Revelation 14:7
Fear the Lord, and give him glory; for the hour of his judgment has come.
Worship him who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and the springs of waters!

God is Strong.
God is Very, Very, Very Strong.


An air tanker makes a drop on the Napa fire west of Yountville, Calif. on Friday.


Hot, dry winds stoke Calif. wildfires

OJAI, Calif. - Hot, dry Santa Ana winds gusting to more than 50 mph Saturday stoked the flames of a three-week-old wildfire in Los Padres National Forest and ignited at least two new fires.

The fires prompted officials to evacuate about 300 homes and a college east of Ojai, while the winds briefly grounded water-dropping helicopters.

"Today we were getting kind of smacked by the winds. The helicopters were up, and they were down," said Ventura County fire Capt. Barry Parker. "We actually fared pretty well today considering what we were up against."

Late Saturday, authorities urged residents along Highway 150 east of Ojai to evacuate. The order was voluntary and prompted by flames from one of the "spot" fires cresting a nearby ridge, said Curtis Vincent, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

"It's close enough that they are feeling it's better that everyone evacuate now before they go to bed," Vincent said. "If I had friends or family in that area, I'd have them get out in a nice, relaxed fashion just to be safe."

The new blazes that began when the winds blew embers past the fire lines consumed thousands of acres of brush before burning back into the main blaze, which was about 75 miles north of Los Angeles. That fire scorched 120,816 acres — or nearly 189 square miles — since igniting Labor Day. It was 40 percent contained.

One of the "spot" blazes burned about 7,000 acres in the canyons above Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula along Highway 150. The campus was evacuated late Saturday.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for extreme fire conditions through Sunday in the area. Forecasters said gusts as high as 70 mph were possible during the weekend. By late Saturday, gusts were down to about 30 mph, although officials expected them to increase again Sunday morning.

Susan Freeman, an Ojai resident, said she had loaded belongings into her station wagon in case evacuations were ordered and worried about her three dogs and five cats at home. She said, "When you live with your house packed in your car for two weeks, you get scared."

The fire along the border of Ventura and Los Angeles counties doubled in size when Santa Ana winds kicked up a week ago. More than 3,000 firefighters were battling the blaze, which has cost $33 million to fight.

Elsewhere, a small brush fire broke out Saturday in the Angeles National Forest in northern Los Angeles County. It burned 100 acres and was 35 percent contained. No structures were threatened and no evacuations were ordered, authorities said.

Crews mopped up another fire in Angeles National Forest that was fully contained Friday after burning 113 acres. They also mopped up a 2,730-acre blaze in San Bernardino National Forest was fully contained Saturday.

Dave Erzfeld, left, and Jason Austin both of Perryville, Mo., carry antique furniture out of a family member's Crosstown, Mo., home Saturday after severe storms destroyed the 131-year-old brick structure.

Storms sweep southern Midwest, 10 dead

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Severe storms crossing the southern U.S. Midwest produced heavy rains, hail and flooding and caused at least 10 deaths, local officials said on Saturday.

The storms Friday and Saturday dumped more than 10 inches of rain in southeast Missouri and stretched into northeastern Kentucky, the National Weather Service said.

The heaviest flooding occurred in the Ohio River Valley and central portions of the Mississippi River Valley, said Beth Lewandowski of DTN/Meteorlogix.

The National Weather Service said there were 37 preliminary tornado reports around the region and one confirmed tornado in Phelps County, Missouri, since the storms began Friday.

In northeast Arkansas, several people caught in fast-rising flood waters survived by clinging to trees along the Spring River near Hardy.

"The water just rose so fast, there were several individuals rescued from trees in that area," Sharp County emergency dispatcher Tamara Roberts said.

"They were basically going for help and got swept down the river," she said.

In northwest Arkansas, a 51-year-old woman was struck and killed by lightning late Friday while in a fishing boat on a small lake.

Nine people died in Kentucky, including two women who fell into a drainage ditch in Lexington, emergency officials said.

Another woman was killed in Jessamine County, Kentucky, when her pickup truck was swept off a road and overturned in a creek, county officials said. Two passengers escaped harm.

News reports said another motorist died after skidding off a highway near Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

Three dead, thousands evacuated as Kolkata flooded

KOLKATA (AFP) - Three people were electrocuted and more than 2,000 evacuated after the heaviest rains in 23 years left large parts of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata under water.

Residents blamed the city's poor drainage system for failing to carry away the rainwater that had turned the city into a swamp.

But Mayor Bikash Bhattacharya said there was little the capital city of West Bengal state could do.

"It's hard to fight nature's fury," he said Saturday. "If it rains beyond our capacity, we can merely watch the city going under water and wait for it to limp back to normal."

Bangladesh says thousands of fishermen missing

DHAKA, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Thousands of Bangladeshi fishermen are missing feared drowned after a storm last week in the Bay of Bengal, officials said on Sunday, sharply raising earlier estimates.

Rescuers have so far found more than 100 bloated bodies after a storm last Tuesday night wrecked their boats.

"Lists provided by local government bodies, fishing community leaders and fishing boat owners suggested more than 1,700 fishermen are still missing from the Barguna district alone," said district administrator Kazi Obaidur Rahman, on Sunday.

Barguna is 300 km (188 miles) south of the capital, Dhaka.

He said 250 out of about 700 boats caught in the storm off the Barguna coast had returned to shore over the past four days. The fate of the other vessels was unknown.

"The navy, coastguard, civil administration and the fishing trawler owners' association have launched a massive search and rescue operation since Saturday," he told Reuters by telephone, adding that bad weather had prevented an earlier start.

Returning fishermen have told authorities they saw numerous bodies floating in the sea. Dogs were seen eating bodies washed up on sandy islands. The other affected districts are Patuakhali, Cox's Bazar and Bagerhat, where local officials on Sunday said nearly 2,000 fishermen were still unaccounted for.

More drug-resistant TB seen in U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO - The worst forms of the killer tuberculosis bug have been gaining ground in the United States, alarming public health officials over imported drug-resistant strains of a disease that is mostly under control in this country.

5 more E. coli cases blamed on spinach

WASHINGTON - The outbreak of E. coli linked to fresh spinach was blamed for another five cases of illness Saturday, raising the number of people sickened to 171, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The number of states affected held steady at 25. So far, 92 people have been hospitalized, including a Wisconsin woman who died. Two other deaths have been reported in suspected cases — a child in Idaho and an elderly woman in Maryland — but those cases are still being investigated.

Thousands of Muslims flee east Sri Lanka, many stranded

COLOMBO, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Thousands of Muslims are fleeing their homes in embattled northeast Sri Lanka for the second time in as many months but thousands more are stranded, aid workers said on Sunday, after a suspected rebel front vowed to recapture the newly resettled area.

Families who had fled the northeastern town of Mutur as it was ravaged by fighting between the military and Tamil Tigers in August only returned from tent cities and refugee camps a fortnight ago after the army drove the Tamil Tigers out.

Now the military is blocking many resettled civilians from leaving again.

Around 1,500 families left Mutur for nearby Kinniya on Saturday and more than 1,000 families were stranded at a jetty on Sunday after the government suspended ferry service to the northeastern port of Trincomalee, one local aid worker told Reuters by telephone from the area.

"The military and the government are not allowing them to move," he added. "They have stopped the ferry and also by the land route they are stopping them and don't allow them to go on."

The attempted exodus comes after a previously unknown suspected rebel front called Tamileela Thayaga Meedpu Padai distributed leaflets in the town warning residents to leave immediately.

"The final preparations have begun to recapture ... Mutur," the leaflet said. "Do not remain in Mutur... you will only face destruction."

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were not immediately available for comment, but demand that the government must give back the nearby town of Sampur, which the army had captured. The town sits on the southern lip of the strategic harbour of Trincomalee.

Tens of thousands of people displaced by fierce fighting in and around Mutur had spent weeks camped out in emergency shelters in schools in the eastern town of Kantale, but government officials said they were under pressure to return life to normal for the town's regular habitants.

A year after Rita, hunters still finding corpses

CAMERON, Louisiana (AP) -- A year after Hurricane Rita, the grave at Ebenezer Baptist Cemetery sits empty, half-filled with stagnant water, its vault and casket yanked out of the ground and carried north by churning floodwater from the Gulf of Mexico.

Across southwest Louisiana, cemeteries still bear scars from Hurricane Rita like 6-foot rectangular holes in the soil. Hunters and farmers make grim calls to the coroner after stumbling across caskets miles away from the graves.

"We could be recovering caskets, from here on, for years," said Charlie Hunter, a coroner's investigator working in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes. "It's going to be a long process."

"In the marsh, duck hunters going to their duck blinds, they're still finding caskets," he said.

Hunter said his office has recovered 325 caskets and human remains the storm pulled up from the earth. One casket was found 34 miles from its grave, he said.

Of those recovered, 240 have been identified and returned to their graves.

Local funeral homes have started putting metal bracelets on the deceased, and attaching metal discs to vaults and caskets, stamped with the person's name.

That will make it easier to identify disinterred bodies when the next storm comes.

U.S. report says Iraq war has fueled terror threat

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A classified intelligence report concludes that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat to the United States, U.S. officials told CNN Sunday.

Early wildfires threaten Sydney

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Six houses were destroyed, one man was killed and several hundred firefighters battled blazes into the night as swirling winds and scorching temperatures on Sunday gave Australia an early start to its wildfire season.

Anxious authorities greeted a cool change that swept southeastern New South Wales state late Sunday, calming gale force winds and cooling unusually hot autumn conditions that drove dozens of fires in parks and farmland around Australia's largest city.

One man was killed when a wind gust toppled a tree branch that struck him as he rode his motorcycle in Kangaroo Valley, south of Sydney, police said.

State Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg said about 50 fires erupted in various locations on Sunday. Four houses were razed near Thirlmere southwest of Sydney, and two more near Cattai, to the northwest of the city.

Television networks showed footage of the skeletons of two houses still afire, as well as panicking kangaroos, horses and other animals fleeing the flames and smoke.

Water-bombing planes and hundreds of firefighters dumped thousands of liters (gallons) trying to douse the flames, which chewed through tinder-dry forests and were whipped up by winds gusting to about 100 kph (60 mph) as temperatures hit 35 C (95 F).

"We've not had a day like this in September in history," Koperberg told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation "It was a very, very difficult day for firefighters."

Some still homeless after deadly storms

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Stormy weather blamed for 12 deaths in the Midwest and South subsided on Sunday, though residents in some states remained shut out of their homes due to high waters.

Flood warnings remained in effect for parts of Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri. Many Kentucky roads were still submerged on Sunday, but waters in many areas began to recede.

"It looks like everything's kind of quieting down, and things are being handled on the local level right now," said Buddy Rogers, a spokesman for the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management in Frankfort.

The storms that hit parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee Friday and Saturday stranded people in cars, forced others from their homes and left thousands without power.

The death toll in Kentucky reached eight, including a father and his 1-year-old daughter in a truck that skidded in floodwaters. Two deaths were reported in Arkansas, and in Illinois, authorities say lightning was the apparent cause of a house fire that killed elderly two women.

The National Weather Service reported that areas of Kentucky received at least 5 inches of rain, with isolated regions getting close to 10 inches. Over 24 hours, parts of northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri received more than 10 inches of rain, the weather service reported.

In Kentucky, about 200 people at Terrapin Hill Harvest Festival were evacuated by boats and school buses to transport after rising waters forced an evacuation, said Ruthann Phillips of the Red Cross.

"It was almost Katrina-like pretty much," said Chester Craig, a lieutenant with the Mercer Central Volunteer Fire Department. "There were vehicles underwater and people were walking around in a daze."

Arkansas rivers swelled up to 8 feet above flood levels, officials said. Campers at River Bend Park in Hardy, Ark., were asked to evacuate when the Spring River began rising.

"I didn't think we were going to make it out of there," said Charles Lenderman, who awoke Saturday morning to find knee-high water in his camper's kitchen. Lenderman and family members — wearing life jackets — swam from the camper to higher ground about 100 yards away.

In central and eastern Missouri, nearly 400 structures were damaged or destroyed and at least 10 people were injured by about 10 tornadoes, officials said.

Crews gain ground on massive Calif. fire

OJAI, Calif. - Firefighters gained ground Sunday against a wildfire that has burned more than 200 square miles in the Los Padres National Forest, aided by calmer winds and aircraft dropping water and fire-smothering chemicals.

Winds fluctuated Sunday but were still tamer than in recent days, gusting at 40 mph compared to 50 mph Saturday and shifting away from populated communities in the afternoon. That lowered the risk of flames spreading and let more ground crews go to work.

As winds faded, local residents appeared less anxious as more than 3,000 firefighters and emergency blanketed the area.

"If something major happens, it would really be an act of God because this area has just been covered so completely by the fire service," said Mike Gram, 54, who stopped into a grocery store in Ojai.