region of central Tibet. According to the regional agricultural ministry, a total of 123 live head of cattle and 108 pigs have showed symptoms associated with FMD. After collecting samples, the Chinese National Foot-and-Mouth Disease Reference Laboratory on Thursday confirmed that the livestock were infected with type O FMD. The local authorities have “sealed off and sterilised the infected area, where a total of 612 head of cattle and pigs have been culled and safely disposed of in order to prevent the disease from spreading since the case was confirmed.” While “quietly sending military troops to kill and burry the cattle,” Chinese authorities did not reveal the outbreak to the public. “Insiders say the provincial officials ordered the cover-up in fear that their records might be affected. Further investigation confirmed the disease to be a special type of FMD resistant to the current vaccine.” Following an outbreak of FMD in China’s eastern provinces of Shandong and Jiangsu, which later spread to suburban Beijing in 2005, China had for the first time reported FMD outbreak to the World Health Organisation. FMD is an acute contagious febrile disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids. The disease can potentially cost huge economic loss to farming and nomadic families who make their living from livestock.
Biohazard name:
Foot-mouth disease (FMD)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
15.09.2012
HAZMAT
USA
State of Indiana, Mishawaka [Baycote Metal Finishing]
A large portion of the southside of MIshawaka, Ind. was evacuated overnight after a chemical spill. Firefighters were called to 1302 Industrial Drive just after 8 p.m. after receiving a call of smoke coming out of a vacant building. The building used to be the home of Baycote Metal Finishing. After the fire was out, a firefighter noticed a low hanging vapor cloud in the building and immediately evacuated the area. The area includes about fifty homes, including an assisted living center. WSBT reports about 200 people were evacuated. The Red Cross set up a shelter for evacuees. Residents reported irritated skin and itchy eyes. Officials say this will be a major clean-up effort. This is a developing story. We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
The Czech Republic has banned the sale of spirits with more than 20 percent alcohol content as it battles a wave of methanol poisonings that has already killed 19 people. Health Minister Leos Heger says the unprecedented ban is effective immediately and applies nationwide. It covers all possible sales locations, including restaurants, hotels and stores. Kiosks and markets had earlier been banned from selling spirits with more than 30 percent alcohol content. In a brief announcement late Friday, Heger said the measure was taken as the death toll from the poisonings reached 19 and the first person was hospitalized in Prague. Dozens of people have been hospitalized, some in critical condition after drinking vodka and rum laced with methanol. The problem appears largely centered in northeastern Czech Republic.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
Guatemala volcano: At least 17 villages near the Volcan del Fuego, six miles from the colonial city of Antigua, are being evacuated. The eruption of the volcano could cause a disruption in airline flights in and out of Guatemala.
By Alberto Arce and Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, Associated Press
Plumes of dark smoke rise from the Volcan de Fuego ( Volcano of Fire) as seen from Palin, south of Guatemala City, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Officials are carrying out “a massive evacuation of thousands of people” in five communities.
(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Guatemala City
A long-simmering volcano outside one of the Guatemala‘s most famous tourist attractions exploded into a series of powerful eruptions Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and forcing the evacuation of more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities.
Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were leaving some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua. The ash was blowing south and authorities said Antigua was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours.
The agency said the volcano spewed lava nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around Acatenango, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as “Volcano of Fire.”
“A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash,” said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said the cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in many places.
He said extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected.
There was a general orange alert, the second-highest level, but a red alert south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, “it’s almost in total darkness.”
Teresa Marroquin, disaster coordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organization had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water. “There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems,” she said.
At least 17 villages near the Volcan del Fuego, six miles from the colonial city of Antigua, are being evacuated. The eruption of the volcano could cause a disruption in airline flights in and out of Guatemala. A long-simmering volcano outside one of the Guatemala’s most famous tourist attractions exploded into a series of powerful eruptions Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and forcing the evacuation of more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities. Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were leaving some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua. The ash was blowing south and authorities said Antigua was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours.
The agency said the volcano spewed lava nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around Acatenango, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as “Volcano of Fire.” “A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash,” said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said the cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in many places. He said extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected. There was a general orange alert, the second-highest level, but a red alert south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, “it’s almost in total darkness.” Teresa Marroquin, disaster coordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organization had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water. “There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems,” she said.
In the summer of 2002, pinyon pines began dying in large numbers from drought stress and an associated bark beetle outbreak. This aerial photo was taken near Los Alamos, N.M. Credit: Craig D. Allen, USGS.
As temperatures rise and droughts become more severe in the Southwest, trees are increasingly up against extremely stressful growing conditions, especially in low to middle elevations, University of Arizona researchers report in a study soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences.
Lead author Jeremy Weiss, a senior research specialist in the UA department of geosciences, said: “We know the climate in the Southwest is getting warmer, but we wanted to investigate how the higher temperatures might interact with the highly variable precipitation typical of the region.”
Weiss’ team used a growing season index computed from weather data to examine limits to plant growth during times of drought.
“The approach we took allows us to model and map potential plant responses to droughts under past, present and future conditions across the whole region,” explained Julio Betancourt, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who co-authored the study along with Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the UA Institute of the Environment. Betancourt holds adjunct appointments in the UA department of geosciences, the UA School of Geography and Development, the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment and the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.
“Our study helps pinpoint how vegetation might respond to future droughts, assuming milder winters and hotter summers, across the complex and mountainous terrain of the Southwest,” Betancourt said.
For this study, the researchers used a growing season index that considers day length, cold temperature limits and a key metric called vapor pressure deficit to map and compare potential plant responses to major regional droughts during 1953-56 and 2000-03.
A key source of plant stress, vapor pressure deficit is defined as the difference between how much moisture the air can hold when it is saturated and the amount of moisture actually present in the air. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, and during droughts it acts like a sponge sucking up any available moisture from the ground surface, including from plants.
Both droughts – with the more recent one occurring in warmer times – led to widespread tree die-offs, and comparisons between them can help sort out how both warming and drying affected the degree of mortality in different areas.
Weiss pointed out that multiyear droughts with precipitation well below the long-term average are normal for the Southwest. He said the 1950s drought mainly affected the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and southern High Plains and happened before warming in the region started. The 2000s drought centered on the Four Corners area and occurred after regional warming began around 1980.
The actual causes of physiological plant stress and tree death during droughts are being investigated by various research teams using models and field and greenhouse experiments. One possibility is prolonged embolism, or the catastrophic disruption of the water column in wood vessels as trees struggle to pump moisture from the soil in the heat of summer.
The other is carbon starvation as leaves shut their openings, called stomates, to conserve leaf water, slowing the uptake of carbon dioxide needed for photosynthesis. Stomatal closure is triggered by deficits in the ambient vapor pressure, which controls the rate of evaporation for water and is very much influenced by temperature.
“When the air is hotter and drier, it becomes more difficult for plants to conserve water while taking up carbon dioxide,” Weiss explained. “As plants become starved of carbon, it also weakens their defenses and renders them more susceptible to insect pests.”
To make matters worse, Weiss said, the size of the “atmospheric sponge” grows faster during increasingly hotter summers like those over the last 30 years, absorbing even more moisture from soil and vegetation.
“When warmer temperatures combine with drought, relatively stressful growing conditions for a plant become even more stressful,” Weiss explained. “You could say drought makes that atmospheric sponge thirstier, and as the drought progresses, there is increasingly less moisture that can be evaporated from soil and vegetation to fill – and cool – the dry air.”
“In a sense, it’s a vicious circle. Warmer temperatures during droughts lead to even drier and hotter conditions.”
The researchers mapped relatively extreme values of vapor deficit pressure for areas of tree die-offs during the most recent drought determined from annual aerial surveys conducted by the U.S. Forest Service.
“Our study suggests that as regional warming continues, drought-related plant stress associated with higher vapor pressure deficits will intensify and spread from late spring through summer to earlier and later parts of the growing season, as well to higher elevations,” the authors write. This could lead to even more severe and widespread plant stress.
The results are in line with other trends of warming-related impacts in the Southwest over the past 30 years, including earlier leafout and flowering, more extensive insect and disease outbreaks, and an increase in large wildfires.
“We’re seeing climatic growing conditions already at an extreme level with just the relatively little warming we have seen in the region so far,” Weiss said. “Our concern is that vegetation will experience even more extreme growing conditions as anticipated further warming exacerbates the impacts of future droughts.”
Weiss added: “We also know that part of the regional warming is linked to human-caused climate change. Seeing vapor-pressure deficits at such extreme levels points to the conclusion that the warmer temperatures linked to human-caused climate change are playing a role in drying out the region.”
Betancourt said: “We have few ways of knowing how this is going to affect plants across an entire landscape, except by modeling it. There is not much we can do to avert drought-related tree mortality, whether it is due to climate variability or climate change.”
Instead, Betancourt suggested, land managers should focus on how to manage the regrowth of vegetation in the aftermath of increased large-scale ecological disturbances, including wildfires and drought-related tree die-offs.
“Models like the one we developed can provide us with a roadmap of areas sensitive to future disturbances,” Betancourt said. “The next step will be to start planning, determine the scale of intervention and figure out what can be done to direct or engineer the outcomes of vegetation change in a warmer world.”
NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Sanba on Sept. 13 at 12:47 a.m. EDT. AIRS infrared data found an eye (the yellow dot in the middle of the purple area) about 20 nautical miles wide, surrounded by a thick area of strong thunderstorms (purple) with very cold cloud temperatures. Credit: Ed Olsen, NASA/JPL Tropical Storm Sanba exploded in intensity between Sept. 12 and 13, becoming a major Category 4 Typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. NASA’s Aqua satellite captured infrared data that showed a large area of powerful thunderstorms around the center of circulation, dropping heavy rain over the western North Pacific Ocean.
NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Sanba on Sept. 13 at 0447 UTC (12:47 a.m. EDT). The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Sanba and found an eye about 20 nautical miles (23 miles/37 km) wide, surrounded by a thick area of strong convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up the storm) and strong thunderstorms. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning center noted that the AIRS imagery showed that there was “no banding outside of this ring, consistent with an annular typhoon.” On Sept. 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Sanba’s maximum sustained winds were near 135 knots (155 mph/250 kmh). Sanba had higher gusts into the Category 5 typhoon category. The Saffir-Simpson scale was slightly revised earlier in 2012, so a Category 4 typhoon/hurricane has maximum sustained winds from 113 to 136 knots (130 to 156 mph /209 to 251 kmh). A Category 5 typhoon’s maximum sustained winds begin at 137 knots (157 mph /252 kmh). Sanba was located about 600 nautical miles (690 miles/1,111 km) south of Kadena Air Base, near 16.8 North latitude and 129.5 East longitude. It was moving to the north at 9 knots (10.3 mph/16.6 kmh) and generating wave heights of 40 feet. Sanba is expected to continue on a north-northwesterly track through the western North Pacific and move through the East China Sea, passing close to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan on Sept. 15. Provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center search and more info website
Rare Reversal Last Occurred with Hurricane Katrina
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GettyImages
People brave the rain and strong winds for a walk along the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans early in the day on August 28, 2012 in Louisiana, where Hurricane Isaac made landfall. Starting in the late afternoon, the river reversed course and began flowing away from the Gulf of Mexico.
Most of the time, rivers large and small are as consistent as the tides, flowing from their headwaters to their mouths, where they empty into oceans, lakes, seas and valleys. For nearly 24 hours during Hurricane Isaac, however, exactly the opposite happened in the mighty Mississippi River.
The category 1 storm’s intense winds and storm surge, which came ashore near New Orleans on Aug. 28, pushed salt water from the Gulf of Mexico up the fresh water river as far north as Baton Rouge, more than 200 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, surging the river there more than 8 feet over its previous height.
During the night in Belle Chase, La., just south of New Orleans, the U.S. Geological Survey’s stream gage measured the river flowing backwards at 182,000 cubic feet per second. Normally, the river flows at about 125,000 cubic feet per second toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Play Video
Cantore Talks About Isaac
“One of the unique things about Isaac was that, unlike most storms that tend to blow on through, Isaac ended up hanging around for a while,” said USGS Public Affairs Officer Alex Demas. “Because it hung around for a while, the storm surge built up enough momentum that it was able to push the river back up its channel.”
The Mississippi last flowed backward during 2005’s devastating Hurricane Katrina, when it crested at 13 feet above its previous level. At its highest point during Isaac, the river crested at 12.4 feet above its previous level.
“We saw an impact as far as 300 miles upstream from the mouth,” from Isaac’s surge up the river, said Greg Arcement, the director of the USGS Louisiana Water Science Center in Baton Rouge. “It had actually quite an impact when you think about it.”
What had officials concerned wasn’t just the impacts from storm surge, however. By the time Isaac arrived, severe drought throughout the Midwest had left the Mississippi several feet below its normal levels, which meant that salt water moving upstream from the ocean might easily overpower the depleted fresh water in the river.
Keeping Salt Water from Moving Up
Salt water is heavier than fresh water. When surging salt water meets fresh water that’s been laid low by a months-long drought, the salt water can travel upstream to places it normally doesn’t, explains Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph.D., a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center.
“It’s very similar to how a cold front and a warm front work,” she said. “It basically works like a wedge — as the column of fresh water gets shallower because we’re in low flow, it has less weight. So the salt water is able to push underneath the fresh water and just move on up, because it doesn’t have as much weight to displace.”
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Denser salt water flows upstream along the bottom of the Mississippi River, underneath the less dense fresh river water.
That creates what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls a “salt water wedge.” If it moves up far enough along the Mississippi, the wedge can threaten cities and towns that rely on the river for their drinking water as well as industrial water supplies.
To prevent that, the Corps periodically builds a saltwater barrier sill, a kind of underwater levee, made from earth along the banks of the river and sandbars exposed by the drought. The sill stops the toe of the wedge from moving forward.
“It’s basically a speed bump at the bottom of the river, to prevent the salt water from moving upstream,” explains Dave Ramirez, the lead hydraulic engineer with the Corps’ New Orleans District.
The Corps builds these sills about every 7 to 8 years, and they work well in normal conditions. Fears rose sharply that Isaac would destroy this one when the storm approached, however.
“The toe of the wedge was about up to river mile 89 [before the storm], which is about the limit of where we want to see it,” said Ramirez, explaining that the wedge was about 89 miles up the river from the mouth of the Mississippi. “We didn’t really know if the sill would hold, because we’ve never had a salt water wedge during a hurricane.”
Thankfully, Isaac left the sill undisturbed. After the storm passed, Ramirez and his team inspected the salt water wedge and determined that it had actually regressed 20 miles back downstream, where he said it was expected to remain for the next few weeks.
After six days of heavy rains, floodwaters are threatening Sindh and the army has moved in to rescue people in the worst-hit areas. The death toll of rain-related mishaps has crossed 100, as 18 more people died on Wednesday. After record-breaking rain in Jacobabad and Kashmore, thousands of people are stranded in the low-lying areas, where, according to reports, five to six feet water has accumulated. Torrents coming downhill from Balochistan have played havoc with ten union councils in the Thull taluka of Jacobabad. As hundreds of houses collapsed due to flooding, at least 18 people, including women and children, were reported to have died. Another 78 were reportedly injured. On Wednesday, hundreds of army personnel were dispatched to the rain-hit areas, including RD-44 and Bahoo Khoso, where thousands of people have been stranded for the past five days. In Ghotki, a teenage girl was crushed by a wall in the Katcho Bhindi area. A three-year-old girl, Kariman, drowned in rainwater in Rehmoonwali. Rainwater has also entered the Shahi Wah and Pat Feeder canals, breaching both in at least four places. The water is now heading towards the outskirts of Jacobabad. Relief camps have been set up in Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Kashmore. The people are, however, reluctant to go to the camps as neither food nor medicines are available. The district administrations have arranged cooked meals for the rain-hit people, but instead of being distributed among them, the food is being taken away by the influential.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas students relax on inflatable pool toys in floodwater at UNLV in Las Vegas Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. Storms drenched parts of the Southwest on Tuesday, delaying flights and stranding motorists in the Las Vegas area and flooding two mobile home parks in Southern California.
LAS VEGAS — Intense thunderstorms swept through the Las Vegas area on Tuesday, flooding washes, delaying flights, snarling traffic and prompting helicopter rescues of stranded motorists in water-filled intersections, authorities said.
Television news video showed yellow school buses inching along roads after school in areas east of downtown Las Vegas, and muddy brown water up to the lower sills of picture windows of stucco homes in other neighborhoods.
In southeast Las Vegas, authorities recommended that the residents of about 45 homes damaged by flooding should leave in case the damage start electrical fires. The Clark County Fire Department was going door-to-door Tuesday night suggesting that residents leave their homes, said county spokesman Dan Kulin.
A Twitter photo showed dozens of cars swamped by water up to their headlights in a parking lot outside the Thomas & Mack sports arena at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
But after responding to numerous 911 calls, officials in Clark County, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Las Vegas said no serious injuries were reported.
The National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings before and after almost an inch of rain was reported at McCarran International Airport just before 2 p.m. Meteorologist Michael Staudenmaier said more than 1.75 inches of rain were reported in downtown Las Vegas.
September 11, 2012 was the wettest September day on record in Las Vegas, according to weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen. The city received 1.18″ of rain.
Firefighters responded to more than 20 calls about people in stalled cars, Kulin said.
A Las Vegas police helicopter was dispatched during the height of the storm to pluck several people from swamped vehicles on area roadways, Officer Bill Cassell said.
The Las Vegas area is crisscrossed with concrete-lined flood control channels and pocked by lake-sized water retention basins. Since 1985, Clark County Regional Flood Control District officials say they’ve spent $1.7 billion constructing about 573 miles of storm drains and 90 basins.
Police officer Jose Hernandez noted that homeless people sometimes live in normally dry tunnels beneath key areas like the Las Vegas Strip. After rains fall, the channels and tunnels fill quickly as water flows west to east across Las Vegas toward the Lake Mead reservoir on the Colorado River.
Crews searched in vain along a wash northeast of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after at least two callers separately reported that they saw a person in the water during the height of the storm.
Departures were postponed and arrivals were delayed after the airport ordered a stop on fueling operations during lightning, airport spokeswoman Linda Healey said.
Staudenmaier said the rainfall amounts put the region on pace to exceed the 4.5 inches of rain it normally gets in a year.
Between early July and early September 2012, flooding claimed an estimated 137 lives in Nigeria and forced thousands more to relocate, according to Reuters. In addition to the challenges posed by heavy rains, Nigerians had to cope with the release of water from the Lagdo Dam in neighboring Cameroon, which further swelled the Benue River. Flooding from the dam release was blamed for 30 deaths in Nigeria, Agence France-Presse reported.
These images show a stretch of the Benue River in eastern Nigeria, around the city of Lau. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image on September 8, 2012. For comparison, the bottom image shows the same area nearly three years earlier, on September 23, 2009. These images use a combination of visible and infrared light to better distinguish between water and land. Water varies from electric blue to navy, vegetation is bright green, and clouds range in color from nearly white to pale blue-green.
In 2009, the Benue River was a relatively thin river bordered by small, isolated water bodies. Three years later, the river had spilled over its banks, engulfing the small lakes on either side. Flood waters often carry heavy loads of sediment, and such sediment might account for the relatively light shades of blue along part of the river.
Despite thousands of displaced residents, no major damage to agriculture and industry had yet been reported, Reuters stated.
An Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo risks spreading to major towns if not brought under control soon, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
The death toll has more than doubled since last week to 31, including five health workers dying from the contagious virus for which there is no known treatment. Ebola causes massive bleeding and kills up to 90 percent of its victims.
“The epidemic is not under control. On the contrary the situation is very, very serious,” Eugene Kabambi, a WHO spokesman in Congo’s capital Kinshasa told Reuters by telephone.
“If nothing is done now, the disease will reach other places, and even major towns will be threatened,” he said.
The disease has so far struck in the towns of Isiro and Viadana in Orientale province in the north east.
In August, 16 people in neighboring Uganda died of the disease, although health experts said the two epidemics are not connected and have blamed the Congolese outbreak on villagers eating contaminated meat in the forests which cover the region.
(Reporting by Jonny Hogg; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by David Lewis and Robin Pomeroy)
MessageToEagle.com – ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile presents a beautiful Herschel’s Ray commnonly known as the Pencil Nebula – a part of the Vela Supernova Remnant.
This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of wreckage left over after a supernova explosion that took place about 11 000 years ago. This detailed view was produced by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope.
Despite the tranquil and apparently unchanging beauty of a starry night, the Universe is far from being a quiet place. Stars are being born and dying in an endless cycle, and sometimes the death of a star can create a vista of unequalled beauty as material is blasted out into space to form strange structures in the sky.
Click on image to enlargeWide-field view of the sky around the Pencil Nebula. Credits: ESO
This new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the Pencil Nebula against a rich starry background. This oddly shaped cloud, which is also known as NGC 2736, is a small part of a supernova remnant in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails).
These glowing filaments were created by the violent death of a star that took place about 11 000 years ago. The brightest part resembles a pencil; hence the name, but the whole structure looks rather more like a traditional witch’s broom.
The Vela supernova remnant is an expanding shell of gas that originated from the supernova explosion. Initially the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometres per hour, but as it expanded through space it ploughed through the gas between the stars, which has slowed it considerably and created strangely shaped folds of nebulosity.
The Pencil Nebula is the brightest part of this huge shell.
Click on image to enlargeThe Pencil Nebula, a strangely shaped leftover from a vast explosion. Credits: ESO
This new image shows large, wispy filamentary structures, smaller bright knots of gas and patches of diffuse gas. The nebula’s luminous appearance comes from dense gas regions that have been struck by the supernova shock wave. As the shock wave travels through space, it rams into the interstellar material.
At first, the gas was heated to millions of degrees, but it then subsequently cooled down and is still giving off the faint glow that was captured in the new image.
By looking at the different colours of the nebula, astronomers have been able to map the temperature of the gas. Some regions are still so hot that the emission is dominated by ionised oxygen atoms, which glow blue in the picture. Other cooler regions are seen glowing red, due to emission from hydrogen.
The Pencil Nebula measures about 0.75 light-years across and is moving through the interstellar medium at about 650 000 kilometres per hour. Remarkably, even at its distance of approximately 800 light-years from Earth, this means that it will noticeably change its position relative to the background stars within a human lifetime.
Even after 11 000 years the supernova explosion is still changing the face of the night sky.
Less than two decades after wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, viral diseases like mange threaten the stability of the new population.
Humans had killed off gray wolves in the region by the 1930s, but in 1995, U.S. wildlife officials tried to restore the native population by bringing 31 wolves captured from Canada into the national park.
The new wolf community initially expanded rapidly, climbing to more than 170 at its peak. But researchers from Penn State University say that the most recent data show the number of animals has dipped below 100.
“We’re down to extremely low levels of wolves right now,” researcher Emily S. Almberg, a graduate student in ecology, said in a statement. “We’re down to [similar numbers as] the early years of reintroduction. So it doesn’t look like it’s going to be as large and as a stable a population as was maybe initially thought.”
The researchers point to pathogens as the culprit in the population’s instability. By 1997, all of the new wolves at the park that were tested for disease had at least one infection, including canine distemper, canine parvovirus and canine herpesvirus. Starting in 2007, wolves inside the park were testing positive for mange — an infection in which mites burrow under the skin causing insatiable scratching and so much hair loss that infected wolves often freeze to death in the winter.
A group of wolves known as Mollie’s pack was the first in Yellowstone to show signs of mange, in January 2007, but they recovered from the disease by March 2011. Meanwhile, another group, called the Druid pack — once one of the park’s most stable new packs — was decimated by the end of winter 2010 after showing signs of mange just half a year earlier, the researchers said.
“It was in a very short amount of time that the majority of the animals [in Druid] became severely infected,” Almberg said in a statement. “The majority of their hair was missing from their bodies and it hit them right in the middle of winter. The summer before it got really bad, we saw that many of the pups had mange.”
The Penn State researchers found that distance made a difference in the spread of the disease. For every six miles between a pack of mangy wolves and an uninfected pack, there was a 66 percent drop in risk of disease for the healthy pack, the researchers said. Thus the high wolf densities afforded by protection within Yellowstone may come at the cost of some population stability, the researchers wrote in their paper in the current issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Mange was introduced into the Yellowstone ecosystem in 1905 in an attempt to accelerate wolf eradication during an era when wildlife officials tried to cut down predator populations. When the wolves were gone, the disease likely persisted among regional carnivores, like coyotes and foxes, the researchers said.
“Many invasive species flourish because they lack their native predators and pathogens, but in Yellowstone we restored a native predator to an ecosystem that had other canids (animals in the dog family) present that were capable of sustaining a lot of infections in their absence,” said Almberg. “It’s not terribly surprising that we were able to witness and confirm that there was a relatively short window in which the reintroduced wolves stayed disease-free.”
The Texas Department of State Health Services is looking for piece of equipment containing potentially dangerous radioactive material that was lost Tuesday by an oil and gas crew in a rural part of West Texas. The sealed radioactive source, a small stainless steel cylinder approximately 7 inches long and an inch across, contains Americium-241/Beryllium….The cylinder is stamped with the words “danger radioactive” and “do not handle” along with a radiation warning symbol. Anyone who sees it should stay at least 25 feet away and notify local law enforcement. This type of device is used to evaluate oil and gas wells and is usually stored in a protective shielding. A Halliburton crew was transporting it from a well outside of Pecos to another well south of Odessa. On arrival, the crew noticed the shielding was not locked and the device was missing. DSHS is assisting law enforcement with the search and investigating the loss of the radioactive material.
Czech police say they have discovered two possible sources of methanol poisoning that has killed at least 18 people. About 400 liters (106 gallons) of illegal alcohol was seized and two male suspects arrested in the northeastern part of the country where most victims lived. Around 500 bottles and several barrels of illicit booze have been found in a garage in the eastern city of Zlin on Thursday. Methanol tests still have to be conducted. Health Minister Leos Heger said Thursday a majority of alcohol samples taken elsewhere that have been tested so far contained dangerous levels of methanol that is mainly used for industrial purposes. About two dozen people are hospitalized, some in critical condition after drinking vodka and rum laced with methanol.
A platform elevator at a construction site in southern China has dropped 30 floors in a free fall, killing 19 workers. The accident happened Thursday in Wuhan city in Hubei province. A government notice posted by local Wuhan newspapers on their official microblogging sites says the elevator fell 100 meters (328 feet). It says the municipal government is halting all construction in Wuhan for security checks. Work safety is a big problem in China, where regulations are routinely ignored.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press, STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press
FILE – In this Aug. 23, 2011, file photo, a U.S. Park Service helicopter flies between the Washington Monument and the Capitol on the National Mall in Washington, following an earthquake in the Washington area. The unexpected jolt cracked the Washington Monument in spots and toppled delicate masonry high atop the National Cathedral. The shaking was felt far along the densely populated Eastern seaboard from Georgia to New England. While West Coast earthquake veterans scoffed at what they viewed as only a moderate temblor, last year’s quake has forever changed the way officials along the East Coast view emergency preparedness. Photo: AP / AP
MINERAL, Va. (AP) — When the “Big One” rocked the East Coast one year ago, the earthquake centered on this rural Virginia town cracked ceiling tiles and damaged two local school buildings so badly that they had to be shuttered for good. Now as the academic year gets under way, students are reciting a new safety mantra: Drop, cover, and hold on.
Earthquake drills are now as ubiquitous as fire drills at Louisa County schools in central Virginia, where 4,600 students were attending classes when the 5.8-magnitude quake struck nearby on Aug. 23, 2011. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt.
“It’s the new normal,” Superintendent Deborah D. Pettit said of the earthquake drills. “It’s become a normal part of the school routine and safety.”
One such drill is planned for Thursday at 1:51 p.m. EDT — the precise moment a year ago when the quake struck.
The unexpected jolt cracked the Washington Monument in spots and toppled delicate masonry high atop the National Cathedral. The shaking was felt far along the densely populated Eastern seaboard from Georgia to New England.
While West Coast earthquake veterans scoffed at what they viewed as only a moderate temblor, last year’s quake has changed the way officials along the East Coast view emergency preparedness.
Emergency response plans that once focused on hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and snow are being revised to include quakes. Some states have enacted laws specifically related to the quake, and there is anecdotal evidence of a spike in insurance coverage for earthquake damage.
The quake was centered 3 to 4 miles beneath Mineral, a town of fewer than 500 people about 50 miles northwest of Richmond. Yet it was believed to have been felt by more people than any other in U.S. history.
The damage, estimated at more than $200 million, extended far beyond rural Louisa County. In the nation’s capital, the Washington Monument sustained several large cracks and remains closed indefinitely.
The National Park Service plans next month to finalize the contract to repair the Washington Monument. Repairs are expected to cost $15 million and require a massive scaffolding, and the landmark obelisk is likely to remain closed until 2014.
The National Cathedral reopened last November, but repairs are expected to take years and cost $20 million. The cathedral announced Thursday that it has received a $5 million grant from the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. With that funding in place, stonemasons were scheduled to begin active restoration Thursday afternoon. Previously, they had been stabilizing the damaged components and cataloging the damage.
In Virginia, the North Anna Power Station became the first operating U.S. nuclear power plant shut down because of an earthquake.
Was it a once-in-a-century anomaly, or are there more quakes to come?
Scientists are trying to answer that question as they pore over the data and survey the epicenter from the air.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, much of central Virginia has been labeled for decades as an area of elevated seismic hazard. But last year’s quake was the largest known to occur in that seismic zone.
“Scientists would like to know if this earthquake was Virginia’s ‘Big One,'” said J. Wright Horton of the USGS.
Meanwhile, the quake prompted several jurisdictions to revise their emergency response plans.
Photographs of the inner crater inside the outer crater, the presence of magma inside the inner crater and pyroclastic deposits in the crater. (S. Vallejo and MF. Naranjo, OVT-IGEPN)
Small pyroclastic flow on the western flank of the volcano in the afternoon of August 21, 2012 (IGEPN)
Thermal image of the continuous emission of gases and ash accompanied by expulsion of incandescent material (Source: S. Vallejo, OVT-IG)
Thermal image of the northern flank of the volcano with fresh pyroclastic deposits and the trace of the lava flow recorded on Saturday August 18 (S. Vallejo, OVT-IGEPN)
Current seismic signal (RETU station, IG)
Tremor signal on current seismic recording (RETU station, IG)
SO2 plume from Tungurahua yesterday 21 Aug (NOAA)
Tungurahua’s eruption continues. This morning, a tall ash plume was rising to 32,000 ft (ca. 10 km) altitude and drifting west. A slight decrease in tremor is visible on the latest seismograms.
So far, effects of the eruption have been limited to ash fall. In canton Quero, the ash fall during the past days has damaged more than 5000 hectares of plant cultivations and hit about 2.000 families.
In the meanwhile, scientists from the volcano observatory have made an overflight of the volcano and posted the following interesting update (freely translated) for 20-21 Aug:
The volcano emits a neary constant eruption column, associated with explosions, that reached a maximum height of 5 km and an average height of 1.5 km above the crater, with moderate ash content, drifting to the west. There were no new reports of ash fall.
An increase in the number and size of the explosions was observed since 15:00 local time on 20 Aug. Until 16:00 on 21 Aug, there were 16 large explosions producing strong cannon-shot noises heard in villages near the volcano and in cities as far away as Ambato, Riobamba and Miracle.
The seismic activity at Tungurahua shows a constant tremor signal associated with steam, gas and ash emissions.
Otherwise, the roaring noises have decreased in intensity and duration with respect to the previous days.
In the evening observatory staff observed constant expulsion of hot material in jets. Lava blocks landed outside the crater and rolled up to 1.5 km from the top of the volcano’s flanks.
An explosion at 14:11 on 21 Aug generated an ash column rising 4 km above the crater, that produced a small pyroclastic flow that descended approximately 2.5 km along the Achupashal creek.
Staff of the Geophysical Institute of the National Polytechnic School conducted an overflight of the volcano yesterday afternoon for thermal and visual monitoring of the activity in the crater area and top of the mountain. They observed that that much of the western and southwestern flank have been covered by fresh ash and blocks.
Thermal images show near continuous explosive activity from the inner crater, ejecting incandescent material onto the the upper flanks of the volcano, where temperatures ranged between 116 and 150°C.
The morphology of the summit consists of an outer crater containing an inner crater about 80 m wide, and a few dozend meters distance from the outside crater. The inner crater was observed to be almost filled with fresh lava. Numerous large meter sized hot blocks could be identified in the crater area and the upper flanks. Temperatures measured at the crater raned between 550°C for the inner crater and 236°C at the outer crater.
Many fresh lava blocks have accumulated in ravines on the south-west, west and north-west upper flanks of the volcano. These could be mobilized to form avalanches IG scientists warn.
The thermal image analysis confirmed that during the night of Saturday, August 18, a lava flow and an incandescent avalanche of blocks that had accumulated in the north-western flank flew down through the Cusu canyon as had been observed then.
IG recommends the authorities and the general public to maintain protective and preparative measures in case the activity escalates further which is a possibility. Most danger during the ongoing activity comes from pyroclastic flows, lahars and ash fall.
An aerial view of New Yorkers taking in the sun on a beach at Coney Island on August 4, 2012 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP)
PARIS: Heat waves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists.
Climate experts as a group are reluctant to ascribe a single extreme event or season to global warming.
Weather, they argue, has to be assessed over far longer periods to confirm a shift in the climate and whether natural factors or fossil-fuel emissions are the cause.
But for some, such caution is easing.
A lengthening string of brutal weather events is going hand in hand with record-breaking rises in temperatures and greenhouse-gas levels, an association so stark that it can no longer be dismissed as statistical coincidence, they say.
“We prefer to look at average annual temperatures on a global scale, rather than extreme temperatures,” said Jean Jouzel, vice chairman of the U.N.’s Nobel-winning scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Even so, according to computer models, “over the medium and long term, one of the clearest signs of climate change is a rise in the frequency of heat waves”, he said.
“Over the last 50 years, we have seen that as warming progresses, heat waves are becoming more and more frequent,” Jouzel said.
“If we don’t do anything, the risk of a heat wave occurring will be 10 times higher by 2100 compared with the start of the century.”
The past three months have seen some extraordinary weather in the United States, Europe and East and Southeast Asia.
The worst drought in more than 50 years hit the U.S. Midwest breadbasket while forest fires stoked by fierce heat and dry undergrowth erupted in California, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Spain.
Heavy rains flooded Manila and Beijing and China’s eastern coast was hit by three typhoons in a week.
Last month was the warmest ever recorded for land in the northern hemisphere and a record high for the contiguous United States, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Globally, the temperature in July was the fourth highest since records began in 1880, it said.
James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist (and a bogeyman to climate skeptics), contends the link between extreme heat events and global warming is now all but irrefutable.
The evidence, he says, comes not from computer simulations but from weather observations themselves.
In a study published this month in the peer-reviewed U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hansen and colleagues compared temperatures over the past three decades to a baseline of 1951-80, a period of relative stability.
Over the last 30 years, there was 0.5-0.6 C (0.9-1.0 F) of warming, a rise that seems small but “is already having important effects”, said Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
During the baseline period, cold summers occurred about a third of the time, but this fell to about 10 percent in the 30-year period that followed.
Hot summers, which during the baseline period occurred 33 percent of the time, rose to about 75 percent in the three decades that followed.
Even more remarkable, though, was the geographical expansion of heat waves. During the baseline period, an unusually hot summer would yield a heat wave that would cover just a few tenths of 1 percent of the world’s land area.
Today, though, an above average summer causes heat waves that in total affect about 10 percent of the land surface.
“The extreme summer climate anomalies in Texas in 2011, in Moscow in 2010 and in France in 2003 almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of global warming with its resulting shift of the anomaly situation,” says the paper.
In March, an IPCC special report said there was mounting evidence of a shift in patterns of extreme events in some regions, including more intense and longer droughts and rainfall.
But it saw no increases in the frequency, length or severity of tropical storms.
Budgets leave governments in tough spot to get people, planes, bulldozers to beat back flames
Jeff Barnard / AP
A damaged truck sits among other remains on Wednesday at a rural house site outside Manton, Calif., where a huge wildfire burned through on Saturday, forcing residents to evacuate.
By Jeff Barnard and Nicholas K. Geranios
MANTON, Calif. — Twisted sheets of metal, the hulks of pickup trucks and brick walls were all that was left of homes once sheltered by green pine and cedar trees.
In a rural Northern California subdivision that was the latest to feel the wrath of massive western wildfires, long pine needles bent back on themselves, unburned but dried to a brittle dusty gray by the intensive heat of the Ponderosa fire.
Thousands of residents of tiny rural communities just outside Lassen Volcanic National Park who had been forced to flee soon after the fire was ignited by lighting on Saturday were allowed to return home on Wednesday. But hundreds of other homes were threatened as the fire burned a new front on the southern flank.
The blaze has grown to 44 square miles in the hills about 30 miles east of Redding.
Bob Folsom, who works at a nearby hydroelectric facility, tended the gasoline generator that is keeping his refrigerator running while utility crews worked to replace power lines destroyed by the blaze when it roared through the area last weekend.
“I was ready for this day,” he said. “I try to be self-sufficient.”
Folsom and his son never left their home as the fire burned within a half mile of them last weekend, close enough that they heard trees exploding and the flames roaring like a freight train. Over the past 10 years, they had thinned hundreds of trees, dug a pond to store water, and installed hydrants to fill fire hoses.
“When it comes through, it’s gonna come fast,” he said. “You don’t have time to cut down trees.”
Fires across the West have left some states with thin budgets to scramble to get people, planes, bulldozers and other tools on fire lines to beat back the flames.
And that’s with about a third of the annual wildfire season remaining.
Video: Ponderosa blaze prompts state of emergency (on this page)According to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, the nation as of Wednesday had seen 42,927 wildfires this year, which burned just over 7 million acres.
While the number of fires is down from the 10-year average of 54,209 as of Aug. 22, the acreage was well above the average of 5.4 million acres, said Don Smurthwaite, a NIFC spokesman.
“The fires are bigger,” he said.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., this summer, about 350 homes were burned in the most destructive wildfire in state history. Another fire in northern Colorado just before it scorched 257 homes.
The costs have mounted, not just in the damage to houses and other buildings.
In Utah, for example, officials have spent $50 million as of mid-August to fight more than 1,000 wildfires, far surpassing the $3 million a year the Legislature budgeted for fighting wildfires.
The state’s share is estimated at $16 million, said Roger Lewis of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. He said lawmakers will need to figure out how to come up with $13 million.
That’s the largest-ever supplemental appropriation request needed for firefighting in the state, agency spokesman Jason Curry said. He said, “It’s obviously been a big year.”
Washington state fire officials project that they will spend about $19.8 million on emergency fire suppression activities in the current fiscal year that ends next June.
That is expected to far surpass the $11.2 million the agency was allotted for such work, meaning the Department of Natural Resources will have to ask the Legislature for supplemental funds.
Not all Western states are seeing their budgets busted because of fires.
In Oregon, the state estimated it had spent $3.4 million through last Saturday to fight wildfires, with more than two months of the season left. Last year, it spent $6.6 million.
In Montana, forest managers told Gov. Brian Schweitzer that long-term forecasts call for fire conditions through the end of September, which is longer than normal.
The Northern Rockies Coordination Center put the total cost of fighting large wildfires in Montana, including costs to federal and state agencies, at $64 million so far this season. The state’s share is about $25 million to fight fires that have burned about 1,100 square miles.
Schweitzer said the state has already burned through cash reserves set aside for such natural disasters, but that plenty of money is available from surplus general funds.
While parts of the Southwest, particularly Southern California, still have three months of fire season left, Smurthwaite said, shorter days, declining temperatures and higher humidity will help curtail fires.
“That’s almost like putting a little wet blanket over a fire,” he said.
Firefighters in Northern California on Thursday made progress in containing a huge wildfire that has burned 80 homes and other buildings and is threatening 900 more. It was 57 percent contained on Thursday.
Fire crews assessing the rural area determined Thursday that 84 buildings had been destroyed since it was sparked by lightning Saturday. It was unclear when the structures burned and how many were homes.
More than 2,500 firefighters were battling the fire near several remote towns about 170 miles north of Sacramento.
Elsewhere in California, a large wildfire in Plumas National Forest continued to expand, helped by gusty winds.
In Washington state, fire crews still hoped to fully contain a week-old wildfire that has destroyed 51 homes and 26 outbuildings and damaged at least six other homes, authorities said.
The fire, about 75 miles east of Seattle, has caused an estimated $8.3 million in property damage.
In south-central Idaho, authorities have spent more than $23 million fighting a fire near the towns of Pine and Featherville and another in a forest near the resort town of Stanley.
Those wildfires have each consumed about 150 square miles, and will not be extinguished for some time, Smurthwaite said.
“We expect to be managing them for weeks to come,” he said.
Associated Press writers Haven Daley in Manton Calif., Jonathan Cooper in Salem, Ore., Brian Skoloff in Salt Lake City, Terry Collins, John S. Marshall and Terence Chea in San Francisco, Shannon Dininny in Yakima, Wash., Mike Baker in Olympia, Wash., and Jessie Bonner in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in three Northern California counties on Wednesday after officials said wildfires in the region had destroyed at least 50 buildings and were threatening hundreds more. Some 3,000 people have been evacuated as the so-called Ponderosa fire burned through more than 24,000 acres (9,700 hectares) of steep, rugged terrain in the rural counties of Tehama and Shasta, about 125 miles (200 km) north of state capital Sacramento. The blaze is 50-percent contained, fire officials said. Brown also declared a state of emergency in nearby Plumas County, where a fire has burned through 47,000 acres (19,000 hectares). Declaring a state of emergency frees up funds to help battle the fires. Firefighters on Wednesday were expected to start inspecting the damage from the Ponderosa fire, which they surveyed by air on Tuesday. Efforts to prevent the fire from overrunning the rural towns of Manton and Shingletown have succeeded so far despite high winds and heat, fire officials said.
23.08.2012
Forest / Wild Fire
USA
State of Washington, [Ahtanum Forest, Yakima County]
State officials have closed part of Ahtanum State Forest to help fight a wildfire burning in a closed section of the Yakama reservation about 15 miles northwest of White Swan. Steep terrain is hampering firefighters efforts to contain the blaze, said Sarah Foster, a spokeswoman for the state fire management team that took over the 331-acre fire early Wednesday. The team’s staging camp is in the closed state forest land, which covers Ahtanum Meadows, Ahtanum Campground, Whites Ridge Trailhead and Middle Fork Road. The closures, which were enacted by the state Department of Natural Resources, are expected to last through the weekend, Foster said. Other parts of the state forest, including South Fork Road, Nasty Creek Road, North Fork Road and Jackass Road, are still open to the public. Lightning sparked the fire Sunday. About 200 firefighters and support people are working to contain the flames, which are burning in lodge pole pine trees in the Diamond Butte area. There are no structures in the area. The fire’s commanders want to keep the flames from reaching forested land with heavy infestation of mountain pine beetles. The insects’ activity kill trees, which creates ready fuel for wildfire, Foster said. “Those dead trees burn really rapidly.” Calm weather conditions are expected until Friday, when a cool front will bring lower temperatures and higher winds, she said. Helicopters and nine hand crews worked Wednesday to make progress on the fire. The helicopters are flying out of an area a couple miles outside Tampico. As many as 350 firefigthers could be called in to corral the fire, she said. Some of them could come from the Taylor Bridge Fire, where the incident commanders are starting to reduce the number of crews. In Washington, firefighters can work 14 days on a fire, then have to take 24 hours off before going back out.
TODAY’s Al Roker tracks Tropical Storms Isaac’s current path as it takes aim at Puerto Rico and the eastern Caribbean.
By Weather.com and wire reports
Updated at 11:12 a.m. ET: Tropical Storm Isaac brought rain and gusty winds to Puerto Rico and the eastern Caribbean Islands and was expected to gradually strengthen as it moved west through the northeastern Caribbean on Thursday.
Forecasters said it was too soon to gauge Isaac’s potential impact on Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the Republican National Convention is to run from Monday through Thursday.
Some computer models showed Isaac shifting slightly to the west and eventually moving parallel to Florida’s western coastline. Others forecast the storm to make landfall in South Florida and then move inland.
Forecasters predict Isaac will become a hurricane by Friday morning, but perhaps the more ominous threat in the short term is the potential for extremely heavy rainfall over the islands near Isaac’s path, weather.com reported.
More than a foot of rainfall, and potentially as much as 20 inches in some places, was possible on the island of Hispaniola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Life-threatening flash floods and mudslides could result from that amount of rain.
Residents and visitors of the northern Caribbean, Yucatan Peninsula, southeastern United States and the central/eastern Gulf Coast should watch the progress of Isaac closely over the next week or more, weather.com reported.
Numerous watches and warnings have been issued, including a hurricane warning for Haiti and the south coast of the Dominican Republic. Puerto Rico was under a tropical storm warning, and it was expected to see its greatest impacts from Isaac on Thursday.
On Thursday, Isaac was passing just south of Puerto Rico. As the storm approached, Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno declared a state of emergency, canceled classes, closed government agencies and activated the National Guard.
The government also froze prices on basic necessities such as food, batteries and other supplies and prepared emergency shelters at schools and other facilities.
Despite Tropical Storm Isaac’s threatening winds and rains ahead of the GOP convention in Florida, Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan are taking aim at President Obama and his handling of the economy. NBC’s Peter Alexander reports.
Isaac was projected to weaken to a tropical storm over Haiti and then pass over Cuba before strengthening into a hurricane in the Florida Straits between Cuba and Florida. Its exact path after that remained uncertain.
Heavy rainfall, flooding and mudslides will be threats in all of the northern Caribbean islands regardless of how strong the system becomes, weather.com reported.
Isaac may also threaten U.S. energy interests in the Gulf of Mexico, weather experts said. It was centered about 265 miles southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, early on Thursday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Isaac had top sustained winds of 45 miles per hour.
At the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeast Cuba on Wednesday, authorities said Isaac forced the postponement of pretrial hearings that were to begin on Thursday for five prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks.
The U.S. military was preparing flights to evacuate the base of lawyers, paralegals, interpreters, journalists, rights monitors and family members of 9/11 victims who had traveled there for the hearings.
Lixion Avila, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center, suggested it would be foolish for anyone to think Tampa — where Republicans will nominate Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate — was out of harm’s way.
Hurricane expert Jeff Masters of private forecaster Weather Underground said Tampa had a 9 percent chance of getting hit with tropical storm-force winds for a 24-hour period ending on the morning the Republican convention kicks off. But that could make the storm a non-event in terms of the convention itself.
“I put the odds of an evacuation occurring during the convention in the current situation at 3 percent,” Masters said in his blog on the weatherunderground.com website.
Orange juice prices rise Florida has not been hit by a major hurricane since 2005 and forecasts showed Isaac was not expected to strengthen beyond a weak Category 1, with top sustained wind speeds of about 80 mph.
The threat to Florida triggered a nearly 6 percent jump in orange juice prices on Wednesday as they surged to a six-week high in trading in New York.
Florida produces more than 75 percent of the U.S. orange crop and accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s orange juice supply.
Lurking behind Isaac, the hurricane center said another tropical depression grew into Tropical Storm Joyce on Thursday.
Located about 1,045 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, it was packing winds of 40 mph and was moving northwest at 17 mph.
Forecasts predicted it will eventually veer toward the open Atlantic and away from the Caribbean. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect for Joyce.
Reuters and weather.com contributed to this report.
Tropical Storm Isaac has strengthened slightly, data from the hurricane hunters show, but the storm remains disorganized and difficult to forecast. If you have to make decisions based upon what Isaac will do, I highly recommend that you wait until at least Friday morning to make a decision, if at all possible, as the forecasts then should be of significantly higher accuracy. Isaac continues to have a large area of light winds about 50 miles across near its center. This makes the storm subject to reformations of the center closer to areas of heavy thunderstorms that form, resulting in semi-random course changes. Until Isaac consolidates, the lack of a well-defined center will make forecasts of the storm’s behavior less accurate than usual. An Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft is in Isaac this afternoon, and has found that surface tropical storm-force winds on the east side of the storm, south of Puerto Rico, have undergone a modest expansion. These winds were mostly in the 40 mph range, with a few areas of 45 mph winds. The surface pressure remained fairly high, at 1004 mb. Infrared and visible satellite loops show that Isaac has fairly symmetric circular cloud pattern, with developing spiral bands that are contracting towards the center, which suggests intensification. However, the storm has a very clumpy appearance, and is a long way from being a hurricane. Given the storm’s continued reluctance to organize, Isaac is unlikely to reach hurricane strength before encountering Haiti and Cuba. An analysis of upper level winds from the University of Wisconsin CIMSS shows an upper-level outflow channel well-established to the north, and an intermittent outflow channel to the south. Radar imagery from Puerto Rico shows some weak low-level spiral bands that haven’t changed much in intensity or organization this afternoon. NOAA buoy 42060 reported 1-minute mean winds of 35 mph and a wind gust of 40 early this afternoon. At St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, wind gusts up to 45 mph were observed early this afternoon. Isaac’s rains caused major flooding last night in Trinidad and Tobago, the southernmost islands of the Lesser Antilles chain, according to the Trinidad Express. Isaac’s rains have not been heavy enough today to cause flooding problems on other islands.
Figure 1. True-color MODIS image of Isaac taken at 1:40 pm EDT August 23, 2012. Image credit: NASA.
Latest model runs for Isaac
The latest set of 12Z (8 am EDT) model runs have shifted to the west compared to the previous set of runs. The models continue to show a west-northwestward track to a point on the south coast of Hispaniola, then across eastern Cuba and into the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba. A trough of low pressure is then expected to pull Isaac to the northwest and then north, towards the Florida Panhandle. The big news in this model cycle is that both of our top models–the GFS and ECMWF–predict that 5 – 6 days from now, the trough of low pressure pulling Isaac to the north may not be strong enough to finish the job. These models predict that the trough will lift out and a ridge of high pressure will build in, forcing Isaac more to the west. The GFS predicts this will occur after Isaac makes landfall in the Florida Panhandle, resulting in Isaac moving slowly to the west over land, from Georgia to Alabama. The ECMWF predicts the westward motion will happen while Isaac is in the northern Gulf of Mexico, resulting in an eventual landfall near the Louisiana/Texas border on Thursday. There are some huge issues to resolve to make an accurate long-range track forecast for Isaac. Where will its center consolidate? How will the interaction with the mountains of Hispaniola and Cuba will affect it? Where will Isaac pop off the coast of Cuba? Hopefully, the data being collected by the NOAA jet this afternoon will give us a more unified set of model forecasts early Friday morning. For now, pay attention to the cone of uncertainty. If you’re in the cone, you might get hit.
A worker tapes the window of a convenience store in Hualien, Taiwan province, on Wednesday, in preparation for typhoon Tembin. (Photo/China Daily)
Two powerful typhoons are heading toward China, putting the weather-beaten nation on alert again after four storms have caused landfalls across the country since the start of August.
“Typhoons Tembin and Bolaven may have a combined impact on coastal areas in the coming 10 days,” Zhang Chang’an, chief forecaster at the China Meteorological Administration, said on Wednesday.
Both storms are strengthening, with Bolaven expected to be the strongest typhoon to hit China this year if it lands in the country, Zhang said, adding that the storm will bring maximum winds of 220 km/h.
The National Commission on Disaster Reduction issued a typhoon alert on Wednesday, warning authorities to make emergency plans.
Tembin was about 2,000 km from the coast of Zhejiang province on Wednesday, moving at a speed of 5 km/h.
The administration has asked authorities in potential affected areas to set up warning signs in high-risk areas such as construction sites and low-lying areas, and open emergency shelters including schools and stadiums for evacuation of affected people.
The Fujian Meteorological Bureau urged boats to take shelter in ports by Wednesday to avoid possible damage brought by Tembin.
Cannon Beach City Councilor Sam Steidel displays the three containers residents can choose from to store their emergency supplies on Aug. 10, 2012 in Cannon Beach, Ore. By Oct. 18, when a statewide earthquake drill called the “Great Oregon Shakeout” is planned, city officials expect to complete the placement of at least one shipping container on Elk Creek Road, east of U.S. Highway 101. (AP Photo/The Daily Astorian, Nancy McCarthy)
CANNON BEACH, Ore. (AP) — What does one stash for a tsunami? Residents of Cannon Beach are thinking about that.
They’re planning to store drums full of survival gear far enough inland and high enough to be safe if the big one hits the Oregon coast and sends a tsunami wave ashore.
The Daily Astorian reports the city is offering residents space in a shipping container and various sizes of drums, barrels and buckets that can be stored inside.
Cannon Beach held a workshop on how to pack for the days after the big one, the equivalent of last year’s Japanese earthquake that could send a deadly tsunami across West Coast beaches and flood coastal towns.
Essential items would include a shelter, such as a tent or tarp; sleeping bags or blankets; food with a long shelf life, such as ready-to-eat meals or canned goods, and a can opener; a basic first-aid kit, either pre-assembled or one containing personal medical items; a survival knife; axe or hatchet; garden trowel or folding shovel; flashlights with extra batteries; matches or lighter with a fire starter; water purification; and bottles or canteens for water storage.
“We’re encouraging people not to turn this into a big to-do,” said City Council member Sam Steidel. “Most things they will need they can find at rummage sales, or they could be surplus stuff they find around the house that they’re not using all the time.”
“I have packed my barrel with enough things for a two-person camp,” said Steidel, who participates in Civil War re-enactments. “The things are pretty much up-to-date items that are in the re-enactment trailer. A simple pot or Dutch oven is all you really need to cook with. Just about everyone has an old cast iron fry pan.”
Cannon Beach is a popular tourist destination on the north Oregon coast, at the other end of a highway from Portland. It’s also known for thinking hard and creatively about tsunamis — something critics say has been lacking along the West Coast.
A few years ago, Cannon Beach looked at the idea of rebuilding City Hall on stilts to provide refuge for people fleeing a tsunami. Computer modeling showed that the location wasn’t the best, and a study of alternative ideas continues.
Recently, state and federal officials said they plan to use Cannon Beach in a pilot study of how landscape and a town’s demographics affect how long it takes for people to flee a tsunami.
For the storage exercise, the city is preparing a 2,000-square-foot pad for at least one, and perhaps two shipping containers, each 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet high. The pad is inland, east of the coastal highway, and planned for an elevation above the expected inundation level.
Each shipping container could hold at least 50 of the largest containers offered, those of 55-gallon capacity, Steidel said.
There also are 30-gallon plastic barrels and five-gallon buckets.
In October, the shipping container is to be opened for families to store their emergency stashes. Unless there’s a disaster, the container wouldn’t be reopened until spring, when the caches could be restocked.
Earlier this year, 53 people at a forum signed up for the small containers, and orders are being accepted for more. City officials said some families are buying more than one.
In addition to a purchase fee, the city is charging an annual maintenance fee based on capacity. A 55-gallon plastic barrel costs $57.90, and the annual fee is $55.
Russian authorities said Wednesday that a flash flood had killed four people in the southern Krasnodar region where 172 people drowned in rising waters last month, many trapped in their homes.
“Four people have died,” a spokeswoman for the regional emergency situations ministry told AFP.
“Three people are listed as missing,” the Krasnodar regional government said in a statement.
Heavy rain battered the coastal Tuapse area overnight causing many rivers to overflow and flood the houses and apartments of around 1,837 people, the regional authorities said.
In July, 172 people were found dead after severe flooding in the Krymsk area not far from Tuapse. Around 35,000 people lost some or all of their possessions.
The local authorities faced widespread censure for their failure to warn people in time of the need to evacuate. Three officials have been arrested and accused of negligence leading to the deaths.
On Wednesday the regional government stressed that this time the warning system had functioned “in time” so that the public was not caught unaware by the flooding.
“There will not be a second Krymsk,” the regional government promised, saying that residents had been warned this time with an onscreen message on local television and officials driving the streets with loudspeakers.
Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are facing the threat of floods because of heavy rains which various districts of the two provinces are likely to receive over the next two days. The late spell of monsoon has already claimed 11 lives in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Bajaur Agency while eight people have died in Azad Kashmir. Officials said that torrential rains triggered flash floods in hill torrents in Nowshera, Mansehra and Bajaur Agency. The provincial disaster management authority said that floods had killed three people in Nowshera and six in Mansehra districts. A landslide blocked a portion of the main highway near Garhi Habibullah, Mansehra district. In Rawalpindi’s Kotli Sattiyan area, Ahmed Nawaz, a retired army man, lost three children-a son and two daughters- when a wall of their room collapsed after heavy rain. The three children were asleep when the wall collapsed on them, killing them on the spot. National Disaster Management Authority chairman Dr Zafar Iqbal Qadir told Dawn on Wednesday that catchment areas of Chenab and Ravi rivers’ distributaries were expected to receive heavy rains over the next two days. This may cause floods in Lahore, Faisalabad and Gujranwala divisions. He said the District Management Authority had been placed on alert.Areas around Jhelum river are also likely to receive rains which will raise the level of Mangla dam and will be of benefit to agriculture. He said the level at Mangla had risen by five feet over the past three days to reach 1,173 feet and was expected to go up by another 10-15 feet during the upcoming spell – sufficient for the irrigation requirements. He said there were fears of flash flood in urban areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, particularly in Nowshera, Peshawar, Mardan, Swat and Buner. He said the PDMA was fully operational in the province and working round the clock to cope with any situation and minimise losses. In reply to a question, he said the threat of drought was not yet fully over, but it had substantially fallen. He said Makran, Kharan, Chaghai and Washuk areas in Balochistan were not receiving rains and might face drought if the dry weather persisted. “There is no possibility of massive flooding and the heavy downpour is likely to cause medium-level floods.” The country saw worst flooding of its history in 2010. It affected one-fifth of the population and rendered several hundred thousand people homeless right from Himalayas in the north to the deserts of Sindh in the south. The following year, comparatively low-intensity floods hit the country again, especially parts of lower Sindh. This year the monsoon spell in the middle of July and August was predicted to cause disaster with a forecast of 15 per cent more than the usual rains, but the situation suddenly changed and the threat of flood turned into one of drought. The situation has once again changed and now moderate floods are likely in at least two provinces.According to the Flood Forecasting Division (FFD), heavy rains triggered a low flood in the Ravi river at Shahdara on Wednesday. The Ravi, Jhelum and Chenab rivers were expected to attain medium to high flood by Friday. The three rivers swelled because of rains in their catchment areas during Eid holidays. The FFD centre in Lahore forecast fairly widespread thunderstorm/rain, with isolated heavy to very heavy falls (extremely heavy at one or two places) over Azad Kashmir, northern and north-eastern Punjab (mostly areas falling within Lahore, Gujranwala and Rawalpindi divisions) for Thursday. Azad Kashmir covers the upper and low catchments of the Jhelum river while northern and north-eastern Punjab constitutes the lower catchments of the Chenab and Ravi. The rain forecast means the water level will shoot up by Friday. Riaz Khan, the FFD chief, however said the situation was not alarming.
Rain in the Jhelum catchments would help fill Mangla Dam. The Chenab and Ravi were approaching flood level because of rain in their lower catchments in Pakistan while rain in their upper catchments in India was being stored in dams. “Hence there is no threat of devastating floods.” The FFD reported that a peak of 40,000 cusecs was passing the Ravi at Shahdara on Wednesday evening and the level was rising. The river was in low flood and was expected to attain medium flood level on Thursday. The FFD expected medium to high flood in Jhelum river at Mangla and in Chenab at Marala and Khanki on Thursday or Friday. Heavy rains flooded the Dek and Basantar nullahs in Sialkot region, submerging hundreds of acres of agricultural land. Traffic also remained suspended on Narowal-Pasrur road because of the flooding. The FFD expected more flooding of almost all nullahs in the region over 24 hours.
The Met office reported that Kakul had received 84mm of rain, Murree 77mm, Jhelum 76mm, Sialkot airport 74mm, Mandi Bahauddin 60mm, Mangla 39mm, Kotli 37mm, Sialkot Cantt 32mm, Cherat 29mm, Saidu Sharif 21mm, Islamabad 14mm, Rawlakot 12mm, Muzaffarabad 10mm, Gujranwala 8mm, and Balakot 4mm.
It also forecast scattered thunderstorm/rain with isolated heavy showers over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as Sahiwal, Faisalabad and Sargodha divisions of Punjab for Thursday. Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed on Wednesday appealed to the federal government to help his administration in rehabilitation of rain victims. A spell of relentless rain since Sunday has displaced thousands of people in the region, besides leaving eight dead. In Muzaffarabad, the capital, one person was killed and landslides threatened over 100 families living on the outskirts of the city. Within the city area, many areas were virtually buried under a huge rock that the gushing rainwater had brought with it. Four people were killed in Bagh district on Eid day and two children died in Mirpur on Wednesday in incidents of house collapse and drowning. Officials said almost all inter-city roads had been cleared for traffic.
A teenager was missing Thursday after heavy rain in southern Nevada brought flash flooding to both Las Vegas and Henderson. The 17-year-old disappeared late Wednesday morning in Henderson. He was swept into flood waters in Pittman Wash. Firefighters say the teen was with friends who witnessed his disappearance. Bud Cranor, a spokesman for the city, said a search for him turned up nothing. “I noticed a man go right through, right in the middle of it,” Mike Harms said. “I got in the car and rode down. I saw him one more time, he was waving his arms and yelling for help, but it was hopeless because he was going so fast, he was gone.” While the water had receded in most areas, it left debris behind. The Desert Rose Golf Course in Las Vegas was covered with trash, including a shopping cart and bottles. For some daredevils, the flood was a chance to show off, authorities said. A Metro Las Vegas helicopter pilot, sent to check out a report of teens riding an air mattress down a flooded wash, saw them leave the water without injury
An official from Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration takes a sample from a shipment of frozen fish imported from Japan to test for possible radiation contamination at Ladkrabang customs in Bangkok (Reuters/Sukree Sukplang)
A pair of fish captured near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have shown to be carrying record levels of radiation. The pair of greenlings are contaminated with 258 times the level government deems safe for consumption.
The fish, which were captured just 12 miles from the nuclear plant, registered 25,800 becquerels of caesium per kilo, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
TEPCO says the high levels may be due to the fish feeding in radioactive hotspots. The company plans on capturing and testing more of the fish, as well as their feed, and the seabed soil to determine the exact cause of the high radiation.
The findings were surprising for officials, who had previously seen much lower levels of radiation in contaminated fish.
Fishermen been allowed to cast their reels in the nearby waters on an experimental basis since June – but only in areas more than 31 miles from the plant.
Previously, the highest recorded radiation seen in the captured wildlife was 18,700 becquerels per kilo in cherry salmons, according to the Japanese Fisheries Agency.
The radiation was caused by a meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima power plant after it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The disaster was so intense that contaminated fish were caught all the way across the Pacific Ocean, on the California coast.
But it’s not only aquatic life that is suffering from side effects of the leaked radiation.
According to researchers, the radiation has caused mutations in some butterflies, giving them dented eyes, malformed legs and antennae, and stunted wings.
The results show the butterflies were deteriorating both physically and genetically.
But the harmful risks don’t stop with butterflies. The radioactivity which seeped into the region’s air and water has left humans facing potentially life threatening health issues.
The report shows that nearly 36 per cent of children in the Fukushima Prefecture have abnormal thyroid growths which pose a risk of becoming cancerous.
The World Health Organization warns that young people are particularly prone to radiation poisoning in the thyroid gland. Infants are most at risk because their cells divide at a higher rate.
NASSAU, Bahamas: The health minister of the Bahamas says he has ordered an investigation into a bacteria outbreak at a local hospital following the death of two babies and amid reports of new cases.
Perry Gomez says four adults and one child in the general intensive care unit of Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau are carrying the bacteria.
About a month ago, the acinetobacter bamannii outbreak sickened eight babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, killing two.
Gomez announced in Parliament Thursday that the ministry will hire a physician to investigate the outbreak.
The hospital reported a similar outbreak in August 1996 that killed three infants and infected five others.
The bacteria enter the body through open wounds, breathing tubes and catheters and are highly resistant to antibiotics.
Written by UN News Service Wednesday, 22 August 2012 15:39
The United Nations health agency today reported that the cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone was escalating and stressed the need to rapidly scale up the response to the spread of the of the frequently fatal water and food-borne disease.
In a press briefing in Geneva, Glenn Thomas, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), confirmed the spread of cholera to an additional two districts of the West African country, noting that since the beginning of 2012, there had been 11,189 reported cases and 203 deaths due to the outbreak.
Mr. Thomas told reporters that the WHO was supporting the Government of Sierra Leone in the areas of epidemiology and social mobilization and had sent three cholera experts form its regional office to respond to the deteriorating crisis, UN News Service reports.
Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with the bacterium known as vibrio cholerae. The disease has a short incubation period and produces a toxin that causes continuous watery diarrhoea, a condition that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not administered promptly. Vomiting also occurs in most patients.
In his briefing, Mr. Thomas also provided an update on the outbreak of Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where a total of 15 cases of viral contamination, including nine deaths, have been reported.
He said that the WHO was supporting the DRC Ministry of Health in conducting a series of epidemiological investigations as well as surveillance, public information and social mobilization initiatives.
Ebola is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, secretions, other bodily fluids or organs of infected persons or animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys and antelopes, and it has an incubation period of two to 21 days.
Sufferers can experience fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat, as well as vomiting, diarrhoea, rashes and impaired kidney and liver function. In the most severe cases, the virus leads to both external and internal bleeding. The most recent outbreak happened last month in Uganda with a total of 20 cases, including 14 deaths, reported across the western part of the country.
In its briefing, the WHO added that it did not recommend that any travel or trade restrictions be applied to the DRC because of the outbreak.
Aerial mosquito spraying is underway in Dallas County and Houston to prevent the spread of West Nile virus while the disease spreads farther, faster and earlier in the season than ever before, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Only 29 cases were reported a month ago. Now, the CDC is reporting 1,118 cases spread across 47 states, with 41 deaths.
Seventy-five percent of the cases have been reported from five states: Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Illinois. Texas appears to be the hardest hit, with 586 reported cases in total. The death toll in Texas was 21 as of Wednesday, with Dallas County hit hardest, for a total of 270 cases and 11 deaths.
No place is striking back harder against the West Nile virus than Texas, which has launched an aerial assault against mosquitoes despite objections from environmental groups. Overnight, planes carrying pesticides took to the skies dousing more than 63,000 acres of land in Dallas and Houston to battle the disease.
“These kinds of chemicals are most toxic to young children, infants and babies,” said Jennifer Sass, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Dallas Fights West Nile Virus With Aerial Spray Watch Video
The CDC and health officials in Texas insist the worries about the spray are overblown and pale in comparison to the devastating effects of the disease. Harris County Mosquito Control Director Dr. Rudy Bueno told ABC News that the spray is “very safe and effective.”
“We normally kill 90, 95 percent of the mosquitoes that are out flying the night we put this out,” pilot Malcolm Williams said.
The CDC says this outbreak is on track to be the worst in the country’s history. The worst year on record is 2003, in which the country saw 9,862 cases of West Nile virus infection and 264 deaths.
Many experts point to last year’s mild winter for the drastic outbreak and the scorching temperatures this summer, helping the mosquitoes thrive.
Eighty percent of the people who contract the West Nile virus have no symptoms and their body eventually gets rid of it, according to the CDC. The remaining 20 percent experience flu-like symptoms.
One in 150 people will develop more severe forms of the disease and experience neurological symptoms and brain swelling, according to ABC News’ Dr. Richard Besser.
Patient Garrick Larson told ABC News affiliate WDAY in Minnesota, “I woke up with a headache like I have never come close to feeling before. The pain was immense. I knew I was in trouble.”
Larson, a cross country coach in Moorhead, Minn., was hospitalized for a week with a high fever and meningitis.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest briefed reporters aboard Air Force One as President Obama traveled from Las Vegas to New York Wednesday.
“The president’s been briefed on the increase in the number of West Nile virus cases,” he said. “[The] White House staff are at regular contact with the experts at the CDC, and the president will continue to receive updates as necessary.”
These are common disease manifestations in patients with anti-interferon-γ autoantibodies, according to researchers.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Patients with disease are making antibodies that attack their immune system
Cases date back to 2004, with most of them occurring in Thailand and Taiwan
Scientists do not believe the disease is contagious
The NIH has seen about 12 cases, all in people of Asian descent
(CNN) — Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a new disease among people in Asia that causes AIDS-like symptoms but is not associated with HIV.
The study, released in the New England Journal of Medicine Thursday, found patients with the disease were making antibodies that attacked their immune systems.
“We all make molecules and proteins in the body that tell our immune system how to function properly,” said Dr. Sarah Browne, a clinical investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH and the lead author on the study.
“They tell different immune cells when to turn on and when to start fighting infection,” she said. “We found a large number of the patients that we studied with serious opportunistic infections make an antibody that blocks the function of one of these molecules, which is interferon-gamma.”
Without functioning interferon-gamma, people become more susceptible to certain types of infections — infections people with working immune systems normally don’t get, she said.
The disease is being called an adult-onset immunodeficiency syndrome because it strikes adults. Cases date back to 2004, with most of them occurring in Thailand and Taiwan. The NIH has been studying the disease since 2005.
“It’s rare — more prevalent over in Southeast Asia,” Browne told CNN. “But we have been diagnosing it here in the U.S. in individuals of Asian descent.”
So far NIH has seen about 12 cases, all of them in people of Asian descent. According to Browne, most patients survive. There have been deaths in other countries, she said, but did not know how many. No one has died in the United States.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, says it’s important to note the disease is not contagious.
“It is not a virus, that’s the first thing. It’s not a new AIDS-like virus,” Fauci said. “It’s a syndrome that was noticed and discovered in Asia where people get opportunistic infections similar to HIV/AIDS, but the cause of the syndrome is not an infection like HIV.”
Fauci said researchers “found the people have an autoimmunity, where their bodies are making antibodies against a protein that’s important in fighting infection.
“The reason the body is making that antibody is unclear but it isn’t a virus like HIV that’s causing it,” he said. ” It’s autoimmune disease, and people get secondary infections similar to AIDS.”
The study was already in the early stages in 2009, when Kim Nguyen, a 62-year-old Vietnamese woman from Tennessee, came to NIH suffering from symptoms that would be linked to the mystery disease.
A little more than 200 people — almost exclusively from Thailand and Taiwan between the ages of 18 and 78 — were studied. All were HIV-negative.
“We want to understand what triggers people to make these antibodies in the first place,” Browne said. “And we want to use that information to guide treatment — because really, when you treat the infection you’re treating the symptom. You’re not treating the underlying cause.”
Right now, doctors are simply treating the infections. For many of the patients, that’s sufficient, Browne said, but for those cases where it’s not, they are trying to find ways to target the antibodies themselves by lowering the antibody levels and trying to reverse the immunodeficiency.
Both Fauci and Browne believe a combination of both genetic and environmental factors are most likely at play, but don’t yet know what those factors are.
“Overall it appears to be a chronic disease, but we have not yet studied it for a long enough period of time to know the long-term prognosis,” Browne said. “We don’t yet know what factors may distinguish those with mild versus those with severe disease.”
The Ebola virus has killed 10 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. As of Monday, WHO said, the deaths are among 13 probable and two confirmed Ebola cases reported in Orientale province in eastern Congo. The Congolese Ministry of Health has set up a task force to deal with the outbreak and is working with WHO, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twelve cases and eight deaths occurred in the area of Isiro, a town in Congo’s north, WHO said. The fatalities included three health care workers. One death each occurred in Congo’s Pawa and Dungu regions. Congo’s Orientale province borders western Uganda, where 24 probable and confirmed cases, including 16 deaths, have been reported since the beginning of July.But WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told CNN that there’s no connection between the outbreaks in Uganda and Congo. The viruses, he said, are two different Ebola strains. There are five strains of the virus, a highly infectious and often fatal agent spread through direct contact with bodily fluids And, Hartl said, it is extremely difficult to travel between Isiro, for example, and Kiballe, the western Ugandan district where an outbreak emerged last month. That’s because it is heavily forested with impassable roads, and the only viable way to travel is going 10 to 15 kilometers per hour via motorbike. So it is unlikely there would be contact between Ugandans and Congolese that would lead to infection. The natural habitat of the Ebola virus is in the central African forest belt region, Hartl said. It’s “either by chance” or from “more surveying” for the disease, he said, that “we see these two outbreaks concurrently.” Health agencies have embarked on an aggressive approach in Uganda to deal with the cases. WHO has asked countries bordering Uganda to “enhance surveillance” for the virus. The last confirmed case in Uganda was admitted to an isolation facility on August 4, WHO said.
Officials Find Another “Bubbles on the Bayou” Site in Louisiana Near Bayou Corne
The Assumption Parish Police Jury said it was discovered Monday between two previous sites in Grand Bayou.
A news release classified the bubbling as small and added it will be monitored daily.
A meeting is scheduled for Friday at St. Joseph the Worker Church Hall in Pierre Part at 6:30 p.m.
Tuesday is day four of drilling at the observation well near the giant South Louisiana sink hole in Assumption Parish. The company believed to be responsible for the sink hole, Texas Brine, brought members of the news media to examine what they hope will be a good piece of evidence as to what exactly happened at the sink hole 18 days ago.
The observation well is being used to show Louisiana DEQ officials exactly what happened to create the sink hole, or what they call a slurry.
Texas Brine is hooking its wagon to a 140-foot, 10-story drilling rig, and placed just 1,000 feet from the sink hole. The plan is for the well to drill to the salt dome believed to be responsible for the sink hole, and take observations of the dome. Those observations will be sent topside for analysis.
John Boudreaux is tired, he has worked 18 straight days at the staging area in Bayou Corne. Because the drilling will last at least another 40 days, he hopes things will be quiet.
“You have really two different events. You have the drilling, the observation event as they call it, but you have the sink hole and monitoring that and make sure that doesn’t expand or move any further,” said Boudreaux.
“We’ve got the casing, they are now drilling into the cap rock which covers the salt dome and I think once they get through that, things may move a little more rapidly,” said Sonny Cranch with Texas Brine.
Cap rock is being pulled out of the hold at 486 feet. It is pulverized by the drill bit before being sucked out of the ground. They are drilling 24 hours a day, seven days a week and Texas Brine is hoping they get some answers once the dome is pierced.
“All we want to know is what has happened,” said Cranch.
The drilling platform will be drilling for at least another 40 days. Texas Brine says 40 days is an optimistic goal.
Officials said the site of the slurry is still off limits and the cleanup remains halted.
The parish has requested Texas Brine provide a plan for continued cleanup.
Health officials have confirmed four people have contracted Murine typhus in Burbank. Two cases originated in the 700 block of Screenland Drive. Both of those men were treated at local hospitals and released. Murine typhus is also called endemic typhus and is transmitted by fleas. While rat fleas are the most common transmitters, cat fleas and mouse fleas can also transmit the Murine typhus virus.
Biohazard name:
Murine typhus
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
24.08.2012
HAZMAT
USA
State of Washington, Richland [Hanford Nuclear Reservation]
As part of the biggest, costliest environmental cleanup project in the nation’s history – disposing of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state – one thing was supposed to be sure: Waste stored in the sturdy, double-wall steel tanks that hold part of the toxic ooze wasn’t going anywhere. But that reassurance has been thrown into question with the discovery of a 3-foot-long piece of radioactive material between the inner and outer steel walls of one of the storage tanks, prompting new worries at the troubled cleanup site. “We’re taking it seriously, and we’re doing an investigation so we can better understand what it is,” Department of Energy spokeswoman Lori Gamache said. The discovery marks the first time material has been found outside the inner wall of one of the site’s 28 double-shell tanks, thought to be relatively secure interim storage for the radioactive material generated when Hanford was one of the nation’s major atomic production facilities. It opened in 1943 and began a gradual shutdown in 1964. Cleanup started in 1989. The $12.2-billion cleanup project eventually aims to turn most of the waste stored at Hanford into glass rods at a high-tech vitrification plant scheduled to be operational in 2019, assuming the formidable design and engineering hurdles can be overcome. In the meantime, plant engineers have been gathering waste stored in the facility’s 149 aging, leaky single-wall storage tanks and redepositing them in the double0-shell tanks for safekeeping. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons of waste has leaked out of 67 single-wall tanks into the surrounding soil.”There’s been this presumption that the double-shell tanks at least are sound and won’t fail, and they’ll be there for us,” said Tom Carpenter of the advocacy group Hanford Challenge. Several days ago the group obtained a memo from the cleanup site detailing discovery of the mysterious substance. “This changes everything. It is alarming that there is now solid evidence that Hanford double-shell has leaked,” Carpenter said in a separate statement on the discovery. The 42-year-old tank, known as AY-102, holds about 857,000 gallons of radioactive and other toxic chemical waste, much of it removed several years ago from a single-shell storage tank where it was considered unsafe. Workers who relocated the material fell ill simply from inhaling the fumes, Carpenter said. Department of Energy officials said none of the material has leaked outside the outer steel wall or the concrete casing that surrounds the structure, and there is no present hazard to workers or groundwater. They said they were trying to determine whether the material leaked from the inner tank or oozed from a nearby pit into the space between the two walls, known as the annulus. “There’s no evidence of it leaking the liquid from the inner shell right now,” Gamache said. The material – a mound 2 feet by 3 feet by 8 inches — is dry and doesn’t appear to be growing. It was discovered during a routine video inspection of the annulus conducted last month from a viewpoint not normally used. The possibility that it could have come as overflow from a nearby pit arises because a pipe runs into the annulus from the pit, Gamache said.But Carpenter, who has talked extensively with workers at Hanford and was briefed Tuesday by one of the Department of Energy’s senior officials at the tank farm, said he believed the evidence was strong that there was a leak. “I know Hanford would like it not to be so. But the people I’m talking to at the Hanford site say, no, it really does look like a leak,” he said. “From what I’m being told and looking at the pictures, it appears it’s coming from under the tank and going up. Which is a far cry from it coming from the pit.” Gamache said an initial sample of the material revealed that “the contamination levels were higher than expected” and it definitely contained radioactive waste. “There wasn’t enough material to fully characterize the material, so we’re preparing to pull another sample. That will probably happen around the mid-September time frame,” she said. Carpenter said that if the inner tank leaked, it would probably prompt the need to reevaluate expectations that the tanks could safely act as interim storage vessels for several decades.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
The Hunger Site – Your click helps to feed the hungry
Wheatgrass Kits.com
FAIR USE NOTICE
The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of scientific, environmental, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal or technical advice.
Any materials (ie. graphics, articles , commentary) that are original to this blog are copyrighted and signed by it's creator. Said original material may be shared with attribution. Please respect the work that goes into these items and give the creator his/her credit. Just as we share articles , graphics and photos always giving credit to their creators when available. Credit and a link back to the original source is required.
If you have an issue with anything posted here or would prefer we not use it . Please contact me. Any items that are requested to be removed by the copyright owner will be removed immediately. No threats needed or lawsuit required. If there is a problem and you do not wish your work to be showcased then we will happily find an alternative from the many sources readily available from creators who would find it amenable to having their work presented to the subscribers of this feed.
Thank you for your time and attention, blessings to all :)
![Heavy flooding reaches Prague [VIDEO]](https://i0.wp.com/www.praguepost.com/pictures/1-20130529-16402-12403-pic.jpg "Heavy flooding reaches Prague [VIDEO]")
Smoke and ash billow from North Maluku’s Gamalama on Sunday. (Antara Photo/Rosa Panggabean)
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GettyImages
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, John Locher
MessageToEagle.com – ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile presents a beautiful Herschel’s Ray commnonly known as the Pencil Nebula – a part of the Vela Supernova Remnant.
The United Nations health agency today reported that the cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone was escalating and stressed the need to rapidly scale up the response to the spread of the of the frequently fatal water and food-borne disease.
Family Survival Protocol - Microcosm News 