4 dead from Midwest ice storm

TULSA — Freezing rain fell in the nation's midsection Friday, and temperatures plunged from Minnesota to Las Vegas as a storm rolled in that could leave several states coated in ice.
At least four deaths have been blamed on the storm, some schools closed early Friday, and dozens of flights were delayed.

"It could definitely be a paralyzing storm. This is going to be a long-term event," said Max Blood, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Tulsa, where at least two airlines, Southwest and Atlantic Southeast, canceled all afternoon flights.

In Missouri, dozens of flights were canceled at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. In Texas, about 60 flights were canceled at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Several inches of ice was expected in parts of Kansas by the end of the weekend.

A 16-year-old boy riding to school Friday was killed in the Kansas City, Mo., suburb of Lee's Summit when the pickup he was in slid on ice and overturned, police said.

Later Friday morning, an 81-year-old man died after his sports utility vehicle slid off a highway in the suburb of Sugar Creek and overturned, police said. A 19-year-old woman was killed when she lost control of her car on an icy stretch of highway in Henry County and was struck in the passenger side by an oncoming pickup, police said.

In Oklahoma City, a lumber truck flipped on an icy Interstate 44 exit ramp Friday, killing the driver, the state highway patrol said.

Utility crews were bracing for another round of bad weather as they working to restore power to irrigation systems, stock wells and oil wells, which sustained significant damage during back-to-back blizzards a few weeks ago. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, power was restored late Thursday to the final 15 homes hit previously, Tri-County Electric Cooperative reported.

Oklahoma Department of Transportation crews and city crews were in the field Friday working to prevent icing on bridges and overpasses, which are typically the first portions of roadway to freeze over.

In Tulsa, 50 spreaders loaded with salt and sand were prepared to hit the streets by late Friday.

"The way it looks, we'll be running all weekend, maybe longer," said Dan Crossland, the city's street maintenance supervisor.

Forecasters warned for freezing temperatures in Nevada, but were no longer expecting up to 2 inches of snow in the southern part of the state.

In Minnesota, the temperature dropped to 24 below zero around dawn Friday in Hallock, in the state's northwestern corner, the National Weather Service said. Winds up to 25 mph made it feel closer to 40 below zero in much of western Minnesota.

The National Weather Service on Friday night issued an ice storm warning for central Illinois night that stays in effect through Monday morning. Freezing rain could layer the region with up to half an inch of ice, forecasters said, with Springfield and the area southwest of the city getting hit the hardest.

Sri Lanka floods displace 60,000

COLOMBO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Around 60,000 people have been displaced in Sri Lanka by flooding caused by torrential monsoon rains, the government said on Saturday, while the death toll from landslides a day earlier rose to 13.

Sri Lanka's central tea-growing hills are prone to landslides during the monsoon, particularly in the district of Nuwara Eliya renowned for its lush plantations, where the deaths occurred on Friday.

"A total of 12,500 families have been affected due to the floods and landslides," Major-General Gamini Hettiarrachchi, head of the National Disaster Management Centre, told Reuters. "That is about 60,000 people."

The southeastern disitrict of Hambantota, which was pounded by the 2004 tsunami, was badly affected.

Hundreds of houses were damaged and thousands of people remain stranded in the central hills, said the government, which is temporarily housing the displaced in schools and welfare centres.

Floods hit southern Malaysia, 50,000 homeless

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Heavy rains in southern Malaysian have forced some 50,000 people to seek higher ground after many victims had just returned to their homes following the worst floods in 37 years, local media said on Saturday.

The fresh floods cut off several major roads in the southern state of Johor, a major oil palm and rubber growing region. The state's capital, Johor Baru, was the worst hit area, with nearly 20,000 people evacuated, the official Bernama news agency reported. The situation is expected to worsen with rain forecast to continue until Monday.

Last month floods killed 15 people and displaced over 100,000. The damage bill was estimated at more than 100 million ringgit ($28 million). ($1=3.512 Ringgit)

Small tsunami waves hit Japan after Pacific quake

TOKYO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Small tsunami waves hit northern and eastern Japan on Saturday after a powerful earthquake in the Pacific prompted tsunami warnings in Japan, Russia and Alaska.

Watches were also mounted in Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hawaii, island territories nervous of a repeat of the disaster two years ago when a quake in the Indian Ocean created giant waves that killed 230,000.

A 40-cm (16-inch) wave was reported at Chichijima in the Ogasawara islands, some 1,200 km (750 miles) south of Tokyo, and several smaller waves on Hokkaido and northern Japan, but there were no reports of injuries and no immediate reports of damage.

Evacuation advisories had been issued for tens of thousands of households in Japan but all warnings were cancelled at 10:10 p.m. (1310 GMT).

The USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) put the quake magnitude at 8.2, a "great" tremor, and said its epicentre was in the northern Pacific, 525 km (325 miles) east northeast of Kurilsk, Kurile Islands, and 1,710 km (1,065 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

The same area was struck by a powerful quake in November, prompting evacuations and tsunami warnings, but then too only small waves reached Japan.

An official in Russia's Emergencies Ministry told Reuters the threat of a tsunami had passed.

"Half-past eight, nine o' clock Moscow time (0530-0600 GMT) was the approximate time the threat of a tsunami was due to appear. That time passed, and the threat did not materialise. Everything is normal," the official said.

RESIDENTS EVACUATED

Japan's Meteorological Agency had said a tsunami as tall as a metre (yard) could hit parts of Hokkaido and smaller waves were likely to hit a wide area of coast, from Hokkaido to Wakayama prefecture on Japan's largest main island of Honshu.

Hokkaido officials urged residents to move to higher ground and fire trucks made the rounds of coastal areas warning about the tsunami threat. There were only moderate tremors in Hokkaido and no immediate reports of casualties.

"We have cars going around the city telling people to evacuate," Takahiro Yamamoto, an official with the Monbetsu city government, told NHK.

Television footage showed a worried resident of Kushiro studying the coast with binoculars from an evacuation centre.

"I'm scared to return home," said a woman cradling a child.

Authorities in the Philippines said they issued a tsunami alert "level one", warning residents on the northern and eastern coasts to wait for further information and possible evacuation.

Officials in Taiwan said they would continue to monitor for several hours but did not expect anything to happen.

A tsunami, Japanese for "harbour wave," travels at dizzying speed in the open ocean and, when it approaches shallow water along a coast, slows and swells. In an inlet, it can rise to a towering height very quickly.

In 1993, a tsunami caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed about 200 people on the island of Okushiri, off Hokkaido's southwestern coast.

Comoros volcano emits fumes, island put on alert

MORONI, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Comoros' Mount Karthala begun emitting fumes and producing a red glow over the top of its volcano, residents said on Saturday as the Indian Ocean archipelago's main island was put on alert.

The 2,361-metre (7,746-foot) Mount Karthala, one of the world's largest active volcanoes, dominates the island of Grand Comore but its past periodic eruptions have rarely caused a major disaster.

"Since yesterday evening, the volcano has become eruptive," Hamidou Soule, a geologist who heads the Karthala volcano surveillance centre, told Reuters.

He said the lava level had risen in the volcano's crater. Mount Karthala has erupted every 11 years on average for the last two centuries.

Residents of Mvouni, a town at 1,000 metres altitude on the volcano's west slope, were woken up by strong fumes.

"My neighbour woke me at two o'clock in the morning and we saw the red glimmer in the sky," said resident Halima Ahamada.

"A strong smell of burning earth took us by the throats."

Colonel Ismael Daho, head of the emergency management team for the archipelago, said Grande Comore had been put on red alert.

In May, the volcano frightened thousands of residents when it bubbled lava and lit up the night sky, but later stabilised.

The last big eruption, in April 2005, sent thousands fleeing in fear of poisonous gas and lava.

The worst disaster on record came in 1903, when 17 died from noxious fumes that seeped from cracks.