Magnitude 6.4 quake hits off Peru coast

LIMA, Oct 20 (Reuters) - A 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit near the coast of central Peru on Friday, shaking three cities and causing some light damage but no injuries were reported, Peru's Geophysical Institute said.

The quake struck at 5:48 a.m. (1048 GMT) with an epicenter 56 miles (90 km) northwest of the city of Pisco, at a depth of 27 miles (43 km). The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake was of a 6.5 magnitude at a depth of 20 miles (33 km).

"Some light damage to houses in Pisco has been reported but there are no deaths or injuries," institute director Hernando Tavera said. The quake could also be felt in the capital Lima and the city of Camana.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cautioned that people along coasts within 62 miles (100 km) of the epicenter should be aware of the threat of a local tsunami, although there was no threat of a Pacific-wide tsunami.

"There is a very small risk of a destructive local tsnuami but we are continuing to monitor sea levels," said Stuart Weinstein, deputy director of the Hawaii-based center.

"Earthquakes of this size sometimes generate tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a hundred kilometers of the earthquake epicenter," the warning center said on its Web site.

Climate water threat to millions

Climate change threatens supplies of water for millions of people in poorer countries, warns a new report from the Christian development agency Tearfund.

Sir John Houghton, who contributed a foreword to the Tearfund report, said water shortages will be the biggest climate threat to developing countries.

"It's the extremes of water which are going to provide the biggest threat to the developing world from climate change," he said.

Putin's 'rape joke' played down

Hawaii looks to calm edgy tourists

HONOLULU - Sewage spills, flooding and now an earthquake and aftershocks — what a challenging year it’s been for Hawaii and its tourism officials.

The state was to launch a new marketing campaign aimed at keeping tourists coming following a 6.7-magnitude temblor shook the state over the weekend.

Tourism is Hawaii’s No. 1 industry, bringing 7.5 million people to the islands and generating $12 billion annually. Visitors during Sunday’s earthquake found themselves in the dark — frightened and inconvenienced like everyone else. Some travelers planning to arrive soon are wondering whether they should cancel their trips.

Preliminary damage estimates from the earthquake hit $73 million and President Bush declared a major disaster, ordering federal aid to help state and local recovery efforts.

“I was very, very scared for my life. I wanted to run for the hills in case of a tsunami,” said Australian Carrie Prior, 38, who was visiting the Big Island. “But the trip gets a 10 out of 10. It’s been awesome.”

In the spring, 40 days of heavy rains pounded the islands, contributing to a dam break that killed seven people on Kauai. The rain also caused a major sewer line to rupture, closing Waikiki beaches, and heavy flooding throughout Oahu.

Report: Kim sorry about N. Korea nuclear test

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret about his country’s nuclear test to a Chinese delegation and said Pyongyang would return to international nuclear talks if Washington backs off a campaign to financially isolate the country, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.

“If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks,” Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.

Kim told the Chinese delegation that “he is sorry about the nuclear test,” the newspaper reported.

Death toll from Thai, Myanmar floods reaches 127

BANGKOK (AFP) - The death toll from severe flooding in Thailand and neighboring Myanmar has reached 127 as Thai weather authorities warned of more heavy rains over the weekend in the country's south.

At least 108 people have died in Thailand since severe flooding began in late August in the country's central and northern provinces, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The death toll soared overnight after the ministry confirmed that 25 people reported dead earlier were confirmed to be flood victims.

The water that inundated northern Thailand was slowly working its way south, but 16 central provinces were still suffering from the floods, the ministry said.

At its peak earlier in the month, the flooding, triggered by heavy rains from Typhoon Xangsane, affected 46 of the nation's 76 provinces.

In neighboring Myanmar, 19 people died in floods across central and eastern parts of the country, but in most places there, the water has already subsided.

4,000 crocodiles moved due to floods

UTHAI THANI, Thailand - Workers at a flood-threatened crocodile farm in central Thailand rushed on Wednesday to move hundreds of the reptiles to higher ground to stop them from swimming away.

Authorities in the central province of Uthai Thani, 140 miles north of Bangkok, ordered the evacuation of some 4,000 crocodiles on Sunday, most of them kept in pens alongside a river swollen from monsoon rains.

"I am confident that these crocodiles will not swim away from my farm, but I have to move them to other farms for the sake of public safety," said farm owner Amorn Jittapinitmas, who has raised crocodiles for meat and skin for 35 years.

Stingray victim called a 'very tough' 81-year-old

MIAMI - An 81-year-old Florida man who survived a stingray attack is being described as “a very tough gentleman.”

Dr. Eugene Constantini, of the Broward General Medical Center, also told NBC's "Today" show on Friday that while the past couple of days have been rough for James Bertakis, he’s pleased with his progress overnight and “hopeful” that Bertakis will survive.

Constantini said Bertakis was lucky that the stingray’s barb broke underneath the skin and couldn’t be removed until he got to the hospital. Otherwise rescuers might have been unable to stop the bleeding.

He added that that’s what makes this case different from that of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, who died after pulling out a stingray’s barb.

In the case of Bertakis, who also suffered a collapsed lung, surgeons were able to remove the 2.5 inch barb, which had penetrated the wall of his heart.

Ellen Pikitch, a University of Miami marine biology professor who has been studying stingrays for decades, said they are generally docile.

“Something like this is really, really extraordinarily rare,” she said. “Even when they are under duress, they don’t usually attack.”

Lt. Mike Sullivan said the incident occurred on Florida’s Intercoastal Waterway, where stingrays are rarely seen leaping in the air.

The three-foot-wide stingray died on board the boat and was later removed.

Irwin, 44, died when a stingray’s stinger punctured his heart off Australia’s north coast last month. It was one of only a handful of stingray fatalities on record.

Remains found at World Trade Center site

NEW YORK (AP) -- Human remains that appear to be from World Trade Center victims were found by utility workers in a manhole at the northern edge of the site, a Port Authority official said Thursday.

A Consolidated Edison crew doing excavation of the manhole at street level found the remains, some as big as arm or leg bones, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site.

Con Ed said it entered the site Wednesday to remove material from two manholes that had been damaged and abandoned after the 2001 collapse of the twin towers.

Crews hauled the excavated materials Wednesday to a work center more than a mile away, as is customary, Con Edison said. On Thursday morning, a contractor working for the Port Authority realized the materials contained remains, Con Edison spokesman Chris Olert said, and the medical examiner's office was contacted.

Five years after 2,749 people died in the September 11 World Trade Center attacks, families of about 1,150 victims still do not know whether their loved ones' remains were recovered.

During the excavation of the 110-story twin towers, which began the evening of the attacks and lasted for nine months, about 20,000 pieces of human remains were found. The DNA in thousands of those pieces, many small enough to slip into a test tube, was too damaged by heat, humidity and time to yield matches in the many tests forensic scientists have tried over the years.

The city told victims' families last year that it was putting the project of making identifications on hold, possibly for years, until new DNA technology was developed. Last month, the company contracted to work on the bone fragments said advances had been made and new identifications would be forthcoming.

Besides the new remains found by the utility workers, the lab also has recently received hundreds of bone fragments discovered on the roof of a building just south of where the trade center had stood. The building had been condemned since the attacks and was about to be torn down when workers found the bone pieces.

Charles Wolf, whose wife Katherine's remains were never recovered, said he wants an independent party to take over the remains search. He showed up at the Con Edison site after being contacted by television stations Thursday.

"We've got a problem right now," Wolf said. "Where else are we going to find them next?"

The Drought-Plagued West

Nevada takes heavy hand
In 2003, with the West in the thick of the drought, the Southern Nevada Water Authority shut down all decorative water fountains, leading to unsightly empty tanks outside gas stations and business parks.

“Any visual use of water like that can undermine people’s perception of water conservation. It gives you the impression that water’s not valued in your community,” said Doug Bennett, the authority’s conservation manager.

Bathtub rings around Lake Mead
Water pressure can be low, something people from other parts of the country notice right away. (Ozzy Osbourne once complained to his wife on their MTV show “The Osbournes” about the low water pressure in the shower until she told him about the water-saving shower heads in California.)

Boaters and swimmers have grown accustomed to the bathtub rings around Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona and Lake Powell in Arizona and Utah that show where the water used to be, before drought brought the levels down. Similarly, tourists at Hoover Dam outside Las Vegas gawk and take pictures of the prominent white water line.

Sunset Hills Memorial Park owner Chet Hill has persuaded other cemeteries to try artificial turf, too.

The only problem? “Sometimes it looks too good, too perfect,” Hill said. “We actually put little lumps in it, throw some dirt underneath it.”

Early snowstorm battered Buffalo's historic parks, trees


Virtually every tree in the city of Buffalo was damaged by last week's surprise early season snowstorm.

BUFFALO (AP) — Heavy, lake-saturated snow was falling like never before in Buffalo, at least not so early in the fall, piling up on a citywide canopy of maple, ash and oak trees still lush with leaves.
Strobes of lightning and bursts of thunder punctuated the overnight storm. And there was another sound, an eerie popping like gunshots from all directions. It was the sound of tree limbs cracking under the weight of the snow and leaves.

Karen and Clem Arrison rushed from tree to tree in their yard and the parkway where they live trying to shake off the pummeling snow, but the morning light showed the futility of their efforts.

The surprise storm, with its nearly two feet of snow, devastated the city's trees, damaging virtually every one.

"I felt like I was out there watching my old friends die," Karen Arrison said.

In Buffalo's treasured system of interconnected parks, parkways and circles envisioned in 1868 by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, an estimated 90% of the trees will need care.

"This system is as unique and means as much to Buffalo as Central Park means to New York City," said Johnathan Holifield, chief executive of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, the not-for-profit group that oversees the system and its 11,000 trees.

The countless other trees shading streets and homes outside the system also suffered.

State environmental officials say trees are resilient. With proper pruning when dormant, the odds of survival are good. But many are clearly beyond hope, split down the middle, uprooted or snapped at the trunk. A giant willow tree believed to have been planted in 1899 for the Pan-American Exposition, lay on a driveway in one Buffalo neighborhood.

Weather forecasting needs dollars, sense

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."
— Attributed to Mark Twain, 1890s

This week it was heavy flooding near Houston. Last week a severe snowstorm in Buffalo. Last month a tornado in South Dakota and in August a "hurricane" in Florida.

Each of those major weather developments had either too little or too much advance warning from the National Weather Service (NWS).

The media — especially TV — often hype bad weather forecasts, especially hurricanes. Some public officials compound the problem.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who like his brother the president cries "wolf" too soon too often, ordered mass evacuations for "hurricane" Ernesto, which turned out to be just a summer wind and rainstorm.

Scientists: Antarctic ozone hole is largest ever recorded

WASHINGTON (AP) — This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, government scientists said Thursday.
The so-called hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone — a form of oxygen — in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth by blocking the sun's ultraviolet rays.

Scientists say human-produced gases such as bromine and chlorine damage the layer, causing the hole. That's why many compounds such as spray-can propellants have been banned in recent years.

"From Sept. 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles," said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. That's larger than the area of North America.

In addition, satellite measurements observed a low reading of 85 Dobson units of ozone on Oct. 8. That's down from a thickness of 300 Dobson units in July.

The ozone hole is considered to be the area with total column ozone below 220 Dobson Units. A reading of 100 Dobson Units means that if all the ozone in the air above a point were brought down to sea-level pressure and cooled to freezing it would form a layer 1 centimeter thick. A reading of 250 Dobson Units translates to a layer about an inch thick.

In a critical layer of air between eight and 13 miles above the surface, the measurement was only 1.2 Dobson unit, down from 125 in July.

"These numbers mean the ozone is virtually gone in this layer of the atmosphere," said David Hofmann, director of the Global Monitoring Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory. "The depleted layer has an unusual vertical extent this year, so it appears that the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter."