Welcome to Sunday

Revelations
15:3 "Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God, the Almighty; Righteous and true are your ways, you King of the nations.

15:4 Who wouldn't fear you, Lord, And glorify your name? For you only are holy. For all the nations will come and worship before you. For your righteous acts have been revealed."

Disaster declared as quake hits Hawaii

HONOLULU - A strong earthquake shook Hawaii early Sunday, jolting residents out of bed and causing a landslide that blocked a major highway. Ceilings crashed at a hospital, and aftershocks kept the state on edge.

The state Civil Defense had unconfirmed reports of injuries, but communication problems prevented more definite reports. Gov. Linda Lingle issued a disaster declaration for the entire state, saying there had been damage to buildings and roads. There were no reports of fatalities.

The quake hit at 7:07 a.m. local time, 10 miles north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of Hawaii Island, also known as the Big Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Blakeman said there was no risk of a Pacific-wide tsunami, but there was a possibility of significant wave activity in Hawaii.

The Pacific Tsunami Center reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.6. The earthquake was followed by several strong aftershocks, including one measuring a magnitude of 5.8, the Geological Survey said.

"We were rocking and rolling," said Anne LaVasseur, who was on the second floor of a two-story, wood-framed house on the east side of the Big Island when the temblor struck. "I was pretty scared. We were swaying back and forth, like King Kong's pushing your house back and forth."

Water pipes exploded at Aston Kona By The Sea, an 86-unit condominium resort, creating a dramatic waterfall down the front of the hotel from the fourth floor, said Kenneth Piper, who runs the front desk.

"We are a concrete building, but we really shook. You could almost see the cars bouncing up and down in the parking garage," he said.

The quake caused widespread power outages, and phone communication was possible, but difficult. By mid-day Sunday, power was restored to Hilo on the Big Island and was starting to be restored to Maui, said Chuck Anthony, a spokesman for the Hawaii National Guard. Officials did not have a firm estimate of how many people were without power.

Lingle told radio station KSSK that she toured the Kona area by helicopter to view the damage, including earth falling into Kealakekua Bay.

"You could see the water was turning brown," said Lingle.

What is termed
"a Landslide of Principle Proportion"
it better be big

Strong quake shakes Hawaii, knocks out power

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - A strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake jolted residents of Hawaii awake, knocking out power and rattling windows, but officials were quick to say no tsunami was expected.

The US Geological Survey said the quake hit at 7:07 am (1707 GMT) near the island of Hawaii and was followed by at least a dozen aftershocks, the strongest a moderate 5.8 magnitude.

Governor Linda Lingle issued a disaster declaration, local media reported. She said in a radio interview that there had been no reports of deaths from the temblors in the Pacific island chain.

Sunday's quake is believed to be Hawaii's strongest since 1983, when a magnitude 6.7 quake hit Kaoiki, according to USGS.

oh these little earthquakes
here we go again
oh these little earthquakes
doesn’t take much
to RIP us into pieces

More than 300,000 await power in New York area, flood watch posted

BUFFALO (AP) — A flood watch was posted Saturday as the region's record snowfall melted, and most homes and businesses still had no electricity.
More than a day after nearly two feet of snow buried western New York, travel bans were lifted Saturday, the airport was open, stores reopened and the evening's Buffalo Sabres game was on.

However, National Grid still had more than 240,000 customers without power Saturday afternoon and New York State Electric & Gas reported 120,800 customers still in the dark.

"This is going to be the worst (outage) we ever had in western New York," said National Grid spokesman Steve Brady. He said the outages affected about two-thirds of Buffalo homes and businesses.

Buffalo's two snowiest October days on record claimed three lives: One person who was hit by a falling tree limb while shoveling snow. Two others died in traffic accidents.

Health officials said hospitals had seen dozens of cases of people sickened by carbon monoxide produced by improperly vented stoves and generators. As a precaution, residents outside Buffalo and Tonawanda were advised to boil water for two minutes before drinking it after a pumping station was temporarily idled by a power loss.

Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins toured the damage Saturday and promised help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"It's different I guess than any other of the storms because the damage is so focused on power," Schumer, D-N.Y., said after watching firefighters use chain saws to cut fallen limbs from power lines.

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. And along with the snow, this storm left in its aftermath countless downed power lines and the tree limbs that dragged them onto houses and cars under the weight of ice and snow-covered leaves.

A day after the storm, curbside mounds of leafy branches loomed higher than snowdrifts in many neighborhoods. Jail inmates were enlisted to clear debris from streets.

"The extent of the damage is quite overwhelming," Clinton said.

Plague confirmed in Congo, 42 reported dead - WHO

GENEVA, Oct 13 (Reuters) - An outbreak of plague has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 42 deaths reported among 626 suspected cases over the past 10 weeks, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

But the U.N. health agency said the number of suspected cases "may be an overestimation" as the fatality ratio was unusually low for pneumonic plague.

"Preliminary results from a rapid diagnosis test in the field found three samples positive, out of eight," the WHO said, confirming the presence of the disease. It said additional tests were under way.

Highly contagious pneumonic plague is the most deadly form of plague. It can be spread by humans and usually kills half of its victims.

A team from the WHO, Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and Congolese health authorities has been investigating the outbreak near Wamba in Oriental province in the northeast of the country.

Disease surveillance was being strengthened and tracing of contacts of people with the disease was under way, as well as measures to raise awareness among the population, it said in a statement.

Plague, which causes fever, aches, vomiting and nausea, as well as open sores in some forms, is endemic in many African countries, the Americas, Asia and the former Soviet Union.

Indonesian bird flu toll now 53

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- An 11-year-old Indonesian boy has died of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, raising the national death toll from the disease to 53, the director of the hospital where the patient was being treated said Sunday.

The boy, who wasn't named by officials, was admitted to the Sulianti Saroso Hospital for Infectious Diseases on Thursday and died Saturday night, said Director Dr. Santoso Suroso.

"The death of the boy has brought to 53 the number of people killed by the bird flu virus," Suroso said.

Vietnam is the second worst hit at 42, but it has not recorded any deaths in 2006.

Experts say Indonesians will continue to die until the nation stops the rampant spread of infection among its hundreds of millions of backyard poultry.

Before the latest Indonesian fatality, there had been 253 confirmed cases of bird flu around the world, in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, according to the World Health Organization's Web site. Of those, 148 cases had been fatal.

Dengue fever outbreak in India kills dozens more

NEW DELHI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - An outbreak of dengue fever in India has killed 42 more people and infected another 1,000 over the past four days despite authorities' efforts to control the spread of the mosquito-borne disease, officials said on Sunday.

A total of 94 people have died and nearly 5,000 dengue cases have been reported since late August. The disease is spread by the bite of the female Aedes aegypti mosquito.

"We are not taking the situation lightly. I wish we had an adequate action plan each year to prevent this outbreak," P.K. Hota, India's health secretary, said.

Health officials in New Delhi as well as state governments have been criticised for not anticipating the dangers of mosquito breeding in stagnant and filthy water that collects after the monsoons taper off.

India is also fighting an outbreak of Chikungunya, another disease spread by female Aedes mosquito and which has the same symptoms of high fever, joint and muscular pains, vomiting and skin rashes as dengue.

The government has confirmed 1,610 Chikungunya cases so far with no reported deaths but said there were 1.35 million suspected infections nationwide.

The outbreaks, especially the dengue cases, have received wide media attention this year as the national capital, with a huge municipal budget, has been the worst hit by dengue fever with 24 deaths and nearly 1,400 cases. Civic authorities in New Delhi are running a campaign asking residents to empty their water-coolers and even flower vases to remove breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Vatican unveils world of the dead

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Visitors to the Vatican will soon be able to descend into an ancient world of the dead, a newly unveiled necropolis that was a burial place for the rich and not-so-affluent during Roman imperial rule.

Vatican Museums officials and archaeologists on Monday gave a press tour of the necropolis, which was unearthed three years ago during construction of a parking lot.

One archaeologist said sculptures, engravings and other objects found entombed with the dead made the find a "little Pompeii" of cemeteries.

The burial places, ranging from simple terracotta funerary urns with ashes still inside to ornately sculptured sarcophagi, date from between the era of Augustus (23 B.C. to 14 A.D.) to that of Constantine in the first part of the 4th century.

From specially constructed walkways, visitors can look down on some skeletons, including that of an infant buried by loved ones who left a hen's egg beside the body. The egg, whose smashed shell was reconstructed by archaeologists, might have symbolized hopes for a rebirth, said officials at a Vatican Museums news conference.

The remains of the child, whose gender wasn't determined, were discovered during the construction of the walkways, after the main excavation had finished, said Daniele Battistoni, a Vatican archaeologist.

Buried there were upper class Romans as well as simple artisans, with symbols of their trade, offering what archaeologists called rare insights into middle and lower-middle class life.

"We found a little Pompeii of funeral" life, said Giandomenico Spinola, a head of the Museums' classical antiquities department.

"We have had the mausoleums of Hadrian and Augustus," Spinola said, referring to majestic monuments along the Tiber in Rome, "but we were short on these middle and lower-class" burial places.

The burial sites help "document the middle class, which usually escapes us," said consultant Paolo Liverani, an archaeologist and former Museums official. "You don't construct history with only generals and kings."

Among those buried in the necropolis was a set designer for Pompey's Theater, notorious for being near the spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death. Decorating the designer's tomb were some symbols of his trade -- a compass and a T-square.

Also buried in the necropolis were an archivist for Emperor Nero's private property and mailmen.

Unearthed were black-and-white mosaic flooring and other decorations, including figures of a satyr and Dionysus, an ancient god of fertility and wine, along with a scene of a grape harvest.

Calif. growers fear biotech rice threat

PRINCETON, Calif. - Fourth-generation farmer Greg Massa was in the middle of the rice harvest and he was dirty, angry and depressed.

The price of the gasoline that powers his water pumps and rice harvester has never been more expensive. A late planting season, hot summer and rising expenses had ensured a less-than-stellar harvest, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasting a 13 percent drop compared to last year.

So the last thing Massa needed was a biotechnology blunder so disastrous that it prompted the rice industry's biggest export customer — Japan — to prohibit some varieties and threaten to ban all U.S. imports. The European Union is making similar threats because genetically engineered rice continues to turn up on grocery shelves in Europe.

"If that happens, the California industry will evaporate," said Massa as he drove the harvester around his farm about 80 miles north of Sacramento.