New $100 mln fund to fight killer diseases in Myanmar

YANGON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A new $100 million fund to fight three killer diseases in army-ruled Myanmar should be operational early next year under the supervision of a U.N.-appointed manager, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

The "3-Diseases Fund" is a five-year programme that aims to plug the gap left by the abrupt departure of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria last year, citing restrictions on their activities.

Thousands fleeing Iraq daily in 'silent exodus'-UN

GENEVA, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the country every day in a "steady, silent exodus" and a spike in sectarian violence has stopped others from returning to their homeland, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

More than 50,000 exiled Iraqis returned from neighbouring countries last year in the hope that calm might return after the country's first post-war elections in January 2005.

New Orleans infested with wildlife

NEW ORLEANS - Alligators have been dragged from abandoned swimming pools. Foxes had to be removed from the airport. Coyotes are stalking rabbits and nutria (a sort of countrified rat) in city streets. And armadillos are undermining air conditioning units.

In the year since Hurricane Katrina drove out many of the people of New Orleans, wild animals have been moving in. Some were blown in by the winds or redistributed by the floodwaters. Others were drawn by the piles of rotting garbage and by the shelter afforded by all the abandoned homes and tall weeds.

"In 20 years of trapping animals here, I've never seen anything like it," said Greg duTreil, who is licensed by the state to remove nuisance wildlife in the metropolitan area. "I'm getting calls night and day."

The Belle of New Orleans tried to show me once - how to tango


Dengue fever outbreak in Pakistani city kills 17

KARACHI, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Mosquito-borne dengue fever has killed at least 17 people in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, in the past four months, five of them since the beginning of October, health officials said on Saturday.

Health officials have declared a high alert in the city's hospitals after about 250 people tested positive for the disease, they said.

"We have had 17 reported deaths from the virus in various hospitals," Abdul Majid, additional secretary for health in the southern province of Sindh, told Reuters. Karachi is the provincial capital.

"It is not a panic-like situation but yes, in the last few weeks cases have been increasing on a daily basis," he said.

Opposition politicians, some aid workers and the media have criticised the city government for not anticipating the disease after the rainy season and for not carrying out proper fumigation drives.

Dengue is a disease of the tropics and is caused by a specific type of mosquito, the Aedes mosquito, that bites during the day. The mosquitoes usually breed in rain water trapped in discarded containers and car tyres.

Majid said the health department had appealed for more blood donations from the public to help treat those suffering from the disease.

Western New York digs out from snowstorm
Record-breaking early storm leaves up to 341,000 customers without power

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Residents were digging out and cleaning up Saturday after a record-breaking early snowstorm walloped the Buffalo area, leaving thousands without power and killing three people.

Nearly 2 feet of snow fell in a fury of thunder and lightning Thursday night and early Friday in Buffalo’s two snowiest October days since the National Weather Service began keeping track 137 years ago.

The heavy, wet snow snapped tree limbs all over western New York, leaving some 341,000 homes and businesses without power Saturday.

‘It looks like the apocalypse’
“Our street looked like it was hit by a hurricane. It looks like the apocalypse. It’s unreal,” said Buffalo resident Matthew Colken. “One-hundred-year-old trees are down.”

"I've personally never seen anything this bad"

But even for Buffalo residents who famously battle big snows every winter, this one was challenging. Not only was it a surprise (the forecast had called for a few inches at most), but it came amid green lightning and claps of thunder.

"I've personally never seen anything this bad," said Chuck Tingley, a 60-year-old meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

"I worked here one time when we got 38 inches in one day around Christmas. You expect that sort of thing in December, but this snow was like lead, and all night in my neighborhood, all you heard all night, besides the thunder, which there was a lot of, was the crashing of tree branches coming down," said Tingley, who lives in Tonawanda, Erie County.

Alaska highway, town cut off by flooding

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Floodwaters damaged a 66-mile stretch of highway so severely that the road could be closed as long as a week, blocking Valdez from the rest of Alaska, state officials said Wednesday.

"There are huge washouts in the roadway and approaches to bridges," said Shannon McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Transportation. "We have debris on the road. We have mudslides. We have asphalt that's literally missing, that just washed away."

Severe storms, high winds damage homes in central Ohio


Night terrors: An outdoor grill sits in the middle of a street late Wednesday evening, Oct. 11, 2006, after a possible tornado tore through Columbus, Ohio. No injuries were reported from the storm, which leveled several houses under construction.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Several homes on the city's northeast side were damaged when storms packing high winds moved through central Ohio, and weather service investigators planned to determine Thursday whether a tornado touched down.
About 15 homes in a development were damaged on Wednesday night, and seven of them were uninhabitable, authorities said. No one was injured.

Jason Smith, whose home is one of the seven expected to be condemned, said he saw a funnel cloud "jump out of the sky," then spiral down over the roof across the street.

"I just pushed everyone and yelled, 'Tornado! Everyone in the closet,"' he said.

Smith, who moved into the new home in May, said he huddled in a first-floor closet with his fiancee and his parents while the house shook. The storm smashed windows on both floors.

Several of the homes in the development, which is under construction, sustained roof damage, and others partially collapsed.

"It's pretty horrific," police Cmdr. Jeff Blackwell said. "These homes had no basements. These people are lucky they weren't killed."

Snowfall moves across central USA, brings early start to holiday season

In a year that has been the warmest on record, the first winter storm of the season brought record early snowfall Thursday to parts of Michigan and Illinois. Chicago saw its earliest snowfall since record-keeping began in 1871, according to the National Weather Service.