Report: "

The distinctive, planet-encircling flows of the Southern Ocean have played a role in moderating global warming, but change is at hand with the water heating up, getting less salty, storing more carbon, and growing more acidic. These changes could lead to rises in sea levels, changing weather patterns, and the inability of marine life to form shells, skeletons, and reefs. These are some of the findings of Position Analysis: Climate Change and the Southern Ocean, a report released today by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC)."

China Drought Threatens Global Wheat Supply

Expect the price of your noodles to rise. Bad news for consumers, good news for American and Canadian wheat producers. With both Russia and China experiencing environmental problems resulting in detrimental wheat production, expect China to import a huge amount of wheat from North America, which is good news for American and Canadian farmers.

Soaring prices of sugar, grain and oilseed drove world food prices to a record in December, surpassing the levels of 2008 when the cost of food sparked riots around the world, and prompting warnings of prices being in "danger territory".

Soaring cotton prices threaten to put further pressure on inflation amid a chorus of warnings over the likely impact on price tags.

Devastating floods in Pakistan - one of the world's largest producers - and fears over this year's crop in China have sent cotton prices surging to 15-year highs in recent weeks.

The News of the World paid a private detective to provide hundreds of pieces of confidential information, often using illegal means, a confidential document obtained by The Independent on Sunday has revealed.

The "Blue Book", a ledger of work carried out by Steve Whittamore for News International titles, including the NoW and The Sunday Times, details a series of transactions including obtaining ex-directory phone numbers, telephone accounts, criminal records checks and withheld mobile numbers. It reveals the itemised details of checks on public figures, including Peter Mandelson, ordered and paid for – at up to £750 a time – by reporters working for the redtop. Staff from a number of other national newspapers made similar requests, and their details are contained in further dossiers held by the Information Commissioner, the privacy watchdog.

New York - Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake, an estimated 1.3 million Haitians are still living in temporary shelters while the country struggles with reconstruction and rebuilding a government, the United Nations said Thursday in an updated report.

The 1.3 million people displaced by the magnitude-7 earthquake on January 12 now live in 1,300 settlement sites.

"The situation in the camps remains complex, given a shifting population and fluctuating use of camps," the report said. It said most of the 600,000 residents who left the capital Port-au-Prince after the quake have returned.

WASHINGTON – Outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward has refused a request by U.S. senators to testify next month about BP's role in the release of the man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

In a letter this week signed by Hayward and obtained by The Associated Press, Hayward told Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that he is focused on ensuring a "smooth and successful leadership change" at the company and will be unable to testify. The committee is looking into whether the British-based oil company had sought Abdel Baset al-Megrahi's release to help get a $900 million exploration agreement with Libya off the ground.

BP has been forced to abandon hopes of drilling in the Arctic, currently the centre of a new oil rush, owing to its tarnished reputation after the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The company confirmed tonight that it was no longer trying to win an exploration licence in Greenland, despite earlier reports of its interest. "We are not participating in the bid round," said a spokesman at BP's London headquarters, who declined to discuss its reasons for the reverse.

In 2003 Putin amazed scientists when he speculated that a global warming by "two or three degrees" could be a good thing for Russia as its people would no longer need fur coats and its agricultural production could rise.

A German female scientist working at the station however showed no fear in making her opinion clear to the Russian strongman.

"The burning of various kinds of fuel has a far greater effect on climate than these methane emissions," said Inken Preuss quoted by Russian news agencies.

"Climate change has never happened like now and mankind is making a large impact," she added.

A group of intellectuals and politicians has called on France to repay 17bn euros (£14bn) "extorted" from Haiti in the 19th Century.

The money, they say, would help impoverished Haiti rebuild after January's devastating earthquake, which killed more than 250,000 people.

In 1825 France demanded 150m gold francs in compensation after Haiti gained independence in a slave revolt.

Campaigners say that demand was illegitimate and illegal.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly the North-West Frontier Province, which is already ravaged by terrorism, has experienced the worst flooding. Roads and communications systems there have been badly damaged and bridges have washed away. Floods have also affected parts of Punjab Province.

"This is the worst ever flood in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, said Saturday. He put the death toll at 800, but aid workers said it was too early to know the final toll of deaths and property damage.

Stormy weather grounded helicopters carrying emergency supplies to Pakistan's flood-ravaged northwest Friday as the worst monsoon rains in decades brought more destruction to a nation already reeling from Islamist militant violence.

U.S. military personnel waiting to fly Chinooks to stranded communities in the upper reaches of the hard-hit Swat Valley were frustrated by the storms, which dumped more rain on a region where many thousands are living in tents or crammed into public buildings.

Over the last week, floods have spread from the northwest down Pakistan, killing around 1,500 people and affecting more than 4 million. Much of the destruction has come from the mighty Indus River, which in better times irrigates vast swaths of farmland.

Some 30,000 Pakistani soldiers are rebuilding bridges, delivering food and setting up relief camps in the northwest, which is the main battleground in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban. Foreign countries and the United Nations have donated millions of dollars.

Also helping out are Islamist charities, including the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, which Western officials believe is linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Foundation head Hafiz Abdur Rauf said the assistance of the U.S. Army was welcome.

"This is a difficult situation for us. Every helping hand and donation is welcome," he said, adding that his group is running 12 medical facilities and providing cooked food for 100,000 people every day. The foundation helped out after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake under a different name.

The government has come under criticism for not doing enough, especially since President Asif Ali Zardari chose to go ahead with a trip to Europe at the height of the crisis.

In the Sukkur area of Sindh in southern Pakistan, 70 villages had been flooded over the last 24 hours, the navy said.

"Floods killed our people, they have ruined our homes and even washed away the graves of our loved ones. Yet we are here without help from the government," said Mai Sahat, a 35-year-old women looking over a flooded landscape where her village used to be.

Saleh Farooqi, head of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority in Sindh, said authorities had evacuated about 200,000 people from areas where floodwaters could hit, but many more were still living in the danger zone.

"About 500,000 people living near the Indus River do not realize the gravity of the situation, and they do not know how fast the water is rushing to their areas," he said.

All helicopters currently stationed in the northwest were grounded because of poor weather, said Amal Masud, a spokeswoman for the National Disaster Management Authority.

About 85 U.S. military personnel are taking part in the relief activities along with six helicopters that were flown over from Afghanistan, where some 100,000 American troops are based battling the Taliban.

Specialist Joseph James usually flies Chinooks on combat missions in Afghanistan and was happy with his new mission.

"It just feels nicer helping people," he said at a Pakistani air base in Ghazi where biscuits and water were being loaded into choppers. "The first time we got up there, everybody was shaking our hand," said the 22-year-old from Union Star, Missouri.

The United States is unpopular in Pakistan, and Washington is hoping the relief missions will help improve its image.

The U.S. military carried out larger operations in the aftermath of the Kashmir quake, as it did in predominantly Muslim Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami. Those missions were credited with boosting Washington's reputation there.

___

Toosi contributed to this report from Ghazi.

The city of Moscow was shrouded Friday by a dense smog that grounded flights at international airports and seeped into homes and offices, as wildfires that have killed 50 people nationwide continued to burn.

The fires have torn through forests and villages over the last two weeks with lightning speed, also decimating a military base and threatening an animal shelter with hundreds of inhabitants.

On Friday, visibility in parts of the capital was down to a few dozen yards (meters) due to the smog caused by the fires, which carries a strong burning smell and causes coughing. Airborne pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, were four times higher than average readings — the worst seen to date in the Russian capital.

Dozens of forest and peat bog fires around the city are fanned by southeasterly winds and exacerbated by the country's most intense heat wave in 130 years of record-keeping.

More than 500 separate blazes were active nationwide Friday, mainly across Russia's European territory, according to the Emergencies Ministry.

Yelena Galanova, a spokeswoman for Domodedovo Airport, said 15 flights were diverted to other airports overnight, significantly delaying outgoing flights on the same planes.

Visibility on the runway was down to 400 meters, less than half the average, and air traffic controllers were offering all incoming flights an option to divert to other nearby airports, she said.

Up to 2,000 homes have been destroyed in the blazes. Officials have suggested the 10,000 firefighters battling them aren't enough. The forecast for the week ahead, with temperatures approaching 38 C (100 F), shows little change in the capital and surrounding regions, where the average summer temperature is around 23 (75).

Officials are also scrambling to minimize any further damage, evacuating explosives from other military facilities and sending planes, helicopters and even robots to help control blazes around the country's top nuclear research facility in Sarov, 300 miles (480 kilometers) east of Moscow.

An obscure blog has kick-started a massive fundraising campaign that resulted in donations of almost £50,000 for international disaster relief charity, ShelterBox.

Never mind the mule is blind, just load the wagon.

Craig's Little Campfire

When we all began to set-up our our own little campfires on the world wide campground. I stumbled on Craig Crawford's little blaze . It was an amazing little salon, with a marshmallow toasting on a coat hanger feel. Something about Young Crawford , he has a pretty interesting set of friends. It was a treat to visit the clearing and see what was cooking on the fire.

Some times the flames roared-up, and caught a sleeping bag or two on fire. But Craig , has managed over the years to control the flames, and not set the woods on fire. No mean feat when one considers that the campground he chose is in Washington D.C., home to a lot of dead wood.

Craig has talked about from time to time about moving the campground back home to Florida, and starting a fish camp. This was mostly when he was confronted by just how much dead wood there is in Washington. And I joked about what to do when fish heads were left everywhere, around the campfire, instead of empty bags of marshmallows & bent coat hangers.

The TM Fish Camp

Over the years, at our little fire, we watched the world, and informed each other about things of day , music, books, history, life/death, jokes, ( Lot's of jokes ), big events, and the small events as well. These discussions are real treat for me, and have been of great value to my life. When the Great Haiti Earth Quake struck. We were all discussing what we could do to help, and I began poking around looking for something that would let us all not feel so helpless in the face of such great tragedy. I came across ShelterBox, and because one of the things I learned at Craig's campfire was how to build campfires of on my own, I set - up The TM Fish Camp, as a place where we could band together to help the people of Haiti. At first, all we were hoping for was to chip - in , and buy a few of these ShelterBoxes. Our plan was to follow these messages of shelter to where they will end-up in Haiti. Little push pins on a map , and see if we could learn the stories behind where they landed.

But then , a funny thing happened , some of those interesting friend's of Craigs began to help us as well. It began as a shout-out from Keith Olbermann on Tuesday night 2 weeks ago. Then the next morning Craig appeared on Don Imus's show, and in the following days, we went from giving shelter to 30 people, ...... to giving shelter to 950 people. Our campground of just a few souls, exploded into a village of hundreds. Mixed in among all these gifts , are the contributions of Imus & Olbermann , one of the things we love at Crawford's campfire is irony.

As of this morning, we have raised nearly $75,000.00, and we are working on buying our 96th ShelterBox. That's over 950 people, and that's a village.

Join The TM Fish Camp here.

Our Donation Page

Colorado Bob

Drought-stricken Australia has been shocked by the killing of a pensioner in an argument over suburban water restrictions as he hosed his lawn.

A 36-year-old man, Todd Munter of the south Sydney suburb of Sylvania, appeared in court Thursday on a charge of murdering Kenneth Proctor, 66, who lived in the same suburb.

Australia is locked in a drought of drastic proportions. In recent years, rivers have reached record lows. Temperatures have spiked to record highs. Cities are running out of water. Wildfires are burning. Ecosystems are suffering. And climate models are projecting more of the same—and worse—for many years to come.

At least 30 people have died and 100 been injured in flooding in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials have said.

Heavy rain caused waterways to burst their banks, washing away roads and bridges and knocking down power lines.

However, production fell by 4.0 percent to 3.137 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the third quarter ... (Shell)

BP's production had also fallen by 4.0 percent, to 3.65 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Green campaigners, scientists and big business Wednesday hammered out plans to slash France's greenhouse gas emissions at a round-table aimed at launching an environmental revolution in Europe's third-biggest economy.

President Nicolas Sarkozy was to conclude the two-day government summit on Thursday, outlining a raft of green measures in the presence of Nobel Peace Prize winning climate crusaders, former US vice president Al Gore and Kenyan green advocate Wangari Maathai.

The world has a narrow window of opportunity to save coral reefs from the destruction caused by extreme climate change, according to a unanimous statement issued today by leading Australian scientists. The call for action is the outcome of a National Forum on Coral Reef Futures, held at the Australian Academy of Sciences, in Canberra.

Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday that he would accept targets for cutting Australia's greenhouse gases thrashed out in a global deal that would follow the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Speaking in a televised debate with opposition Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, Howard also said that he would urge US President George W Bush to join him in accepting that firm national targets were necessary to curb climate change.

Australia and the US are the only developed countries not to have signed the 1997 protocol that commits 35 industrialized countries to meeting greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets.

There's a reason Europeans call them water closets. From our toilets to our tubs, roughly 60 percent of a home's water consumption takes place in the bathroom, according to the California Urban Water Conservation Council. After this past summer's droughts and floods, which wreaked havoc on water quality making it either unavailable or unuseable, any renovations or improvements you make in your bathroom should be done with an eye on the aquatic, especially in older homes. Past manipulations to your existing fixtures may be luring you into a false sense of security about how much water you're actually using.

Stocks of North Sea cod have slightly increased but quotas should remain in place for 2008, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) said Friday. The independent scientific body monitors fish stocks in the North Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic Sea issued its latest projections of cod and other fish species on Friday.

Farmers are making up to 1000 calls daily to the hotline seeking information on assistance such as income support, interest subsidies, planning grants and counselling.

With many areas of Australia's agricultural land in the grip of its worst drought on record, National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher said interest in farm exit grants and other schemes was not surprising.

This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument, shows the breaking away of a giant iceberg from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Spanning 34 km in length by 20 km in width, the new iceberg covers an area nearly half the size of Greater London.

Intense rainfall added to the damage from other heavy rain in recent months, causing an estimated 80 million dollars in damage in Costa Rica, National Emergency Commission boss Daniel Gallardo said Wednesday.

Rising floodwaters in central Vietnam have killed six people and forced thousands to flee, following floods that killed more than 80 earlier this month, officials said Wednesday. "We haven't forgotten the severe human loss from the previous floods so more than 20,000 people from flood-prone areas have been evacuated to higher ground," said Van Phu Chinh with the central region's Flood and Storm Department.

It's not the Holy Grail, but for fans of "The Da Vinci Code'' and its tantalizing story line about the Knights Templar, it could be the next best thing.

Ignored for centuries and found in the Vatican secret archives in 2001, a parchment about the early 14th-century heresy trial of the ancient Christian order is the basis of a limited edition volume being published with an euro5,900 (US$8,375) pricetag.

After little or no rain in September, almost 80 percent of New South Wales state is now in a state of drought, compared with 71 percent last month.

Al Gore may have just won the Nobel Peace Prize, but some of his ideas are under fire in the British court system. Showing schoolchildren Al Gore's award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth is a political act, a High Court British judge has said, ruling on a challenge by a parent to remove the film from secondary schools. Although it does not ban the film, the decision requires that the film be shown with guidance notes to comply with laws prohibiting "partisan" material in the school curriculum.

At least four million people are to be moved from the area around China's Three Gorges Dam amid warnings of an "environmental catastrophe".

The announcement by state media follows reports that the dam could cause landslides, soil erosion and pollution.

Critics have long warned the dam, the world's largest hydro-electric project, could cause huge environmental damage.

In eight weeks the quiet narrow road that hugs Nongdao's sugarcane fields on the way to the ancient jungles of Myanmar will be overrun with Chinese trucks loaded down with illegal timber.

The large wheezing diesels will dump their logs in this southwestern border sawmill town where it will be processed, then shipped to Chinese furniture makers on the seaboard before being exported for Western consumption.

"We estimate that there are ten million people affected by floods in July, and 10 million by the most recent floods," said Winnie Romeril, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"A lot of people were displaced twice," she told AFP.

Weathermen in Taiwan on Thursday urged ships and residents to take precautions against Typhoon Krosa which is gaining momentum and heading towards the island.

"Typhoon Krosa is gaining strength and expanding its radius while approaching Taiwan," the official Central Weather Bureau said in its first warning of the typhoon at 5:30 pm (0930 GMT.)

Vietnam began evacuating 200,000 people along its central coast on Wednesday and put troops on standby as typhoon Lekima surged toward the Southeast Asian country, officials said.

The typhoon was expected to make landfall late Wednesday, possibly packing maximum sustained winds of 117 kilometres (72 miles) an hour, Vietnamese weather forecasters said.

Large swathes of woodland have been destroyed in fires that swept through several regions of Lebanon, leaving one woman dead and dozens injured, officials said on Wednesday.

More than 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of forest were lost, much of it without any possibility of regeneration, the officials said.

The global insurance industry faces substantial risks from climate change due to the increased incidence of cyclones, floods, drought and bushfires, a major European reinsurer told the Greenhouse 2007 conference.

NASA scientists said the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover has diminished 23 percent during the past two winters.

That drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is believed the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and the subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic ice coverage.

More than 100 girls' schools were closed down in north-west Pakistan Monday following the murder of a female teacher by suspected pro-Taliban militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, media reports said. The teacher was shot dead Saturday in the Mohmand Agency in what appeared to be the fulfilment of threats of reprisals by Islamic extremists if teachers did not start wearing burka head-to-toe veils, the Dawn news channel reported.

At least 88 people have died in rain-related accidents in eastern India since the start of September with tens of thousands stranded in state-run relief camps, officials said.

Rain-related accidents in the state of West Bengal have claimed 48 lives there in recent days, a minister told AFP.

Parts of a temple dating to the reign of pharaoh Ramses II have been discovered inside a mosque in Luxor, Egypt, officials report (see map).

Experts restoring the historic mosque uncovered sections of columns, capitals, and elaborately inscribed reliefs from one of the ancient temple's courtyards built around 1250 B.C.

Tropical storm Hanna was poised to hit the northern Philippines Saturday, bringing heavy rain and raising fears of mudslides, government agencies warned.

At 4:00 am Saturday, (2000 GMT Friday), Hanna was located 70 kilometres (43.7 miles) east of the northeastern province of Aurora, moving west at 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) per hour towards the northern half of the main island of Luzon, the government weather station said.

Wheat prices soared to a record on futures markets Thursday, propelled by tight world supplies and strong demand. Relief could be awhile in coming.

Wheat for December delivery closed at $9.33 a bushel in Chicago, more than double the price from a year ago. Drought in Australia and poor crops in other nations helped drive U.S. and world supplies to the lowest levels in decades. U.S. wheat stocks are pegged at 362 million bushels in 2007-08, the tightest since 1973-74.

"The wheat-production problems are exceptional. You don't usually have bad weather in as many different places around the world," says Edward Allen, agricultural economist at the USDA's Economic Research Service.

Major wheat producers Russia and the Ukraine face export restrictions. In Italy, consumer groups staged a mini-boycott of bread and pasta to protest prices.

If you are to go in search of the big dry that has ransacked the dreams of country folk to the point that — according to Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile — a farmer is now committing suicide once every four days and the Federal Government is offering $150,000 to families wishing to walk off their properties, the land around Deniliquin is its physical essence.

The $150,000 "enhanced exit assistance" has become the most notable — and debated — feature of the Government's announcement this week of an extra $714 million in funds for the dry bush. This brings Australia's drought rescue effort to an astounding $3.5 billion since 2001. Farmers' groups have cautiously welcomed the exit initiative while pointing out, as the National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher put it, "we don't see a vacant landscape as the answer".

It is hardly a new device, and many agricultural industry advisers believe that most of the truly uneconomic, inefficient farmers have already gone, and most of the useless farming land has been abandoned.

The head of the national climate centre at the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr Michael Coughlan, points out that for a huge swathe of Australian farmland the long-term outlook is only likely to worsen with climate change. "What we will be seeing is higher frequency of low rainfall and that, to me, suggests a greater area of aridity, not a droughty area," Coughlan said. "We will see more rainfall in the north of Australia but a drying of the southern half."

In other words, much of the farmland that is now considered to be drought-affected may need to be reclassified as arid. What appears today to be a cyclical problem of drought will increasingly become a structural one.

At least 69 people have died in rain-related accidents in eastern India since the start of September with tens of thousands stranded in state-run relief camps, officials said on Friday.

The situation in eastern Orissa state was grim with 40 dead, Manmohan Samal, minister for revenue and disaster management in the state, told AFP.

Further north in neighbouring West Bengal, heavy rains and related accidents claimed 29 lives with more than 200,000 homes destroyed, officials said.

An infant mountain gorilla found slain in Congo was buried Wednesday, the latest victim of violence that threatens a species whose numbers are critically low.

Park rangers in Congo found the dead infant after a raid on a suspected ring of gorilla traffickers in which authorities detained two people.

A government statement said 23,000 of Australia's 140,000 farmers were already receiving assistance for the drought, which gripped 70 percent of Australia's farmland. The government expected about 100,000 farmers could apply for help under the latest package.

Australia is the driest continent after Antarctica and all major cities face drinking water restrictions due to the extended drought and changing patterns of rain fall.

Flooding across a swathe of Africa now affects 22 countries, including Ethiopia, Niger and Sudan where the situation has worsened in recent days, the United Nations said Monday.

More than 800,000 people are now affected by torrential rains in those three countries alone, compared to around 700,000 recorded last week, according to data from the UN humanitarian coordination office.

Australia's drought could cut the 2008 wine grape vintage by more than half, industry groups said on Monday, cutting into a A$3 billion ($2.6 billion) a year export business and possibly forcing hundreds of winemakers out of business.

The 2008 vintage is likely to fall to between 800,000 tones and 1.3 million tones, compared with a normal seasonal crop of about 1.9 million tones, according to Wine Grape Growers and Winemakers' Federation of Australia.

"Some growers will not be able to recover, and some vineyards will be lost as a result of the drought," said Mark McKenzie, executive director of another industry group, Wine Grape Growers' Australia.

An environmental catastrophe is threatening central Turkey, once the country's breadbasket, where farmers are depleting the water table after the hottest summer in living memory.

A shepherd since his childhood, 60-year-old Kamil Gurel reckoned he knew the terrain on the southern edge of Turkey's vast Konya plain as well as anyone. Until one moonless night recently, when walking his flocks back home, he fell at least 40 metres down a sink-hole that hadn't been there the week before.

Several tornadoes hit central England on Monday, tearing roof tiles down and ripping branches from trees.

Australia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years, decimating its agricultural industry. The nation's agricultural bureau has slashed its forecast for this year's winter harvest by over 30 percent. Farmers and consumers worldwide will face financial headaches.

According to the Australian, the nation is experiencing the worst succession of droughts since the 1940s, leaving farmers very worried about the future.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics announced on Tuesday that the cereal crop harvest beginning in October was estimated to be 25.6 million metric tons, down from the June forecast of 37 million. It also forecasted that the wheat crop would be 15.5 million metric tons instead of the 22.5 million predicted earlier. Both these figures depend on Australia receiving normal rain over the next few weeks.

Oil prices powered to new record highs on global markets Thursday, as concerns about squeezed supplies were heightened by a storm threatening Gulf of Mexico installations.

New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in October, jumped 1.39 dollars to close at 83.32 dollars a barrel. The contract expired at the close.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for November delivery added 62 cents to settle at 79.09 dollars a barrel, after earlier hitting an all-time high of 79.28 dollars.

Four people died and four were still missing Wednesday, the day after the heaviest rains in 30 years hit Slovenia's northwest, causing flooding and mudslides, state radio said.

A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures – the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which will expose millions to drought, hunger and flooding – is now "very unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate scientists said yesterday.

The latest study from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the inevitability of drastic global warming in the starkest terms yet, stating that major impacts on parts of the world – in particular Africa, Asian river deltas, low-lying islands and the Arctic – are unavoidable and the focus must be on adapting life to survive the most devastating changes.

For more than a decade, EU countries led by Britain have set a rise of two degrees centigrade or less in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels as the benchmark after which the effects of climate become devastating, with crop failures, water shortages, sea-level rises, species extinctions and increased disease.

Severe flooding across east, central and west Africa has destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, killing at least 250 people, and washing away much of the continent's most fertile farmland. More rain is expected and aid agencies are warning that the need for food, shelter and medicine in the affected regions is urgent.

By last night at least 15 countries across Africa were thought to be affected by the flooding, from Senegal in the west to Kenya in the east. West Africa has suffered most with deaths recorded in Burkina Faso, Togo, Mali and Niger.

Australia's drought is ``getting worse'' and ``deepening,'' according to federal Transport Minister Mark Vaile, leader of the rural-based Nationals Party.

Farmers across the nation are ``suffering badly,'' Vaile told reporters in Canberra today.

PRESENT WIND DISTRIBUTION:
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS - 130 KT, GUSTS 160 KT.

Earlier this girl was blowing 256 kmph, that's 157 mph. A Cat 5 tropical cyclone. The 5th - Cat 5 cyclone this year, and the 13th Intense Tropical Cyclone of 2007.

* Cyclone Dora: Category 4

* Cyclone Favio: Category 4

* Cyclone Indlala: Category 4

* Cyclone Gonu: Category 5

* Typhoon Yutu: Category 4

* Super Typhoon Man-Yi: Category 4

* Typhoon Usagi: Category 4

* Super Typhoon Sepat: Category 5

* Hurricane Flossie: Category 4

* Hurricane Dean: Category 5

* Hurricane Felix: Category 5

* Typhoon Nari: Category 4

This thing is forecast to cross North Korea, this storm is the last thing those poor people need, after the massive flooding earlier this year.

People in northern Taiwan were Monday told to brace themselves for downpours and strong winds as Typhoon Wipha approaches.

Wipha, a woman's name in Thai, was located 520 kilometres (322 miles) off Ilan along Taiwan's northeastern coast at 4:00pm (0800 GMT) Monday.

The death toll rose to nine Monday after a powerful typhoon lashed the country's south, flooding hundreds of homes, roads and farmland, anti-disaster officials said Monday.

The National Emergency Management Agency also reported five missing after the torrential rain and gusts Typhoon Nari brought on Sunday. Some 740 people were left homeless in flooding.

Nearly ten million Greeks were to vote Sunday for a new government in general elections held in the aftermath of a national fire tragedy which cast a pall on the entire campaign.

After one of the briefest electoral races in decades, pollsters expected a neck-and-neck run between the ruling conservative New Democracy party and the opposition Pasok socialists.

For although the ND party led by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis carried a slim lead into Sunday's decider, an unusually high number of undecided voters and general alienation over the fires that killed over 60 people makes this election impossible to call.

The 20,623 polling stations were scheduled to open across the country from 0400 to 1600 GMT. Exit polls are expected to be released after 16H00 GMT. Result projections are expected around 1930 GMT.

Nearly 13.5 million people have been marooned or displaced by floods in India and Bangladesh, officials said on Saturday.

The flooding in South Asia caused by the June-to-September monsoon has been described as the worst in decades, with more than 2,200 people killed by floods and rains in India since it started.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, the number of people killed by flooding topped 1,000 on Saturday, the government said.

IT'S called agflation and it's coming very soon, propelled by climate change and drought.

Grain prices have hit record levels, and those prices will ramify through the feed chain - beef, dairy, pork, eggs and chicken -- and reach consumers.

The nation's food bowl, the Murray-Darling basin, does not have enough water in the system to keep 150,000ha of citrus, apples, pears, apricots, plums, cherries, table grapes and winegrapes alive, let alone in production.

Fruit production in the basin is worth more than $1.5 billion and accounts for 60 per cent of Australian-grown fruit.

Australian Horticulture Council chief executive Kris Newton says the severe cutback in irrigation water could result in price rises, as seen with bananas after Cyclone Larry.

"But that will be across all the commodities," Ms Newton said.

"We are facing a disaster unprecedented in Australian history. I can't think of anything in agriculture that comes even close."

THE next two weeks will determine if hundreds of farmers will be forced off their land and food prices soar as major crop-growing regions, still gripped by drought, wait for the long-promised rain.

This Tuesday the Federal Government's agricultural forecasting body, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), will release its updated outlook for the sector. It will confirm the situation has deteriorated rapidly since its upbeat appraisal in June.

"Conditions have certainly changed," ABARE's commodities manager, Vince O'Donnell, told The Sunday Age. "There are quite a few areas that have been observed at the moment that are drying out fairly rapidly."

A powerful typhoon packing winds of up to 250 kilometres (155 miles) per hour was churning off Japan's southern islands in the East China Sea on Saturday.

Typhoon Nari was located 350 kilometres northwest of Amami-Oshima island at 5:40 pm (0840 GMT) and moving north at 20 kilometres per hour, the meteorological agency said.

Several of Africa's poorest countries are in dire need of assistance due to severe floods that have killed more than 200 people and affected a million in recent weeks, officials warned Friday.

The latest victims were reported in Rwanda, where officials from the northern region said floods killed 15 people and destroyed more than 500 homes since Wednesday.

In Sudan, the worst floods in living memory have left 64 people dead and displaced and affected several hundred thousand, mainly in the troubled south, according to the United Nations.

A cholera epidemic spread by floods has also killed at least 49 Sudanese in recent weeks, according to the World Health Organisation.

Wheat prices in Chicago have more doubled to a record in the past year as weather damaged crops from Canada to Australia and demand increased from Egypt to India. A decision by India to hold back from buying more wheat may help curb gains in prices. India bought 1.3 million tons of wheat in the past two months.

Wheat surpassed $9 a bushel for the first time as a drought in Australia and Canada cut production, pushing global stockpiles toward a 26-year low.

A strong typhoon closed in on Tokyo Thursday, bringing downpours and gusts that injured five people and disrupted hundreds of flights, officials and reports said.

Japan went on alert for landslides and floods as it braced for Typhoon Fitow, which is expected to hit the capital and its vicinity by early Friday.

Typhoon Fitow, packing winds of up to 126 kilometres (78 miles) an hour near its centre, was in the Pacific and some 200 kilometres southwest of Tokyo Thursday evening, the meteorological agency said.

Two people have died and another is missing following severe floods that have hit eastern Romania in the last 24 hours, Interior Minister Cristian David said Thursday.

One person was killed in Galati county and another in Vrancea county, where police were still looking for a woman who went missing Wednesday evening, David added.

The town of Tecuci was the worst hit by the flooding. The Realitatea TV station showed residents seeking refuge on their roofs as the town was submerged by water.

Australia may never fully recover from the current decade-long drought due to climate change, experts have warned.

The nation was facing a "new reality" of harsh water restrictions and a new climate with run-offs and river inflows the first casualty, speakers at Thursday's Bureau of Meteorology national post-winter update said.

It was also revealed that although above-average rain fell along Australia's east coast in June-July, August rainfall in the south-east had been "terrible".

The torrential rains and flash flooding that have ravaged much of the country since midsummer killed 119 people and forced tens of thousands from their homes, officials said Wednesday.

As the rainy season comes to an end, the government appealed to the international community for help in addressing the estimated $150 million cost of aiding the homeless.

"Since the beginning of July 2007, torrential rains and overflowing rivers have been causing the worst floods and flash floods in the living memory of Sudan," the government said in a statement issued by its embassy in Kenya.

In addition, the government estimated that 36,000 livestock and 104,000 acres of crops destroyed by the massive flooding in the east, south and center of the country.

Water containing small amounts of radioactive contamination has leaked from the Ohi nuclear power plant on a Japanese island, Kansai Electrical Power said Tuesday.

The company, owner of the plant and the second largest power producer in Japan, announced that 3.4 tonnes of radioactive water had leaked from the 1,175 megawatt generating unit No. 1 of the power plant Monday evening.

Hurricane Dean, which slammed into Mexico last month killing around 30 people, caused one to two billion dollars (735 million-1.5 billion euros) in total insured damage, German reinsurance giant Munich Re said on Wednesday.

Highly endangered mountain gorillas in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo faced fresh dangers Monday after renegade troops overran their habitat, forcing rangers to flee, conservationists warned.

Forces loyal to cashiered general Laurent Nkunda, a powerful local leader, attacked Jomba and Bikenge patrol posts in Virunga National Park, Wildlife Direct said in a statement.

It seems that the people who actually are observing nature are getting concerned, because "Climatic Tsunami" isn't my phrase.
That phrase came from Professor Stephen J Pyne, at Arizona State University. Now that's some strong language for the professor . One from Arizona State no less, one of the leading places in the world for the study of trees and forests. They pioneered dendrology, and have one of the best tree ring collections in the world. Professor Pyne was featured in a story that CP33 found.

From that find :

Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes.

If you think the fires we just saw in Greece were a freak, think again. Consider 2003, just 4 years ago.
In the Siberia :

In the spring and summer of 2003, Siberian forest fires consumed 46.7 million acres, or nearly 73,000 square miles -- an area slightly larger than the state of Washington. That was more than twice the annual average from 1996 until 2003. The fires burned most intensely during May and June, and the smoke plume was tracked by satellites and detected during a research flight off the Washington coast on June 2

Or the fires in 1998 in Indonesia :

The 1998 El Niño, for example, helped encourage fires across Borneo which emitted up to 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, equivalent to Europe's entire carbon emissions that year.

Or this from the United States just last year :

AMARILLO, Texas, March 15, 2006 (ENS) - Firefighters are battling the largest complex of fires in Texas history. Eleven people have lost their lives and 10,000 head of cattle have been killed in the grass fires that have spread since Sunday across 850,000 acres, or about 1,328 square miles of the Texas Panhandle.

Walls of flames , fueled at times by 55 mile an hour winds , literally burned livestock where they stood in some places, ranchers report. The flames came so quickly the cattle were not able to run from them.

In 9 days Greece lost over 700 square miles on top of the already scorched earth from the rest of the summer's fires. 65 dead and 4,000 homeless. Many of whom are old, and will have a hard time with a small plot of ashes to rebuild on.

Kevin O'Loughlin, the head of Melbourne's Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre added: "They cannot be controlled by any suppression resources that we have available anywhere in the world."

Fires of unprecedented ferocity are sweeping around the world, fuelled by global warming and misguided environmentalism.

Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes.

The United Nations says recent flooding in West Africa has affected more than 130,000 people.

A statement from the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the worst-affected countries are Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. Gambia, Senegal, Liberia and Niger are also feeling the effects of torrential rains that began in July.

Economic growth in Pacific rim countries will increase emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by 130 percent by 2050, a new Australian study predicted Sunday.

But cleaner and more advanced technologies would slash the pollution scientists say could lead to increasingly wild weather and environmental disaster, the government's Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics said.

The study was presented by Prime Minister John Howard at a news conference to coincide with a week of meetings leading up to a summit of the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

It is based on a projection that APEC economies will grow by an average of 3.0 percent a year, with a resulting increase in energy consumption of around 140 percent.

Fitow formed so far east of Iwo Jima, now called Iwo To. I haven't looked at it for awhile .... The forecast now is for it to go just to the left of Tokyo Bay, which will push the ocean up Tokyo Bay. Looking at Thursday landfall with 100 m.p.h. winds.

It's shape has really filled in, very symmetrical in the satellite shot now. Last Wednesday's satellite shot :

Click Here

Joint Typhoon Warning Center Here

Firefighters in southern Greece were battling Saturday to contain the remains of an inferno that has killed more than 60 people, with temperatures forecast to rise again after a recent brief respite.

Five large fires were still burning in the Peloponnese peninsula to the south of Athens and the island of Evia east of the capital, but inhabited areas were not in threat, a fire department spokesman said.

"The fires are burning over an enormous area which firemen cannot easily access on foot, it would require a force of tens of thousands of people," fire department spokesman Nikolaos Diamantis told reporters on Friday evening.

Temperatures were forecast to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in these areas and in Athens on Saturday while stormy weather was expected in the north.

"This is our tsunami. Our 9/11," said a Greek friend, grasping for words to express the dimensions of the devastation. The fires that have reduced vast swaths of Greece to a stinking, charred vision of hell have shocked the world, but will soon be forgotten by the disaster-weary media, which will move on to the next subject. For those of us who live in Greece, the catastrophe is the worst thing to have hit the country since the ravages of the second world war. Like the war, the fallout will almost certainly affect our lives for at least the next generation.

Article continues

As temperatures around the globe rise, the world's mountains are changing. In the Alps, retreating glaciers, more landslides and rockfalls are causing shifts not only in the physical environment, but in jobs, town budgets, and attitudes.

Johann Kaufmann is a climbing guide, born and raised in Grindelwald, a village tucked below the melting glaciers of Switzerland's central Alps. Trekking along the west edge of the Eiger, one of the most famous mountains in Switzerland, Kaufmann spots a band of snow chicks, flecked brown now in the summer to blend in with the rocks.

- Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.

M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.

"Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes," Sivakumar, who leads the WMO's agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.

"Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?," he said.

A State Department spokesman late Friday said that the United States was ready to talk to North Korea about a "significant" food aid package for victims of the recent devastating floods.

Widespread floods in August caused huge crop losses in a nation already unable to feed its people.

Washington "is prepared to engage with North Korean officials on arrangements for a significant food aid package, including appropriate monitoring procedures," deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in a statement.

For some people, a poisonous snake hissing in their courtyard is the stuff of nightmares. But in this sleepy village in eastern India, the reptiles are welcome and abundant.

The village of Choto Pashla in West Bengal state has one snake for every two residents, mainly the poisonous monocled cobra, a black reptile with a yellow ring around its neck that can grow to seven feet (two metres) in length.

Such snakes are found everywhere -- in rice fields, ditches, muddy ponds and even sometimes sunning themselves by houses -- and no one appears to fear them.

"The poison-fanged reptiles represent a way of life in Choto Pashla. People of the neighbouring villages are scared to come here," said Samir Chatterjee, the local school headmaster, who has written a book about the snakes.

Grain growers across Australia are praying for September rains, which will mean the difference between a record payout and disaster. Leonie Wood reports.

All through central and north-western Victoria, on the swathes of Western Australia's wheat belt, and from NSW's Riverina to the Queensland border, vast fields of green hold the promise of a bountiful grains harvest. If spring rains fall soon, soaking deep into the subsoil and energising these tentative shoots, Australia's wheat farmers might be in for a decent year.

Wheat futures in Chicago climbed to a record, heading for the biggest monthly gain in 34 years, as demand from importers including South Korea and India reduced global inventories.

Prices for the grain have doubled in the past year as adverse weather in Ukraine, Canada, Europe and Australia damaged crops. Global stockpiles will fall to the lowest in 26 years by May 31, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Buyers in Egypt, the world's biggest importer after Brazil, and Taiwan have also sought the grain, used for animal feed and in foods such as bread, biscuits and noodles.

``This is abnormal,'' said Park Yang Jin, business department manager at Daehan Flour Mills Co., Korea's largest milling wheat importer. ``I hope to see a correction soon.''

Wheat for December delivery rose as much as 23.25 cents, or 3 percent, to $8.0775 a bushel in electronic trading on the Chicago Board of Trade. It was at $8.0525 as of 7:10 a.m. local time. The commodity has gained 28 percent this month, the most since August 1973.

Severe flood damage has in two months affected more than 65,000 people in west Africa, making thousands homeless and wrecking infrastructure, the Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations said Friday.

Heavy rain and "unprecedented floods" from Senegal to Nigeria have caused the "loss of human lives and devastated crop zones, plunging some populations into total penury," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

Lower temperatures and lighter winds helped bring fires around the Mediterranean under control on Friday but six Croatian firefighters were found dead and in Greece authorities feared a new heatwave.

The Croatian firefighters, who included a 17 year-old and two 19 year-olds, died on Thursday after being cut off while battling a wildfire in a national park on the Adriatic island of Kornat, the fire brigade said.

Six Croatian firefighters were found dead Friday and five were in a critical condition in hospital after getting cut off battling a wildfire on the Adriatic island of Kornat, authorities said Friday.

"We located six corpses which we will remove in the morning. We evacuated 11 wounded firemen on Thursday evening," the commander of the GSS national rescue service, Vinko Prizmic, told AFP.

The victims, most of them aged between 17 and 33, became surrounded by flames when powerful winds changed the direction of the blaze that broke out on Kornat around midday on Thursday, said Croatian fire chief Mladen Jurin.

"They simply had nowhere to escape and died of burns," the head of the rescue team sent to the spot, Stipe Bozic, told national television.

The 11 survivors were rushed to a hospital in the central coastal city of Zadar and five of them were taken to the capital Zagreb where doctors were fighting to save their lives.

The five were in a critical condition.

NAIROBI, 29 August 2007 (IRIN) - Floods have destroyed at least 4,000 hectares of farmland in southern Somalia's Middle Shabelle region, affecting 12,000 people, local officials said.

The damage occurred around the town of Jowhar, the regional capital, where the Shabelle River burst its banks last week.

"Some of the villagers were about to harvest [crops] when the river broke its banks," Usman Haji Abdullahi Aqil, Jowhar district commissioner, told IRIN on 29 August. "Some 2,050 families [about 12,000 people] were affected and lost their crops."

While Greece edged closer to mastering forest fires that have killed more than 63 people, other countries on the Mediterranean and the Adriatic struggled with deadly woodland blazes Thursday.

In Algeria, forest fires fed by winds off the Sahara and still burning out of control in the north of the country had claimed eight lives in the past 48 hours, said the country's civil protection services.

In Spain, 400 firefighters were forced to give ground as a fierce blaze that started two days ago in the northeast continued to grow in strength, fed by the hot weather and summer winds.

In Croatia a firefighter died in a fire that destroyed some 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of forest on an island off the Adriatic coast.

Some 400 firefighters were forced to give ground Thursday as a fierce fire in eastern Spain increased in strength, fed by the hot weather and summer winds, local officials told the Spanish media.

The fire, which broke out on Tuesday and by late Wednesday had already burnt up 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of land, had gained in strength overnight, Vincente Rambla, vice president of the Valencia region, told reporters.

Forest fires fed by winds off the Sahara and still burning out of control in northern Algeria have claimed eight lives in the past 48 hours, the country's civil protection services said Thursday.

A lack of specialised water-bombing planes, such as those currently being used to fight fires in Greece and Spain, adds to the challenges faced by firefighters and soldiers sent in as reinforcements.

Authorities have been battling 90 separate fires in 19 wooded regions in the north of the country, from Chlef in the west across to Skikda in the east.

Ian Shippen is something of a rural prophet on the arid salt plains 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) west of Sydney.

A thoughtful 42-year-old with spiked hair, Shippen believes the drought shriveling Australia's food bowl will forever change agriculture on the world's driest settled continent.

"We are going back to our natural way of farming, we are going back to the way it was 100 years ago, growing good broadacre areas and running sheep," the former rice farmer told Reuters at his property near the rural hamlet of Moulamein.

"We will have big areas of country that are pretty bloody useless, running one sheep to 5 or 6 acres. This drought is going to knock it all around."