'Beginning of the end of America'

Millions spent on a storm season that wasn't

"The main uncertainty in the outlook is not whether the season will be above normal, but how much above normal it will be," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters announced in May. That forecast called for eight to 10 hurricanes and noted that the year might be "hyperactive."

Now comes a humbling moment for prognosticators: Those predictions were wrong.

Scientists say Hawaii hit by two quakes


Richard Horita looks at a sinkhole at his home, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006, in Paauilo that was caused when a 6.7 temblor struck the island of Hawaii on Sunday. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

HONOLULU - Scientists are investigating whether a magnitude-6.0 earthquake that rocked Hawaii within minutes of Sunday's 6.7 temblor was a separate quake and not an aftershock.

The lead scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory and a seismologist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said Wednesday they were two independent events. Others aren't so sure.

The 6.7-magnitude quake struck 12.5 miles northeast of the Big Island's Kona airport at a depth of 24 miles at 7:07 a.m. Sunday. Seven minutes later, the 6.0-magnitude quake struck 27 miles north of the airport at a depth of about 12.5 miles.

Jim Kauahikaua, the scientist-in-charge at the observatory, said the difference in depths establishes that the two are "independent."

More Flooding Rains

Western N.Y. still reeling from snow; new storm hits Colorado


Utility crews clear fallen trees in Blasdell, New York after a rare snowstorm dumped more than two feet of snow on October 13.

BUFFALO (AP) — Nearly 97,000 customers remained without power Wednesday and schools were still closed nearly a week after a record snowstorm in western New York.
Health officials raised the toll of storm-related deaths to 12 people, including one person hit by a falling tree limb, three killed by carbon monoxide and two who died shoveling snow.

"If you have one death it's bad," said Erie County Health Commissioner Anthony Billitier.

The surprise storm dumped up to 2 feet of snow on Buffalo and four counties last Thursday and Friday.

The state Health Department deployed 17 nurses from around the state to help out in busy hospitals.

More than 170 people have been treated for carbon monoxide poisoning from using improperly vented generators and stoves for heat. Others have hurt themselves or had heart attacks clearing mounds of tree limbs that litter the region.

The storm knocked out electricity to more than 380,000 homes and businesses. By Wednesday afternoon, the number without power had been cut to 97,000.

Schools in Buffalo and surrounding towns said they wouldn't be able to reopen until next week.

U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins called the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response inadequate. He said the agency had offered little guidance on reimbursement and loan programs.

FEMA officials defended their response, saying they had readied generators and other equipment even before a Sunday disaster declaration made up to $5 million in cleanup funds available.

"We need to go out and evaluate (the damage), is it within the capability, the financial bounds of local officials and the state to pay for it?" said Mike Beeman, the region's acting director of response and recovery. "Taxpayers don't pay for every disaster."

Erie County Executive Joel Giambra said "people's anger and frustration is at the boil-over point."

In the West, a wintry storm began to move out of Colorado on Wednesday after dropping more than a foot of snow a day earlier in parts of the state. Snow and black ice forced a number of schools and facilities in the Colorado Springs area to close or open late Wednesday.

At least 30 searchers on foot and horseback were looking for a hunter missing in northwest Colorado. A second missing hunter was found safe, officials said.

Up to 13 inches of snow fell Tuesday night in the mountains and foothills along the Front Range, slowing traffic and downing power lines. Denver got its first significant snow of the season.

Millions in South Asia still lack vital services

NEW DELHI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - South Asian governments are failing to provide millions of people in the region with basic health and education services, clean water and sanitation, aid agency Oxfam International said on Thursday.

Poor infrastructure, inefficient public delivery systems and the widespread subjugation of women across South Asia mean a litany of problems blighting the region remain unsolved, Oxfam said in a report.

Two out of three Indians cannot afford essential medicines even as the country gears up to become a medical tourism destination for Westerners looking for cheaper surgery.

At least a third of children in Pakistan and Nepal do not go to school.

In Bangladesh, arsenic-contaminated shallow tube-wells are exposing an estimated 25 million people to the toxin, while 87 percent of Afghanis have no access to clean drinking water.

Speaking at the report's launch in the Indian capital New Delhi, Oxfam's Balasubramanyam Muralidharan urged India's government to abolish charging fees for access to healthcare.

The system should be funded entirely through taxes, he said.

Vegas reaching for rural water

Flooding continues from southeast Texas into Mississippi

Florida boater stabbed in chest by stingray

LIGHTHOUSE POINT, Fla. - An 81-year-old boater was in critical condition Thursday after a stingray flopped onto his boat and stabbed him, leaving a foot-long barb in his chest, authorities said.

"It was a freak accident," said Lighthouse Point acting fire Chief David Donzella. "It's very odd that the thing jumped out of the water and stung him. We still can't believe it."

Fatal stingray attacks like the one that killed "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin last month are rare, marine experts say. Rays reflexively deploy a sharp spine in their tails when frightened, but the venom coating the barb usually causes just a painful sting for humans.

James Bertakis of Lighthouse Point was on the water with his granddaughter and a friend Wednesday when the stingray flopped onto the boat and stung Bertakis. The women steered the boat to shore and called 911.

Surgeons were able to remove some of the barb, and Bertakis, who also suffered a collapsed lung, underwent surgery late Wednesday and early Thursday, the Miami Herald reported on its web site.

Ellen Pikitch, a professor of marine biology and fisheries at the University of Miami, 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."

U.N.: Number of ocean 'dead zones' rise

WASHINGTON - The number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the world's seas and oceans has risen more than a third in the past two years because of fertilizer, sewage, animal waste and fossil-fuel burning, United Nations experts said Thursday.

Their number has jumped to about 200, according to new estimates released by U.N. marine experts meeting in Beijing. In 2004, U.N. experts put the estimate at 149 globally.

The damage is caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom, and then are eaten by bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water. Those blooms are triggered by too many nutrients — particularly phosphorous and nitrogen.

Suicide note leads to dismembered body


Voodoo Priestess Miriam Chamani poses for a photograph in her spiritual room in the French Quarter of New Orleans Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006. A note found on the body of a suicide jumper led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found his girlfriend's charred head in a pot on the stove, her arms and legs in the oven and her torso in the refrigerator, a law enforcement officer said Wednesday. New Orleans Police spokesmen confirmed that a 26-year-old woman was found dismembered Tuesday night in her apartment above a voodoo shop. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

NEW ORLEANS - After Hurricane Katrina, Zackery Bowen and his girlfriend Adriane Hall appeared in news stories as examples of young people who had pressed on in the battered city despite evacuation orders and a lack of power and water.

Their story came to a disturbing end this week: Bowen leapt to his death from a hotel, leaving a note that led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found a woman's charred head on the stove, limbs in the oven and torso in the refrigerator.

Bowen's note said he had strangled and dismembered his girlfriend, but did not mention her name, police said Wednesday. Authorities said that because of the condition of the dismembered woman's body they could not immediately identify her. They were looking for Hall, however.

In the note, Bowen wrote: "I scared myself not by the action of calmly strangling the woman I've loved for one and a half years .... but by my entire lack of remorse," according to The Times-Picayune newspaper, which said it had obtained a copy of the note.

Bowen wrote that he had $1,500 in cash and spent it lavishly before killing himself, the newspaper reported: "So that's what I did: good food, good drugs, good strippers, good friends and any loose ends I may have had."

Insurers put Wilma damage at $3 billion

MEXICO CITY - Hurricane Wilma caused $3 billion in damage, the largest insured losses in Mexican history, the director of the Mexican Insurance Association said Thursday.

About $1.8 billion of the losses were insured damage, Recaredo Arias told a news conference.

Two days before Wilma's first anniversary, Arias said the industry had paid 94 percent of those claims to hotels, restaurants, banks, hospitals, schools and homeowners.

Hurricane Wilma slammed into Cancun on October 21, 2005, filling hotel lobbies with shattered metal, marble, glass and muck, and blowing away so much sand that hotel beaches were reduced to thin strips.