Judgment Day

About 70 world leaders will address the General Assembly this week, but the focus will be on Bush and Ahmadinejad.

Bush said his U.N. speech will serve as a warning to Iran that "if they try to drag their feet or, you know, get us to look the other way, that we won't do that."

What Ahmadinejad might say is harder to predict. In the past year he has risen from a little-known Iranian hard-liner to one of Bush's chief antagonists.

Last year, in his debut on the diplomatic scene, Ahmadinejad stunned the General Assembly with a speech assailing the United States and calling for the return of the Twelfth Imam, a revered Shiite Muslim figure whose coming is akin to Judgment Day.

He later told an Iranian cleric that he felt an "aura" of holiness surrounding him during the speech and claimed that the audience sat rapt for half an hour "as if a hand held them there (and) made them sit."

Al Qaeda militants in Iraq vowed war on "worshippers of the cross"

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Al Qaeda militants in Iraq vowed war on "worshippers of the cross" and protesters burned a papal effigy on Monday over Pope Benedict's comments on Islam, while Western churchmen and statesmen tried to calm passions.

The statement by an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda came after the Pontiff said on Sunday he was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of a medieval quotation on Islam and holy war.

"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said a Web statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome ... (May) God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Super Typhoon Shanshan

TOKYO, Sept 18 (Reuters) - A typhoon left nine people dead and hundreds injured in southwestern Japan on Monday as it weakened to a tropical storm and headed out to sea.

But strong gusts continued to disrupt transport in the southwest and west of the country, forcing the cancellation of nearly 80 flights and delays in the high-speed bullet train service, airline and railway officials said.

Typhoon Shanshan's torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides on the main southern island of Kyushu over the weekend.

High winds overturned cars, derailed an express train and forced thousands of people to flee their homes for shelters.

About 25,000 households in the western prefecture of Yamaguchi were without electricity, utility firm Chugoku Electric Power Co said.

Spinach recalls expand in USA

The investigation into a deadly E. coli outbreak in 19 states widened on Sunday as a second produce company was set to recall its spinach products, according to federal officials.
Food and Drug Administration officials on Sunday reported 109 cases so far of infection with a deadly strain of Escherichia. coli bacteria. The bacteria produces toxins than can lead to bloody diarrhea, damaged kidneys and death. Roughly half of the cases in the outbreak resulted in hospitalization, and nearly one in six have led to kidney failure. There has been one death, a 77-year-old Wisconsin woman.

"This is unquestionably a significant outbreak," says FDA official David Acheson. Acheson said state and federal investigators will begin on Monday sampling spinach farms in California's Salinas Valley that have been linked to the outbreak. It will take at least a week for those samples to identify the source of the outbreak, he says.

Hurricanes churn over Atlantic

MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricanes Gordon and Helene churned across the open Atlantic on Sunday, packing strong winds and gusty rains but posing no immediate threat to land, U.S. forecasters said.

At 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), maximum sustained winds from Helene -- the fourth hurricane of the Atlantic season -- were blowing at 105 miles per hour (169 kph) and the storm was moving northwest at about 9 mph (14 kph), the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

It said the center of the storm, which could strengthen over the next 24 hours, was located 920 miles east-northeast of the northern Leeward Islands.

Gordon, the third hurricane of the season, had top sustained winds near 80 mph (130 kph), the hurricane center said. Located 1,430 miles west of the Azores, it was swirling north-northeast at 14 mph (22 kph).

The International Space Station's newly installed P3/P4 truss and solar arrays fly 218 statute miles above the Atlantic ocean where hurricane Gordon swirls in the ocean waters in this view from NASA TV September 16, 2006. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY (NASA TV/Reuters)

Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores brace for tropical storm

LISBON (AFP) - Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores islands braced for strong winds, tidal surges and torrential rain after the national weather office warned that a tropical storm was heading towards the archipelago.

Hurricane Gordon was expected to be downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it hits the nine-island chain, about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) west of mainland Portugal, on Tuesday evening due to its movement over colder waters, the office said on its Internet site.

The storm was expected to batter the islands until Wednesday with sustained winds of 100 kilometres an hour, with gusts up to 150 kilometres an hour, the possibility of thunderstorms and 10- to 12-metre swells.

UN: 350,000 may be displaced if AU leaves Darfur

KHARTOUM, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Some 350,000 people in Sudan's war-ravaged west could be displaced if African Union forces leave Darfur when their mandate expires at the end of the month, the United Nations said on Monday.

It forecast that if the 7,000-strong AU force pulled out of Darfur, humanitarian access there would deteriorate dramatically as attacks on vehicles made road travel impossible outside urban centres.

The U.N. also feared more civilians could be killed in areas out of reach of aid workers.

"We feel very strongly that any pullout of the peacekeepers as they are today will trigger a much more serious situation in Darfur," U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan Manuel da Silva told a news conference in Khartoum.

"We think that if the African Union leaves Darfur, there will be many more people displaced in a very short time," he added, estimating that 350,000 could be displaced in the months following a pullout.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is under heavy international pressure to accept U.N. peacekeepers who would more aggressively enforce a shaky ceasefire in Darfur.

African heads of state are due to meet in New York on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Darfur, where an estimated 200,000 people have died since the conflict flared in 2003.

Two anti-U.S. nations heap praise on each other

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Iran's president visited Venezuela for the first time on Sunday, advancing an increasingly close alliance between two leaders united by fierce opposition to the United States.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who greeted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Caracas' main airport, said the two countries plan to set up a plant for producing gunpowder and other components of ammunition.

"Iran is generously transferring technology to us," Chavez told troops shortly before the Iranian leader arrived. He said Iran and Venezuela will also set up factories to build cars and produce plastics -- efforts to be formalized with the signing of accords during Ahmadinejad's two-day visit.

Chavez said Iran and Venezuela are "two heroic nations" with "two revolutions that are giving each other a hand."

Chavez has become a leading defender of Iran's nuclear ambitions on the world stage, while Ahmadinejad and other Middle Eastern leaders are backing Venezuela's bid for a rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council -- a candidacy opposed by the Bush administration, which is supporting Guatemala instead.

Clutching Chavez's hands in a prolonged handshake, Ahmadinejad said Venezuela and Iran have much in common.

"Today we have thoughts, objectives and interests in common," Ahmadinejad said through an interpreter at the airport. "We must be united to be able to make these ideas reality with the aim of achieving justice and peace in the world."

Stubborn California fire doubles in size

OJAI, Calif. - Firefighters battling a stubborn, two-week-old wildfire that scorched more than 116 square miles of wilderness along the Los Angeles-Ventura County line were counting on help from shifting winds Monday.

The largest of three Southern California blazes doubled in size when it was fanned by gusty winds over the weekend. But a cool, moist ocean breeze Sunday night slowed the fire and put communities out of immediate danger.

The fire has burned 74,052 acres since Labor Day and was 15 percent contained. Meanwhile, two desert wildfires forced the temporary evacuation of about 2,500 residents. One fire was contained, the other 90 percent contained. Two homes were destroyed in one of the desert fires.

Meanwhile, in Montana, a weekend storm dumped as much as 2 inches of rain on two wildfires, dramatically slowing their growth. Fire managers said they expect to wrap up most firefighting efforts Tuesday.

One fire, 20 miles southeast of Livingston, has burned about 29,000 acres, or 45 square miles. It blew up on Wednesday, destroying two cabins plus a shop. It was 50 percent contained.

The other fire, 15 miles south of Big Timber, has burned 208,096 acres and 26 homes since it began with a lightning strike Aug. 22. It was considered 85 percent contained.

A Deadly, Spreading Migration

Sept. 25, 2006 issue - The Danish angler never saw his killer. Earlier this summer the 62-year-old (whose name was never released by Danish authorities) was fishing with a friend in the Baltic Sea when a microscopic marine bug entered his system, probably through a cut or scrape. Within a week he was dead, one arm already amputated. His attacker: Vibrio vulnificus, a flesh-eating bacterium that normally makes its home in the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Although the bug is not always fatal, it can be especially dangerous to the old or the weakened.

Was this a freak accident caused by a rogue organism? Maybe not. Some scientists argue that last summer's soaring temperatures are part of a warming trend that is encouraging a slew of heat-loving organisms to extend their habitats into the once chillier North. Recent tests in Germany showed that Vibrio vulnificus was present in more than nine out of 10 samples of Baltic Sea water. "Microorganisms aren't clever," says Tove Roenne, a doctor with Denmark's National Board of Health. "They just do whatever the temperature tells them to do."

Plenty of victims can testify to the consequences. The authorities on the Italian Riviera were forced to close beaches this summer after more than 100 holidaymakers were hospitalized following exposure to Ostreopsis ovata, tropical algae that can cause rashes and diarrhea. Farm animals, too, have suffered. Cattle herds in Northern Europe this summer came down with the region's first cases of potentially fatal Blue Tongue disease, a midge-borne ailment previously associated only with the Mediterranean region.