Storms in Greece leave three dead; state of emergency declared on three islands


Tourists look at the sea in front of two overturned cars on Crete, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006. A truck driver was killed late Tuesday because of mudslides near the Cretan city of Hania, while several hundred homes were flooded on islands across the southern Aegean Sea.

ATHENS (AP) — Heavy storms lashed southeastern Greece, killing three people and forcing authorities to declare a state of emergency Wednesday for three islands, including Crete.
Hundreds of homes and shops were flooded and road transport was disrupted by falling rock and raging torrents on the three islands, Leros and Astypalaia in the Dodecanese, and areas of western Crete.

Two swimmers drowned Wednesday in rough waves off the holiday island of Rhodes, officials said.

On Crete, a truck driver was killed late Tuesday because of mudslides near the city of Hania, while floodwaters swept parked cars into the sea in coastal areas and heavy rain caused extensive damage to crops.

On the island's northern coast, rescuers were searching for a man missing since Tuesday night after floodwaters swept his car off the road. The vehicle was located empty on Wednesday.

In southern Greece, the coast guard rescued the five Turkish crewmen of the Cambodia-flagged Pasha cargo ship stranded late Tuesday after suffering engine failure in a severe gale off Cape Maleas.

The seamen were hospitalized as a precaution after being transported by helicopter to the mainland while the vessel was being towed to port, the Merchant Marine Ministry said.

Island ferry schedules were disrupted by gale-force winds, which reached 10 on the Beaufort scale in parts of the Aegean.

Officials said conditions had improved since Tuesday, though more storms were expected on Thursday.

"The weather is better now, although there are still high winds and rain on Crete," a civil protection agency official said. "According to meteorological forecasts, the weather will be bad tomorrow (Thursday) in the Aegean Sea, Crete, the Dodecanese and Cyclades islands."

A cold front gripped most of the country Wednesday, with the temperature dropping to freezing in the northern city of Florina, and snowfall in the mountains of north and central Greece.

Earlier this month, parts of northern and central Greece also were affected by severe flooding.

4,000 lightning bolts rain down under
Drought-stricken Australia worried about fire from above

SYDNEY - Thunderstorms sparked 4,000 bolts of lightning across southeastern Australia on Wednesday, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said.

Senior forecaster Neale Fraser said the lightning strikes in the southeast corner of New South Wales state heralded the start of Australia’s summer storm season.

“From now on, right through the summer, is the severe storm season. Certainly from October onwards until March or April next year is potentially severe thunderstorm time,” said Fraser.

Dams drying up
Evaporation saw the equivalent of the water content of Sydney Harbor being lost in one dam alone in New South Wales.

Without rain many already shrinking rivers, including Australia’s food basket, the Murray-Darling river system, would run dry, warned the National Climate Center.

Prime Minister John Howard said the drought was the worst in 100 years and would eat into the country’s economic growth.

“It’s the worst in a century,” he said. “I would expect this drought to leave a very big impression on the Australian psyche.”

Patience wearing thin five days after record snowfall in Buffalo

BUFFALO (AP) (AP) — The strain of last week's surprise two-foot snowfall showed itself Tuesday as people in shelters worried about flooding basements and fallen trees, and elected officials lashed out at the federal government's response to the storm.
With round-the-clock cleanup efforts continuing, nearly 125,500 homes and businesses remained without power and schools in Buffalo and surrounding towns said they would be unable to reopen until next week.

"We're four or five days into the (recovery)," Erie County Executive Joel Giambra said. "This is about the time where people's anger and frustration is at the boil-over point."

U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response in the region as inadequate, saying the agency had offered little guidance on reimbursement and loan programs and snubbed the city of Buffalo during a tour of damage this week.

"When this storm hit on Thursday night and Friday morning it led national news," said Higgins, who listed his concerns in a letter to President Bush. "It was very clear to everybody else in the world there was a natural disaster that took place in Buffalo and western New York."

The storm dropped up to two feet of snow on four western New York counties Thursday into Friday and knocked out power to more than 380,000 homes and businesses. At least six deaths have been blamed on the storm.

Helene Lipman's house was finger-numbing cold and the water in her basement had crept to the first step. Tuesday marked day six without electricity and the 85-year-old had moved into an elementary school, showering in the locker room and sleeping on a cot.

Lipman said there had been some laughs at the Tonawanda Red Cross shelter, but with her power likely out through the coming weekend, the sense of adventure was wearing thin.

"Absolutely fed up," she said when asked how she was faring. "I'm going to lose my furnace, washer, dryer."

Utility crews from 10 states and Canada worked to restore power amid a soaking rain. State police helped direct traffic at darkened intersections and National Guard troops helped clear fallen tree limbs.

"I'm getting used to it but I want to go back home," said Denise Dellamora, 52, of Lackawanna, who began staying at a Red Cross shelter in Buffalo Sunday. At first, Dellamora tried waiting out the dark under blankets at home.

"It was very cold, and with no phone, no heat it was just unbearable," she said. "I felt cut off from civilization."

Mayor Byron Brown said police had stepped up patrols in areas still without power.

"We know that as the days go on, frustration will rise," Brown said, "but we ask people to continue to be patient."

Rains lead to flooding in parts of Louisiana

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Houses and roads flooded in northern Louisiana after the area received the most rain it's gotten in a single storm since Tropical Storm Allison in 1989, authorities said Tuesday.
One of the hardest-hit areas was Grayson, a town in north-central Louisiana's Caldwell Parish, which received 17 inches of rain between Sunday evening and Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

"The rainfall amounts were exceptional," said Nick Fillo, a weather service meteorologist. "Outside of a tropical system, it happens every once in a while."

Rainfall totals ranged widely across the state, from roughly an inch in New Orleans and 5 inches at Alexandria, in central Louisiana, to nearly 11 inches at Toledo Bend dam, at the Texas-Louisiana border, the weather service reported.

The stormy weather — heavy rains and stiff winds — was spawned by a system that was a combination of tropical moisture and a strong atmospheric disturbance, meteorologist Tim Destri said.

A tornado was likely responsible for ripping boats from moorings and flipping trailer houses early Monday at Leeville, in southeast Louisiana, Destri said.

On Tuesday, school was canceled in northern Louisiana in Franklin and Caldwell parishes; an estimated 100 homes flooded in Caldwell Parish, where Beckie Ledbetter of the Sheriff's Office said water was waist-deep in some areas. The Red Cross was expected in the parish Tuesday to survey the damage and assess the need for a temporary shelter, she said.

While much of the water had receded by Tuesday morning, some roads in the parish remained closed because of high water, Ledbetter said. She believes a lack of proper drainage, due to extensive road construction in the area, contributed to the flooding.

The area had also been dry, and the soil was incapable of handling so much rain at once, Fillo said.

Louisiana has been suffering from abnormally dry weather in recent years — despite last year's hurricanes, Katrina and Rita. The U.S. Drought Monitor, which tracks drought conditions weekly, shows Louisiana nearly evenly divided between moderate drought in the north and abnormally dry conditions in the south.

National park hit by hurricane-force winds

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Torrential rains and hurricane-force winds ripped through Tennessee, downing trees and forcing officials to close major roads in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Tuesday.

The storm, which had a peak wind gust of 106 mph, swept into the 520,000-acre preserve that straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border on Monday evening.

In southeast Texas, the storm was blamed for severe flooding that killed at least five people, while it damaged hundreds of homes and forced schools to close in northern Louisiana.

“The rainfall amounts were exceptional,” said meteorologist Nick Fillo. “Outside of a tropical system, it happens every once in a while.”

“Just because the rain has stopped does not mean the flood dangers have ceased,” said Gloria Roemer, spokeswoman for the Harris County Office of Emergency Services. About 50-250 households could be affected, Roemer said.

Fewer birds and bees mean trouble for crops

WASHINGTON - This is a story about the birds and the bees and reproduction. No, not that story. It's about plants. Most plants need to be pollinated by birds, bees, bats and other animals and insects to reproduce. And scientists say a decline in pollinators may spell trouble for crops.

Honeybees and bumblebees have been infected by the introduction of a parasite, while destruction of cave roosts has led to a decline in the bat population, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Research Council.

Hawaii remains vulnerable to quakes
Another massive temblor could strike 50th state at any time

HONOLULU - Another massive earthquake could strike the Hawaiian isles at any time, but this weekend's 6.7 magnitude tremor does not signal an increase in ground-shaking activity, researchers said.

Hawaii is always vulnerable to earthquakes, and temblors above 6.0 magnitude occur about once every decade, said Cecily Wolfe, a seismologist at the University of Hawaii.

"You can't assume that just because one occurred yesterday, that we're not going to get another one later this week," Wolfe said. It's also possible that no rumblings will occur soon, she said.

Disease, old age take toll on L.A. palm trees

LOS ANGELES - The city’s palm trees — as much a symbol of L.A. as the automobile, movie stars and the beach — are vanishing.

The trees are dying of old age and a fungal disease, disappearing one by one from parks and streets, and city planners are replacing them with oaks, sycamores and other species that are actually native to Los Angeles and offer more shade, too.

AFGHANISTAN: Millions face hunger as drought worsens, warns aid group

QALAT, 18 October (IRIN) - Some 2.5 million drought-stricken Afghans across much of the country have lost their crops and are facing acute food shortages, international aid group Christian Aid warned on Wednesday in the capital, Kabul.

An assessment carried out by the aid group in 66 villages in the provinces of Badghis, Farah, Faryab, Herat and Ghor, mainly in the northwest, found that many people have lost 70 to 80 percent of their rain-fed crops following too little rain last winter and spring.

According to government figures, around 20,000 people have left their homes in order to survive, the UK based aid group has said.

US group lists 10 most polluted places on Earth

NEW YORK, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A Russian city where chemical weapons were once manufactured and a town in Zambia's copper mining belt are among the 10 most polluted places on Earth, a U.S. environmental group said on Wednesday.

The list was compiled by the New York-based nonprofit group the Blacksmith Institute, which said the world's pollution is sickening up to 1 billion people.

Blacksmith Director Richard Fuller said environmental problems cause up to 20 percent of deaths in developing countries. And environmental toxins in these towns put residents at risk of being poisoned, developing cancers and lung infections and having mentally retarded children, the group said.

"The worst problem is the damage it does to children's development ... and that damages the future of the countries," Fuller said in a telephone interview.

In Dzerzhinsk, Russia, a former Cold War-era center for making chemical weapons, including Sarin and mustard gas, the average life expectancy is 42 for men and 47 for women.

Chemicals from the weapons manufacturing were dumped into an aquifer that also provides the local community with drinking water, according to Blacksmith.

The group researched 300 sites to come up with its list. The sites were not ranked because health records in some developing countries were not available.

Several cities with industrial operations like coal and metal mining dominated the list.

"Norilsk in Russia is also just a horror story," Fuller said about an industrial city founded as a slave labor camp in 1935. "Smelters with no pollution control: nickel, copper, lead, cadmium. No pollution control. Just an awful place."

In Kabwe, Zambia, one of six towns around the country's copper belt, soil contamination levels of heavy metals are higher than those recommended by the World Health Organization. The average level of lead in a child's blood is five to 10 times the levels allowed in the United States, according to Blacksmith.

No U.S. sites were listed in the group's top 10, as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Superfund law helped cleaned up the country, Fuller said.

"We've managed to clean up a lot of these horror stories. Pittsburgh 20 or 30 years ago probably ranked as badly as some of these sites did, and now it's quite a lovely place," he said.

Fuller said pollution in developing countries is best combated through funding from international donations and training on how to clean up sites. He said support for environmental clean-up was gaining strength, but took time.

US undertakers admit corpse scam

Seven undertakers in the New York area have admitted being part of a scheme to steal body parts for transplants.
The criminal operation saw body parts removed from corpses without the consent of relatives and sold to biomedical companies.

The body of veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke was among those used.

Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes said that hundreds of parts were sold for millions of dollars, and that more people were likely to be charged.

He said the seven, who have not been named, agreed to co-operate in the investigation and entered their pleas in a secret hearing.

One of those who pleaded guilty was the undertaker who removed parts from the body of Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004 aged 95, Associated Press reported.

Four other people who have been named - Michael Mastromarino, Joseph Nicelli, Lee Cruceta, and Christopher Aldorasi - on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to charges of illegally harvesting bones and organs and were released on bail.

They could face up to 25 years in jail if convicted.