An aerial view of flooded area in Malaysia's southern state of Johor, December 20, 2006. (Stringer/Reuters)

Floods worsen in southern Malaysia, 50,000 homeless

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Around 50,000 people have been forced to evacuate their flooded homes in southern Malaysia as the region suffered its heaviest rainfall in a century, news reports said on Thursday.

The rains, blamed on Typhoon Utor, triggered large-scale flooding, cut off several towns in the southern state of Johor, shut down power and water supplies and disrupted train services.

One passenger bus fell into a ravine early on Thursday in the southern town of Kota Tinggi but none of the six people on board were injured, the online edition of the Star newspaper said.

Official news agency Bernama put the total number of evacuees in Johor and three neighboring states at 50,000, up sharply from 30,000 a day earlier.

The Meteorological Services Department said more rains were forecast in Johor and the northeastern states of Kelantan and Terengganu over the next 24 hours.

Science Minister Jamaluddin Jarjis blamed the downpours on strong winds from the western Pacific Ocean.

"The phenomenon is due to the effects of Typhoon Utor near the Philippines," he said. The typhoon killed 27 people in the Philippines last week.

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak was in Johor on Thursday to visit flood victims, many of them taking shelter in schools and community halls.

Johor is one of Malaysia's biggest producers of rubber and palm oil. There was no immediate word on the impact on crops in the state, but palm oil prices have risen on fears of supply disruption.

Colorado blizzard strands thousands

DENVER - The Denver area was motionless for a second day Thursday. City streets were empty, nothing moved at the airport but the thousands of stranded travelers, long stretches of highway were impassable, even the mail couldn't get through after a powerful blizzard dumped 2 feet of snow on the region.

"It feels like I'm a refugee," said Lisa Maurer, a University of Wyoming student who was stuck at the Denver airport as she tried to make her way home to Germany.

Some 4,700 people hunkered down with her overnight at Denver International Airport after all flights there were canceled. The runways weren't likely to reopen until Thursday night, airport spokesman Steve Snyder said.

More than 30 inches of snow fell in the mountains, and up to 2 feet fell in the Denver metro area Wednesday and early Thursday.

A snowstorm also dumped up to 18 inches on parts of New Mexico, glazing roads with ice and forcing some schools to close Wednesday, and the National Weather Service warned that another storm was taking aim at the state Friday night and Saturday.

Denver, Colorado Springs and other cities along the Rocky Mountain Front Range remained virtual ghost towns Thursday morning after workers slipped and slid their way home on Wednesday and stayed there.

The wind-whipped snow was finally expected to taper off in Colorado on Thursday afternoon. Parts of Nebraska and Kansas were also getting snow and ice, but farther east, warmer temperatures meant even Chicago was only forecast to get heavy rain as the storm moved through.

In Colorado's socked-in eastern half, though, few travelers were going anywhere. The Colorado Springs airport reopened and some airlines were flying, but getting there was nearly impossible.

Bus and light rail service in a six-county region around Denver was suspended. The State Patrol reported a rash of collisions but no fatalities.

Gov. Bill Owens declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard, which assisted dozens of motorists on the highways around Denver and delivered diapers, formula and bottled water to the airport.

Long stretches of Interstates 70 and 25, the main east-west and north-south routes through the Mountain West, were closed. Interstate 76 was closed from Denver to Nebraska.

"They pulled everyone off the highway," said Leon Medina, manager of a truck stop on Interstate 25 in Walsenburg, about 130 miles south of Denver. "Cars are all around the building. Trucks are all over, trucks and cars pulled into ditches."

At least 270 people took refuge at seven American Red Cross shelters in the Denver area and the number was expected to rise as motorists arrived by the busload early Thursday, said Robert Thompson, spokesman for the Mile High chapter.

"It's just amazing how many people are still out there," Thompson said.

Shelters also opened in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, and the Red Cross provided 140 cots for nearly 350 people stranded at a Greyhound bus station in downtown Denver, Thompson said.

Weather Service program manager Byron Louis said it was the most powerful storm to hit Colorado since March 2003, when a massive blizzard dumped up to 11 feet of snow in the mountains over several days and was blamed for at least six deaths in Colorado and Wyoming.

Major malls closed early Wednesday. One, Flatirons Crossing Mall in Broomfield, northwest of Denver, offered warmth for motorists stranded along U.S. 36, the major link between Denver and Boulder.

Mail service was canceled in the eastern half of the state because mail carriers and trucks delivering mail four days before Christmas couldn't get through.

"We don't want to take the risk of clogging up the system just by being out there," said Al DeSarro, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman in Denver. "We're considering delivering on Sunday to make up for what's sure to be a backlog of mail."

At Denver International Airport, more than 1,000 flights were canceled from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday. United Airlines canceled more than 670 flights into Denver, plus 160 that had been scheduled leave before noon Thursday. Frontier Airlines canceled up to 190 flights.

"I'm just happy to be alive. It was a terrifying drive," Sara Kelton said of the two-hour crawl over slick, snow-clogged roads to reach the airport.

Thirteen hours after Alan Barr left his Denver office for a bus ride home to Boulder, he was stuck at a Red Cross shelter in Denver, not much closer to home than when he left.

His bus had set out from Denver hours late, then had to turn back. Barr trudged into the shelter shortly after midnight with other discouraged riders but said he had not given up on the bus system.

"Days like today are an exception," he said. "I believe in public transportation."

Commuters on several buses had similar experiences, said Scott Reed, spokesman for the Regional Transportation District. "There was just no traffic moving," Reed said. "It was absolute gridlock."

Public transit service was not expected to resume until late Thursday at the earliest.

"It was comical for a while," said bus rider Matt Notter of Boulder. "Then we realized, this is an all-night thing."

Christmas cheer blooms in Philippine typhoon path

LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - Anne Hermosura swapped Christmas shopping and parties for back-breaking construction work this week to help thousands left destitute by typhoons in the central Philippines.

The 19-year old student nurse was one of hundreds of volunteers, from soldiers to businessmen, who passed buckets of water and building materials at a site for 600 new homes in Albay province, around 200 miles south of Manila.

"It's really very difficult because I am not used to doing these things only men do," Hermosura told Reuters, wiping sweat from her face as she took a short break from carrying cement blocks in the baking heat.

"It's a rewarding and humbling experience. I couldn't believe it myself that I was capable of doing this. Of course, all of us were exhausted and tired after a day's work, but I can't explain the happiness of helping people I never even knew or met."

The Philippine government wants to build around 10,000 new homes for nearly 440,000 people displaced after a succession of typhoons crashed into the Philippines since September.

Hermosura and her friends were toiling on what will become Taysan village, a hilly area free of geological hazards that will be a new home for families displaced after Typhoon Durian destroyed their communities last month.

Durian killed more than 1,000 people when its high winds and rains sent tonnes of mud and water crashing from Mount Mayon, the country's most active volcano, onto nearby villages.

Around 120,000 people were still sheltering in evacuation centers in Albay after Durian's wrath.

TYPHOON-PROOF

"Twenty-one days after the last powerful typhoon to hit our country, we now begin the massive reconstruction efforts to get the affected communities back on their feet," said Glenn Rabonza, executive director of the National Disaster Coordinating Council.

Earlier this month, the United Nations appealed for $46 million to help feed, clothe and rebuild the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in the central region of Bicol, known as the country's welcome mat for typhoons.

The government has said it would need 50 billion pesos ($1 billion) to rebuild farms and communities, which have seen fruit crops and irrigation systems destroyed, fishing boats smashed and bridges and roads obliterated.

Around 20 typhoons buffet the Philippines every year and Luis Oquinera, national coordinator of non-government group Gawad Kalinga, said his organization was building homes to deal with the meteorological challenge.

"Our engineers have made modifications to make these homes withstand 250 kph winds during typhoons," he said, adding that it would take about two weeks to complete one home depending on the number of volunteers helping to build it.

"Some of the displaced residents could probably move in one day before Christmas in about 20 homes nearing completion."

Hermosura said she had not thought twice when she got a mobile phone text message from school friends to spend their Christmas break rebuilding communities in the Bicol region.

"I can shop and party any time in Manila but I wouldn't pass on this rare chance of spending Christmas with our less fortunate countrymen."

South Korea says fourth bird flu case confirmed

SEOUL, Dec 21 (Reuters) - A fourth case of bird flu has been discovered in South Korea after culling of poultry from earlier cases, a government official said on Thursday, raising concerns that quarantine measures had failed to control the outbreak.

South Korea confirmed in November its first case of the H5N1 strain in about three years.

The three initial cases were found in farms in the North Cholla province, around 170 km (100 miles) south of Seoul. The latest case emerged at a duck farm in Asan, South Chungcheong province, about 100 km further north.

"We confirmed that a case at a duck farm in Asan was highly pathogenic," an official at the agriculture ministry said.

There were no reports suggesting human infection, the official added.

Quarantine authorities would cull 23,000 poultry within a 3-km radius of the latest infected farm.

Between December 2003 and March 2004, about 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu. During that outbreak, the country destroyed 5.3 million birds.

Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease, but it has infected nearly 260 people worldwide since late 2003, killing more than 150, according to the World Health Organisation.

Since 2003, outbreaks have been confirmed in about 50 countries and territories.

Bird flu outbreak spreads in Vietnam's Mekong Delta

HANOI, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Vietnam's first outbreak of bird flu since August has spread to four more areas in the Mekong Delta, where nearly 8,300 birds have been killed by the virus or slaughtered to hold it back, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Three outbreaks spotted between Dec. 11 and Dec. 20 in Ca Mau province killed over 2,500 chickens and ducks, while one in neighbouring Bac Lieu province killed dozens of ducks, the ministry's Animal Health Department said in a report on Thursday.

The outbreaks of the H5N1 virus were the first in Vietnam since August. The initial eruptions killed around 6,000 newly hatched chickens and ducklings that were not vaccinated against bird flu.

Farmers have since thrown dead birds into water channels or let ducks roam on rice fields, helping spread the virus that first arrived in the Delta in late 2003 and has since killed 42 of the 93 people infected in Vietnam.

Vietnam, which has had no human bird flu cases since late 2005, has a human death toll second only to Indonesia's 57, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

WHO says bird flu has killed 154 people out of 258 infected globally since late 2003.

Vietnamese animal health officials said on Wednesday that temperatures were falling in the southern region incorporating the delta, which would help the spread of a virus that thrives best in cooler temperatures.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmissible among humans and spark an influenza pandemic that would kill millions.

The Mekong Delta outbreaks caused health officials in nearby Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's largest city, to tighten inspection of poultry and step up monitoring of breeding farms, state media reported on Thursday.

Thousands stuck at foggy Heathrow

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded Thursday after a thick blanket of freezing fog forced hundreds of flights to be canceled at Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport.

Heated tents, sleeping mats and catering stalls were set up to accommodate irate travelers, many of whom were affected after British Airways canceled 180 flights, including all domestic and some European services.

"It's bedlam. The whole terminal is so packed you can barely walk," said Nicholas Velez, 23, one of about 500 passengers left stranded Wednesday night while trying to return home to Washington, D.C., for the holidays.

About 350 flights have been canceled since Tuesday, when a thick blanket of freezing fog moved in to the city.

"When we flew in last night, you couldn't see the ground," said Velez, who had been transferring through Heathrow. "I've never seen anything like it before."

Velez said he saw fights breaking out as people scrambled for places in line and criticized British Airways for its management of the crowds.

Outside Heathrow, visibility reached a low of 115 meters (377 feet), making runways nearly invisible to approaching aircraft, said Keith Fenwick, a spokesman for Britain's Meteorological office. Visibility lower than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) is generally considered disruptive for flights.

The fog was expected to continue through Friday -- one of the busiest travel days before the holidays -- raising the possibility that thousands more passengers could be stranded. Eurostar reported a 15 percent spike in traffic as frustrated airline passengers boarded trains to get to Paris and Brussels.

At Heathrow's Terminal Four, the British Airways terminal, lines snaked out of the door as passengers struggled to reach the ticket counter.

Mark Bullock, managing director of BAA Heathrow, said the airport's capacity had been reduced by about 40 percent.

"The cancellations will need to continue as long as the weather conditions prevail," he told the British Broadcasting Corp. Flights at other London airports were relatively unaffected, with nine cancellations reported at Stansted and none at Gatwick.

Flu 'could wipe out 62 million'

A global flu pandemic could kill 62 million people, experts have warned.

The 1918 pandemic claimed 50 million lives, and experts in The Lancet predict the toll today would be higher than this, despite medical advances.

The world's poorest nations would be hardest hit, fuelled by factors such as HIV and malaria infections, the Harvard University researchers believe.

Yet developing countries can least afford to prepare for a pandemic, which needs to be addressed, they say.

Killer strain

Lethal global flu epidemics tend to occur three or four times a century.

Some scientists believe a new one may be imminent and could be triggered by bird flu.

So far there have been only 258 cases of the latest strain of avian flu, H5N1, recorded in humans.

But the fear is that this strain could mutate and spread quickly and easily between people, triggering a deadly pandemic.

It is estimated between 50,000 and 700,000 people could die in the UK if such an event occurred.

To forecast how big the global death toll might be, Professor Christopher Murray and his team looked back at the events of the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic.

When they extrapolated the mortality rates then to the global population of 2004, they estimated 51-81 million people could die from a similarly severe outbreak and gave a median estimate of 62 million.

And 96% of these deaths would occur in the poorest countries, where there is overcrowding and access to medical care is limited, they predict.

Professor Murray warned: "The burden of the next influenza pandemic will be overwhelmingly focused in the developing world.

"Focusing on practical and affordable strategies for low-income countries where the pandemic will have the biggest effect is clearly prudent."

Dr Neil Ferguson, a UK flu expert at Imperial College London, St Mary's, said: "Access to vaccines, antivirals, and antibiotics for the most vulnerable populations is clearly part of the solution."

But he said it might be more pragmatic to focus on public health measures such as school closure, household quarantine and mask-wearing, although more evidence is needed to show if these can delay or reduce the effect of a pandemic.

"The evidence for non-medical interventions will be eagerly awaited," he added.